Nimit Moore of Mali - Gone Too soon in the Wilder Sahara

    I watched "Out of Africa" with my wife last night. Made in the middle 1980s. I think that it won some Oscars back then. Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Not bad. It shed light on parts of Kenya, and things between Europeans and Africans in the 1910s. Thought provoking, my wife commented. Yes. The local ethnic groups with their particular cultures and differences. She, as well as I, were interested in the dynamics and interests of the characters of the story. The woman, the man. The things.

    This morning I was thinking about her, my wife, in Morocco, interacting with many displaced nationals of French-speaking Niger. I think that there may have been some people in Ceuta, (Sebta), Morocco, enclave of Spain, from Mali as well.

    Nimit was from near Gao, Mali; perhaps within 50 miles of that town. Around 1984 ABC television did a spotlight of the drought and malnutrition occurring in Mali. An Indianapolis family adopted a boy that they saw on TV, Mohammad. He was Tuareg; later he wished to have his best friend come to him, so the Moore family of Bloomington adopted him. (Later they acquired another boy from Mali, Adam.)

    Things went well for a while. I met Nimit at my Scout Camp in rural Jackson County, Maumee, when I was 15, that first summer he was in the U.S. We were asked to clean some dishes in the mess hall kitchen. I remember being interested in his newness and the novelty of his change of lifestyle. He was kind of cool, as the local paper explained. I had read up on him. Years before the Internet.

    My parents lived in West Africa. Togo and Sierra Leone. Some things about the continent and the peoples there spoke to me. Later, people I knew like Joseph Hill and Robert Bogh had further, deeper experiences and lessons there. Greater West Africa. In Sierra Leone, Senegal, and into Mali. And other lands. I know a good deal of people, including the natives themselves, of most of the nations of Africa. Quite a place.

    I saw Nimit again after my South American mission in the summer or fall of 1992. Maybe he was a freshman? He was three years younger than me, as I see it based on ages mentioned in articles. He had plans, and went through with them, to set up tours of his home country.

    

    It all went tragically awry when he brought his American family there in January 2001. A local tribesman, perhaps resentful or jealous of Nimit, shot and killed him. A long rifle, I presume, to Nimit's forehead. The man was never charged.

    Articles celebrate and lament the life of Nimit.

    I do that here, now. Blessed to have known him. He inspired me, and many others.

    Africa, with its billions, living and dead, has done more good to the world than bad.

    Nimit was among the best of them.

    We thank God for him. His memory will live on.