The Stone Walls of Ireland

Roughly 200 km northwest of the city of Agadez, in northern Niger, lies a tiny village of around 50 families called Teguidda-n-Tessoumt. The population here is largely seasonal, based in the nearby town of Ingall who oversee a historic and quite unusual salt producing industry. The principal source of salt here is, not water, for this is the Sahara and there is no sea around for thousands of kilometers. The precious salt is, hence, extracted from clay.

The entire village is pockmarked with hundreds of salt ponds filled with pastel colored brine water, attended to by men, women, and children all hard at work. There are small hills all around some of which are 30 feet high, and they were all created by the deposition of clay from many years of salt extraction in the area.