In the second part of his trip through Chad, GRAHAME MCLEOD views massive volcanoes and some of the continent’s best-preserved rock art. He also comes across charming traditional Tubu villages and learns that the Tibesti region has seen scary turbulent times in recent years.
After stocking up on fuel, water and supplies in Faya, we headed north towards the Tibesti Mountains, in the heart of the Sahara Desert. At first, the route was dominated by dunes. If our drivers had plans to ever enter the Dakar Rally, they were certainly getting in some good practice! With feet fully down on the gas pedal, they would climb up the dunes at crazy angles and then plunge down the other side. The leading Land Cruiser did not set a very good example and got stuck twice…
Conflict in the sands
One morning we stopped at the foot of a sandstone escarpment. It was exercise time. We had to trudge up to the top and then hike for a few kilometres to rendezvous with the vehicles.
Once on top, the piste was flanked with red and white rocks, and we were told – in no uncertain terms – that we were not to step over the stones. Pierot explained that we were in the middle of a minefield where mines had been laid during the Chad-Libya war of the 1970’s.
This conflict had its roots in the carving up of Africa by the European powers and focused on the Aouzou Strip, an area in the northernmost part of Chad along the border between the two countries. The late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi always claimed that the area was part of Libya. He based this on an unratified treaty which was signed in 1935 by the French and Italians, then the colonial powers of Chad and Libya respectively.
Libyan troops invaded Chad in 1972 and only left in 1981. During this period, fighting between Libyan and Chadian forces occurred, not only in the Aouzou Strip, but also as far as Faya, some 300km south of the border, where we had seen a few abandoned tanks and rocket launchers earlier.
Large areas were mined, and we were currently in one of them! Looking at the rocks more carefully, I could see that one side had been painted white to show the safe area whilst the other side was red to warn of danger. I hoped that nobody had since moved the rocks. To ensure our safety, Pierot instructed us to follow in the tracks of the vehicles – at least if one of them was to drive over a mine and be catapulted into orbit, we would have been spared an unfortunate accident. Anyway, we survived to tell the tale…
Fossils, rock art and settlements
Later we stopped on top of a limestone escarpment. Littered in the sand were, according to Pierot, pieces of whitish rock containing fossilised algae, or seaweed. The fossils had the appearance of tree branches and were similar in appearance to the green stuff that is so often washed up on our beaches today. Some geologists believe that they are trace fossils, which are not the actual remains of organisms. Instead, they include the remains of tracks made on the seabed by small organisms, such as trilobites or worms, as they went about their daily activities. If this is indeed the case, then large areas of the Sahara were once covered by a shallow sea.
We also came across our first rock art of the trip on an exposed vertical rock face. There are two types of rock art in the Sahara – engravings and paintings. Engravings were made through a method known as pecking and involved the use of a large, pointed stone. Another stone was then used to bang the first stone into the rock surface to produce shallow grooves which marked the outlines of animals and people.
The rock face here extended for almost 100m and was adorned with large numbers of camel engravings. I also saw some stick-like human figures and a guy on horseback holding what was probably an iron lance. These engravings, therefore, probably postdated the Stone Age and, with a knowledge of ironwork, the locals were able to make weapons to conquer and enslave other tribes.
We passed through small settlements, each with its own clinic and school. Conformity seemed the rule here – every school was painted white and had blue painted wooden shutters. This begs the questions – who provided the funds and what will happen when the greenbacks or euros dry up? And is this an attempt by the government to encourage people to remain in the rural areas by providing them with essential services and so prevent the scourge of mass urban migration which is prevalent over much of Africa? Clearly, there is a dilemma here – to benefit from such services, the nomads have to sacrifice much of their traditional way of life. And if sedentarised, would new problems occur, such as drunkenness and a lack of identity? Only time will tell…
Away from the settlements, there was little sign of life save for the occasional small, triangular-shaped hoof marks of small gazelles.
Into the Tibesti
After two days, the gently sloping, basalt volcanic cone of Emi Koussi appeared on the northern horizon. Standing at a height of 3 415m, it is the highest point in the Sahara and – like the desert itself – it is huge, with a diameter of some 90km.
Geologists refer to such big gently sloping Hawaiian-style volcanoes as shield volcanoes.
This behemoth marks the southern limit of the Tibesti Mountain range, which boasts five similar shield volcanoes. The entire region was also, at one time, covered by a shallow sea in which great thicknesses of sand were deposited. This sand was then compacted to produce the brownish and yellowish-brown sandstones that are found throughout the area. Three times the size of Lesotho, this mountainous area in the middle of the Sahara is affectionately known by Saharan aficionados as the Alps of the Sahara – minus, of course, those glaciers.
This is the land of the Tubu, the name loosely translating to ‘rock people’ or ‘people of the mountains’. The majority of them live around the Tibesti which, in turn, translates to ‘the place where the mountain people live’. Many still lead a nomadic lifestyle with their animals. Although many of the women wear long black garments, others wear more colourful ones which may come in a mixture of colours, but mainly black, red and green. Many women also wear nose rings.
