Johnny Walks into 'dry' Mauritania - and gets his feet wet at Orm's 30th birthday party

I think everyone was a little sad to leave Morocco. After all – it was the first of the 29 countries that we will be getting to know over the next ten months, we did spend four weeks and covered 4000 kilometres there and the country served well as a gentle introduction to the vast dark continent which is Africa. For many in the group it was a first in many things – a first taste of the medinas, a first look into the Arabic souks, the first call to prayer – five times a day, seven days a week, the first lesson in bargaining and haggling and finding a good deal which makes the seller as well as buyer a happy man, the first time sleeping under African skies, cooking over open fires, finding the ingredients for a meal for thirteen people in the open air markets alongside the road, eating goat, eating camel - riding a camel, touching a camel, falling in love with a camel!, the first lessons in Fun Finnish Facts, the first time playing Arse-hole and Shit-head, the first time having to dig your own toilet every morning, the first time swimming/surfing in the Atlantic ocean, the first time baking a birthday cake over an open fire in a hole dug in the sand in the desert, the first time seeing a cobra snake hypnotised by a flute player, the first time pitching a tent, the first time being transported 3 metres across the desert floor by the wind whilst sleeping, the first time seeing shooting stars in the desert, the first time seeing snow and throwing a snowball!, the first time shopping in Marjane!, first time sleeping on the flat rooftop of a travellers' inn, --- no doubt there will be many many more firsts!

The last of firsts go on – and with all firsts – they are good, they are memorable, they make for great stories.

But now Morocco is behind us. Yesterday, after drivi9ng through the Western Sahara for three days and seeing the gradual change in the dress, the architecture, the very appearance of the people as we go along – Layounne, Boudjour, Dakhla – exotic names for exotic places, where the men are so much taller and bigger and darker and mostly dressed in flowing, richly embroidered Bedouin robes, the women in brightly coloured tie-dyed robes, looking like exotic flowers in the otherwise monochrome hues of the desert – and being stopped every 20 kilometres or so at a road block where the Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie inspect the truck, get a list of our names and details, inspect the truck papers and interrogate Mark and in various levels of thoroughness, and then finally ask for whiskey. Mark’s self-taught French is good we finally reached the border post. Getting out of a country can be more time consuming and tricky than getting in. Each one of us, one by one, had to go
underneath the police, the gendarmerie, immigration and customs' magnifying glass – and then, for good measure., in the fifty metres between the last check of passports and papers, the truck gets stopped another two times to allow more police to get onto the truck and go through each passport and have a good look around. And while we were all being scrutinised, the entire truck had to be driven into a large building where it was x-rayed., Amazing!
And then finally – we are through the impressive gateway – in No Man's Land! We pulled over almost immediately and like vultures, the blue and white robed men were all around us, their robes billowing in the wind, their weathered bedouin faces beautifully framed by their head scarves, their hands deep in their chest pockets ready to provide us with Mauritanian ouguiya in exchange for our Moroccan dirhams. Roughly 33 ouguiya for one dirham – the exchange taking place quickly and efficiently, bony ebony fingers fluttering over the cheap little pocket calculators, the dirhams disappearing deep in the djelleba pocket and thick wads of Mauritania ouguiya appearing from the same place – already counted out in neatly folded packets of nine thousand wrapped in a tenth note. The money is beautiful with pictures of all things Mauritanian, giving us a glimpse of what we will see over the next few days. Little square huts with cone shaped canvas roofs, camels – and more camels, fortress type casbahs, a beautiful mosque, the longest train in the world (a 2.5 kilometres-long trains that transports iron ore from the Mauritanian mines to Agadir port – we actually saw the train – quite an incredible sight! – Is it longer than the Richards Bay anthracite and coal train?), an iron ore mine, an oil rig (Idid not know they had oil -- but now see it everywhere - Star Oil) – somewhere out there are all these things – for now we only see flat white and pink and green that stretches all the way to infinity.
No man's land. How very strange. There is no road to speak of – so for probably about five kilometres, we drive bumpy across sand dunes, rocks, holes, surrounded by burntout cars, wrecks, random tyres, the odd tent of a money changer. We speculate about being in No Man's Land – what happens if you decide to stay there? Do you live Nowhere? If you died there, are you really dead, since you have died nowhere? What is the situation if you should be born in No Man's Land (and rest assured, if you were pregnant you would probably give birth – it was that bumpy!) – I would love to know the answer to these International Political questions please!)
And then we arrive at the entrance to Mauritania. A much much smaller set-up than at the Moroccan side, a small building or two and a boom over the road – yes, suddenly a proper tarred road again!

