As It Was In The Beginning: At home in the desert

Living on the outer edge of the Sahara desert this community settles on solutions that have worked for centuries beyond memory and even the written word.

The walls made of packed mud and straw, and are constructed to at least keep the everyday heat in control. First, they build them high enough — and the hallways narrow enough — so that direct sunlight can reach them only a couple of hours per day.

At first you look at this as rudimentary and primitive. But for creating a home in these conditions, the engineering is ideal. It was perfectly comfortable inside, just as it has been for centuries.

Love this video below for a couple of reasons. First the girls, perhaps sisters, sit together talking in very animated tones and hand gestures (most likely about we the gawkers walking in and out and through their lives). They could be any two girls in any culture in any time period ever.

With just this cute little snippet of a few seconds in passing, what hit me is how much we are the same. The clothes and toys and buildings and trappings of modern life change. You know what changes? Our conceits. But what doesn’t change is our humanity.

Next is the communal oven, found behind the wall of hardened mud bricks. Inside this area is a hole dug out of clay. Stones have been placed to one side of the small apse and a space left on the other for the sticks gathered to provide the heat needed to bake the bread. Her spatula consists of a couple of those long sticks used to move the bread around to prevent burning, and then to pull it out of the oven.

How long has it been like this? How long has a community created the common space for making food for their family? Well beyond medieval, Roman, Greek, Egyptian