Category: Mauritania

Chinguetti Mosque

Chinguetti is one of the great cities of the Mauritanian Sahara, a place with an ancient history as a settlement, an island of culture and relative urbanity in the middle of a desert wilderness. Chinguetti is famous as a West African center of the Muslim faith, for its manuscript tradition attested to by thousands of volumes, and for its role in history. But like Timbuktu, a city of similar background about a thousand kilometers southeast across the Sahara, it is today almost swallowed up by the sands, clinging to its only remaining significance–that as a tourist destination.

Cemetery

But quite a tourist destination it is. The ruins of the old town, charming minaret aside, are not much of a draw, but the location could not be more spectacular. The desert around Chinguetti is the real deal, the Sahara of one’s wildest dreams. Fantastic dunes lie just meters from town; even higher dunes and romantic oases within a short 4×4 or camel trek away. Within reach are beautiful and desolate landscapes, archaeological sites and even an enormous meteor crater. With, believe it or not, direct flights to Paris, the Adrar (the region of Mauritania in which Chinguetti lies) is one of the most beautiful and removed, yet highly accessible, travel destinations I can think of, utterly peaceful and away from it all. [The flights were suspended for most of 2008 due to an incident near Christmas 2007 in which a French family was killed in a kidnapping attempt and to feared political instability following the 2008 (peaceful) coup in Mauritania. Quite contrary to the travel advisories, however, I could not imagine anything bad happening to a tourist in the parts of Mauritania that we visited (we had checked with the helpful U.S. embassy and a local Peace Corps volunteer before coming), and we only benefited from the resulting quietness and bargains on lodging–rooms were available for as low as USD 3.20 per person.]

For others out on an extended trip, holidays can be sad times, reminding them that they’re away on days they would normally be sharing with loved ones. Such travelers often gather around others of their nationality or religion at a backpacker or expat bar or restaurant, trying to recreate a sense of home. Frequently they’ll send forth emails trying to make the situation sound as positive as possible–“Hey man, I’m enjoying Christmas from this beautiful beach in Thailand!”–but if you look closely, there’s sadness. But we ourselves really aren’t that big on holidays (see post of 11.27), and so Chinguetti is as good a place as any to spend Christmas.

Back in our first “Arab” country of the trip, in Syria in April, I asked our Palestinian friend whether he really felt a kinship with all “Arabs,” including those as far out as Mauritania. The answer was a definite “yes”–everyone from Mauritania to Iraq was in fact Arab, part of the same ethnic group. I found this somewhat dubious at the time, and considering the great ethnic diversity of the so-called Arab world (see posts of 4.16, 4.25, 10.05 and 10.13), I had grown to think such feelings of kinship to be misplaced.

But perhaps prematurely. We crossed the border from Mali into Mauritania a couple days ago, and I am astonished by the extent to which, being here, we really feel that we’re back in the Middle East, more specifically, the Gulf. The feeling was immediate, and something more than the sum of discrete parts, but let me try to identify a few things that make Mauritania, at least at a superficial level, very much a part of the Arab world.

architecture – All developing countries have similar architecture to a certain extent–styles driven by cost and efficiency over aesthetics–but the boxy cement blocks of Mauritania reminded us instantly of less development parts of Oman and the United Arab Emirates (yes, despite all the oil money, when outside the fancy parts of those countries there are definitely “developing world” buildings). Not only the type of buildings, but their placement and density–sparseness of population encouraging tremendous sprawl–are similar to other desert Arab countries we have been to.

Great Mosque, Nouakchott. Built in a sort of Moorish style, but nevertheless similar to mosques in the Gulf–no doubt in part because it was paid for by the Saudis.

landscape – Now, it may sound a bit silly to say that Mauritania feels like an Arab country because it’s sandy, but it’s true. There is that certain bleakness and openness that is such common terrain in the Arab world–of course, this commonality of terrain is part of what allowed the Arab conquerors in the seventh century onward to expand so quickly into the countries that we now consider Arab.

population density – Like much of the Gulf, even “urban” Mauritania has a certain emptiness, resulting from low population density and sprawl, not at all like the crowded metropolises of Africa to the south.

