In Mauritania
Day 2
Tuesday July 19th
Start: St. Louis, Senegal [16 01N 16 37 W]
Mid: Rosso [Senegal / Mauritania border] [16 30 N 15 49 W]
End: Nouakchott, Mauritania [18 07 N 16 02 W]
We got bright and early at six and headed out. We knew from reaching the border we would get ripped of from the exchange and so we wanted just enough to exchange to get us to Nouakchott where, hopefully, a volunteer could help us get a good deal on the black market. I have American dollars and with a quick calculation $50 would be more than enough for us three to get from the border to 127 miles to the capital. Up until this point Erika had been keeping track of who spent what amount and for what, so later we could pay each other back. For instance, I had zero CFA on me for Senegal. Both of them had to pay for me for the days travel through the country. However, they had plenty of CFA and no Mauritanian Ouguiya (pronounced you-gee-ah). I would pay the $50 to get to Nouakchott, exchange enough US for everyone for the week and they would pay me back at the end of the trip in CFA which was valid for the next two countries I planned on going anyway.
We took a taxi to the garage park, about ten minutes away, where we got a car going to Rosso – the border town between Senegal and Mauritania. Getting into the car we headed back the exact same way we went and actually passed our hotel. The ride up to Rosso was an hour and a half. In that time, as I was looking at the meters and gauges at the drivers side and I realized only one worked. The gas gauge. He had no idea how fast he was going, how many miles the car had, how hot the engine was, how many revolutions the tires were making. Nothing. Only the occasional: We need more fuel. All others were secondary. If cars are passing you, your going too slow; if your passing other cars your going too fast. I was trying to determine if there was a car somewhere in Africa that had more miles on it that the record in the Guinness World Records. Your piece of junk car in the US would easily last another ten years or so here, with all the MacGyver mechanics they do to keep it running.
Every 5km there was a stone marker on the road which I could use to estimate how fast we were going. About 50 mph, or about four times faster then any car in The Gambia. During the ride Nate started talking to the guy sitting in front, asking what certain plants were we saw on the side of the road. They ended up being sugar cane fields. The guy and his wife worked in Rosso, on the Mauritanian side, and were heading there now. They helped us out at the border a great deal and we tipped them at the end.
The cars we were in are called ‘set-place’ for seven-seats. In the US, you would have the driver, the passenger, three in the back, and two in the way back. In this car we had the driver, two passengers up front, four in the back and three in way back. We count the driver as one, they don’t; plus we fit one more in there. Erika, Nate, and I always had the way back since it worked well there was three of us. Of the seats in front, one had to flip over for us to get in and out – and such we were the last to get out and first to get in at every stop.
When we reached Rosso, on the Senegal side, vendors stormed the car. We were told not to talk to anyone even if they ask for your passport. Amidst the commotion someone was, expectedly, asking for our passports. We blew him off and continued walking. He yelled louder. We continued walking. Then the vendors got involved – apparently this guy was the real deal. Oops. He led us to the police station as the border patrol man in the office checked our visas. To the right was a jail with five people in it just sitting around, two using their cell phones to text the outside world. The guard stamped two passports before he realized the stamp had the wrong date on it. Officially, according to my passport I had left Senegal on the 18th and 19th, with entering Mauritania on the 19th.
Guys in the streets were selling everything from hand lotion, belts, zippers, pants, vegetables, toothpaste, mirrors, and even one guy hint he could get me a visa. (Already had a legitimate one). We waited for the ferry to appear, to cross the River Senegal. As we waited, three familiar faces appeared from the other side: Micah, Dave and Tina. All three are Gambian volunteers who were just returning from their Mauritanian trip and we caught them at the border. Micah had bought a fold-up wooden chair and was now carrying it back to The Gambia. With only a few minutes to spare we had just enough time to say hello and catch up. As Micah was leaving he yelled back “Make you sure you get 300”, meaning 300 Ouguiya [abbreviated UM] for the dollar. The official exchange rate was 254.
On the ferry it was standing room only, with trucks pulling up a foot in front of you, and luggages and other bags behind you it was quite crowded. They bottled necked us getting out while a police officer collected every passport on the boat. Luckily we had been told beforehand not to worry about that procedure since it was the common practice and that we would get our passports back if we just go with the flow and not make a scene as some volunteers did a year before.
