Sahara (2002)

by Michael Palin

  ‘It was parked over there!’

  My room was the one used in the film itself.

  As Fort Saganne was all about the terrible privations endured by members of the French Foreign Legion, this explains a lot.

  Day Twenty-Eight

  CHINGUETTI TO NOUAKCHOTT

  Around a quarter to seven the generator coughs into life, which means electricity and hot water will be available until half past nine, when they turn it off again. Up onto the battlements for a last reminder of the panorama of Chinguetti, this quintessential image of the desert. It requires a vivid imagination to evoke the glory days of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Ibn Battuta came down here from Tangiers, when there were seventy-six libraries in the town and when the constant coming and going of camel trains between Morocco and the fabulous kingdom of Mali made Chinguetti one of the centres of the civilised world.

  Now the desert is quiet. The trade has gone elsewhere, by ship around the coast, on overland trucks that can’t cope with the fine sand seas that enclose Chinguetti.

  But, splendidly isolated as it may feel, Chinguetti is only 1200 miles from the coast of Europe, and if not trucks and boats, then aeroplanes may yet be its saviour. There is a growing curiosity about the desert, and as more tourists brave the Sahara south of Morocco this particular combination of landscape and history could well bring some money back to this historic city.

  These tourist-board thoughts come to me as I wait at the small airstrip outside Chinguetti. I’m cadging a ride to Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, aboard a Cessna, from which Nigel has been filming the desert sands.

  We peel off the baking tarmac and into the air, spreading panic amongst the camels careering below us. Soon the ancient crust of the old Saharan plateau pushes through the desert sands, exposing fault lines that reveal shiny, fractured, black rock and reminding me more than anything of the world’s second largest desert, Antarctica.

  After two hours in the air the colours begin to change. The charred blacks and browns of the escarpment give way to a green and white landscape as we slowly descend towards Nouakchott. The green is from stands of trees and fields of crops, a reminder of what irrigation can do in the fiercest of deserts, but it’s the white that predominates, a great spreading undercloth of limestone and salt, as if the desert had been bleached as it reached the sea.

  Our plane banks and turns and as it begins its final approach to the Mauritanian capital I can just about make out the Atlantic Ocean, away to the west.

  Below us, streets and cars and palaces and office blocks and other visions of a way of life I’d half forgotten race up towards the plane. After where we’ve been, the thought of descending into the midst of a million people seems a great anticlimax, and the more I look forward to the creature comforts of a big city hotel the more I feel that I’m betraying the desert.

  Day Twenty Nine

  NOUAKCHOTT

  After one night at the Monotel Bar-El-Barka I realise that my appreciation of the simple life is a cracked and broken vessel. Maybe it’s a question of age, but the delight I have taken in switching the air-con on and off, flushing and re-flushing the lavatory, caressing the bedside light and reading the laundry list from start to finish, including the women’s section, suggests to me that I am not cut out for deprivation.

  If twelve days of desert travel can reduce me to gibbering delight at the sight of one of the world’s shortest room-service menus, what is to become of me when we turn east again, back to the sands?

  There is water outside my room that is just for swimming in. It’s surprisingly cold and refreshing. The only other occupants are two Mauritanian children, who seem amazed by the whiteness of my body, which, fresh from a long English winter, is very white indeed. They stare open-mouthed, as if seeing a ghost.

  Thirteen years ago, whilst filming Around the World in 80 Days, I was stuck on a Yugoslav freighter moving agonisingly slowly across the Bay of Bengal. The tiny mess room was dominated by a map of the world. To help pass the time, my cameraman, Nigel Meakin, and I competed with each other to memorise every African country and, for extra points, the name of its capital. Mauritania was a tough one, but Nouakchott was a match winner. Nouakchott was the Holy Grail of obscurity.

  Which is why I experienced more than the usual frisson of firsttimer’s excitement when I saw the name on the airport building, and why I immediately bought up all three postcards in the hotel shop. And why I’m rather ashamed to learn that this city we could never remember is the biggest in the Sahara.

