 realized that year he didn't have any of his own cows and he had lost his government job and they were on the verge of not being able to be nomads anymore so I bought him a cow they'd been so good to me so I bought him a cow and when I went back the next year his uncle took me aside and said that cow has made it possible for no parochie to become and his family to stay nomadic and talk about a profound moment for me and I realized you know that one cow was $200 it was there was a lot of money for me at the time but it didn't change my life it did change so that's what started the foundation what's up everyone welcome to simulation I'm your host Alan Sakyan very excited to be in the beautiful Ohio California we are at the Nomad Gallery we are gonna be speaking with Leslie Clark hello hello thank you so much for coming on the show Leslie really appreciate it and I couldn't help but ask Leslie to come on the show while we were visiting this beautiful area her gallery here is beautiful her story is beautiful I'm very excited to be unpacking it sharing it with you guys for those who don't know Leslie's background she is an artisanal gallery owner in Ohio California and has traveled to Niger 50 times setting up general health education and economic support to indigenous nomadic people and you can find the links in the bio to nomadgal.com as well as a nomadfoundation.org okay Leslie let's start things off by asking you who are you and what do you stand for well I am sometimes I forget this but I'm first an artist and that is my what drives me and that's what drove me to Africa the first time and that when I first started when I got my art education a master's in fine arts I started traveling at the same time and I found that I absolutely loved to travel and so I I went to the south of France to study to work on my master's and I was painting on plein air all around the Côte d'Azur and I was somebody saw the paintings I was doing and they asked me to do a show in Monte Carlo and so I said sure as was my first show I was really excited about it and I sold a bunch of paintings and I thought wow what a good gig travel sell paint what I see and then try and figure out a way to sell the painting so that I can earn enough money for the next trip and so that became the pattern for my painting life how did you hooked into painting when you were younger well it was always something that I knew I needed to do I never had any my high school didn't have art education my grammar school didn't really but my grandfather was a painter an artist a carpenter and he would get out his little blackboard that was about this big and say okay draw circles draw triangles draw straight lines and I would do all these things and I was about five six at the time and I would do all these things and my reward for doing them correctly was that he would draw me a horse and it was such a treat to have him draw me a horse so I I just from then I knew I had to draw so I just kept drawing and I never went into a formal education and when I went to college I thought well I'm going to be an artist and at the time there were no art schools that had life drawing classes it was all abstract so I didn't know what to do I thought I don't really want to I want to learn you know anatomy and how to paint from the old masters and all that and nobody was teaching that at the time so I kind of got you know distracted and went off and did some other things for a few years and then my parents died and I and at the same time I got a divorce and at the same time my ranch burned down and so it was like this is ground zero nothing left of my formal life so I I said I am going to be an artist now so I went back to school and got my degree I ended up halfway through that degree meeting the man that would become my future husband and I moved to the East Coast because I thought hey I can get a great I can get a great education here found the best program I could have found it was based on on methods and materials of the masters and I lived in Washington DC and I got to go to all the fabulous museums when there was nobody there and learn about the and paint from the old masters and we had a course that just totally transformed and made my painting life and that was called methods and materials and from that course we were required to paint using the materials and the methods of every major trend in art throughout history so I would start with the Byzantine altarpieces and that's what really struck me I today my painting reflects a lot of gold leaf a lot of sculptural elements that are carved into gesso and this is what the Byzantine altarpieces were or illuminated manuscripts with gold leaf and very intricate borders and all of those things continue to inform my work my work doesn't isn't religious and it's not the same subject matter now it may be floral or it may be a camel in Africa but it's got those elements of the Byzantine and and I went all the way through and painted in Aguil tempura and painted in techniques that the masters used and and one of my one of my projects was to paint a portrait I portraits have always been what I was really people is what I've always been interested in and so I painted a portrait of a friend in all of my favorite artists style I did John Singer Sergeant and I did Degas and I did Klimt and I did Raphael and I did in those in their styles it was so much fun so portraits ended up being in all these different styles this it was methods and methods and materials materials and it just made me learn how to we would grind our own pigment we would it made me learn how to use anything and it made me conversant in those materials so so whether no matter what I chose to paint in whether it was pastels or to or tempura or casein or now I paint in acrylics and oils and a lot of water colors when I travel but I I'm comfortable with it all and that gave me that ability that wonderful class that seems like something that every aspiring artist should endeavor into that's absolutely and the the wonderful thing they did is even art history majors had to take that class so historians and critics would be conversant in what these artists go through and it's it was it was a very transformational and wonderful moment in my early painting life and then how did you decide to make the the trip you see were in DC and then how did you decide to go to the the west coast of Africa and start painting portraits of indigenous how did that happen well I it was kind of a process I was painting in in the Mediterranean area for years I was doing this pattern of traveling to paint and and then you know having some kind of show so I could earn enough money and figure out where the next trip was going to be and I did that for many years and then I my husband and I decided to move back to my home of Ohio which I was born here and it was where I lived a lot of my life even though my father traveled around a bit but we moved back here and we're thinking that we might sell my house that I had built when I was in my early 20s and that was an all other side of my life I'm kind of an architect in many I've built six houses now cool anyway but I just love being creative I love design so where was I I was talking trying to get to Africa it's great that you just described also that you you know not only do you have your hands in things like design and architecture as well that helps with artistic edge but also I just want to mention I didn't actually know that you actually went to Mediterranean also beforehand a couple to visits many times and you were doing this process of going there painting portraits and then selling those to fund your next exactly it's such a cool process it what it's not exactly portraits it's people doing what they do so in the Mediterranean it would be sitting in cafes or at the beach or fishing or doing what they do so a lot of times I'll focus on a face because I love to paint people's faces and try and capture the personalities but a lot of times it'll be somebody as in Africa you know riding on a camel or drawing water from a well or embroidering doing the things braiding somebody's hair and and the process of that is I have to paint I paint rather large paintings and when you travel you can't lug around a 48 by 72 canvas so you have to figure out what is going to be possible and for me it was watercolor I painted small watercolors and journals so I'd write about what I was seeing and feeling and and sketch it so I got very adept at watching people who are moving around and capturing what they were doing because the most posing is you know somebody sitting still but that's not