Take me to the water – Chad (part 4)

With one trip to the Tibesti under his belt, GRAHAME McLEOD’S fascination with the landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa, Chad, led him to do another trip to that country – this time, not only to the Tibesti region again, but also to view freshwater lakes in the sands and magnificent rock art in the Ennedi massif.

In October 2017, I was once again bound to the capital of Chad, N’Djamena, for another adventure-filled trip into the Sahara. On arrival, I met up with Moussa who was immaculately dressed in a long white djellaba. He was head of the local tour operator, Tchad Evasion which, along with German operator Desert Reisen, had organised a four-week tour into the Sahara for myself and a German group.

On the morning of our departure, we met our Desert Reisen guide Matina, who hails from Vienna in Austria – she proudly claimed that she had already visited some 60 countries. And finally, our Tubu team – Omar, guide and driver, drivers Hassan and Abdeh, and cook, Samba. They told me that the Tubu greeting was khalega, and to say thank you for a tasty meal, I should say boodigalay!

Stuck in the sand

Two days later, we entered the infamous Erg Djourab, where things did not pan out as expected. As the day unfolded, the newer of the three Land Cruisers we were travelling in began to emit clouds of black smoke. In an attempt to solve the problem, the drivers stopped from time to time to top up the radiator which was considered to be the cause of the problem. However, after lunch the problem returned with a vengeance. We stopped, and one of the drivers extracted a package which was unwrapped to reveal a spare radiator, from the roof rack. After loosening numerous nuts and bolts, the old radiator was swapped for the new one.

Believing that all was now well, we headed for Faya where we hoped that we would spend the night. But it was not to be. The new radiator started leaking and the drivers now blamed the water pump! They then realised that the gaskets in the cylinder head were probably worn and were now leaking oil, which resulted in the black fumes. Realising that nothing could be done out there in the bundu, Matina used her satellite phone to call the company office in the capital – 800km away – to ask for a vehicle to replace the one that had just died in the sands.

We spent a fitful night in the shelter of some barchan dunes. One of the Sahara’s icons, these dunes are boomerang- or croissant-shaped, with a steep leeward slope and a much gentler windward slope. Setting up tents in the strengthening Harmattan winds around us was not an easy task… also, the wind-laden sand was continually blowing off the crest of the dune, cascading down the lee slope in violent eddies and depositing fine sand into my tent. I slept little that night, mostly for fear of being buried alive before dawn came!

Over a breakfast of increasingly stale baguettes, Matina told us she got word of our replacement vehicle having passed Salal (480km from N‘Djamena) and that it would probably arrive around midday. When, at 09:30 she heard that the vehicle had reached Kouba, some 100km away, we were full of hope to get this adventure properly started. But our optimism was short lived – the Harmattan had other ideas and the 4×4 was not able to proceed further due to a vicious sandstorm. So, we decided to proceed to Faya in the remaining two vehicles.

Weddings and a beer hideaway

After a lunch of couscous and salads in Faya, we made our way into town. Here we were in for a surprise – despite living a hard life in the desert, the locals certainly know how to arrange and celebrate weddings! And we were treated to seeing part of one that afternoon. It was nothing like the average European-style wedding which is more often than not a fairly formal occasion, devoid of life and to which only the lucky few are invited!

Here the weddings are the opposite – the one we saw was a very public occasion where the wedding party consisted of a procession of small open-backed trucks and cars filled to the brim with people passing through the dusty streets with horns blaring and women ululating. Women were decked out in all their eye-catching finery and the men were dressed in cream white djellabas. And, of course, those andatory multicoloured balloons were firmly tied on top of the vehicles. This is certainly one occasion where no one would complain if you took photos! Islam is often considered a dull religion devoid of life, but as I had already found out on my first trip to Chad that is actually quite far from the truth!

To compensate for the non-arrival of the new vehicle, Matina treated us to some beers at a Chadian-style bar. We left the main drag and walked through a maze of unlit narrow passageways and there it was – a narrow entrance led into an open sandy courtyard flanked on all sides by high whitewashed walls. No signs here! Around small tables sat the clientele – men dressed in their djellabas and cheches and unveiled ladies wearing colourful robes. The speciality here were green bottles of GALA beer, brewed in N’Djamena.

I saw a young girl serve up the precious liquid, whilst another woman, dressed in a head-to-toe dark blue robe and wearing earrings, was cooking up soup in a three-legged black iron pot in the corner. For the teetotallers like myself, bottles of Es Sabah Egyptian white guava juice were available.

The crisis continues…

Next morning, we awoke to the sight of the same two vehicles. The latest rumour was that the new driver had left Kouba but could not find the piste (route) because of the sandstorm and maybe he was now completely lost. Matina sent Omar to try and find him and the military had been informed about the gravity of the situation. Getting lost out here is no joke – stories abound of drivers who were lost for days and yet all the time they were only a few metres away from the piste!

