A Christmas feast among nomadic tribesmen and an exchange of ideas and gifts

I was far from home, in a place of deprivation, among strangers who spoke no English and didn't celebrate our holidays.

But 30-plus years later, it remains my favorite Christmas.

I’d gone to Africa to write about the famine there in the mid-1980s. My final stop was the legendary city of Timbuktu, once a great trading post.

But now struggling.

It was late December, so the timing was right. The afternoon of Christmas Eve, I left the hotel with a UNICEF doctor who drove me a half-hour by Land Rover through the Sahara to a camp of Touareg Bedouins who'd become famine refugees.

I was received by their chief, Hamzata. He wore a blue silk turban and was surrounded by scores of tribes people in Muslim robes.

Then the Land Rover left and our only form of communication was my broken French from high school.

But it was enough.

I explained it was Christmas Eve — the best-loved of nights in America. Hamzata nodded.

“Noël,” he said.

By now it was night and we gathered around a fire outside, tribesmen graciously holding up lanterns so I could see my notebook as I wrote.

I asked how they came to be hungry.

It is simple, the chief said. They lived off cattle. The drought came. The desert grass disappeared. The cattle died.

I told him I thought Bedouins were often poor, subsisting in the barren desert, which made them laugh.

The opposite, the chief said.

His was a rich tribe with 1,000 cows. They were nomadic by choice, the desert a place of sustenance. From October to May, they'd find a stand of grass and settle, then move on happily the rest of the year in search of other grasses.

They brought their culture with them, feasting on steak and camel milk, and there was guitar music and gazelle hunts by horse and teachers for the young.

But that, said the chief, was “Avant.”

Before.

Before the drought forced them here to try a new way of life, learning to plant while depending on UNICEF. Yet there still wasn’t enough, so many were hungry.

But because I was a stranger who cared enough to come, and because it was my Noël, Hamzata said they would have a special meal this night. I tried to protest, but they insisted and prepared meat from one of their sheep.

I saw him having trouble cutting it with a dull sword, so I offered my Swiss Army knife. It had come in handy this trip and I planned to keep it forever as a memento of my time in Africa. The chief marveled at it and cut the rest with ease.

Finally, it was time for bed. Hospitality is everything to the Touareg, and the chief insisted I sleep in his den-sized tent. He and the other senior tribesmen who stayed there put out the lanterns and we settled in.

"La Noël joyeux," I said in the dark. "Tu comprends?"

"Ah, oui," the chief said. "Je comprends."

Soon after we woke the next morning we heard the Land Rover approaching and then it was there.

The chief took off his blue silk turban and handed it to me.

“For you,” he said.

At that, I dug out my Swiss Army knife.

“For you.”

I climbed into the Land Rover.

"Until next time," said Hamzata.

Three decades later, I can still picture the chief waving goodbye as we headed into the Sahara.

On what is still my favorite Christmas.

— mpatinkin@providencejournal.com

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