NIGER
Gerewol of Wanaabe
Wedding in the desert
Every year, at the end of the rainy season, the Wanaabe people meet in large tribal gatherings on the edge of the Sahara desert to renew family ties, business, friendship. It is an opportunity to celebrate weddings. And it is the young women who choose the future husbands selected from dozens of well-kept, tireless warrior dancers.
MAURITANIA
Between sea and desert
Sand, sand as far as the eye can see. And where the sand ends, the sea begins. It could be said that Mauritania is all here, and that would also be true. But the desert, like the sea, is a world apart and then we could talk for hours about the granite monoliths that emerge from the sands, the ancient caravan routes that reached the city where precious libraries are still preserved today, the huge mine of zouerat and the endless train that crosses the desert to the port of Nouadhibou, of the sandy islands where millions of birds nest and the fishermen renew every day a thousand-year fishing technique in symbiosis with the dolphins, and one would only have begun to say what Mauritania.
ZIMBABWE
Zambezi Safari
An adventurous descent of the Zambezi River, one of the great African waterways by seaplane, rafting, canoe. From the spectacular Victoria Falls to the Ruckomechi Camp, one of the most remote nature lodges in Zimbabwe.
MALI
African nostalgia
Beyond Timbuktù there is only the desert. For many, this would be enough to set out on the tracks that crossed the Sahara, or sailing along the great Niger River that arches throughout the country and mixes people and destinies, carries things and stories. Mali is a concentrate of Africa with African sickness.
ETHIOPIA
Danakil depression and Tigray
Located at the eastern end of Ethiopia, 155 meters below sea level, the Danakil depression is certainly one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, where the desert is an absolute concept and the world is made of salt, heat and minerals colored. To find a more hospitable environment, you have to climb the Tigray plateaus at almost 2000 meters, where the land becomes fertile again and the ancient churches are carved out of the living rock.
MOZAMBIQUE
“I like to spend some time in Mozambique”
Between 1996 and 1997 I made two long trips to Mozambique to make a series of social and travel reportages. The country was emerging from a terrible civil war that lasted 19 years and the signs of that experience were everywhere. The sweet atmosphere celebrated by Bob Dylan in his famous ballad was far away, but the country was finally raising its head and regaining the will to live.
UGANDA
Not only gorilla in the fog
Two aspects of a country. On the one hand, the lush and magnificent nature of large parks, waterfalls, savannahs with lions and forests populated by mountain gorillas, on the other the desolate region of Gulu, in the north of the country, where the St. Mary hospital, founded in 1959 by Piero and Lucille Corti, it is the only health center for a basin of over three million people and for many years it has offered night shelter to hundreds of children from the surrounding countryside, to reduce the scourge of kidnappings and their reduction to slave soldiers.
TANZANIA
Zanzibar, something in the wind
Something in the wind. Just off the coast of Tanzania is Zanzibar, a unique place. It will be the old patinated houses of Stone Town, a city of stone and sheet metal, or perhaps those ladies of Pwani Machagani who as elegant as queens cultivate and harvest algae in the shallow waters of their home sea that make this island so special. Beyond the suggestions of a world still so ancient, the magic of Zanzibar is in the air. An air full of spice aromas that refers to even more remote places and times and renews forgotten nostalgia.
