Birao

Birao lies in the far north of the Central African Republic, near the borders with Chad and Sudan, on the rim of the Vakaga country. The land here turns from wooded hills and valleys toward dry savanna. Rain falls mostly between May and September, and the dry months leave the ground open to the wind. Wild game ranged through the bush, and the roads that linked this northern country to the Sahel were tracks used by herders and traders.

Before the nineteenth century the region lay outside the great states of the north and the forest kingdoms of the south. Its villages were small, scattered across the grassland and along seasonal watercourses. From the early nineteenth century, slave raiders from the Sudanese and Wadai states pushed into the Vakaga, carrying away many of its people and leaving the settlements thin. The distance from any centre of power made the region a frontier in every sense.