  I take some comfort from the fact that this is a recent development. Nouakchott, whose name, my guidebook tells me helpfully, may mean ‘Place of Wind’ or ‘Place of Floating Seashells’, was only created in the late 1950s, and even by 1980 had less than 150,000 inhabitants. Then came fourteen years of drought and an influx of refugees, which has pushed the population beyond the million mark.

  Located at the collision point of Sahara Desert and Atlantic Ocean, the city of Nouakchott feels a bit like a lifeboat, tossed between two seas - one sand, one salt - with new people scrambling on board all the time. It has had neither the time nor the resources to create an identity or shape a character. It is just a place full of people.

  There are some grandiose government buildings and a quarter where diplomats and foreign businessmen live in well-fenced comfort, but the heart of the city, down by the Grand Marche is a steaming, jostling mass of on-street commerce. The buildings that line the Avenue Abdul El Nasser lack any distinction, but in a sense that’s not the point. They are just spaces to be filled, emptied, leaned against and sheltered beneath by the throng of buyers, sellers, hawkers, beggars and all the other players on this congested stage: smooth young men in dark glasses, exuding unspecified threat, blind old men being led about by young companions, venerable, bearded figures swathed in veils, and poised young girls in deep-blue robes balancing on their heads trays of soft drinks the colour of dentist’s mouthwash. Around them a ragged army of street sweepers, with faces wrapped like mummies, carry out the Sisyphean task of keeping the capital clean.

  The crowd is fed by a cruising stream of green and yellow minibuses, setting down and picking up constantly. Weaving amongst them are all shades of the transport spectrum, from donkey-drawn carts to Mercedes 200s, with missing fenders, sightless headlamps and window-cracks like spider’s webs.

  The children beg blatantly and cheerfully.

  ‘Donnez-moi quelque chose!’

  I see no-one buying, selling or reading a newspaper.

  The Atlantic shore, a mile or so from the centre of the city, offers the prospect of space and sea breezes, somewhere to cool off away from the clamour. I make for it at sunset, following the road across a desolate wasteland of broken shells and crusted sand dunes (the white blanket I’d seen from the air yesterday). The road does not, in fact, lead to a place of peace and quiet contemplation (they don’t build roads in Africa for that sort of thing); it leads to a great heaving fish market, the Plage des Pecheurs, Fishermen’s Beach.

  Dominated at one end by the curved concrete roof of the market building and at the other by the ghostly hulks of two wrecked freighters, this half-mile stretch of beach seethes with human activity. Donkeys pull carts through the sand, exhorted with sharp blows from their drivers. A man passes through the crowd with a plank on his head, carrying a dozen loaves of fresh-baked bread. Salesmen offer football shirts and trainers, combs, brushes, even a set of gleaming new spanners. Women in bold patterned veils or turbans gossip together, breaking off every now and then to call to their children. It’s a family affair, part Billingsgate, part Blackpool, part B&Q. The majority of those here are black Africans. The Arabs, with their nomadic traditions, don’t eat much fish, preferring the desert staples of camel, mutton or goat meat.

  Long low boats with crescent-shaped hulls painted bright primary colours are everywhere, some drawn up on the beach, others out on the viscous Atlantic swell, bringing in their catch from the cool and fer
tile offshore currents. When full, the boats come to within a few yards of the shore and a score of porters plunge into the water. Mostly teenage boys, they compete with each other, racing with trays of swordfish, barracuda, sea bass and red mullet balanced on their heads, up through the crowds to the market. Their sense of urgency and the accompanying din of shouts, protests, yelps and laughter indicate the sense of elation that such an abundant food source can bring to a small country, but one of the market traders puts it in perspective. Many of the boats here, he says, are from neighbouring Senegal, and what does come in is only what has been rejected by the Japanese, Korean and Chinese factory ships lurking out beyond the horizon.

