Dali Gimba

Nicola Rabbi

One night, a supernatural creature appeared in the dream of a woman expecting a child. It told her that her child would be special and would receive a gift from Allah that would make it different from other children. But it also told her that her child would be born blind and that its descendants would be blind as well.

This is the explanation given by the inhabitants of the village of Dali Gimba, half of whose 2000 inhabitants are born almost blind, to visitors to this remote spot on the border between Mauritania and Mali, almost at the center of the Sahara Desert.

This strange phenomenon, which has lasted for about ten generations, seems linked to a genetic defect transmitted to newborns in an isolated population where marriages between blood relatives is common.

Dali Gimba is just a small village 60 km south of the city of Timbreda and, searching for it on Google Maps, you might wonder why people choose to live in such an isolated place, where the desert heat and lack of water make life so hard.

This must also be what the authorities wonder, since they no longer provide healthcare to the village. This lack of care has become worse over time, and is fairly common in developing countries, where development (when it arrives) is focused on cities and rural areas are forgotten.

The inhabitants of Dali Gimba form a tight-knit community, and the fact that half are almost blind creates a unique form of social life where sight and blindness mix and integrate normally in everyday life

In 1904, H. G. Wells wrote a long a short story entitled “The Country of the Blind,” in which a traveler reaches a country where no one can see. Nuñez (who can see) enters a world he can’t understand, where the blind consider the gift of sight as a cause of hallucinations and dangerous social behavior. But this is not the case in Dali Gimba, where the community is tight-knit and has to deal with a hard life, made even more difficult because it has been abandoned by the authorities, But sometimes a sighted inhabitant leaves the village in search of a better life, and those who remain tend to have less and less contact with the neighboring villages.

The karama, the gift from Allah promised by the supernatural creature. In fact, some of the blind inhabitants are diviners and - who knows how – have developed a refined sense of smell. They approach the surface of the desert, smell the sand, and know if there’s fresh water below. Neighboring villages also call them to find water. Some of the diviners are even venerated as spiritual teachers. In 2024, Saquib Usman, a young anthropologist at the University of Michigan, wrote about one of these blind, holy diviners in his dissertation.

One night, a supernatural creature appeared in the dream of the President of Mauritania. The strange creature made a prophesy and said that if he didn’t send doctors to Dali Gimba his son would be born with the ears of a jackal, and all of his descendants as well….

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