The World in Its Extreme 4/6

[Dennis L. Fiddle]

This is what Lag Lag and his assistant started drinking. They had
been under the truck for several weeks. They wrote good-bye
letters to their families and stuck them up in the cab. The
assistant cried. Lag Lag was annoyed and said, "When you die, you
die." He was a good Muslim. He lay calm.

Finally, the two of them having drunk most of the coolant, Lag Lag
had an inspiration. He drained oil from the engine and poured it
into the fuel tank. The assistant had given up hope, and wanted no
part in the experiment. Lag Lag figured the oil would combine with
the dregs of diesel fuel, and the mixture might ignite. He climbed
into the cab, cycled the glow plug, and pressed the starter. The
engine turned over and rumbled to life. The astonished assistant
scrambled aboard. Spewing dense blue smoke, the truck rolled
forward. After some miles they came to a track. With no idea where
they were, or where the track led, they followed it. Allah was
with them. A refrigerated van appeared, with water, meats, and
vegetables. It was driven by a friend. They broke the seal on the
back, built a fire, drank, and feasted. As the specialists say,
they rehydrated.

DRIVING in the north is no longer so dangerous. A network of
hard-surfaced roads branches out from the Trans-Saharan, linking
the oases. The roads are narrow and sometimes interrupted by
drifting sand, but well maintained. Although the distances are
great, help is never far away. There are cargo trucks, passenger
buses, army-convoys, occasional private cars, and swarms of yellow
taxicabs. These taxis, mostly beat-up Peugeot station wagons,
shuttle from one oasis to the next. Airline managers must dream of
such schedules: the taxis never leave with less than a full load,
and they arrive when they please. In that sense they are like the
bush taxis of black Africa, but they are less crowded (only six
passengers) and better driven. They are also better driven than
the cabs of New York, and much cheaper. For the price of a trip
from Grand Central to La Guardia, you can travel a full day in the
Sahara. The desert undulates under a brilliant sky. You pass a
ruined fortress, a stand of palms, a camel wandering untethered, a
dry riverbed filled with refracted sunlight, shimmering like
water. There is no dispatch radio. Instead, a tape deck plays
melodic readings of the Koran.

The south is different. There are few roads and few taxis. You
drive most of the time over open desert, following tracks that are
braided, eroded, obscured by dirt and sand. The braiding occurs
when one driver gets stuck and others detour around the signs of
trouble, making new tracks. Still others follow, mire down in
turn, and pick new ways through. The Oregon Trail used to braid
the same way. In the Sahara every truck, every car, every
motorcycle leaves its trace. This repeats itself over the years
until a route consists of a band maybe twenty miles wide of
crisscrossing tire marks. Intersecting routes lead off to unknown
destinations. Seen from the air, the tracks might make sense; on
the ground they become hopelessly confusing. People follow them in
circles. There is no one to ask directions from, and no one to
help you if you break down. South of Tamanrasset heavy traffic on
the Trans-Saharan means two trucks passing ten miles apart, on
opposite ends of a basin.

This is a subject close to Salah Addoun. His father was lost in
the desert while driving with friends. It was 1962, the year of
Algerian independence. Addoun's father wrote farewells on his
chcchc. He survived a month and was the last to die. The next day
his body was discovered. Addoun was six.

Years later Addoun set out on a trip at sunset, to avoid the heat
of day. After a full night of driving he came to some lights --
and found himself back where he had started. As he says, Allah did
not choose his death then. More recently he was a passenger in a
desert taxi across the sands southwestward from al Golea to a
village called al Homr. After a while one of the passengers said
to the driver, "Where are you going?"

"To al Homr."

The passenger said, "No, al Homr is toward that star there." He
pointed to the left. The driver was unsure. The passenger took the
wheel and followed the star to safety.

These are the skills of the nomad, and they require an
encyclopedic knowledge of the land. One old man explained
navigation this way: "Yes, by the stars at night. In daylight by
local knowledge of the desert -- this soil, this tree, this ruin,
these tracks, these shadows before sunset. It is passed down from
father to son, and spoken of among friends." He said "local," but
we were discussing the smugglers who drive hundreds of miles
across the open desert.