On Mauritanian soil a policeman pointed to where everyone must cleanse their hands clean before going another foot into his country. Officially, and by law, if you are born in Mauritania you are Muslim. Even the United States recognizes that Mauritania has a 100% Muslim population. Despite the legality, it is well over 90% and even close to 99%. Although being in West Africa it is considered an Arab country. The entire country is mostly barren, with some flat plains of the Sahara stretching to the horizon. It isn’t until you get to the northern region do you see some hills and plateaus. Over 75% of their land is desert, 99.5% of their land is non-arable, with half a percent for arable land. It didn’t always used to be like this, though. Before the Sahara started spreading about 10,000 years ago Mauritania was covered with large lakes and had enough vegetation to support elephants, rhinos, and hippos. The only large animal we saw in the week was camels.
All the men were wearing turbans on their heads while the women were covering from head to toe with only a single piece of cloth wrapped around their bodies. Despite only being one piece of fabric, they are fully clothed – but most of clothing underneath anyway, as do the men. You are fortunate to take a picture of the men and very lucky to get a picture of the women, as their husband or brother must approve.
As I was about to cleanse my hands I accidentally bumped the tank the lid fell in the tank. This caused no concern other then when I looked into the tank and saw the water was dirtier than the river. After we all “cleaned” our hands we waited for our passport. Surprise, surprise one was “missing”. Nate, being the best Wollof speaker among us, went to talk to the policemen. He played ignorant for a little bit, before other people in the crowd told him he had ‘sweeten his business’, which he already knew.
We paid the bribe and were allowed through. I cashed in my $50 with the best rate I could get at the time, 260UM/$1 – a bit low, but still above official. We used that money to pay for our fare to Nouakchott.
Heading north, from Banjul, The Gambia to Nouakchott, Mauritania you could see the ground change; from sub-Sahara savannas to desert with a dry mid-lattitude steppe climate between. This is the area between the tropics and the desert, with a combination of tallgrass praire (with more rain) or a arid desert with less. It also helped I was traveling with two geographers. North of St. Louis is started getting less and less vegetation, and almost north of the Mauritanian border it was practically a desert scenario.
While driving through that desert on the way to Nouakchott we stopped in the middle of nowhere, but there was one small store. Believe it or not, but in the middle of nowhere you can get coke by the dozen. They had them stacked up along the wall, going around the store; a refrigerator kept some cool, they had cookies for sale, and other snacks. Just because it’s Africa doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a Mountain Dew or a Coke. It’s interesting that Mauritania has Mountain Dew but The Gambia doesn’t, while we have our own beer factory and alcohol is prohibited in Mauritania. In Mauritania, the Mauritanians can neither buy nor sell alcohol; but non-Mauritanians can do either, albeit expensively.
Our first view of camels was when the driver had to hold down the horn for the camels to get out of the way as they were crossing the road. At one police stop the policeman was trying to tell us something. Maybe it was going to be a question? We thought he was trying to ask what the capital was before D.C. We told him Philadelphia, then New York. That wasn’t what he was looking for. He then went on to try and talk about Presidents and Europe, then people who lived there before Americans. All of this was in Wollof or French with very broken English. Finally, after ten minutes of talking we realized all this wasn’t connected at all, he was showing his trivia of US he knew and no question was involved. What he was trying to say about Europe was that none of the original people of America were Presidents, only descendants of Europe. We agreed, although it was after we left that I remembered that we did have a Native American Vice President, though. I couldn’t think of it at the time but it was Charles Curtis who served under Herbert Hoover from 1929-1933.
We arrived in the capital at 4:30. Not knowing when the Peace Corps office was going to be closed at five we raced to the office only to find volunteers casually standing at the balcony waving us in. It’s open 24/7, just like in The Gambia. Their office in Mauritania is like a palace! It’s a block long and goes back almost a block. I had to take two pictures of it at different angles, it was so big. They have three different computer labs depending on what stage of service you are in, they have their own kitchen, shower area, walkways, and balconies. Right across the street is the Embassy for Mali, which was a good sign for me, since that was my next stop.
