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196 CHAPTER 5a number of young children who are now generally called ‘the orphans’ or ‘thechildren of 1963’. Often traumatised by what they had witnessed during Alfellaga,these orphans would make up the core of the Tamasheq revolutionarymovement. Likewise, their experiences will form the core of this chapter andthe next. They were both the nucleus of the Teshumara culture as well as theinner core of the Tanekra revolutionary movement. A number of these orphansmigrated to Algeria with their families, but about 400 of them were kept inboarding schools in Mali. 5 Whereas other children were allowed to visit theirparents during the holidays, the four hundred ‘orphans’ were permanently keptin Kidal during their school career. One can imagine what years of forcedboarding school does to group formation and cohesion. It can also be imaginedwhat being kept against one’s will in a system responsible for the death of one’sparents does to one’s emotional state.The droughtsThe late colonial period was not only a golden age for the Kel Tamasheq becauseof their improved relations with the colonial state. It was especially anage of material prosperity. Pictures taken in that decade by ethnographers suchas Johannes Nicolaisen, as well as their ethnographic work on Tamasheq materialculture, speak of that abundance. 6 This was largely the effect of favourableclimatic conditions. Discussing the paleoclimate and the present climate inWest Africa, Roderick McIntosh proposes to call a particular climatic pattern ofunpredictability with regards to rainfall ‘Dènkejugu’, the Mande rascal pranksterboy. In the decades between the late 1940s and the mid 1980s, McIntosh’sDènkejugu (a phenomenon analogous to El Niño) produced a climate of abnormalabundance followed by equally abnormal extreme droughts. 7 Rainfall inthe 1950s was more than abundant and seasons were mild. Pastures increasedand so did the number of livestock, which was further augmented by the newFrench development schemes in the Sahara and Sahel. New wells were dug,opening up new pastures otherwise out of reach. Veterinary assistance towardthe nomad populations improved, and la paix française meant that the need tospread the herds to keep a high degree of mobility as a defence against razziashad fallen away. However, the abundant rainfalls and the growing populationsin the Sahel meant that farmers brought more and more previously marginallands under cultivation, with the encouragement of the colonial administration,which gave prevalence to agricultural production over livestock, despite their567Cdt. Cercle Kidal à Gov. Gao, 09/06/1966. Objet: Demande de maintien de la cantinescolaire pour enfants sans parents. ACK.Nicolaisen, J. 1963.McIntosh, R. 2004: 23.