Concerned about the number of drivers lost in the south, the
Algerian government has marked the main routes with metal pylons
every ten kilometers. Ten kilometers is 6.21 miles, and drivers
still get lost. For marking the Trans-Saharan south of
Tamanrasset, the authorities decided on something more visible.
This is the stretch that causes the most trouble. For 280 miles
the route descends across infernal badlands to the border with
Niger. There are no wells and few landmarks. Drivers take days to
negotiate it. The solution was to be 451 white concrete markers,
one every kilometer. A kilometer is 0.621 miles, an easy distance
for seeing from one marker to the next. Addoun's company won the
contract. It was springtime. He set off from Tamanrasset on foot
followed by a three-man crew in a Land Cruiser carrying supplies
and topographic charts. Over two weeks he walked the entire
distance, surveying thirty kilometers a day and driving stakes at
the prescribed intervals. He did this as casually as you or I
might go for a weekend stroll -- no photographers, no expedition
flags. Once the stakes were in place, he returned to Tamanrasset,
gathered a larger crew, and set off with trucks carrying steel
molds. Pouring the concrete took an additional three months.
Thinking of his father, I asked if the walking had been a
pilgrimage of sorts. He smiled and said he had needed the
exercise. I asked if his markers would make the driving easy. He
said no, he was not a dreamer. Smugglers and adventurers would
still get lost. People would still take shortcuts, break down, or
get stuck. And the tracks would still braid.

I caught a ride on one of a pair of battered trucks exporting
dates down the Trans-Saharan to Agadez, Niger. It was the only
public transportation available heading south. Addoun saw me off.
He introduced me to the chief driver, a bearded man with quick,
amused expressions, whose name was Ali. He wore stained trousers,
a ragged shirt, and no shoes. Addoun had told me that Ali was the
best: he practically lived in the desert. He was a trader as well
as a driver; the trucks and the cargoes belonged to him. The dates
were lowquality export varieties in burlap sacks. I asked Ali what
he would return with from Niger. He said chickens.

The other driver was a gaunt, silent Tuareg, who spoke no French
and little Arabic. I was assigned to his truck. Addoun gave me a
chcchc against the sun and dust, a blanket for the nights, and a
sack of oranges to share with my fellow passengers. On my truck
there were ten of them -- Tuaregs and black Africans, immigrant
workers heading home. They peered down at me from atop the cargo.
I threw my duffle on board and climbed up to join them. Each
driver had an assistant, and started rolling without him. The
assistants pretended not to notice. At the last possible moment
they swung into the cabs. It was late afternoon.

By sundown we had settled into a rhythm. The trucks were like
great beasts, guided lovingly across treacherous terrain. We
wallowed and rolled, hesitated, backed, and shuddered. The gears
ground. On high-speed level ground the engines bellowed and the
tires heaved dust, and we hit twenty miles an hour It was not to
be a fast trip.

The darkness closed around us, and we probed it cautiously with
yellow headlights. The trucks competed for the lead. Now we were
ahead, watching our dust swirl around Ali's lights; now we were
behind, tasting his dirt, following his single red taillight. We
made camp late, drank from fifty-gallon drums lashed to the
chassis, and built two miserly fires. Campfires in the Sahara are
fed by twigs and refuse, and are sparing of fuel. I have seen
entire meals cooked on a few scraps of cardboard. Tonight we baked
unleavened bread in the sand below the fires. After scraping the
loaves clean we shredded them into goat stew, and ate from
communal bowls. The air turned cool. I walked away and rolled
myself into a blanket under brilliant stars. The desert was
silent.

Hours later a truck passed. I heard its engine clearly, and after
a while saw its lights creeping through the distance. It crested a
rise maybe five miles away and disappeared. Someone was pushing
hard for the border, giving dimension to the night.

We left before dawn, and the next day passed through a land of
torn hills, where sand lay in pockets too deep to escape. This was
why passengers were taken along: the trucks bogged down often. You
could sense the trouble coming on: the double-clutching of
uncooperative gears, the desperate shifting-down, the shuddering
loss of momentum, the halt, the surrender. We dug ourselves out
with hands, shovels, and sand ladders. The sand ladders were
ten-foot segments of portable runways from the Second World War --
perforated metal strips, designed to link together and support the
weight of an airplane. Now they supported the export of dates.
Each truck carried a pair. I sometimes had the feeling we were
digging our way across the Sahara. Other people had not succeeded;
we passed the rusted hulks of their cars, partly buried in the
sand. I saw an old Volvo, a Lada, Renaults, Peugeots, Volkswagen
buses, and a Fiat clustered around the worst spots.

In the late afternoon nomadic children materialized from the empty
desert. They ran toward us in a flock, waving plastic bottles to
be filled. We stopped and gave them water. They had copper skin,
ragged robes, and hair in wild dreadlocks. They begged for sugar,
but we had none. I finally spotted their camp at the base of a
hill -- two tents, some goats, a camel, a woman watching. The
children waited for us to leave. They stood looking up, shielding
their eyes from the sun. Then they trudged off, lugging the heavy
water bottles. They lived this way, off the traffic of the
Trans-Saharan. It has become a moving oasis.

