by Les W Kuzyk
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Aahil led the American down the stairs to the lower seating area. He felt comfortable with this new acquaintance, but any real friendship took time.
Many past stories among his people told of the comings and goings of the rains, of the wet years and the dryer times. The older ones spoke endlessly of the ancestors living in the greener times, before the recent droughts and even longer before the French came. But the recent story of his cousin he thought would fit best for this white man.
His cousin Aksil, he told Brad, had listened intently to those stories of greener times, tirelessly searching for crumbs of wisdom. As he heard the yarns, he would also watch closely the water pools along the Anou Mekkerene. A place among the Ayărs where even the palms and acacias grew. He saw where the last of the green would hold out before it too would return to sand. Always after the rains had poured down and rushed away.
They sat in a circle on cushions around the lower room. Hamina set a plate of meat in the centre before them and a steaming platter of rice beside on the mat. Their evening meal. And a basket of crusty Taguella.
“Fire roast goat.” Aahil waved to his guest.
“Taguella, our bread.” He took a piece and dipped it in a sauce bowl to show his guest.
Aksil was Aahil’s mother’s cousin’s son, and had only three fewer years than Aahil. Brad nodded. “Aksil, my cousin, has stolen a piece back from the Ténéré, in a mountain pasture, in the Ayărs.” Aahil’s eye twinkled. “We, the Tuareg, have a reputation for plunder.” His cousin had turned a sand meadow into grazing grass with large herds. “Listen, and I will tell you the story of Aksil.”
As the American dug into his meal, Aahil told more.
As a boy, Aksil would follow his goats up the valleys to the higher places. Everyone knew he was a clever young man. He noticed those things around him that were important, and he was always trying out other ways as a boy. He would rush out into the rains when they came, and yet even the heavy rains would wash away by the next day. The light rains would simply disappear from the hot rock and sand. How could he capture that water he wondered? He discovered how the wet stayed longer under fallen palm leaves, and how in the odd spot even in the high valleys, a plant would grow. A tiny patch of soil developed around the plant and the water stayed a little longer. As long as his goats did not get close, at least at first, for they would chew it down to the sand.
One time he decided to build a wall of blue marble stones across a small ravine, and to catch the rain water in a pool. A place he could stay through the night, keeping the goats close and safe from cheetah and fennec fox. The water stayed but only a few days in the beginning. He found if he kept the goats and their droppings close to the sometimes pool the grass grew and the soil grew also. And with soil, the water stayed longer. But he had to move the goats, and let the grass grow before they ate too much.
Now Aksil sounds like only a goat herd boy, but he grew to be a man in the times of a wireless connection to his cell phone. He followed other ideas, other projects combating desertification across Africa online. He learned about managing his goat grazing land by dividing his pasture into pieces, and keeping the animals close as a herd. And from watching his first at times wet pond and goats, he knew to move each tight herd from one pasture to another. Never allowing the desert to return.
As he grew older, Aksil raised more animals, lots more. One might think fewer, in a dry desert, but bigger herds were good he learned online. Websites said mimic the wild where large groups of hoofed animals stayed in a tight herd, yet moved about the grasslands. One replaces the predatory big cats with people, consumers of milk, cheese and meat. Now, he has spread his pasture from the little ravine where he began, down and out across a valley bottom. What at one time was a patch of barren sand now was a green pasture. Even the water trickled along the bottom of the ravine for months at a time.
“Wow,” Brad said. “Sounds like an answer.”
Aksil had tried to show other Tuareg people, but most even in family did not listen. Most saw him either lucky or blessed. “As my father would say,” Aahil said. “Better ways often lay hidden in the sands, waiting long to be discovered. Even then, only a few at first can know them.”
“You got that right,” Brad said.
After the meal, Aahil invited his guest to lean back to rest, while he rose to help his Hamina clear away the plates and bring out the sweet dates and coffee.
This white man showed his teeth often as Europeans did but he did carry himself with honour. Aahil felt respect shown to his family, and the American held respect for his own family far away. In his way, in the European manner.
Still, how far could he trust this man?
The Green Sahara president talked to his citizens of one idea. The balloons would rise into the air as a spectacle for the people. But Aahil had heard more rumour buzzing about the Minister’s office. Anyone, it sounded, who could influence the engineers’ numbers would find esteem in the eyes of the president. More rain would bring more votes. If the president could cool his country of Niger even further, the people would cheer even louder. There were future contracts to be had, Berber or not, yet he needed be careful. Aahil knew enough about North American culture to avoid talking directly about a tip, a bribe they would say. But tips had never held honour with the Taureg. And he liked this man.