MAURITANIA
December 11, 2017 to December 27,
2017
2017-12-11 MAURITANIA DAY 2 - NOUAKCHOTT TO THE SEA
“I love you,
baby”
It's the
only English the elf knows, but he delivers it a wave, a smile, and just a hint
of a ‘gotcha, didn't I? look as he and his buddies run off, waving their plastic
wrapped photos from our magic printers.
We are in Iwik,
a miniscule bump in the flatness of the coast of Mauritania. Next landfall, straight
west across the Atlantic, is Cuba. Behind us the beach becomes scrub, then thousands
of miles of sand. We have been in Mauritania under 12 hours, and with the elves
of Iwik the country has already set anchor in our memories.
So far it not
a beautiful place. Our 2 Toyota 4x4s roll out of Nouakchott, capital city, and through
a flat landscape, whitish, scrappy, powdery, a table that needs a good dusting.
It's the look of this part of Africa, the Sahel, the dried up look of the desert-in-becoming,
the future of half a dozen of the world's poorest countries.
There is
color from painted houses, signs (‘Burgertown Best in Town’ in flaming pink),
and the graceful Mauritanians.
The women of
Mauritania, like most in traditional Africa, wrap in swirls of color and
pattern, close to the body, lovely textile totems. Not so the men. The men of billow,
only in sky blue, or white, but they billow, fill space, wiping the air in
their voluminous daras.
Stand up
tall, arms stretched to the side as far as they can go. Sew together enough
pieces of light weight, pure white or sky-blue fabric, only those 2 colors, no
others, to make a huge rectangle, long enough to reach from ankles in front
over the shoulders and down to the ankles in back and wide enough to reach the
fingertips on both side and, perhaps, keep going another foot or two. Slice a
hole for your head, longer in front than in back. Trim the décollétage with
embroidery then sew a large pocket on an angle over the chest, embroidered to
match, sky blue, white, ir gold. On the side, sew up a few feet. The arm holes
should be massive, reaching at least to the knees. Now, gather the fabric up
from each arm and rest the pleats on each shoulder. Wear this over a long
sleeved traditional tunic, or jeans, or a soccer shirt. Walk tall, and
straight. Your dara takes care of the rest. You will billow. Like the men of
Mauritania.
Eminu our
guide, Dah, the cook, and our two drivers, Habib and Nutah, billow
occasionally, but seem to prefer working without a beautiful tent filling the
air around them.
We share our
lunch of Dah's doing with Eminu, a good fresh salad, in the sun, on sand not
far from the ocean and the elves, and share the sand with the bleached skeleton
of Leviathon, a whale beached way above today’s water line. It's at least 30
feet long, angular vertebrae slithering into a long, curved tail.
Dinner is
two thick and succulent fish, fresh caught, baked in foil and sauced with
lemon, peas, and onions by Dah. They look and taste like catfish, sweet and
grassy, not flaccid like the farmed nonentities we get in Florida. We leave not
much but the skeleton, miniscule cousin to the one on the beach.
We sleep in spacious,
high-walled, pointed tents. The cloth walls flap. We don’t hear the flat sea,
but we know it's near. That's enough.
We rolled into our hotel about 1:30 in the morning, are up by
7, strip Ruth's room in a search for her glasses by 8, and on the road by 9. Breakfast
is strong coffee, warm pain au chocolat, ditto on the airy croissants, and a
crusty baguette (bless the French for these gifts to the taste buds of their
former colonies), cheese, and butter, and yoghurt.
2017-12-12 MAURITANIA DAY 3 – BY THE SEA
“Je souhaite…..I wish when you go back you tell your people that Mauritania is safe and we welcome you."
Tall, aristocratic Sidi is our guide on a wooden boat to see
birds. The grey stubble and sun-etched lines on his chiseled face make him
surpassingly handsome, a Mauritanian Marlboro Man, his height, posture and
impact, a diplomat, king.
I have been translating his narrative, and as usual the French
goes in the ears, the English comes out the mouth, and nothing takes roots
between. But I do remember the intensity of his wish…and why.
“The French have a campaign against us because we won't give
them what they want, our mines and what is in them. So, they tell the world Mauritania
is dangerous.”
It has not been so. Last night we slept, secure, in a
‘campement' on the beach, foam on straw on sand, under a colorful fabric
pyramid tall enough to walk in, roomy enough to expand in, and thin enough to
breathe with the wind. Tents are a fine first night in a new place. They anchor
us to the earth.
Today, we ride the sea.
We are in Banc d'Arguin National Park, UNESCO World Heritage
Site saved for its birds and rich marine life. It gets few tourists Real
travelers come for the isolation, quiet, the sand, sea, the village of
fisherfolk and boat builders, and the promise of birds. The village is a gift
of the generous Atlantic, created piece by piece from the flotsam and jetsam
scraped from the shore.
Three guys building
a boat grab our attention. They want photos, we give them prints. Of one, tall
and dashing in his dara, Ruth says: “He is VERY handsome. I can see him in an
Armani ad in New York.” Dreamboat may not understand the English, but we all
think he gets the gist, and turns the smolder up a notch.
Sidi
and crew haul us on board.
The boat is weathered, greyed into a monochrome, missing
planks here and there, filled with the flotsam of the fishing life. We climb
over, rest against, nap on, ropes, beams, poles, nets, canvas. The only sounds
are the push of the wind, and the burble as the hull rides through the sea. And
the calls of birds, whirling clouds of birds. A patch of sky fills with
flamingos, nesting ahead. We leave them to their nursery.
Sidi tells us of Portuguese, French, Dutch, Chinese traders,
miners, slavers, coveting Mauritania’s territory, marine life, minerals (iron,
gold, silver), taking its people as slaves. “I am not making this up. You can
read it everywhere.”
He speaks with great
poise, clarity, and precision, waits for me to translate, nods, then goes on.
This man would command attention anywhere. Here in this setting, he has the
glow of an oracle. (Take my word for it. We agreed to not take his photo, or,
if we did to not share it on Facebook or Instagram.) This is a person I wish I
could know.
We sip tea. Brewed
on a heap of charcoal midships, then poured a dozen times back and forth
between tiny glasses until it breathes and froths, hot, sweet, welcome.
Occasionally one if the crew bails water frim the bilge.
We dig into the
veggie salad, Dah, our cook sent with us. The crew passes, hauling in grey and
rose dorados for a later dinner…
The day passes at
the pace of the wind in the sail, unhurried. It is a perfect disconnect from
the frenzy of airports, border nonsense, introductions. We now have this one
shared day with Eminu, our guide, and already we laugh easily together.
We
have arrived in Mauritania.
And
we have Sidi’s message to carry.
2017-12-13. MAURITANIA - DAY 4 - NOUADHIBOU
“Gold.
People come here for gold.”
We are out
of the tents by 7 and into another perfect day. Sibi stops by to say goodbye
and to remind us to be ambassadors for Mauritania. By 8 we turn our backs on
the sea and head north to Mauritania's second city, Nouadhibou.
A few quick
pharmacy stops, then a consult with a doctor in the hospital get Den a ‘good enough
‘ anti-biotic for his cellulitis flare up. Doctor was free. Meds $2.80.
