Reverie

Thursday, July 10th

...that sudden sense of happiness which comes to one in Dakar doesn't last... a happiness that tingles behind the eyes, beautiful and insecure, a wish fulfillment... Undoubtedly the other Dakar... the [Dakar of] despair and injustice... was there, but something else was momentarily shining through...
-Graham Green, Journey without Maps


It's been a week since I landed in Africa and I picked up my bike today. The dealership is a shiny new metal and glass behemoth that makes American dealerships look grimy and unkempt. They sell expensive "African" models of European cars and hence cater to the wealthy elite: Senegalese VIPs, expatriate French and Lebanese merchants. They don't have room in their business plan for American backpackers who need cheap transportation. The dealership had been telling me for three days that it would be ready, "the next day." So I was prepared to put my metaphorical foot down with a slow paced game of chicken.

I walked in a 9 am and sat down in one of the chairs in the middle of the showroom floor. Around me there were a menagerie of off-road motorcycles, 4x4's and a full-size Mitsubishi truck that I didn't recognize from the U.S. The motorcycles were arranged in the front display case, ostensibly to catch the eye of potential buyers. But in a land where the government violently puts down food riots, there are no impulse buys. In my three days at the dealership, I never saw a customer look at the bikes. I was their sole admirer and I drooled over then. These bikes were the real deal and my economy sized suzuki looked like a 98-pound weakling struggling to make varsity. I played the "what kind of adventure could I have with that one?" game over and over. I looked at the Yamaha with the off-road tires and the front and rear luggage racks and imagined carrying 5 days worth of food and gas onto the little dirt roads that dot the African backcountry. No maps, no GPS, no backup plan. I would then look at the Honda with the enduro hand guards and engine plate and imagine catching air off a sand dune in Mauritania before meeting toureg nomads who would insist that I have tea with them. After a filling dinner of rice and fried sand viper, they would invite me along on their next desert trading caravan. Four weeks across through the Sahara to trade small arms with Chadian rebels in exchange for gold that comes from unmarked mines deep in the sand dunes. I would then trade my share of the gold to a South African mercenary in exchange for safe passage into the fabled Hoggar Mountains where uranium dealers send coded messages to Al Queda operatives. Our plane would be a Cessna 2-seater. The engine trouble would start 100 miles from the nearest oasis...

"Excusez-moi monseiur, what are you waiting for? Can I help you?" The chief security guard spoke in an officious tone that he would only dare use with American travelers and schizophrenic Africans. It was now 9:05 am. "I'm waiting for Mimo," I replied, using the nickname for my sales contact. "Ahhh, Mimo will not be in until 11," he said, with an air of triumph. I replied, "thank you for the excellent information. When he comes in, could you please let him know that I will be sitting here?" I was sitting 15 feet from the entrance that Mimo would be using on arrival and the irony was not lost on the guard. He left me alone to read my french comic books in peace.

Mimo arrived on schedule. When he saw me, his face dropped. I greeted him cheerily and asked what time today I would be able to pick up my bike. Mimo is a Senegal-born Lebanese who had recently spent 2 years in Houston. He spoke great English and was thus the unfortunate chap assigned to me. He knew that my bike was not ready. I knew that my bike was not ready. But, he had half-heartedly offered to have it ready today. I had a hunch that my presence would force him to make good on his offer. In a country that relies on patience and good will in order to conduct business, my assumption was particularly guache but it worked. By 5pm, he said that I would have my bike.
Just before I rode out of the showroom
It is impossible to be impatient in a hot country. This does not mean that is impossible to feel impatient, just that it is impossible to do the things that normally come from being impatient. I got up. I paced around. I started sweating. I sat back down. I had 6 hours to kill and only a comic book, a French-English dictionary, and some note-cards. I fidgeted and paced around and tried to write note cards for new French words for 21,600 glacial seconds of Senegalese time.

But then my bike came and a lifetime of christmas mornings came flooding back. The bike started on the first try. I rode it in little circles in the parking lot grinning like an idiot. Dopamine neurons flashed in my head like fireworks. Believe the hype. Motorcyles [1] are fun.

So, hold on to your berets, handrolled cigarettes, and superior attitudes. Paris, here I come.

[1] From here on out I will call my contraption a 'motorbike' instead of a 'motorcycle.' My bike had a 1/10th of a liter sewing machine for an engine. The smallest bikes sold in America are 1/4 liter and most Harleys are over a liter.

