Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African

Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah

Look out for Anna Badkhen's new book, Fisherman's Blues: A West African Community at Sea, on sale now

An intrepid journalist joins the planetâ€™s largest group of nomads on an annual migration that, like them, has endured for centuries.
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Anna Badkhen has forged a career chronicling life in extremis around the world, from war-torn Afghanistan to the border regions of the American Southwest. In Walking with Abel, she embeds herself with a family of Fulani cowboysâ€”nomadic herders in Maliâ€™s Sahel grasslandsâ€”as they embark on their annual migration across the savanna. Itâ€™s a cycle that connects the Fulani to their past even as their present is increasingly under threatâ€”from Islamic militants, climate change, and the ever-encroaching urbanization that lures away their young. The Fulani, though, are no strangers to uncertaintyâ€”brilliantly resourceful and resilient, theyâ€™ve contended with famines, droughts, and wars for centuries.
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Dubbed â€œAnna Baâ€ by the nomads, who embrace her as one of theirs, Badkhen narrates the Fulaniâ€™s journeys and her own with compassion and keen observation, transporting us from the Neolithic Sahara crisscrossed by rivers and abundant with wildlife to obelisk forests where the Fulaniâ€™s Stone Age ancestors painted tributes to cattle. As they cross the Sahel, the savanna belt that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, they accompany themselves with Fulani music they download to their cell phones and tales of herders and hustlers, griots and holy men, infused with the myths the Fulani tell themselves to ground their past, make sense of their identity, and safeguard theirâ€”ourâ€”future.
Country USA
Brand Riverhead Books
Manufacturer Riverhead Books
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 0399576010_used
Color Black
ReleaseDate 2016-08-02
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780399576010

Country	USA
Brand	Riverhead Books
Manufacturer	Riverhead Books
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	0399576010_used
Color	Black
ReleaseDate	2016-08-02
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780399576010

Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah