The Log's Prayer

my foot is getting better, thanks, hopefully I'll get to keep it.
That's a joke. Really. It's much better. I'm still keeping off it as much as possible which is hard when you've just received 20 tons of cement and have a lot you want to do. But I _am_ staying off it.


The Log’s Prayer

Our supplies which art on order,
Swift be thine path to our stores,
Our supply truck come,
Our supplies all as one.
In our stores as they are in the pipeline.

Give us this day wisdom to be prudent with our resources
And forgive us our wastefulness
As we forgive those who forget to:
Save energy (turn off lights!)
Use equipment with care (turn off and cover computers and printers!)
Plan their needs and ask or order things well before they need them
Organize and rationalize requests
Ask only that which is actually achievable
Understand that other people have needs too
Do things for themselves

Lead us not into impatience
But deliver our supplies (as quick as possible)
For thine is the supply chain
The backlog and the breakdowns,
(we know that sometimes it can take) for ever and ever,

A ll merciful and
M ighty
E quiper of the
N eedy

yay!

I've got cement!

Let the fun resume...

How this will work...

Honestly, I have no idea how this will work.
The plan is to talk with as many iNGOs as possible and see if we can source someone to take over the project. That will include agencies like IRC, ICRC, Merlin, MDM, StC, WV, and the numerous nation-specific NGOs. We'll also talk with other MSF sections already in Liberia (MSF-France, MSF-Swiss, MSF-Belgium, MSF-Spain). There are lots of iNGOs in Liberia. We just have to find one to take it over.

The finding/negotiating part takes place at as many levels as possible. The country management team is working on it from the capital level, the Project Coordinator works on it at our local level, and the whole team works on exploring avenues whenever possible.
In an ideal world, we would transition the whole project to a single agency. That would include all four clinics and the hospital and also the specialized programs that MSF has implemented - vertical HIV, TB, SGBV programs on top of primary and secondary health. Given the depth of programs we support and the complexity of certain programs we have implemented, we would hand over pieces of the program if necessary to different agencies.
Ultimately, the HoM (Head of Mission) is responsible for the negotiations.

Potentially devastating. That's pretty strong phrasing. We of course begin by doing everything we can in case no other NGO steps in. Training, sustainable projects, guidelines, documentation, etc. Since the project was established, a part of the work we do is to implement our protocols and standards. I hope, after three years, that those things could be carried on whether or not we're here.

There's a secondary consideration when talking about pulling out, especially from a region like upper Nimba, where MSF is the only medical iNGO present. To put it bluntly, there exists a possibility that NGO presence here allows the Ministry to, well, ignore the region. Why would they expend energy and money and staff and supplies if an NGO will provide them?

I cannot say if that is the case. It's neither my place for analysis of that sort, nor is this the proper venue for any kind of assumption of that type. What I can say is that, in my limited experience, this argument especially in post-conflict countries which have experienced a distancing from the conflict, which have entered a phase approaching normalcy and increased infrastructure development and the like, is given weight by many different people. I suppose it's considered human nature to allow others to do your work for you if possible, and to ignore something that someone else is willing to take responsibility for. There exists a train of thought that some countries are fully capable of taking over NGO projects that are run inside their borders, they just won't do it unless they are left with no other option.

The long-term goal of most humanitarian agencies is (well, "should be" in my opinion) to leave. Eventually, you hope to see governements and ministries and communities independently capable of caring for their population, whether that's schools or hospitals or roads. MSF has a charter that indicates we would, usually, leave before others - as an 'emergency' agency, MSF's doctrine is to pull out as soon as the emergency is over. Granted that's not always the case. Many MSF projects have run for years after the emergency is over - a reticence born, I presume, of the entirely natural bad feeling you get from 'abandoning' a population in distress. Certainly we are experiencing some of that hesitancy ourselves.

Not an easy position for any of us.

Just a couple things

So, firstly, I have another infected wound. A silly 2x4 bit me on the ankle the other day. Well, Ok, last week. I thought maybe I had learned my lesson the last time I had a scratch, and cleaned the bugger good _immediately_. Didn't work. Now my ankle's all swollen and red and generally unpleasant. Hurts a lot. But my fever's down. So that's good.

On the plus side, we have a new doctor in the project. He's german (yes, german) and his name is Micha(el). Very exciting to have a new person in the project...it always changes things. For the better, for the worse, you definitely get changes. Neat!

On the minus side (you can't have good without evil?), work has essentially stopped on my clinic because I can't get cement. In fact, I'm damn close to having this thing done, but I can't get to two of the last three things until the finish-quality layer is on the floor. And that means more cement. I also can't put in concrete floors in Beoyoolar, nor fix the well and placenta pit at Zuluyee, nor fix the water tower at the hospital. No cement. It's a bit...burdensome...on my psyche. Oh, I have lots of other things to do, to be sure, but I would really like to wrap those projects up as they've been hanging in the 'to do' pile for some time.

Made a couple of changes to the blog since the internet is working and I can't move around all day (what with a big fat red ankle and a doctor telling me 'don't walk on it. no, really, don't. if you want to keep your foot...'). Comments will now be visible 'in-line'...which is to say you'll always be able to see them on the main page. If you _don't_ want to see them, click on the little line that says how many comments are attached to the post (for example "6 comments").

I'm doing this because I have gotten tired of coming up with things to write about on my own. It seems a bit self-absorbed, and generally 'blog-like', just to whip off a lecture on what I think is important, and I don't think I'm very good at it. In fact, I think it contributes to the disuse of my blog by me. I'd much rather be writing about things folks have questions or thoughts on.

I'll still drop the occasional monologue irrespective of all of your input, but I thought maybe if I have the comments right there, it can generate some good discourse. I have a much easier time putting together answers and opinions on my experiences than just mindlessly reprinting them by rote into the much-vaunted 'blogosphere'.

hope everything is going swimmingly...
ciao
taj

what my life right now consists of

a picture is worth a thousand words, right?
These two pictures adequately sum up my job right now. Above, 'my' clinic at lugbeye, nearing completion. Below, mud. Specifically 'my' mobile in mud. As in, stuck in mud. That's me on the right. If you look close enough, you can see I'm laughing. You've got to have a sense of humor, right?

Where have I been?

That's a really good question. The internets been on the fritz, but really I have been busy.

Since I last posted, they've officially announced the project here in Nimba will be closed by May 2007. Emotionally, that's hard for a lot of us. It's certainly hard for the national staff, who are now faced with no job, income, or stability in this time of Liberia's post-war developmental infancy. For the expat staff, it's hard because these people are definitely our friends. Our co-workers. I _know_ what many of them face when we leave, and it's not good.

The other side, for me, is that I agree that this context for Liberia - Liberia now, as it were - is not for MSF. Work needs to be done here, for sure, the people are vulnerable, the government not-quite-stable, extensive needs have to met, but this work is not MSF work. At least, not MSF work the way I think of it. There's no criticality to the situation, no emergent need. The work we're doing could be done better by another agency. An agency with different resources, tools, and goals. MSF's best work could be done elsewhere. It's not an easy thing to think, especially when I look around the compound in the morning and greet all the staff coming to work, but it is what I think.

So, what does it mean to be pulling out? Well, for a log, it means you get really REALLY busy. Because essentially they're telling you that you now have a known window of time, quite short, in which to get anything and everything done that you want to get done. In an environment such as this, that's a lot. My to-do list, which was big before, is now huge. It's not even so much a matter of what can I get done as how MUCH can I get done before I leave, before the next log takes over for the closing.

So I'm busy. Busy busy busy.

We had a fun bit of 'insecurity' the other day. Independence Day. Biggest holiday in Liberia after Christmas. For weeks we had heard rumors of armed insurrection on Independence Day (even broadcast on the radio!) which we had mostly scoffed at. Because of the rumors, however, most NGOs were restricting their movements just in case. We did likewise.

Then, about one o'clock in the afternoon, we got a radio message.
"The presidential mansion is burning. How well do you copy"
Um...loud and clear.
"It's not clear what happened, but the entire fifth floor is in flames. How well do you copy?"
Um...loud and clear. And, now what?

And that was that. Lockdown in Monrovia, lockdown in Sanniquellie (you're not going out...no sirree), the Ghanian UN force in Monrovia holding back the public.

As it turned out, it was just a coincidence. Just a random fire. But, boy, in the context, with everything else, it was scary. A little too timely to be a coincidence, you think. But there you have it.

Hmmm...My functional boss, Yuri (the LogCo) has left the Mission. I got to go down to Monrovia to attend his farewell party since I also needed to meet and brief with the new LogCo, Don.

I got along great with Yuri, and I think he got along well with me. I had fun with him - he's a great guy, he knows his stuff. Add to that that he pretty much taught me (or coached me in) everything I know about working as a Log for MSF, and you could perhaps say I have him on a bit of a pedastal. "I want to be like Yuri when I grow up. Except being Russian. I don't want to be Russian." Well, and he's shorter than me. So I'd need to grow down.

But regardless, I'm really really glad that he was my first LogCo. He knows a ton, he's been all over for MSF and other aid agencies, and I learned a lot from him, whether or not he knows it. I'm looking forward to working now with Don, but when Yuri left I got a bit sad and felt like an era was coming to a close. I talked with him a lot, he helped me out a lot, and it was hard to see him go. Bon chance, Yuri. We'll cross paths again, I'm sure.

Got my work cut out for me now. Huge list of things to do, rainy season at our doorstep, project closure on the horizon. Truthfully, I'm loving it. Don put it great the other day. We were talking about logistics. About the job. About the work. About what it means. Back home in the states, I've liked most of my jobs. I've enjoyed my work, my coworkers, being "productive". But this is different for me.

I was talking to some of my staff the other day. We were chatting about the project. It came up that the staff have a bit of a legacy here that's not overt but here nonetheless. This is Malcolm's workshop. Jackson's Bungalow. The concrete floors in Tiayee are Chris's. The palava hut is Rob's. Now I'm in that list.

Don said (of logisticians) "We get shit done".

And that pretty much sums it up. You look around a context like this one, at the hospital and clinics and base and landcruisers and drugs and refrigerators and staff and EVERYTHING in the project, and some days you can kind of smile inwardly to yourself. Of course, there's the medicine. The patients. The outreach. The education. The bandaging and injections and blood transfusions and operations. These are pivotal to an MSF program and why we're here in the first place. But everything I can _see_...well, that's from a logistician who got shit done.

Not necessarily me...but a chain of logisticians stretching back to the founding of the project. My contribution is added to the history of logistics in Sanniquellie. But my work is a part of it. Shit _I_ got done is here.

That's a nice feeling.

Damn.

It's been a month since I last posted. My apologies. I've been crazy busy and the internet's been down a _lot_.

Here's my travelogue.

Taj’s Holiday Travelogue
June 11 to June 26th, 2006
West Africa

Day 1: June 11, 2006
Travel: Monrovia, Liberia to Dakar, Senegal
Method: Air

And so my travel begins. After four+ months exclusively in Liberia, I get to venture out a bit as part of a mandatory vacation from the project. The Powers That Be are not happy at how long I’ve put off my holiday and have been pushing me to get out of the project more often. I’m heading out on holiday with Dr. Daniel Eibach, he’s the HIV/TB doctor in the project, working mostly out in the field (almost never in the hospital). On the plus side, he’s studied a lot of tropical medicine, so I’m hopeful that I’ve picked a good traveling companion should any kind of weird jungle/desert syndrome strike me. Plus, I’m just generally confident.
We’ve decided on a “huh?” travel route, one that leaves everyone else we’ve talked to scratching their heads and looking nonplussed. We also have almost no plans. The crux of the trip is the following: Monrovia to Dakar overland to Nouadibou overland to as deep into the Western Sahara as we can get in our limited time, and then back out a different route. Where we’ll stay, what we’ll see, what we’ll do, we have almost no concrete ideas. We’ve got a Lonely Planet in our backpacks (from 2002) and a bunch of money.
I’m more than a little trepidatious about this trip. I’ve never traveled in Africa. I’ve never been in the desert. I’ve never sojourned with someone I don’t know well. I’ve never ridden shotgun in one of those scary little African taxis. There are a lot of unknowns for me, and they don’t all sit well. Things could definitely go poorly in that combination.
Countering that to a hefty degree is more than a modicum of excitement. After all, that’s a lot of ‘firsts’! This is a whole continent I’ve never seen! People and culture that I have no idea about! Compared to the decision to go with MSF in the first place, this holiday business seems fairly small potatoes. But the holiday still gives me quite a case of the nerves. So in many ways it’s very similar to setting off from New York for MSF – exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.

So, the journey begins with a trip to the Roberts International Airport in Monrovia. Well, actually it’s about an hour from Monrovia. Slok Air, official airline of The Gambia, is the carrier I’ll be flying on. Well known in West Africa for not actually doing what you want it to do, Slok Air is the holiday airline choice of MSF since a Bellview Air plane crash killed some MSF staffers late last year. Slok’s prices are OK, we’ll be flying from MRV to DAK for about USD450. MSF is picking up about USD400 of the ticket (part of the unofficial “R&R” policy – they pay for the cheapest ticket out of the country. In this case, that’s Ghana – USD400 – but we don’t want to go there). Slok’s a first-come-first-serve airline, with horrible organization – at one point our previous lab tech, Charles, got stuck in Monrovia for three days because he kept missing his flight – even though he was at the gate each time.
Flight 104 has the following route: Monrovia, Freetown, Dakar, Banjul, Accra. Given the previous knowledge we have of the airline, we opt to not check our packs but carry them on. We might not ever see them again otherwise.
The flight to Dakar goes, blissfully, uneventfully. We make the stop in Freetown with minimal fanfare and delay, and land in Dakar more or less one time for Slok Air (only three hours late).
Prior to the flight, we found a listing for a hotel (hostel/brothel) not far from the airport at a reasonable rate that sounds quite OK. Hotel Les Mamelles, in the Ouakum district. So, our first task upon landing is to get oriented, change some money, and get to the hotel.
So…now it’s officially ‘late’ (after 10PM) when we get off the plane. We still need to change some money. Fortunately, as soon as we set foot inside the airport we are immediately besieged by kind local gentlepersons offering to help us. Gee, how nice!
Daniel and I have a similar attitude towards this kind of thing, which is to just ignore it and make like we know what we’re doing (which we don’t) but seems to work. I spy a “Bureau d’Change” sign, and we just make a beeline for it, even though it’s not likely to be open. At least it gives us a sure activity to engage in. Honestly, it would be perfectly impossible to stop moving for one second to discuss anything in the airport, even at this hour, as we are carrying our big European-traveler backpacks and in the middle of an airport.
It turns out the change office IS open (which is similar to a godsend…really!). We both change some money into Central African Francs, a standard currency for most countries in West/Central Africa (except, of course, where we’re going). We then use the idyllic quiet of the change office to talk about how we’re going to get to the hotel without being totally ripped off. We don’t really have a good plan for that, honestly, and while Daniel speaks a little French, it’s not much. So we’re just going to wing it.
Freshly armed with some local currency (change rate at the airport: USD1=CFA500), we set out to find a taxi.
The airport has a special “taxi queue” outside the arrivals section. While this is a sanctioned activity, it by no means implies that the rates are reasonable or fixed. Beryl, the expat midwife, had been to Dakar a few months previously and said that CFA3000 should get us into the city. Daniel and I had sort of informally agreed on the plane that when the prices came to being discussed, we’d ask them how much, halve it, and go from there. At least until we got a better idea of standards and norms.
We do get a taxi from the queue and spend a paltry CFA2000 on it…which is great, until we realize that the hotel is quite literally only 10 minutes from the airport. Ah, well. I’m committed to being relaxed on this trip. We probably could have gotten the trip for CFA1000 or even CFA500 if we’d known what we were doing and spoke good French, but so it goes.
Hotel Les Mamelles is located in what must be an ‘up and coming’ district by Dakar standards, at least to my eyes. It’s quite close to the westernmost point in Africa, just under a lighthouse in a small quadrant that’s mostly occupied by residential buildings.
Walking into the Hotel was like something out of a movie. At least, it was to me. But that could just be because I had been in the bush of Liberia for the last four months. Compared to life in Liberia, this was like some kind of four-star hotel. They had tile on the floor, not just concrete or dirt; lights on city power, not just kerosene or generators; water on city sewer, not just pit latrines and buckets; proper beds…in short, nothing special. But it really was like a wave of exhaustion and relief washed over me and said “at last! Civilization again!”
Daniel and I checked in (USD17/night per person for a nice, clean room…with no mosquito nets). The evening was one of the most pleasant I’ve had since Jens left. We sat in the small bar/restaurant, I had a ham and cheese crepe and two big Gazelle beers (66ccl each!). We kicked back. Relaxed. Chatted about nothing in particular in a very comfortable fashion, topics from the beaches of Monrovia to the death penalty. It felt a hell of a lot like a normal day, and it was damn nice.
Unfortunately, this was probably the worst night I’ve had since February. Dakar is hot, every bit as hot as Monrovia. There were no mosquito nets. I don’t think I slept at all. It was hell. I ended up trying to cover myself with my sheet, but that meant that I didn’t get any breeze from the windows and all my heat was trapped, so that only lasted about 20 bucket-sweating minutes before I needed a break outside the sheet, when maybe I would drift off for a few minutes before a mosquito found me. Torment. Unpleasant.
But, eventually it ended. The next morning, I took a shower (with HOT WATER!) we grabbed a continental breakfast, and headed into the city to find our way to our next destination: St. Louis

Day 2: June 12, 2006.
Travel: Dakar to St. Louis
Method: “Peugot Taxi”