The Chopshop

Saturday Continued

"I think of John N. R. Wayne... standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head."
-Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

I met Mathieu in an online message board. In my broken French, I'd posted some requests for information about buying a motorbike in Dakar. Mathieu posted a response and then sent me an email offering to help me out once I got there. It turns out that I'd hit the random "guy-I-met-online" lottery. Mathieu is a French orthodontist who had spent three months in DC taking classes and working on his English. Instead of an axe-murderer or drug runner, I'd lucked into the best connected Frenchman in Dakar.

"David, if you are not busy then you should come to my house and have lunch with my wife and I." This was the first phone call that I'd received while I was in Senegal. Mathieu had patiently explained how to buy a phone card--I overpaid despite his best advice--and use it in my phone's SIM. When he called, I was hesitant at first. I was going to ride on the back of some dude's motorcycle over to his house. But I was in Africa, the stores are closed on Saturdays, and I had jackshit to do. Glad things worked out and my parents didn't have to identify my various body parts to an unsmiling consular officer.

I tried not to fall off the back of his bike as we gunned it through downtown Dakar. This was the second time in two days that I'd been on the back of somebody else's motorcycle and I could hear the sputtering sound that my life-expectancy was making. We parked outside of his apartment building which was located next to the morgue of the main hospital. We could hear regular pounding coming from inside. Mathieu assured me that it wasn't the caretakers making coffins but rather local women beating manioc into meal.



Their apartment was nothing less than stunning. They had the top floor of the second tallest building in his neighborhood. Their nearly wraparound porch has views of the entire city and the surrounding ocean. Julie, his wife, was home and we ended up eating mexican food with two of their French-expat friends. We talked about Senegal, DC, and my plans. I told him about my goal of going north through the Sahara and finishing up in Paris in time to sell my bike and get back to the U.S. Mathieu thought about how he could help me. He'd already made the trip from Paris to Dakar three times and he was currently planning his fourth trip with his rally racing partner. But he had never gone north--or alone for that matter. He had two racing partners, both of whom were well-connected. One was the son of the biggest auto dealership in Dakar. The other was the daughter of the President of Senegal. (fyi, I drop names like Usain Bolt drops records.)



Mathieu made a phone call to his friend and negotiated a good deal on a new Suzuki motorbike. It was small--only 100cc--but it was a genuine Suzuki and the price was right. It was about as much as a new low-to-mid tier road bicycle would cost in the U.S.

The next few days were not pleasant. I knew it was going to take awhile to get the bike assembled and get all of the paperwork processed, but I wasn't mentally or physically prepared for the delay that I faced. If you have an image in your mind of incomprehensible African bureaucracy, then you can imagine what my next few days were like. If you don't, I won't bother. Needless to say, I survived. Thank you, Mr. Bureaucrat, I am now a more patient and humble person. But I would rather remove my left little toe with a ball peen hammer than spend another 3 days in your office.

Communications Breakdown

Saturday July 5

I started studying french before I came to Africa. Or, more accurately, I started studying French so that I could come to Africa. Back in January, I started listening to the 90-lesson Pimsleur French CD's and I finished the series the day I left DC. I'd also bought 1000 preprinted vocab flash cards and a "vocabulary builder" comic book. The comic book is intended to help teach "real" French to disaffected teens who are presumably taking high school French classes. So you follow the main character--a 15-year old girl--around her daily life. I learned such useful phrases as "but, everyone else is doing it!" and "no, Mom, he's not my boyfriend." From a vocabulary perspective, French is a great language to learn as an anglophone. By some estimates, 50% of the words are direct cognates with English and I went from not knowing french to reading easy passages fairly quickly. Unfortunately, spoken French is a completely different story. And spoken French in Africa where the dialect is different and the accent is strong is even more difficult still. For the first few days no one understood me, or vice-versa. Fortunately, I slowly learned some tricks with the local dialect that helped me out. For example, the soft "ooh" as in deux becomes "ay" in Senegalese French. So you count, "unh, day, twa, kat, sank, sase" instead of "unh, deux, twa, kat, sank, sees."

