further into Saudi Arabia

After the group tour, I had opted to stay on in Saudi Arabia for a few more days, with a friend, so see a few sites in the Asir Mountains region.  I wish I had added more time so as to relax a little in Jeddah where the group made only a fleeting visit, but we had to make the most of the days we had, so we took a taxi to the hire car office that the hotel told us was open.  One of the most frustrating things about Saudi was that places (offices, restaurants, museums ...) were closed, for no obvious reason, for much of the time, and this was no exception.  But once again the Saudi hospitality (or curiosity about foreigners?) was forthcoming, and a man who saw us looking despairingly into the closed windows of the office offered to help, and drove us for twenty minutes to another car hire office which he knew would be open.

So finally we set out for the south, the first day being just a LONG drive along the (almost) coast road - flat and fairly featureless, with just one or two camels to keep me amused.  But on the second day we turned into the mountain area.  Where the first surprise was the sight of baboons!  There were hundreds of them, swarming around rubbish bins and hanging around any lookout stops along the road, where they scavenged for food.  Not very friendly (one irritated male ran over and smacked my foot when I did something that annoyed him), but quite photogenic!

The mountains were fairly bare and rocky, and dotted with old watch-towers and other buildings constructed from the local dark stone with white quartz decoration above the windows and sometimes along the roof line.  It was sad to see so many of them crumbling, but there is a national programme that has allocated money for preservation of the heritage, and the village of Rijal Alma is one of the best.

We also stopped to explore a few of the abandoned buildings along the route, including these below where you can also see the other building style - layers of mud separated by rows of slate to protect the building from rain - more usually found in the valleys.  The roofs had mostly collapsed, and none of those we were able to see into had any of the traditional brightly-painted wall coverings remaining.

We also viewed the heritage village of Thee Ain - a beautiful spot in the late afternoon light, but over-restored so that from a closer viewpoint you could see that everything was cemented together.  The interiors still looked real but the precise, cemented joins of the exteriors made it feel like a film set rather than an authentic old village.

To get around this region, we were mostly travelling on Highway 15, an impressive bit of engineering as it traverses the high mountain passes.  The road, which runs from Mecca down into Yemen, was built (in the 1960s) by Osama Bin Laden's father - and twelve of the fifteen 9/11 hijackers were recruited from the towns and villages along this route!  As obvious non-Muslim foreigners we didn't encounter any hostility, however - and as noted in my previous post, the cultural environment in the country is changing enormously now.

Not changing so much that we were tempted into Mecca, though.  We accidentally followed one of the Muslims Only lanes as we approached the city, and so drove through on the inner rather than outer ringroad, but we did not take any of the turnings to Al-Masjid al Haram, with their pictures of the kaaba on the signs.  Apparently some independent travellers have been right into the city, and up to the outside of the mosque, but as far as we know it is technically still forbidden, and the rewards to me don't seem to outweigh either the risks nor the lack of respect to our host country that such a visit would have involved.  We could in any case clearly see the enormous Abraj Al-Bait clock tower (currently the fourth tallest building in the world).

Unfortunately no time at the end of the trip to see more of Jeddah, just time to return the car, get something to eat, and start the long flight home.

a tour of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia opened its doors to tourists a couple of years ago, and I was quick to sign up to a tour.  Then it was postponed because of the pandemic but finally, a year later than planned, I was in Saudi Arabia - for a ten-day organised tour, followed by four free days.

I don't really know where to start with this post, to be honest, as it was such an enjoyable and fascinating visit in so many different ways, in particular for the scenery (I love deserts), the visual reminders of the history (Nabatean tombs, such as those at Jabal AlAhmar in the pic above, as well as architectural reminders of the Ottoman period, and the Yemeni-style old buildings in the mountains of the south), the camels, and finally the window onto a country undergoing MASSIVE change.  This latter was apparent physically (the construction - roads, railways, metros and buildings) as well as socially (women driving, women not fully covered, a few couples holidng hands in public, a public live music performance...).  The Crown Prince recognises that the oil era will end, so the money they currently have is being spent on adding/upgrading infrastructure (also financed by the fairly recent introduction of income tax, currently at 15%), whilst an enormous effort is being made to attract visitors, presumably with tourism seen as an important future revenue stream.  The social revolution in the 'freeing' of women supports the latter, as does a focus on international events.  Just before I arrived in the country there was a Grand Prix held in the streets of Jeddah, as I left there was an international film and arts festival taking place there, as well as a 'rave festival' near Riyadh.  Yes, really - men and women dancing to electronic dance music and, according to a report I heard, clear evidence of both alcohol and drugs there (although both of those currently remain illegal).  A Saudi there told me that most Saudis he knows would put up with a hundred Khashoggis if it means they will be able to go and have a drink in a bar.  Obviously I'm not supporting the murder of journalists - nor any kind of suppression of protest, as is the norm still in Saudi - but the Crown Prince and the change he is trying to bring about is popular - and the extent of change is impressive.