necessarily communicating who that person is so their activity and their body language and the way and what they're interested in doing communicates more for me and so that I would go to a port in Greece and watch the fishermen and this guy will be over there and he's working on his nets and and I'll look at him and I kind of take a mental photograph and then I sketch it I won't look at him again until I finish that sketch because it will confuse me because he's moved so that's my technique of capturing some kind of activity in a quick sketch now the sketch might be terrible but if I look at what I've done I remember it I can smell it I can feel the temperature it is all captured in those silly ugly lines that I've drawn in my journal but I have to do that in order to get to the painting yes yes okay so there's a mental snapshot of in in action a human on the plane that's in action with the process that they're in that they're doing that they may be in love with doing and that then that that first of all is much different than like you were describing a portrait of just positioned it catches them in their essence of what they do and then also like you said you capture this mentally as a photograph and then you bring it into your sketch book and you don't look back you just sketch that out and then you from there you decide whether or not you want to take that to canvas and usually I mean if it's in a quick in my journal I may take it to a small or a little bit larger watercolor that's somewhat more detailed first but I'll never take it to canvas while I'm traveling that happens once I get back into my studio so I will do maybe several sketches a couple of small watercolors of a subject matter or maybe one just depending on the time because people aren't going to stand around and keep doing what they're doing so that I can draw them but there's always something that and I sometimes don't know whether it's going to be a big painting until I get back and I kind of get into what I what I've done sometimes I know immediately this is going to be the painting from this trip the major painting sometimes cool and then can you so then so sometimes you add watercolor and then you bring them back and you pick out of the ones that you've sketched in your notebook which ones in your studio in oh hi that you want to turn them on to canvas and then you share that moment that you captured across the planet with other people that come to your gallery and decide to bring that into their home that those moments and kind of bring the world closer together through that process it's beautiful and then how many would you say that you out of the the total if you go on a trip for is it a couple weeks how many examples of sketches would you make and then how many of those would you turn to canvas I would when I was you know on a trip of maybe I'd usually go for three weeks or so and I'd probably do oh 50 sketches in my journal probably 40 larger watercolors and then I'd come back and maybe do 10 to 15 at larger pieces so neat and then would you let the people coming to the gallery know that by by supporting this artwork you were funding my next travels did absolutely I love that and so yeah how did the transition then happen how many times you go to the Mediterranean then how did it come up to go to West Africa well I moved back from my education was in Washington DC I moved back to Ohio I built a home or moved back into a home I'd already built but I met my now husband and he moved back here and we at first I thought we'd probably move back to the East Coast because he's an East Coast person and I thought oh he's not going to adapt to this because he is a horseman and that's his passion we get along very well because he lets me be who I am and I let him be who he is and sometimes we'll be apart from each other for six months of the year but it's because we understand that each other has something that is really who they are and important so we moved moved out here to Ohio to sell the house that I've built before and he totally fell in love with Ohio totally fell in love with being a horseman cowboy instead of a polo playing fox hunting steeple chasing East Coast guy on a horse and and totally adapted he he couldn't possibly leave Ohio now he's more Ohio than I am anyway so we decided to we had put there the house on the market found a good buyer and we decided to build another house to sell that one and build another one that was more oriented toward my having me having a studio and a place to display paintings and so for a while I started traveling closer by when I moved to California getting to the Mediterranean was a slap it was a long way and also if I was building a house I didn't want to go too far and so I started traveling in Central America well I had a show of a series I'd done from Guatemala and a woman came up and said you know I love this painting would you have any interest in painting in trading for a trip a river rafting trip between on the river that was some asyntha which is between Chiapas and Guatemala and and it's basically to visit the Mayan ruins and I was of course and so I we agreed on that I took the trip and entering the Mayan ruins from the river is the way to do it because that's the way they were built all of these phenomenal plinths and temples that have all these beautiful carvings if they are facing the rivers the little airports that there you come in the back door if you arrive in the jungle in an airport and can come through in a Jeep but entering it seeing it by river is just spectacular because they are built to impress and from the river so did the river trip painted a this isn't yet this is a long story but we'll eventually get to Africa I saw a man in this jungle viney temple that was a ruin and there was a guy with this long black hair and a white tunic and he just kind of let it through and disappeared and then I saw him again and I asked my guide who is this guy and he said oh that's a lock and don't they they are they live here and this temple is their sacred site but they're not really allowed to be here because the government's reserves it for tourists and I'm going well it was obvious he was using it anyway he was there and so I did a painting of this guy I did a really quick sketch and I did a painting and I was invited back the next year to Palenque to a group of Mayanists who were at the time deciphering the Mayan glyphs kind of you know like the Rosetta Stone and the and they were doing it through the connection with the lock and doneness because the lock and don't had never been affected by the Spanish conquest they were in the jungle not wealthy small tribe so they were speaking the same language so they understood what though they provided the link that helped these people translate anyway that's a digression I go to I take this huge painting I'd done of this lock and don't man and I'm exhibiting it in this this hall along with other paintings I've done of the Mayan ruins and this man walks in to the and he's got long black hair and a white tunic and he walks up to the painting and he says that's my brother so I met him he was to be the next chief here he is in totally out of his element he's this rainforest guy and he's in with all these Western you know European and American scientists and and he's just cruising along comfortable doesn't speak any language that you know so anyway I I was so fascinated by him that I asked my guide to to see if he would let me follow him around in the rainforest for a couple of days so I could paint him and he did and so I spent a few days just you know creeping around I felt like an elephant in the rainforest is he just going through because there's all of these you know vines everywhere and anyway so I I did that and it was and it painted a whole series of this guy and was set to go back to this same convention the next year and there was an uprising the Zapatista uprising and I couldn't go back so I I had this time set aside I had money saved and I thought you know where am I going to find indigenous people that have I want more of this I want to be to figure out why that he was so comfortable with who he was totally out of his element why wasn't he scared why wasn't he nervous he was just I am who I am and I and then as I I was so comfortable with him on our days in the rainforest I wanted more of that so I decided Africa was the deal and that's what led me there and I had seen a book by Carol Beckwith called no meds of Niger and I wanted to meet those people they were but the kind of part of it was a spiritual thing that I had felt that I had had with him but