I also found out that many cab drivers don't speak [much] French. This was a shocker as French seems to be a pre-requisite for anyone in the tourist or transportation industries. However, the caliber of a Senegalese's French is usually correlated with his or her education level. More educated = more french. Cab drivers aren't awarded a license based on education level, but on their ability to pay baksheesh to the commissioner or their personal connections.

Estimates vary, but I would guess that relatively few Senegalese speak fluent French, maybe 20%. Approximately 80% of Senegalese speak Wolof as their native language and the balance is filled out with such sonorous sounding languages as Diola, Mandinka, Soninke, and Fula. The language hodgepodge is relatively unimportant in Senegal which relies mainly on Wolof as the basis for daily business. Unlike other African countries, Senegal has relatively few native languages, so French is less important as the de facto language of commerce. Togo, for example, is smaller than Senegal with respect to both land area and population and yet Togolese speak more than 30 local languages. French becomes more important as a common language.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that communication is difficult in Senegal. Add in complex cultural mores and American dollars and you can fry your interpersonal circuits at a moment's notice. Luckily, I met someone who [briefly] took my communication problems off the table.

The Senegalese National Workout

Saturday July 5
========

It's been 90 days since I last wrote a blog post. I am going to be a whiny bitch and play the "I-don't-have-any-time-since-business-school-started" card. Thankfully, my friend wrote me and inspired me to keep going. So, no excuses. I am going to finish this blog.

=========

SCOTT: There's somebody following us.
CURTIS: How do you know?
SCOTT: In the city, there's always a reflection. In the woods, there's always a sound.
CURTIS: What about the desert?
SCOTT: Don't go into the desert.
-Val Kilmer & Derek Luke from David Mamet's "Spartan"

When I landed in Dakar, I took a taxi to my hotel. The ride seemed to continue a brief nightmare that I'd had just before we landed. People stared intently at me as I drove by. Wayward springs poked through the fabric of the cab's seat. The axels groaned every time they met a pothole. The cab driver didn't understand a word I said and the air had the low-grade menace of a Damid Mamet movie. Every street turned into an alley and the lights were never bright enough to see the faces of those who watched me.

I got to my hotel and checked in. My room was stifling, but fatigue is more powerful than comfort, so I slept soundly.

I woke up around 6:45 and went for a run on the beach. There were hundreds of young men--and even young women--out doing what I call the Senegalese national workout. It involves running for a couple of miles, stopping every quarter mile or so to do situps and pushups. In the meantime, you also do fun things like windsprints, running backwards, sideways crossovers and bear walks. From 6 am to about 10 am, all of the beaches around Dakar look like a very black version of Muscle Beach in Venice, California. The beach is filthy and trash strewn. At first, this seemed normal for a developing country with intermittent trash service. I assumed that trash washes up and stays there until a big storm. I would have continued to think that except I happened to be on the same beach one night before nightfall. All of the local women brought their buckets of trash down to the beach and threw it at the tideline. This was their trash service. Luckily, Fishheads and plastic scraps weren't going to keep me from training there in the morning. Though they did make think about the diseases I was courting.

On my first day, I tried to do too much in the heat and I was struggling. A cute Senegalese girl jogged by while I was trying to do some pushups. Whe was wearing a headscarf, long pants, a tight fitting soccer jersey, and clean Western running shoes. She chuckled at me and said--my french was rusty--"You don't have to do it all in one day."

Kung Fu Camp

Friday, July 4
Dakar, Senegal

My guidebook to Dakar is worthless. I found this out after I spent two hours trying to find the "must-see" Piscine Olympique. It's a swimming pool. And my map is wrong more often than it is right. Thanks, Lonely Planet!

I went down to the main local's market to try to buy a motorbike today. There's a Chinese brand called "Sanili" that is pretty popular in West Africa. The bikes aren't high quality but they aren't bad either. For $1,000 to $1,500 I'm not expecting a Honda Africa Twin. I got off the bus and started asking around for motorcycle vendors. I got pointed in a number of different directions, not all of them particularly helpful, but nevertheless I had a great time walking through the market. It was my first "real" African market. Since it's a market for the local people, not tourists, no one hassled me. I couldn't find the moto vendors but I did stumble upon the cow head vendors. Finally, I came to a break in the market and stumbled upon a guy driving a Moto Sanili. I found out that his name was Cheick Kane and that he is a business school student at the Dakar International School of Business. I asked him where he bought his bike and within two minutes, I was on the back heading for the dealership.



Of all of the stupid things I've done--running with the bulls, going to Mauritania, not buying stock in google--getting on the back of this bike is at at the top of the list.


CHEIK: David, hold on. Inshallah, we shall arrive at the dealership.
ME: I'm ready.
CHEIK: Driving in Dakar is very dangerous.
ME: Shouldn't we rely on your driving skills and not Allah?
CHEIK: Allah knows best.
ME: Fuck.

Somewhere between the time we drove about 8 inches behind a dump truck and the time we drove 40 mph against our right-of-way into a blind intersection, my heart rate hit about 200 beats per minute. I didn't know the French word for "heart attack" so I mimed for Cheik to slow down. When this had no discernible result, I began to calculate the damage from jumping off the bike and taking my chances with the pavement. Not worth it. I stayed put and we arrived a few minutes later at the Sanili shop. Cheik negotiated a great price for me on a new bike. I told the dealer I would be back on Monday with the money and I returned to my hotel to try to figure out how to get enough money in cash.

To the Shores of Tripoli

July 3rd
Tripoli, Libya

30 hours by air from DC to Dakar, Senegal. DC to Munich. Munich to Paris. Paris to Tripoli. Tripoli to Dakar. Needless to say I got my flight from a cut-rate discounter. The only benefit outside of spending 5 hours in Charles De Gaulle airport--pronounced shar d gaw in French as best I can tell--was spending 3 hours in Tripoli. For a scary sounding place like Libya, Tripoli was surprising. Neat, orderly rows of houses and olive trees as far as the eye could see. Though the Sahara rides herd on the small fertile belt by the Mediterranean. At times the desert is only a few kilometers from the shore. The farmers and shepherds have to subsist in that narrow band. At the airport, I poked my head outside, walked around for a bit and then retreated out of the sun to send a postcard. It was a kitschy tourist print of a nomad riding a snowboard down a sand dune. Nothing but the best for my friends.

While I was on the plane to Tripoli, there was something about the enormity of my upcoming trip that stuck with me and made me tear up a bit. I'd been reading a biography of Warren Buffett for business school. That reminded me of a friend of mine who had died a few years ago in a swimming accident. My friend was the only person who I've ever met who could truly think for himself. He was someone who brought a unique perspective to *everything* from April Fool's day pranks to the stock market. In the seventh grade, we'd played the stock market game in our math class. I bought the standard run of blue-chip stocks--IBM, Caterpillar, Coke, etc. He bought Berkshire Hathaway. Sixteen years later that is so awesome it is hard to describe. Whenever I think about independent thinkers, Kyle Hurdle and Warren Buffett always stand above the rest.

Before we took off from Tripoli to Dakar, two African passengers got into a fistfight over their seats. One man had to be restrained by the flight attendants. I wasn't sure whether to cheer or fear for my life. Thankfully there was no more violence over the next five weeks.

The flight to Dakar was interminable--massive thunderstorms blocked our path, but we finally arrived. The Dakar airport is the smallest international airport I have ever seen. If there were more than two terminals, I would be surprised. I walked out into a smothering humidity that seemed to suck the light out of the air. I paid a guy 1 US dollar (an actual dollar bill, mind you) to help me find my guide. 4 minutes later, I was in a cab to my hotel in Yoff, a surprisingly run-down neighborhood 6 km outside of Dakar. When I got to my hotel I drank a beer, turned on my fan and slept like a rock for 10 hours.

It Doesn't Take a Weatherman

Wednesday, July 23
Nouakchott, Mauritania

Before I start, let me say three things:

1) Bald Pete has now taken to calling me "CIA Dave" because of my unrivaled capacity for misinformation (see previous posts)
2) Apologies to my two faithful readers (thanks Mom!). I have been sidetracked by school. I will try to do better.
3) My blog has more time changes (past, present, flashbacks) than a Christopher Nolan movie. I will take steps to correct that in today and tomorrow's post.


Today is the big day. The day that I have to head either north into the Sahara or south into Senegal. Last night I finally met some travelers who are making the overland trip north by car. They are two 20 year old girls who are driving back from their 6 month volunteer job in either Togo or Benin. I can't remember. Since then, they've driven their super-micro mini van here to Mauritania and are planning to make the run all the way across the desert back to France. One girl is French, one is Canadian, and both speak fluent French, definitely an asset in the desert. This is a big step. I've been waiting four days now for travelers who are heading north. However, they don't have any room for me in their car should my bike break down. The best they can do is bring some extra gas for me. And they don't have a cell phone. For a backwards country, Mauritania has an excellent cell phone network, even in the middle of the desert.