There are soldiers everywhere. So different from the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie. These are tall men, almost black with Arabic features – long aquiline noses, moist black eyes, regal bearing, so totally in charge. They take turns to get onto the truck and ask for our passports, they scan every nook and cranny of the truck for the slightest sign of alcohol, they ask the question everyone asks at every check point: Is this a humanitarian mission? What is your mission? Who are you? Why are you travelling through Africa? Tourists? No! Not possible! What is your mission? Are you going to teach? Are you scientists? Is it humanitarian? No one will believe that we are mere adventurous explorers of an exciting continent.
Mauritania is a 'dry' country, meaning not only that almost the entire country is one big stretch of desert, but also that absolutely no alcohol is allowed in this country. I have often come across this ruling and have traditionally found that those are the areas where you are most likely to see several drunk people lurching across your way. Not here, it seems. It really, really is dry. So the last remnants of the Stork Beers, the Flag beers, the red Moroccan Sahara wine – everything containing any alcohol was finished and polished off the night before. Because we knew the truck would go through the x-ray machine, no one was going to take a chance on trying to get even one drop of alcohol through that b order. “Where is the alcohol?' the soldier barks. “We have none” we reply – and I even taught Mark the little phrase – especially for all those policemen at every checkpoint in Morocco who wanted whiskey before letting us go – how to say – we respect the Muslim faith so we don't drink in Muslim countries and carry no alcohol. There were a few embarrassed faces at the checkpoints – but only a few...
But then of course we had Johnny with us – black labelled and all. You see, it was Arm’s 30th birthday on the 8th and Graham's 25th birthday on the 9th, and everyone had pooled in to buy a special bottle to celebrate. Where Johnny was hiding when we crossed the border I have no idea, but better so – I am not sure how long I would have stood up to the interrogation were I put under the spotlight.

But – as mentioned, we had to empty the truck of ALL alcohol the night before we crossed the border, and thus the night before the birthdays, so the birthdays were preceded though by a HAT Party! The night before the first birthday party, everyone had to make a hat with whatever was to hand. The idea was not to buy a hat, but to make your own. What a truly mad hatter party that turned into! There was a shisha pipe contraption made from a cut-in-half round-bellied water bottle, complete with the Vache qui rit logo on the front on Graham's head. On Orm's head was a (water-bottle-) tagine with Je ne sais quoi Morocco randomness inside – a bicycle peddle, a lucky stone, a crystal from way back, other odds and ends collected along the way in Morocco and rounded off with the obligatory slice of preserved lemon – looking a little worse for wear. Elissa looked splendid in her disco ball hat – a round aliminium foil cap covered in the bottoms of plastic cups that she had painted – each another fluorescent colour. Emy was superb in her Moroccon “Looking is free” shop. She had a camel – with a superb hump, a pair of Moroccan babouche slippers, silver earrings, a Fatima's hand, and several key rings – Moroccan'Roll, Mint tea pot , and of course. A drink or two of your own preferred tipple could buy you any of the items. There was quite a bit of bartering going on – usually in the opposite direction of what we were by now used to doing! Kyle wore a miniature red fes which got a little lost in his dreaded dreads, Mark started off as a koala, but then had a metamorphosis halfway through the evening and became a sad donkey. Ben was a happy donkey – again half a water bottle forming the base for two magnificently happy donkey ears, perking up even more as the evening progressed. I used five Moroccan bread loaves – the plate sized round flat loaves – all on top of each other as the base for Terry – our pterodactyl dinosaur mascot, with a few more smaller dinosaurs around, a crown from a palm leaf and some desert flowers for decoration – since I am the dinosaur on the trip, after all and the bread loaves – well, the thinking was they might just come in handy. And they did – breakfast the following morning was some delicious flower flavoured toast. Andrew had a hat of toilet rolls – treated like the crown jewels that those are out here!, John was the prince of the desert with his karate headband covered in clothes pegs and David looked jolly with his hat made from a swimming cap (yes, David- the man with no hair!)in which he had threaded about twenty blown up balloons in all colours, with a champagne glass nestling on the top of his head amongst the balloons. This glass was constantly filled with beer and so he shared his big stash of beer with the group. But the winner of the evening was Suzanne who had spent hours making miniature drawings of everything that had impressed her since arriving in Morocco. There were surfers, waves, Mark in his Moroccan Ewok coat, a face of each one in the group – quite remarkable likenesses! And all of this was on the burka head covering and veil that she had made out of the Marjane logo cut from about forty Marjane plastic bags. It was superb! The very worthy winner got a medal (made from – guess! The top of a water bottle!) as well as a bag of small Mars Bars – which was shared with everyone. And the slightly blurry star of the evening was Elissa who, in true Finnish style, taped all her empties on top of each other and needed a couple of guys by the end of the evening to stand at the top of the truck stairs and hold this one long beer can for her to drink from. (don't ask how many empty cans were in the end result ! ) But in case you do, it was 18!)

