Fifteen-year-old Kadi Ben Wahab puffs out his chest and poses for a photograph with several friends, before setting off to hunt cats in northern Mali’s Timbuktu.
As part of an age-old tradition in the city, in the desert north of the Sahel, Kadi and his band of hunters hit the streets after dark to trap, skin and cook cats. They dance and sing after a successful hunt, throwing the skins of their prey over the electric cables that hang over the alleyways.
“I killed this one a few days ago,” Kadi said, pointing to a cat skin hanging nearby — not an uncommon sight in Timbuktu.
Photo: AFP
The boy said that he is the best cat hunter in his neighborhood and, as such, is the leader of his gang.
The children standing beside him are aged six to 12 years old. They lead otherwise ordinary lives, but after dinner, they often sneak out to hunt cats — always targeting neighborhoods other than their own.
Their weapon of choice is a crate-like wooden trap, which contains a piece of mutton as bait and can be pulled closed with a piece of string.
The unusual pastime offers children an escape in an otherwise tough environment: landlocked and conflict-torn Mali is one of the poorest nations in the world.
Compounding the shortage of distractions, Timbuktu is in Mali’s volatile north, where an extremist insurgency has raged since 2012.
Timbuktu residents seemed unable to pinpoint the origin of the city’s cat-hunting tradition, but several cast it as a rite of passage for boys. The practice appears to be older than living memory.
Timbuktu poet Sane Chirfi said that after one of his octogenarian relatives died, an old cat trap was found among his possessions.
“It goes back a very, very long time,” he said. “It’s impossible to find anyone in town who didn’t hunt cats as a child.”
SECRET AGREEMENT: China is paying for construction at Ream Naval Base, where dredging would be needed if larger military ships were to dock there, AMTI said Dredgers have been spotted off Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, where China is funding construction work and deeper port facilities would be necessary for the docking of larger military ships, a US think tank said on Friday. The US, which has sought to push back against Beijing’s extensive territorial claims and military expansion in the South China Sea, reiterated its “serious concerns” about China’s construction and military presence at Ream. “These developments threaten US and partner interests, regional security and Cambodia’s sovereignty,” a US Department of State spokesperson said. The report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank said the
Two years ago, Qi Jiayao visited his mother’s hometown of Shaoxing in eastern China. When he tried to speak to his cousin’s children in the local dialect, Qi was surprised. “None of them was able to,” said the 38-year-old linguist, who teaches Mandarin in Mexico. The decline in local dialects among the younger generation has become more apparent in recent years as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has sought to bolster a uniform Chinese identity. Mandarin is now spoken by more than 80 percent of China’s population, up from 70 percent a decade ago. Last month, China’s State Council promised to
France is to relax some COVID-19 restrictions from early next month in a bet that an outbreak of the Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 would recede thanks to faster inoculations and plans to shut the unvaccinated out of most social activities. The French government is to lift the obligation to work from home at least three days a week from Feb. 2, French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday. It would also remove a requirement to wear a mask outdoors, and scrap attendance limits for sports arenas and cultural venues, Castex said. Infections with the Delta variant are “clearly receding,” while the
DEMOGRAPHIC CRISIS: Beijing is attempting to address its population decline, including considering raising the retirement age and allowing more than two children China’s birthrate has fallen to its lowest level in six decades, barely outnumbering deaths last year despite major government efforts to increase population growth and stave off a demographic crisis. Across China, 10.62 million babies were born last year, a rate of 7.52 per thousand people, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. In the same period 10.14 million deaths were recorded, a mortality rate of 7.18 per thousand, producing a population growth rate of just 0.34 per 1,000 people. The growth rate is the lowest since 1960, and adds to the findings of May last year’s once-per-decade census, which found
RSS