One of my friend's forwarded this YouTube post to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6VrzGWCq2I

You only need to watch 30 seconds of it, but it will give you the queasy feeling about Mauritania that I've been feeling for the past 9 days. I feel like there's always something creepy around the next corner.


I woke up this morning undecided about which way to go. My mind raced all night about what to do and as a result, I slept like a mexican jumping bean. I'm generally pretty risk-averse--some might say reckless--but Pete's stories about the bandits have stuck with me. At the same time, if I can just make it 1000 kilometers north, I will re-enter civilization in southern Morocco where there is a bus system, highways, and even such luxuries as hospitals. on my bike, I can handle about 500 km per day as an absolute max. That puts me two days out from Dakhla, a sheisty resort city/border town/windsurfing mecca in the Western Sahara. There are no easy choices here and nothing underscores that fact like the lack of gas for the next 600 km. I woke up at 5:45 am with a jolt. The Mosque next door was *blasting* ALLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AKBBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAR at the ear splitting level of a Guns 'n Roses concert. There was no hope of sleep after this. I rubbed my eyes for a second and decided before getting out of my tent that I would go whichever way the wind blew. Riding against the wind is unpleasant on a 7 Horsepower motorbike, and after the last few days, I needed nothing more than the solace of few hundred desert filled kilometers--north with the girls into the Sahara or south into Africa...

Through the Looking Glass

Tuesday, July 22
Nouakchott, Mauritania

My visa expires tomorrow and I still have not found a caravan going north. I am getting concerned. I heard about a camion--french for "big ass truck"--that goes all the way from Nouakchott to Agadir, Morocco. That's about 1500 km for a very reasonable $100. I drove my bike down the Moroccan Market to ask around. I finally found a young guy who could give me some information. He said I could get on a truck that day--but I couldn't bring my moto. [start soapbox]


[in French]
ME: Why is it that I cannot bring my motorcycle?
MOROCCAN: You cannon take it. You can sell it to me.
ME: I will not do that. I will go only if I can bring my motorcycle.
MOROCCAN: Ah, it is decided. You will ride on the truck today and before you will sell me the motorcycle.
ME: [in English] You can suck my awful french diction.
MOROCCAN: Qua?
ME: J'ai dit que ce ne pas possible. Au revoir.

And that was that. Exchanges like this piss me off because in each case the local person's desire to make a killing off a foreigner stopped the flow of normal business. Each local who deals with tourists inevitably gets one big score from either a hapless or desperate foreigner. This leads them to believe that all foreigners are either stupid, fantastically rich, or desperate. This guy would have benefited from a compromise, but his greed got in the way. When I suggested that he set a surcharge for the moto--I offered another $100--he just stonewalled me. To him, the mere chance of getting my bike at a favorable price set him salivating. In Africa, I ran into situations like this on a daily basis, but the difference in Senegal was that if I held firm the Africans were always willing to settle for a reasonable price--one that was higher than for locals, but less than extortionate. Unfortunately for both of us, the Moors and Moroccans were as stubborn in their ways as I am in mine. [end soapbox]

Inexplicably, Mauritania is somewhat similar to America--in purely negative ways. If Alice fell through the evil looking glass somewhere in Kansas, she would inevitably end up in a David Lynch nightmare world in Nouakchott.

To wit:
Moors drive big cars
Moors live in soulless tract houses
Moors--at least the Arab half--are unaccountably fat*

*A few weeks later I talked with a Canadian hotel manager who relayed a rumor that Mauritanian girls must get fat before their father can marry them away. She went on to tell me some stories about mothers force feeding their daughters that turned my stomach. Stories like these may or may not be true, but they often tell us as much about the culture that tells them--white expats--as it purports to tell about the local population.

This is my last negative Mauritanian post. Promise. I actually love the place, but just had a few bad experiences...

