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Reading the environment
Traditional trackers have learned their skills over generations and have been practicing them since time immemorial. With time, these skills have become officially recognised and those who possess them are often employed by the police. Tracking footprints can be used to find the culprits who steal livestock from pens or possessions from people’s homes or assets from government institutions.
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Traditional trackers have learned their skills over generations and have been practicing them since time immemorial. With time, these skills have become officially recognised and those who possess them are often employed by the police. Tracking footprints can be used to find the culprits who steal livestock from pens or possessions from people’s homes or assets from government institutions.
A tracker is a person who possesses keen observation skills and expertise in identifying the characteristics of a thief through their footprint; whether they are tall or short, fat or thin, or even if they have a physical disability such as a lame leg or blind eye. This profession is often inherited, with parents teaching their children, but it can also be learned through the intuition, intelligence, and keen observation of the tracker.
The tracker has earned a special type of respect in society. When a theft is discovered, and before calling the tracker, the owners of the stolen items often preserve whatever evidence there is by covering it with a large vessel to keep it safe until the tracker arrives, especially in villages and open areas with strong winds.
A famous story involving a tracker tells of the bedouin who lost his camel and sought the help of a tracker he encountered. “Is the camel you own blind in one eye?” asked the tracker. The bedouin replied that it was. The tracker then asked, “is the camel lame?” to which the response was also yes. Listening to the questions the bedouin became excited thinking the tracker had already found his lost animal. “I have not found or seen it” was the tracker’ss reply “but I recognized it by its footprints on the ground; it is lame because its tracks are deep in the ground on one side, and it is blind in one eye because it only eats the gorse on one side of the track,” he continued. The camel owner then received his instructions to follow said footprint until he finally found his camel.
Until recently, people in the city of El Obeid relied on tracking footprints to solve burglaries including mysterious cases of theft which even the police had been unable to solve.
Tracking footprints remains a pretty accurate means of apprehending thieves despite efforts by these criminals to mislead trackers such as by changing the way they walk or turning their shoes inside out, among others.
Today footprint tracking continues to be popular and relied upon to solve crimes in many villages and rural areas.
(This article was written by Amani Youssif Bashir based on an interview with Mr. Youssif Bashir Idris in January, 2025)
Cover picture © Amani Youssif Bashir
Traditional trackers have learned their skills over generations and have been practicing them since time immemorial. With time, these skills have become officially recognised and those who possess them are often employed by the police. Tracking footprints can be used to find the culprits who steal livestock from pens or possessions from people’s homes or assets from government institutions.
A tracker is a person who possesses keen observation skills and expertise in identifying the characteristics of a thief through their footprint; whether they are tall or short, fat or thin, or even if they have a physical disability such as a lame leg or blind eye. This profession is often inherited, with parents teaching their children, but it can also be learned through the intuition, intelligence, and keen observation of the tracker.
The tracker has earned a special type of respect in society. When a theft is discovered, and before calling the tracker, the owners of the stolen items often preserve whatever evidence there is by covering it with a large vessel to keep it safe until the tracker arrives, especially in villages and open areas with strong winds.
A famous story involving a tracker tells of the bedouin who lost his camel and sought the help of a tracker he encountered. “Is the camel you own blind in one eye?” asked the tracker. The bedouin replied that it was. The tracker then asked, “is the camel lame?” to which the response was also yes. Listening to the questions the bedouin became excited thinking the tracker had already found his lost animal. “I have not found or seen it” was the tracker’ss reply “but I recognized it by its footprints on the ground; it is lame because its tracks are deep in the ground on one side, and it is blind in one eye because it only eats the gorse on one side of the track,” he continued. The camel owner then received his instructions to follow said footprint until he finally found his camel.
Until recently, people in the city of El Obeid relied on tracking footprints to solve burglaries including mysterious cases of theft which even the police had been unable to solve.
Tracking footprints remains a pretty accurate means of apprehending thieves despite efforts by these criminals to mislead trackers such as by changing the way they walk or turning their shoes inside out, among others.
Today footprint tracking continues to be popular and relied upon to solve crimes in many villages and rural areas.
(This article was written by Amani Youssif Bashir based on an interview with Mr. Youssif Bashir Idris in January, 2025)
Cover picture © Amani Youssif Bashir
