It’s good that we don’t live like this: Tuareg-style poverty

Another example of how people live on our planet. Looking at these photos, you rejoice that you were not born THERE, but in your own country, where life is completely different. And in general, you perceive the surrounding reality, your country, in a completely different way, no matter how upset you are by certain things in the country and society.

These photos are not of some refugees, but the photos themselves are by no means from the last century: I took them last month, traveling with the Tuareg in the Sahara desert.

14 PHOTOS

1. One day we drove into their settlement and I was a little dumbfounded. How so? The Tuareg have always been known as dashing nomads, dangerous robbers who have never been conquered by anyone, and their way of life to this day differs little from the way of the Stone Age. Amazing.

2. Yes, the Tuareg are nomads and they don’t need a lot of property, because all of it needs to be transported from place to place, migrating in search of scarce pastures for their camels and goats. But the asceticism of the Tuareg is somewhere on the level of poverty.

Houses - several sticks stuck in the ground and rags stretched as roofs and walls. It’s good that it rarely rains in the desert, otherwise, it would be difficult to call such houses. If they can even be called houses

3. Houses are located at some distance from each other, not densely. Fortunately, the space in the desert allows and there is no shortage of free land here. Small settlements, as a rule, consist entirely of "houses" of relatives, but there are also larger camps, in which there may be several families.

4. Each family sets up their home around a kitchen that everyone shares. As you can see, it is a more "capital" building: its walls are not made of fabric but of straw. They do this to protect against the wind so that it does not blow sand into the products that are stored here and do not extinguish the fire in the gas stove (this is a settlement of "rich" nomads, they cook food on gas).

If the family does not have a gas stove and the opportunity to replenish the cylinder with gas, the food is cooked on a fire outside the kitchen so that the sparks do not set fire to the straw.

5. The interior of the Tuareg cuisine

6. Nanotechnology is also penetrating the desert: now the Tuareg can use not only wineskins to store water and other liquids, but also the fruits of the industry: barrels, plastic containers, and plastic canisters.

Water is brought from streams, collected during rare rains, and shallow underground sources are sought.

7. Cattle shed. The family we were visiting keeps a few goats here that give people some milk. They feed several children and also make butter and cheese from milk.

8. On the day when we visited here, the goat just gave birth to a goat. He was still barely on his feet, bleating plaintively, and the goat did not even have time to get rid of the birth sac.

All the inhabitants of this camp were in high spirits, because. the birth of animals by nomads is a good and joyful event.

9. Dishes of nomads. Seen a lot, but until it starts to leak, it will be used, no matter how it looks.

10. Junk storage. Here are building materials for houses, flasks for water, canisters for fuel, utensils, and everything that may be needed on the farm.

11. There are about a dozen huts in the settlement and only women, their children, and a few old people live here permanently. Men are always somewhere in the desert: they watch their goats and camels, which roam in search of sparse vegetation, bring water, and get food and all the necessary trash. In general, getters.

12. One of our guides has a family living in this camp: his wife, mother-in-law, and a little son. He feeds them, earning money by escorting foreigners in the desert.

13. And once again, visiting such extremely poor settlements, where people live in the truest sense of the word in poverty, I notice the same thing.

They are neat, they smile, they laugh and joke. They do not try to cheat you for money and accept gifts with a degree of embarrassment and try to treat you with something in return.

14. Yes, they do not know another life and do not even imagine that someone in the world lives in a completely different way. That there are huge cities with skyscrapers, that people build mining farms and are nervous about the bitcoin rate, and for the new year they bring a fragrant Christmas tree to their apartment in a high-rise building...

Perhaps they are happy?