The contact we had for Mauritania was busy in another city helping out with a new training group and so another volunteer housed us for a night. Marc Valentine. Before we met up with him another volunteer, Jae, took us out for dinner and showed us the market where we could exchange money illegally. This has the advantage of getting a better rate but the disadvantage of being scammed. We also asked him "How do you know what cars are taxis?", "If they have less than two headlights" was his reply.
We were going to exchange $450 to last us the week for three people. The exchanged money would be split among us and anyone could pay for anything that the group did for since it all came out of the same pot. All personal expenses were recorded as well. This kept money problems to a minimum since we mostly did everything as a group.
The Mauritanian volunteer, Jae, set up with a black market dealer at a rate of 306 for every $100 and 300 for $50 (they don’t like fifties). We agreed and he left for fifteen minutes to get it organized. After a while he signaled us to follow him as we went inside an alley where small stores were and more privacy. Each stack of ten bills were together with the tenth bill wrapped around the other nine. I took each one out and counted that they were all there, as a number, while Nate counted what I had counted to make sure all was there as an amount. A discrepancy. We stopped everything and went further in where for the next ten minutes we counted every bill one by one, orientating them in the same way with numbers showing. They were going to cheat us out of 7600 UM ($28.50). Later that night we figured out how: The back of the 1000UM note is strikingly similar to the back of the 2000UM note. In the stack of ten 2000UM notes they simply put a 1000UM note instead for a few of them making sure the back is facing us. That’s why they needed the 15 minutes, to make sure it all looked good. We almost fell for it as well.
Back at our hosts house, Marc, his living room was about the size of my house, and his bedroom was air conditioned, and he had continuous power and water. In his bedroom was three mattresses on the floor already, not necessarily for us, but he always has guests coming and going from other countries who just need a night stop. In his two year service his house had been broken into three times: The first time he was out of the house and his guests left the house for a few minutes without locking the door and the guy just walked in and stole his stereo and money. The second time someone crow bared his way through the front door, stole his new stereo and more money. The third, and most recent time was someone took a saw and cut through the metal grating in the windows then kicked the window out and crawled in. The sawing along probably took more than an hour.
Marc went out for the night while we just crashed on the mattresses for a good nights sleep.
Tuesday July 19th
Start: St. Louis, Senegal [16 01N 16 37 W]
Mid: Rosso [Senegal / Mauritania border] [16 30 N 15 49 W]
End: Nouakchott, Mauritania [18 07 N 16 02 W]
We got bright and early at six and headed out. We knew from reaching the border we would get ripped of from the exchange and so we wanted just enough to exchange to get us to Nouakchott where, hopefully, a volunteer could help us get a good deal on the black market. I have American dollars and with a quick calculation $50 would be more than enough for us three to get from the border to 127 miles to the capital. Up until this point Erika had been keeping track of who spent what amount and for what, so later we could pay each other back. For instance, I had zero CFA on me for Senegal. Both of them had to pay for me for the days travel through the country. However, they had plenty of CFA and no Mauritanian Ouguiya (pronounced you-gee-ah). I would pay the $50 to get to Nouakchott, exchange enough US for everyone for the week and they would pay me back at the end of the trip in CFA which was valid for the next two countries I planned on going anyway.
We took a taxi to the garage park, about ten minutes away, where we got a car going to Rosso – the border town between Senegal and Mauritania. Getting into the car we headed back the exact same way we went and actually passed our hotel. The ride up to Rosso was an hour and a half. In that time, as I was looking at the meters and gauges at the drivers side and I realized only one worked. The gas gauge. He had no idea how fast he was going, how many miles the car had, how hot the engine was, how many revolutions the tires were making. Nothing. Only the occasional: We need more fuel. All others were secondary. If cars are passing you, your going too slow; if your passing other cars your going too fast. I was trying to determine if there was a car somewhere in Africa that had more miles on it that the record in the Guinness World Records. Your piece of junk car in the US would easily last another ten years or so here, with all the MacGyver mechanics they do to keep it running.
Every 5km there was a stone marker on the road which I could use to estimate how fast we were going. About 50 mph, or about four times faster then any car in The Gambia. During the ride Nate started talking to the guy sitting in front, asking what certain plants were we saw on the side of the road. They ended up being sugar cane fields. The guy and his wife worked in Rosso, on the Mauritanian side, and were heading there now. They helped us out at the border a great deal and we tipped them at the end.