We’ve heard a lot about Dakar, most of it not too good. As such, we’ve mutually decided that we’re not really going to spend any time in the city. We’re out of bed at 7AM and off to the Garage, or “garre rote”(or some French word a facsimile thereof). This is a bit complicated, as the hotel host took it upon himself to find us a taxi driver…who wants to overcharge us by a hefty amount, even by our as-yet-with-no-idea standards. This is a bit tricky, then, as since he came to pick us up he expects us to travel with him. In the end, he gives us a ‘free’ lift to the major intersection and we find our own taxi. He also offers to take us to St. Louis himself for only CFA40000. That’s WAAAY out of our pricerange…we had hoped to get by on less than USD50/day each for this trip. We find a taxi to take us into the city to the St. Louis garage.
Each (major) destination in Senegal has its own garage in Dakar. If you want to go to St. Louis, it’s the garage by the market. If you want to go to The Gambia, it’s a garage on the east side of town. And so on. We have to drive pretty much all the way across the city to get to the garage for St. Louis.
Dakar, at least from the back of a broken down old taxi, is not pleasant. It’s noisy. It’s crowded. It’s dirty. It’s just generally not very nice. Add to this the people are also not so friendly, and I just didn’t particularly enjoy the time. I don’t know that I’ve encountered such horrible traffic before, especially given that there were actual proper roads and stop lights and traffic cops and such. The trip from the hotel to the garage, about 10kms, took us almost an hour and a half. By the end of it, I was pretty much sick to my stomach…not from the travel, but from the tremendous, intense, foul diesel fumes from the ancient decrepit cars and trucks making their way along with us. Particularly bad are these giant white busses, which must date to the 50s or 60s, painted in garish colors and festooned with a variety of colorful objects and pennants, frequently with the words “alhamduolallah” painted on the front. They’re always breaking down, and they spit black clouds of diesel out a variety of places as they chug down the road, with people hanging on the back and the roof and out the windows. These are ‘community transit’.
In any case, we do eventually make it to the garage, which is just as noisy, bustling, crowded, and diesel-fume-y as any other place, probably more than most. It’s also a serious challenge to figure out what the hell we’re supposed to do next. We know, at least, that we want a “Peugot Taxi” to St. Louis…
The Lonely Planet identifies three grades of transport from Dakar to St. Louis, the ranging from the Peugot Taxi down to the big white bus. The Peugot’s are more expensive, but also the fastest and most reliable…we’re much more likely to actually reach our destination.
The garage, it turns out, is separated into different sections (this becomes apparent after a few minutes to walking around pretending we know where we’re going while ignoring various requests to give us some guidance). I’m becoming more entrenched by the minute in my initial assessment that no one in Dakar actually wants to help us, just to get our money. We find ourselves, finally, in front of the Peugot section of the garage. And there the fun begins. We need to get to St. Louis.
I have almost never felt as helpless as I did in these negotiations the first couple days traveling. I have no useful French at all, and the locals speak almost no English. As such, Daniel takes the lead in negotiations. Daniel has traveled in Africa before, so before the trip started, I was pretty comfortable with this partnership.
But on this, our first real negotiation, all I can do is stand by and watch, holding my bag and watching out for pickpockets, while Daniel…discusses…the price with the driver. By the end of the trip, I feel like I managed to finally come into my own on this, even with no French to speak of. But for now, I’m useless. Feel a bit lost. I’m standing there, perched by the back of this old car, backpack on my back, surrounded by a mob of Senegalese all trying to get our money and I can’t speak with them at all…
It may well have been one of the most frustrating moments of my life. Ultimately, it passed, and Daniel agreed on a price for us (CFA4000…not our finest hour) and we climbed aboard.
So. “Peugot Taxi”. What is this? Niall’s old Corolla is a good place to start, visually. Not one of these Peugots is newer than 1975. Take Niall’s Corolla, drive it in the desert for twenty-five years, put on four unmatched wheels (possible even different sizes), replace various parts of it with, oh, I don’t know, parts from a 1982 Datsun or something (seats, maybe, and bumpers, and maybe quarter panels…), cut a variety of holes in the floor for appearances, then paint it yellow. Then black. Then yellow again. Then black. Then yellow. Then decide to take all the paint off. But only half of it. Make sure none of the dials work.
Oh, yeah…and put a third row of seats in…somewhere.
The Senegalese standard for filling a taxi is one up front, three in the middle, three in the back. Daniel and I ended up in the third row with one other nice fellow (actually a nice fellow), three abreast. We thought this was horrible…until we got to Mauritania.
The drive to St. Louis was only a little bit harrowing. None of the passengers talked with each other or the driver (that surprised me). We narrowly escape colliding with donkeys, horse carts, children a couple times.
We made two stops on that trip, neither of which were for us. We pass by a seemlingly endless string of market-stalls, each of which filled to bursting with mangoes. Mangoes in all colors and sizes.
As we drive, it feels like we’re starting to enter “North Africa.” A noticeable increase in the visibility of mosques, an increase in men wearing flowing robes and women in head scarves. The scenery quickly moves from lush and green near Dakar to scrub brush and twisted, stunted bushes. I ponder whether or not Senegal produces good olives…probably, but they might not get enough rain.
The road, running generally along the coast, winds through small towns and hamlets. Speed bumps dot the pavement in the middle of the bigger villages. Along the side of the road, painted mud-brick and cement-block houses hunch next to the road – with all the space available, it seems incongruous that they are so near each other. Each town we pass through seems to have a small market in it, and usually a post office and police station. And each small market is packed to the corrugated-iron roof with mangoes. It’s a mango paradise.
With all the mangoes available, I can’t believe anyone stops to buy any, or that anyone could possibly sell their mangoes. There are literally millions of mangoes crouched on top of rickety scrap-timber tables clustered along the highway. Behind each table, a woman in a scarf is standing, waiting for some passerby to decide they need to buy HER mangoes instead of the ones from any of the four hundred thousand other stalls located nearby. The mechanics of this supply/demand market baffle me. Granted, they look scrumptious. They add an infusion of color – emerald greens, ruby reds, sapphire yellows, heaped haphazardly, chronically in danger of rolling to a mushy, sticky demise – to the view out the window of the dusty brown and gray of the passing scrubland.
And they’re absolutely delightful to eat. At the first stop, a ‘pit stop’ for a fellow passenger, we’re instantly beset on all sides by wizened old ladies attempting to shove plates full and bags crammed to bursting with mangoes. How can I resist? I decide to get a bag, something to pass the time, from one woman. It costs me about CFA100 (twenty-five cents) for probably a seven pound bag. I wash them quickly with my drinking water and relish in these perfectly ripe mangoes in the desert heat. They’re everything they appear to be – perfect mangoes, sweet, juicy, messy. I’ve learned (during the brief mango season) the ‘African’ (also, I understand, South American) way of eating mangoes – which is to nip off the tip and essentially suck the mango out through a small hole in the skin. I can think of one time I’ve had mangoes in the States that were sufficiently ripe to eat this way, from Pike Place Market a couple years ago. Every one of these can be squished a little bit and almost drunk like a mango puree from inside the peel. Yum.
But, I digress. Can you tell I liked the mangoes?
We arrived at our destination just after lunchtime dusty and dehydrated. The taxi drops us off at the garage in St. Louis, from where we’ll need to get a taxi into the city. The first order of business is a cold Coke from a nearby shop, just outside of the garage, which gets us away from the squall of begging children and taxi drivers hoping for our custom. A Coke, of course, is still about USD1. Heh. We find a bench in the shade outside the shop and plot our next course of action. We decide we’ll try the Hotel La Louisianne, located at the very northernmost edge of the ‘middle’ island. Taking a glance at the Lonely Planet, I decide that we’re not going pay more than CFA500 for the ride from the garage to the hotel. We’ll just be firm and wait for a taxi to accept our price. If four taxis in succession refuse our fare, we’ll increase it and go from there.
At first, my strategy seems to be not working. Like every other city we visit, if you try to get a taxi in the ‘proper’ place, it’s a queue of taxis waiting for customers, much like you’d see in an airport in the States. This makes haggling a bit difficult, as they try to say you’ve only got one choice, take it or leave it. But that’s just not true. Since the first two drivers in the queue say we’re being silly with our price, I start to pick off drivers just arriving from the town. Two still refuse, and Daniel’s starting to get a little edgy. Finally, the third taxi arriving accepts our fare. I knew it would work!
St. Louis is the former capital of the French colony, which was a combination of parts of Senegal and Mauritania. It’s located quite close to the border and has three distinct parts. The mainland is where the locals mostly live, it’s where real work is done and seems much like any other African city we passed through. Then there are two islands, whose names escape me, connected to the mainland by a bridge by Eiffel – a bridge which is not nearly as impressive as I had hoped. But it was still nice. The first island is the former colonial seat of power. Construction makes it look like its right out of Mediterranean France. Beautiful, if crumbling, old French colonial buildings painted in beautiful colors, lots of flowers, narrow streets with terraces above. Every building seems to have its own small plaza hiding at the end of a small corridor reached through a door from the street – private plazas all. Families live in this section of St. Louis, but they’re much better off and there are also a lot of expats living here. In truth, I think I fell in love with St. Louis. Over the course of the next 18 hours there, I think I could easily live there. The pace of life is pleasant, the people were friendly (for the first time since I arrived in Senegal), the streets were pretty, the standard of living was African but with a colonial twist and a bit of French heritage to it. I delighted in strolling along the sandy boulevards, inspecting the goods in the boulangeries, pastisseries, and bijouteries. The town felt full of life, full of personality, and generally content. Beautiful old plazas in the center of the island. Pleasant conversations (even though we didn’t speak the same language) with people walking to or from work.
St. Louis is a bit of a tourist destination for the French, but either our timing was great or that’s over-reaching a bit, as we were quite literally the only tourists in the city. This was really nice as it meant that there were no queues, no hassling from hustlers, but also it meant that most of the tourist shops were closed up. Unfortunately, this is something that was true almost everywhere we went this trip. The markets were full, but only of regular market goods, not keepsakes and souvenirs.
The second island is again a ‘functioning’ island…it’s where the fishermen live and work. St. Louis is located quite near one of the supposed most dense fish grounds in the world. We walked quite extensively around this part of St. Louis – I loved it. Much less well-off from the first island, but a delight nonetheless. Dabs of colonial buildings surrounded on all sides by the familiar cinder-block constructions of west Africa. The beach…The beach was incredible. From the second you step on it, you’re transported. For as far as you can see, pirogues (the term for the local fishing boats) stretch across the sand. Each of these boats is approximately 10-15m long and no more than 2m wide, with an old, unhinged outboard clamped precariously on the stern. Each boat has a name, and each boat has a determined crew hard at work on some facet of its construction. The most common past-time on this beach seems to be swimming, but a close second is painting your fishing boat. Stunningly bright colors, elaborate paint schemes, bold lines of reds, yellows, oranges, reach from bow to stern. The crews are diligent, especially compared to the standard West African work ethic I’ve witnessed so far. They’re stripping, they’re painting, they’re nailing, they’re sawing…
The beach is probably about 5km long, from the south to the north end of the island, and almost every available space up from the tide mark is occupied by a pirogue, with its fishing crew not far away. We’ve arrived after the catch was returned to shore, so there are almost no boats in the water. It’s a feast for the eyes – everywhere you look are these boats, fishing gear, crews, children playing in the water, colors, sun, sand – it’s tremendous. And they’re friendly!
Friendly, that is, until you ask to take their picture. This they don’t like at all. I ended up with very few pictures of this beach as they were quick to take anger if they saw my camera come up, and if I ever asked to take their picture, they declined.
The other thing about St. Louis for me was the surprising childish delight I experienced to hear the call to prayer from the mosques again. Scattered about the mainland and both islands, mosques are obviously a focal point for the city. I absolutely loved the mosques and calls to prayer of Istanbul. While the mosques were no match for Istanbul, I enjoyed the call to prayer even more here. Unlike Istanbul, where every mosque used the same recorded muezzin, each mosque here in St. Louis had its own. So five times a day, the air was filled with a remarkably joyous cascade of allah hu’akbars, with overlapping chants occasionally produced intense harmonies or discords, making a blanket of music to God that was, quite simply, sublime.
Finished with my walking for the day, I spent the afternoon relaxing on the patio on the water at the hotel, sipping an espresso, taking notes on the trip so far, and relishing in the sounds rising from the city around me.
Later that evening, we went into town to find some food. We were absolutely famished, and the restaurant in the hotel didn’t open until 7PM. It was 5, and I needed some food. We settled on a fairly classy looking place called La Provençal, where I had what could be one of the most satisfying meals of my entire life. A fair amount of this could be due to my lifestyle of the last four months, and the dust and grime from the travel of the day having been finally removed, but it’s a meal I will tell my grandchildren about. It was a simple crepe jambon champignon. It was simple incredible. The crepe itself was perfectly cooked, to my palette, filled with delectable French jambon and a beautiful cheese, topped with fresh sautéed mushrooms and covered in a perfect French béchamel sauce. I washed it down with a very nice dark rum. I don’t think my stomach has been that happy in a hell of a long time, possibly the restaurant in Sydney Harbor where Sky and I ate. I could have died after that crepe, happy.
Slept like a stone that night, in our room over the water, with sounds of the fishing boats drifting across the water to our window.

