Eat it

I'm going to miss the bread. One thing you can reasonably expect to find in most average sized boutiques in the morning is bread - little 9 inch-ish loaves of bread the thickness of a banana which make up the better part of many Mauritanian breakfasts.

Usually no two places make their bread the same way. One major variety, which we call, colorfully, electric bread, is, not surprisingly, made only in places that are on the grid. El Qidiya is very, very, not, which is great because I hate electric bread anyway, excepting certain instances which do not include traveling, because electric bread is like a light, crusty baseball bat and makes a tremendous mess of crumbs every time. In El Qidiya we have mburu li htab (wood bread) which is made in a small stove, or a big, car sized shack with a mud-brick dome and a wood-burning oven. When the loaves come out they are small, chewy and golden brown packets of empty carb calories, perfect for those on the go.

El Qidiya's bread uses too much oil. Tijikja's loaves are rather tasteless and dry. Tokomaji's are perfectly symmetrical elipses, with crunchy, artisanal crusts. Nbeika's are skinny, like weaklings, taste like mesquite and are made in a dirty little hole of a garage, blackened with greasy filth, by wife-beatered young men sweating from the heat. The sign on the door spells garage like this: GARGE.

In Nouakchott we have boulangeries and possibilities open. Every morning they radiate out their doughy offerings to the the surrounding boutiques, enabling one to get a pretty decent croissant, or a semi-sweet bun, but my favorite is still the traditional, the adorable little mburu Qur'an, five thin little loaves stuck together in a 100 ougiya lump like the fingers on a hand.

Whenever I'm in Nouakchott and have the time, I get two croissants, and have the boutique owner spread on a slab of 10 ougiya butter with his short, wide knife. (Jelly is also an option). I love this. I love, so much, food created right before your very eyes, which has multiple parts or in which your choices are an integral part of its preparation. This is why I love street food. For example, one of the best things about (car) garages (not so much in Mauritania) is that they always have food to sell, and much of it comes to you in a rotating parade of vendors. There is usually a boy or two carrying a 30 count egg carton on his head filled with brown, hardboiled goodies and you beckon to him with your finger, or you hiss, and you tell him that you want two, holding up your fingers like the peace sign, and he cracks them on their pointy heads with the butt of his knife, then he peels them with expert ease in 3 seconds flat, nestles them in a piece of torn brown paper and slices them into squishy, jiggling quarters. If you want black pepper (why wouldn't you?) he'll sprinkle some over the top from the make-shift shaker, fashioned from an old pill vial with holes poked in the lid, tied with a string to the end of his little blue knife. I'm not sure why I find this so beautiful and honest and good, in a world of ambiguous good, but I really, really do. I feel like saying, "do you know who you are little guy? Do you know how much color you're giving to the world, drifting out from your cardboard egg-tray? It's worth so much more than 50 francs. But don't you dare overcharge me..."