No Man's Land

Monday, July 21
Nouakchott, Mauritania

No Man's Land is the name of the 5 km wasteland between Mauritania and Morocco. Once you leave Mauritania, you are literally in no man's land until you reach the visa checkpoint in Morocco. There is no road. Just a mishmash of trails. Some go the right way. Some dead end in a sea of rocks and landmines. Mathieu and Julie, my erstwhile gurus and experienced desert travelers had once gotten lost in no man's land. Their van broke down right before sunset. In no man's land, there is no rule of law, no government, and nobody to account to. The area is ruled by desert nomads, and I'm sure there are a few travel horror stories attributable to the crossing. luckily, Mathieu and Julie did not become another one. They flagged down a truck, got their van running and made it through without any further problems.

I offer this as explanation for why I am still waiting here in Nouakchott for a caravan going north. Mauritania is not fun and I would prefer to leave as soon as possible, but unfortunately there are very few travelers right now. Mauritania is a particularly strict Arab country and alcohol is illegal. Normally, I'm not too keen on drinking in foreign countries--it's expensive, it leads to stupid decisions, and it makes the desert heat unbearable. But Mauritania is different. There is no intellectual stimulation. All I can think about here is drinking. But there is no beer here.

Pete, Cam, Dan, Adam (the aforementioned brits) and I drove around town for a good two hours looking for alcohol. Everybody seemed to "think" they knew where we could buy alcohol, but none of the locals could tell us for sure. Mauritanians have a very loose grasp of concepts like "facts" or "truth." The great Homer Simpson once said, "Facts, schmacts, facts can't be used to prove anything even remotely true." He would have made a great Mauritanian. Person after person would tell us, "a guy will sell you alcohol in that store over there" or "ask at the hotel. One of the bellhops will sell to you." It reminded me of driving around with my delinquent friends shoulder-tapping beer back in high school. But here, it had none of the exhilaration or sense of purpose. It was just a depressing schlep from one unhelpful store owner to the next.



The constant evasions, lies, and half-truths wore off on me. I became unable to process facts in the normal way--things that I had seen with my own eyes became distorted and muddy. As we drove around, I became convinced that a place I had stopped at a couple days earlier sold beer.

ME: Let's drive back to the hotel. I know a convenience store that sells beer.
PETE: Nope.
ME: No, seriously. I stopped there on my bike a couple days ago. The guy behind me bought a few cold beers. Maybe Castel brand. I wasn't sure.
PETE: Absolutely fucking impossible. Nobody sells alcohol openly here.
ME: I'll put money on it.
PETE: I wouldn't want to make you feel bad.

We drove back to the aforementioned convenience store. No alcohol. The beer I had seen was non-alcoholic. The bottles of liquor I had seen turned out to be obscure and very expensive bottles of olive oil. The desert mirages were extending past the sand dunes and into my head.








Later that afternoon we went down to the fish market. The coast off Mauritania may very well have the most fertile fishing grounds in the world and the fish market is hard to describe. 200 lb. Tuna, Captain, Monkfish, and Dorat(?) in astounding quantities and at great prices. We bought some monkfish and some tiger prawns intending to grill them back at the hotel. But as always, man plans and Allah laughs. When we got back, Pete discovered that we'd been ripped off with the tiger prawns. The box had a few tiger prawns on top and then just regular shrimp underneath. He estimated we were out $20, or so. Pete grabbed a baseball bat and got back in the van to return to the fish market. He warned me that it would get ugly, but I'd rather spend a few days in jail than miss all the fun. I joined the impromptu posse. We brought some of the hotel staff with us--local Mauritanian guys. Deep down, I knew that things wouldn't get too out of hand because the hotel staff knew the culture and the language and I was certain they would reel things back when they got too heavy. We showed up at the fish market 6 strong and with the righteous anger of the recently ripped-off. We shouldn't have bothered. The haul must have been a pretty good one for the merchant because he had already closed shop and gone home to gloat.

Pirate Pete & Other Adventures

Sunday, July 20
Nouakchott, Mauritania




By Mauritanian standards, today was pretty uneventful. I hung out in Nouakchott with the intention of doing very little. I was still fatigued by my monster journey from Noudibou, and mentally, I was in no shape to make the potentially life or death decision to either continue north or retreat south to the comfort and relative safety of Senegal--and Sub-Saharan Africa in general. My goal is to make it from Mauritania north into Western Sahara and then up in Morocco and finally into Spain. But I knew how scary the desert could be and I was waiting for a caravan of westerners who might be headed north. Or better yet, wait for a pickup truck that could carry me and my bike north through Mauritania and the no-man's land into Western Sahara/Morocco.