Day 3: June 13, 2006
Travel: St. Louis to Nouakchott
Method: Peugot taxi, Mercedes taxi

I hope someday, I can come back to St. Louis.
We left the hotel at 7AM, catching a taxi to the garage. We stop along the way to pick up some baguette and cheese (from an actual epicerie with real French cheese – a pleasure if there ever was one) for the road, as we expect to do quite a bit of travel today. We’re at the garage by 7:30, and begin the hunt for a vehicle to Rosso (the border town between Senegal and Mauritania). Apparently, there’s only one Peugot to Rosso at any one time, so we have a choice – take it, or leave it. Having recently experienced the back seat of a Peugot taxi from Dakar, we haggle a bit, and agree on a price…and then buy three seats instead of two, so the rear seat is to our own. We do a better job on the price than we had before. We’ve bought the last seats, so once we’re on board the taxi is ready to go.
The ride to Rosso takes about three hours. With our new-found elbow room, baguette and French cheese, it’s almost enjoyable. I watch the countryside pass by…this part of the Senegal is right on the large Senegal river, and irrigation canals have been brought in extensively from the river to make the land quite fertile. It’s actually green out the window again. We make no stops.
We arrive at the Senegalese side of the border to the now-typical mass of humanity all trying to get money from us except for a new difference, now there’s a man in uniform asking us for something insistently. This actually gives me a bit of a scare…he wants our passports. Why? He doesn’t say. But he definitely wants them, and his armband says “police” on it, so we comply…
And stay hot on his heels so we don’t lose track of our passports. Fortunately, he takes them just into a police station, where they stamp our passports with a departure stamp (saying we’ve left Senegal). Relieved, we head back outside and head for the border crossing post. No bother there, just the same press of bodies trying to sell us things, or offer us money changing services, or guides, or any number of a million other things they offer us because we’re backpackers passing through.
We manage to pass through the border post without incident, and set about finding a pirogue to take us across the river to Mauritania…which is quite easy, as they’re all lined up. We haven’t learned our lesson yet, so we end up on a pirogue close the gate but rather empty. This means that we have to wait until the boat fills up until we depart. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, except that the Mauritanian side of the border closes from two to five every day for some unknown reason. And the hour is ticking closer by the second. In the end, we depart in a crowded pirogue that’s far more stable than it seems and head across the river…and our outboard dies. We’re dead in the water. After putzing about with it for fifteen minutes, the pilot finally decides he needs help. He waves down another pirogue passing by, and they throw us a rope, which all the passengers take a good grip on so we can be towed to the far shore.
We’re on Mauritanian soil finally, and hand over our passports once again to a uniformed army official. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for…
You see, Daniel and I, in our desire not to plan too much, declined to try to get visas before leaving on our trip and instead to get a visa on the border…which we assumed (hoped!) was possible. Anecdotal evidence on the web indicated this could be done.
So…we inform the official that we need visas. This means we have to go to the big grey building nearby. And talk with the visa-guy.
Now, this is easier said than done. Remember, I have no French, and Daniel’s is minimal. Eventually we make it clear to the visa-guy that we need visas. The visa guy was straight out of a Roman Prefecture…he was stout and swarthy, wearing a boubou (like a toga), bossing people around left and right, in general with an air of medieval authority about him. He sat, leaning back on his chair, feet up on his desk, and pointed and directed and was, really, the picture of a prelate.
Daniel is German. They say his visa is no problem. Matter of minutes. Mine, however, is a different story…after all, I’m American. According to the group of people we’re working with, I put together through various snippets of English and French directed at me that they’re not supposed to give me a visa at the border, that I was supposed to get one in Dakar. They didn’t know if they could give me one. I would probably have to go back to Dakar. They had to call the boss man in the capital and find out. It could take some time.
Well, at this point I’ve got nothing but time, so we sit ourselves down and wait.
It was a pleasant wait, although hot. We still had some bread, cheese, and water. I spent the next two hours watching activity at the border. I came to the conclusion that I liked Mauritanians better than Senegalese…they were friendlier, more open, and more personable. There were almost no pushy buggers trying to sell me things or take me places. They did want to know where we were from, how did we like Mauritania, what were we going to do, had we thought about this or that, etc.
In the end, two hours of waiting plus a number of questions from officials about what the hell I was doing plus 20 euros was enough to get me in to Mauritania. *phew*
Next task at hand, find transport to Nouakchott. Now, over the course of our two hour wait, we had met the occasional individual who offered us a ride. Not pushily, just offered. So we figured no problem.
After some hard bargaining, we agreed on 2000 Ougiya per person to go to Nouakchott. This is where we learn of a crucial difference between the Senegalese and the Mauritanian. It turns out that Mauritanians put FOUR in the back seat and TWO in the front seat of a Mercedes taxi. Now, granted, Mercedes sedans are a wee bit bigger than Peugots, but not appreciably larger – certainly not one person wider. This was perhaps the second most uncomfortable trip we made on this journey, from Rosso to Nouakchott in the back with two other full-grown men. Also, we had to wait almost one hour while he filled up the rest of the Mercedes. On the plus side, the Mercedes in Mauritania are in much better state of repair than the Peugots in Senegal. They were almost (almost) like real cars.
Mid afternoon, we set out for the 4 hour drive to Nouakchott.
The road from Rosso to Nouakchott has none of the small villages along the route. It’s mostly surrounded by the edge of the desert, and the monotony is broken only occasionally by a travelers-rest type place where they sell petrol, fix tires, and have a tent set up to rest in the shade. The only other thing you see are gendarmeries (police check-points) about every 60km where everyone has their documents scrutinized. As such, it was one of the more dull trips, except that it did give us our first taste of sand.
Lots of sand can be found in Mauritania. Lots of it. Sitting sand, blowing sand, red sand, white sand, yellow sand, sand in your eyes, in your clothes, in your pockets, in your shoes. Sand. Lots of it.
Due to the sand, we were forced to ride with most of the windows on the Mercedes raised, and of course there is no functioning air conditioning. This made for a very hot ride, the two of us in the back with two others, the three in front. The view out the window was neat, to really feel like I was getting to desert, but it was an uncomfortable, unpleasant journey in general.
After four unremarkable hours driving more or less in a straight line, we arrived in Nouakchott. Not much to see, really. Once again as soon as we pull in to the garage, we find a small shop just outside and get a Coke in the shade. We get an offer for a taxi to which we respond “not right now”. Much to our surprise, he replies to the effect of “ok, well, when you’re ready, if you like, I’ll be over here”. This is quite a shift from the Senegalese experience. A much appreciated shift.
Nouakchott was, according to the guide book, entirely constructed in the 60s from scratch. There was literally nothing there before then. The city kind of looks like it. There’s not much to it. It’s a bit sprawly, definitely dusty and sandy, and with very little to do or see. It seems to ‘work’ – that is, it appears to have a stable economy of its own, which is a plus, especially after my time in Liberia, and the people are still friendly and pleasant. We find a hotel (Hotel La Dune) just outside the market area. Then we relish in not being in the back of a Mercedes, and have a nice espresso (real espresso, not Nescafe!) I get to spend some time updating my travelogue and watch the world of Nouakchott walk by. Get into some nice conversations with a man, Aziz, who, it turns out, is a former guide. But he’s a nice guy, and we hit it off although he speaks no English and I speak no French. It’s with Aziz that I realize how effectively you can communicate with someone even though it’s another language you both speak. And I think I have a knack for it. With Aziz, we get some money changed, and also schedule transport for tomorrow to Nouadibou, and also buy a tierag. The tierag is what almost all the men in Mauritania are wearing on their heads. It’s a long (2 meters?) piece of cloth that you wind about your head in a variety of fashions depending on your need…to keep sand out the various places in your head. We both picked up black tierags (much easier to clean, according to Aziz, and it’s a good thing we did!) and he gave us our first instructions on how to put the things on our heads without looking like total western morons. The course of the day wore on, and at one point Aziz offered us tea. Tea? Yep, tea. Mauritanian tea.
I felt honored, and accepted, and we went back to his quarters (he lives in the hotel compound, back in the staff area) and spent the next hour participating in a Mauritanian cultural ritual. It’s a lot like the tea in Turkey, only more ceremonial based, and the tea itself is totally different. I hope I get a chance to try to make it in the States.
It’s based on green tea, that’s boiled (strongly!) in small pot. After some predetermined amount of time has passed, they add a staggering amount of sugar and a bunch of fresh mint to the pot, then pour it into tiny (think demitasse) cups. It’s then poured back and forth between the cup and the pot about 12 times (near as I could tell) and replaced on the fire. Then its poured into a cup. This cup is then poured between the other cups (usually two others) another fifteen or twenty times (when I asked, this was to mix and oxidize the tea…maybe it’s true?! I don’t know). Finally, after the ‘right’ amount of mixing and oxidizing has taken place, the tea is distributed between the cups and drunk. In total each serving is probably about one fluid ounce. It’s sweet, minty, hot, delicious. Both Daniel and I agreed. The process of brewing a serving takes about 15 minutes.
By custom, to have anything less than three servings is rude. So we spent the rest of that hour having tea with Aziz, and other hotel staff that showed up (Mustapha, Mohammad, and others). I thought it was great. It was exactly the kind of thing I love when traveling. I felt like I finally got a bit of a picture of the people, I got off the road and got to meet some people, got to experience the life a little bit. It was wonderful. Plus, we both liked the tea (a lot!) and now we looked forward to getting some more.
We wrapped the evening off with shwarma sandwiches from a nearby restaurant…which would have gone great with a beer, except you can’t drink in Mauritania…and watching a world cup match at the hotel restaurant. Sleep was a welcome relief, and sound, if quite hot.

