Michael Palin: Sahara

And now for something completely different. In 2002, BBC produced a travelogue of the Sahara desert region, with Michael Palin of Monty Python fame as host. Palin’s goal was to tramp around the Sahara and see the ancient sites–taking just one small bag and a skeleton TV crew. The name “Sahara” evokes a far-off empty wasteland (it is the size of the United States), but as Palin notes at the beginning, the Sahara is only 300 miles from Gibraltar and is loaded with diverse peoples. The Sahara, we find, is not just sand after all. This is one of the major points of the travelogue. Except for one lonely camel journey, Palin befriends scores of people and finds loads of evidence of the human imprint on the region: from the 800-year-old dye-making process in Fez, Morocco, to the vast iron ore mines of Senegal, to the 6000+ year-old rock carvings in Niger, to the rich oilfields of Libya. With Palin we zip from one place to another, each new and unique, all containing lots of people.

As a traveler and interviewer, Palin is interested in culture. He visits the Muslim Arabs on the north coast, the West Africans in Senegal and Mali, and several tribes without traceable roots. This journey is a bit anthropological, since Palin is quick to describe the cuisine (often camels’ heads), and ask the locals about marriage customs. In fact he asks about this latter topic about fifteen times. Marriage in the Sahara region is practiced a variety of ways, but it’s clear that polygamy and fornication are rampant and that no one in the Sahara embraces Western feminism. And there is some rejoicing about the effects of Islamic religion and custom, particularly in regard to art and architecture. But this is a “non-judgmental” documentary, so no value system gets its toes stepped on.

One of the most interesting things about this series is its presentation of itself as an unplanned trip. Palin doesn’t seem to have booked transportation to the places he’s going, and when he tries to board the iron ore train in Senegal and hire a boat to ride up the Niger river, we believe him. And popping up here and there–seemingly by accident–are displaced Westerners and expatriates. They show up in every place Palin stops, whether at a Senegalese bar, where Palin meets an American jazz saxophone player, or in no-man’s land in Southern Algeria, where Palin runs into a retired RAF officer driving around the desert. The most interesting for us were the Anglican church in Morocco, attended by five British subjects and 195 Nigerians (cellphones ringing during the service and all), and the Christian Norweigian missionary in Mali. This latter lady seemed quite exuberant about her work, but Palin tried to squelch her fire by asking her again and again how many Malisian Muslims she’d converted. When she responded that her mission isn’t about numbers, it’s about living for Christ, Palin wasn’t satisfied and kept pressing her about number of converts. This is the last we see of her, and we were left feeling that it was too bad we had to keep going with Palin and couldn’t travel around with her.

In fact, this documentary works in spite of Palin, who draws people out in interviews very well but whose knack for on-camera improvisational joking is probably poorer than yours. Our household had this exchange about him:

“This guy is actually a famous comedian.”
“Really? He’s not funny.”
“Yes. He was in Monty Python’s Flying Circus and several comedy movies.”
“Huh. I thought he was just another one of those travel show hosts.”

Even worse, Palin ends up judging his Sahara project in terms of European immigration. The journey ends where it started, the Rock of Gibraltar, where Palin investigates evidence of African refugees crashing on Gibraltar’s shore, then interviews Nigerians who trekked across the Sahara by themselves. His tentative solution is humanitarian aid and a free invitation into the E.U. for all who want to come. Of course there is no analysis of the potential effects of this invitation, and Palin doesn’t seem to understand the difference between visiting alien peoples and living with them. Palin didn’t like the socially restrictiveness of Islam (he needs a bodyguard in Algeria because of a fatwa on foreigners) or the filthiness of countries like Mali (the banks of the Niger are covered in sewage, to Palin’s dismay as he walks on it). Why then would he want to invite the Sahara into Europe? The documentary fails to reflect on what it shows, but despite that, we can partly recommend this one as something far better than what PBS or the Discovery Channel could produce.

Note: We particularly recommend the first two of the four episodes. The third only shows a camel journey, which plods on a bit, and the fourth is hardly about the Sahara but instead about the tourist traps on the North African coast. Also, Palin has numerous other travelogues. If you’ve seen them, let us know what you think.

Entertainment: 5.5
Intelligence: 7
Morality: (okay, except for a half-second shot of Palin demonstrating a Saharan shower)