  Day Thirty

  NOUAKCHOTT

  Strange weather. A warm wind blows from a brooding, hazy sky. The air is heavy, as if it might rain, which in a city that receives only 4 inches a year (London has nearer 30) would be quite an occasion. I feel a little disoriented by Mauritania. Having passed through an enormous country, I find myself in this wide, flat, shapeless capital feeling that I could be anywhere. I remember my colleague Graham Chapman on a Python tour of Canada being asked by a local tourist guide what he thought of Regina, Saskatchewan. Graham looked around at the flat expanse of prairie stretching away in every direction and then enquired, with winning politeness, ‘Why didn’t they put it over there?’

  Guidebook information is scarce, only fifty pages in my Rough Guide, half that for neighbouring and much smaller Senegal, so for on-the-spot information I seek out the honorary British consul, Nancy Abeiderrahmane MBE, or Nancy Jones from Essex, as she was before she married a Mauritanian in the late 1960s. I found her at work in a spotlessly clean compound off an unmade, sand-strewn road, from which she runs the highly successful Tiviski dairy business. Beneath the shade of two spreading neem trees and between an unloading tanker and a refrigerated delivery van, I’m welcomed by a small, vivacious, middle-aged woman in a white sari, obviously treated with respect by her workforce. The yard and the unloading bays, where milk is brought in from farms and from hundreds of small producers, many of them desert nomads, is constantly being hosed down. ‘Portez Le Turban SVP‘ (Please Wear a Turban), says the sign on the door of the plant, and Nancy calls someone over to help me tie a length of black cotton into a howli, the Moorish head-wrap. It isn’t easy. My nose keeps getting in the way. The man is dismissed and another more senior member of Nancy’s 180-strong workforce takes over. He doesn’t fare much better. It’s a bit like tying a bow tie, easier to do for yourself than someone else. Nancy notices I have some hair showing, which is hygienically impermissible, and yet another man, who for all I know could be the chairman of the board, is summonsed. He does the trick, and, looking like a passable imitation of Lawrence of Arabia, I step, not into the desert, but into the bottling plant. It’s the coldest place in Africa; a gleaming world of stainless steel and streamlined automation. Milk from cows, goats and camels is poured into cartons at the rate of 2000 an hour. The plant works seven days a week and sells product to over 2000 shops. The water they use is recycled to irrigate a garden on a nearby roundabout.

  In the office, flanked by computers and a sign on the wall, ‘Don’t EVER Give Up’, I’m treated to a tasting of Tiviski’s products, including conventional cow’s milk, sweeter than its English counterpart, and less conventional but quite delicious ranges like date yoghurt, camel cheese and, the pride of her production, camel milk. Camel milk, Nancy assures me, is the answer to all our prayers.

  ‘It has half the fat of cow’s milk, and less sugar, so good for diabetics. It has a lot of vitamin C. It’s good for vascular problems, women take it to have a clear complexion and they say it’s a tonic for men.’ Nancy smiles, and takes a breather before adding, unconvincingly, ‘Whatever that means.’

  ‘One protein in it is similar to human insulin, and as camels are pretty close to humans in the evolutionary tree, so the proteins are closer to humans, and it’s less allergenic than cow’s milk, she explains.

  I want it and I want it every day from now on. But I can’t, because I live in Europe, and the European regulations don’t cover camel products. The EU won’t even acknowledge that camels have products.

  ‘But we’re getting there,’ says Nancy, and I believe her. She’s not the sort of person to start out unless she intends getting there.

  I ask her about Mauritania.

  Life is hard for most people here - ‘Everybody makes do with very little’ - but she points to rapid change. Forty years ago there was not one mile of tarred road in the entire country. Now there is water and electricity supply to most homes in the city. It is a tolerant country; women do not have to cover their faces or accept polygamy. If a man wants a new wife he must divorce the old one first. This makes divorced women much sought after in Mauritania. They do not have any ties and they generally will have benefited from a divorce settlement. She feels quite comfortable as a female entrepreneur in a country that has women in the cabinet, law, medicine and even in the army. ‘People,’ she says with a touch of a smile, ‘are very nice to women.’

  She nimbly sidesteps the knotty question of slavery, which was only formally abolished here in 1981, but acknowledges that the Moorish social system is complex and tribal, with warrior and scholar tribes.

