In the north of Tanzania, there is a place suspended between poetry, infinite spaces and light: Ol Doinyo, the mountain of God for the Maasai; the still active and never-extinguished volcano that scrutinizes living beings and the arid land.
It is evening in northern Tanzania. The herds return to the villages kicking up dust. They are white, a greyish white made of dirt and sand, but bright against a barren, bare and dense landscape. It is the usual oxymoron of existence: bare, reduced to the bare bones and, at the same time, incomprehensibly rich.
The shepherds are slim, some are wiry. They are mostly male, more or less young. They move slowly, the day is almost over, it is the quiet time of the return. They are supported by a wooden stick, perhaps ancient. They wear a red checked cloth, the fabric that tells the story of a people. It is a cloth that wraps the body in a casual and very elegant way.
Further away a woman, made visible from afar by a blue cloth that tends towards purple. It is the dress that makes her one with her child, tired, baked by the sun, curled up on his mother’s shoulders. They too are together with the cattle. Her bare feet move stones, her ankles, adorned with voluminous jewels, dance unawares together with the herds.
The dust rises, forming small clouds that dissolve and reform. The animals move, advance. Other shepherds return. Small, barefoot children appear. They move fast, champing at the bit. They play, run and, sometimes, stop to watch over the goats and thus take care of their own subsistence. Some have a stick in their hand, thin and fragile like themselves.
The spaces are enormous, almost infinite. It is a gigantic plateau, interspersed with scree and tufts of yellowish grass, which makes the progress of animals and humans a sacred act. In the background reigns the magical mountain for those who inhabit and trample those lands. It is the Ol Doinyo Lengai, the mountain of God for the Maasai, the still active volcano that scrutinizes the living beings and the arid land.
The sun comes from there, it changes colour quickly because it is sunset time. In the meantime, the cattle gather together and move away from the mountain while the dust reflects the light that turns a host of different shades, delicate and very strong. At first a pale yellow, then orange and then an even more intense orange.
It is a mystical, ancestral place that tells and moves. It is a difficult place to abandon. It smells of roots, of stones, of men and beasts, of torrid heat, fatigue and shared days that follow one another and return. You have to return to Ol Doinyo Lengai. There are places that are infinitely revisited because they soak into you. They stay inside you. (Paola Scaccabarozzi/Africa)