The wildness
sets in There are no roads, just dusty, flat leather-earth, stretched tight to
the knife edge horizon. Then, there is a road and an eruption of tall, War of
the Worlds towers striding into a buzzing town. They are solar powered street
lights, and we are in thriving Shemi, Gold Rush Town. ‘Gold' people come here
looking for gold”. So there is a town. It looks less haphazard than gold rush
towns we have seen in Ethiopia and Madagascar, and less sleazy. There are no
bars and obvious prostitutes in a Moslem country. There are banks, gas
stations, restaurants.
We roll into
Nouadhibou, Mauritania's second city. It is prosperous, terminal and delivery
port for Mauritania's iron, with a dusting of silver and gold. The train that
transports the ore from its source further north is the longest train in the
world, stretching up to two miles. Riding it is, apparently, a Must Do for the
Deranged Traveler Set. You can do it jammed into freight cars, or, and this is
So Tempting, ride on top of the ore for free, in the dust, in the wind, and,
for the Really Masochistic, in the summer temperatures flirting with 120
degrees, on top of a pile of hot rocks. Oh, yum!
Our hotel is
a thorough surprise, decked in bougainvillea, and catering to Italians. Thus,
the name: Mauritalia. Hot showers and laundry service improve our
micro-environment, rapidly slipping into ‘what died’ territory.
I note a few
signs for my collection: Restaurant Mama Rama and IDEA FREE ZONE. I am hoping
it's a zone OF FREE ideas, and not a zone FREE OF ideas.
Off the end
of the peninsula of Nouadhibou is another reason the area is both a national
park and UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE: monk seals. The 200 seals are the largest
population and one of the last refuges of the endearing mustachioed and finny
mermaid wannabes.
The guys
have an apartment nearby---I never did figure out why---and Dah whips up a
veggie and meat stew and rice. We eat, lounge on pillows, and watch an incomprehensible
testosterone epic having to do with Ex Calibur, and a lot of people with facial
tics. Colin Firth gets to bed the luscious Ayeshwara Rai, former Miss
Something, stunning presence, and, fortunately, no need to be any kind of
actress, and die a hero. Then a sword gets stuck in a rock and it snows.
We walk back to Mauritalia, dive onto the Internet and see
that news from the rest of the world, in which testosterone run rampant seems
to be the theme, makes about as much sense as the movie.
2017-12-14 MAURITANIA DAY 5 - NOUADHIBOU- BEN AMERA
“Can you see
it !! Can you see it!!
Eminu points
ahead through the dusty windshield, across the endless tawny flats, into the
sand-filled horizon. Rising above it all is a massive blackness. It is Ben
Amera, the second largest single piece of rock on the planet, second only to
Ayer's Rick/Uluru in Australia. We camp here tonight, specks in the sand.
To get here
we drive across the Moon.
The pale
blue sky, so essentially a part of the ‘pale blue dot' we call Earth, wraps
over and belies what stretches beneath it. The sun is a distant blur behind the
dust scrim, its light flat, but still low on the wispy horizon, and casting
shadows, reducing the rocky rubble and dust to elemental black and grey, images
from the Moon. It is exploded, bombarded terrain, surely inimical with blue dot
life. Then dots move and resolve into camels and goats, scrappy survivors
living on surviving scraps. Then, date palms, a few shops, a mosque, power
lines, and a field of solar panels.
Our journey
north, then west, away from the sea is measured in checkpoints, each stowing
away a sheet from Eminu’s stash of permits. The checkpoint guys are always
polite, less and less formal the further we range from the city. The last
before Ben Amera are barefoot.
For hours we
cross a flatness so extreme it is 2 dimensional, the rubble flattened by the
weight of the immense sky into just spots with only length and width.
Habib plays
music, songs that wail like the wind, and grab us. THIS is a singer. I ask
Eminu who it is. ‘She is Dibi, our greatest singer. “Oui, c'est vrai” to that.
Her voice guides us through her land.
The
landscape changes, wrinkles, then ripples, then rolls, its color golden, only 8
or 10 karat, but golden We have reached the sands. The dunes are not high, but
their ridges, sinuous scimitars, slice the sky. On the surface the wind draws
the endless ripples, the moiré pattern of water silk.
This is the
desert landscape that has drawn us to Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Jordan, Oman, and now
Mauritania.
But, the
dunes fizzle into three-foot tall heaps, excruciating to bounce through and
over, and then all is flat again. Until we see the monolith of Ben Amera.
Tents up,
stuff stowed, we sit in the warm wind. There is no one else for miles. The sun is
a white ball through the whipped dust, then golden, then gone.
We bundle against the night chill, share another of Dah's
good meals, and, in the deep shadow of this geologic giant, fall asleep.
2017-12-15 MAURITANIA – DAY 6 – BEN A RA-AZOUGHI-ATAR
“Helou”.
I trot out
my one word in the local dialect of Arabic and the lady beams. Her deep fried
little donuts are right out of the hot oil and ARE good, warm crisp wrapped
around slightly sweet softness. Twenty cost: 11 cents. We munch, and munch
again, but save some for the guys, are rewarded with one of Dah's dazzling
smiles and a big hand slap. As we walk through Atar's market, Eminu, his face
scarf-wrapped except for his sunglasses, and billowing in a fresh white dara,
is recognized by a friend. Even he asks “How did he recognize me?” Uh, maybe
because you’re trailing a gaggle of foreigners??? “Ah”, and he laughs. More
cough syrup ($8.40), and doses of fruit juice packaged in cardboard containers
($.28 each) and we're shopped out. Dah's dinner is in an hour.
We are
ending our day, in Atar, biggest city (and not very, at that) in the region of
Mauritania that will bring us the real desert, dunes and all. The day has been
a master class in geological surprises.
Last night
the heavens outdid fantasy. The sliver moon could not compete with the stream
of light from the Milky Way. I almost decide to untent myself. The chill wind
convinces me otherwise. A few times in the night it carries the unnatural rumble
of the Mauritanian iron ore train across miles of sand, and throws coughs from
me, Dennis, and Ruth into the dark.
Dawn returns
haze to the sky. Our monolith masses behind us, a wall without top, still cold
to the touch with night, but warming. The ‘instant tents' defeat 4 of us until
Dah whips one into the air, twists it once, then back on itself, then again and
slips it into a 20 inch by 20 inch sack...with that smile, a shrug, and the
offer to do his magic with the rest. Accepted.
Our
monolithic backdrop is the largest of several immense pebbles strewn by the
Geology Titans in a row across the endless flats. They are the remnants of the
cores of volcanos decaying in the abyss of time. The next largest in the row is
Ayisha. Around her (for she is clearly a feminine pebble) sculptors have coaxed
images out of the boulders sloughed from her slopes, literal, abstract,
geometric, figurative, but deeply etched into the geology. They seep into the
mystery of the place. We all feel that ‘something is going on here’, falling
way short of a description, let alone an explanation. A night here would be
magic, but we leave that for future visitors and move on.
We are just
briefly on tarmac, often on sliding sand, sometimes over hillocks of grass,
never without the bounce, jar, wrench, grunt of African travel. For half an
hour we skirt a field of densely black boulders, then slip into true sand,
golden, but gummy to the wheels . We picnic on this softness, salad by Dah,
crispness via our delicious baguette. It is one of a pile offered through the
car window in the town of Shoum by a self-possessed charmer, all of 11 or 12,
who asks me what my name is and tells me his. Duties done, bread in hand for
$.28, we leave. I wave to Mohamed Salem and he waves back, turns to make
another sale. I wonder if he'll remember my name?