  There are two national sports. One is dhaemon, the desert draughts I played in Chinguetti, and the other poetry.

  ‘In a decent gathering like a wedding party the young men are expected to improvise four verses of poetry and others to compose a reply. Everybody can recite lots and lots of poetry.’

  She sees similarities between Mauritanians and the British.

  ‘They love wit and they’re always ready to say something funny. And you’ll have noticed the country runs on tea. The cooking is, likewise, not terribly noteworthy.’

  Day Thirty-One

  NOUAKCHOTT TO ST-LOUIS

  It’s 127 miles from the capital of Mauritania to the border with Senegal. Both countries were once part of Afrique Occidentale Francaise, a huge slab of the French colonial empire. As we drive out of Nouakchott this morning, we are reminded of the new world order.

  The American embassy is a fortress, bristling with razor wire, sprung with alarms and guarded by armed men. The Presidential Palace, a drab grey mass, of considerable size and very little beauty, was built by the Chinese.

  However, the French influence lives on. As we pull up in the town of Tiguent we’re ambushed by half a dozen children, heavily armed with baguettes, who crowd around the doors, shouting and jabbing loaves through the window until we submit and reach in our pockets for our last few ouguiya. The bread tastes good; a richer, stickier consistency than French baguette and with the added ingredient that marks it out as fresh - Saharan sand.

  The French language remains the lingua franca and the one in which we’re interrogated at a series of army roadblocks.

  At one of these enforced halts, a tall, thin, young soldier in camouflaged fatigues approaches our vehicle and examines the contents carefully. His eyes flick towards us.

  ‘Parti a Rosso?’ he asks.

  Yes, we reply cautiously. We are going to Rosso.

  He looks us up and down, slowly, then appears to come to a decision. We hold our breath.

  ‘Vous avez une place?’

  He wants a lift.

  As we near the River Senegal, the bleached white shell-fields of Nouakchott give way to terracotta dunes dotted with spiky grass scrub and acacia trees just tall enough to provide shelter for the Fulani herders. As the sands of the Sahara blow in from the north and east, they’re forced progressively closer to the River Senegal. Only ten years earlier, the issue of land ownership along the border brought Mauritania and Senegal to the brink of war. Senegal kicked out Mauritanian traders and Mauritania allowed equally violent reprisals against ‘southerners’. Today relations are better, but the security presence is strong enough to make filming a delicate task.

  By midday we are passing a network of irrigation ditche
s and the first glimpse of grassland for two and a half weeks. The fields contain sugar cane, rice and grazing land, grown under a scheme which I see from a billboard is financed by the government of the Emirates, 3000 miles across the other side of the desert. An example of pan-Islamic co-operation, which could prove a much bigger influence on West Africa than anything French, American or Chinese.

  At Rosso we reach the river and the next frontier, and take our place in a shuffling line of vehicles, most of which look like survivors of a stock car race, weighed down to the floor with goods, wires hanging out of empty headlamp sockets. We’re a captive audience and vendors gather at the windows. It’s very hot and hard to be patient in the face of endless demands for cadeaux and bonbons. We are not allowed to film and the ferry gates are shut.

  Repair to the Patisserie El Belediya, which serves food on metal tables beneath walls of peeling paint. We are the only Westerners. A television set high on the wall is showing women being interviewed in houses reduced to rubble. It’s hard to tell if it’s the West Bank or the suburbs of Baghdad, recently hit by air strikes ordered by America’s new president, George W. Bush, but none of those watching shows any hostility towards us.

  After eating a skeletal chicken in casserole, I buy a carton of Nancy’s Tiviski brand camel’s milk from the freezer behind the counter and drink it outside on a porch where there is, at least, some breeze. Basil is doing his flowing t’ai chi routine, which a couple of locals watch with amused curiosity.

  ‘Kung fu?’ asks one of them.

  I nod. ‘Sort of.’

  After three journeys round the world with him, I’m used to Basil being mistaken for Bruce Lee.

  Three hours later we are aboard the 80-foot floating platform that will take us into Senegal. It runs on African time, leaving only when it is full to bursting point.