it was also I wanted just exotic subject matter to paint well I finally got to Niger and and met I had found a woman who had been there before and we went together and the first nomad I ever met there was a big rebellion going on I couldn't get into the north to meet the Twerig nomads but I could meet the Wadabi which is the group that Carol Beckwith spoke was about nomads of Niger and they have this beauty contest where the men compete and the women judge and they it's the men in their culture the men can't propose to a woman it's a marriage festival but the guys can't propose they have to make themselves so irresistible that the woman proposed to them and that's what this beauty contest is all about and but I didn't know I was trying to find this contest because I'd seen it in the book and it took a couple years because there was a rebellion going on and we couldn't get north there were they were shooting at us and at the air at the military that were blocking us that we didn't actually get shot at that trip but it was it was a process when I finally did get to them I it transformed my life I became I've from 93 on I've been back to Niger for every year at least twice sometimes three times and for as much as six months in the year whoa so cool okay so let's let's briefly mention the visit to the the Mayan ruins through the river and what was the indigenous that was there in the black and white what was the name of the indigenous lock and on lock and on okay and then you and then when you went to the the Mayan the congregation I was happening with some of the experts that were looking at the glyphs that that someone said that it's my brother there and then that's so neat how that happened then you went into the rainforest for three days following the Lakondon to be chief Kuyum what's his name Kuyum whoa see that right there in itself is such a profoundly life-changing experience following Kuyum for three days in the in in the rainforest and watching how Kuyum moves and treats that like a native thing and we're trying to like no follow and be all like awkward and the other thing that was really striking is I would always ask about the plants there were so many plants I mean it's a jungle this is a rainforest and I would say well so what's that and they'd say Sylvester so I finally and everything was Sylvester it turns out that that meant wild okay so they don't name their plants but they can tell you what everything's used for okay so when you ask about a plant they won't have a name for it they would oh that's the plant that cures headaches that's the plant that's good for your stomach that's the plant that you rub on a wound and that's how they would always describe so they know of visually by the specific healing process that the plant helps it yeah we're so lost here in the United States we know all of our logos and but we don't can't name a couple different plants or trees or flowers yeah yeah yeah there's there's okay and I can see how this like hooked you into wanting to go okay in the book was a nomads of Niger was the book okay and then it's the wood wood a wood abby wood abby wood abby and first of all a nomadic is that's that that that in itself is much different than a lot of other than indigenous have a home that they have to live in so nomads different that but then also like you said there's these cultural processes of indigenous heritages that I think are so beautiful like these are there's a festival where the men dress up and have a culture competition for the women to propose to them so things like that are completely a different and so it's very unique and it's cool to be a process of that so first trip was 93 at least two to three times a year since that and tell us about yeah these first times that you started going out there and then and then we'll get into more on the general health clinics side of things okay so I met this nomad his name was proji and he had a large family most nomads do they move with you know the know that would abby can have four wives and proji was so handsome and so charming that he had more than his allotted for but they once I asked him down the road after I got to know him pretty well and I learned their language and all this I asked him how many wives he'd had and he said well I think maybe 32 but only eight stayed more than two weeks anyway I the first family that I met on that first trip became my my family for years and I traveled back to see them I would arrange because they don't have a house the second time I didn't the the first time I met them they were just so lovely and they were that we couldn't get into the north where those dances that I was just dying to see were so the kids all the young men and women who were of that age that would be in those competitions were behind the rebel lines so we couldn't go there and I was just devastated but the kids who were like between eight and twelve years old weren't quite old enough to be in the competitions they did all the dances for us and they made up for us and they and they would go out and all night long they'd be singing and they were so excited because we were there and they would do this kind of their version it was so wonderful I thought you know this is what childhood should be I always felt sad that the people that my I mean in my childhood I could ride my bike anywhere I get my parents would let me you know walk down the street by myself it's kind of not the case anymore and I felt so sad for kids of our world today they've got everything they've got food and shelter and wealth and comforts but they don't have freedom and these kids as long as they got up in the morning to do their chores and they knew they had to when you're up until about five years old you could do anything you want and you're just adored and everybody coddles you and that's but five on you have chores and but they could stay up all night if they wanted to as long as they got up and did their chores so they would have and their big brothers would you know protect them from the snake that might bite them or I mean it was such a free you know fabulous life for a child and I got a little taste of what the festivals were going to be like because they would sing the songs and recreate these for us and I was so pleased with the visit and we the head of the family for Oji took us around to visit other families and there were some little celebrations not the big the big deal which I got to the next year but when it came time to leave I didn't realize how poor they actually were they didn't have any cows they had just been through a major drought in West Africa the 80s decimated all the herds in West Africa and this family were trying to hang on to being nomads but he had just gotten kind of a job out of his regular territory that's why I was able even to meet him because normally the nomads would all have been farther north and he was planting trees for the government and this was not kind of a normal thing for him but he didn't have anything else and he had no animals and but they would do they would do anything for us he came along and took me to other friends so I could meet other other Wadabi and so when I left I organized a way for to communicate with him and he said well he doesn't know how to write but he has somebody in the town where we could maybe the nearby nearest town which was like a four-hour drive away a week by their you know or several days by donkey but we took him into the town showed him the post office how to mail a letter he introduced me to the person that could write a letter for him this is such a complicated means of communication there were no cell phones or anything like that in the day so I I came back thinking am I ever gonna get back to see this you know it just it was so deep in my heart and of course I came back and started painting I did so many paintings of proji I did paintings of all of his kids and his wives and and the herds and it was just every time I was doing a painting I was there and so I knew I had to get back but I didn't have a clue how to find him but I kept trying I kept trying to communicate by letter I never got a letter back but I was writing and saying okay I'm going to be here on a search at such and such a date can you meet me and leap of faith so I get back the next year I go to the house of the person that was supposed to write the letters and proji had never gotten any of them so he didn't know I was coming back so we start cruising around in the bush looking for a nomad and and the guide kind of knew what they're I mean he's the one that took me the first time so he knew what their housing