The First Climate Crisis Catastrophe

It’s been a while since I posted a story, and there will be gaps sometimes, but the news from Sudan set me remembering events from long ago. In 1983 I went out to Darfur, the start of a long relationship with that diverse, creative and endlessly hospitable country that has now sunk into the abyss.

Friday 17 May: Al Jazeera news report that the city of El Fasher in Northern Darfur is under siege by the Rapid Support Forces who have been responsible for widespread atrocities and extreme racial violence. Inside the beleagured city, 1.8 million people, residents and displaced refugees from other areas, are now threatened.

At first sight El Fasher was everything I wanted. Each evening, through clouds of golden dust, hundreds of camels came to markets that were busy with a dazzling variety of tribal people. I'd wander around in a state of bliss, drinking it all in: everyone wrapped in robes, men with deep facial scarification carrying hippo hide whips, all the produce tied up with hemp and palm, camels roaring and grunting as bricks of rock salt were forced down their throats to make them drink, while under hessian shanties people took shots of thick sweet coffee from exquisitely-made clay pots. It was mad and wonderful and I was a greenhorn, a 22-year-old driven by childhood dreams of remote places and adventure, rather than my official reason for being there: to teach English. I had never, in fact, stood in front of a class - except to be punished.

I had done my first journey through Africa, from Cairo to Nairobi, the year before, clutching my bible - not the desert scrolls concoction - I mean the gospel according to Geoff Crowley, the Lonely Planet guide, Africa on a Shoestring. Now, with Geoff's rousing panegyric to the wonders of the lost world of Darfur, I had made it to the far west of Sudan where, I naively imagined, nothing had changed for a very long time.

On my second day in town I went to visit the museum. It had been set up by the colonial British who regarded such institutions as essential markers of progress. When everything quaint, backward and tribal had been consigned to a museum, a country could begin to move forward. The El Fasher institution did not have a large collection. There was one unfortunate stuffed bird, labelled "bastard". I think they meant bustard, but I never knew the animal personally so cannot be sure.

The exhibit which most impressed me was the chain mail. The information claimed that it had been captured from European crusaders in the Holy Land in the 12th century, then traded across the desert. Warriors of various Darfur kingdoms had used it in battle right up to the arrival of the British in 1916. I loved all that. And I loved the soft sunsets in the wadi where the camels were couched. I loved the open-air cinema where they almost always got the reels in the wrong order and a dodgy Libyan emigree served grilled sausages during the intervals. I loved the fresh cool air of dawn and the walk to school through sandy lanes, passing the doe-eyed cows tied up outside the butchery. I'd stop and shake hands with their owners: cattle-herders whose lands lay to the south. I liked the school too. The boys were friendly, lively, and interested in learning nothing, which was handy because that was the one thing I could teach them. We got on well, mostly because I never sent them out for a whipping, unlike the local teachers who did this frequently.

In some regards the British colonial approach had advantages in backwaters like Darfur. They really did not want to have to supress rebellions, or bring in military forces. The aim was always a quiet life with a modicum of tax collection. To achieve this they usually backed the traditional rulers, bolstering the dominant class or ethnic group with a few well-chosen officers and a machine gun. Alongside this was a cultural aspect, an attempt to lift ‘the natives’. In Fasher this had taken the form of a library which I discovered one day. Inside were a few shelves of dusty Dickens and the collected works of George Bernard Shaw. Astonishingly the caretaker was still paid a small salary. “Will the British come back?” he asked me forlornly. No one had taken a book out for some years.

If the British imperial project had had its own guidebook, it would have been called Empire on a Shoestring. In Darfur the reverberations of that short-lived and light imperial touch were still being felt. Old men would assail me in the market. "Where are the British? They were here once, you know."

Laughing with them, I told them Britain was now a washed-up nonentity, that the British they remembered were not even typical, but members of a privileged clique who had hijacked our country then used its resources to subjugate one quarter of the globe only to squander the loot on ugly country houses and oil paintings of themselves. They were fortunate to be rid of the British. If they understood any of this youthful invective, the old men ignored it, instead becoming misty-eyed. "Yes, but things worked."

It was hard to know quite what there was to 'work'. El Fasher was a market. Desert tribes came in to sell their animals and their handicrafts; farmers sold grains and vegetables; traders handled everything else, mostly soap and sugar. One merchant showed a little more imagination, selling custard powder. It tasted divine. I'd mix it with the little woody bananas that needed a knife to peel. The custard made them edible. It became my luxury, the thing that helped me survive. It was the taste of the outside world.

One of El Fasher’s markets in 1983

I lived with two other teachers inside a small compound with a central courtyard and bare rooms around. There was a huge spider living in the outhouse and a rat down the toilet. We slept on angarebs, wooden-frame beds strung with hemp rope. On my wall I had the three Michelin maps that covered all of Africa and I would plan my future expeditions. One of these was to travel by camel to the Tibesti Mountains in Chad, and for that reason I started going to the camel market.

The traders were semi-nomadic people who wore loose tunics, pantaloons and turbans, all in white. Up their left sleeve would be a knife. That was how I got to know Muhammad. I asked to see his knife and he slipped the plaited leather sash down his wiry arm. The knife had a crocodile and python skin sheath.

Muhammad had learned a little English. I was picking up some words of Arabic. We managed.

"Crocodile is in Chad," he told me. "Long time ago it was here too."

Muhammad had been to Tibesti and told me he'd seen ‘tiger’ tracks. I assumed he meant leopard. He allowed me to test drive his camels, rocking and rolling around the market, brandishing a hippo hide whip, to the whoops of other traders.

Talking about Muhammad's life was difficult with so little language, but it was not hard to understand that things were tough. Which tribe did he belong to? Zaghawa. Was he married? Yes. Where was his wife? He waved a hand vaguely northwards. When would he see her? In a few weeks or months. How many children? Two alive and two dead. How many camels did he have? Not enough. Prices were low. And every day he stayed in Fasher meant finding forage which was an expense.

I bought the crocodile knife from him and a basket. It was only years later that I realised these tribesmen, sitting around their fires at night, were on the brink of disaster. The desert was slithering southwards, smothering the meagre patches of grazing and drying up wells. The northern nomadic peoples were being pressured and so were the others: the cattle-herding Baggara tribes of the savannah and the farmers of the hills. To the outsider, newly arrived, distinguishing these people from each other was not easy. The cattle and camel herders referred to themselves as Arabs and the farmers, dismissively, as African. The physical differences might be obvious: a sharp Arab nose on one, fuller African lips on another. But both might claim to be Arab, or neither. It seemed insignificant, like which football team you supported.

Slowly and steadily in those years of the early 1980s, El Fasher was sliding towards disaster. It was in fact a climate crisis, long before anyone called it that. The label in those days was desertification. The consequences were not unknown, but they were easily trotted out and forgotten. People would be poorer and would have to move - that was obvious. That this would trigger a catastrophic chain reaction of violence and chaos was never envisaged. That some malevolent individuals would foment, dominate and benefit from this horrible future was not predicted. That weapons would flood in, even as everything else dried up, was unforeseen. That those small facial differences might mean life or death seemed impossible. That the outside world would do nothing to stop it was unthinkable.

One evening I went down to the market and Muhammad and his camp were gone. With him had gone my dream of getting to Tibesti. I was certainly not courageous enough to attempt it alone.

There were other old men lounging around, inviting me to take a glass of sweet red tea.

"Britisher?" they grinned. "Very good. They were here once, you know."