The children draw faces in the dirt and throw camel droppings. I recline by the side of the road as the transport crew cranks a spare. This is one of the many tire-popping breakdowns during the rugged transport from the capital to the frontier of Saharan West Africa. The assumed grandfather of the romping children makes sacred the stop, kneeling in dust, bending, standing, swiping sand from his forehead. I couldn’t help but gush at the beauty of the moment. Couldn’t help but feel religious in my non-belief. Soon enough, we’re back at it and I doze for the rest of the journey. We stop at five or six stationed militia. Each time, a copy of my passport is handed off. At the last stop, a man opens the back door and implores in french, “Ça va?” How was your trip? No problems? Beautiful ride? Yes, actually. Beautiful, merci. He smiles and says goodbye. He grunts at the driver.
Jemal is waiting for me in Atar. He is the Chief of the Terjit Oasis. He has a dash of age to him, his balding head topped by turbo. He shakes my hand, smiles, and off the bat we know we won’t be speaking so much. He only speaks French and Arabic. And I, English. No matter, we stop in town for tea in an empty room in a colorful building that he owns. We sit and listen to african blues - Felenko Yefe. He enjoys it, snapping, singing and dancing to the sound. We stay like this, drinking, eating, listening, for two hours. Then, Terjit. The road is not straight, nor does it lack police. All the more, copy after copy. The landscape begins to change from desert dust to mountainous terrain with jutting, confounding geological structures, what with their peaks are plateaus. Deeper, deeper. A touch of green, a spot of palm. We come upon a valley filled with huts and vibrant foliage, boasting their abundance of dates and freshwater. La source. We come about, sit, eat more, drink more tea and I nap in a traditional hut, woven of the earth, spanning from the base of a tree. It is a natural sanctuary from the sun. I wake up in time to take some photos from the hut perched on top of a hill - these will be my quarters.
From here, I see a new van arrive at the compound. Out steps a milky white woman with a deep brown man. I find out later that this woman is Ruth, of Austria, traveling Africa by van and residing in Burkina Faso to provide community entreprenurship and water to the villages there, and the man is Sidi from Nouakchott, another Sidi, who is from France and is a guide for people in Mauritania. He lives here now with his wife, for 10 years. We hi and bye for but a moment before heading to La Source to check the center of the oasis. We vow to touch base later. Together, Jemal and I walk to La Source, and I’d swear on holy text I’m walking into a fantasy. The palms swoon above the freshwater rivers pulsing through the compound. They nestle sweetly between stalagmite rock, collecting fresh water for drinking at its basin. We pass this, climbing higher to the mountain beyond, and we find to our right a view of Terjit and to our left the beginning of the sand dunes. Jemal teaches me some french words in reference to our natural surroundings, and we bond again by singing these words to the tune of the wind.
Upon return to camp, I find Ruth bathing in the pool, and she invites me for a swim and a chat. Who knew I would be walking into the path of, perhaps, a mentor. She reminds me, so dearly, of “C”, in her accent and her mannerisms, and most importantly, in her spirit. I immediately bloom for her, listening, without interjection, for hours. She is a force to be reckoned with. We get out, shower, sit and eat and talk through the evening with Jemal and Sidi, Ruth acting as translator. The topic of love evolves. The wind blows thick. We talk about a lot of things this night. I cannot mention them all. I fear the moment I recount it all, is the moment it leaves my subconscious and the thought feels cared for enough to not bug me in my conscious doings, and I will, at that moment, lose all of the teachings that are being integrated from this woman and this desert. Ruth commands to fight for love in all things because it is true, and it is the only wealth for which death is a worthy trade. We go for a swim again, this time, in the nude. She is so free, it's contagious. I feel that I forget where I am but am nowhere else. We talk of Burkina Faso, where she’s living and supplying wells for drinking water. We dispute the rules, the experience there, her husband’s cancer, and the counter-intuitive recovery of her marriage. Next, I chat up her life path and life-long dream of coming to Africa, her realization that Africa is her home, her spirituality, her tango with Malaria and Dengue simultaneously, the pursuit of life and love, her past as a mediator for refugees, etc, etc. Afterward, she shows me the van she lives in. It has everything you could need and more. She will sleep there tonight with her door open to the stars. We exchange contact, as I plan to join her on her mission in Burkina at some point. I know we will cross ways again, in a productive way. I return with my camera to my castle on the hill and daze into the stars. The lens cannot capture this beauty. Not for me. Nothing can. Only this memory exists in my mind, and for that, it is extraordinary. I am so happy and amazed, I cannot sleep. I stay up until 3:30.