Later we
levitate up a snake road to the top of a plateau to visit a 10th
century site. It was the home of strict Islamists who eventually reached
Portugal and Spain, centuries after the tolerant, sophisticated first Moslems
there had created a questioning, and inclusive society. The Al Hambra, Granada,
Cordoba still stand as monuments to that open and vibrant world. Here, we see the
rubble that remains of the others.
Our hotel is
a cluster of neat hexagonal cottages, empty but for us. Even though Eminu says
tourists come to his country, so far, we have seen only 2, at the Hotel
Mauritalia, a few days ago. It's comfortable, has showers, and wee-fee. I
prefer the earth anchoring of tents, but hot showers are seductive liquid
Loreleis.
The guys bivouac out of town in a compound of square earthen
houses. We eat Dah's couscous and veggie stew inside a roomy rectangle with
walls of palm fronds, and a ceiling draped in striped cloth. By 8 we're sleepy.
By 8:15 we're back at Hotel Waha, Ruth off ‘in Siberia', the cottages in the
area preserved for women. But, we all have wee-fee, leaping walls, and
shrinking distances.
2017-12-16 MAURITANIA – DAY 7 – ATAR TO TERJIT
“C'est votre frêre!” I say it without
a doubt to Dah. This is for sure his brother. The Killer Smile is the dead
giveaway, ear to ear. Can eyes smile? His do.
We're in Dah’s family home, the oasis
of Terjit, sipping ‘tea’ (‘tea' being 3 tiny glasses of tea, sugar, froth
sipped quickly) and eating dates on the slab in from of the family store
(‘Chickens and Drinks') . On the edge of paradise.
Whatever
fantasies (gleaned, I admit, from 1950's luridly technicolor harem epics
starring Thudley Hungwell and LaQuelle Poitrine) I might have had about an
oasis are here incarnate in Terjit But, minus the bare-midriffed harem girls
and the bare-chested heroes, the local inhabitants being a thoroughly clothed
lot.
Terjit is
paradise. Words are too flaccid to describe paradise. The realities of this
sublime place belong in the imagination not on the page. I leave them there.
The oasis is a gift of the abundant water that trickles then
flows through a narrow slit in the skyscraping plateau of this part of
Mauritania. It is this I take with me from here: the sound of running water.
It's a short drive from Atar to reach
Terjit, across, above, below a landscape so ancient it is all geology. The
paved road is way below the bed of the ancient sea, a table top eons of layers
above us. The layers are messages from ancient climates, weathering landscapes,
lithic letters to the future pressed flat by time. Experts can read them. We
just pass below them. Not so the people of Mauritania's Adrar region. Wind,
heat, cold, water flex, warp, massage the stone until it sloughs off into heaps
of flat tiles at the base of the cliffs, then reassembled as the walls of
houses. The houses are not only of the land but they resemble it, its layered
regularity writ small.
We, however,
sleep in huge, walk-in fabric tents, canopied by date palms. For the first time
we run into other travelers. The two Danish guys, one, a marine biologist on
break, both bright, articulate, fun, have come north from Senegal. They
delicately test the waters of our feelings about tRump, then dive in: “We are
terrified what he will do to the world”. We have no reassurances to offer.
Neither have they. The rise of right wing conservative and racist populism all
over Europe has support even in Denmark. Our common refuge is travel talk, way
into the dark. They leave me heated up about the high desert of Bolivia, and
they take with them succulent images of Chad and Ethiopia.
Sleep should come easily, but there are the young Spaniards,
four of them, none decibel challenged. They're nice enough, but thoroughly
oblivious. One of the guys dances and plays hip-hop music. The woman chatters
and hoots non-stop in a loud acidic voice that curdles the night. But finally,
he hops his last hip, and the BanShee of Barcelona wears out her vocal cords, and
the night heals.
Later,
briefly awake, I think I hear the howl of a wolf. Then the silence of the
desert night closes in again.
I fall asleep sure I hear the sound of softly running water.
2017-12-17 MAURITANIA – DAY 8– TERJIT OASIS TO TOUNGAD OASIS
“We should be polite. We will look”
We sit in
the narrow circle of light from Eminu's inflatable solar light (Note to self:
find ‘em before next trip). Around us is blackness. The stars hide high behind
clouds, all invisible. There is no wind. The air is cool, just enough for the
down jacket and head scarf. This is the silence and purity of the desert we
come for.
Eminu has
promised us a surprise tonight. Our first course is sweet potato soup, with a
hint of rose water, surprise enough. Then, the real surprise, and Dah delivers
it: barbecue! Of goat. From his family's flock. Not a big fan of red meat, less
of lamb, and waaay beyond even germinal interest in goat, I figure it's a gift:
‘grin and bear it’ will get me through. It is, against all experience with that
smelly representative of the hooved ones, truly delicious. Dah claims the only
seasoning is salt, but he's clearly holding close on to his special touch. We
munch happily on baby nanny, pommes frites, baguettes.
It is a long day.
Our route
today takes us through the most spectacular scenery yet. The rocky plateau
stops dead over a vast valley of gold dunes, hemmed in by dead-black walls. To
local eyes the black washes out the gold. They call it The White Valley. To our
eyes, it glows gold.
We drop down
a road so rock-strewn it is a staircase. Between us and the valley floor are
oceanic dunes, mountain-swallowers, so steep we slalom up to the thin blade of
drift on the summit then switch Olympic events and high dive down the far side,
spewing gold dust.
Lunch is
delectable long grain rice with onions, carrots, potatoes, and an undercurrent
of something luscious, bouillion, perhaps. The seven of us share the three tea
glasses spread over the mandatory 3 cups each. The swishing and switching
inspire Ruth to buy a set of six hand painted glasses---more than enough to go
around---but not the tea pot, offered by a gaggle of women in the next village.
One points to me and laughs. No translator is necessary: “Ok, so now YOU buy
the pot”, which I suspect is the polite version, because Eminu is
laughing---hard--- too. Ice broken by the rustle of bills, there's a thawing in
the glances towards the cameras, then giggles, then poses, and so we finally
have some photos of the women of Mauritania.
We tent in
the gold. Out of the dark, a buzz slides over the sands, then syllables, then
greetings. Three dark shapes, bundles really, take root on the sand, spread
into the dark. The 3 women from the nearby village spread crafts, for us. “We
should be polite. We will look”, says Eminu. And we do. These are real things,
painted, touched, handled, carrying a bit of one person. Of course we buy. My
small, happily painted, camel skin and fringed tea container, and tiny painted
bottle, fit in the rucksack just fine, thank you.
Eminu
approves. The men are off in the city. The women have no way to earn money
except to sell handicrafts, and tourists are rare now. So, it's good.
Our day has
not all been good. Not far from the sands where we stop for lunch, Dennis finds
a donkey mired to its stomach in mud, perhaps caught in a rare flash flood. It
is exhausted, too drained to struggle any more against the suck of the mud.