Of course there must be a proportion of the population who were happy with the conservative lifestyle they are used to, and still most women are fully covered, for example - with the niqab as well as the abaya even though the niqab was never obligatory.  It was interesting though to experience the extent of the welcome we experienced as tourists, with complete strangers waving to us as they drove past, inviting us into their home for coffee and dates, and countless women beaming with happiness when I smiled at them, making the heart symbol at me with their hands given their inability to express what they were feeling in words.

Anyway - perhaps I should mention some of the more 'standard' tourist highlights that I enjoyed there ... so first of all, the camels!  We went to Buraydah camel market - the largest in the world - to observe the trading as well as being real tourists with the opportunity some of us took to feed one man's camels.  I have no idea how many camels are there on a typical day, but there were baby and adult camels, there were white, sandy-coloured and dark brown camels, and a small number of smartly attired camels.  There were also plenty of trucks with cranes and winches, with protesting camels being lifted up into the air and into the trucks of buyers.

The beautiful desert 'countryside' was also well stocked with camels - some seemingly wild, but all, apparently, with their (mostly Sudanese) camel herder somewhere around.

Then, as I mentioned above, there were the Nabatean tombs, some 130 of them, carved into the sandstone mountains of the desert around the site of AlUla, aka Hegra.  These are the same people who carved the monuments of Petra, in Jordan, and the tombs - and their settings - are spectacular and now UNESCO-listed.  We stayed for two nghts at the Shaden Resort in the area where the tombs are, with no time available to use the resort swimming pool, nor to request a film to be streamed from Netflix onto the giant outdoor screen ... this pic shows the dining part of the resort, with different cuisines available in the different tented structures.

I should also add that the area is full of old petroglyphs carved into the sandstone rocks.

We visited a few more recent historical sights too - fortresses and 'heritage' towns.  The latter were quite amusing, as all contained little heritage museums, showcasing anything 'historical' collected up from that town.  The traditional gowns and jewellery, the old daggers, and the traditional furnishing and room set-ups were interesting, but there were also plenty of exhibits of things which date from within my own lifetime, such as manual sewing machines, fixed line telephones, and cans of food!

Then there was Jeddah - beautiful Jeddah, with the Ottoman influence in its architecture - still very much under restoration but already a pleasure to wander around both for the architecture but also for the nightlife (I just wish we'd had the time to stop and enjoy the live music being performed in one little square in the old town).  Difficult to photograph given the narrow streets, but this shows the traditional old window screens - there to enable women to observe the street life without being seen.  I would have happily spent many days there.

& finally, in terms of major sights seen on the organised tour, there was the city of Medina. Here is found the Masjid an-Nabawi, the big mosque built around the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed, making this the second holiest city in Islam.  In the past, such places were off-limits to non-Muslim visitors, but whilst we still cannot go inside the mosque, we are now able to go right up to the courtyard surrounding it.

black faces

I have to return to the black-white relations topic, inspired by the recent outcry over racism in British cricket, as I find this so interesting when considered from the African perspective.

I’m thinking of the case where an old picture has come to light of a white cricketer in blackface, where he was apparently playing homage to the (then) recently deceased black artist, Tupac Shakur.  It reminded me of an incident maybe ten years ago, when an Australian politician got into hot water over a blackface incident, at which time I innocently mentioned the case to a Cameroonian colleague.  To my surprise, he was confused by the incident.  “What’s wrong with that?” he asked.  I tried to explain, but he found it very strange, telling me about a popular Cameroonian comedian of the time who was known for making himself up as a white person, and then acting out doing typically local jobs which would not normally ever be done in Cameroon by a white person.  I recall he gave one example of street vendors.  My colleague asked me if I found that offensive – which of course I didn’t.  Perhaps an example of white privilege (a term which I don’t think existed at that time) as you don’t get easily offended by mickey-taking when you are in the dominant group.

