Our mtDNA appears to coalesce into a single woman, who lived on the African savannah 150,000 years ago.
J M Ledgard, Exodus, Intelligent Life, Summer 2009

I'd met Abdullah al Rahbi in October 2007. Abdullah's grandfather, a goatherd, had built his shack at the point where the wadis met. He called the spot Majamma, the confluence of things. He eked out a living with his goats and donkeys, scratching a life through the thorn and the rock. His house was of scraps of branches, sometimes the shelter of the mountains. In summer, when the water dried up, he moved 13km up-wadi with his herd, to Wadi Slooh and its natural spring. Life was simple: you had little choice except to follow the water table as it flowed down with the rains or dried up in the summer.

Over a couple of generations, the family grew, and a settlement took root. Now, the Rahbis live in concrete houses, and have water brought to them from Madinat al Nahda. Although desperately poor, a lot have found jobs, and stability. They put on their air-conditioner for me, but the interiors look a lot more ragged than what you normally see, and the children as wild-eyed as can be. I bring them prints of the photographs I took almost a year ago, and they're absolutely ecstatic. The kahwa is brought in, and a cell phone rings in the background, mixing with the winds blowing across the barren wadis and through the open sheet-metal door.

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