Sticks, ropes, muscle power…we try them all. But, eventually we leave the poor
beast to its fate and drive off.
I worry
someone might be losing an essential resource. Eminu shrugs a “No”.” Donkeys
are wild here. There are too many. People don’t like them because they eat what
little people can grow here or try to store”. And this explains the chicken
wire looped around the houses. Still, not an easy death for one of the gentle
ones.
The donkey swirls through my thoughts as sleep seeps into the
tent. Then, it is morning.
2017-12-18 MAURITANIA – DAY 9– MHERITH TO OUDANE
“The dunes
are coming.”
Sweet Dah
holds close his 13-month old daughter, kisses her, then flashes us one of those
smiles. This is a happy man.
We are in
his house in the oasis of Mherith, short drive from our camp. His wife is from
here. She sits off to the side brewing tea. Eminu and the drivers chat with
her, but she does not acknowledge the strangers. Nor we her. She has prepared
for us, as hospitality requires: warm, chewy, thick circles of fresh baked
bread, slightly sweet and delicious, and dates from their date palms. They are
thick, soft, honeyed, of this earth. Eminu warns us away from the milk mixture
in a big bowl: “There is water in it, and your stomach won't be happy”. We
believe him. And happy to munch bread and dates.
The star
guest is the printer, spewing a portfolio of ‘Dah and Baby'. Dah wants one of
the baby alone. She is not committed to the idea of a solo career, preferring
Daddy's lap and smooches. We shoot, pass him the camera. He passes the camera
to his wife. It’s she who chooses the photo she likes. The camera returns via
the same route, as does the photo, in reverse, nary a glance from Mrs. DAH . We
lounge until the third glass of tea announces time to move on. Or, vice versa,
tea being the sealant of a visit, needed to soften departure.
Like nearby
Terjit oasis, Mherith is a gift of the water seeping out of the high plateau. A
long, wide, thick finger of layered rock separates the two. These rocks protect
Mherith from the tsunami of sand spreading out of the Sahara, waves of dunes,
scores of meters high, mountain-eaters. “The dunes are coming” and Eminu points
upwards. Sand spills off the plateau. Goats leave tracks as they skitter-drop
down the sand, angled softness where there was once rocky cliff face. The sand
thins way before the bullrushes along the stream that feeds the oasis, but
there is nothing to push back against the Sahara. It eats mountains.
The sands
were not always here. Voluptuously full-bodied giraffes, and big-horned cattle,
fill the rock paintings at D'Agrour, as they did the green savannah here 6,000
years ago when they were stop-motioned on the rock walls. The few human images
are by contrast sketchy, unfleshed, abstracted, perhaps not deserving or
requiring the realism of the animals. But, they are not all dressed alike---at
least one seems to wear puffy pantaloons--- and seem to be holding hands, all
in a row, dancing towards me, out of their 6,000 year prison. We've seen
similar images of a green, wet world, long overcome by sand and sere in the
deserts of Chad, and Tunisia, and completely across Africa, in Somaliland. And
the real thing in the shrinking oases left here, and in the wonder of the
teeming Serengeti.
Dusty, well
massaged by the trail, we pull into the courtyard of L' Auberge El Ghalawiya.
High above is the ancient city of Oudane, still watching over the caravans that
pass below it. Ours really is a CARavan, and we ride on 4 wheels, not
metronomic legs, but we have come from afar, perhaps have wondrous tales to
tell, and are guests. The first cup of tea is sweet and wet.
That, at least, defeats the sands.
Old Ouadane
reeks atmosphere
The old city
is abandoned now, desert mystery writ in the calligraphic alleyways, narrow,
cursive pathways between dwellings now tumbles of stacked stone returning to
earth. Rare in this plastic and litter-encrusted country, footsteps in the
alleys of old Ouadane don't crackle with crushed water bottles, flattened
batteries and tuna fish cans, and the discarded below- basement-quality
effluvium China dumps over all of Africa. Eminu says that is worth the guide
fee.
We wander with the guide. Old Ouadane is more than a ruin,
far from totally restored, but enough is here to draw us back to when it was a
thriving caravan crossroad, alive with the tastes, sounds, voices of other
places. The guide and a flutter of Trinket Ladies and Guys are the only life
now. I add a tie-dyed head scarf from a Trinket Guy to my wardrobe, and so will
carry with me a swatch of the blue of the men's robes, and a tiny sample of
Ouadane tie-dye away from the city.
My caravan still has a way to go.
2017-12-19 MAURITANIA – DAY 10– IN OUDANE
“The cook has fainted and is in the hospital.
He cannot walk. He cannot talk.”
It takes us a few minutes to work out that
“the cook” is not the one from the auberge kitchen, but our cook, Dah, of the
Killer Smile.
The long
version is eternally lost to us in a barrage of gutterals. The short version:
“malaria”. Then, “relapse”. We all ride up to the ‘hospital', aka ‘centre de
santé', health center. The ward has 2 beds, the room filling with Dah's sister,
her husband, our crew. Dah is on IV, 10% Glucose, and is totally out of it,
barely responsive. Prognosis: good, minimum of 3 days in the hospital. There
are no smiles here.
We are also
here for Dennis. The cellulitis that survived two successive, and unsuccessful,
antibiotics in the US has flared again, bringing with it odd arm pains. The
story repeats here. Neither of the 2 antibiotics he got in local pharmacies
across Mauritania have budged it. The young, very handsome, health center
doctor speaks English, checks the flare-up, the meds Den shows him: ‘Not strong
enough' and provides a 9-day bacterial blitzkrieg. (Note: a day later, things
are already improving.)
By noon, Dah
is alert. By late afternoon, he is well on the mend. By evening, the smile is
back, and his sister is packing him up to take him back to her place for some
TLC. I pass him our thank you gift for his time with us. He gifts us with
another of those smiles and me with his triple handshake. We will miss him.
Our visits
to Dah are parentheses around today's adventure: an expedition to the Eye of
Africa. A gazillion years ago some sort of volcanic event (the experts differ
on everything but its scale) created a round, rimmed crater 40 kilometers (28
miles) in diameter. At its center is a mass of black rocks. In NASA photos the
crater is an immense eye with a dead-black pupil. The iris is banded, in
colors, from space, at least. On the ground, I climb the pupil. The black rocks
resolve into boulders of a black matrix that has captured tiny stones, reds,
blues, greens, mixes, calicos… Eroded free of the black, they cover the immense
space of the iris. Here at Ground Zero, on our knees, they are brilliant points
of color, the ground calico…by Seurat. We three pick a few for our pockets. But,
standing, all I see is a pebbled corduroy wilderness, colors washed into grey.
The temperature is dropping. Even the desert bows to the
approach of winter, embraces it by nightfall. Inside, we sprawl on pillows
around the low round table. Madame Zayda’s chicken, carrot, and potato stew is
so good it pulls a memory across 60 years, of a favorite dish my grandmother
used to make (with the addition of artichokes). Zayda’s smile is almost as good
as Dah's. Almost.
2017-12-20 MAURITANIA – DAY 11– OUDANE—TENEWCHERT OASIS-CHINGUITTY
“Habib is like boy. He gets an idea in his head…”
We're
dead-stuck in the sand. For the second time today. Habib is a spectacularly
good desert driver, judging, riding, subduing the sands hour after hour. We
think he is a bit of a cowboying show-off, trotting out his stuff, and bouncing
us into submission on a route rougher than it need be (or so says Eminu). I
love it.
