Jouney into the vast Sahara:
Gainesville attorney savors 20 days in the desert on camelback

By Alice Wallace
Photos By: David Zents & Martin Goldberg
Special to The Sun
Reprinted with the permission of the Gainesville Sun. All rights reserved.

When the war in Iraq started in March, suddenly it seemed that most of America was on edge. Even for those who simply watched the bombs drop from the safety of their favorite armchair, uneasiness was practically inescapable. Now imagine you are Martin Goldberg, a Gainesville attorney. On the night bombs started dropping on Iraq, he was heading down to Orlando to catch a plane to Algeria, a Muslim country located on the northern border of Africa, for a three-week camelback trip through the Sahara.

Martin with a camelAlgeria might not have been the ideal place for a white, Jewish male to be when there is a war raging across a few miles of water and the prevailing opinion of Americans throughout Europe is anything but friendly. However, months of planning had gone into this trip, and Goldberg wouldn't let himself back out. He tried not to think about the potential danger, thinking instead about the opportunity to be a sort of emissary.

This would be, he thought, his chance to let Europeans know - since most of his travel companions were going to be European - that not all Americans shared the same sentiments regarding the war. "From their media, they (had) the idea that all Americans felt the same way," Goldberg said.

For Goldberg, the trip was a vision quest, a journey that indigenous peoples throughout the world perform in order to get in touch with their spirituality. While Goldberg is Jewish, he is quick to point out that his spirituality encompasses many faiths. "People are sent off by themselves in nature, usually fasting, and they seek to get in touch with their spirituality on a deeper level," he said. Goldberg had gone on one vision quest in the canyon lands of Utah, and he was very excited at the opportunity for another one - especially one through the Sahara desert.

He and the other members of his team met in Switzerland and Paris and then flew into the southern Algerian city of Tamanrasset. There they were joined by their guides, the Tuareg, a nomadic indigenous people, many of whom still live in the Sahara. The caravan consisted of 21 people. Eleven were Tuareg guides, including one medicine man, or shaman, named Jumbo, who would become very close to Goldberg over the three-week period. The remaining 10 travelers were comprised of people from all walks of life. There were two Americans - Goldberg and one other - and eight Europeans, among them a homeopathic physician, a writer, a retired priest and a teacher, to name a few.

'A mind of his own'

Martin at his deskStarting out on March 23, the first leg of their journey involved three cramped days riding deep into the desert in four-wheel-drive vehicles. Once they were far enough away that civilization seemed only a memory, they met up with more Tuareg who were waiting with some 40 camels.

Goldberg was impressed with the landscape of the Sahara. He had pictured lots of white, soft sand and huge sand dunes. Although some parts fit his stereotypical desert image, other parts were incredibly volcanic. "The Sahara desert is just incredible, and it's not like anything I had imagined," he said. "I had a sort of Lawrence of Arabia image in mind."

Each person was assigned a specific camel to ride. Camels are very dear to the Tuareg, and each camel was hand-picked for the rider. Goldberg got Aguakor, which means "the young man" in the Tuareg's language, Tamachek. "He definitely had a mind of his own," Goldberg said of Aguakor. But Goldberg and Aguakor got along well once they understood each other. It was a little startling the first time Aguakor rubbed his enormous head against Goldberg's back while being led, but the sign of affection eventually became very important to their relationship.

The Tuareg have incredible respect for their camels, as they are never tied up. When the camels aren't needed, the Tuareg unload the gear and let them wander, sometimes for miles, until they are needed again for travel. Each day, the Tuareg must get up in the middle of the night to round up the camels for the day's traveling. Though this may seem a very inefficient means to an end to most people, the Tuareg feel it is only fair to let the camels have freedom after they have done their service.

On the trip, the Tuareg and the travelers like Goldberg worked, slept and ate together. Goldberg said that the Tuareg were a very sweet and gentle, yet strong, people. Though they were shy at first, eventually the whole group opened up and there seemed to be no difference between the nomadic Tuareg and the modern Europeans. "It felt like we became one family over the course of the journey," Goldberg said.