One afternoon, we came across a line of old diesel drums across the piste which signalled a military checkpoint. Four military gendarmes reluctantly rose from their haunches, checked our documents and gave us the all-clear to proceed deeper into the impenetrable mountain fortress. Our campsite that night was surrounded by towering sandstone cliffs, pillars and spires – testimony to the erosive power of the ever-present wind in sculpting the landscape here.
The next day we followed a dried-up riverbed into the heart of the mountains. At its end, we climbed onto a stony plateau carpeted with small bushes of desert cabbage with dark green leaves and purple flowers – excellent fodder for the resident camels. To the west towered another one of the Tibesti’s volcanoes, Tarso Tieroko.
Tradition at its best
Towards sunset, we descended into the traditional village of Yebbi-Bou, perched on the rim of a small canyon. This was one of the highlights of the entire trip and showed Tubu village life at its best. Here traditions die hard and all the homes in the village are built using locally available natural materials. Only the local school and clinic are built of modern materials.
Most of the homes are simple circular huts and have a low stone wall made of loose basalt boulders which are cemented together with clay. The roof is dome shaped and made of grasses and bulrush leaves that are laid on top of an arched framework consisting of mainly acacia branches. Huts have a single door which is usually made of reeds, and most are surrounded by a courtyard with a wall of basalt boulders or a fence made of acacia branches, palm or bulrush leaves.
The local mosque was little more than a mud-built one roomed place with a loudspeaker on the flat roof to which access by the imam was possible by means of a wooden outside ladder.
On one flat rock outcrop we noticed a few date storage containers. These were conical in shape, up to two metres tall, and consisted of a network of sticks covered with dark clay. One square shaped opening provided access to the sweet goodies inside. Accompanied by the evening call to prayer, we later dined on the inevitable pasta and rounded off the meal by feasting on deglet nour dates, which westerners so relish at Christmas time.
Yebbi-Bou to Bardaï
The following day the going was much easier since the boneshaking piste had recently been upgraded. We passed another traditional village, Yebbi-Souma, overlooking a deep canyon cut into the basalt thousands of years ago. At the bottom of the canyon, we could see stands of bulrush growing in a pool and cut bulrushes stacked at the foot of the canyon walls.
Later, we passed through a narrow canyon and being the only geologist in the group, I pointed out columnar jointing on the canyon walls and proudly explained to my fellow travellers that basalt, a blackish igneous rock, was formed by the cooling of red-hot lava on the earth’s surface. As the rock later cooled and contracted hexagonal columns were formed. Although most of the columns were vertical, many were also inclined.
The next day was New Year’s Day, but it did not start well. All Pierot could offer us for breakfast was stale bread and coffee and any New Year’s resolutions for a corruption-free tour through Chad were quickly buried at the next military checkpoint. Pierot reluctantly had to fork out the equivalent of about R1 500 for us to pass through. He had no choice, though, as there was only one piste! After the money had changed hands, it was all smiles and, after exchanging pleasantries, we moved on.
We followed a riverbed downstream as it cut through the basalt into the underlying sandstone and had lunch in a forest of tall sandstone towers and pillars. There were ripple marks on sandstone outcrops– more evidence that a sea, or lake, once existed here in the distant eons of time.
In a cave we came across red and yellow-brown paintings of cattle and human figures. For paintings throughout the Sahara, different coloured paints were obtained from pigments in local soil and rocks, which were ground up into a powder. These pigments were then mixed with water, animal fat, urine, or the gum from local acacia trees and applied onto the rock by means of brushes made of animal hair, or even by the fingers of the artist. Red brown (or ochre) and yellow brown were the most common colours and were obtained from iron oxides.
We also saw some primitive one-faced stone tools. This shows that in the distant past, the Sahara was much wetter than it is today – and probably resembled the present-day savanna grasslands of East Africa. The paintings here probably date back to the Pastoral/Cattle period which lasted between 6000 to 2000BC. The higher rainfall probably had also carved out the wide riverbeds that are so common in the Tibesti.
Bardaï
Our next stop was the sleepy outpost of Bardaï (which translates to ‘cold’ in Chadian Arabic and refers to its low night temperatures), to stock up on supplies. The main street is little more than a dusty track lined with simple open-fronted stalls selling the basics. Outside a stall selling blankets, I met an old lady dressed in a charming white outfit, and her daughter, Fatime, a tall slender girl in a stunning red, blue and gold coloured robe adorned with geometrical patters.
Although many Westerners view Islam as a dour religion, I saw women of the faith dressed to the nines! And contrary to Islamic custom where taking photos of women is strictly taboo, they even asked me to take a few snaps of them. I was happy to oblige! I took a few shots after which Fatime wanted to view herself on the LCD screen at the back of the camera. She was most disappointed when I showed her my film camera and told her that it would first have to be developed. It seems that, despite its isolation, the digital age had arrived in Bardaï – no matter how humble-looking the shops were, many had satellite dishes mounted outside.