looks like they call them oral which is house but it's a arched root thing with mats on it and so he kind of knew what a wadabi camp would look like and we we went around and went around for a couple of days asking and nobody had heard of proji and so we're driving down and there's a guy walking down the the road and we stop and ask us in there's nobody around so anytime you see anybody you ask them what you need to know so yeah we asked this guy and he said oh yeah I know proji is my cousin so so he said and yeah he's at a big festival and I'll take you I got there we we went through another several hours of driving through the bush and the problem for nomads is they don't have cars so they'll say oh well just it's just over here but the car can't get over that big gully or can't so you really are you're going to take a whole different route than they would be able to normally you know because they can walk and they will and their camel can go places where the car can't go or they're donkey can't so anyway we eventually get to this place and I see all of these guys in a line and there's these tall feathers and there's a lot of dust and there's herds milling around and I hear some chanting and then I look over and here comes proji and he's clapping and he's so excited so it's like how could this have happened yeah yeah well a needless to say over the years getting to find the nomad that you want to find has always been a challenge I I commute developed a means of communication with a guy who had it in those days that you had to go to a telecenter to make a phone call so there was a guy at this place he would help proji make a phone call to me and that way I could find out we could arrange where I would meet him on at a roadside somewhere well one time I went back to meet him and we went to find his family and he couldn't find him he's the head of the household he's the nomad he's the head of the household and he can't find his own family so think how hard it is for us to find these folks so he's looking for a couple days yeah yeah we asked everybody nobody'd seen him but when he leaves his wives or his oldest son or whoever makes the decisions and often it's the woman they've got to go where there's pasture because the herds aren't going to survive if so in those days I thought it was these were his cows they weren't it was an extended family group and they help each other out so his his uncle was letting proji's family kind of live off of the milk from his cows I realized that year he didn't have any of his own cows and he had lost his government job and they were on the verge of not being able to be nomads anymore so I bought him a cow they'd been so good to me so I bought him a cow and when I went back the next year his uncle took me aside and said that cow has made it possible for not proji to become and his family to stay nomadic and wow talk about a profound moment for me and I realized you know that one cow was two hundred dollars it was it was a lot of money for me at the time but it didn't change my life it did change his so that's what started the foundation and I knew I had to start asking people for help because I couldn't buy too many cows and I didn't but I knew that my link between them and here and people with money and willingness to be generous would could make a difference to their lives so cool okay it's yeah how does one even find if the if the if pierogi can't find the family it takes several days to find this nomadic family good luck you going and trying yourself and you did and you made this tie and I think it's so beautiful that if there's a way to find people around the world that lives can be changed so that their original traditions can be upheld through the generous contributions of people from around the world they get like you were the link the the middle connector piece between the two and so okay so then so the the animal the cow acts as a source of food for them through the milk and then also as they have to take it to pasture and that's what keeps the nomads moving so that cow can continue eating some okay okay and then and then so you're also nomadic when you're there for several I I was determined to when I first went and met the family I was with a guide who was from another ethnic group nomads are not considered to be none of them are educated at the time they weren't and they're kind of considered by the educated people the people that can drive cars and have be guides in the agencies as barbarians so he interpreted things between myself and pierogi's family that were coloring what how he wanted me to believe these people were they weren't what they were actually saying so I started right away I didn't know this then I found it out after I learned the language so I started and they were so wonderful at helping me learn the language there are no there were no dictionaries I just made my own dictionary and I pointed things and they tell me this and and um and they were they were so helpful that I would okay for full day is this weird language that has all these noun classes and if you want to describe a beautiful flower the word for beautiful is different than if you're saying a beautiful house or beautiful land because it's a different noun class so the word beautiful isn't beautiful every time it's a whole different word depending on what it's modifying so that really confused me and so I just use the same word no matter what noun class it was and so they would repeat my mistakes so I would understand what they were saying I eventually got good enough so I knew they were they were not speaking correct full full day but they were doing it so I would understand and and they were trying to help me it was it was so so charming and and delightful on their part but um I decided I wanted to be on my own and I wanted to learn what it was like to migrate so I arranged the one thing I needed to have was good water and so I had a car drop me off with you know five five gallon jerry cans of water that we could carry on our camels and um other than that I just had a mattress and I didn't have a tent I just had a mattress and a mosquito net and um and I'd ride on the camel every day and we'd stop in a new place and the thing that you if you find a really a really good place is one that has shade yeah because we're in the Sahara Desert so it's going to be at least 100 degrees every day in April it's 140 I didn't go again in April I went only once I didn't want to do the 140 thing again but I was um when I was we were migrating it was sometimes there wouldn't be shade so they would there there's a plant it's kind it's a kind of milkweed they would arrive at a spot and within 10 minutes they had harvested these little these little sticks with leaves and made a shade shelter called the room faroo and we would stop and we'd be able to have shade because you really can't not have shade in that part of the world so and the thorn trees don't provide great shade but the wadabi pin their blankets under under the tree so that it's dense shade instead of just little thorny yes yes yeah well yeah yeah the skills that can be gained from from spending time with indigenous people like that that's so interesting and then so then what was it like then as you are visiting you know several times a year you're spending months at a time with them you're learning more their language you're making your own dictionary this type of neat things then when did it kind of come up that that you could potentially not only help you link with with support to preserve their their culture but also some of the general health things that were coming up yeah well it really the wadabi were very they're the only they're a part of a a large ethnic group the fulani but they've kind of split off and they're the only truly nomadic so and they're pretty isolated and almost none are educated so the key to doing taking more steps was to meet the twareg the twareg is another nomadic group the wadabi are more in the south they have cattle and and and sheep mostly and there's more pastureland the twareg are desert people and they're desert warriors and they have camels and goats because that those animals live can live in the more arid north where where it's a lot of sand and not as much pastureland but and i had wanted to meet them the first trip but i couldn't go because of this rebellion well the next trip we were allowed to go and i went but we had to go in a convoy that was that was guarded that was led by armed vehicles so we went up into the north to agides and the woman that i was with had known this man who had started the main tourist agency in