Border Boredom Blues
The wind was still this morning when my alarm went off at 6am for 7am breakfast and 8am departure for border with Mauritania. I creaked my way out of my tent, headlight on, checked for toe nibbling or biting beasties, stretched and looked up up at the stars. They were still dazzling and amazing. The moon was a waning crescent or possibly a waning gibbous. I’m not too sure about my astronomy terms. Venus was by far the brightest body in the heavens. I answered a call of nature and took a moment to reflect.
I slept well. I was asleep at 9.30am, mid-afternoon for me, Irish sleep habits. The wind had died down so I wasn’t awakened by the sound of my tent flapping like a speedfreak in a straightjacket.
As soon as I started dismantling my tent, the wind started up again. I’ll help you, it whispered. Nah, yer grand, sez I. I don’t think it understands Hiberno-English because it didn’t stop. It didn’t really matter as it wasn’t very strong. Maybe the exertions of the past few days had taken some of the puff out of its huff.
I have a system to fold my tent so that it fits in its holding bag, is protected and, importantly, easy to pitch the next time I need it. This is very difficult to do when it’s windy. I managed it anyway.
We had breakfast and hit the road at 7am, right on cue.
We stopped hallway to get diesel for the truck, and some coffee. There was a funny rigmarole about making and serving it. I ordered 2 coffees au lait, one for myself and one for another guy. They eventually arrived and then the guy serving got a small glass saucer and scraped all the foam off the coffee. Then he poured the 2 coffees into 3 smaller cups but charged for 2. I haven’t the foggiest why he did this but it’s one of the ideosyncrancies about travelling off the beaten teach which delights me.
Back on the road again to reach the border with Mauritania. Like nearly every border outside Europe, the border post consists of three parts.
The first part is in exit zone where you leave the country you are travelling in. They check your visa your date of entry and they stamp the exit date in your passport. Sometimes it can be a right pain in the fundamentals as you wait for different officials to stamp different bits of paper. It can be far more complicated when there is a vehicle involved. The vehicle has its own passport, sort of, and all the stamps and paperwork must be in order. This can take a long time.
The second part is no man’s land. Sometimes it’s just a couple of metres from one building to the next. Sometimes it can be a short road or lane or pathway. In this case it was a 3 km stretch of no man’s land and apart from the road we were travelling on the whole area was heavily mined and we were warned not to leave the road. There were signs all around “Danger Mines” with a red skull and crossbones. This is because the border is disputed between Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Morocco.
The third part is the entrance area of the new country you’re travelling into. In this case, Mauritania and the reverse happens again. You go through the rigmarole of getting a visa or presenting a paper you got from the embassy before you left or whatever conditions the country sets for offering entry to people. In this case, in Mauritania, there was no opportunity to make a online application so the only option was what’s called a visa on arrival. So we rolled up and went to one office to have our fingerprints and our photograph taken which they printed out a passport page sized visa with our photograph and all our details on it. They stuck this onto a full page in the passport. Then be trooped into another office after about an hours or two wait in the boiling sun to have our passports stamped, stating when we arrived in the country. Then more waiting in the baking sun while the truck was being processed. This whole procedure took, I think, about 6 or 7 hours. I was too numb to note the exact time. At the end of it we were all exhausted. The bureaucracy is insane. But that’s the way they do it and it’s really important to roll with this and not to get uptight about the whole process.
Finally we got the stamp in our passports and we walked down to a nearby restaurant while we waiting for the the bus to complete its particular procedure. They serve no food in the restaurant but we got a Coke and some biscuits and stuff from a nearby shop and sat in the shade until the truck was through. We hopped on with gratitude.
The clock had gone back in hour so we gained an hour but this made the process seem even longer and we finished at about 4:15 p.m. which would be 5:15 had the clock’s not gone back and we arrived at the border at 10:45 this morning .
This was by far the worst border I’ve ever gone through and I’ve gone through quite a few. I think it’s because of the dispute between Mauritania and Morocco over the Western Sahara, once called Spanish Sahara.
When we hit the place we are staying, a campsite in the middle of a coastal city called Nouadhibou. I’m not quite sure how you pronounce that word but it sounds like you have a bad cold when you do.
The contrast between Morocco and Mauritania is very great. In Morocco the roads were pretty good and there was quite a lot of prosperity apparent in the cities we passed through. Mauritania was very different. The roads were pretty manky and the buildings looked very old and at the point of falling down.
The people also looked very different from the Arabs and Berbers in Morocco. They were much darker in skin colour and we began to feel that we’re in real Africa itself.
At first appearance, the campsite looked like a shithole. There was no grass or any decent camping area. We had to pitch our tents very close together in what looks like a bit of waste ground surrounded by semi derelict buildings. However, after a while, it grew on me. This is West Africa, after all.
I was on the cook team that night so as soon as we hit the campsite we had to set up the kitchen and begin to prepare a meal. By the time we arrived I was wrecked and the last thing I wanted to do was haul food and utensils from the truck to the kitchen area but needs must etc etc. I engage with this as well as I could and as soon as dinner was over at about 8pm, I went into my tent and I was asleep by 9:00 I woke up next morning at 5:00 and the call to prayer started.
They seem very enthusiastic about their religion here. In most of the countries I travelled through, the call to prayer comes, I think, about an hour or so before dawn and it lasts a fairly short time. This guy here went on in the most raucous voice for about an hour so, from 5:00 to 6:00 we had this cacophony going on. I wonder what it’s like to be subjected to this everyday of your life from your very earliest years.
That’s it, possums. I’ve decided not to get a simcard and only use WiFi. My posts will gone in bursts from now on.
Please feel to comment or to subscribe.
(Please click on any thumbnail above to enlarge the whole gallery for full sliding photos)
About Author
