Road to Nowhere

[Martin Hash]

Truck Stuck.JPG

I hesitate to call something a “bad idea” because so many people express no ideas at all for fear of criticism, but when it quacks like a duck… Mauritania is a poor country – somebody told me it was in the bottom three – and it shows it. It’s got good cell phone coverage though, and every village of mud brick hovels has a few with satellite dishes on the roof. (I don’t know where the electricity comes from?) The streets are dirt and trash strewn, the roads barely more than tracks on the ground.

Since the Mauritanian currency floats, the only way to get money is from men on the streets who will exchange it at non-uniform rates, but they wouldn’t change dollars there so Gwynne and I went without money for 8 days. That was fine because there wasn’t anything to buy, anyway. Water, however, was important, and unfortunately Gwynne and I were in short supply, so every village well, no matter how primitive, became a happy discovery, and the people were mostly generous in sharing their meager but essential resource with us.

There’s also absolutely nothing to do in Mauritania but sweat. For that reason our driver, Chris, was receptive when someone from the group suggested we visit an ancient city, Olata, said to be “the best kept secret in Mauritania” by the guidebook – we learned why. So, after driving east near the southern border of the country for many hours, we turned north into unmapped, and certainly unpaved territory.

Within 10 minutes we were lost as to which track to take, and within half an hour we were stuck in the sand for the next 3 hours. Our attempts to dig our way out provided some amusement to the villagers – the entire community gathered to watch the white people struggle in 100 degree heat in what seemed a poorly exercised training event because this was the first time we’d been stuck and the whole process was new to everyone except the drivers. There’s also a learning curve where you discover who’s a helpful, contributing member, and who not to trust with a shovel. Thankfully, the majority of our fellow travelers were conscientious and responsible.

I can’t blame anyone for being uncertain of our direction but in this age of GPS, it seems reasonable that we should be going in generally the right direction – which was debatable. We didn’t have a lot of opportunity to worry since getting stuck in the sand and flat tires consumed much of our time. No matter the morale of our group or even the endurance of its members, the breaking point was reached when the truck’s water supply was near consumed. We weren’t sure where we were and there didn’t seem to be anything around for at least 100 more kilometers. Temperatures were over 100 degrees all of the time so at the next sheet of bare rock we turned the truck around, stopped, put out the sun tarp, and had lunch.