By Anna Badkhen, from Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah, out this month from Riverhead Books. Badkhen is the author of several previous books, including The World Is a Carpet: Four Seasons in an Afghan Village.

To join the nomads I needed an introduction, and I went looking in the unpaved bezel of Djenné’s market square, in the shadow of the Grande Mosquée’s soaring clay minarets. It was Sunday; the Africa Cup of Nations blared from television sets propped on crates outside the shops. South Africa was playing Morocco. Halftime news delivered dispatches of…