Tuareg culture: written in people, not books

Read time 4 mins

At the entrance to the Museum of Tuareg Culture in Djanet, Algeria, there is a sign that proclaims “Intangible cultural heritage lives only within and among people”. After reading it one might think ‘why bother with the museum?’ and you might be correct. Although lovers of pickled fish and small asteroid fragments might pass a pleasant ten minutes here, the true riches of the Tuareg lie in its people and in the Sahara Desert itself.

To the Tuareg, the Sahara Desert is a vast repository of signs, history, art, and texts written into stone; from last week to the previous century. At each camping place a memory, at each grave a story to be retold, at each strangely shaped rock a myth. Texts written in Tomachek (the Tuareg language) on sandblasted rock tell of where water can be found and who has passed this way before. Tuaregs navigate the desert through easily recognisable landmarks – an intimate ancestral geography spread over a desert landscape of thousands of miles.

Tito, my Tuareg guide tells me that the Tuareg are “the original nomadic wanderers of the Sahara” and “do not recognise borders”. When Algeria gained independence in 1962, it secured its frontiers and ended the Tuareg’s cross–border wanderings. Tito’s family now live scattered across Libya, Niger, and Algeria.

Tito gives me a tour of his house, telling me that “my grandfather was a nomad and built this house when he settled in Djanet”. I look around the living room and–save for a table and chairs set aside for tourists–see nothing that would look out of place in a nomad tent. Tito has a fitted kitchen, yet he cooks on a gas burner on the floor. Tea is prepared, desert style, on open coals in a portable cast iron grate. Tuareg guests sit on traditional rugs on the floor. It seems that inherited nomad instincts run deep. As Bruce Chatwin wrote: “If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert–then it is why possessions exhaust us”.

With thanks to Piora Klinger and Tito Khellaoui.
Text excerpt from The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin.

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