the area he was a twareg and he was the rebel leader so the rebellion was still going on and she found a way to meet him we'd travel up into the into this very remote area and and we look over and here comes this this convoy of vehicles with 50 calibers on their roofs and and all these you know turban guys and we're all and i'm going like this and it's him it's monodiac and he was the most charming cosmopolitan guy and he sat down at our table and told us his story and he said and i was with this kind of semi tourist group and my friend ermah at the time and we were going to just stay a day and then go back but uh and i had some extra time and he invited me to go along and meet his rebels and travel through the desert nobody else was able to go there at the time because they controlled the desert and there would be battles so i said yes another yes and um he was a very charming and very competent guy so i um he said well you have to oh god i've got so many stories to tell i'm gonna out i love this these are such good stories so he said well come back and meet be in agates on such and such a day but don't stay in agates because it will be suspicious if you wait around they might think you're trying to help me and so the people that were the foreigners that were there at the moment the government thought might because the twaric were very connected to the french and to white people in general this especially through monodiac who was who'd gotten his education in france and america and he was trying to negotiate the peace through the white people the french and the americans but um the government did not like that at all and so they had this blockade on anybody leaving town that that could be providing them with gas or supplies or whatever so he said don't stay in agates just wait and just do something and then come back and meet me on such and such a day and i will send a driver in and he will take take you out and that way you can meet us so what am i going to do where do i go so i got a guide who was going to take me by camel to a wedding that was about a day and a half trip to out of agates so he was recommended by somebody so i thought well this is probably okay i've never been on a camel before so we we go out and we're traveling along and and it's you know it's about oh four or five hours on the camel and it's just you know this kind of rubbly waddy what's a dry river bed kind of thing that we're going through and and he said do you want to stop and have lunch and and take a break and i'm going yeah so we stopped and i didn't know i mean there was no this is the middle of nowhere i am in the middle of nowhere and he says just excuse me a minute i have to go behind the bush but if my can't my camel isn't as well trained as yours so if he jumps up grab his rope don't let him run away and i said okay and so he goes behind the bush of course the camel jumps up i grab the rope and the camel pulls and there and the rope is attached by a ring in their nose he pulls loose and goes running off and here i am holding the rope well i grab my camel who's very well behaved and he's staying there and the and i go moza moza come and chase the camel he's disappearing he goes running after the camel and realizes very soon that the camel is going to outrun him yeah so he comes back and grabs my camel and takes off and you're stuck waiting there uh so what do i have he has my food my water my i have a mat and i have my sketchbook yay so i'm sitting there under a thorn tree and you know writing in my journal and sketching and waiting for moza to come back an hour goes by two hours goes by and i'm going all right i'm going through all these things how what how am i going to get out of here i can't really start walking now because it's so hot and i have no water i will die how long does somebody take to die yeah yeah and i'm going through all these things these mental things and then i or what should i wait until it's dark well i won't be able to see the tracks when it's dark going through us so have i just stepped into the thing that's going to finally you know be the end and then this little creaky old man comes walking up and he's you know toothless and he's got no shoes on and he just comes over and he's turbaned and robed he comes over and and nods at me and sits down next to me and i'm thinking well if he's here he knows where other people are yeah he knows i'm a white person i don't survive well out here he will know how to help me i couldn't talk to him but i knew he was my guardian angel i knew i was safe it took me it took moza four hours to get back it was almost dark but by the time he got back but he got back he got back to the yeah so that must have taken him like two hours one direction almost to like get the camel yep he got the camel had gotten all the way back to agadez running and and so um so i lived to to tell the tail and we went on to the and i asked moza about the guy and he said oh he lives around here i don't know who he is but i always thought it's that that made me know that i was i was okay yeah yeah exactly otherwise you were running all of the possibilities oh yeah yeah all the simulations okay and then um then you went to the wedding and then and the wedding was really phenomenal and then i got back into agadez this guy comes to meet me and says okay you know come on we're gone the driver comes and he drives a couple hours and then somebody else comes to meet me he drops me off in this little spot and somebody else comes to meet me there takes me out and eventually i get out to mono and the rebels and i'm there with all of these i mean and i am so naive at this moment right now i'm kind of i'm kind of used to traveling with armed folks but not not in those days i'm just kind of wide-eyed but mono was so competent and and and charming and i could hardly speak french even you know so i couldn't even talk to these people hardly but he wanted people to understand what they were fighting for he's we weren't this isn't some stupid armed insurgency we're fighting for the survival of our culture and he told me the whole story of why they were doing it and and he was such a brilliant guy the the people it's they were they're illiterate they don't have telephones and radio you know and radios and televisions and all that so he devised a way of communication music was really important he brought in guitars the guys the whole generation of rebels learned many of them learned how to play the guitar and they wrote songs that explained where to go what to you know what that they were fighting for their survival of their culture this is and if you're going to join us come to this spot and it was all kind of in code but everybody understood it and they sent it from camp to camp in cassette tapes in boom boxes and that's how they communicate eventually the government banned the music made it way more popular because they banned it but it the entire generation of of musicians of young men knew how to play and sing all of these songs and the songs became just legendary and I became I got eventually connected to many of the musicians and I brought them over to Ohio and the first group was one guy was a nephew of mono dyak and and his cousin came with him on the second trip and they eventually just split up and didn't didn't play in the same group anymore but the cousin was just back here and I brought them together four times they helped raise money for the foundation which we haven't even gotten to the foundation much yet but uh he came back this year being the first musician from Niger to ever be nominated for a Grammy whoa I'm so proud of that kid yes so he's he's a world famous guy but getting back to mono and that's a crazy communication story too the guitar is yes the way to communicate and cassettes and boom boxes and and it was of huge importance and everybody knew I mean to this day they know all the rebel songs and this was in 95 so I traveled with mono for three weeks and we visited the camps of the people who were who were his rebels and and these they were nomadic families and those nomads were helping these rebels survive because they didn't have anything to eat I mean I all of the young men that I that I met in those days and they eventually came here and they would starve to death in the hills because they didn't have and as a result they decimated the population the wildlife the gazelles the ostrich and the military who were out there fighting them were doing the same thing so it was really hard on the wildlife and it was really hard on them too and the women were fighting the good fight trying to get them you know food