fairytale of the Tuareg of northern Mali

The compass made of black goat horn

Only when the embers of the red sun had sunk far behind the endless expanses of sand desert dotted with black rock pustules did young Targi roll out from under his lair where he had lain resting from the scorching heat of the day. However, he carefully avoided putting his supporting hands out of the shadow cast by the sharp-edged, flat splinter of basalt so as not to come into direct contact with the skin of the still glowing sand.

He then took a slow, economical little sip with relish from the calabash gourd, which he had pushed deep into the gap between the rocks and the adjacent sand during the day, which had also given him refuge during the past few hours. After he had carefully rubbed away the encrusted sand around his burning eyes, he also put just two more drops of the precious liquid on the painful retina between the still pinched eyelids from the attached pumpkin tip.

Every movement he made was slow and deliberate in the still warm, shimmering air, as if he owned all the time in the world. When the afterglow of the setting sun faded on the horizon and the stars and the large pale moon showed in the now dark night sky, the Tuareg jumped up with an almost rapid movement, bent down briefly and lithely again to take his bundle of few things under the fishing out rocks.

Then he loosened the deep dark blue cloth that had been wrapped several times around his neck, head and neck, revealing a small round pendant made of dark horn. On it glittered strange signs of pale bone, round inlays of reddish desert amber, and hammered silver star-shaped rivets.

The marabou, the white guardian of tradition, had put this pendant around his neck when he explained his test to him. With him he should only wander at night, using the stars to find the way from Niamey to Timbuktu on the great Niger River. He was supposed to get by with just a calabash of water. He was only allowed to eat at the destination of the journey.

After orienting himself and fixing his destination between the Canine constellation on the celestial horizon, he tucked the pendant into his neckline, carefully wrapped the long strip of cloth around his head and neck, threw the bundle around his shoulder, and stomped off at a brisk pace.

In one of our next exhibitions in our old village smithy, artist courtyard at the House of Cultures and Mask Museum in Diedorf, Lindenstrasse 1, we will show pieces of jewellery, amulets and talismans. Among them are, in addition to such strangely decorative things as honey badger claws and chains made of shiny green beetle wing covers, also that small pendant of the Tuareg in the south of the Sahara, which, like the much better known and much earlier Nebra sky disc, was probably used as a compass.