“Does the new driver have a GPS or satellite phone?” I asked Matina anxiously. “No, the driver is a mechanic. He has the spare parts but he’s not really a desert driver. He does not have experience. If the military finds out that he has a satellite phone, it would be confiscated, and he could be in serious trouble. It’s illegal to import, or have, such things,” she replied. I had the feeling that we might be staying in Faya for some days…

At lunch, we were told that we would be staying another night to await the arrival of the new driver who was still nowhere to be seen. However, his situation was not as serious as we thought – our driver, Abdeh, had left early in the morning to locate the missing driver. He now told us that he finally found him a little way off the piste. As a result, there was now a drastic change of plan. Matina had, in the meantime, managed to rent a Toyota Hilux 4×4 Double Cab that belonged to a relative of one of our drivers, and it actually appeared an hour later! We finally loaded the vehicles and headed out of town along the piste towards Zouar, the gateway to the Tibesti (around 600km away).

On to the Tibesti

From time to time on our journey, we stumbled across the remains of abandoned grey Chadian tanks and green Libyan tanks half buried in the sand. The Libyan tanks were Soviet designed T-55 models with D-10TG 100mm calibre guns. We also saw a rocket launcher with 40 rocket tubes of which 24 were still occupied by rockets – I wondered if they could still be fired in the event of another conflict.

Nearing Zouar, the monotony of the landscape was broken by Ehi Atroun – a huge flat-topped slab of brownish sandstone rising abruptly out of the sand. Seen from afar, this monolith appeared as a lone sentinel keeping watch over a sea of sand stretching to the distant horizon. On one side we saw a huge cave, some 50m high, which had been gouged out of the rock by the wind.

Just outside Zouar, we entered the Plateau du Daski, a sandstone massif sculptured by the wind to produce a mass of conical, or phallic-shaped outcrops, pillars, towers and mesas rising out of the pale brown sand. Lapping around the foot of the plateau, the Grand erg du Bilma/Ténéré – a vast expanse of boundless sandy plains and dunes – extends westwards for some 1 000km as far as Agadez, and beyond, in Niger. That’s the same distance as from Johannesburg to Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth)! Clocking in at 155 000km2, this sea of sand is but one of nearly 30 that occur in the Sahara… and sand only covers one quarter of the Sahara’s total area! It somehow makes our local Namib desert pale into insignificance.

Signs of life here were scarce, save for the spoor of lizards and black beetles. Lizard spoor is easy to identify since between the footprints there is a groove, or drag mark left by the tail as it brushed over the sand. As elsewhere in the desert, we rarely caught sight of the owners of the spoor. However, all too often we saw the carcasses of animals that had succumbed to the harsh desert conditions.

Recent rains had carpeted some parts of the desert with rich green grasses. Due to the ever-present winds, the tips of some of these grasses had traced out half circles in the sand. Many other plants also grow here, including wild watermelons which provide much needed food and water for the local gazelles and donkeys. The Tubu extract the seeds from the fruits and then boil, dry and pound them to produce a type of flour. The fruit pulp is also used to treat scorpion and snake bites, boils and even haemorrhoids.

The locals were thin on the ground here, but we did stumble across a camel train consisting of around 20 camels loaded up with personal possessions. These nomadic Tubu were clearly on the move to seek out water and fresh pasture for their animals. But it seems that the days of the camel train may be numbered; a few hundred years ago we would have seen hundreds of camels in one camel train, and they would have transported, not only personal effects, but also ivory, animal skins, gold and slaves across the Sahara to markets in north Africa and beyond.

Into the Tibesti and on to Gouro

We followed the same bone-shaking piste as the year before from Zouar to Bardaï. We set up camp just outside town, surrounded by cliffs and pedestals of yellowish-brown sandstone. This place must be home to the desert’s largest gallery devoted to modern rock art. In 1989, French painter Jean Verame, painted numerous sandstone outcrops here.

The project was supported by the Chadian President, the United Nations Development Programme, and also by private companies such as the French oil company Total. However, the paint probably came out of a tin rather than being made using natural materials! It is claimed that he used some 60 tonnes of paint, all of which had to be trucked here from N’Djamena – a tough journey of four days, or 1 500km!

Before leaving Bardaï, we filled up at an ‘upmarket’ filling station in the oasis. Here the fuel was not stored in the usual drums but in large rubber waterbeds, each of which could hold up to 10 000 litres. A portable generator then simply pumps the black gold into the vehicles’ tanks.

We continued on to Yebbi Bou and from here we travelled eastwards along another piste for some 200km to the oasis of Gouro. At first, we gradually ascended across gravel plains punctuated by low lying ridges of black volcanic rock and occasional oueds, marked by dried tufts of wiry grass. According to our GPS, we reached an elevation of 1 913m.

