Road Notes # 2

A few thoughts while traveling to Tijikja...

1 This time out of my village I caught a ride with one of the big, Italian-donated green supply trucks that come here occasionally bearing all sorts of necessary, and unnecessary junk.

2 The truck had a crew of 4 (very dirty) men who sat off to the side as the villagers unloaded the truck and flared their egos.

3 When I approached them to ask for a ride they were on a small mat, eating a lunch/dinner of white rice, which had been cooked on a little gas burner in the cab of the truck.

4 I bet it was the first time they were ever asked by some random whitey, living in the middle of nowhere and speaking their language, if he could catch a ride on top of their motored leviathan.

5 Cheikh, the driver, wouldn't let me ride on top because he said I would fall. So I rode in the cab. (By the way, I totally would not have fallen).

6 Hours later (around ten pm) after eating cous cous with a strange family, served by a Buddha-like woman who hid her face, we left.

7 Ironically big trucks get stuck in the sand much more frequently than little ones (sand is basically like snow) and so on about twenty separate occasions we stopped and put down giant metal plates on the ground for traction.

8. They expressed surprise when I proved willing and able to give unsolicited help getting unstuck, much the same way everyone else expresses surprise whenever I do almost anything at all.

9. The crew of men (none over 30) were each like something perfectly sketched by a short storyist's pen. Cheikh, slightly pudgy yet solid with a highish, nasal voice, a little imperious, a chain smoker. Ali, side-kick-esque, thin, and with one lame leg causing him to limp heavily, sober-voiced and quiet, the rice-cooker, the tea-maker. And the two Mohameds, both young, both sporting spectacularly oil-stained clothes, one short with thick, aggressive features, a happy persona and loud, bad (yet fluid) French, the other tall and thin and broad-shouldered, with an elegant, finely drawn face, austere eyebrows; the countenance of a wise child.

10 From sucking on a rubber hose earlier to induce gasoline to travel from a spare barrel to the fuel tank, tall Mohamed had become ill, and afterward merely lay in the truck bed while we dug out the tires. More importantly I knew what was happening because I know the verb 'to vomit' (which is Yigdhev).

11 We finally reached the gudrone about six hours later (4 am) and collapsed on dirty mats under a hangar on the side of the road, me sharing the blankets of this strange collection of men I didn't know a few hours ago. Sometimes Mauritania is wild.

12 Also, not for nothing, but could you imagine for a second that I would ever be allowed to find myself in a similar situation with the approximate counterparts of these people (whoever those might be) in America? No sir. Being foreign in the third world is like having a backstage pass to all sorts of crazy perks. Although I guess perks is relative.

13 The next morning I woke up to the sound of names being called. One of the inscrutable, and, I happen to think, endearing things that Mauritanians do is to call the name of the person they want over and over and over again, with out ceasing, and without the change of inflection or exasperated shouting that would certainly seem reasonable after a while. They just evenly call over and over, as if they're certain you will answer and haven't a thing to do in the meantime.

14 Spread on the pavement we breakfasted on peanuts and camel biscuits. Ali made tea on the gas burner and served it from a dirty, blue-plastic oil jug, turned on its side, with holes cut out for two kesses (shot glasses) and a baraad (the dainty little tea pot).

15 One of the new companions I had acquired overnight (we had slept in a place with several more of their truck-driving companions, waiting for a wheel to their hobbled vehicle) was named Yahya and had such exaggerated African features (prodigious lips; wide, flat nose; almond shaped eyes ) that it was hard to believe he was real. He chatted with me about his wish to learn karate while Cheikh scrubbed his feet on the pavement with a sliver of soap and a stone.

16 The late morning found me waiting in the searing heat for a car, in one of the many places in Mauritania where no one should ever have settled down. (But they did).

17 At the gendarme stop, where Yahye and his newly be-wheeled comanions bade me their farewell, I finally snagged a car for the second leg of my journey. The driver was nice, conversational but just enough for politeness, his speech intelligible, the window was down (it was just the two of us) the fare was free, and he gave me an orange from the pile on the floor. That's what's known as a holiday.