In Mauritania

 

 

Mauritania

And so to Mauritania, well enough off the beaten track for people to ask where it is although some spectacular desert scenery calls to its aficionados and the famous SNIM iron ore train gets its small share of tourists hitching an uncomfortable overnight ride on top of the cargo. Nouakchott, the capital is low rise whitewash and buff, a huge US embassy, a fairly high international presence altogether, the odd surprise like a Patisserie Valérie to match and various beauty shops and boutiques, a large choice of multi national car saleroom and the heavy Chinese presence in the country exemplified by a cluster of Chinese restaurants near the Embassy. They are here, another African country ready to be unzipped for Chinese advantage, road building, promised port development, fishing rights acquired in exchange to the long and richly stocked coastline.  The impression here for now is of an overcrowded sea where fish leap from the water, either for joy or to escape the piscatorial crush, the fish markets of Nouakchott, and of Nouadhibou up the coast, are stuffed with the bounty caught by the local fishing fleet, that is now.  Mauritania is rich in natural resources but remains a poor country, a presidential democracy with a history of military coups, ethnic and sexual discrimination and residual slavery of the black population of constantly disputed extent. More than half the total population of about 4 million in this huge desert country, live in poverty; farmers, fishers and small traders scratching a living and leaving their fate in the hands of Allah.

Islam is the rhythm of life, no extremes, just unchanging constancy and the beguiling innocence of religious faith where fact and superstition merge in comforting ritual, tradition and belief.  Less comfort from corrupt governance, complicated and apparently unreasoning bureaucracy (as experienced both on arrival and departure from Nouakchott airport) and constantly changing law and regulation.  This combined with a corrupt judiciary and deeply unpleasant prison system has engendered general fear of the figures of authority, usually the gendarmerie of one or another variety who must always be greeted with smiles and subservience for fear of any possible perceived infringement of the law and the likely resulting fate. I made the mistake of showing a camera, heedlessly taking a photograph of a dog at a police post – the police were fairly calm over such an error from a foreign fool, my travel companions were more shaken.  Cameras here remain divisive tools, there are few women who will permit a photograph and not so many men but smiles and chat in almost any language do ease the path to some record of the people on a journey of vast landscapes and the extraordinary natural phenomena of the Mauritanian Sahara such as the Richat Structure and the mighty monoliths of Ben Amera, his separated wife, Aisha and their smaller children.

I travelled and camped in high luxury as to manpower, a guide, Ahmed, a driver, Mukhtar, and a cook, a very good cook with a very good sense of humour, Talib who unusually cooks at home too because his wife is too messy and too slow.    They came from Sidi Tours who I would not hesitate to use directly on another journey further south in Mauritania and down to the Senegal border.  The camping itself is not luxury camping and thank good for that when there is little more luxurious in this day and world than empty space with not a soul in sight and only your two tiny tents and a camp bed under a mosquito net as blots on a magnificent landscape.  Only now someone, somewhere, the privileged and opinionated visitor will say loudly, should find the means and the way to stop the growth of plastic waste all over this country and its once pristine desert.  It is out of Allah’s hands, the hadiths of the Prophet did not prescribe on the regulation of single use plastic, to promote collection and alternatives, to suggest that plastic and tins, also found in semi-burned piles on desert routes, might be carried home, and to build the expensive re-cycling plants that might well fall within the budget of a government with so much in the way of natural resources, if only it cared to do so and to educate its people for the sake of their descendants.  And, come to think of it for every cow, goat and dog in search of food with a plastic bag or wrapper hanging from its mouth.

Mauritania was a French colony like neighbouring Algeria but here a nomadic population was ruled or rather overseen with a light touch by a colonial overlord who referred to the country as the ‘Le Grand Vide’, the Great Void and mainly let it get on with itself as merely a link between its more important territories in North and West Africa.  As in its other colonies, the French left their language behind and it is spoken by large numbers of the population in addition to Hassaniya, Mauritanian Arabic, and African languages such as Wolof and Fula.  They also left the baguettes that stretch from the countries of the former French Indo-China to Martinique and French Guyana via chunks of North and West Africa.  The British have managed to make a small mark here in the ancient landrovers that have now been superseded by much preferred Toyota landcruisers and pickups and German motor industry is likewise represented by fleets of Mercedes of varying age and decrepitude, in particular in the town of Atar, the Sargasso Sea of the marque.