food – The richness and variety of Senegalese food (the cuisine found in Mali, at least when you’re lucky) has largely been substituted by roasted meat (chicken or lamb) and rice or french fries, basically the common diet all over the Arab world (and large parts of the non-Arab Muslim world). Lebanese restaurants, which seemed somewhat exotic, fancy “foreign food” in Senegal and Mali, suddenly seem more like local food and are far more common. The quality of the meat, by the way, has miraculously improved–livestock here must be raised better, more scientifically. (And, holding true to what I’ve said about African pricing (see post of 12.18), food prices have dropped precipitously–much cheaper prices for much better food.)

the hours people keep – Arabs, especially in the Gulf states, like to stay up late. The excuse given for this is usually the hot climate, and I suppose it’s true, but the end result is that people engage in a very wide range of activities in the several dark hours following dinner, activities that elsewhere in the world would be handled during the day. Shopping centers are often open until midnight or later, and the level of car and foot traffic during those hours is also intense in Gulf city centers. Perhaps it’s because of the climate here, too–Mauritanians keep similar hours, and downtown Nouakchott buzzes late into the night.

hospitality – Not all Arabs rate highly in this regard, but it can certainly be generalized that Arab countries (or Muslim countries for that matter) have a more living tradition of hospitality than the developed countries of the west or east. Even if it sometimes feels perfunctory, there is an effort or reflex to be generous to the outsider (or at least certain outsiders). Not that Senegalese and Malians were not welcoming–they were–but the sort of formality and ritual that comes with hospitality in the Middle East is very much back, now that we are in Mauritania. (Some would argue that this relates back to the terrain as well: Arab hospitality is often attributed to the harsh desert climate, and the need to share shelter and protection from the elements.)

race – A banal comment, but, yes, the racial composition here is different from that of the countries to the south. It’s not a matter of night and day–Mauritania is something like 30% Moor, 40% mixed Moor/black and 30% black, while Mali is 10% Moor/Tuareg and 90% black–but it is a significant shift. Even in Mali’s Timbuktu you feel that most people are black, with some settled Tuaregs as well as Tuaregs coming and going from the desert; in Mauritania the average person is a tan Moor.

language – A dialect of Arabic known as Hassaniya is the official language.

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Now, I say that Mauritania feels to the outsider like an Arab or Middle Eastern country, and not an African (or sub-Saharan African) one, but the real demographic answer is that Mauritania fits somewhere in the middle. As I mention above, about a third of Mauritania’s population is sub-Saharan/black African, while another third is “mixed,” which likely means descendants of the black slaves of the Moors (some of whom, one reads, still live in a slave-like state, although it was officially abolished in 1980), making it a majority black country, as far as race is concerned. Mauritania until independence was part of French West Africa, and until 1973, when it joined the Arab League and started to align itself more with the Arab world than the former French colonial world, it was a member of the French West African central bank (BCEAO) and monetary union (the CFA Franc). So the answer to, “Is Mauritania a black sub-Saharan African country or an Arab North African one?” is by no means clear.

Traveling around the world, in cultures so different from those with which you are familiar, you are bound to have some missteps, commit some cultural gaffes. Sometimes it’s as simple as wearing your shoes inside a place you shouldn’t, using your left hand to do something that your right hand should have or making a gesture that has a very different local meaning than you intended (no doubt, sexual). Or, perhaps, it is a matter of not honoring clear hierarchies that are visible to all the locals, but not to you. Faux pas are a persistent risk of travel.

One of my favorite depictions of a traveler’s faux pas was on an HSBC ad that was running for a while on channels such as CNN International. In the advertisement, a very pasty British businessman is having dinner with Chinese counterparts. As might be expected, the dinner is an elaborate production, with the group of six or seven Chinese businessmen eager to please and impress the visiting guest, who is seated at the head of the table. As you may know, one problem with Chinese cuisine, especially as one goes higher in price, is that the Chinese eat a much wider range of foods, including quite a few “exotic” items with which westerners are not familiar. Ending up with some animal or body part that you really don’t want to try is always a risk in China. The British guest in the advertisement is presented with an eel (shown to him live and slithering before it appears chopped up in his bowl), which he clearly does not find appetizing, but finishes, as the voiceover says, “The English believe it’s a slur on your hosts’ food if you don’t clear your plate.” His hosts first look on with approval, and then order another, larger eel. The Englishman looks a little more troubled, but dutifully finishes the second huge bowl of eel as the voiceover continues, “Whereas the Chinese feel that it’s questioning their generosity if you do.” As the commercial ends, a third, truly humongous giant eel is wrestled out from the kitchen, with the Brit looking even more pale and downright frightened.