I spent a good portion of the day talking to Cam and Bald Pete. They are two very cool expats with a fairly untraditional outlook on life. Cam is a bit younger--closer to my age--and he's sort of Pete's apprentice. Bald Pete is a grizzled veteran pirate whose profession can best be described as that of Camel Trader. Though while he seemed to know the price of camels in various parts of the Sahara--$1,000 in northern Mauritania and $4,000 in southern Morocco--I don't think he'd ever actually traded camels for a living. He preferred importing and exporting less cumbersome trade goods. As far as I could tell Pete has lived in Istanbul, Bangkok, South Africa, England, Namibia and Morocco, and the closest thing he's ever had to traditional job has been "property development." He's a businessman in the classic sense of the word--someone who exploits massive disparities between supply and demand and keeps a little profit for himself. Pete was in Mauritania attempting to set up an import/export business for self-contained solar power units, chinese made motorcycles, and anything else that nouveau riche Moors might want. Pete has a healthy disrespect for authority that makes me look like a corporate yes-man in comparison.


Quick Note:
Mom and Dad, if I leave business school without prior warning and you have no idea where I am, I have probably moved to Morocco to become an apprentice pirate/desert trader. I still love you. But, please do not follow me. If you must find me to tell me that I finally got that spot on "Road Rules" you can fly to Agadir and ask for the Dread-Pirate-Dave at the British Pub. Do not eat their food.

love,
your son


As I mentioned before, Pete and Cam had driven through the Sahara from Morocco in their tricked out Ford Turbo Diesel Cargo Van. They drove about 160 km/h and it still took them four days. That was a bit of a concern for me as a I could only drive 90 km/h, absent sandstorms, camel trains, and greedy customs officers. I asked them about the road.

ME: Is the road in good condition?
PETE: Absolutely, I'm an exceptional driver so I rarely needed to slow down under 160.
ME: Are there other cars and places to get gas and whatnot?
PETE: There are gas stations and occasional cars and trucks.
ME: Bandits?
PETE: That might be a problem. At one point we drove by four guys standing outside of a white land rover. We couldn't tell if they had guns.
CAM: I'm pretty sure they had guns.
PETE: Well, they did have boards with nails in them to stop cars.
ME: How did you get by?
PETE: Mate, we were doing 160 kilometers per hour. We weren't stopping. I had two choices, veer off into the desert and go around them or hit the fuckers dead on. Of course, I wanted to hit them, but wiping the blood off the car may have been a hassle. We were around them before they could even turn their heads.

The Kids are All Right

Saturday July 19th
Noukchott, Mauritania




This is Cam and Seleka. I am now staying at Auberge Sahara where I have met Cam and his "mate" Pete. Cam and Pete are British and South African expats who live in Morocco. They drove down from Southern Morocco in Pete's Turbo Diesel Van. Seleka lives next door to the Auberge with her family in a well appointed tent (note TV in upper left hand corner and Seleka on the left). You can click on any of these photos to get a bigger version of the original.

This is what Moors do. They pimp out their tents. Oddly enough Moors drive pretty pimp cars--all Mercedes, all almost new, all unfortunately stolen from Europe and sold for a pittance in this backwater Saharan Country. Seleka is about as cute as they come, so she would come over--by herself--and hang out with all the western travelers who would ooh and ahh over her. You may be tempted to ask the obvious questions, like what is a 2 year old doing wandering around by herself, but I will answer your foolish questions with an all purpose response. This is Africa.





For the first time I am excited to be in Mauritania. My experience so far has been hellish and the dare-I-say that the people have been less than welcoming. So I was a bit shocked to check into my tent and find that they were 4 brits at the hotel. I left the US on July 3, and since then, I have not spoken with a native English speaker. I had started having dreams where I was shouting in English. Not at anybody in particular mind you, but just because my brain needed to speak in its native tongue. "THE FLOWERS ARE ON THE TABLE. THE GIRL CROSSES THE ROAD. YES, MY GOATS ARE FATTENING UP NICELY THIS SEASON." I was tired of communicating by slowly speaking my French with somebody for whom French was their 3rd or 4th language.