I was only in Mauritania for 10 days and would go back, as with Algeria, to see more of the South of the country.  On this journey after a night in the newly appointed and comfortable Best Centric Hotel, half a night after the complications of airport entry and visa on arrival, we set out first in search of money – the Ouguiya at the rate of 8,000 to 200 euros from an unexpectedly operational and efficient ATM, my rather limp looking euro notes rejected by the black market.  Then off towards the desert and the dunes of Azouega.  Camels on the road, donkey carts, goats scattered across the landscape, women dressed in yards of covering, small villages, and eventually  huge dunes above sand still dotted here with palm trees, clumps of grass and the presently abandoned clumps of nomad huts, covered with dry fronds which provided vital shelter during a sudden and spectacular storm.  October sees the end of the rainy season, there are drying pools of water here and there and the movable water stores like giant green, black and brown lilos, and the weather may produce surprises, desert sand suddenly whipped up by a howling wind and the sky purple black. And then, after the thunder and lightning, delicious fish kebabs cooked on a primus stove and sudden peace, the wind dying in an instant to allow for outdoor sleeping, the mosquito net dome essential as mosquitos, blown far and wide in the gale, regrouped in the night time calm to zoom in loudly on any exposed human flesh.

Apart from a donkey chorus from a nearby village, a protest against the storm or who knows what else that continues until the early hours, the large desert beetles, they might be darkling beetles, Tok Tokkie, are the only other sign of life here under the clearing clouds.  They are positively over friendly, scurrying about in the sand on some important errand or other and may be trodden on by mistake with no harm done to anyone. They are usually found in the morning tucked into the toe of a shoe if you forget to shake it out first. Not much bird life, a crow or two and maybe a kite but bird life in Mauritania seems mainly focused on the coast and particularly the Banc d’Arguin National Park which is a haven for sea birds and flamingos with a fish eating wolf or two to be spotted on the rough roads along the coast.  Fennec foxes live throughout the Western Sahara but they are shy and nocturnal so you are lucky if you spot one, hares, Patas monkeys and possibly a warthog are the survivors of a greater past diversity of wildlife in Mauretania.

The scenery of the White Valley may be familiar to viewers of The Grand Tour when the team followed in the wheeltracks of the Paris-Dakar rally that was stopped here after an Al-Qaeda attack in 2008.  From this dramatic landscape we dropped down to the oasis of Terjit with its palm gardens and dry stone walls, quiet and sparsely populated after the date harvest.  One day this might be the site for a tourist resort among the pools, streams, dripping rocks and greenery, for now a bathe in a sandy pool is a pleasure that exchanges hot desert sand for the cool wet alternative.

 Inside this valley with its high cliffs is a different world to the desert and not necessarily one that appealed to this difficult traveller – it is bizarrely, too cool, too damp and too quiet and if the djinns of the desert are to be feared, I would rather have them than the mouldering spirits that may dwell under these drenched cliffs.  It is a relief to come out into the open again among staggering flat topped mountains of Mevlek Bakkar where we pitch our tents again for the night.

 

At the oasis of Mherth we slid and slipped on rainy season mud to deeper pools and then on to the Amoglar Canyon, a vision of stunning desolation, and negotiated our way, in the absence of the gardien, along a rather steep wall, into the locked enclosure where ancient rock paintings, an elegant giraffe, a herd of what?  Aurochs are they or some other ancient bovine, an elephant, fade gently into the surroundings, memories of times when these stark plains were alive with great beasts.  From there to memories of other times again in the city of Chinguetti, centre of the Mediaeval and later trans-Saharan trade routes, on the pilgrimage route to Mecca for the people of the Maghreb and, in its own right a centre of learning and scholarship full of libraries and literary collections that encompassed rhetoric, law and the sciences as well as religion. Little remains of the old city, the desert encroaches year by year leaving the Friday Mosque with its square minaret and ostrich egg finials as the memory of that past while the sand rises and spills over the lower part of the building. We visited one of the remaining libraries where old manuscripts are brought out from metal cupboards to be admired and explained by the dignified owner.

From here, after a night in an almost deserted auberge, to the Richat Structure, the huge area, best viewed it seems from space, where a monumental volcanic eruption and other geological events combined to produce concentric rings of rock 40 kilometres in diameter and irresistibly spread with the residue of Neolithic nomadic peoples in stone arrow and axe heads.  Even if it is not the site, as once believed, of a meteor strike or, better still, Atlantis, it is a staggering place.  My travel companions were less keen to explore for too long in temperatures of 40 plus degrees but local villagers are suppliers of those artefacts, of which there seems to be a fairly inexhaustible supply, that you may not have had a chance to grub out for yourself.  One shout of ‘stop the car’ from me was a nearby patch in the desert filled with tiny shells, pointed spirals and miniature flat ammonites.  I have not yet discovered how they got there.

