Hospitality

Sadouan was the first to greet me when I arrived in the temporary Tuareg camp that eventually settled to be Tangarwashane. She invited me to her tent, prepared a traditional bed constructed with large wooden poles and woven mats, and gave me a mosquito net and elaborate leather pillows for armrests. Late into the night her family members and friends from neighboring tents came bearing bowls of camel milk. Sitting on a pillow and sipping the frothy liquid, I conversed with Sadouan's husband, Alhassan. The camp and its herds, he recounted, had recently returned from salt licks in the north near [...]