So this time around, I asked a Senegalese friend – an educated and well-travelled Senegalese friend – what he thought about what this cricketer had done.  Like my Cameroonian colleague, he was confused, telling me that he and other Senegalese would consider it an honour if a white person made themselves up (clothing but also make-up) as Senegalese in homage to someone who had died.  I asked how he would feel if it were done in a more light-hearted context, rather than as homage to someone deceased, and he still said that he and other Senegalese would view it as something positive, showing recognition and appreciation of Senegalese/Africans.  Indeed when I walk in the street wearing anything local, such as outfits in African wax fabric, I get appreciative comments from random strangers – it is never seen as cultural appropriation but rather as a mark of appreciation and respect.

I suppose the negative reactions to such things usually start in the US, where the history of black-white relations is so bad that any instance of white folk interacting with the black culture is viewed with suspicion.  Not that black-white relations in Africa have been exactly balanced and fair, but perhaps being on ‘home turf’ makes a difference in some way.  Indeed, it still astonishes me how positively white people and white culture are seen here.  On my way back from Lompoul last weekend, as our minibus drove through some small towns and villages, several people looked up and noticed that there were some white people in the vehicle – “Toubab!” (the local word for white person) one older lady shouted excitedly as she waved to me.  I don’t know that I’ll ever fully understand that reaction, but one thing I do know is that when I eventually return ‘home’ to the UK, I shall have to be careful as to what I say and do in respect of the minefield of black-white interactions.

the 18sqkm desert of Lompoul

I should have flown to Ethiopia last Thursday, to start a trip to the Omo Valley and from there by land into Somaliland.  Sadly the British tour company I was going with have panicked about the situation with the rebels, and announced just a few days before departure that they have cancelled the trip.

So I booked a last minute weekend away in northern Senegal, to visit the sand dunes of Lompoul.  Somewhere I'd previously decided was not worth my time and money, but with fewer tourists here right now, and the trip not too pricey, I thought it would be preferable to sitting at home moping about my missed Ethiopia trip.

It was billed as an 'astronomy weekend', as a professor of astronomy was to accompany the group, with his telescopes and a ready-made presentation - not really a selling point for me but once he had taken us through the presentation and pointed out Venus and Jupiter when the clouds parted, I was getting interested - so was sad that the clouds thickened during the course of the evening and we didn't get to see Jupiter, Saturn and the surface of the moon through his telescope.  Nor did I get to see Venus at 6am the next morning, as the downside of sleeping in desert tents is the lack of anywhere to charge your phone, so the battery went dead some three hours before the alarm was supposed to wake me up.

However, I did get to be very touristy and do a short walk around on a camel, and also walked about in the dunes looking at the various animal tracks and watching dung beetles do their thing.

As with many events in Senegal which attract tourists or foreign residents, the other participants were mostly French - and whilst I can converse quite happily in French with the Senegalese (indeed with any French-speaking Africans), I find the accent of the French themselves very hard to understand.  I still somehow finished this weekend with a few new friends, however, and had some interesting conversations.  This included some discussion of the risk to the ecology of this part of Senegal - and the livelihoods of those who work there in the tourist trade - from the imminent exploitation of the mineral zircon which was discovered there a few years ago (this apparently being the fourth largest known source in the world).  What I hadn't known was that the Minister of Mines who signed the deal with a French company to exploit the deposits (in which just 10% of the benefit comes to Senegal) was none other than our current president!

the other parts of my trip to Niger

Whilst the Gerewol was the purpose of my trip, and of course the highlight, I did also visit Agadez, Zinder and Mirriah, and some of the scenes viewed along the roads were also interesting.

This was a fully-laden truck, en-route from Libya to Diffa in the south-east of Niger.  The driver had stopped for a nap in the shade of the vehicle, and hearing that it had taken three days to do part of a road that took us eight hours, I really couldn't imagine it having to go through sandy parts of the Libyan desert!!

We also passed a family of Fulani nomads, with all of their household possessions piled up around them on their donkeys, which were almost as overladen as this truck.  & a group of Touaregs, travelling by camel, but with the camels all in their best leatherwork, decorated noseclips and so on, looking really spectacular.

