I've not been to Chad, and after this week I'm not sure I need to go. That's not to say Chad isn't a perfectly nice country (well, in point of fact, it probably isn't), but having spent the last few days in the dusty wilds of North Cameroon, I think I have an idea of what to expect.
At least when it comes to the physical landscape. And by physical landscape, I mean the Sahel -- the band of semi-desert that extends like an ochre belt across the Sahara and the whole of Africa. It's very difficult to describe what its like to enter the world's greatest dry zone. In one way everything becomes more muted, more blanched by the sunlight -- which in turn is the only thing amplified, a semi-blinding white explosion, always there, always burning you out through the motile net of the thickest dust clouds.
The dust, like the light, is everywhere. It gets kicked out by trucks and motorcycles and herds of cattle and goats from the Sahelscape, which is yellow-grey-white-brown-above-mentioned-ochre, and the sky is white, bright, and its all hard rocks and spiny trees and quick lizards. This is a hard place. If you're a video game nerd, like me, let me put it this way: this is easily a level 55-60 zone.
It has produced a thin, beautiful people -- some of the most handsome people I've encountered while traveling: the Fulani. They wear bright wraps the color of rainbow puddles like they were rebelling against the natural monochrome of their homeland, and their features are a blend of traditional Bantu African and Nilotic, that bird-boned delicate frame you see in the step of Sudanese, Ethiopians and Somalis. I've experienced few stares as striking as the dark eyes lined in kohl and henna that peered out at me from behind a veil like fire or a sunset on the short grass and thorn trees: red, orange, yellow and dark, bloody purple.
They eat very good meat here. Its always what's for dinner: beef or goat, hunks of it with the fat still wet and yellow off a grill with some dry desert bread that tastes sweet, but also gritty, like it was equal parts sand and flour. It's sliced into bite-sized pieces with a knife that could be small scimitar by a man in a turqouise robe and turban, and maybe next to you an elder who smiles warmly as you enjoy the food, or boys eating the local version of salad, wich is made with avacadoes and tomatos and does, and sorry to be unimaginative, really taste just like guacamole, or a man clad in red keffiyeh and black cloth gloves and black tshirt and camo pants and an AK-47 with an extra banana clip taped to the stock slung over his back.
By Waza National Park, Adamioau and I waited for a van to take us back to Maroua, the commercial hub of Cameroon's Extreme Nord province. Let me make another nerdy aside: Maroua is basically Mos Eisley. Now back to those readers who perhaps aren't religious Star Wars fans: low, rounded buildings, beige and white and soft brown, all neutral tones, and red desert paths between the houses, soft geometric patterns cross-hatched onto the walls and the doors, all of it shaded by thin but tall and strong Neem Trees, which are such the arboreal equivalent of the Fulani you start to wonder if people really are, physically, just a product of their local geography. In and amidst the back alleys are mud palaces and mosques made in that Muslim West African architectural style that is one of my favorites, the way it combines the elegance of Arabic taste without the effeteness, and the pleasing geomteric lines that characterize so much of sub-Saharan Africa, but with a greater sense of artistic refinement.
In any case: back to Waza. We waited, and waited, and waited on the side of the road. A herder sauntered past with a few dozen beautiful bulls, all brindle and dark brown and long horned, skin smooth and sweaty in the dust and their tails swishing a cloud from which emerged maybe 50 more snow white goats. It was one of the finest herds I've seen in Africa -- and, I realized, I have seen a few, having spent much of my time on the continent with people like the Xhosa, Zulu and Orma -- and I mean it, I actually derived pleasure from seeing such fine livestock driven so a gracefully across the semi-desert.
The only other animals were lizards -- dozens of them, chasing each other by the tail and licking unseen moisture from the air. A Fulani boy sold me a bottle of cold ginger juice, which was perhaps too sharp to really quench my thirst, and then did something that touched and surprised me and Adamioua: set out some water, cooed, and watched smiling as all the lizards gathered round and drank, bobbing their heads like small reptilian 'thank you's. Adamioua began to play songs on his cell phones and the lizards loved to the dust in front of us, heads like metronomes again, and that was how we wiled away the hours in the Sahel: drinking cold, yellow ginger juice and watching lizards dance to hip hop.
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