Day 4: June 14, 2006
Travel: Nouakchott to Nouadibou
Method: Mercedes taxi

Having experienced the back of the Mercedes taxi and finding it extremely undesirable, and knowing the upcoming ride was a long one, we invested a little extra this time to secure ourselves the front seat. We wanted to go from Nouakchott to Nouadibou. The Lonely Planet says this trip takes anywhere from 12 to 24 hours depending on the tides. Huh? Well, supposedly the first 150kms are along the beach and can only be passed at low tide. So we wanted an early start. And, if we were going to be on board for 24 hours, we wanted the front seats and plenty of food.
As it turns out, as in so many things on this trip, the Lonely Planet was wrong. There’s now a perfectly good black-top road the whole length of the journey. We managed about 100km/hr the 450km from Nouakchott to Nouadibou. The front seats were worth the extra four bucks we paid. I took a lot of pictures along this road as it really was feeling now like I was in the desert…even more than the first leg of our trip in Mauritania. Sand and rock all around. Fewer small bushes and such. Lots of pictures of not very much, really. Found myself a bit frustrated that apparently I can’t set the f-stop on my neat little camera. Ah, well.
We arrive in Nouadibou (again) sandy and dusty and coated with travel grime. This time the driver takes us all the way to our chosen place of rest, Camping Abba. We have lunch in a Chinese restaurant (of all things) that’s right near the ‘hotel’. Intriguingly, the menu for said restaurant is in French, English, and Spanish (!). Nouadibou has…well…nothing in it. I mean, it’s a town and all, but there’s just not much there. It’s on the water, and is one of the other major fishing areas of the west African cost – but none of the small boats fish the waters. It’s all ‘real’ fishing boats.
Spanish, I hear you say? Indeed, Spanish. As it happens, Nouadibou is a major fishing port, one of the peak ports in Africa. As a major fishing port, it deals extensively with the Canary Islands. From what little I could glean (between Spanish and French), the original colony in Mauritania was Spanish speaking, and also the Canaries. On the edge of the desert, in a sandy, dusty, broken-down town, after hearing for days only French and hassanye, all of a sudden there are signs in Spanish, there are menus in Spanish, and people passing by are speaking three languages at once instead of just two. On the plus side, I had at least a small ability to communicate now, as my Spanish, while not great, is passable for certain things. But just to feel like we stumbled across a little alcove of Spanish speakers was a bit, well, strange. Welcome, and neat, but strange.
I want to get feel for the city. Similar impressions to Nouakchott, actually: the people are friendly and pleasant, the town is dusty and sandy, with not much to it. It was very nice, however, to stroll along and feel a little bit like I was part of the place. We ventured into the marche (market) which was similar to the others we’d encountered – quite normal. Lots of normal person stuff, almost nothing for tourists. Daniel decides to buy a boubou, which is like a big toga, and is worn in combination with the tierag by most men in this area. I’m still thinking about it, at this point. He’s planning ahead for the coming train ride across the desert, which can get downright frigid at night, and thinking it’ll be a convenient thing to have along. I’m torn, and for now, decide against it.
After the market, we drop our stuff back at the ‘hotel’ and head to the port and fish markets. This was a blast. We only almost got into big trouble once (taking pictures of what may have been government property…oops!) but they’re quite laid back and a couple of minutes of discussion and we were just sent off the grounds.
The port was impressive, there really were a lot of fishing boats about. The market was similarly neat – the catches were still coming in that day and were being offloaded and sold on the spot. We ran into a man from Senegal (much friendlier than most Senegalese) with whom we chatted quite a bit, and he ended up inviting us for tea in his fishmonger shop. Love the tea! We spent an hour passing the time in a dark, dank, fishy, fly filled fishmonger hut, but had a great time doing it. Felt, again, like this was ‘what it is about’ – really felt like I could connect with the place and the people.
Those are, I think, the moments I enjoy most when I’m traveling. That’s what I like the best, that’s what makes me feel like my traveling time is worthwhile. To see sights, to wander around, to take pictures, that’s good and I enjoy it. But what really gets me going is when I meet and experience a small window of the culture, of the character, or the attitude and perspective of the place. The only way I can do that is through the people. I love to meet the people in the place. I love to sit and talk about not very much for a long time and get a glimpse of the world they live in through their eyes. What their concerns are, what things make them laugh, what things make them angry. This was something I felt intangibly before this trip, but was very much cemented by our touring. We were on the go so much, trying to get so far and see things, that the moments we were still and interacting with people were few and far between and extra-special for me.
After an hour of tea and conversation, we headed back to town. We watched the world cup at the Chinese restaurant, headed back to the ‘hotel’, hatched our plans for the following day, and hit the sack.