Overcoming language restraints was a problem at first. The Tuareg speak Tamachek, an Afro-Asiatic language with a 2,000 year history. At one point it was determined that seven languages were being spoken between all of the travelers. However, Goldberg and the rest of his companions learned quickly that, despite their difficulties with verbal communication, there are a few universal signs that are never mistaken. For example, everyone knows the familiar "thumbs up," he said. "You found you could really communicate with people if you paid attention," Goldberg said.

'Tuareg customs'

Everyone on the caravan dressed in the traditional Tuareg garb. Considering how long the Tuareg have been traveling through the desert, they have developed clothes that are perfectly suited for extreme conditions. Each person wore a turban-like wrap on their head called a shesh and a long gown with pants underneath called a gandora. Tuareg rituals were also incorporated into the trip. For example, each meal was accompanied by a tea ritual. The Tuareg use the same tea leaves for all three meals each day. Though the tea gets weaker with each meal, this has significance to them. In the morning, they say the tea is bitter, like life. In the afternoon, the tea is strong, like love. By dinnertime, the tea is weak, like death.

The fact that the Tuareg put so much meaning into little things like tea was eye-opening for Goldberg. Unfortunately, he said, much of modern society doesn't think the same way. "Our lives tend to be cluttered with a lot of distraction," Goldberg said. "The Tuareg, on the other hand, have to work so hard to cover their survival. So when their survival is covered, they're happy." At one point, Goldberg asked Adem, a Tuareg man who is married to a Swiss woman and divides his time between Switzerland and the Tuareg people, what the main difference is between the two lifestyles.

"He thought about it for a long time and said, 'Here it almost never rains and there it rains all the time,'" Goldberg said. When Goldberg pressed Adem for further explanation, Adem's reply went something like this: "Here when it rains, everybody is happy. There is a solution to every problem. There it rains all the time. But every day, lots of problems, no solutions." It was this kind of innocent view of the world that made Goldberg fall in love with the Tuareg on the trip, he said. The Tuareg don't carry driver's licenses. They don't have birth certificates. In fact, birthdays are unheard of among the Tuareg. "None of the Tuareg I met knew how old they were," Goldberg said. "They don't keep track of those kinds of things."

But even without birthdays to celebrate and cars to ogle over, the Tuareg find joy in things most would overlook. Goldberg told a story of one night around the campfire that was especially touching. Each evening ended around the campfire, and usually the Tuareg would start drumming and chanting and the travelers would chime in. One night, Gowit, the camp cook, brought out a guitar. Though he could only play four chords, the music was still considered brilliant by the Tuareg. "He would strum these chords and all of the other Tuareg were just delighted," Goldberg said. Just the fact that Gowit was making music was all the Tuareg needed to be happy, he said. It didn't matter that he played the same chords over and over.

'Time for reflection'

Living for three weeks with such open and loving people, Goldberg said he found himself contemplating the current state of the world. Being with such a diverse mix of Africans, Europeans and Americans where no prejudice or expectations hindered their relationships seemed to be a perfect example of how the world stage should work. "As we evolve as a world community, I think it's important that we reach out more and more so we can respect and celebrate our differences rather than reject each other for our differences," he said.

Three days of the trip were spent as "alone time." Each traveler set off and found a place to camp by themselves for 72 hours, and the Tuareg kept track of where each person was camped. Being alone in the wilderness for that long gives a person time to really think, something that is missing from most people's lives, he said. He commented on how most major religions started after someone, be it Jesus Christ, the Buddha or Mohammed, went out into the wilderness alone. "There's something very real about being in the wilderness," he said.

Unfortunately, the wilderness eventually had to be left behind, and Goldberg was startled with the world that he came back to. Being an avid news reader, three weeks with no idea of the goings-on in the world had been somewhat of a shock for him. The first newspapers he encountered upon returning were French papers, and the French weren't exactly sympathetic with the United States regarding the war in Iraq. The front pages were littered with grotesque pictures of a very bloody war. Swiss papers had headlines like "Bush Krieg," relating Bush's swift attacks on Iraq to those of Hitler in World War II.

Back in the United States, Goldberg came upon a very different view of the war. He felt that the American media wasn't focusing on the horrors of war so much as the thrill of the fight. He said it seemed as though he were watching a football game, complete with announcers cheering on the home team, rather than witnessing the real and sobering event that was actually taking place. "It's a great example of how the information we receive and how we receive it affects our opinions," he said.