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.