In the towns and cities we were looking at a mixture of mosques (including the UNESCO-listed sixteenth century mud mosque of Agadez), sultan's palaces, and older districts of traditional architecture.  You can see at the top the eighteenth century sultan's palace in the town of Mirriah, which still has the old drum inside (beaten to announce the appointment of a new sultan) as well as sacks of something mysterious suspended from the ceiling inside the entrance, designed to protect the interior from evil.  Despite the presence of Islamist terrorism in parts of the country, it still holds a variety of traditional beliefs alongside Islam.

& here the front wall of the sultan's palace in Zinder, reputed to have three young girls and four Korans buried within (or under), on the advice from 1850 when it was built of some spiritual guides and hunters, considered to have mystical powers.

Inside included an area where prisoners used to be kept, with three doors to small dark 'rooms' (only shoulder high) where they could be sent to reflect on whether they had any information to divulge: the first where they were just left on their own for a while in the dark; the second where they were accompanied by a scorpion; and the third where they were accompanied by a snake.  Finally from the same area was the Door of No Return - any prisoner passing through here either met his death or was sold into the transatlantic slave trade.  Zinder was a major power along the trans-Saharan trade route.  Bizarrely, the current sultan also has a thing about fancy cars, and inside the palace were two very duty old Rolls Royces alongside a number of other fancy older brands and a ridiculously long limousine that surely has never been out in the streets of the city!

The Birni district of Zinder (around the palace) had some impressive old Hausa architecture, as well as a strange old French cemetery with no markings on any of the gravestones - I've not been able to get any explanation for that.  Agadez also had some nice architecture, and was very pleasant to walk around.

Even aside from the festival, Niger was a rewarding country to visit although, I will admit, not the most comfortable in terms of climate or facilities.

the Gerewol and the Yaké

The core of the gathering of nomads that takes place in northern Niger at the end of every year's rainy season is the performance throughout the week of 'dances' by the young men, who are competing to be selected as the most beautiful.  There are two main dances, the Gerewol, after which the festival is named, and the Yaké, which is featured in most of the photographs one might see of the event.  The costumes, make-up and jewellery are traditional, as are the chants and movements that the men perform to show off their attributes.  Height, symmetry of features and white eyes and teeth are prized.

The dances start in the late morning with the Yaké - by far the most impressive, to my mind.  Firstly the men have to prepare, their hair braided (often by a sister), traditional costumes donned, and the make-up carefully applied by the participants themselves.  The yellow (and later red) make up is natural, but I was told that battery acid is used by some to make the black colour applied to the mouth and eyes.  We were able to see all of this preparation taking place, and I have to say that some of the young men were stunning!!

This is a picture of the Yaké dance being performed:

At the same time as the Yaké is taking place, other young men will be preparing themselves for the Gerewol dances which take place during the afternoon and all through the night.  These involve a different costume and different make-up, but with the same objectives.  Here you can see some Gerewol participants showing off the whites of their eyes and teeth!

This is the first, main, part of the performance, which can have around 70 participants, and after which a much smaller number are selected for a 'dance-off', with more vigorous movements. It wasn't clear who makes this selection.  In the Gerewol dance, this 'dance-off' follows the removal of the initial headpiece and the application in its place of a kind of 'plume'.

Female judges (we only saw two per dance, but apparently there can be more) watch their performance and indicate their selected winner by pulling on the plume.  I didn't get to find out how the judges are appointed, but they also sport traditional hairstyles and jewellery, and follow a convention of shielding their faces from the audience with their hands, whilst slowly walking up and down the line of participants to make their choice - not directly looking at them, with their whole performance being very coy.  I also didn't see them make their selection, as despite the presence of men wielding sticks to beat back the audience if they approach the participants too closely, it always descended into apparent chaos at the end, with everyone rushing forward to see who was going to win.

The audience is made up of a mixture of young women - who all stay together - and men, some seated and some standing, and behind them the Touaregs on their camels.  The Touaregs don't participate in the dances (perhaps better termed beauty contests?) and no-one explained to me why they attend.  The women check out the contestants carefully, for this festival is basically - how can I put this? - a chance for the young people to get laid!  With the women in the driving seat.