Days 5 & 6: June 15-16, 2006
Travel: Nouadibou to Choûm to Atâr to Chinguetti (yikes!)
Method: Iron ore train, bed of a pickup, bed of another pickup

Planning for the following day was important because it was a little complicated. The goal was to take “the longest train in the world” across the western Sahara as east as it goes, then get off the train in the middle of the night and find transport from the landing point to the town of Chinguetti. According to the Lonely Planet, this train leaves at 2PM, and is free, if you want to ride in an empty iron ore car. There’s also a ‘passenger car’ which is really a cattle car with benches along the interior. Now, we had seen the day before the train go by, and it had an ACTUAL passenger car. We were more than a little nervous about the open iron ore car thing, not from safety, but because the nights can be so cold. After four months in Sanniquellie, we didn’t want to hyperthermiate. After a LOT of thinking and talking about it, we decided we’d take the passenger car. As neat as it sounded to take the iron ore car, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to risk freezing. As it turns out, we shouldn’t have worried about it.
We spent the morning wandering around, I went ahead and purchased a boubou (got a much better deal for it, much to Daniel’s chagrin I think). At about noon (thinking the train left at 2PM) we headed to the train station. The Lonely Planet indicated the “train station” was just a spot in the desert where the train stopped and people jumped on, but in fact, there was a small station built out in the desert. We got there and were the only ones. So we waited.

And waited.

Over time, people gradually began trickling in to the station in ones and twos. Slowly, donkey carts carrying supplies began to line up along the tracks up the way from the station. More people begin to show up. By 3:30PM there’s quite a collection of people gathered at the site, all manner of people, and a tremendous lineup of donkey carts carrying goods stalled along the railway line.
The station’s location was right out of the Tatooine desert in Star Wars – rocky escarpments and yellow sand. You felt a bit like you were on the edge of the world. A pair of railroad tracks appear out of the sand and disappear to the other horizon. Big chunks of umber and golden colored sandstone jut out of the desert floor. The wind was fierce. Sand was blowing hard, and the temperature had not gotten below 37C since we had started out that day. It made for quite the combination…Large family groups, with what must be all their earthly possessions, a few individuals like us just traveling, carts and piles of merchant goods and empty oil drums towering up the tracks, and across it all the nonstop hum of blowing sand. No one ever wanted to face into the wind, even with boubou and tierag.
And at long last, the train arrives. Sure enough, at the end of it (and it was long) was one passenger car. Then the chaos began. People began using anything they could think of to get into the train and try to secure one of the very limited supply of cabins in the passenger car. The mob was amazing. There were people everywhere fighting and shouting and cramming into windows and crawling all over the train. Daniel and I were just not prepared. We ended up late in the mob, and found ourselves with only a tiny bit of space along the corridor, along with 75 or 80 others. All of the cabins had been grabbed by family groups.

Thus began the 12 hour ride across the desert on the longest train in the world.

In hindsight, while it was neat, I don’t think I’d do it again. I certainly wouldn’t do it in the passenger car. It was the third most unpleasant traveling experience of the trip. There was no room, no place to sit, a mass of humanity in the car with us, people stepping on us to get past, and it was hot with a hot desert wind. It was pretty well miserable, although definitely an experience I relish having done. I think I would do it again, in the iron ore cars…sure you’d get really, really dirty, but you could probably stretch out and lie down if you want. I don’t imagine, anyway, that it could be any more uncomfortable than the passenger car.
It was a long, hot, noisy ride. Once the sun went down, it was almost pitch black inside on an almost moonless night. Some families had brought gas containers and cooked themselves dinner. Some had no food. A few people had flashlights. Most did not. Mostly, there was just the sound of the train moving through the desert, and a quiet murmur of 250 people in a train car meant for 50, sleeping, or talking softly in Hassanye, with the occasional swell of sound when a man would start an Islamic chant in the darkness.
It was a fascinating bit of travel, in hindsight, if totally uncomfortable. We just hunkered down and sat on our backpacks, crushed tight against the outside wall. We had managed to get ourselves by a window, thank god, which meant at least we could see out. I was stuck again by how hard it was to travel in a land where you don’t speak the language. I would’ve absolutely loved to have been able to chat with my neighbors for the 12 hours we spent in the train. Our fears of freezing were greatly unjustified. In fact, the only thing the weather did was to get even more hot when the wind blew across the sand. The temperature began to climb up from the 37 into the 40s inside the car.
We had plenty of water with us, and also some food to tide us over. Late in the evening we cracked open our packs to enjoy tinned corned beef, some kind of tuna thing from a can, scary room temperature cream cheese, and baguettes from the market. Washed down with a bit of water, it was a feast.
And, at about 4AM, having slept for some few minutes sitting on our packs hunched over in the hallway, it was over. The train creaked to a halt and you could hear ‘Choûm’ called out in the dark. A mad dash to get off the train before it started moving again ensued. We all spilled out into the star-lit desert. A small line of pickup trucks was waiting for us.
Choûm is really just a spot in the desert where the train turns north. A small community has sprung out of the sand since it’s the closest point to the town of Atâr and the train stops there to change tracks. In Choûm, really, the only thing you can do is go somewhere else.
So, addled from our experience on the train, we joined the throng of others and found ourselves transport to Atâr. And thus began the first most unpleasant leg of our trip.
Everyone who got off in Choûm ended up on the same landcruiser. This landcruiser was the pickup-truck variety. It was in pretty good shape, really. But “everyone” was an awful lot of people. There were at least four families of 5 or more, as well as a number of bachelors traveling to Atâr. Once we had all agreed on a price (and, mostly, we all paid the same rate), the loading began. This consisted of piling everything that was luggage in the bottom of the pickup bed. Then they covered this with a layer of blankets and the like.
Having learned my lesson at the train, I was perched, like a hawk waiting to strike, at the truck for the sign that we could board. I was determined, this time, not to get screwed out of a decent place to sit. I could see how many people they were going to put in this pickup.
Unfortunately, all my preparation was in vain. In true Mauritanian chivalrous fashion they allowed the women and children to board the truck first. They, of course, took all the nice sitting down space in the interior of the truck. Once they were settled, small children nestled between mothers and grandmothers, us men-folk were allowed to find anyplace we could cling on. This meant, really, that we were indeed clinging on for dear life as there was no place to really sit down anywhere. Thus loaded, we began our trip across the desert to Atâr.
I’m pretty sure, over the course of that trip, I cracked a rib and bruised a kidney. We bounced across the sand and rock in the darkness for a solid three or four hours (at this point, I lost track). I had wedged myself in along the tailgate in a way that afforded me some purchase as well as the ability to lean my body against the gate so I could relax my muscles from time to time. Or, at least, that was my plan. In truth, I could relax never. The acceleration and breaking of the truck, the mass of people and luggage in the back, the lack of any road or even trail to follow, all meant that I was a mass of nerves, sore muscles, and bruises by the time we entered Atâr mid-morning. I would’ve loved to get a picture, but I couldn’t even move enough to get my camera out of my pants pocket. It was physically impossible to do so.
Atâr is a blur. Even in my travelogue notes from that day I didn’t really notice anything. We were so exhausted we must have both looked like the walking dead. All we knew, from our planning in Nouadibou, was that we were not going to spend time in Atâr. We needed to get to Chinguetti. Once we got to Chinguetti, we would relax a bit. Chinguetti was as far into the desert as we would really go.
So we had to find another ride for the two hours to Chinguetti. We managed to find a pickup heading that way. Unlike the other, this one was just a normal pickup we hitched a ride on…so we could sit or stand in the back, on our packs, in a fashion that was, compared to the traveling of the previous 18 hours, a luxury.
The travel from Atâr to Chinguetti was a scant 2 hours. The landscape around us was stunning. Atâr is at the edge of the “Adrar Plateau”, a vast plateau hundreds of kilometers across and a couple hundred meters up. The journey to Chinguetti took us up and on to the plateau. The heat was stifling. We had thought it was hot before, but we were wrong. The wind blew stinging sand and gravel across us in the back of the truck. Once up on the plateau, all I could see from horizon to horizon was like a moonscape – black blasted rock. Nothing growing. Heat waves rose from the ground like ripples in water. It was tremendous. It was desolate. It was beautiful.
We drove in to Chinguetti early afternoon. The town is surrounded by swelling red sand dunes hundreds of meters high. It’s quite large, but mostly abandoned, having only a population of a thousand or so. It’s the seventh holiest city of Islam, coincidentally, and well known for old Islamic texts kept under lock and key in equally old libraries. Much of the town dates to the 12th century, especially the red-stone construction of much of the old (western half) town. Once we arrive, we arrange for a tent at the Hotel Rose de la Sable.

I promptly fall asleep.