And so the journey continues – Orm successfully turned 30 and lives to tell the tale – balloons, crowns, lots and lots – and lots of singing and of course, a dashing Johnny later, and so did Graham enjoy his 25th. If their families are reading this – I am afraid you have a lot to live up to from now on – they will want every birthday to be this good in the future! They both got silly little presents from everyone, beautiful cards, T-shirts with everyone's (rude) messages written on, and everyone will agree that is it good to celebrate a birthday on a trip like this (where the any-excuse-for-a-party-policy applies)


Short note: Layounne was interesting – big sprawling quite modern city on top of a hill in the desert. Lots of building going, seems flourishing, I had my last hammam there and spent a glorious two hours enjoying the last of this fabulous luxury. Next shower or wash is fourteen days away. Don't ask!...)
Nouakchott is the first mad, crazy, busy, colourful, noisy noisy noisy, bustling, very very dirty, dusty, disorganised African city. And so hot we are dying! We slept on the roof of a camp-site building last night on the beach – after visiting g the fishing port where the huge 20+metre wooden brightly painted fishing boats are pulled in from the ocean – our boys helping the 30-a-side teams to drag these boats in with their haul on drums and sand mats – quite an amazing sight to see! The brightly clothed women sit on the beach and wait for the first choice from their husbands' catch, before the fish is unloaded and everyone e can come to buy. Huge trucks drive down to load fish and drive it away to the factories, people shouting, donkeys braying standing waiting to take their loads over the soft beach sand, over there a half-faced dog heartbreakingly drinking sea water, here a mother breast feeding her new-born baby, and there, in the shade of the boat, a few men kneeling towards the east and praying. Wonderful!
We also all swam in the ocean – very salty! Very strong currents. Very wild waves – and a cup or two of precious water had to suffice to at least wash the crusted salt off my face afterwards. The rest of me will have to wait until we get to Bamako and water. The beach was crowded on the Saturday afternoon – families, groups of friends, men in flowing robes, women either veiled and covered or almost naked, everyone swimming and enjoying g the slight relief from the heat once in the water. Mark and Orm impressed everyone with their excellent body surfing, and we reckon Mauritania has learned a new sport from them yesterday.

Oh yes – Elissa and David and John left us yesterday to travel 13 hours by bush taxi down to Senegal. We will meet them again in Bamako – we hope! As we will Randy – who never got his visa for Mauritania so went back to Rabat to collect his passport and flew from there to Senegal (we think!) So – we now head off into the hinterland and will be in touch again next Sunday – if all goes well!