Apparently the hair protruding over the forehead is the sign that a particular woman or girl is 'up for it' - and there is no judgement against this behaviour, everything is allowed during the festival.  I suppose when you normally spend the year travelling, with just your family group and your animals, this is understandable.  The liaisons can lead to marriage, but they can equally be just a bit of fun - and I heard that the girls can be quite competitive, trying to out-do eachother in the number of beautiful young men they can bed (I also heard that STIs are rife).  The activity is not restricted to single women either - apparently beauty is so highly prized amongst the Wodaabe that a man will accept his wife sleeping with a beatiful dance participant, reasoning that should she become pregnant, the baby will be more beautiful than if he had fathered it himself!!

So, all in all, a lot to take in, and I am still processing what I saw some two weeks after the festival.  It certainly lived up to - and indeed surpassed - my expectations.

Nomads of Niger

The title of this post is actually the name of a book which I bought when aged 21 or 22, still a student trying to get by on a student grant, but which grabbed my attention when I saw it displayed in a shop.  I still have the book, and have long dreamed of going to see the people portrayed in it (the Wodaabe) - to see their famous Gerewol festival.

I didn't go when I lived in London, as Niger was not the easiest country to get a visa for (there being no embassy in the UK), and then when I moved out to West Africa it always seemed better to wait until 'next year', when the security situation in that part of Niger might improve.  It never did, but now it doesn't feel so threatening when compared with the much worse situation in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.  So I decided to bite the bullet and go this year, whilst I have a Niger embassy just down the road and am still young enough to cope with nights sleeping in the desert.  I had found a Nigerien company (Zenith Tours) who offered such a trip (together with the mandatory security escort), and with Covid thankfully not an issue in this part of the world, I packed my bags and set off - to finally fulfill this long-held dream!

The experience was actually quite overwhelming, both the dance performances which are the purpose of the festival, but also the gathering itself - several thousand nomads, mostly Fulani but also Touaregs, with their cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and camels.  & no concessions to tourists other than allowing us to wander wherever we liked and phtograph whoever and whatever we liked.

So early in the morning you could see people bringing in water from the watering hole at the edge of the site, preparing food, and leading their cattle out to graze.

Whilst some had traditional tents like the one in the photo to the left, some had modern tents.  A small number came by motorbike, with Nigerien music blasting out - and I saw many small, portable solar panels, mostly used to charge mobile phones, it seems.  But these were the only hints of the modern world. 

Most people did not speak either French or English, and of course I do not speak any of the languages of the participants, but I was able to find a few I could communicate with, those who had learned a little French in school, or who had picked up some English during time in Nigeria or Ghana.  For these are well-travelled people!  I asked one young man how many people were in the group he travelled with, but as a Fulani he travelled alone with his cattle - travelling for up to three months at a time, he told me.

Whilst those men who shared a language with me were happy to talk, communicating with the women was a different matter. 

The girls and young women seemed fascinated by me, but were also afraid.  I tried to make some physical contact, extending my hand, and there were gasps of fear as they backed off, whilst some of the younger girls hid behind the older ones.  By hanging around with them for a while - and not just smiling, but deliberately playing with my hair, which of course fascinated them - I was able to get some contact eventually with some of the braver ones who eventually touched my hair and my arm, but how I wish we could have had a conversation!

I should say that this lady to the left was not typical - most did not sport so much jewellery - but she was certainly photogenic!  Her hairstyle, however, is typical, with the hair pulled out over the forehead.  One person told me that this style indicates that they are 'available' for the young men who participate in the dance (which I will explain in the next post).

What was far more common was the facial tattoos; again I wish I could have communicated with the participants to understand the meaning behind them, but I did at least pick up that the three little lines spreading from the corners of the mouth indicate that one is a member of the Wodaabe ethnic group.  The rest could signify clan/family, or perhaps are simply decorative.

So much that I wanted to understand, but could not!!

Which maybe added to the sense that I was in a totally different time and place, almost a different world.  Nearly two weeks have gone by since I was at this festival and I am still struggling to bring myself back to the world I live in.

To finish, in any case, here is a picture I sneakily took between our tents early in the morning, of our security escort.  I should say that at no point did it 'feel' as though such an escort was necessary, but I suppose those who are kidnapped in this part of the world are unlikely to sense that a kidnap is imminent.