That night I mentioned to Ali that I had seen only one of Addoun's
markers. Ali answered, "It's better to find your own way. " I
asked when we would get to the border. He was amused by the
question. "Maybe not tomorrow," he said.

Maybe not ever, I thought the following afternoon. Against all
reason, the trucks had been driving in loose formation, miles
apart, as if to demonstrate that maddening disinclination to
prudence that one encounters so frequently in the Third World. I
was angered but not surprised when we lost sight of each other.
After an hour in a maze of trackless basins, I began to worry. So,
apparently, did our driver. He parked, killed the engine, and
without a word marched off to a nearby hill, where he stood
looking. I followed him. In all directions the land was empty. I
left him there and returned to the truck. My concern was not Ali
but the ignorance of our driver. I sat and waited. The desert was
calm. I had hours to consider the worst. Somewhere out here,
perhaps not far away, the Belgians had been lost.

They were husband, wife, and five-year-old boy, driving a Peugeot
sedan for resale in Burkina Faso. At first their trip went fast,
from Algiers through the northern oases to points south.
Eventually the pavement ended. They were prepared to spend nights
in the desert, but the driving was slower than expected. They were
encouraged when they made Tamanrasset. After resting there they
pushed on, planning on three days to the border.

When they got lost, they still had plenty of gas, and they set out
to retrace their route. This was not easy, because the ground was
hard-packed and rocky. They grew even more confused. But getting
lost was part of the adventure, a special game for carefree
Europeans. We know this because the woman later wrote it down.
People dying of thirst in the desert often leave a written record.
They have time to think. Writing denies the isolation.

The car broke down. They rationed their water and lay in the shade
of a tarpaulin. The rationing did not extend their lives. They
might as well have drunk their fill, since the human body loses
water at a constant rate even when dehydrated. The only way to
stretch your life in the desert is to reduce your water needs:
stay put, stay shaded, and keep your clothes on.

The Belgians hoped a truck would pass. For a week they waited,
scanning the horizon for a dust-tail or the glint of a windshield.
The woman wrote more frantically. Their water ran low, then dry.
They grew horribly thirsty. After filtering it through a cloth,
they drank the radiator coolant.

Water is the largest component of our bodies, but we have little
to spare. In the hottest desert we can lose it (mostly by
sweating) at the rate of two gallons a day while resting in the
shade, or four gallons a day walking. Because sweating keeps us
cool, we function well in extreme heat as long as we have plenty
of water. We need a lot of water -- say, half again as much as a
camel over the course of a year. The rule is to drink until your
thirst is gone and then drink a little more. If water is
available, you naturally maintain your fluid content within a
range of a quarter of a percent. If water is not available, juice,
Coke, or beer is just as good. Apparently, radiator coolant also
works. But what happens when it all runs out? Inevitably this
becomes the question for anyone stranded in the Sahara. I can only
list the symptoms.

Thirst is first felt when the body has lost about 0.5 percent of
its weight to dehydration. For a 180-pound man that amounts to
about a pint. With a two percent loss (say, two quarts) the
stomach is no longer big enough to hold as much as the body needs,
and people stop drinking before they have replenished their loss,
even if they are given ample water. This is called voluntary
dehydration, though it is not a conscious choice. Up to a five
percent loss (about one gallon) the symptoms include fatigue, loss
of appetite, flushed skin, irritability, increased pulse rate, and
mild fever. Beyond that lie dizziness, headache, labored
breathing, absence of salivation, circulatory problems, blue skin,
and slurred speech. At 10 percent a person can no longer walk. The
point of no return is around 12 percent (about three gallons),
when the tongue swells, the mouth loses all sensation, and
swallowing becomes impossible. A person this dehydrated cannot
recover without medical assistance. In the Sahara it may take only
half a day to get to this stage. Now the skin shrinks against the
bones and cracks, the eyes sink, and vision and hearing become
dim. Urine is dark and urination is painful. Delirium sets in. In
a hot desert climate, as the body dehydrates, a disproportionate
amount of water is drawn from the circulating blood. The blood
thickens and finally can no longer fulfill its functions, one of
which is to transport heat generated within the body to the
surface. It is this heat that ultimately kills. The end comes with
an explosive rise in body temperature, convulsions, and blissful
death.

After the radiator coolant was gone, the Belgians started sipping
gasoline. You would too. Call it petroposia: Saharans have
recommended it to me as a way of staying off battery acid. The
woman wrote that it seemed to help. They drank their urine. She
reported that it was difficult at first, but that afterward it
wasn't so bad.

--
dfi...@mn.uswest.net (Dennis L. Fiddle)
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