Her name is Hadisa but she doesn’t know how old she is; she might be in her forties. This Touareg woman sits in front of her straw hut.

She makes her home in the middle of the Sahel, in the heart of the Republic of Niger where some twenty or thirty Touareg families live a settled or semi-settled lifestyle. Since the terrible famine that plagued the Sahel belt thirty years ago, many Touareg have fallen into impoverishment and given up their nomadic lifestyle for farming. They maintain a few camels, which they ride for a change of scenery now and again.

These families no longer resemble the proud Touareg dressed in blue and white so often seen in photographic journals.

Hadisa is dressed in faded and mended black; she is thin, her teeth yellowed by the use of chewing tobacco – one of her only luxuries. She owns only two donkeys.

There were the days when the family owned camels, goats and sheep; but poverty has overtaken them year after year. Like all Touareg women, Hadisa weaves mats and sells them at market. It is often difficult to sell her merchandise, but with the money she earns, she buys millet, tea and sugar.
Her husband having passed on three years earlier, Hadisa is a widow supporting three children. Her igloo-shaped hut is constructed with straw mats. Inside, she hangs all her possessions on pegs: a wool blanket, a few towels, mosquito netting; her clothes she has sold to buy food. Hadisa’s hut serves to protect her only from the sun, and yet this is her home, her life.

Her shy son of five hides behind a scrawny dog. The child’s hair is tawny, a sign of malnutrition.

The mother complains of stomach pain. Could it be hunger or an ulcer? She hasn’t the money to go to the dispensary, and to purchase medication is out of the question. The only thing she can do is suffer in silence. But despite all that, she walks several hours to market once a week.

It is June and the sand of the Sahel has been warmed by a sun almost directly overhead; it blazes its searing heat over the desert day after day. But this is also the beginning of the rainy season. From June to September rain falls sporadically, spawning an October harvest. Sowing is generally done while the first raindrops fall, but it is nearly the end of July and the rain is long in coming.

Last year, not a single drop fell on the earth. Hadisa’s harvest was just enough to get them through ten days. Since then they have endured day after day of hunger. Two months ago, Hadisa bought a few cups of seed and planted millet, beans and sorghum in the hopes that rain would eventually fall from the sky.

With her two donkeys, eight and fifteen years old, she labours in the field as a hired hand earning at least one meal for her family.

Like nearly all the inhabitants of Niger, she has a relative working in Libya. When planting seasons came, her relative sent her twenty-five francs to buy seed. That was the only help she has ever received.

Hadisa stores her provisions in an enamel dish and in a bag; she might have up to five kilos of millet but not more.

“Times are hard for everyone,” she whispers, looking out across the plain to the desert as it creeps steadily toward civilization. “Every day I go out to gather herbs and roots to eat. They give my children diarrhoea but at least it calms their hunger pains.”

If she had a little money, Hadisa would buy sheep and goats to provide a bit of milk for her children every day, and sometimes a bit of meat. But there is no way she will ever be able to have animals.

If the rain comes there will be a harvest in October, but it will only feed her family until the close of the year. The laborious months of weaving mats and walking the long road to market, which is even more demanding, will begin again. Hadisa dreams of having a bit of money to bring change to her future.

Before we return to the base we plan on buying one goat and a few kilos of rice and vegetables for Hadisa and her family, which will provide them with a few good meals over the upcoming weeks.

Isabelle Macheret
Niger – Zinder,  September 2006