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A Pond in Warming Mali Is Disappearing, and a UNESCO-Listed Fishing Tradition Is in Danger 

People gather to fish during the Sanké mon collective fishing rite in San, Sego Region on June 6, 2024. (AFP)
People gather to fish during the Sanké mon collective fishing rite in San, Sego Region on June 6, 2024. (AFP)
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A Pond in Warming Mali Is Disappearing, and a UNESCO-Listed Fishing Tradition Is in Danger 

People gather to fish during the Sanké mon collective fishing rite in San, Sego Region on June 6, 2024. (AFP)
People gather to fish during the Sanké mon collective fishing rite in San, Sego Region on June 6, 2024. (AFP)

Thousands of fishermen holding cone-shaped nets stood side by side, cheering and chanting as they waited for the signal. Suddenly, they rushed to a large muddy pond and cast their nets, dropping to their knees in the mud. Soon, one proudly held up a fish the length of his arm.

For several hundred years, people have gathered in the southern Mali town of San for Sanké mon, a collective fishing rite in June that begins with animal sacrifices and offerings to the water spirits of Sanké pond. The rite, with masked dancers and traditional costumes, is on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage.

The marathon session of collective fishing celebrates the town's founding and marks the beginning of the rainy season. But climate change and heat waves are disturbing the tradition.

Sanké pond is starting to disappear, said a village chief, Mamadou Lamine Traoré.

Heat waves in Mali in recent years have caused the pond to start drying out. Temperatures in the town have reached a record this year at 48.5 degrees Celsius (119 degrees Fahrenheit), Emmanuel Doumbia, a local weather observer, told The Associated Press.

The unprecedented heat wave in Mali this year has also led to a surge in deaths. The heat wave began in March as many in the Muslim-majority country observed the Islamic holy month of Ramadan with dawn-to-dusk fasting.

The Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center said that insufficient data in Mali makes it impossible to know the number of heat-related deaths, but estimated that the toll this year has likely been in the hundreds, if not thousands.

An analysis published in April by the World Weather Attribution — an international team of scientists looking at how human-induced climate change impacts extreme weather — said the latest heat wave in the Sahel, a region south of the Sahara that suffers from periodic droughts, is more than just a record-breaker.

Climate change has made maximum temperatures in Burkina Faso and Mali hotter by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the researchers said.

Experts have warned of more scorching weather ahead.

At the latest Sanké mon collective fishing rite, men sweated as they stripped skinny chickens bare and cooked them over reeds, and dancers in sporty knee socks or plastic sandals adjusted armbands adorned with cowrie shells. A national flag waved limply on a weathered pole along the trampled shore.

“This tradition was already established before I was born,” said one participant, Amadou Coulibaly, who remains faithful to it despite the growing challenges.

When the rite was added to the UNESCO list in 2009, there were plans to dig deeper into the pond to prevent it from silting up, Traoré said. “But since then, nothing was done and the pond is starting to create problems." It wasn't clear why no action was taken.

The pond's disappearance would threaten not just the centuries-old rite but also the town's economic survival if attention fades, he said.

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Brick by Brick, Morocco Rebuilds 12th-Century Mosque Destroyed by 2023 Earthquake

A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
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Brick by Brick, Morocco Rebuilds 12th-Century Mosque Destroyed by 2023 Earthquake

A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)

The hand-carved domes and brick-laid arches had almost all been put back together when an earthquake shook Morocco so violently that they caved in on themselves and crashed to the earth.

After nearly 900 years, the Great Mosque of Tinmel lay in pieces — its minaret toppled, its prayer hall full of rubble, its outer walls knocked over.

But even in ruins, it remained holy ground for the residents of Tinmel. Villagers carried the sheet-laden bodies of the 15 community members killed in the quake down the hillside and placed them in front of the decimated mosque.

Among the mourners was Mohamed Hartatouch, who helped carry the remains of his son Abdelkrim. A 33-year-old substitute teacher, he died under bricks and collapsed walls while the village waited a day and a half for rescue crews to arrive.

“It looked like a storm. I wasn’t able to feel anything,” the grieving father said, remembering the day after the quake.

One year later, the rubble near Hartatouch’s half-standing home has been swept aside and Tinmel residents are eager to rebuild their homes and the mosque. They say the sacred site is a point of pride and source of income in a region where infrastructure and jobs were lacking long before the earthquake hit.

“It’s our past,” Redwan Aitsalah, a 32-year-old construction worker, said the week before the earthquake’s anniversary as he reconstructed his home overlooking the mosque.

The September 2023 quake left a path of destruction that will take Morocco years to recover from. It killed nearly 3,000 people, knocked down almost 60,000 homes and leveled at least 585 schools. The damage will cost about $12.3 billion to rebuild, according to government estimates.

Stretches of road were left unnavigable, including Tizi N’Test, the steep mountain pass that weaves from Marrakech to Tinmel and some of the hardest-hit villages near the earthquake’s epicenter.

Workers are now sifting through the rubble searching for the mosque's puzzle pieces. They are stacking useable bricks and sorting the fragments of remaining decorative elements arch by arch and dome by dome, preparing to rebuild the mosque using as much of the remains as possible.

Hassan Ait Ali Ouhamous, a religious scholar from the region of Al-Haouz, inspects restoration works at the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)

Though incomparable to the human loss and suffering, the restoration effort is among Morocco’s priorities as it attempts to rebuild.

The country’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Ministry of Culture have recruited Moroccan architects, archaeologists and engineers to oversee the project. To assist, the Italian government has sent Moroccan-born architect Aldo Giorgio Pezzi, who had also consulted on Casablanca’s Hassan II Mosque, one of Africa's largest.

“We will rebuild it based on the evidence and remains that we have so it returns to how it was,” Morocco’s Minister of Islamic Affairs Ahmed Toufiq told The Associated Press.

The Great Mosque was a marvel of North African architecture with lobed arches, hand-carved moldings and the adobe-style bricks made of rammed earth used to construct most the area’s structures.

It was undergoing an 18-month-long restoration project when the quake struck, causing its ornate domes and pillars to cave in. Its clay-colored remnants lay in pieces beneath scaffolding erected by restoration workers from villages throughout the region, five of whom also died.

“The mosque withstood centuries. It’s the will of God,” Nadia El Bourakkadi, the site’s conservationist, told local media. The temblor leveled it months before repairs and renovations were to be completed.

Like in many of the area’s villages, residents of Tinmel today live in plastic tents brought in as temporary shelter post-earthquake. Some are there because it feels safer than their half-ruined homes, others because they have nowhere else to go.

Officials have issued more than 55,000 reconstruction permits for villagers to build new homes, including for most of the homes in Tinmel. The government has distributed financial aid in phases. Most households with destroyed homes have received an initial $2,000 installment of rebuilding aid, but not more.

Despite the extent of their personal losses, Moroccans are also mourning the loss of revered cultural heritage. Centuries-old mosques, shrines, fortresses and lodges are scattered throughout the mountains.

The country sees Tinmel as the cradle of one of its most storied civilizations. The mosque served as a source of inspiration for widely visited sacred sites in Marrakech and Seville. Pilgrims once trekked through the High Atlas to pay their respects and visit. Yet centuries ago, it fell into disrepair as political power shifted to Morocco’s larger cities and coastline.

“It was abandoned by the state, but materials were never taken from it,” said Mouhcine El Idrissi, an archaeologist working with Morocco’s Ministry of Culture. “People here have long respected it as a witness to their glorious and spiritual past.”