I am walking down a narrow foot path cut between fields of millet, wake (green beans) and arrachids (peanuts) in the hot Sahlian desert sun of Niger. I am with a Peace Corps volunteer whom the villagers call Adamou. From behind me, I hear “Kasuwa …” That’s my Nigern name, called out by an unusually small eight-year-old boy who sprints to catch up to the only two anasaras (white people) he has ever met. As he runs, he kicks up deep red dust from the path that just yesterday had been a puddle. The young boy’s name is Tahirou. He is the fifth child of Moussa, the chief of the village Tafarkas. In their native tongue, Tafarkas means either “village of bloodied soil” or “salt-lick,” depending on how it is pronounced.
Tahirou’s younger brother, little three-year-old Bello, scurries behind, naked, except for a decorative string tied around his waist and hand-me-down tan colored underwear that barely hang on to his toothpick legs, below his round bulging belly. Bello runs to keep up with the pack holding onto a traditional “toy” in his outstretched hand. This “toy” is often made by young children in the African bush while they spend long, hot mornings in the fields with their families tending to the crops that will feed themselves and the villagers for the entire year. The toy Bello has constructed is the stem of a hake (weed) strung through the exoskeleton of live grasshoppers whose hind legs had been torn off and wriggle with fright. Bello’s collection impressively consists of six grasshoppers.
We continue on the footpath as other children run from their work in family fields to join us for part of our journey from Adamou’s field back to the village. Tafarkas is a Tuareg village of 300 inhabitants who speak Tomajek, the language of the Tuareg, and Hausa, a more common language spoken in several West African countries. There is no running water or electricity in Tafarkas, and less than a handful of the villagers have ever actually left the village at all.
As we approach the village, emerging from the vast fields of whose millet stalks bend in the wind making a constant whispering sound, I can see the village in its entirety. It consists entirely of homes and two mosques, where only the men are allowed to visit twice daily to pray. The only other construction that exists in Tafarkas is a one-room wooden school, which was blown down in the last storm and not yet reconstructed.
Homes are constructed from a melange of reddish-brown mud and the leftover millet stalks, leaves and debris collected after harvest. These homes consist of one small room — no windows — with a doorway in which unwanted insects and weather is kept out by a single pagne or strip of colorful African material that is often used to make wrap skirts. Since the entire home is made of this mud concoction, it plagues the women of the household with the never-ending task of balayer, sweeping the ever-present dust with brooms not much larger than their hands.
The one-roomed houses are all surrounded by mud walls which provide a type of dusty yard. It’s here where the women cook for their over-sized families over open flames, rhythmically pounding millet in mortar and pestles the size of small children. They also teach the youngest girls to be useful by weaving straw into mats that the men use for praying and napping. The women claim these “yards” as their territory as they tie newborn babies to their backs with yet another pagne. As they work in the hot sun, they sing while preparing themselves to walk several kilometers to the well to fetch water.
The mud walls around the homes are just over waist high, so as neighbors pass, the women and children working at home exchange friendly greetings with those who pass by:
Ina kwana?
Lahia lau.
Ina aiki?
Aiki da godia…..
The men, meanwhile, make themselves scarce, lounging under shade of a Baobab tree playing traditional games in grids drawn in the dirt and talking about whatever village gossip there may be.
As we enter the village from our exhausting morning collecting wake (green beans) out in the field, we walk between houses, greeting the women and displaying our success in the field, until we reach Adamou’s house. It is lunch-time, the heat of the day, and time for siesta.
One of Chief Moussa’s daughters comes by to bring us a pot of tuwo and miya, ground millet paste with a sauce made of ochre having the consistency of thick saliva, to honor myself, the guest.
I pass the rest of the afternoon hiding from the energy-draining sun, learning how to wasa (weave) from the young girls as they tug at my anasara hair that they are discovering for the first time. They giggle and mock me in their native language saying I would make a bad wife, as my weaving skills are less than perfect. They teach me traditional hand games and one of the chief’s daughters, who, at 13, is to be married within the next few months, shows me her skills at dying the soles of her feet in intricate patterns with natural henna that she picked herself.
At 6:00, the prayer call begins and all of the men of the village meander toward the mosque in the center of town wearing boubous, or the traditional dress clothing for men consisting of a long flowy dress-shirt that reaches their ankles with a pair of matching pants. There, they lay out four rows of mats woven by the women and girls of the village and begin their prayers to the Muslim god Allah, mostly chanted in Arabic. I am invited to sit on an animal skin that has been blessed, directly next to Moussa, the chief, to watch the ceremony.
Throughout the prayer, the men fall to their knees, rock back and forth and rise to their feet in unison while repeating the prayer call, a sound similar to a Native American chant. Adamou leans over to explain to me that the men involved in the prayer have committed to memory each and every one of the prayers but probably don’t understand a word of what is being said, as it is all in Arabic.
After the first round of prayers, the men relax by laying out on the woven mats letting the darkness swallow them. It feels as if the only visible light in all of Western Africa is the immensely brilliant moon. It shines down on the dark mass of lounging bodies, creating mysterious shadows and a soft, gentle light.
The men lie on the mats as one would picture a Greek goddess at ease in their elaborate dwellings, waiting for servants to appear holding grapes above their heads. But when I blink, the image of the goddesses disappears, and I see these dark skinned men unwinding after yet another day of work gathering and perfecting the crops that will allow them to live through the next year.
Voices dance through the soft light. I am entranced by the beauty of their language. I allow their words to carry my thoughts through the vast African sky. My trance is broken as I begin to converse with Moussa the chief and receive language instructions from several men in the group.
The second round of prayer commences, and I feel every muscle in my body relax and become consumed by the spiritual dedication and pleas to Allah.
When the evening’s ceremonies are completed, the men of the village gather all the mats and head for their crowded homes where they will be served dinner. Later they will drift off to sleep under the same sky that hovers over Boston University, though it is much less muffled by unnatural lights of the city.
Adamou and I walk beside Moussa as we go to his home. In a most unusual gesture of hospitality, he has invited us for dinner. It’s unusual because I am a female and should be waiting on the men, rather than enjoying their company. But since I am an anasara woman, the entire village has opened its world to me.