[Unstagram] A Small Universe Seen in the Sahara

Editor's NoteThis piece reflects on the relationship between elapsed time and humans. It is a prequel to the previous article, "Why the Sahara People Loved Photography."

The little boy stood like a sapling under the shade of a date palm tree, giving me a quiet gaze without moving a muscle. Exhausted from the desert's scorching heat that drained all my energy, I leaned against the tree trunk, sprawled out. The extreme stillness made it impossible to gauge my place or time. After a moment, what broke the silence was not a sound. A single white seed floated diagonally through the windless air and gently landed on the child's shining eyes and head. His eyes were large and clear. The sight of the child with just one seed resting on him stirred my heart. Sometimes, a trivial detail can transform a moment into something entirely different. The child was carrying the universe on his head.

A single seed landed on the head of a Wodaabe child, a nomad of the Sahara Desert, and the child was carrying the universe. ?Heo Young-han

I struggled to make up my mind to take a photo. "Click," the camera shutter sound cut through the profound silence like a distant darkness just once. To my ears, which were only filled with ringing, the sound was almost like a "bang." Perhaps because of the vibration from that noise, the seed lifted off the child's head again and drifted diagonally through the still air before settling on the ground. Just one photo, a moment of divine fortune, was captured. The child in the photo would now forever carry the universe on his head. Sometimes, a photo places a dot on an otherwise insignificant moment, allowing people to talk about it for a long time.

Niger National Road No. 1, built during the French colonial period. The river overflowed due to autumn rains. Photo by Heo Young-han

In the Sahara region of Niger in West Africa, it had barely rained for 15 years, even during the rainy season. Two-thirds of the country was desert, and the desert was steadily expanding its territory. Grass and trees had disappeared, and livestock?both a means of livelihood and family?starved to death. Without livestock, people could not buy grain and went hungry themselves. Animals and people, adults and children alike, were enduring a life-or-death summer. That summer, I traveled with a church volunteer group heading there for relief work. I set out on the trip without fully realizing what it meant to show their hardships through photography.

A man is drawing water with a bucket tied to a pulley from a deep well at the Wodaabe tribe's autumn settlement. Photo by Heo Yeonghan

As a photographer, I had not particularly dreamed of Africa, but it was common for others' misfortunes to become my work, and I did not refuse the irony that their misfortunes brought me opportunities. As a journalist, I set out following orders from my superiors.

Father of the chief of the Wodaabe tribe, nomads of the Sahara Desert. Photo by Heo Young-han

Even in the Sahara Desert, the nomadic regions were places that required alternating between the one-lane, one-way National Route 1 built during the French colonial period and unpaved roads, driving for over a dozen hours. It took three days from the capital, Niamei, to reach there. Along the way, we stopped in cities and villages to distribute grain to residents. Compared to city dwellers, the desert nomads were quiet in the face of misfortune. Tall and handsome, they did not show signs of poverty. Poverty carries an image as an adjective consumed by city people and civilized society. The "expectation" of poignant photographic scenes?like children reduced to bones, fruit flies clinging to their faces that wouldn't fly away even when chased, and carcasses of dead animals?collapsed. The images poured out by international organizations had raised people's expectations too high. But there was no reason photos had to depict predictable scenes. They were suffering and struggling, but their appearance did not reveal misfortune as we easily imagined. After a few days, we finished our work and returned.

A Wodaabe woman is milking cows in the evening for her family to eat. Photo by Heo Younghan

That same autumn, I returned to the Sahara Desert because of a single photo of that child. After that summer, I had no further news from there. What I had seen last summer remained only in photos and said nothing about reality. I was curious about their survival. Though it was difficult to travel such a distant place on willpower alone, through a collaboration of various reasons and excuses (not by anyone's orders), I was able to go back. The dusty, unpaved roads of Niamei in the evening felt even cozy. When I arrived in summer, I was too scared to open the car window at night. The nomads I met in summer were elsewhere in autumn. Summer was the season to leave; autumn was the season to settle. I had learned that civilization begins with settlement. The nomads' settled life during the dry season was thanks to external support that provided wells, grain storage, and schools. That autumn, they had not harvested properly, and their greatest harvest was surviving the harsh summer and reaching an almost normal autumn. After we left, miraculous rains fell, farmers replanted seeds, and nomads fed their livestock with grass grown from the rain. They had barely reached "autumn."

Autumn morning in a nomadic Tuareg village ⓒHeo Younghan

A Tuareg village girl is milking a goat early in the morning. Photo by Heo Young-han

Like the exhausting summer, their autumn was quiet. They remembered me and were grateful to the guest who had come all the way back.

Children who went out to feed the camels with grass are bringing the camels home at dusk. Photo by Heo Yeonghan

Children came around early in the morning, wandering near me and watching curiously. I followed the path where livestock were taken to graze, and saw men drawing water together from a well dozens of meters deep. People and livestock drank the water drawn from the well together. The children chattered as they went to school. It was the first day of school in November. In a place where relative measures of happiness and misfortune were meaningless, being alive and having even a little to eat was happiness. The children of a tribe naturally gifted with musicality danced and sang late into the night, beating gourds in the dark grasslands.

Wodaabe children gather in the classroom on the first day of school in late autumn. The school was built by missionaries. ? Heo Young-han

Wodaabe children are singing and playing in the dark. Photo by Heo Younghan

The dense stars covering the night sky like a roof seemed as if, if they all fell at once, they would snow heavily and fill the view for a long time. I lay under that roof in the Sahara autumn trying to sleep but could not fall asleep all night.

A bowl overturned in water is an excellent percussion instrument. The children's sense of rhythm was outstanding. It made one guess where the origins of jazz might have been. Photo by Heo Yeonghan

The crescent moon rises over the autumn night sky of the Sahara, densely covered with stars. Photo by Heo Young-han

Morning has come to a Tuareg village near Agadez, not far from the Algerian border. Photo by Heo Young-han

Chief Uba Hasan (left) of the Wodaabe tribe and tribal warriors. They willingly stood in front of the camera on their morning "commute." Photo by Heo Young-han