After lunch, we began our long descent down the eastern slopes of the Tibesti. The bone-jarring piste was strewn with boulders, and when we were not navigating our way around them, we were bouncing over them.

After being tossed around in a tin can for a few hours, the basalt suddenly gave way to sandstone and the going became much easier. Finally, we reached a gently undulating sandy plain dotted with sandstone outcrops – we had now at long last left the seemingly impregnable fortress of the Tubu, where the wind had gouged out arches in the sandstone. Only some ten metres high, they were a forerunner of what was to come later.

We stopped at a small cave where we saw paintings depicting long-horned cattle in shades of red, brown and white. Some of the figures were subdivided into squares which had then been infilled in white and superimposed on them were some more recently painted white camel figures. What spoiled the experience were heaps of rusted tin cans inside the cave. Never assume that other travellers are as environmental conscious as you might be!

The following morning, three shiny white Land Cruiser bakkies appeared as if from nowhere. One of them was loaded with a camel and three large blue 210-litre diesel drums and some old worn tyres. It seemed that a reunion of the clans was now on the cards. This was an all-male affair as the visitors, immaculately dressed in white djellabas, all shook hands with us and the drivers and then got down to the serious business of catching up on the latest gossip – how are Mohammed’s camels, how is Mariam’s baby, and is Abdullah studying hard in the Sorbonne…? Later, we met up with a flock of sheep and goats on the move, accompanied by men on camels. However, this time we were given a hostile reception when we tried to take some photographs, and our adversaries began hurling stones at our vehicles. We made a hasty exit.

Entering Gouro, we came across an old Arab fortress, rectangular in shape with low stone walls, a few arched entrances and a round tower-like lookout point in one corner. Nearby were a pair of mega-sized millstones of sandstone. The upper millstone had a large circular hole into which a wooden stick, or peg, would be inserted. The lower millstone was larger, and the local ladies would pour wheat grains onto it. The upper millstone would then be placed on top of the lower one and turned round with the stick or peg to grind the grain down into fine flour to make bread or couscous.

Lakes in the sands

From there we headed east along a sandy piste to Ounianga Kebir, around 120km away. The area around this shanty-like village is home to the Ounianga lakes. In a vast area devoid of permanent rivers and over 1 000km from the sea, the Ounianga lakes of northern Chad – the largest in the Sahara – are nothing short of a mystery. In fact, there are no other comparable stretches of open water within a radius of 800km.

There are 18 lakes in all, and they occur in two groups some 40km apart. The lakes were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012. The first group – comprising four lakes, close to Ounianga Kebir – was up first. All these lakes are saline. This is not surprising since water exposed in deserts quickly evaporates due to a combination of factors – almost continuous sunshine, high daytime temperatures, occasional strong winds and low humidity. As a result, the water becomes increasingly concentrated in salts.

Leaving the village, we made our way down to one of these lakes, Lac Yoa, which is bordered to the south by massive sandstone cliffs and to the north by sandy plains. The colour of the water here was bluish green, but on one side of the lake was a much smaller lake with water in tones of pink, reddish brown and brown. This is due to the presence of salt-tolerant algae, or tiny shrimp-like organisms. Along the margins of the lakes, shallow water had evaporated leaving behind a film of white salt on the sand.

We followed a sandy piste for another 50km eastwards to the much smaller village of Ounianga Serir (Small Ounianga in Arabic). The second group of 14 finger-shaped lakes occurs close to the village. Lac Teli is the largest with an area of 4.4km2 but is only 10m deep. In contrast to the first group, all these lakes are freshwater lakes, except for Lac Teli. Also, many of these lakes are partly, or entirely, covered with reeds. This group of lakes is unique since there are no other comparable freshwater systems in the Sahara or in any other desert on the planet.

Why, then, do these lakes exist here in such an inhospitable environment? After all, up to six metres of water may evaporate annually from a body of water here and little more than 5mm of rain falls each year. And since the lakes are quite shallow, they can so easily dry up in just a few years! However, these water bodies have been around for thousands of years and have clearly stood the test of time.

The reason for this is that a vast reservoir of fossil groundwater, or aquifer, occurs at a shallow depth below the surface and constantly replaces the water that has evaporated. Furthermore, reeds often cover the surface of these freshwater lakes, thus resulting in much lower rates of evaporation and hence little or no precipitation of salts.

Shortly after our arrival, we went down to one of the lakes for an afternoon swim to cool off after the heat of the day. It was indeed a beautiful spot – the lake was fringed with tall reeds and date palms with a stunning backdrop of sandstone outcrops glowing reddish pink in the setting sun. A truly amazing place and unlike elsewhere in Africa, Matina claimed that the water was bilharzia free.

It truly was a welcome – and beautiful – reprieve from the inhospitability of the desert. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed that a place like this actually existed in the Sahara!

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