My butt, back, molars may have another opinion. So does
Nutah. It takes no linguistic skill to get the gist of his a fully-loaded Mack
Truck downshifting on a 30 degree hill throat-stripping explosion of guttural
consonants. “What the HELL we're you thinking” is probably the most polite
version I can think of. Others involve his intelligence, the provenance of his
birth, and the anatomically impossible location of his head. It makes for an
entertaining afternoon.
All is placid earlier in the day. We
say goodbye to the Belgian couple and their enchanting 3-year old son, all
heading south, two months into their one-year trip to drive the length of
Africa. Our two Danish guys are here, too, leaving later to spend the winter
night riding on top of a pile of rocks on Mauritania's famous iron ore train.
They seem sane. (Confession: in the right warm clothes, I might be
tempted)
We head across the desert, oasis
bound, riding the sands not the rails. Unlike our two earlier oases, fed by
streams leaching out of the high plateaus that protect them, Tenewchert is in full
dune-rippled desert, watered by deep wells. Its green is not lush. It barely
dapples the sands.
We bivouac in a palm frond house, at
sand level. Even before the first tea, the village ladies have unbundled their
stores and families on the sand just outside. A boy, braver than his siblings,
waves through the round arch of the door, his hands folding into the universal
signal that a photo would not be amiss.
By 2 teas into our 3, the printer has done its magic. Even
the women are ready for their close-ups.
Mama wants a
picture of eighteen month old Uzza, (adorable, and with the same name as Dah's
daughter, and like her, a twin) but Uzza is way too busy. She has discovered
the joy of shopping and Mama's shawl spread with jangling trinkets is a novice shopper's
paradise. What doesn't fit on her chubby arms (or head) goes into a pink
plastic purse, and out again, all paid in Local Baby Currency, a tenner of
hugs, a few fivers of smiles. Mama runs a tab.
Outside the wind picks up. It has a voice in the oases, sung
out by the fronds of the date palms, in sibilant waves, rising and falling like
in-rolling surf. The surface of the dunes blurs, edges whipped into the air.
The sun oozes light through the haze, washes the gold into silver, tarnishing
the palms.
Ayisha and
Mohammed rise like genies from the dunes, want photos, get them, wave goodbye.
Muhammed adds a palm slap and knuckle bump. Serious Sher, his coat
mis-buttoned, finds us and fetches his little sisters for their photos. It's a
sweet, sweet gesture.
Later, sand
stuck for the second time, we listen to the wind. It relaxes, loses its voice,
but leaves ripples on the dune, its fingerprints. It's a day of small things,
much smaller than the memories.
2017-12-21 MAURITANIA – DAY 12-CHINGUITTY
“Read” is
the first word in the Koran.
Islam has
taken Allah's order seriously.
Islamic
cities were famous for their libraries (and their universities) centuries
before our European ancestors could even read . There are 12 ancient libraries
in Chinguitty. They are why we are here.
The city was
founded in 777, a caravan crossroads, and is the 7th holiest city in
Islam. (Note: One and 2 are in Saudi Arabia, and the third holiest city for
Moslems is Jerusalem, so it's easy to understand their anger at it being
declared the capital of a nation of another faith. It seems to me its status as
an international city, sacred to 3 religions, worked. But, then, what would the
egomaniacal child in the White House know about that?)
Today we
visit libraries. This is Africa. Schedules are approximations. Eminu absorbs a
new batch of English: ‘Man proposes. God disposes'.
While god
works on the librarians, we wander the flat-roofed alleys of the town. We share
them with goats, donkey carts, and an aged Mercedes. Yesterday's clutch of men
playing checkers with markers of wood and hard balls of dried camel dung has
taken shelter from the cold.
Our remedy
for the cold is more tea with sweet-faced Amar in his trinket shop. His
genuine, warm hospitality---and a kilo (2.2 pounds, and $2.80) of his fresh
dates--- leave with us. God is disposing...
The
libraries of Chinguitty belong to families, who have preserved them for
centuries. We visit two. Saif of the Al Ahmed Mahmoud family library is world
famous, and a natural actor-storyteller. He holds up a wooden panel. “Scholars write
on this, memorize the text, then wipe it clean.” He pauses. Grins. “I-Pad”. A
natural!
The oldest
books are on goat skin, the graceful Arabic calligraphy exquisite still after
800 years in desert dryness. Religion dominates, but there are shelves of books
on geometry, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, fields in which Islamic
scholarship was centuries ahead of Europe
Our second
library host is still off somewhere. We wait for him, reclining in shops,
sipping tea, resisting trinkets and Chinguitty's exuberant tie-dyed men’s long,
narrow head wraps and ladies' 4 meter full body wraps.
Word has
spread about the magic printer. First, a boy, then some girls show up, draping
silently across the doorway, miming a camera click, then giggling over their
photos. The Trinket Ladies throw out their ‘Manual of What Nice Moslem Ladies
Do Not Do' and lobby for photos. Taken by men. Strange men. Foreign men.
Eventually,
our guide to the Ahmed Cherif family library billows up. Ahmed Mohammed Sala
has the look of a scholar. He is reserved, twinkle-free, (almost a geek, says
Ruth), but he welcomes us warmly through the wooden gate into his courtyard,
and through another locked door into the library. The walls are covered with
books. Some are centuries old, covering all subjects. Ahmed shows us one,
written in black (charcoal, gum arabic, water) with commentary from later
readers in other colors. Only a few have been translated, fewer photo-copied
(that requires carrying to Nouakchott). One heavy rain and they could be lost.
It's late
afternoon. We drive out of Chinguitty and up the dunes to one of Eminu's
favorite places. Without wind-blown sand desert sunsets are limitless, the soft
slopes and edges of the dunes backlit and honed blade-sharp against the blue
sky by the angled light. Today, the view is flattened, hazy, impressionistic,
liquid, through the gauze of wind-blown sand, charcoal on grey, like the
calligraphy in the old books. I'll take it.
On the trip
back across the dunes, Cowboy Habib flaunts his stuff. He downshifts, floors
it, and his Bucking Bronco rams straight up the steep, steep dune, teeters and
we swan dive straight down the other side. Ruth says that from behind our 4x4
simply up-ended, tail in the air, and disappeared over the dune. I peel off the
roof into Dennis elbow, slam back down hard against the seat, mashing molars.
Cowboy doesn’t even notice.
L’Eden
Auberge offers hot showers. There are solar panels. Judging from their output they
sit in a cave. On a moon of Pluto. The ‘hot water' gets plenty of time to chill
during its journey from the outer solar system and arrives somewhere between
‘ice Floe and ‘No way, Jose’. Shower by sand blast isn't so bad. Depending on
the grit, of course.
Surely, somewhere in those libraries there is another
solution.
2017-12-22 MAURITANIA – DAY 13 - CHINGUITTY TO AIN SAFRA- PART 1
“I have
never been so cold” (Eminu). “Il y a beaucoup de froid.”(Nutah)
Right! At 5
degrees (40 F,) there is a LOT of cold, here a quantity that sits on the
morning, heavy. Across the road four goats lean flat against a stone wall,
unchilling in the rising sun. I join them. They snuffle and leave. Time for
that sandblast shower?