Much of the action in town revolves around the communal water pump at the end of the street. Here small kids were jumping up and down as they moved the pump handle until the water gushed out. In a sudden frenzy of activity, women would then fill their containers, load them onto their heads, and trudge through the deep sand to their homes.
Minefields yet again!
Everything we had experienced on our trip thus far paled in comparison to what lay ahead. Exiting town, we made our way along a very rough, rocky route southwards for 200km through the western Tibesti to Zouar. The road lurched over jagged rocks and loose scree in a rollercoaster of vertiginous descents and steep climbs as it negotiated steep-sided narrow valleys cut into the volcanic rock by water in the distant past.
At other times, the piste meandered its way across flat lava plains. Where the going became extra tough, we would travel at walking pace, and we often had to get out of the vehicles to reduce the load and improve traction. Hence it came as no surprise to learn that it could take all day to negotiate this route. Fortunately, our drivers had completed this white-knuckle ride many times before and got us through safely!
For the first 30km we drove through another minefield marked with red and white painted rocks. The remains of trucks that clearly had not heeded the warning were scattered along the route. Scary stuff indeed!
Meeting an armed prehistoric man
After our ordeal through the minefield, we were relieved to reach the Man of Gonoa, who had been patiently awaiting our arrival for a few thousand years. He is a real Goliath-like giant of some two metres tall, and he welcomed us with a club-like weapon in his right hand. There was no need to be afraid, though, as this imposing figure was simply a rock engraving on a cliff face and was accompanied by other engravings showing cattle, giraffes, rhinos and elephants.
All these engravings were carved into a type of light brown volcanic rock known as ignimbrite. Unlike basalt it was not formed from lava, but from minerals, rock fragments and very fine-grained volcanic glass. It occurred as a result of immense explosions of volcanic ash which rushed down the flanks of the volcanoes here.
A mighty big hole
We camped overlooking the Trou au Natron (Natron Hole), which is no ordinary hole. At some 700m deep and 8km in diameter this caldera – a volcanic crater created by violent eruptions – dwarfs most open-pit mines in the world, including the world’s largest, the 4km-wide Bingham Canyon mine in the USA. A few kilometres to the west another volcano, Pic Toussidé (3 315m), towered into a deep blue sky streaked with white wisp-like cirrus clouds.
To celebrate our arrival, we dined on the group’s favourite – minestrone soup, chicken and chips. The next day we awoke in good spirits and were treated to a breakfast of bread, jam, cheeses, coffee and Lipton’s tea. Post-gorging, Pierot gave us two choices – we could either descend to the bottom of the crater or take a walk around it.
From the rim of the caldera, we could see three small black volcanic cones on the crater floor which were produced by later outpourings of basalt lava. We also noticed a whitish layer of natron, or sodium carbonate, that was formed from the evaporation of mineral-rich groundwaters which once formed lakes on the crater floor. It reminded me of the Makgadikgadi Pans of northern Botswana – but with sodium carbonate instead of sodium chloride, surrounded by volcanoes rather than flat expanses of open grassland, and 1 500m higher. Some geologists believe that around 15 000 years ago, the crater had been home to a lake that might have been up to 500m deep.
Amazingly, we had the place all to ourselves! Unlike Mount Fuji in Japan where thousands trek to the summit to witness the sunrise, Vesuvius in Italy, or Mount Teide on Tenerife in the Canary Islands where a cable car can whisk you to the summit in minutes, this was a no-frills – but priceless – experience, and we were truly humbled by nature. Silence, stillness and solitude reigned here, and the only sounds were the crunch of our boots on the loose volcanic rock and the whisper of the desert breeze. A raw and unspoilt primeval world that had not changed since the last eruption. And weeks would pass by before the next group of adrenaline junkies and adventurers pitched up here.
The testing, knee-jarring path down to the crater floor was just about wide enough for a rock rabbit – one careless step could see you take a rough, uncomfortable and spiky ride down to the bottom on your backside. Fear of breaking my leg or ankle led me to take the walk around the crater rim with Pierot. At times, the rough path teetered alongside sheer drops and wound around boulders of exposed basalt as it dipped, rolled and climbed around the crater.
Four members of the group decided to descend along the steep, winding path to the crater floor but two of them quickly gave up, explaining that the rock was too loose and the sides of the crater simply too steep. After lunch, the two remaining daredevil explorers returned from the crater floor armed with rock samples – they had certainly earned their stripes! Some samples were of pumice, a white, pale grey or black coloured rock composed of volcanic glass and large holes which were once filled up with gas. The holes may make up 80 percent of the rock, making pumice is so light that it can float on water. They also saw some hot springs which have formed a number of small lakes on the crater floor – a sure sign that volcanic activity is continuing today, albeit on a much smaller scale than in the past. Once again, we were amazed and completely enthralled. With so many sights, sounds and experiences to take in, Chad most definitely has to be on any adventure-seeking traveller’s bucket list.
