Nouakchott Interlude
We are here for a few days in the capital city of Mauritania. The main reason we are here is to get visas for the next few countries we will be visiting. I think it’s pretty straightforward for people from the EU and the UK. However, there seemed to be some complications for people from the US and Australia. There are also people from other nationalities such as Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Hong Kong etc. So we’re spending a few days here to make sure we have applied for the visas we need .
I spent half a day trying to negotiate the bureaucratic hurdles of the Guinea visa website which kept crashing but I think I finally cracked it and sent off the online application. I got an email back stating that it had been accepted and would now be examined and the evisa would be granted if all the paperwork was okay. A result.
Apart from that, I did very little. I decided to upgrade to a room and this was a good idea. I have a bed as big as a football pitch and the room is as large as a stadium. Sort of! There is also a power shower with its own immersion heater. This shower is one of those combination overhead cascade types and a regular handheld shower head. The output is strong. I have had several showers to wash the grime of the past few weeks off me. Prior to this, our showers have been pretty basic with a dribble of cold water – if you are lucky.
(Please click on any thumbnail above to enlarge the whole gallery for full sliding photos)
There is not much to see here in Nouakchott. We went out in the truck yesterday to shop for the cook groups and we passed by what could possibly be called the posh part of Nouakchott. This was where the United Nations had their huge compound as well as the French Embassy. All were hidden behind very high walls topped with barbed wire. The rest of the place was pretty ratty. On the map, it looks like a well planned town with parallel streets etc but in fact the majority of the roads are just dirt tracks. Even on the main roads, it is pretty chaotic and shambolic.
Yet, within all the chaos and dirt and semi-derelict buildings, there’s a huge vitality about its place. People are getting on with living their lives, having their small businesses by the side of the road selling cigarettes or SIM cards or whatever. There are lots of shops selling what the people need and lots of little workshops fixing things. I guess this is normal for the people who live here just like for me in Dublin life is normal, or at least normalised.
Today is Sunday and is our last day in Nouakchott. Tomorrow we head off for a bushcamp and then head towards the Senegalese border. I am having a lazy Sunday afternoon now reading the Sunday papers on my tablet and drinking lots of water.
The weather today is a bit strange and although it is still boiling hot, it looks like there is a haze in the air or a thunderstorm is looming. I’m not quite sure as I can’t read the weather here. Maybe it’s a sandstone. I have air conditioning here in my hotel room and have racked it all the way down to 16° C. Bliss but soon to be forgotten.
It’s 3 weeks now since the journey started. It feels like I’ve been on this orange truck for aeons now. The lifestyle is becoming normal and I’m beginning to get used to the very different ways of doing things. It seems half a lifetime ago that I spent an hour in the morning over a pot of Barry’s Black Label tea with toast and marmalade while reading The Irish Times. Now it’s a rush to get my tent unpitched and stowed away on the truck. Then off at 8:00 and bouncing around in West Africa. I love it.
It’s quite hard work though. It’s not really hard work in a physical sense as there’s nothing really strenuous to do. I suppose the hardest thing is lifting boxes of food in and out of the truck or chucking our big heavy bags onto the back of the truck. But these are nothing really.
I suppose the toughest part is the mental part. It’s constantly being out of your comfort zone and constantly having to adapt and change to new environments and new situations. Luckily, I quite enjoy that and I love change and I hate stasis. Not much stasis around here and that’s for sure.
However, I feel it in my body which is a bit achy at the moment. Nothing serious, wouldn’t even register as a three on the pain scale but it wasn’t there a month ago. Again I’m guessing there are the unusual stresses I’m putting on my body – sitting several hours a day on a truck and sleeping in the tent. By the end of the trip, I’ll probably look like either an exclamation mark or a question mark.
Also, if you look at the map on the front of my blog you will see that although we are only 3 weeks into a 12 week journey, we have covered 50% of the distance we will be travelling. This Sahara is the toughest part and when we head south into Senegal we will begin to leave the desert behind and enter lusher and greener lands. Of course, lush and green needs water and water means mosquitoes and also humidity. High temperature and humidity is not my favourite combination of weather systems but no doubt I will adapt
Mauritania is about the same size as Ireland, population wise. In 2023, the official population numbers were 4,863,989
Some Wikipedia factoids:
Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (Arabic: الجمهورية الإسلامية الموريتانية), is a sovereign country in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest. Mauritania is the 11th-largest country in Africa and the 28th-largest in the world, and 90% of its territory is situated in the Sahara. Most of its population of 4.4 million lives in the temperate south of the country, with roughly one-third concentrated in the capital and largest city, Nouakchott, located on the Atlantic coast.
The country’s name derives from the ancient Berber kingdom of Mauretania, located in North Africa within the ancient Maghreb. Berbers occupied what is now Mauritania beginning in the third century AD. Arabs under the Umayyad Caliphate conquered the area in the late seventh century, bringing Islam, Arab culture, and the Arabic language. In the early 20th century, Mauritania was colonised by France as part of French West Africa. It achieved independence in 1960, but has since experienced recurrent coups and periods of military dictatorship. The most recent coup, in 2008, was led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who won subsequent presidential elections in 2009 and 2014. He was succeeded by Mohamed Ould Ghazouani following the 2019 elections, which were considered Mauritania’s first peaceful transition of power since independence.
Mauritania is culturally and politically part of the Arab world; it is a member of the Arab League and Arabic is the sole official language. The official religion is Islam, and almost all inhabitants are Sunni Muslims. Despite its prevailing Arab identity, Mauritanian society is multiethnic; the Bidhan, or so-called “white moors”, make up 30% of the population, while the Haratin, or so-called “black moors”, comprise 40%. Both groups reflect a fusion of Arab-Berber ethnicity, language, and culture. The remaining 30% of the population comprises various sub-Saharan ethnic groups.
Despite an abundance of natural resources, including iron ore and petroleum, Mauritania remains poor; its economy is based primarily on agriculture, livestock, and fishing. Mauritania is also generally seen as having a poor human rights record and is particularly censured for the perpetuation of slavery as an institution within Mauritanian society. It was the last country in the world to abolish the practice in 1981, and only criminalised the ownership of slaves outright in 2007.
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