We’re usually fairly cautious when traveling. For the most part, we read all the relevant warnings and try to offend as little as possible (although there may be some “customs” that we are aware of and still reject, e.g., my preference for using utensils, rather than my hands, to eat most foods, including especially sloppy cuisines such as South Indian). Nonetheless, we too make mistakes, and in this post I thought I would share a story of an embarrassing mistake we recently made in Mauritania.

We were taking a share taxi ride in Mauritania, one driver and six passengers, two in the front bucket seat and four in back, squeezed into a Mercedes sedan for a twelve hour journey from Ayoun el Atrous to Nouakchott. Now, Mauritanians aren’t particularly small like, say, Indians or Southeast Asians, and so four grown men squeezed into the back is a tight fit, and hours on end with that little room creates in your mind reasonable concerns about your physical and mental states at the end of the ride. That said, there is also a great sense of commiseration and camaraderie from such a long, difficult trip. On the one real break in the journey, we all sat down for lunch, in an Arab/Central Asian style tent with mattresses and cushions on the floor. We couldn’t quite figure out how to order food or even what was available, but, back in a land of compulsive hospitality, hoped that things would work themselves out and somehow we would end up with lunch. (It turned out that, in fact, one of the passengers had ordered for the group.)

Now, just a few days before our entry into Mauritania, we had gone on a 4-5 trek in the Dogon Country of Mali. On that hot and sweaty journey, you break up your trip twice a day, for lunch and for dinner/sleep, at so-called campements, established to feed and house trekkers. There is a certain routine at these campements, one of the first things after you arrive being that they bring you a bucket of water so that you can wash some of the dust and sweat off of your hands and face in preparation for eating. Before the Dogon, we were in Timbuktu, where, at the Touareg/Canadian-owned guesthouse of Sahara Passion in which we stayed, there was a similar routine. Since all food was eaten with hands, a pitcher of water, soap and a bowl were brought out before meals, for washing.

And so here we were, between Ayoun and Nouakchott in Mauritania, under a tent waiting for food. One of the staff of the establishment brought around a bowl of murky white liquid and offered it to Derek. Derek promptly used it to wash his right hand, thinking himself culturally savvy and in-the-know for doing the right thing. The boy looked puzzled and glanced over at one of his elders for support or an explanation, but after receiving neither, smiled at us awkwardly and suggested that we drink the liquid instead. Because of his smile, we assumed that he was joking. Then, one of the other passengers laughed and told us that it was “lait de chamaux,” or camel mlik, which I thought was a joke based on the classic “drinking the finger bowl” faux pas said to be committed by rubes throughout history. We laughed–we certainly weren’t rubes–and I proceeded to put my hand into the bowl, and swish it about.

After I finished with the bowl, the boy took the bowl back toward the kitchen, and Derek and I suddenly came to a realization. Smelling our fingers, it was clear what we had done: washed our hands in the communal bowl of milk.

The writing on the wall

Our co-passenger was indeed kidding, but only about it being camel milk (people do drink camel milk in Mauritania, but this was cow milk). The restaurant boy was smiling out of awkwardness and discomfort, while trying to get us to drink as we were supposed to. As we sat red-faced, hoping that the others hadn’t witnessed our stupidity, we could see the waiter whisk (the wire whisk seems to be obligatory) up another bowl of milk (they often start with evaporated milk, it seems, and then add water and sugar) for the rest of our group, as we had fouled the first one. We should have seen the milk coming. Although it was our first real day in Mauritania, we had already witnessed that Mauritanians drink huge quantities of milk, not too surprising in a desert country where little green grows but herding is a common livelihood, and the liquid in the bowl looked more like milk than soapy water. Even in the Dogon a welcome drink arrived at the same time as the bucket of water. Nobody came even close to trying to make us feel sorry or embarrassed for what we did, although of course we did. We had committed a faux pas several times worse than drinking from a finger bowl–we had used communal food to wash our hands.

Fortunately, nobody had to drink from the polluted bowl of milk, and, after the actual handwashing took place (with clear water from a pitcher, soap and a basin that was so much more obviously for handwashing), we joined at the communal table to enjoy what was incredibly tasty roasted lamb, infinitely better than we had had across the border in Mali. In the communal spirit of the traditional world, one of the passengers paid for the whole group (again leaving us to feel mildly embarrassed, as we had in Tajikistan, given our likely superior relative wealth), and we left again for Nouakchott.