Back in
front of L'Eden Auberge, Eminu is a stylish mummy. Sunglasses and headscarf
hide his face. He is bundling not billowing, the volumes of his dara wrapped
tightly around a landscape of layers topped by a sweater.
Dah,
recovered, beams in, flinging tetrawatts that warm the morning. Hands slap,
syllables fly in the clipped rhythms of formula: How are you. Fine! And YOU.
Fine. And your family? Fine. And….so on and so forth. Praise Allah.
Were giving
him a lift back to his village, taking the ‘easy’ road back, dune free,
providing only a minor massage. We rattle our molars down the final rock slide
into Hmerith. Staccato greetings, then hugs, cheek slides, shakes, slurps of
milk, and were off. Back on the road, Habib, Elameen and I semi-pig out on sweet
crispy-mushy Cinguitty dates, each one worth every molar rattling centimeter of
the road.
Then we are
on tarmac, blessed surface. My molars relax, surely requiring a celebratory
date. Or three.
Lunch is a
refuge from the sand-laden wind, spread on big mats under the curved roof of a
palm frond and cloth quonset hut tunnel. There's plenty of room. Nutah pours
cascades of tea. Elameen dishes up rice and veggies in a corner. The wind adds
several varieties of grit. Ladies arrive, spread their knick knacks. Somewhere
in the bundles a baby makes baby sounds.. Habib wants to know what a ‘cowboy'
is. I demonstrate with a bent-kneed gallop around the hut. Nutah and Habib lose
it. Thus, are legends born.
Outside, the
wind whips the dunes into the air, clogging the sun.
Tonight, we
sleep in tents. Really?
The
landscape is new to us, post-apocalyptic rubble, fire storm scorched black. The
rubble is angular blocks tumbled out of an alien aesthetic that decries
softness or curves.
Can anything
live here? Then a woman appears, also deep black, stark in pink, ejected out of
the rubble. The camels are white like the blind fish in deep caves. Life here
must be subterranean.
The rubble seems to remember violence. And emits it. Not even
sand blows into it. There is no sand, no soft eddies. There is only hard,
angular black. And the wind blowing sand so fine it can polish precious things.
2017-12-22 MAURITANIA – DAY 13-CHINGUITTY TO AIN SAFRA. PART 2
“The wind fertilizes the dates” (Eminu)
And covers
everything else in fine, 1000 Grit, gold dust. I excavate a minor sand dune
from my windward ear, abandoned outside my head scarf for a mere minute. My
phone screen dapples, then becomes a sand box. The road is a canvas for sand
dune fingers, greedy for the other side.
Any idea of
camping is Gone With the Wind. We don't worry. Travelers in the Islamic world
will always have a place to stay. The local gendarmes point down the road. Tara
is an empty dune-besieged square house built for the honchos of the crew
fighting to tame the dunes with a road. Our host digs a path to the door
through the embryonic dune eating the walls. Ruth gets the private room with
bed, an ensuite toilette, bowl, pipes, but no water. The rusting AC unit, wall
heater and runs of truncated electric cable suggest either future aspiration or
past resignation. We are welcomed warmly, matter of factly. As always in the
desert.
There no
power in Tara, but next door in the ‘office' is a mess of equipment that
somehow connects to the Internet. We squat with 20 or so young types of both
genders from the village, all fingers aflight over smart phones. Boss invites
us into his space. The signal is strong and we connect for the first time in
4…or is it 5?...days. The world is a mess. No friends or family died. Next.
We get mats on the floor between the couch and chairs of the
stumpy, overstuffed three piece set, nappy hippos set with rhinestones. Our new
cook, quiet Elameen, sets up the kitchen in another room. His veggie stew slips
down sweetly, with just a hint of 1000 grit condiment. Nutah brews our tea,
delivers the requisite 3. Our world is in order. And out of the wind.
2017-12-23 MAURITANIA – DAY 14-AIN SAFRA TO TAGANT DESERT
“He walked
for two days to find his camel”
The wind and
sand drive us indoors. We squat for several horizontal and restful hours on the
floor mats in a guest house near Ain Safra. Villagers visit. Stories swap
owners, sliding smoothly on tea.
The camel
story is sad. Camels wander for food and water. Unlike cows and goats, they
just keep going, ‘home' being where the water and food are. Their owners have
to fetch them, recognizing each camel by its footprints. This man followed and
searched, but found only 1 of his 2 camels, half his whole worth.
Nutah,
recently come out as Not A Morning Person, wraps in a sleeping bag and ignores
a scornful barrage from Cowboy. And it IS Cowboy now, for everyone. In one of
those luscious linguistic linkings there is a local phrase that sounds very
much like ‘Cowboy’, and means, uh, a whole mess of unflattering things. Nutah,
of course, loves it, refuses to entertain the English pronunciation. He finally
has ammo against Habib/Cowboy.
We bivouac
out of the wind under a highway bridge, trolls for the night. There is no
traffic above to rattle us below (Disclosure: We count 3 vehicles in 12 hours).
It seems an odd choice until we walk away from the bridge, pass the wild
donkeys. The cliffs are canvases for dozens of wispy sand waterfalls, swatches
of fairy dust blown into gauze, gold against the red rocks. It's a lovely
place.
2017-12-24 CHRISTMAS EVE - MAURITANIA – TAGANT DESERT TO TIDJIKJA
“Send me Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, any books”.
Ahmed Maka
stands in the sand. Tall, dignified, he speaks with us in excellent French, and
way more than passable English. Around him are shallow pits growing vegetables…so
long as he can keep them watered from a deep well. Now the corn, tomatoes,
beets, potatoes, melons, cabbages are adolescent sprouts vulnerable to a water
shortage and the dry wind. The wind is good for the dates, though, and dates
are the succulent basis for life here in the oasis. The veggies? “I don't sell
them. People just come and take them.”
“I was in
university in Nouakchott. I studied civilization, literature, then …” He
mentions the Gulf War (Mauritania sided with Iraq. Almost all aid stopped), marriage,
children. Now he is a farmer, missing Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy. He gives us
his email and phone “All on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp ”. Later in
the day I send him an email thanking him for our visit and asking him to keep
in touch. He'll get it the next time we have ‘wee-fee’. It isn't Willy and
hardly Hardy, but maybe it will remind him that someone has heard him.
We begin the
day as trolls, crawling out from under a bridge where we pitched our tents,
wind-protected, warmish. Eminu slept in the Mauritanian fabric tent and does
not give his bivouac the same review. “I am sooo cold” just about covers it
The wind has
become lazy. Overnight the heaviest of the sand has settled to earth. The
lightest is reluctant. The sun rises silver, its gold and heat stolen by the
fairy dust. The wind, wakening, pushes against the palms, slips through, leaves
its rasp in the pale light. Wild donkeys plop down the slope, water bound,
stop, stare, with the patience that is their lot, out of their long flat
sunrise shadows, lose interest, and clip-clop on, dragging their shadows.
Camels will follow.