When I awake in the early evening, it’s a good time to go out for a stroll. The old town is fascinating…collapsing, old, beautiful, abandoned, it feels old. The walk around is quite enjoyable, even if it’s swelteringly hot and dry.
There’s pretty much no one around in the town, or at least, we can’t find them. The few we do meet are very surprised to see us this time of year. Stunned, really. Why on earth would we come to Mauritania now, in the hot season? But they’re very friendly as well.
We spend the afternoon exploring the old town of Chinguetti. The town is divided in two by a broad wadi, approximately 40m across. The old town is just that – old. Dating to the establishment of Islam in West Africa (so, ok not that old, but pretty old). It’s a mishmash of convoluted red-stone walls, tiny doors and windows, broken paving stone walkways draped in blowing sand. Nothing crests more than 2 stories, except for the Old Mosque rising out of the center of the town. Placed strategically about the town are signs (in French) identifying various places of interest – here, an artisan collective, there, a biblioteque. Always just on the edge of your vision are the dunes just outside the town, just visible through a gap in the buildings, or as you crest a small rise, a rich mahogany against the deep blue of the unblemished desert sky. As we promenade in the narrow canyons formed by the crumbling walls, we encounter few people but many picturesque moments – made so by the contrast of bright blue doors against old stone walls, of the mosque peeking up above the slate roofs. It was a delightful trip. After our walk through the winding, excavated streets of old town, we find a cold coke (again, about USD1!) and call it a day. We head back to the hotel and the our mats on the floor of the tent.
The longest continuous stretch of travel is done. We’re as far into the desert as we’re going to go. From here, a bit of relaxing, and then head back out.

Day 7: June 17, 2006
Travel: Chinguetti to Ouadâne
Method: 4x4

A pleasant morning, waking up in the relative cool of our tent, having a spot of bread and jam for breakfast. Then we board the 4x4 (a Toyota Hilux pickup) to head across the desert to the mostly-abandoned former caravan town of Oudâne and the crater of Guelb Jerat.
This was, really, a neat ride. We pretty much just set off across the dunes in a truck (we had rented it & a driver for the day) by ourselves. It’s a fascinating three hour drive across the sand, wadis, escarpments, ridges, and dunes of the western Sahara and Adrar plateau. We stop from time to time to adjust the level of air in the tires, or at a small oasis with a spring to top off the radiator. Driving through the desert we pass an awful lot of camels, including more than once a whole herd (herd?), standing, chewing, looking bored and disinterested in the scenery and fast-moving pickup we’re riding in. I took a lot of pictures of sand passing by. They don’t do it justice. I really had a blast.
The ability of the driver to know where he’s going is amazing. There was no road, no track, no nothing except for the occasional wasted tree or big rock or patch of wadi to guide us. Yet he made it there, and in almost exactly the amount of time he thought it would take.
Ouadâne is an even more abandoned town than Chinguetti perched on a cliff. The old town, also dating back 800-900 years, clings, collapsed, to the side of the cliff, rolling down across it like a landslide. We were told that five families still live here. The highlight of the town is definitely the old town, with its two mosques (the New Mosque and the Old Mosque) connected by the Rue de 40 Savants. Much has been excavated, all is in ruin; the view is tremendous. You can walk through ancient narrow winding streets built of red stone that are pretty much untouched by the ages. The houses have an interesting construction of tiny doors just below the ground level and tiny windows up high. The Rue de 40 Savants runs the length of the old town from gate to gate of the Old and New Mosques, meandering through an old plaza and down the hillside to the base of the cliff. It used to be inhabited by a bunch (well, 40) of Islamic scholars, apparently famous across the Old World for their scholarly-ness. It was quite a site to take in. It really felt like we were in a ghost town – we saw almost no one the whole duration of our visit. There were apparently shops and such, but they were all shuttered up, abandoned for the season. We trekked all through the town, up and down the hillside. Here, again, there are libraries holding old preserved Islamic texts, some quite beautifully flourished. Facing west, the Old Town seems to change color in the waxing light of the sun as the day goes on. Finally, after some hours of walking – still encountering almost no people – we find ourselves a cold coke (about USD1), roust our driver from his siesta, and head back to Chinguetti.
Upon returning to Chinguetti, we have a couple rounds of tea with our hostelier, Sheik, before a quick dinner of couscous and vegetables, and hit the sack.

Day 8 & 9: June 18-19, 2006
Travel: Chinguetti to Oasis Gala to Chinguetti to Atar to Nouakchott
Method: Camel, pickup truck, Mercedes taxi

Days eight and nine were the second highlight of my trip (after the crepe in St. Louis).

Quite simply, it was great.

We set off about 7AM on the back of two camels accompanied by a Chamelliere, and a petit Chamelliere, across the dunes to an oasis town. The sky was clear, the weather was not too hot that day, the wind didn’t blow fearsomely across the sand. The camels were very pleasant, quite well indoctrinated to having humans on their backs, and it was a beautiful, beautiful trip. Every direction you looked in was like a shot from National Geographic. This was really the Sahara I had been expecting the whole time – nothing to see for miles and miles but sand. The dunes are quite tall out here, reaching 300m in height, and can move in a matter of nights from one place to another. To reach the oasis, we had to travel by camel for three hours, take a rest for the hot part of the day, then continue for 2 hours more. It was stupendous. The tranquility, the quiet, the gently sway of the camel saddle; it was delightful.
After trekking through non-stop picturesque scenery for the day (after our lunch and tea break under a tree by a wadi), and having climbed steadily up dunes as we go, we crest a dune and arrive at Oasis Gala. This is a proper oasis…
Springing out of the sandy desert, there is a profusion of green, palm trees 20m tall, dense green foliage clumped together around a spot no more than 50m across. The competition in the plant world for the wet patch of sand must be fierce. While there is no surface spring or pool at this oasis, there is enough water close to the surface to support a tiny village of two or three dozen mud huts in the desert. To the north of the village, the dunes we came down rise all at once out of the ground like mountains. After a walk in the oasis itself (quickly over) we stroll between the huts of the town, meet some locals and they offer us tea. A nice experience, although they didn’t even speak French out here, just Hassanye (an Arabic dialect). Made for a quiet tea service, that’s for sure.
With the sun going down, we pick out a small dune next to the village, spread out our camel blankets, have some tea, and just stare at the sky. We ventured back up the dune to catch pictures of the sun setting over the desert, a beautiful sight. Tired, hot, hungry, we return to the camel blanket for some rice and tinned vegetables and sleeping under the stars.

The following morning, happy birthday to me! I’m now 29! Yikes!

I slept great. The stars were crystal clear in the moonless sky overhead, and while it got chilly, my boubou kept me warm. Daniel didn’t sleep so well on the sand, but I found it just fine. The morning brought us a quick bite of breakfast, and heading back to Chinguetti. The ride back was every bit as beautiful and enjoyable as the ride out. The dunes shift and blow on the horizon. The desert is quiet, the desert is beautiful.
The funny thing about camel riding is that you might not get to spend much time on the camel, depending on where you’re going. For instance, camels aren’t too good at climbing up hills if they’re loaded down. So, on our way back, we had to walk the first hour accompanying the camels, as we had to crest the Grande Dune again. Climbing a dune is not fun. They’re a pain in the ass, really, more than a little tiring to climb up. Two steps forward, one and one-half steps back. Also, camels apparently need a lot of rest. Between that, the fact that you can’t travel in the desert between 10AM and 4PM due to the sun, and the amount of rest camels need, and I’m convinced that if you actually had to go anywhere by camel, you might never make it.

But I had an absolute blast.

We returned to the hotel, got in a little fight with the hosteliere about said trip (long story), and found ourselves another pickup back to Atâr, to make the journey back to Nouakchott. The pickup was in pretty crummy state, but it made it the whole way back to without breaking down, even with the eight goats that were riding with us in the bed of the truck. The plateau passing by was every bit as magnificent going out as coming in.
We made it to Atâr without incident, thanks in large part to our boubous and tierags, as the blowing wind was wicked and howling across the rocks. I think that it’s likely I lost the top layer of the skin around my eyes (the only part of my face exposed) to the sand. It’s a little part of me left behind in Mauritania.
Once we got to Atâr, we needed to find a taxi to Nouakchott. We had established that we would be inside the taxi, as we’d now spent an awful lot of time exposed to the weather and the sun and such. Fortunately, they’re easy to find if you’re a white tourist with a big backpack. We rounded one up in no time.
The problem was, there were no more passengers. As it happened, we had to be transferred to a different taxi.
Now, little did we know that this was less of a ‘public’ taxi, and more of a ‘private’ taxi. What did this mean? Well, we had paid our ‘fare’ to Nouakchott. We were driving down the long stretch of highway, through gorgeous multihued desert, and we stopped. We thought, at first, that this was a regular, “rest the car and sit in the shade for a few minutes” kind of stop. However, after the first hour had passed, we realized this was not the case. In fact, this was a bit of a private taxi, and the guy who was driving, it seemed, had family in this little middle-of-nowhere encampment. So he had stopped (with one other passenger) to have a bit of lunch/dinner with his family. Then he needed to have some tea. Then he needed to take a nap. Finally, almost three hours later, we were ready to go.
Now this was, while not great, OK with me. I have certainly gotten used to at this point the concept of Africa time, which is similar to Latin time but apparently even more relaxed. I figured we’d get there eventually. So I sat in the shade, rounded myself up a cold orange Fanta, and watched the desert blow by me from my carpet on the ground. The time just kept ticking by. Of course, they didn’t really speak French, so it was a bit hard to communicate our desires with the driver, especially as he was in his house and the rest of us were sitting around outside. The other passengers didn’t really seem to mind, so I joined them in taking it easy.
As I said, almost three hours later we resumed our travel. Uneventful all the way back in to Nouakchott, and we stayed once again at the Hotel La Dune. We were tired, and hungry, and had some of the best shwarma ever at a dive place around the corner from the hotel. It was divine. Or, perhaps that’s because we spent the last three days eating, essentially, out of a can.
The night passed, following another world cup match in the hotel restaurant, uneventfully and I slept very well.