The cars we were in are called ‘set-place’ for seven-seats. In the US, you would have the driver, the passenger, three in the back, and two in the way back. In this car we had the driver, two passengers up front, four in the back and three in way back. We count the driver as one, they don’t; plus we fit one more in there. Erika, Nate, and I always had the way back since it worked well there was three of us. Of the seats in front, one had to flip over for us to get in and out – and such we were the last to get out and first to get in at every stop.
When we reached Rosso, on the Senegal side, vendors stormed the car. We were told not to talk to anyone even if they ask for your passport. Amidst the commotion someone was, expectedly, asking for our passports. We blew him off and continued walking. He yelled louder. We continued walking. Then the vendors got involved – apparently this guy was the real deal. Oops. He led us to the police station as the border patrol man in the office checked our visas. To the right was a jail with five people in it just sitting around, two using their cell phones to text the outside world. The guard stamped two passports before he realized the stamp had the wrong date on it. Officially, according to my passport I had left Senegal on the 18th and 19th, with entering Mauritania on the 19th.
Guys in the streets were selling everything from hand lotion, belts, zippers, pants, vegetables, toothpaste, mirrors, and even one guy hint he could get me a visa. (Already had a legitimate one). We waited for the ferry to appear, to cross the River Senegal. As we waited, three familiar faces appeared from the other side: Micah, Dave and Tina. All three are Gambian volunteers who were just returning from their Mauritanian trip and we caught them at the border. Micah had bought a fold-up wooden chair and was now carrying it back to The Gambia. With only a few minutes to spare we had just enough time to say hello and catch up. As Micah was leaving he yelled back “Make you sure you get 300”, meaning 300 Ouguiya [abbreviated UM] for the dollar. The official exchange rate was 254.
On the ferry it was standing room only, with trucks pulling up a foot in front of you, and luggages and other bags behind you it was quite crowded. They bottled necked us getting out while a police officer collected every passport on the boat. Luckily we had been told beforehand not to worry about that procedure since it was the common practice and that we would get our passports back if we just go with the flow and not make a scene as some volunteers did a year before.
On Mauritanian soil a policeman pointed to where everyone must cleanse their hands clean before going another foot into his country. Officially, and by law, if you are born in Mauritania you are Muslim. Even the United States recognizes that Mauritania has a 100% Muslim population. Despite the legality, it is well over 90% and even close to 99%. Although being in West Africa it is considered an Arab country. The entire country is mostly barren, with some flat plains of the Sahara stretching to the horizon. It isn’t until you get to the northern region do you see some hills and plateaus. Over 75% of their land is desert, 99.5% of their land is non-arable, with half a percent for arable land. It didn’t always used to be like this, though. Before the Sahara started spreading about 10,000 years ago Mauritania was covered with large lakes and had enough vegetation to support elephants, rhinos, and hippos. The only large animal we saw in the week was camels.
All the men were wearing turbans on their heads while the women were covering from head to toe with only a single piece of cloth wrapped around their bodies. Despite only being one piece of fabric, they are fully clothed – but most of clothing underneath anyway, as do the men. You are fortunate to take a picture of the men and very lucky to get a picture of the women, as their husband or brother must approve.
As I was about to cleanse my hands I accidentally bumped the tank the lid fell in the tank. This caused no concern other then when I looked into the tank and saw the water was dirtier than the river. After we all “cleaned” our hands we waited for our passport. Surprise, surprise one was “missing”. Nate, being the best Wollof speaker among us, went to talk to the policemen. He played ignorant for a little bit, before other people in the crowd told him he had ‘sweeten his business’, which he already knew.
We paid the bribe and were allowed through. I cashed in my $50 with the best rate I could get at the time, 260UM/$1 – a bit low, but still above official. We used that money to pay for our fare to Nouakchott.
Heading north, from Banjul, The Gambia to Nouakchott, Mauritania you could see the ground change; from sub-Sahara savannas to desert with a dry mid-lattitude steppe climate between. This is the area between the tropics and the desert, with a combination of tallgrass praire (with more rain) or a arid desert with less. It also helped I was traveling with two geographers. North of St. Louis is started getting less and less vegetation, and almost north of the Mauritanian border it was practically a desert scenario.
