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MALI – TUAREGS RETURN HOME 357 CAMP TRUCK ARRIVES MOUSSA TYING UP RICE SACK WOMEN ROLLING UP TENT MOUSSA AND CO PULLING SACKS TOWARDS TRUCK MOUSSA AND CO PUTTING STUFF ON TRUCK TRUCKS LEAVING MOUSSA AND CO ON TRUCK LINE OF TRUCKS DUSTY SHOT TRUCKS DISAPPEARING INTO DISTANCE FARACHE SUNRISE FAMILY IN TENT – TEA AND MILK C.S MOHAMET ALI’S FACE GOATS LEAVING ENCLOSURE COME TO MAHOMET ALI BACK TO MAHOMET IN VISION DESOLATE LAKE BED AND GOATS WELL CONSTRUCTION W/S WELL, DUST BLOWING DESOLATE DUSTY SHOTS COME TO MAHOMET ALI IN VISION WELL FOOTAGE TIMBUKTU THROUGH HAZE MARKET MARKET PLACE ANIMALS BY RIVER NIGER C/U HOES DIGGING WITH RIVER IN B/G C/U YELLOW TURBANED MAN M.A. AG TOUTA RIVER AND CAMELS RIVER AND BOATS MOHAMED ALI AG TOUTA Tuareg refugee FATY AND HER FAMILY IN TENT WOMAN IN BER FATY Tuareg refugee FATY CONT’D TRUCKS IN CONVOY ZEINAB SHEIKH-ALI Field Officer, UNHCR MOUSSA HELPING KIDS DOWN C/U TEA POURING MOUSSA CONT’D W/S BER – SQUARE/STREETS AND VILLAGERS FATY’S BROTHER PUMPING GARDENING – FATY AND BROTHER FATY AND FAMILY IN VISION MOUSSA ARRIVES IN BER – UNPACKING TRUCK MOUSSA AND FAMILY WAITING ZEINAB SHEIKH-ALI Field Officer, UNHCR M.A. TALKING TO RED CROSS MAHOMET ALI KIDS BEHIND TENT CU/KIDS – DRUMMING WOMEN AND KIDS DRUMMING ETC. CAMEL CARAVAN |
Refugee camps are seldom cheerful places. But surely few are as remote, as bleak, and as ignored by the outside world as this one. The refugees are desert nomads from the huge west African country of Mali. Four years ago they fled from their homes around Timbuktu to Bassiknou, in the south-east corner of neighbouring Mauritania. TRUCK FX TRUCK FX Now, Moussa Ag Mohammed and his family are going home. There’s no sense of rejoicing. They still don’t want to return. But the UN High Commission for Refugees, says Moussa, has given him no choice. MOUSSA
V/OVER I’ve
taken my three month ration of rice from UNHCR and
I’m taking it with me to Mali. They
say that if we wait until June, we’ll
not get even a truck to take our baggage back to Mali. We’re
obliged to come here and now we’re obliged to go back. FX TRUCKS LEAVE Moussa’s reluctance is caused partly by his fear that it still isn’t safe to go back. He’s been assured that the civil war which caused him to flee is now over – but he’s not convinced. And there’s another fear too – a fear that haunts all the refugees. Will they ever be able to return to the lifestyle they once led – and if not, how will they live? MUSIC GOATS BLEATING ETC. MILKING The Tuareg, the Blue People of the Sahara, have been desert nomads for centuries – but in Mali, only a few of them still are. SNATCH MAHOMET NATSOT The Kel Antsar clan can trace its lignage back to the armies of the Prophet Mahomet, which swept out of Arabia twelve hundred years ago. Mahomet Ali, is a tough, and independent old patriarch. When, five years ago, some of the Tuareg rebelled against the government of Mali, he refused to join them – and he refused to flee. MA:
I stayed here because my philosophy is that I would rather stay at home. One
of our proverbs says that if is hot where you are, it’s even hotter somewhere
else. They
say life is a battle, and we don’t expect it to be easy. However
harsh this way of life may be, we’ll stick with it until we die. But life for Mahomet Ali and his family has not always been harsh. Today, he lives on a dusty plain, and his people’s lives are dominated by the search for water, which lies nearly thirty metres beneath the sand. With pitifully primitive tools, his family are improving a well which has to be dug deeper every year. Yet twenty-five years ago, this whole area was the bed of a vast freshwater lake, three metres deep. V/OVER The
water was so beautiful, there was the beauty of the dunes, the beauty of the
hills, and the beauty of the water. And
for the local people it was a paradise on earth. Q: What
happened? What
happened was that suddenly during the great drought of 1973, the water
receded and the lake disappeared. After
that, this country, which used to have plenty of water became
a country of thirst. Before
people used to fish, grow crops, keep herds – and they were prosperous. Now
people here are thirsty – and that’s why we’re working so hard to
sink wells and repair the well shaft. Throughout the southern Sahara, wells dried up, animals died. But somehow, Mahomet Ali and his family have rebuilt their herds, and clung to their ancient, self-sufficient way of life. When they need to buy grain or stores, one of them takes a camel or a donkey cart on the four-day journey to Timbuktu. This ancient entrepot on the edge of the Sahara has always been a meeting place of cultures and races. However dark their skin, the Moors and Tuaregs of the desert, with their hawk-nosed features, call themselves “whites”. The sedentary Sonrai peasants, who grow their rice and vegetables beside the Niger River, call themselves “blacks”. The commerce between them was usually amicable, and profitable to both communities. But then, in 1984, came a second great drought. For many of the nomads of the desert, it was the last straw. DIGGING FX This is a sight which twenty years ago would have been unthinkable – Tuareg nomads wielding hoes. Side by side with Sonrai peasants they’re preparing a field by the River Niger for rice-planting. The recurring drought forced Mahomet Ali Ag Touta, the descendant of generations of Tuareg herdsmen, to become a farmer. When
the drought covered all the land, we didn’t know what to do, and
all that was left was to come to the river and work the land. The
drought taught us that no matter how many animals you have you
can lose them all in one blow. But
with land, you can keep farming – even
if you don’t get results this year, you can still farm next year. Farming
