Ishmael becomes a trusted festival companion, trader and translator. Photograph: Lisa Skinner
If there is one thing the virgin festival-goer needs to come to terms with, it’s the Tuareg sales pitch. It goes something like this:
”Hello my friend, welcome to the Festival in the Desert. Are you American?
”Oh South Africa, that is my country. I love South Africa, Nelson Mandela, Bafana Bafana, Benni McCarthy.”
You will soon realise that in Mali there are only four South Africans who have reached the consciousness of the man on the street, or rather the man on the dune. They are Nelson Mandela, Benni McCarthy, Lucky Dube and Brenda Fassie, in that order.
Not once did anyone mention Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe or Julius Malema, except if you count that one waiter in Bamako who told me that Jacob Zuma was a very good dancer but not a good leader.
But I digress. Once this young Tuareg has established that he knows a few music and football personalities from your country, he will proceed to tell you a little bit about Tuareg life: how he travelled for 50 days on camelback, navigating by the stars, to attend the festival in the desert — impressive stuff for someone who just drove in by 4×4.
It is at this point that he has hooked you; he will then suggest that you go back to his tent to drink Tuareg tea with his family and discuss Tuareg life.
Although 10% of Tuaregs at the festival may mean this very genuinely, the majority want to get you back to their tent so they can lay out all the family jewellery and craft for you to see, hoping that you will buy your souvenirs from them.
Festival of the Desert director Manny Ansar says the economic benefits of the festival should not be underestimated. ”Before, when the Tuareg people needed to buy things they had to travel for weeks by camel to Timbuktu with their animals to trade at the markets and buy clothes or medicine,” says Ansar.
”Now the market comes to them, they can trade their craft with foreigners and the economic impact for the Tuareg people is huge.”
The majority of these Tuareg families use the festival to make enough money to survive for the rest of the year and you hear variations of these sales pitches over the three days of the festival.
Some Tuaregs are so skilled they effortlessly steer the conversation down this road without you even realising that you are being pitched at. Others, often the ones whose English is very rudimentary, almost trip over themselves in their urgency to do business. By the second day you will be an old hand at this, bartering with the best for swords, knives, bracelets, rings, necklaces, jewellery boxes, rugs, blankets and anything else your heart desires.
One of the first young Tuaregs to pitch to us was named Ishmael. By day two we had officially adopted him as our festival companion because of his tenacious nature and his uncanny ability to pop up at exactly the right time to help us translate something.
Ishmael was at the festival alone; his family was working on the salt mines in northern Mali and he had travelled to the festival with a friend’s family to sell his jewellery.
On our last day at the festival we headed off to have Tuareg tea with Ishmael and to buy some necklaces and one or two knives from him.
We also left him a gift parcel containing a number of travel items we were planning to leave behind in Mali, such as warm shoes, a headlamp, some T-shirts, flip-flops and a space blanket, which he graciously accepted.
”Now, I very happy,” said Ishmael, beaming.