Award: Documentary Award

Time: October.1, 2005
Place: Niger
Nationality: Woddaabe People

Nomadic people in Niger are known as the Wodaabe, "who number among the last nomads of Africa, indeed among the last nomads on earth." The environment where the Wodaabe inhabit is a harsh one: "In central Niger, between the great Sahara Desert and the grasslands, lies an immense steppe, scattered with scrawny bushes and skeletal trees."
For nine months of the year there is hardly a drop of rainfall. The days are torrid, the nights sometimes freezing cold. And the harmattan, the hot wind out of the desert, blows up relentlessly, filling the air with a sandy haze." Across this land without a man, the Wodaabe herd their cattle, migrating north in the rainy season and south again in the dry months and leaving no trace of their travels as they go.