Cud, Sweat and Fears
Tue, September 09, 2008
Since Holly Morris’ GlobeTrekker show about crossing Niger is airing now on PBS, we thought a dispatch about her misguided entry into a camel race (adapted from her book) was in order... - the eds.
update 12/16/08: Tuareg rebels kidnap UN envoy. Tensions high in region.
A Day at the Races
My thighs grip the ornate tamzak saddle and sweat soaks its brightly colored leather fringe as I line up, atop a fifteen-hundred-pound leggy white camel, with 90 other competitors - men wrapped in indigo-pounded cheches and hollering to one another in Tamachek. We are all aggressively jockeying for an inside position; crops are gripped as tight as the tension in the air. A blacksmith raises his glistening takouba silver sword, poised to begin the race. My armpits tingle and my guts suddenly flood with nausea.
I’m in Niger, West Africa, making a film with the nomadic Tuareg people, a disenfranchised tribe who’ve been the independent warriors of the trans-Saharan highway for a millennium. These camel races, called cavalcades, are part of a centuries old tradition, and my fellow competitors have walked for days or weeks to enter the race in hopes of taking home both status and cash.
I wasn’t supposed to enter the race.
