Nomad 1 Tuareg Dance - Timbuktu Mali https://youtube/watch?v=T9qB68lnndE MOUSSA AG ASSARID: I dont know my age. I was born in the Sahara desert, with no papers! I was born in a nomadic camp of Touaregs, between Timbuktu and Gao, in the north of Mali. I have been a shepherd of camels, goats, sheep and cows for my father. Today I study Management in the University of Montpellier. I am a bachelor. I serve as an advocate for the Touareg shepherds. VICTOR-M. AMELA: What a beautiful headdress! MAA: It is a fine cotton fabric: it allows me to cover my face in the desert when the wind blows sand, and allows me to continue to see and to breathe through it. VMA: It is a beautiful blue color. MAA: We Touaregs have long been called the blue men because of this color. Interestingly the fabric loses the color and transfers some of the blue ink onto our skin. VMA: How do you get this intense blue? MAA: From a plant called indigo, mixed with other natural pigments. The blue, for the Touaregs, is the color of the world. VMA: Why? MAA: Its the dominant color, of the sky, the roof of our home VMA: Who are the Touareg? MAA: Touareg means abandoned, because we are an old nomadic tribe of the desert. We are lonely and proud: masters of the desert, they call us. Our ethnic group is Amazigh (or Berber), and our alphabet is the tifinagh. VMA: How many are there of you? MAA: Approximately three million, the majority still are nomadic. But the population is decreasing. A wise man said it is necessary for a tribe to disappear to realize they existed. I am working to preserve this tribe. VMA: What do they do for a living? MAA: We shepherd camels, goats, sheep, cows and donkeys in an infinite kingdom of silence. VMA: Is the desert really so silent? MAA: If you are on your own in that silence you hear your heart beat. There is no better place to meet yourself. VMA: What memories do you have of your childhood in the desert? MAA: I wake up with the sun. The goats of my father are there. They give us milk and meat, and we take them were there is water and grass. My great-grandfather did it, and my grandfather, and my father, and me. There was nothing else in the world than that, and I was very happy! VMA: Really? It doesnt sound very exciting. MAA: It is. At the age of seven you can go alone away from the compound, and for this you are taught the important things—to smell the air, to listen, to see, to orient with the sun and the stars...and to be guided by the camel if you get lost. He will take you where there is water. VMA: This sounds like valuable knowledge, no doubt. MAA: Everything is simple and profound there. There are very few things, and each one has enormous value. VMA: So that world and this one are very different. MAA: There, every little thing gives happiness. Every touch is valuable. We feel great joy just by touching each other, being together. There, nobody dreams of becoming, because everybody already is. VMA: What shocked you most on your first trip to Europe? MAA: I saw people running in the airport. In the desert you only run if a sandstorm is approaching! It scared me, of course. VMA: They were going after their baggage. MAA: Yes, that was it. I also saw signs with naked women. Why this lack of respect for the woman? I wondered. Then at the hotel I saw the first faucet of my life: I saw the water run and wanted to cry. VMA: Because of the waste, the abundance? MAA: Every day of my life had been involved in seeking water. When I see the ornamental fountains here and there, I still feel an intense pain. VMA: Why? MAA: In the early 90s there was a big drought, animals died, and we became sick. I was about twelve years old and my mother died. She was everything to me! She used to tell me stories and taught me to tell stories. She taught me to be myself. VMA: What happened to your family? MAA: I persuaded my father to let me go to school. Every day I walked fifteen kilometers, until one teacher gave me a bed to sleep in and a woman gave me food when I walked by her house. I then understood what was happening; my mother was helping me. VMA: Where did you get interested in school? MAA: A few years before the Paris-Dakar motor rally came through the compound and a journalist dropped a book from her backpack. I picked it up and gave it to her. She gave it to me and talked to me about that book: The Little Prince. I promised myself that I would be able to read it one day. VMA: And you did. MAA: Yes, and because of that I won a scholarship to study in France. VMA: A Touareg going to college! MAA: Ah, what I most miss here is the camel milk. And the wood fires. And walking barefoot on the warm sand. And the stars. We watched them every night, every star is different, just as every goat is different. Here, in the evenings, you watch TV. VMA: That is true. What do you dislike the most here? MAA: You have everything, and it is still not enough for you. You complain. In France people complain all the time! You chain yourself to a bank; everyone is anxious to have things, to have possessions. Everyone is in a rush. In the desert there are no traffic jams, and do you know why? Because there nobody is interested in getting ahead of other people. VMA: Tell me about a moment of deep happiness for you in the desert. MAA: It happens every day, two hours before sunset. The heat decreases, there is still no cold air, and men and animals slowly return to the compound, and their profiles are painted against a sky that is pink, blue, red, yellow, green. VMA: That sounds fascinating. MAA: Its a magical moment. We all get into the tents and we boil tea. Sitting in silence we listen to the sound of the boiling water. We are immersed in calmness, with our the heart beating to the rhythm of the boiling water, potta potta potta...... VMA: How peaceful. MAA: Yes...here you have watches; there, we have time. [source] Both Western and Eastern cruelty has exterminated hundreds millions of innocent nomads, in order to occupy land, in order to steal material wealth, and in order to exercise unreasonable domination. There are no words adequate to describe the intensity of the survived nomads emotional pain and the intensity of their feelings of injustice. There are no words adequate to describe the magnitude of this injustice. It is being well known, since the very old ages, the fact that all cities who dont exercise, the sportsmanship of truth, as their own way of collective living, they are “doomed” to lose both, their freedom, as bad as, their humanness. Living in those cities seems, quite normally, like living in “hell”. In our days, how many cities, having adequate moral capital, are being able to exercise the sportsmanship of truth? What is the relative amount of ethical capital, of the nomads, with regard to the rest population? What is the relative political power, of the nomads, with regard to the rest population? How much freedom are currently enjoying the citizens of Western and Eastern cities? By having uncontrollably propagated all this atrocious military technology and by having collectively so much lowered the statistical means of personal wisdom, a totaly distructive third world war seams like, almost, unavoidable. In order for normalizing this dispute, I can only see just one solution: The West and the East, should return all the stolen material wealth to those who survived, from its legitimate owners. The West and the East, should compensate, for each and every one of the hudreds millions of people who were exterminated, an amount of gold weighting the weight of the corresponding victim. The countries who were destroyed should be rebuild by the monetary expenses of the perpetrators. A new Nation should become formally established; the Nation of the Nomads. The corresponding ethnicity should be “Nomad”. This Nation should be given the right to pass through the border of any already established country and harmlessly use, temporarily (e.g. for no more than 13 months) appropriate non-civil areas of any countrys land, however, without claiming sovereignity and/or civil rights. There should be, for each country, a corresponding quota in order for an effective destribution of the total population of the Nomads, upon the countries. All countries should redirect their military budgets towards, creating, within their land, appropriate ecosystems for the Nomads Nation to use, supporting the Nomads needs for an Health system, education, aquaring livestock, supplying materials, etc. Every people on earth should do his duty for restoring the honor and the pride of being a Nomad. It is never too late to vindicate the victims of our injustice. It is never too late to regain our humanness. It is never too late to rescue our civilization. It is never to late too achieve, peace, freedom, friendship and frugal prosperity; for all. Glen Hansard & Lisa Hannigan : Falling Slowly (HD) Live Albert Hall 2014 Feat . John Sheahan https://youtube/watch?v=VFkfhbQsXiA
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 23:47:04 +0000
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