The Gold of Arab Sahara

November 24, 9:47 PMLafayette Political Buzz ExaminerKen LaRive

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Omar, Tunisian Bedouin of the North Sahara

Photo by Ken LaRive

I have taken six commercial flights over the Sahara on Air France on my way to Equatorial Guinea gazing and photographing its pastel expanse in fascination from tan and blue sand dunes to the naked folds of a brilliant granite face. I have clicked countless pictures, taken them home, scanned them, studied them, looking for clues to just what the Sahara really is. Not until I had the good fortune to travel to Doze, Tunisia, known as “The Gateway to the Sahara” was I finally able to see it first hand, and to experience it at eye level.

It was like a dream. From horizon to horizon, larger even then the continental US and Alaska combined, it is said to be the most desolate, and inhospitable place on the planet. Bounded by the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean to the North, it is unobstructed to the vast Sachel grasslands to the south. I have taken pictures from the air there too, and have found the people desperately trying to hold back the rolling sands. As far as the eye can see at 33,000 feet there are holes filled with the light green of domesticated plants, a testament to the tenacity of Arab farmers who continually dig out the sand, but to no avail. The Sahara always wins, and millions have been displaced south.

A fine morning in Saudi Arabia’s Sahara Desert (video of pictures)

Both heat and the rate of evaporation in the Sahara is the highest in the world. Relative humidity averages about 30 percent, but has been recorded as low as 2.5. The combination of what is called the “radiant factor”, and with a mean annual rainfall of about 3 inches, it is difficult for anything but the hardiest of life to survive. But as I squint into the desert glare, and its expanse of emptiness, it becomes evident that it is anything but that.

Deep inside this desert bowl, where only scorpions, flies, beetles, and ants can live, there is human life. Sporadic emeralds, called oasis, dot the landscape, and there are men who have not only made a home of it here, but have become physically and mentally adapted. Through thousands of years of climatic change, overpopulation, deforestation, and overgrazing, the Sahara has contracted and expanded my nature’s whim. Those who have survived these conditions, and countless generations, are hardened survivalists. Water, more precious then gold, wells from a great northern aquifer, bringing both life and for its control, death. Human blood has been spilt at every spring, and though oil and natural gas has been found to the north, uranium to the south, iron and phosphate in the west, water is still the most cherished and prized of all.

The fires are lit as the sun sets on the horizon, and the welcome cool of the night’s breezes emerges from the dunes. Golden and deep purple sky is reflected in the tiny life-giving pools, surrounded by lush sword grass and scrub. In the quiet of twilight, the same echoes of children’s laughter emerge from camel hair tents that have gone unchanged for four thousand years. The low chants of prayer, the smell of bread and dates, intoxicate, and a lone cord of a distant bird rings sharp and clear. The Arab Nomad endures.