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CREATING MALI 37Azawad areas, the first French schools were created as late as 1947. This waslargely due to Tamasheq resistance against French education, but also, to alesser degree, due to French reluctance. The French believed that education wasunnecessary for a nomadic existence and that it would cause estrangement fromthe strongly orientalised Tamasheq ‘traditional culture’. As late as 1955, ClaudeBlanguernon, a school director in Tamanrasset, whose task it was to educate theKel Tamasheq, wroteI do not believe it to be necessary to bring the Tuareg to a high level of education(...) this will not be beneficiary to them as the educated nomad will find himself cutoff from his tribe, his habits and, fatally, will not be able to stay a nomad. 34In this way the Tamasheq missed one of the most vital links to party politics:education and administrative jobs. As with their political interest, this vision ofthe lack of educational opportunities for the Kel Tamasheq is only partlycorrect. Indeed, levels of French education were low among them, but this wastrue for all of Soudan Français. According to Schachter-Morgenthau, in 1947less than 5 percent of school-age children were actually attending school. Notuntil the 1950s were there Soudanese studying abroad, and not until the 1950sdid the first lycée classes open in Bamako, when the former Ecole primairesupérieure Terrasson de Fougères expanded. In 1961, only 10 per cent ofschool-age children could find places in classrooms, and at least 98 per cent ofthe total population remained illiterate in French. 35 Literacy levels will not havebeen much different among the Kel Tamasheq by that time.One Tamasheq group specifically managed to escape these obstacles topolitical participation and lack of education: the Kel Intessar, a tribe living inthe area south of Goundam towards the Mauritanian border. First of all, theirliving area, the Goundam, was less removed from the political arenas ofTimbuktu and Bamako. From the mid 1940s, Goundam was connected to theSoudanese capital by regular flights with Air France, landing at its own airstripin Goundam. 36 Second, in the Goundam area and in Timbuktu, elementaryschools had been available from an early date. The Medersa Franco Arabe ofTimbuktu opened in 1911. 37 Third, from the start of his reign in 1935 theamenokal of the Kel Intessar, Mohamed Ali ag Attaher Insar, was interested inmodernising the living conditions of his people. In this respect he was evenahead of the colonial administration. His requests for a school had been honoured.The école nomade, a special educational institution for the nomad pupilsof the Goundam that Louis Brenner characterises as a mix between a French34353637Blanguernon, C. 1955: 6.Schachter-Morgenthau, R. 1964: 269.Administration du Cercle de Tombouctou: 1953-1957. ANM – RNII-2D-1169.Brenner, L. 2000: 42.