The Desert Odyssey - a National Geographic Movie

The Desert Odyssey is a National Geographic movie about a Tuareg boy, Adam, on his way to manhood. This movie shows and talks about many aspects of their lives. It educates us on the Tuareg culture, how harsh the environment can be on them, and how upcoming technology has impacted on them. All these things are very important topics that I will discuss.

In the film, it starts off with Adam’s sister getting married. All the villagers celebrate with many activities, like camel racing for example. The only thing that is different with their culture is that Islamic culture is mixed in with it. When the Muslims took over most of North Africa, their culture spread with them causing cultural diffusion. The Tuaregs eventually adopted most of the Islam ways but not all of them.

Many things can tell us about their culture. Their clothing is part of their culture because it symbolizes them and everyone knows them by what they wear. Like how the women wear veils but it’s not covering all their body. This could tell people that they worship part of Islam but they still worship what they always had. Also the Tuaregs are called the Blue People because they dye their clothes with indigo which makes them the color blue. So if you are in Africa and around the area where they live, you will know who they are. Other big events for them is that every year all the men go in a caravan to buy salt then later sell it to buyers. This is a huge event for the Tuareg people because this is a time of prosperity and wealth since they gain money for the village on their trip. Now, Adam decides to go this year with the caravan in order to be a man. The older men all had to go through the same tests when they were on their way to manhood. While Adam is on their six month journey, he would study the Koran so he knows the routes that the caravan uses. This will help him later on when he has to take over when his dad gets older and when he goes on more caravans because they use the same route every time. Also on their journey and the women who take over the village while the men are gone, they pray everyday. Religion is that important to them. They pray for water, safety, protection, wealth, etc., everything a prosperous civilization needs.

In Africa, the Sahara Desert makes living there hard but over the past years, the Tuaregs have changed and adapted to the environment in order to live there. Before there was even a desert, the Sahara use to be a savanna where big animals would roam and it was quite populated. Archaeologist have evidence because of the drawings they found on rocks and of the landmarks that still exist today. Also the temperature makes the journey quite hard. The temperatures get very high to the point where the camels could die after a certain amount of time which then leads to losing transportation. Now since the temperature changed to hot, the savanna turned into sand. The animals started to die off or migrated to somewhere