and gas and all of that but they were just trying to be able to have some kind of rights in their own territory and they never they'd never had anybody in the political spectrum because they weren't educated they weren't enough of them that were educated that's all changed now and in fact the guy who runs our foundation now is a Tuareg man who was educated and is and they very very consciously decided to integrate themselves into the political system so that they would have some kind of control well okay okay so yeah so lead us into um there's still obviously so much to talk about um with some for another conversation all about getting to more of the political nuance and cultural preservation and all this type of stuff um so then yeah so then how did it how did it end up the realization that by you know by providing more general health opportunities as well as economic opportunities it could help the key as i said was that's why i went into the story about the Tuareg the key was the Tuareg because they had the the the knowledge of the of the territory and and more of them had educations and the i ended up meeting um the youngest rebel leader from that rebellion brilliant guy who to this day i met him in 2005 he is still our representative and he and i working together um have devised ways that are are realistic and practical i was winging it with the foundation initially and we did start the first school that the wadabi had ever had and because they had told me they wanted it but i but it was uh and and it's still it's still running today but i didn't really have a plan i was just doing little things that you know people seem to need i'd buy cows for people and that kind of thing what got me into the realm of having a plan and a system was meeting sidi mamman who's our our this rebel leader who is just a brilliant man and that led us into as i told you the story of trying to find a nomad when you've got the head of household in your car it's not an easy thing and that's why nobody helps them that's why no no humanitarian organizations work out there because there's no bang for the buck it's too hard to to drive around and spend a whole bunch of money and vaccinate 14 people you know it's just not practical so they want to have the good statistics meanwhile these people are left out in the cold so what we decided to do was they're the mobile ones let them come to us and there's one migration route there's an area that's known for the it's called the cure sale it's the salt cure it's where all animals the pasture is very rich and salty and animals have to have salts and so they all come to this one area and they pass by this one area and all the nomads in the whole country try to get to this area because that's where their animals are going to get really healthy to make it through the long dry season and so we were given a well on this migration route and decided hey because we were given the well it gave us the right to build something there you're never going to get a nomad to go into the city because they believe that you go into a city and die because when they have serious health problems they wait so long until they're so desperate that they do go into the city and it's too late to care for them so they die and so it's this catch 22 you don't go into the city because you're going to die there well so we decided we're going to build these things in their comfort zone on their migration route we built a medical clinic and the first the opening of the clinic in 2009 we treated over a thousand patients in a week none of them had seen none of them had ever seen a doctor they were just desperate now a lot of it was not real useful work because because in the culture the elders are respected the elders got to come in first and they're going oh I have aches and pains and they have arthritis or cataracts or things that we couldn't really do anything about except give an aspirin and they think that aspirin is miraculous so but we did get to the point where we were treating some real things and we hired a local person to start treating them well over the the years we stopped having to do medical missions where our doctors were treating the patients because they had care all the time there's the staff the clinic is staffed and so they don't have these health this desperation but we did find that the the one group that was really at risk is pregnant women because they're not going to get on a donkey to come to our clinic when they go into labor so coincidentally I meet this obstetrician in ohai who's retired it was retired and his life is about service and so he really wanted to get involved in this program he invented he devised a midwife training program we selected women they hadn't really had any any experience particularly but they were competent women who are respected and the communities selected them and what you have is a woman from an extended family group that will move with that family group and she would come into our our training center next to our clinic and learn what to do and the big deal was prenatal care but what we discovered after that the first two training sessions was and I lost five friends in childbirth they were not their first children it was the maternal these women died left orphans and we couldn't figure out what this what is this it was the country has a very high maternal mortality rate but they're not really any statistics for nomads so we didn't really know but I knew personally I lost five friends so when we started this program we realized that what was killing them was dehydration they as a culture don't drink water because they live in the Sahara desert and in order to protect your community and be cooperative and not be greedy you limit your water and that's a cultural structure and when we got the community behind it and they want to protect their pregnant women we've pretty much cut out maternal mortality with there were a lot of other things but that was the biggie and such a surprise yes the when you were telling me this yesterday it was so beautiful learning about it from you first of all it's crazy interesting that you had to set up the general health clinic on the migration route near the salt pasture which is where you knew that there would be the nomads migrating through and that they would stop and get general health needs taken care of that's brilliant that that's like that's a way to to make it to make general health advancements set it up right there at a key point on the migration route and then also that I remember when you were teaching me about this I had this you know this overwhelming feeling of like beauty that that it's it's it's so beautiful that there's so much selflessness that happens with with water restriction because you want the to to to provide for others and that at the same time that having a little bit more abundance of water prevents the dehydration which prevents the the maternal mortality so again another one of those like wow moments that that hydration can save lives and so then so then how did that end up end up progressing because you you were teaching me that there's you're you're you're teaching one of the members of the of the indigenous tribe to then be trained in midwifery skills to assist with the birth process for other tribe members well we have programs where the the the the communities select the women they come into the thomas now center adult education center we started with the medical clinic which kind of gave us everybody knew we were there because they weren't going to go to the city to get health care they wanted to come to us and so that gave us this recognition we started a boarding school where the kids are allowed or we feed the kids we we pay the teacher we pay the supplies the but the pair and we build the school but the parents have to care for the kids provide the caregivers they stay at the school that's the only way no man's can get an education is to be able to live at the school because they don't live in one place so our training programs are a group of now we have 37 women working that are trained by a doctor originally the doctor that devised the program and now there's he retired at age 85 from our program but he went for six visits before that and now we have a doctor ob gyn and her midwife sister and they're continuing the training and there it's all based on on reenactment of the we have the the midwives there are five languages spoken here yeah and these are illiterate women also so you're not going to give them reading material yeah you either do things by pictures or you reenact and it can be so much fun it's we now