is the only hope for our people. But land by the river is scarce – after years of drought, many Tuareg had neither animals to herd, nor land to farm. Competition with the Sonrai peasants increased. The Moors and Tuaregs – the so-called whites – felt that the black military government far to the South had abandoned them. In the early 1990’s some of their young men rebelled. SECOND HALF PTC. They
attacked military and civilian targets right across the North, especially
black Sonrai communities. The Sonrai – and the military – reacted ferociously
against all Moors and Tuaregs, whether or not they supported the rebels. SUB-TITLE TRANSLATION When
the rebels met the army, or when they attacked a place, after
that anybody the army came across, they killed. And
the black militia, the Gandakoy, came along the river, and
any whites they found, they killed. We
didn’t have any means of self-defense, and that’s why we left. Mahomet Ali ag Touta’s story was repeated to us time and again by returned refugees. SUB-TITLE TRANSLATIONS One
day my sister and I went looking for wood, and
my brother was looking after the animals, and
when we came back, our
tent was one fire and my parents were dead. We
don’t know who started the fire, we never saw who killed them, I
don’t know who they were. Then
we fled to Mauritania. Thousands died, and tens of thousands fled across Mali’s borders. Now – from Mauritania, and Algeria, and Burkina Fasso – they’re coming home. The UNCHR has brokered a peace agreement between the rebels and a new, democratic government in Bamako. The peace, it claims, shows every sign of holding. It
is very evident in the people themselves and we see it as we move around.
Peace is back in the north, and that’s been guaranteed also by the
authorities that we find everywhere we go in the field, and their cooperation
and co-ordination with the population that’s coming back home. But Moussa Ag Mohammed is still mistrustful. And even if the peace does hold, he has little chance of returning to the nomadic way of life he left behind. Camped for the night in a transit centre just inside Mali, he explained to me th at the rebellion has left his family desperately poor. When
we were in Mali we had livestock – we
had cows, sheep, goats, donkeys and camels. (JH
REVERSE Q: What happened to all those animals?) When
I was about to flee to Mauritania, the
army took my cows and camels. I
brought my sheep, goats and donkeys with me to Mauritania, but
some of them died of thirst on the journey and
some were stolen in Mauritania. SUBTITLES: The
only means of living that we have now is the 200 kilos of food I showed you yesterday. When
that’s finished, I don’t know what I will do. I’m
still afraid, but I have to go. What faces Moussa is a life of desperate poverty in his home village of Ber, a hundred kilometres east of Timbuktu. FX PUMPING It’s a life which Faty and her brother are already living. On a patch of sand outside the village, they’re trying to cultivate a market garden. It’s a skill they learned in the refugee camps. But there they had plentiful water from solar-powered pumps. Here every drop the plants consume must be pumped by hand. The returns, for these orphans of the rebellion, are pitiful. When
the boy can gather two or three lettuces, he sells them… and
we get 20 to 50 cents for them and
he will buy some rice with it and we will eat. Or sometimes
if he waters someone’s garden for them, he
will get something and bring it to me. TRUCK ARRIVING AT BER And all the time, more destitute refugees are returning. On the third day after leaving Mauritania, Moussa ag Mohammed and his exhausted family arrive. They too will be trying to start a garden. They too will need health centres, schools, and above all, water. UNHCR and other aid agencies are desperately trying to match the demand for wells. UNHCR Our
priority in 1996 was to have the minimum water security, that is to have
water for drinking. And then this year, we cannot ignore the fact that people
are asking for water for their agriculture projects. So we are trying to
balance and trying to not promise too much but provide at least that minimum
for them to be able to begin, or to continue, a sector that they have already
begun in the refugee camps. With the agencies – and the people – stretched so thinly across this vast area, it’s people like Mahomet Ali Kel Antsar, who insist on staying out in the desert, find themselves last in line. If he’d move to a village, he keeps getting told, and adopt a semi-sedentary way of life, it would be so much easier to help him… But for Mahomet Ali, that would be to abandon the proud independence which is the essence of the Tuareg way. Nomads
do not expect anything from anyone. They lead the life that you have seen.
People who wait for others to give them something in order
to work, don’t have it easy, even if they become sedentary. J: (Fr) Become a bit dependent? MA:
Yes they become a bit dependent. They’ll bring you free grain, they’ll bring
you free medicine, they’ll bring you free milk. That changes things. The
children looking after the herds, even if they are far away, they’ll come
here to talk, and leave the animals to the jackals. Even as it is, many of Mahomet Ali’s children leave for the towns when they grow up. He’s philosophical about it. DRUMMING M.A. V/OVER MA:
The traditional life of the shepherd is very hard. The
young people are attracted to sedentary life, life in town, life in groups.
My generation, and those who came before me, and those who follow us, are
prepared to maintain this way of life, But after that – it's the end. I think
it will die out. J:
(Fr) The end? MA:
That will be the end, after them. DRUMMING AND ULULATING What’s happening in Northern Mali is mostly a good news story. Where there was war, there is now peace. A people who were once marginalized are being included, and helped. The rebellion has put the Tuareg on the map. But as Mahomet Ali Kel Antsar well knows, nothing comes for free. The roaming life of the blue people, which they’ve led for a thousand years, is almost at an end. |