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www.niger-meteorite-recon.de
Niger 2002 - illustrated report
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"Amân Imân" - "Water means life", the most common saying among the Tuareg. This natural freshwater reservoir in the Air collects the rainwater and keeps it fresh over the dry periods over several years. The location served some 300 combatants as a hideout for one year during the rebellion
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Our drivers release pressure from the tires to gain more buoyancy in the sand fields. From now on water is strictly rationed and only issued but for drinking. In an emergency scenario our reserve must last 40 days. The Ténéré, "The Great Examination" as the desert is named in "Tamashek" the Tuareg language, forgives no mistakes, Aoutchiki advises us.
And to emphasize his warning, he tells us the story of a group of French people, company employees of the the mining group Cominac, that went on a weekend excursion in the desert from Arlit last year. Two couples together with their kids, acompanied by a local driver and a cook. A hundred kilos east of Agamgam the two vehicles lost sight because of a flat tire which forced the second car to halt.
Wind arose and blew over the spoor of the guide, who had continued two more hours without a glance in the mirror before he suddenly became aware that he had lost the others. The man turned back but as he had reached the last joint position the second car was nowhere to be seen.
In the same night he made for a fierce drive of 22 hours, reached Arlit and triggered off one of the biggest search operations in the history of the country.
When army, police and private airlines had not found a trace of the vanished after one week the Fench navy sent a Brequet submarine hunter to scan the 6,500 square miles of the search area with infrared sensors. With no success. At day 11 the officials quit with the search. Aouchiki, who had heard of the incident not until this very day called on to one of the pilots involved in the search to learn about details:
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A Tuareg searching for a willow to graze his herds. Along the way he prospects for iron ore that he intends to sell the blacksmith in the oasis Timia
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"I knew that the winds in the considered sector under certain conditions model structures in the sand the unexperienced can eaysily mistake for tire tracks. In this time of the year the false tracks point to the north. They disapear in an area we call the "Labyrinth" As the pilot stated this area hadn't been searched then".
Both of them decided to undertake a last effort and ascended in a Cessna Skyhawk. Less then three hours later the pilot could touch down on a gravel plain close to the searched car. Naked and raving mad the dying attacked their rescuers. "The ergs fiery blaze had dried out their brains" Aoutchiki tells us. Because the complete supply was stored on the other vehicle, the little water they kept with them ran out on the fourth day in spite of brutal rationing. On the second day the cook had managed to rope in a straying camel mare together with her foal. That way they had a bit of camel milk until the foal perished after the sixth day and the mare refused to give any more milk. They gave what was left to the children and a fistful of oranges was good for another few drops of liquid.
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Al Azelai the great salt carvan on the march to cover the 280 miles to the salt oasis Bilma. To reach their target and to return the men will need some 30 days. Water suplly will have to last all the distance - "Inschallah"
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As the fuel ran out after unoriented driving in circles the six dug out a pit under the jeep to shelter from the merciless sun. The last three days without liquid they survived by rubbing their skin with urine to loose less humidity to the dry air.
We take the story serious because we have heard of others who had less fortune. Often decades pass before a caravan or an army patrol discovers the parched bodies in a sand drift. From time to time cases of cannibalism occur under these circumstances. So its not really a surprise that some of the travellers vanish forever. Elkontchi also tells of vast quicksand fields in which even the large drilling trucks of the oil companies disappear.
Beyond Djado, in the east, there are still other dangers. There you do good to hire a Tubu guide if you don't want to expose yourself to the risk of getting robbed and marooned with nothing but a waterskin. Nevertheless a German group of tourists went off on their own last december. One of the venturous had to pay his levity with a retained missile. Fleeced of a toll the outlaws sent a volley with an assault rifle after the fleeing vacationists.
We focus however on the search of the coming day. Early tonight we overcame the dune belt that separates the sand fields from the open plain. In front of us lies the borderless flat of Ténéré Tafassasset. Single meteorite finds occured here sporadicly in the past years. Mostly the finds were reported to Geologists in Niamey by local guides who collected the strange black rocks and questioned about their origin. But also European desert enthusiasts made a couple of finds. In both cases the precious information about the finding situation such as coordinates, geological data of soil and the surrounding is lost. If the stone has passed a few hands the data is no longer reconstructable. But the hope for alleged astronomical profits drives an increasing number of
people into the search for the "Tekack" the "thunderstones" as the Tuareg call them.
Viewed from the financial perspective a weathered medium sized chondrite of which truckloads are being found the Algerian deserts, is not worth the fuel that is spent on the journeys to the remote strewfields. Even if you take North African fuel prices as a scale. The prospect of the one in a million find, a Martian or a Lunar leads to undue expectations that can only be realized in the scarcest cases.
www.niger-meteorite-recon.de
Niger 2002 - illustrated report
go to page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Team | Area Map
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