Late in the
afternoon we pull into Tidjikja, big town of the Tagant district, under a row
of solar powered street lights, and around goats, donkey carts, Toyota 4x4s,
pass gas stations (‘lavage’, car wash always available), ‘épicéries' (mini
grocery stores), signs offering cell phone plans, money transfer, and lodging.
Our nameless auberge got lukewarm reviews (‘not ready for guests') from
Mohammed of Chinguitty Voyages. Our back up plan is tenting. Expectations are
set low, and based on first blush, No Name Auberge stoops with gusto to meet
them, trailing stray pieces of roof thatching, and a hairy pile in the dust, a
pre-owned goat skin, of no use to its previous occupant
“There is no electricity---the whole town is
powerless---and of course no water, BUT it will return soon”, which in Africa
covers every temporal eventuality between now and sometime in the next decade.
Against all
African laws of probability, ‘soon' becomes now. Lights flash, max 5 watt.
(More wattage not kind to the décor.) And…water flows. Hot water, blessed gift,
sputters, then gushes. In volumes up to flushing a cascade of adventurous and
insinuating sand out of my orifices, enough to create a delta downstream. Hot
water trumps the décor. The tents stay on the cars.
The
headscarf I use as a towel dries rapidly in the sun. (All over Africa towels
and clothes hangers or hooks are rare finds, at least in the kinds of places we
frequent. I think you have to have 1 Star to wipe dry.)
Lighter,
almost floating, the freshly desanded us wander the market. A re-purposed
plastic water bottle filled with peanuts ($1.70, bargained down from $2.80, but
still extortion), mini fruit juices ($.28 each), two yummy and squishy chocolate
things (ditto) solve the afternoon munchie crisis. A lovely perforated metal
ladle ($.74) will deliver pasta back home, a Mauritanian Market Memory.
“We wait for
our camel guy”. A slight Gallic shrug underlines the ‘wait' with African
fatalism. The 2 young French guys share the Nameless, are taking a desert break
from teaching in Nouakchott. Camels will carry human food, camel fodder, and
water for both. The humans will walk. 20 to 30 kilometers a day. For 10 days.
Yum!?!
He says he
will never again spend so many months in a Moslem culture. The people are
lovely, kind, but ‘there are too many...limitations”. Silence. Then a knowing
look:
“Women”
This time
the shrug starts in the eyebrows, takes over the face, mouth, neck, invades the
shoulders, down the arms and into the hands, eloquent celibate semaphore.
This is in
the interest of Full Disclosure: I have faith in women. Anywhere on the planet
where women (1) have any say in the matter, and (2) have eyes, this guy would
never have to use that particular shrug. Ever.
Our beds are comfy, though Ruth says hers resembles a
washboard. The cloth ceiling, minus pieces of the errant thatching of our
welcome, lets in soft light. No matter. There is hot water. Like the day, it's
a wonderful Christmas present.
2017-12-25 - CHRISTMAS DAY- MAURITANIA -DAY 16 -– TIDJIKJA TO MATMATA
“I have a surprise, a
big surprise.”
We sit in
the thorny shade of an acacia, eating dusty dates that sneak in a twist of
lemon.
This is our
6th Christmas in a row in this part of the world, and our 5th
in Africa with Ruth. We have the hang of it. Christmas is a non-event here. In
Islam Jesus is a revered prophet, his birth insignificant compared to his
message. Special reverence surrounds his mother, Miriam to Moslems. There are
more mentions of her in the Islamic Scriptures than there are in all the
Christian Scriptures. But, of wise men, stars, stables? Nothing.
Eminu wishes
us all Merry Christmas and the day moves on. He has promised us a gift, “A
Surprise!!!!”, his eyes adding the exclamation points.
The
landscape is flat, shrubby, rubblely, scrub of no distinction or definition,
melting, unlamented, into the horizon haze. Rock box houses add angles, cattle
and donkeys, blocks of dark, scatters of goats add stiff-legged, stop-action
movement, images played out too slowly.
Road signs
appear, probably just part of the Standard Package (Tarmac Plus Decorations)
from the donating agency, and totally wasted on the usual traffic of goats,
donkeys, camels, and sand dunes. My favorite: a symbol that clearly means Sand
Dunes Cross Here. Ya think ?
N'beka is a
lively, congested town with a market and an old friend of Eminu's, gift wrapped
head to toe in a fabric sprouting multicolored warped lozenges. Because we
can't see her face, she lets us photograph her. “She's knocked up” offers
Eminu, using our latest subversive addition to his impressive vocabulary. (I do
take him aside and explain the nuances of that expression.) Her sister wants
her photo, face free, if we promise not to put it on Facebook. Done, but she
wrinkles her nose at the result.
The usual
crowd of adolescent ‘Men About Town’ crowds around. Head Wise Guy asks me how
old I am. “74”. “C’esr trop”, “That's too old”. It gets a big laugh from the
crowd, My Tropness included. He's 18. “C'est trop jeune”, “too young” gets a
bigger laugh.
We leave the
smooth tarmac and its decorative commentaries. The lava ‘flats’ are black,
light sucking, smooth to eye rough to the wheel, the stony spittle of a
dyspeptic volcano, a butt battering, molar munching, spine stunning, coccyx
crushing ‘catastrophe’.
For once
Cowboy lets Nutah find the way. Big mistake. We chase our tail, bounce, smash a
few more vertebrae, ask directions: “tout droit”, “straight ahead” of course.
So is China. Eventually.
Bivouacked,
finally, we walk, leaving the camp behind us at the edge of the dunes, heading
over boulders, for the Surprise!!!. We climb, string out, the guys way ahead,
bright dots, some billowing, in a black and brown jumble. We follow a shallow
wide stream, and then…
Against all
odds, truly, we almost stumble into our Surprise!!!, Part One. The stream bed,
now dry, leaps into a space-gobbling box canyon sprawling hundreds of meters
below our feet, kilometers long, and wide, wide, wide into the haze.
Surprise!!!, Part Two sits below, a lovely lagoon, edged in dune gold hammered
flat. In the rains, water deep dives off the edge. Now there is only a
whispered liquid trickle. Choreographed by the wind and gravity, sand not
water, drops off the cliff, and sprays outward, then downward to coat the pool.
The Really
Big Surprise!! is on the beach. Two desert crocodiles spread on the sand. Three
more barely ripple the water as they tail propel across the pool. There are 8
or 9 here, with the 5 we saw in a tiny pool at the bottom of a remote valley in
Chad, the only desert crocodiles in the world, among the very rarest of
animals, confined now to the last vestiges of the huge lakes of the green
Sahara 7,000 years ago. Crocs have been around for 200 million years. If these
pools dry, the last desert crocs will die with them.
Later, we sip teas 1, 2, and 3 at our table by the dunes.
Twilight settles in around us, softly massaged by the sand haze, backlit by the
struggling moon. Christmas passes into the night, visions of Red-Nosed
Christmas Crocodiles hovering at the edge of my dreams. Some gifts just keep on
giving….
2017-12-26 MAURITANIA DAY 17 – TO BOUTILIMIT AND NUTAH'S HOUSE
“#$%%&@÷÷=//×#!!!!!gargle###@$$=@$=$$$/##!!!”
