‘But we’re getting there,’ says Nancy, and I believe her. She’s not the sort of person to start out unless she intends getting there.
I ask her about Mauritania.
Life is hard for most people here - ‘Everybody makes do with very little’ - but she points to rapid change. Forty years ago there was not one mile of tarred road in the entire country. Now there is water and electricity supply to most homes in the city. It is a tolerant country; women do not have to cover their faces or accept polygamy. If a man wants a new wife he must divorce the old one first. This makes divorced women much sought after in Mauritania. They do not have any ties and they generally will have benefited from a divorce settlement. She feels quite comfortable as a female entrepreneur in a country that has women in the cabinet, law, medicine and even in the army. ‘People,’ she says with a touch of a smile, ‘are very nice to women.’
She nimbly sidesteps the knotty question of slavery, which was only formally abolished here in 1981, but acknowledges that the Moorish social system is complex and tribal, with warrior and scholar tribes.
There are two national sports. One is dhaemon, the desert draughts I played in Chinguetti, and the other poetry.
‘In a decent gathering like a wedding party the young men are expected to improvise four verses of poetry and others to compose a reply. Everybody can recite lots and lots of poetry.’
She sees similarities between Mauritanians and the British.
‘They love wit and they’re always ready to say something funny. And you’ll have noticed the country runs on tea. The cooking is, likewise, not terribly noteworthy.’
Day Thirty-One
NOUAKCHOTT TO ST-LOUIS
It’s 127 miles from the capital of Mauritania to the border with Senegal. Both countries were once part of Afrique Occidentale Francaise, a huge slab of the French colonial empire. As we drive out of Nouakchott this morning, we are reminded of the new world order.
The American embassy is a fortress, bristling with razor wire, sprung with alarms and guarded by armed men. The Presidential Palace, a drab grey mass, of considerable size and very little beauty, was built by the Chinese.
However, the French influence lives on. As we pull up in the town of Tiguent we’re ambushed by half a dozen children, heavily armed with baguettes, who crowd around the doors, shouting and jabbing loaves through the window until we submit and reach in our pockets for our last few ouguiya. The bread tastes good; a richer, stickier consistency than French baguette and with the added ingredient that marks it out as fresh - Saharan sand.
The French language remains the lingua franca and the one in which we’re interrogated at a series of army roadblocks.
At one of these enforced halts, a tall, thin, young soldier in camouflaged fatigues approaches our vehicle and examines the contents carefully. His eyes flick towards us.
‘Parti a Rosso?’ he asks.
Yes, we reply cautiously. We are going to Rosso.
He looks us up and down, slowly, then appears to come to a decision. We hold our breath.
‘Vous avez une place?’
He wants a lift.
As we near the River Senegal, the bleached white shell-fields of Nouakchott give way to terracotta dunes dotted with spiky grass scrub and acacia trees just tall enough to provide shelter for the Fulani herders. As the sands of the Sahara blow in from the north and east, they’re forced progressively closer to the River Senegal. Only ten years earlier, the issue of land ownership along the border brought Mauritania and Senegal to the brink of war. Senegal kicked out Mauritanian traders and Mauritania allowed equally violent reprisals against ‘southerners’. Today relations are better, but the security presence is strong enough to make filming a delicate task.
By midday we are passing a network of irrigation ditches and the first glimpse of grassland for two and a half weeks. The fields contain sugar cane, rice and grazing land, grown under a scheme which I see from a billboard is financed by the government of the Emirates, 3000 miles across the other side of the desert. An example of pan-Islamic co-operation, which could prove a much bigger influence on West Africa than anything French, American or Chinese.
At Rosso we reach the river and the next frontier, and take our place in a shuffling line of vehicles, most of which look like survivors of a stock car race, weighed down to the floor with goods, wires hanging out of empty headlamp sockets. We’re a captive audience and vendors gather at the windows. It’s very hot and hard to be patient in the face of endless demands for cadeaux and bonbons. We are not allowed to film and the ferry gates are shut.
Repair to the Patisserie El Belediya, which serves food on metal tables beneath walls of peeling paint. We are the only Westerners. A television set high on the wall is showing women being interviewed in houses reduced to rubble. It’s hard to tell if it’s the West Bank or the suburbs of Baghdad, recently hit by air strikes ordered by America’s new president, George W. Bush, but none of those watching shows any hostility towards us.
After eating a skeletal chicken in casserole, I buy a carton of Nancy’s Tiviski brand camel’s milk from the freezer behind the counter and drink it outside on a porch where there is, at least, some breeze. Basil is doing his flowing t’ai chi routine, which a couple of locals watch with amused curiosity.
‘Kung fu?’ asks one of them.
I nod. ‘Sort of.’
After three journeys round the world with him, I’m used to Basil being mistaken for Bruce Lee.
Three hours later we are aboard the 80-foot floating platform that will take us into Senegal. It runs on African time, leaving only when it is full to bursting point.
The river, about a half-mile wide, curves languidly towards us through what might almost pass for meadows, which dip down to tall reed beds. Occasionally, the slim, wooden canoes they call pirogues will put out from either shore, precariously packed with foot passengers, all standing.
On the far side are low buildings, a single palm tree, a water tower and a small crowd watching us as keenly as we’re watching them. The fact that the town on both sides is called Rosso seems to misleadingly minimise the difference between the two banks. In fact, the River Senegal, rising over 1000 miles away in the mountains of Guinea, is an important boundary. It separates not only Mauritania from Senegal, but also Sahara from Sahel, the transitional land, half desert and half savannah, whose name means ‘shore’ in Arabic. More significantly, the River Senegal divides Arab Africa to the north from Black Africa to the south.
The last few passengers hurry aboard, urged into a sprint by the long-awaited rumble of the diesel engine. We move stiffly out into the stream. I want to stare into the dark brown tide and think romantic thoughts of Saharan rivers, but it’s impossible. I’ve been trapped by a cheerfully persistent ten-year-old boy called Lallala who wants something, anything, from me.
I try to shut him up by giving him a tin of Smith and Kendon travel sweets I have with me. It doesn’t work. He wants me to translate all the words on the lid.
‘Ken-don? What is Ken-don?’
On Senegalese soil just before four o’clock. Our minders engage in a long negotiation over equipment and visas at the handsome customs shed, built like a small French town hall. It bears not only the inscription ‘Directeur General des Douanes de Republique de Senegal‘, but also a motto, ‘Devenir Meilleur Pour Mieux Servir‘ (Become Better to Serve Better). Very un-African.
Another long wait. Buses and trucks squeeze out of the narrow car park. Currency changers move amongst the recently arrived, offering deals on the Mauritanian ouguiya, which, on account of the foreign aid propping up Mauritania, is stronger than the CFA franc used by Senegal.