Nouakchott
I decided to upgrade from a tent to a beach hut last night. The hut is basically a roof with two walls and the opposite sides are open. One side is facing the sea and the other side is facing the rear of the site. There are four mattresses on the floor and four of the hardest pillows I’ve ever seen in my life. I didn’t use the pillows and brought my own inflatable one instead.
There were four of us staying there last night and that was interesting. In a way it was wasn’t that different to being in a hostel except that there were mattresses on the floor. I was sharing with a Dutch guy and in American young married couple. Oh, I forgot to mention, they was an enormous cockroach who scarpered round the room until we chased him out. We were hoping he wouldn’t bring back his extended family. I think he got the message and fecked off. I called him Cyril and his fame endured in our group for a short while.
In a way, I’ve always had an apprehension about sleeping in the open in Africa because of the multitudes of creepies and crawlies, as well as slithering beasties and critters who nip, sting, bite or otherwise assault my tender Irish skin. Not to mention the big hairy spiders who scare the living bejasus out of me and whose sole function is to GET me. Or should I say, used to scare me. My fear of spiders is really about the fear of fear. Once I recognise this I’m usually ok, or at least the fear doesn’t hijack my reason. This is one of the reasons I thought I might try sleeping in the open, or semi-open. I thought I’d try to transform FEAR from F*** Everything And Run to Face Everything And Resist. It seemed to work. I seemed to develop an attitude of: Meh, it’s grand, what can happen, feck spiders. This allowed me to have a good night’s sleep. I’m still vigilant though, about leaving my tent zip the slightest bit open. Just in case.
The campsite was a bit of a shithole. Hardly anything worked properly and the prices were outrageous. €100 for a room worth, maybe €30-40. I didn’t try the food but it looked pricey. However, like most things in Africa, you focus on what works and forget the rest. In this case, the venue of the beach restaurant car was a great place to sit and view the sunset and the moon over the sea.
Off to bed and the mythic context of spiders, scorpions and snakes.
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