One of the brits had some contraband gin--alcohol is illegal in Mauritania. So we had a great little party which somewhat eased my mind that the day before I had paid $8 for half a gallon of gasoline. I had been driving from Noudibou, just under 500 kilometers away and the wind changed direction during my drive, killing my gas mileage. I calculated that I needed two extra liters to make it back to Noukchott. In the middle of the desert (see illustrative pictures below), there are not many gas stations. I began to ask around and sure enough, a man came out of his shack offering to sell me 20 liters of gas at $2 liter. Not unreasonable considering the circumstances. Our negotiations went like this:




MAN: I have 20 liters for sale
ME: I have a moped. I have no room for 20 liters. I am only looking for a few litres.
MAN: You are in the middle of the Sahara desert. You will buy what I sell or else the vultures will eat your spleen before you die of thirst, infidel.
ME: I will pay well for a few liters.

Desert nomads, while excellent at goat-herding, camel trading, and exploiting the occasional Westerner, aren't always very quick at math. While he was pondering my offer, I did a few calculations to broker a compromise. I ended up paying the guy the same profit for 2 liters (about $5) as if he had sold me all 20 liters. This took me a bit of explanation, but it got both of us closer to our goals and saved me $32. And there is a great silver lining. Now, no matter where you are the planet, when people complain about high gas prices, you can stand up and proudly say you know somebody who has paid a good deal more.

Counting Coup

Noukchott, Mauritania
Friday, July 18th 2008

I paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld when I say that there are some things you know you need to see and there are some important things that you don't know you need to see. Seeing the guy in the pickup truck drag his dead camel into the Noukchott city dump today fell into the latter category. I was a bit loopy from riding 500 clicks across the desert, and the truck was going in the opposite direction from me so I didn't see it until the last second. When I looked back to doublecheck, I expected to see a truck towing something reasonable like a small trailer. But everything was still in its proper place: Toyota Truck. check. City Dump. check. Dead Camel Towed by its Two Hind Legs. check.

I can only imagine the preceding conversation:

KIFAH: Mustafah, the dead camel has become malodorous.
MUSTAFAH: Woman, you don't exactly smell like cactus blossoms.
KIFAH: I want it out of our front yard.
MUSTAFAH: I will bury it tomorrow. Right now I am enjoying drinking my cold non-alcoholic beer and watching this man read the Koran on television.
KIFAH: If that camel is not gone in the next ten minutes, I will call my parents and tell them that you have invited them to stay for the month of Ramadan.


History
Some quick info to bring you up to speed on Mauritania. Mauritania is nearly twice the size of France with a population of only 3 million people. The desert country was a French colony until 1960 and since then has had a bloody history of racial tension, war, and numerous coups. In the early nineties the dictator expelled or killed tens of thousands of black Mauritanians--the population is split nearly evenly between Black and Arab citizens. As far as I can gather, they were the only country other than Syria to support Saddam Hussein's right to take over other Arab countries during the first Gulf War.

Elections are rarely held and the victors of those elections rarely serve for long before being deposed by a coup. Two weeks after I left, 4 generals arrested and deposed the democratically elected President. Despite the fact that Mauritania is an awful place for Americans, I think the guy was pretty effective--he pushed an anti-corruption measure that kept the police from hassling me and was working with the French to improve nationwide security. Four french tourists were shot by desert bandits in December 2007 and the Israeli Embassy in Noukchott was bombed by an Al Qaeda cell in February. Not the friendliest of places. I was only there because I needed to go north into the Western Sahara and then into Morocco.

Goal Sheet

In honor of an old friend of mine and the ex-Mauritanian President, I am going to start my blog in medias res. This may be a bit confusing at first, but I will try my best to be clear and concise. Luckily, I have the benefit of hindsight. My trip ended safely last week and I am writing this from my notes.

Travel Goals
My travel goals were very simple, straightforward, and not the least bit idiosyncratic:

• go somewhere where there are not a lot of Americans
• go somewhere where I have to speak French
• travel solo across the Sahara from Dakar to Paris
  

Therefore (using adverbs makes this next part sound more logical) I flew one-way from DC to Dakar, Senegal and bought a motorcycle*. A week or two later I found myself in the most exciting city in the world, Noukchott, Mauritania.

*profound thanks to Mathieu and Julie--more later. merci et mes homages