Day 10: June 20, 2006
Travel: Nouakchott to St. Louis
Method: Mercedes taxi, big white bus

A hard day for us. It started out well, we left the hotel (we had to break out of the hotel as it was locked up tight when we wanted to leave) to shop for a t-shirt for me (trying to find one with the Mauritanian flag). I was unsuccessful, although a lot of people offered to paint one for me…that wasn’t quite what I had in mind. After that, we picked up some food for the trip, returned to the hotel (which, by this time thankfully was open), and found a taxi to head out.
Now seasoned travelers with this area, we knew what to look for and what to pay and who to talk to. We found a great taxi, almost full (which means we leave soon), in decent shape, and got the price we wanted. We did have to have a goat in the car with us, but it was pretty quiet about the matter, and didn’t smell too bad, so that was OK.
We made great time down to the border at Rosso, right up until some road construction just before the town. Biting our nails a bit about the time (remember, the border closed in the afternoon), we did manage to coast in to the Senegal side at 11:30AM. Plenty of time.
Not, however, if they decide to close the Senegal side of the border too! Which, regretfully, they did. They had plenty of time to process our passports, and instead they hung on to them until noon, at which time they said “sorry, we’re closed for the afternoon”. Which is how I got introduced to ‘dash’. A dash is a bribe. They wanted CFA1000 to stamp our passports with ‘arrival’ (not just us, everybody after twelve, but they had hung on to ours even though we had arrived early).
I was pissed. Daniel was even more pissed. However, I did not relish the idea of waiting until 3PM at the border post in the blazing sun to get my passport stamped, so I proposed that we just paid the damn money and moved on. It was a bit of a debate, but in the end we did decide to pay the bribe, and proceeded to find a ride to St. Louis.
Which is how we found ourselves on one of those big white busses. The peugot taxi we wanted to take was almost empty…it could very well have been three hours before it left if it filled at the current rate. The bus was pretty close to full. Granted, full is pretty damn full, but still it had a better chance of leaving much sooner than the Peugot, and I wanted to just be in St. Louis. So, we took it.
Boarded, found seats (small, cramped ones), and…waited. And waited. And waited. Until, finally, we were off! Crammed, seven across four seats, ten deep, in a puttering white bus with “alhoumdoulallah” splashed across the front, to slowly coast down the road to St. Louis.
In hindsight, after the entire trip was over, I managed to put two and two together. It makes perfect sense to have that across the front of the bus. As I understand it, it means (more or less) “oh, thank god” (or, rather, the Islamic equivalent there of). And that’s exactly right.
If you can find a bus, “alhoumdoulallah”…if you’re waiting for the bus and it finally arrives, “alhoumdoulallah”…if you’re on the bus, when it finally leaves its station, “alhoumdoulallah”…when you’re on the bus and it breaks down (which it WILL do, inevitably) when it finally gets repaired, “alhoumdoulallah”…when you finally arrive at your destination after being in the bus for untold number of hours, “alhoumdoulallah”…and so on.
We had a hot, dry, slow, tiresome journey back across the northern corner of Senegal. We did eventually make it, but it took a lot longer that we had hoped. We only broke down twice. We managed to keep our seats. We didn’t get pulled off the bus by the army (although some other passengers did). In short, “alhoumdoulallah”.
The day was so hot, the trip so dry, I was tremendously dehydrated by the time we pulled in to St. Louis. I was so dehydrated, in fact, that over the course of an hour and a half, I drank two bottles of pop, a 1.5L bottle of water, a liter of coke, and still didn’t have to pee. Later that evening, I had another bottle of water and two big (66cl) bottles of beer (first beer in days! Damn it was tasty!) in the evening and that was finally enough to get me back to mostly-rehydrated status. It was pretty intense. If the day had been much longer, I would’ve probably needed the ORS.
The night was great. Relaxing, quiet, serene, muezzin calls floating through the air, moonlight on the ocean out from the patio, just great. I slept wonderfully.

Day 11, 12, and 13: June 21-23, 2006
Travel: St. Louis to Dakar to Ile de Goree
Method: Peugot taxi, ferry boat

Day eleven was our last official day traveling. We had two weeks of vacation time, and we were back at our starting point (more or less) and we were both ready for at least one day of not moving. Since neither of us had any great thoughts about Dakar, we settled on staying on the Ile de Goree for our last two days.
The Ile de Gorree has a fair amount of international notoriety as a slaving port. One of the most famous attractions in Senegal is the Ile de Gorree, and the “Door of no return”, where slaves who were sold made their last foot step in Africa before being loaded on slave ships headed to the States or Europe. It’s quite a doorway, actually, as it opens unobstructed out to the sea. To walk around the Maison de Esclave (I think that’s the term), to view the holding cells and rooms, to stand at the door and look out, it is quite moving.
It would be more moving if the site weren’t the source of such controversy. Many legitimate sources are claiming that it’s a bunch of hooey, that no slaves were ever moved out of this island, that it doesn’t make any sense for a variety of reasons. That the government of Senegal is foisting it upon tourists to compete with the slaving forts of Togo and Benin. That, at best, it was a slave trader’s house, but that it probably never actually saw a slave in it.
Regardless, it’s a nice moment, and the museum attached is a nice addition, even if it’s all in French.
The island itself is, well, gorgeous. Located between Dakar and the mainland of Africa, it’s less than a kilometer long, and only about 200 kilometers wide. It’s covered, tip to tail, in wonderful old French colonial houses in beautiful Mediterranean colors, except where WWII-era forts eat up the cliff faces. It is surrounded by black volcanic rock but has a few nice sandy beaches (somehow) clinging to the shores. On the island are a smattering of restaurants, some guesthouses, and lots of artists.

Really, it was the perfect place to spend days 12 and 13. A great place to relax.

And that’s exactly what we did. I pretty much camped myself out on a chair in a restaurant with a book, ate decent food (actually, some excellent boulliabase) drank coffee, water, pop, beer, and rum, and generally watched life go by for two solid days. By the time we had reached the Ile de Gorree, I think we had earned it.
Granted, it felt pretty strange to spend a day NOT moving around, much less two. But I needed it. After all the stuff we had done and seen the first 11 days, I needed to just sit for a bit and stare at the ocean. The people on the island were actually quite friendly, much more so than other Senegalese, even the ones who actually lived there (and there are quite a few).
So, two days passed for us on this small idyllic isle. We moseyed about, poked our heads into various little shops, made good friends with some of the locals, watched the world cup, and just laid low for a couple days. I needed it, that’s for sure, after the intensity and constant movement of the previous two weeks. There wasn’t really a lot to do on the island, but that was OK with me. During the days, the ferry would come roughly every hour (every African hour) and offload a whole boatload of tourists who would whirl through the island, taking in the Slave House, walking up to the fort, and then leaving again. Both days, the small beach cove was packed with school children apparently on holiday from the mainland, cavorting about the tiny harbor, playing games, screaming, and having fun. They had one game in particular which has scary to watch – it involved waiting until the ferry was leaving and then trying to climb on board the back of the boat without anyone noticing and shooing them off…dangerously close, in my opinion, to the big propeller on the ferry. I was amazed that over the two days I didn’t see any kids chewed up into fish bait by this game. But they thought it was great fun.

Day 14/15 – 24 and 25 June 2006
Travel: Ile de Goree to Dakar to Monrovia
Method: Ferry, Airplane

Knowing that our flight was leaving unpleasantly early the following day, we had to leave the Ile de Goree and stay on the mainland for our last night. This meant a return to Hotel Les Mamelles for the evening. I was a bit dubious, given the previous night I spent there not getting any sleep, but it made the most sense from a planning standpoint and the hotel was, at least, a known quantity in a city of unknowns for us. So we took the mid-afternoon ferry and the two hour taxi ride back through the stinking diesel miasma that seems to define Dakar for me now, and passed the balance of the day continuing to relax. We watched some world cup.
The room was better, mosquitoes greatly reduced, and it would have been swell except that I got sick. I’m pretty sure it was the food, the pizza in particular, but it was not much fun. I ended up still not getting any sleep. In the morning, at 5AM, we left for the airport. I threw up while waiting to board and felt much better from then on. The flight was unexceptional, and so we returned to Monrovia.


So, that’s my trip. In hindsight, I would’ve loved to be a bit more ‘still’ during my holiday, but I also don’t regret anything we did or didn’t do. I saw a lot (although not many tourist sights), I had a fabulous time. I felt that Daniel and I did a good job together, never bit off each others’ heads or had serious conflict. I relish a number of experiences I won’t soon forget, if ever, and learned a lot about myself in strange unknown contexts. It was a blast.