NomadicMILK

Mr. Idiris did a great job remembering his rainy season route. In the beginning he made some clear moves in northern directing of Kaduna, but after a couple of weeks, he suddenly and sharply turned east. After that, he made a slow loop, in the direction of his dry season camp, and stayed for the last two months of rainy season in the proximity.

I was surprised, what had happened? After some questioning we found out that the news about the religious crisis in June 2009 in Kaduna first reached him by radio, but he sort of ignored it and moved on. Later he met some Fulani people on the market, who explained him that he would risk the lives of himself and his cattle if he moved on to Kaduna. So this finally made him decide on turning back, and not traveling far at all this year.

As a start we make the robot drawing based on mr. Idiris trip on Thursday, doing his shopping for Sallah (festival of sacrifice). As the data shows clearly, he made a lot of kilometers on his motorbike, buying rice, but also visiting markets just for the enjoyment of it.

After discussing this trip, I explain mr. Idiris the situation with the collar. As he took so well care, I feel a really bad about bringing the news. I also explain that we expect the data to be downloaded still, but that we need to send the collar to Sweden first, and this will take time.
In order to still discuss the rainy season transhumance route of mr. Idiris now, we kindly ask him to draw the route by memory, and explain as best as he can what has happened.

In order to do this, I did prepare a bottle with sand, with a special, slightly larger hole in the lit, as I expect mr. Idiris to want to make his drawing fast (as he does everything fast).

Tomorrow we have workshop with Mr. Idiris, and I give the downloading of the collar data a last try. But it does not work. Firstly I don’t know what to do.

Thinking about our experiences with the workshop with Binta today, where we based our discussion on the relation between two tracks, I decide to try out something likewise. The Thursday track we collected from mr. Idiris could maybe serve as a starting point, and I could ask mr. Ideris to draw, in connection to this track, his rainy season transhumance route by hand. As we had no usable GPS data, this seemed to be the best option.

The main thing is to find out about his experiences during this trip, and I make myself remember that the use of robot was primary a means to this end. I try to keep this in mind firmly and not be to discouraged by the disappointment about the lack of access to the collar data.

In order to have enough sand for the workshop with Binta we go down to the river to collect the fine, white sand that can be found there.