all all woman team the clinic director is a woman the two doctors are women i am and all the all the midwives and then we get them up there and say okay tell us what you do on the first prenatal visit what do you ask the patient what do you give the patient and they have they go through the whole process what do you do on the second prenatal so we have them do three prenatal visits and then and then the big thing is preparing for an evacuation if it's necessary because you know there's some a lot of things they can't do but they can take blood pressure so they've learned they can't do anything about it but they've learned how to take it and know that this woman is at risk of preeclampsia which is a result of high blood pressure in pregnancy and it can cause death and if if she's got high blood pressure in her pregnancy get her next to a hospital when she's going to deliver and they've they're doing it they're doing it we haven't lost one woman in our in over 2000 births since we started and that we we have lost three that died as a result of malaria but that was after they got to the hospital wow a 2000 total no deaths wow wow wow wow wow wow and the statistic for the country was one in seven more term that was what it was yeah yeah and now but the nomads have never had statistics i just had this anecdotal thing personal experience of losing five women but now we have these little reports that the women can fill out so we know how many women died in the or none but it's that's part of the column that they have to fill out they've put their mark down they I drew a little picture of a of a dead woman and a dead baby or a woman that has fever a woman that has um uh what are the other things that are on the report anyway we have statistics now that have never been available for nomads because they're these illiterate women are making out their reports so it's a very very successful program i'm so proud of it i could burst yeah yeah 37 total um yeah functioning functioning we call them traditional birth attendants um or in in in Niger they're called matrons matrons wow and also the fact that they go off of memory that they store this in their memory they're not writing it down and looking at notes no notes yeah just go through the process enough times until you solidified it um wow and okay so this is one of of many of the so general so the general health clinic um there's also um the foundation nomad foundation is also working um on economic opportunity in general as well and so you do cool things like like like buy incredible goods um uh and then that have a deep cultural meaning and then you bring them to ohai in this gallery and you share it with other people and share that message then all the other cool things that you're teaching about the adult education programs motorcycle repair solar panels earth bank buildings for storehouses serial banks micro credits so this is a lot of different optionality for economic opportunity and so it's just about how that's been going um well i've you find that i see a lot of big organizations focusing on a specific thing and if you um cure malaria for instance you end up having a lot of people that didn't die but those people need to eat they need to have jobs they need to have educations you can't just i feel very personally i feel that you have to address all those things or else you're missing the boat and so one of the big risks in the area has been uh that the young men without opportunities uh and they a lot of them were in rebellion before and so the only skill they had is with arms uh are being recruited into terrorism because they're surrounded by libya algeria molly countries that are nigeria the countries that are very rife with terrorism so we wanted to give them some kind of opportunity so they don't have to do that because they don't really want to do that that's dangerous you get killed it's not and they that's not what they wanted i mean even the rebellion using arms in the rebellion is not what they wanted to do they did it out of necessity to survive you know for the survival of their culture so we did a lot of programs addressing young men microcredit was very successful they if they have something to do at home they won't go across the and they've always had the habit to go to libya or algeria which are very oil rich countries and that's where they could find jobs now there aren't any jobs it's just terrorism and so they in order to stop them from going there you give them a two hundred dollar loan most of them did this very brilliant thing nomads don't live next to the grocery store they have to go send their donkey or their camel for a week to go and get grain or tea and sugar which is terribly important to them in the town the nearest town so these guys would would take their two hundred dollars and buy a stock and get it transported to where their families are moving and that is that gave them they'd sell it at profit it would be a big advantage to the families because they weren't spending all that time to get in to do their own shopping and so it gave them some profits and we we recirculated those loans for about four years and as soon as they pay back the loan in they'd have six months with the two hundred dollar loan they'd pay it back and they'd have some little business going and somebody else would get the money and so they we had we've done over 200 loans nice I mean that kept that kept 200 young men from going into terrorism yes we did we found that they really like motorcycles because they're faster than camels and they cost about the same as a camel and are a little bit less than a camel problem is you got to put gas in them so there's something that you've got to pay for and you got to repair them they don't just eat pasture yeah and you don't just take care of them like they know how to take care of camels so anyway we announced that we were going to do a motorcycle repair training and we had funding for 20 because we wanted to buy tools for these guys that were trained got a local guy who was a really good mechanic that I've known for many years and he said yeah I'll do this this is great but 40 people showed up and 40 more wanted want the training we could only give the tools to 20 but this next year we're going to do it again because already five of those guys who were in that training are making their living repairing other people's motorcycles and it was you know two-week training and they have the tools and they can you know they're they're cruising now so the solar panel those project we taught them how to build solar panels they we kind of hit a snag and all of the projects that I've done have been or the foundation has done you're going to have plenty of failures and that's how you get better the the the big failure in solar panels is they could build the panels they knew how to to solder the little photovoltaic cells together and the only thing we had to bring in was those photovoltaic cells we made the frames and had the glass and the backing and the wiring and all of that local problem is you can't get very strong glass there so they made these beautiful panels we had schools electrified we had our center electrified by our students we had gardens electrified the panels only last a couple years because the winds are so strong the glass breaks so what they were very successful at was small charging things for cell phones but it gave them this this knowledge of solar so a lot of them are working for solar companies now and or they're doing their own little projects that are solar related so you take what you can get you know you some is perfect and some of the midwife is almost perfect but it takes annual revision and supplying them with the things that they need and you know you just hope that most of them are successful and then what do you see now with you know approaching now the year 2020 and the way that we're making advancements with all of the exponential technologies on around the world and we're also trying to desperately like preserve indigenous wisdom because we know there's so much important understanding of the interconnectedness of us with our planet and the ecosystem that we live in and how to treat it spiritually so how do you see this interplaying in the in the future the way that we engage with indigenous tribes around the world to help them with economic opportunity general health but also learn the some of the philosophy some of the spirituality some of that indigenous wisdom as well how do you how do you see that interplaying well technology has been a major thing most most nomads have cell phones nomads generally they're