To be no more or to be differently : the role of women
My house is my nation which is the whole world's house.
Karsa welet Elghelas
Originally from the Adrar, Karsa welet Elghelas has lived in Ouagadougou for many years. She is about 40 years old, married to a Burkinabé & mother of several children.
This text was taken down in Touareg by Hawad in Ouagadougou, 1995.
In my house, peace & goodness
For me, my house represents my nation & the Touareg nation-house is everybody's house. Whoever comes into my house will find peace & goodness. He will have my goods & his goods will be my strength.
And the strength of every person who comes into my house and into my camp, is that he becomes my brother. I do not make any difference : Songhay, Haoussa, Peul, Touareg, Arab, Bambara & any human being who comes into my house is the same as me & my brothers.
Even my enemies & my nation's enemies, once they come into my house I welcome them, I protect them & I care for them until the day that they leave. This fact & this hospitality, even to my enemies & those who kill my brothers, if they come into my house, they will find even today.
Any person, for us Touareg, who has come into our "receptacles" becomes our brother & will find family, brothership & protection, because for us, one does not fight war in houses but outside, on the plains.
The inside of our tents & our pots belongs to brotherhood & to humanity, that is our Touareg tradition.
For us, war & hate take place outside our space, & never under the baggage, a place which is for us that of brotherhood, of humanities & not of wickedness & savagery.
I am the guardian of this custom, this ideal, & I know that we the Touareg have inherited it from our ancestors. If tomorrow the project of rebuilding our nation was to happen, it is this spirit that I would like all the brothers of the nation to continue.
Get rid of everything except the generous side of our traditions
To my brothers who are fighting to build our nation, I would like them in the future to keep this ancestral tradition & to spread a knowledge, a meaning & noble & elevated humanities that respect our traditions, those which opened our tents & our country to any man who comes to us seeking protection, hospitality & help. Because for me, I consider the cultural identity of a man as something sacred, it's not normal that it should collapse or be buried in the name of hatred or some modern mirage.
We can get rid of all our traditions and all our values except for their generous side, I mean the dignity that is accorded even to the enemy or the hyena when they come into our houses. They become those who one has to look after, those who merit respect, dignity, peace, noble hospitality just as you would treat yourself. It is this level of our traditions that we must not bury tomorrow in the name of any illusion, or any paradise.
When the Touareg abandon their identity (temusa), they become the living dead.
My house-nation of my nation (ehan akal-in n tumast-in) is the crossroads of all humanity, because for me every human being who come to me brings with him a goal & a viewpoint that I, house-crossroads, redistribute & fuse with my identity, and which are beneficial to me.
The character, the culture & the knowledge of guests who come into my house, I accept them & I take them, & they become for me a light which brightens that of the Touareg my nation.
A nation like a crossroads for all of humanity
My heart is for me my house, it is the Touareg nation. So I would like us, the Touareg, to rebuild a nation like we used to have before. A nation which considers its heart-tent like a crossroads for all the humanity of the world. One of our proverbs says "If you want men, give your sisters".
He who doesnt have children does not live. We, all that we have practised in generosity & dignity, going further than the enemy in humanity, all these actions, I would like that tomorrow they be the grandchildren of the touareg nation, those who will come up tomorrow.
The person who you have invited into your house is like the man who weds your sister. Perhaps tomorrow, when you meet, he will help you & perhaps you weren't thinking about it & didn't even need it. We the Touareg, in our strategies & our politics, even the madman has his role to play. If he comes to you, invite him into your house & keep him there so as to build with him tomorrow another universe. There are a lot of elements in life. All are different & each has its own role & its interest. It is in the name of this philosophy, this spirit, that my tent, even here in Ougadougou, outside of Touareg territory in a foreign land, is open day and night to everybody, to all the nations. And it is thus that I want to open the Touareg nation, that my brothers will build. The Touareg nation, I want it to be like my tent, open to all nations.
My desire is for a Touareg nation free again and which opens all the heart-tents of its country to all the winds and the peoples of humanity.
My desire is that once my brother Touareg are free they will help each other & keep their tents open to all.
There is not a single being who doesn't offer some advantage for the unity of the world. Each being has something and each person brings an element which makes up the world. Not a single being or event is without importance, each brings good or evil : it is thus that the world is made. Yes, evil isn't good luck, but the world works that way & goes on. Our theory of life, if someone or something has done us wrong, is to take a long term view : we will do him good and if he understands, he will render to us the good we have done him, this is good. If he does us wrong, we count upon the good that another will do us tomorrow.
There is no place anymore for us, Touareg women
From what is the world made up of except for Adam's sons : man is a product of good & evil. Nobody, it's a lie, can stay alone. It is thus that we the Touareg, we think that it is necessary that a man should have discovered his double or triple, his pair. There is not a single man without his double or his triple & even if he existed, he could not, for us, be someone important.
Even in our deserts, the well that is not used for getting water & that is not cleared out, ends up by drying up & dying, and the earth drinks its water. That's our philosophy, we, the women of the Touareg nation, but alas, in this modern world, we, the Touareg women do not have our place. In these difficulties which the Touareg nation is going through, in the struggle by which it is seeking to liberate itself & to build itself & its country, alas, the Touareg woman does not have her place. For the Touareg woman from the older generations like myself, the humanities, the spirit & the education that we have inherited from our nation do not have a place in this world. We do not have a place, but the Touareg woman, despite her lack of strength & stability, continues to resist & attempts as usual to nurture her humanity & her philosophy.
Alas, the house-heart of the Touareg world-woman has no place in this small hearted world. Today Touareg women who think of the world as I do are many, but they hide, stay back & stay quiet, in short they are wounded, their humanity is battered, frustrated & they are suffocated. The will of the Touareg woman in this dusk has been broken, oppressed, worn out, raped, wounded, assassinated. Her vision and her landscapes have shrunk, because it is she who carries the burden of her nation, her nation that is being hunted and massacred, all the bad situation with its horrible acts that the Touareg people is going through. And it is us, the women, who carry the burden on our back, because it is we who have the memory and it is we who know the opposition between the days of our childhood & those of today. Our world, for we women who have had a Touareg education, has been overturned.
Our sisters who are of the generations born after us and who have not had the Touareg education, have been uprooted from their identity. They are stronger than we are, able to go with the changes and they go further than us, they are able to resist all the bad images which spring out each moment from the mirror of the blind twilight that their nation is going through.
I don't say that these women who have gone with the metamorphosis do not suffer and are not in difficulties but they are more resistant than us, already hardened by the fact of never having known a free world, worthy, noble like that in which we ourselves grew up. In brief, the generation of Touareg women born after us has no other memory or recollection which prevents them from confronting their twilight, as we who dream of a noble past & a worthy future.
The Touareg women of my generation, today, have no other role than to huddle over our regrets because we have no present. All our bodies and hearts are mulling over the old days. Old before becoming old and submerged in a past with no present and no glimmer of a future, in this upside down world, we cant see the other side of the mirror of the world, unless we wed the metamorphosis. But how to wed the metamorphosis, to accept the change, when one has lived and were proud of our existence ? The bitterness has killed & is killing the Touareg women, inheritors of the values of their nation.
I have no desire nor wish nor remedy for my bitterness nor for that of my sisters except to see my nation reborn in the future, a nation with its pillars, strong pillars with branches that can shade every place.
This nation will not be reborn, except by understanding and sharing the burden & the meaning, the meaning of an entire nation.