While driving through that desert on the way to Nouakchott we stopped in the middle of nowhere, but there was one small store. Believe it or not, but in the middle of nowhere you can get coke by the dozen. They had them stacked up along the wall, going around the store; a refrigerator kept some cool, they had cookies for sale, and other snacks. Just because it’s Africa doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a Mountain Dew or a Coke. It’s interesting that Mauritania has Mountain Dew but The Gambia doesn’t, while we have our own beer factory and alcohol is prohibited in Mauritania. In Mauritania, the Mauritanians can neither buy nor sell alcohol; but non-Mauritanians can do either, albeit expensively.
Our first view of camels was when the driver had to hold down the horn for the camels to get out of the way as they were crossing the road. At one police stop the policeman was trying to tell us something. Maybe it was going to be a question? We thought he was trying to ask what the capital was before D.C. We told him Philadelphia, then New York. That wasn’t what he was looking for. He then went on to try and talk about Presidents and Europe, then people who lived there before Americans. All of this was in Wollof or French with very broken English. Finally, after ten minutes of talking we realized all this wasn’t connected at all, he was showing his trivia of US he knew and no question was involved. What he was trying to say about Europe was that none of the original people of America were Presidents, only descendants of Europe. We agreed, although it was after we left that I remembered that we did have a Native American Vice President, though. I couldn’t think of it at the time but it was Charles Curtis who served under Herbert Hoover from 1929-1933.
We arrived in the capital at 4:30. Not knowing when the Peace Corps office was going to be closed at five we raced to the office only to find volunteers casually standing at the balcony waving us in. It’s open 24/7, just like in The Gambia. Their office in Mauritania is like a palace! It’s a block long and goes back almost a block. I had to take two pictures of it at different angles, it was so big. They have three different computer labs depending on what stage of service you are in, they have their own kitchen, shower area, walkways, and balconies. Right across the street is the Embassy for Mali, which was a good sign for me, since that was my next stop.
The contact we had for Mauritania was busy in another city helping out with a new training group and so another volunteer housed us for a night. Marc Valentine. Before we met up with him another volunteer, Jae, took us out for dinner and showed us the market where we could exchange money illegally. This has the advantage of getting a better rate but the disadvantage of being scammed. We also asked him "How do you know what cars are taxis?", "If they have less than two headlights" was his reply.
We were going to exchange $450 to last us the week for three people. The exchanged money would be split among us and anyone could pay for anything that the group did for since it all came out of the same pot. All personal expenses were recorded as well. This kept money problems to a minimum since we mostly did everything as a group.
The Mauritanian volunteer, Jae, set up with a black market dealer at a rate of 306 for every $100 and 300 for $50 (they don’t like fifties). We agreed and he left for fifteen minutes to get it organized. After a while he signaled us to follow him as we went inside an alley where small stores were and more privacy. Each stack of ten bills were together with the tenth bill wrapped around the other nine. I took each one out and counted that they were all there, as a number, while Nate counted what I had counted to make sure all was there as an amount. A discrepancy. We stopped everything and went further in where for the next ten minutes we counted every bill one by one, orientating them in the same way with numbers showing. They were going to cheat us out of 7600 UM ($28.50). Later that night we figured out how: The back of the 1000UM note is strikingly similar to the back of the 2000UM note. In the stack of ten 2000UM notes they simply put a 1000UM note instead for a few of them making sure the back is facing us. That’s why they needed the 15 minutes, to make sure it all looked good. We almost fell for it as well.
Back at our hosts house, Marc, his living room was about the size of my house, and his bedroom was air conditioned, and he had continuous power and water. In his bedroom was three mattresses on the floor already, not necessarily for us, but he always has guests coming and going from other countries who just need a night stop. In his two year service his house had been broken into three times: The first time he was out of the house and his guests left the house for a few minutes without locking the door and the guy just walked in and stole his stereo and money. The second time someone crow bared his way through the front door, stole his new stereo and more money. The third, and most recent time was someone took a saw and cut through the metal grating in the windows then kicked the window out and crawled in. The sawing along probably took more than an hour.
Marc went out for the night while we just crashed on the mattresses for a good nights sleep.
posted by Mike | 2:56 PM
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