I don’t need
a translator. Habib/Cowboy's hands fill the air with his inevitable comment,
roughly:”Why the h**l did we drive all around the village to get here. “ ‘Here’ is Nutah's house, our ‘camp' for
tonight. Camp does not do justice to this lovely house. Ruth, our fashionista,
gives the interior walls, sunset orange, hot pink, a thumbs up, and the rest, a
definite all-hands-up.
Dennis and I
share the rugs, pillows and mats in a room bigger than the bedroom back home.
We all
spread out on pillows and mats in the room where we will eat. Our bones need a
flat surface that doesn't move.
This long
day started with a dawn contest, Nutah vs. Igloo Tent, score:
Tent: 1.
Nutah:0
Igloo tents
unfold explosively with a quick toss into the air, descending fully formed,
ready to serve. It takes a degree in topology, five people, or a quick and
sneaky double twist by one, to get them to fold again and stay folded. Habib
frees Nutah from its python grip, beats and bellows it into submission, imprisons
it in its flat bag, and tosses a triumphant gargle at Nutah. I'm glad I know
these guys are long and affectionate friends.
By late
afternoon, Nutah invites us to sleep in his house, rescuing us from our final
night of camping and himself from another morning ignominy…and ‘descriptive‘
running commentary, gargled and gesticulated, from Cowboy.
All morning Our
road away from Camp des Crocs is the Lounge Lizard of roads. Smooth from a
distance, What the h**l was I thinking? up close. My molars start out already
munched. The road takes on the bicuspids, crushes the cuspids, heads for the
incisors. My spine compresses from gentle ‘S’ to dense, angled, zig-zag. I have
gained some nice biceps hanging on. By the time we bounce onto the tarmac, even
my eyes are shaken loose. Out the window, everything wobbles. I see an
opportunity. Bob’s Bounce and Bust Clinic (‘We've Got Your Back') would clean
up here.
The tarmac
takes its flatness seriously and unrolls without protest or tooth damage. We
slide, not bounce, into a town and wrap around Giggle-Gaggle-Waves of school
kids, Disdains of camels, Skitters of goats, Plods of cattle, Stares of
donkeys. Warm, long, mammoth fingers of fresh bread (perfect size for a foot-long
hotdog) pile on tables along the road. Several (12 cents each) pass through the
car window, but don't survive until Elameen’s lunch of rice and veggies under
an acacia.
Much later
we stop again. It's Tea for Tous under the trees. And then again in a market
for more donuts, and doughy things with onion, tomato and tuna sauce from a
woman head-wrapped in a winged and flapping bird of paradise confection of
fabric, exuberantly not Mauritanian (except in citizenship). “She's Wolof, from
the south and Senegal.”, says Eminu even before I ask.
By late
afternoon our black road run not only flat but straight, stitching two
landscapes. To the left and West, the sand and trees are backlit by the
lowering sun, stark white and black in the haze, receding through the gauzy
dreaminess of a Turner painting. To the right and East, they are front lit,
gold and green, but still hazy, the edges tenuous, Monet in The Desert.
We are
welcomed by Nutah's mother, then sent off to the world of men, sprawling around
a tagine of lamb/goat and a mass of couscous. The metal roof booms with the
thunderous footsteps of a convention of talentless tap dancingg hippos. “Only
pigeons” says Nutah. (Riiiiight. I’m sticking with the hippos.)
The
RataTatTat of the Road Company Rooftop Rackettes and the power surge of three
small, but strong sugar-laden teas, both before and after dinner don't bode
well for a good sleep. But the Rackettes are Hindenburged to their next
fruitless audition (surely not a gig), and the sugar behaves itself. Sleep
comes quickly.
I awake about 3am to silence and the distant snuffle of
goats.
2017-12-27 MAURITANIA DAY 18 – BOUTILIMIT AND NUTAHS HOUSE TO NOUAKCHOTT
“It's a
dinosaur” (Ruth
There are
hundreds, maybe thousands of camels at the camel market, but this mountain of a
dromedary dwarfs them all, massive in height and bulk. I can't quite walk
upright under its belly, but I can under the great Romanesque arch of its neck.
Camels all look disdainful but this one literally looks down at the world. Other
camels ignore him. Camels are good at ignoring.
Everything
here is in slow motion. The camels are hobbled, their front legs linked by a
short rope. They shuffle through the sand, nuzzle one another, ignore us mere
two-legged, humpless tiny lumps. A matched pair of twin calves drop an acre of
eyelashes into a slow blink as we pass. Camel traders billow in blue white,
hands hanging money, deals sealing fates. Most of these camels are destined for
the butcher's block.
“Thank you,
thank you so much.”
These are
the final words we hear from Eminu as we hug and say goodbye at the hotel.
Habib/Cowboy, and Nutah, are already outside, hugged. Tonight, past midnight,
they pick up 11 travelers for another trip through their country. Elameen, the
cook, will catch a ride home. Dah will arrive late today to join the other two.
Eminu has two weddings of close friends this week, so will take a pass on this
trip, sacrificing much needed income for friendship. He has no trips coming up.
These guys
have been our trip, their faces replacing the space labelled ‘Mauritania' on
the map, more important than the geography.
Today, our
last, lunch is on us in a restaurant suggested by Mohammed (head honcho of
Chinguitty Voyages). It is classic Mauritanian Fish and Rice. The rice grains
are so tiny I mistake it for couscous. It is a bit spicy, a bit crunchy, and
thoroughly delicious. The fish is firm, white, perhaps swordfish. Carrots,
cabbage, small falafel-like crunchy balls, some other root veggies, and a lemon
slice, cover the rice. This is the staple dish of Mauritania, and Eminu's daily
dose of comfort food. It's delicious. And cheap. For 6 of us, with water and
tea, the bill was 3600 Ouguiya, or a dribble under $11. Total.
Today is our
first---and last---chance to visit Nouakchott. It's only 50 years old, but like
most African cities, the infra structure hasn’t caught up with growth. It has too
many cars, traffic lights are for decorative purposes only, and the drivers
have a special genius for navigating the Gordian knot of downtown. Still, the
city has a reputation for being a safe place to walk about, and it seems a
laidback town. It's a new city, grafted onto an ancient landscape
In the
museum we saw evidence that our ancestors were already living Mauritania a
million years ago.
Fishing is
the big deal here. I read that the waters off Mauritania's coast are the
richest on the planet. Eminu wants us to see the fish market. So, we go to the
coast.
Further
north on this coast immense Chinese factory ships suck everything from the sea,
indecent ecological pillaging. Here, the fishing is on a human scale, dictated
by tradition, muscle, and common sense. Armadas of low-slung, brilliantly
painted canoes fish with nets powered by muscle not machines. They haul their
take close to shore. Men wade into the surf to collect the fish in head
baskets, and carry it back to shore. Some of the fish are huge, 4 and 5 feet
long, hanging thickly off counters. Some are on--- or near--- ice. Men and
women buy or hawk baskets of smaller fish, and, for the lazy not up for
scraping and gutting, bags of fillets. We pass.
And so, our
trip that has been all quiet, in the gilded haze of desert sands, ends in
rampant human sounds on the beach sands of the coast, in noise, and color.
Tonight at
the hotel, we eat our first meal without the guys, without the desert. The
crevettes are delicious.
We know
what's missing. And we miss them.
(TURN THE PAGE, PLEASE)