From there to Ouadane, a more complete example of the ksars or desert trading towns like Chinguetti although the name is slightly less well known.  They are grouped together as UNESCO World Heritage Sites with Tichitt and Oualata.  Ouadane, built on a hill has survived the desert sands, falling prey instead to termites and plague but retaining much of its structure including the old city walls and the Rue des 40 Savants with each of their houses signed for posterity.  It is atmospheric in a way Chinguetti has sadly lost in the battle against desertification. In the modern village we stayed in another local auberge run immaculately by a local owner and filled with French travellers in astonishing continent crossing Mad Max style converted vehicles.

From here to Atar, the Mercedes graveyard and one of the hottest places I have ever been.  The colourful markets contrasting with a supermarket selling Nutella, Cornflakes and Weetabix in bulk and providing much needed cold drinks.  Market folk here were not generally keen on photography but everyone was too busy to object to a distant shot where no particular person was the obvious target.  We travelled on eating local doughnuts, balls of friend dough with minimal sweetening and perfectly delicious as a result and then back to the desert to the monolith of Ben Amera, second only to Uluru in Australia and maybe not…….Ben Amera sits close to his wife, Aisha, where recent man made attractions are carvings of anything from sheep to teapots in the rocks at her base, made for the Millenium by a group of international artists.  Other smaller nearby monoliths are of course the children of Ben Amera and his wife and there is some question as to whether the desert here has consumed more of the story.  Could all these granite hills be part of one structure that might be bigger than Uluru?  It is a theory but camping in the shadow of Ben Amera is an experience that conjures all those djinns of the desert to mind as they lurk at the base of this utterly bizarre natural edifice.

We had encountered the great iron ore train on our way to Ben Amera.  Had I been impressed, yes, up to a point, it is an extraordinary train and almost surreal in this desert landscape but as our route from the monoliths followed its tracks further, we met it approaching one of the stops along its track in all its kilometres long glory. Almost the image of the Western film train arriving in the one horse town and in another most atmospheric sandstorm.  Figures emerged through the dust and gloom, clambering on and off the train, donkey carts waited outside what might be the sheriff’s office, antique landrovers drove down the side of the tracks and the huge blue engine dominated a filmic  scene.  And on again to the train’s starting point and ultimate destination, Nouadhibou, where SNIM employees live in their own complex, the Chinese are or are not developing the port, large ships lie out to sea and there are outposts of international luxury in smart supermarkets, restaurants and hotel suites with very much newer Mercedes on these roads where the cows and goats graze on the rubbish. The great attraction is the fishing market and port with it row upon row of local boats stretching as far as the eye and the camera lens can cover.  Unfortunately, we were informed, the port or the fishing fleet is now privately owned, this unexpected new fact endorsed by a reasonably friendly gendarme who did not look too closely while photographs were in theory being deleted from my camera.

More problems with regulations at the village of Chami where local gold prospectors refine their treasure – no entry without permission of the mayor.  This acquired, only no photography.  It is a grim enough place, the life of the solitary prospector hoping to make his fortune is a touch one as he burrows into the hot ground below slag heaps of the quartz that might contain the precious metal. The processing involves crushing and chemical washing and always the promise of a fortune. 

Swiftly onwards to the fixed camping site at Tafarit on the coast, above all in this traveller’s experience the place above all not to stay in Mauritania in its ‘traditional Mauritanian tents’ on a piece of blasted land whose claim to fame is that it is where the desert meets the sea. We moved on from the rubbish on the beach to the fishing village of Iwik and a wonderfully unlikely group of blue tourist cabins with bathrooms and complicated plumbing arrangements of the working shower or working loo variety but never mind that.  

The village in the evening with cheerful children playing on the sand among the sandpipers, goats and cats, the boats coming into shore at dusk with their romantic sailed silhouettes, a moon rising overhead.  This was the place to be and the next day on a boat, fresh caught fish for breakfast, and shortly again for lunch, sandbanks and islands covered with pelicans, guillemots and terns, flamingos on another in the distance.  A second night in the cabins and back to Nouakchott – the fish market more relaxed than Nouadhibou during a visit by the German ambassador, huge unidentifiable fish, boats and bustle and back to the Best Centric Hotel to eat an enormous fish, shower and go to the airport for a rare battle to be allowed out of the country on the much delayed flight to Algiers on Air Algérie, very cheap flights and they work by and large, and on to London.