still very there's a 70 plus percent illiteracy in Niger and higher than that among nomads so they're not able to you know type out stuff on a computer but they all have cell phones and they use WhatsApp so that's which is vocal and so they can and they have they do a lot of social media stuff there they have Facebook and they have groups that and there nomads are major communicators when I before cell phones you never let a camel go by without stopping that camel and asking what what the pastor was like over there or what you know was on the road or what you're always always communicating they the cell phone companies had no idea how much this the nomadic population would would subscribe to cell phones huge but it's not about you know getting them out of their culture it's about hey have you seen my camel yeah or what's is that a disease oh can you get vaccinations at that point it's about it's it's really a lot about preserving their culture yeah and it's easier to communicate in that way than you know walking down the path and running into somebody haphazardly they still take it upon themselves to communicate those important things but they do it for cell phones and I don't I mean it's not because it's still largely illiterate it's still I don't think that immediately they're gonna lose their because they're tremendously proud of their culture and I don't and and so few nomads have have emigrated out of their country because they love their country monodiac told me he was killed by the way two weeks after I left him but he told me a nomad always returns to his first camp and he's been all over the world but he came back and he snuck into the desert to lead the rebellion because he couldn't come in and publicly so they are wed to their their desert and their pasture land and their herding lifestyle and even though some of them live in cities and some of them have gone to college I have our solar engineer that does all our solar work at the at our center went to college in France but he installs solar systems for nomadic families and every summer he comes back and spends his vacation with his nomadic family all they live in the symbiotic relationship with the people that that move that live in the city and sometimes the city people are doing better than the nomads and sometimes the nomads are doing better than the city people and they just but they really cherish their traditions and that I don't think is is going to go away right away it's still around and I believe that when we're ready to with I'm probably not going to last forever like so I'm going to keep doing this as long as I can but I want it to be ready to turn over to them and and let them continue with what they've always done have a little bit more better health care have a little more opportunities the kids who are being educated in the school they're going to come back and be the director of the clinic and the director of the school one of these days they don't want to leave they want to work where they where they have always lived yeah the other things that were coming through me during that time was that by doing something like having a big database of all the voice to voice communications that they're now doing is a way to preserve the language over time and that's versus having if if if a certain indigenous tribes disappear from the face of the earth and all the culture is gone with them it's so hard to go back and try and do any sort of archaeology to identify that right so to actually at least have a record of human beings existing the way that they communicated all this type of stuff yeah there's a bunch of important projects going on like the Rosetta Project with the Long Now Foundation things like that that are at least trying to preserve the the languages that have been spoken across the planet things like that and it's good that like you said that that there's an increase in general health that prevents mortality that these types of things in education of of that can get children to to come back and be the director of the school or the clinic afterward that type of stuff interesting there's a lot of nuance still to understand about the way that we can take some of the indigenous wisdoms and really embody them in this exponential technology age that we're that we're bracing towards and also the way that we can most effectively have links like you were this link that made it easier for us to that you took a lot of big sacrifices leaps of faith in order to become this link that then made it easier to to provide the general health and the economic opportunity increases so to figure out that is going to be is going to be interesting in the next couple of decades I want to see if there were so many cool stories that you taught us about along this journey and that is still just like a tiny bit of the cool stories well wait for my book wait for the book yeah so that'll be another episode of Leslie will hopefully 2020 next year hopefully is the she'll be traveling painting writing that's the plan now this was the the beautiful last day actually in the gallery after 23 years in ohai of bringing all the beautiful paintings from around the world that you ended up illustrating for for people to bring into their homes um and so okay does it feel like we did a good job covering the first piece of the conversation I feel like we did really well I think we did I think we did really well Leslie you're so so cool I want to ask you just um let's do two quick questions on the way out um the first question was a little bit out of left field but do you think we're in a simulation what do you mean like do you think that reality is a simulation who knows I mean everybody's reality is different and the one thing that I've learned about when I step into nomadic life and those the people I've learned to never think I know anything yes just experience it and don't impose what I think I know yes doesn't work yes the Shoshin the beginner's mindset the humility carrying that with you at all times yeah yeah especially to to be able to learn from people around the world yes yes and okay the last question is what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world the most beautiful thing in the world is is beauty I mean what it's like I can't there are so many things that are beautiful and the only thing to me that and the and the king is beauty itself you you have to for me I I have been accused or not accused but people say oh you must be so observant because I paint a lot and I can paint from life from from what I see I am not I am focused I extract the beautiful from what I see and that it doesn't matter what it is it is it is the essence of something that just fills my heart and I that's what I wanted to pick I've taken friends into Tunisier and and we're sitting watching this beautiful Jarawa and they're going you smell that dead donkey I didn't notice the dead donkey you know it's it's I focus on what I and I choose to make things beautiful that's my my choice in life and I and I won't say there's any one thing that's the most beautiful thing in the world because everything is if you make it so yes yes that's a very valuable very valuable takeaway that we can add beauty to to all of our different life experiences and have our perception be geared in a way that enables us to see that that beauty and I love how you said that you take this the essence of what's going on in that moment and then that you find the beauty in that and you bring it onto a canvas and that that's your and you bring it other people to share it with them Leslie thank you so much for talking to us on the show for coming on thank you thank you thank you you're so cool I'm so excited to do another show on the book when that's done everyone thank you so much for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode let us know what you think about indigenous wisdom about nomadic tribes about bringing general health also bringing economic opportunity please let us know your thoughts in the comments below also do check out the links in the bio below as well nomadgal.com as well as nomadfoundation.org check those out and go and support the artists the entrepreneurs the the different spiritual leaders the organizations in your communities around with the world that you believe in support them support simulation support our show so we can continue doing cool things like coming on site to beautiful places like oh hi and talking to awesome people like Leslie and also go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you soon peace that's a wrap that's a wrap that was so fun that was so fun you're so awesome