Taureg
The Tuaregs
Most of us have seen photos or film of the Sahara Desert. In those mediums, we see the stereotypical transient of the desert with his robes and camels. Those images loosely resemble nomadic people called Tuaregs.
The Tuaregs have traversed the Sahara Desert for several hundred years. Their primary product is salt that is caravanned from mines that are scattered throughout Central and North Africa. Those mines are to be enchanted. This adds a little more value to the product and keeps the Tuaregs in business to this day.
If you want to do business with a Tuareg, you could attempt to learn some of their language. Marry Ellen Guffey wrote that it is best that we learn some basics about the culture of the people we are doing business with in order to provide a good working environment (Guffey). Therefore, I am going to provide some background, history, and some mannerisms of the Tuareg people.
As former rulers of the upper third of Africa for nearly 1200 years, they still do not recognize the governments of the countries formed by the Europeans in their rush to carve up Africa into their own little empires. And they do not participate in the political systems of the countries in which they still roam; consequently, they have no representation amongst the elected officials who would attempt to regulate their movements and tax their goods. For the last 15 years the Tuaregs have been fighting an armed conflict in hopes of establishing their own country carved out of the Northern wastelands of Nigeria and Mali.
Over the last half decade or so, the Sahara Desert has been punished with several prolonged droughts that have devastated the Tuareg people. This is because the Tuareg measures his wealth their herds rather than currency. When the herds were decimated by the droughts, 75% of the men committed suicide. The remaining family members were forced to move into the cities where they were forced to...
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