Diko in Mali

“This here is paradise. This here is my home. And it is enormous.”

 Mali – one of the poorest countries in the world. Two thirds of the country is made up of the Sahara Desert. More than half the people are illiterate. Out of a thousand of children born, more than two hundred die in the first five years of their lives. What does happiness mean to the people in this country?

Diko is a nomad, a man of the Tuareg tribe. For eight years Diko has been forced to live in Mopti, a lively river port in central Mali, because he cannot survive in his home, the desert, any more. Civil war, rebellions and catastrophic droughts have driven him, as they have so many Tuareg, to Mali’s cities.

But he hasn’t found happiness here. All the people, the noise and the dirt have made his longing for the desert more and more intense. Since learning that the wells in the Sahara have water again and with the little bit of money he earned on the salt trade, the idea of returning has been ripening in his mind.

Annette Dittert met Diko just before he began turning this plan into action and followed him all the way on his gruelling journey back to the desert: from Mopti along the Niger northwards to Timbuktu and from there deep into the Sahara, where even today the legendary salt caravans make their way.

Annette Dittert (b.1962)
has been working as a TV editor for WDR for many years. She was in charge for and moderated several programs before she became the head of the ARD studio in Warsaw as foreign correspondent for three years. In 2004 she received the well respected Hans-Friedrichs-Award for extraordinary achievements in journalism