More Monoliths

On our second day in Ben Amira, next to the world’s second biggest monolith, we lounged around the camp, collected a bit of wood, cooked and relaxed. We talked about going to Aisha, the sister monolith to Ben Amira, but we were too lazy and content with staying in this place an extra day. The only problem was that we were running low on water already and had to go pick up our bread order at the shop. At some point in the morning, I grabbed for something in my pack, and from underneath ran a one inch long brown spider. It was one of the fastest spiders that I had seen. I recognized it immediately as a camel spider. I had read horror stories about them on the internet, and that they were extremely poisonous. I tried to hit it with my book, but it zoomed back under my pack. I forced Jonathan to take care of it, and they both laughed at me, assuring that this spider was not dangerous. I told them I was going to die from a camel spider bite and it would be there fault.
In the afternoon we hiked back to town, and rousted the shop owner from his house so we could buy our bread. Jonathan and I splurged on Cokes, as this was one of the better chances to take one when it counts. We asked if we could fill up on water somewhere, and he took us into the courtyard of his compound where he had what looked like the bladder of a waterbed with a hose coming out. And essentially this is what it was. The water in this town was delivered by a truck that ran along the tracks between villages. I wondered where it originated, how often it came, how much people paid for the service, and what people did before water was delivered on a track. I assumed that this village didn’t exist before the train tracks, as Mauritania is historically and even today, very nomadic. After we filled our water bottles and bag, the shop keeper nervously brought us the bread. Even he knew that he (or whoever made it) had kind of screwed up the recipe. They were the same size as normal baguettes, but they lacked the key ingredient: yeast. Each hot-on-the-outside, dough-in-the-middle bread weighed at least 2 pounds. While they seemed inedible, we definitely got our money’s worth in flour. We figured we would toss them out, but somebody pointed out that if we wanted to eat them, it has to be now, as they are at their only cuttable moment. We bought a can of sardines and a couple onions and made sandwiches that took about a half hour to eat. We only used 2 of the breads, and we were all terrified of the third one we would take back with us.
That night I set up my tent to protect myself from camel spiders. Jonathan and Susan thought I was crazy, insisting there was nothing dangerous about these so-called “camel spiders”.
Somehow the next morning we were low on water again. The walk back from town had sapped our bodies of water, and we had probably cooked whatever took the most water (pasta?), plus plenty of coffee. We wanted to go to the monolith Aisha, Ben Amira’s unfaithful wife (as the folktale goes). We debated walking to town first to refill on water, but decided that walking the 6-8 km would leave us needing that much more thirsty and too tired. So we each got a ration of a 1.5 liter bottle of water.
One source of information told us that Aisha was 11 km from the town, making it about 8 km from Ben Amira. Another source said Ben Amira and Aisha are only 5 km apart. Doesn’t really matter, we knew it would be fine.




Halfway there, I had fallen behind Jonathan and Susan, and each of them had chosen different paths through the desert toward the junior monolith. They re-joined paths and waited for me. As I approached, I saw two men riding high on tall camels. Jonathan and I yelled at Susan to get respectable, as she had descended into her skimpy free-in-the-desert garb. I ran forward to exchange asaalam alaykums with the two men. The camels, one brown one stark white, were spindly, and the men in their long robes and turbans, one with a blind eye, reached as far down as they could to reach my hand for a shake. I tried to speak with them in French, and them to me in Arabic. All we could communicate was that I was going to Aisha, and that they were going…that way. I wanted desperately to follow them, see where they were going, what they were doing. Even though Mauritania (as with many parts of the world) was always nomadic, it is now rare to encounter truly nomadic people. It dawned on me that I had seen a couple of large white tents from the view I had gotten from halfway up Ben Amira. I had thought that it could be some group of tourists with a nomadic tent, but now it seemed that it was the real deal.

The nomads dancing away from us

We continued on. I was trying to keep up with them. Jonathan, still keeping a good pace, was feeling rough,. I was hanging in there, vowing not to touch my water until we reached the monolith. Susan pushed on, untouched by the sun pounding us. She went on, talking about how there might be caves in the monolith, and how she was excited to climb it. We told her that there would be no caves, and the monolith was too steep.

Aisha, Susan, Jonathan

As we approached the monolith, we saw quickly that while we usually disagreed, Susan was right again. There was a small cave that Jonathan and I didn’t want to acknowledge, but it did provide a desperately needed shade. We relaxed in the shade for a bit before we felt enough strength to find the real treat of this monolith: an open air sculpture park. Apparently in December of 1999 a group of sculptures from Mauritania and all over the world decided to come to Aisha (not Ben Amira?) to carve the surrounding rocks into art to commemorate the new millennium. We didn’t know which side of the monolith the carvings were on, so we went on the west side of it. This was wrong, and we probably walked an extra kilometer to arrive just a few hundred meters from the cave we started.
The carvings were interesting and a good reason to go on a long desert walk, but not the most spectacular art I’ve ever seen. The obscure location of it made it worth it.

Sculpture/Jonathan's legs

By the time we left, Jonathan said he was getting heat stroke, and was almost out of water. Susan was feeling fine, but still had half her bottle. I was feeling mentally strong, but weak. I had drunk half my bottle while looking at the carvings. We discussed which route through the desert we would take, and whether we would go back to camp, or go directly to the village for water. There was too much arguing and the consensus never materialized, so we left without a solid plan. I fell behind quickly. My sandals had large holes on each heel, and the toe ends were flapping around. In between, the soft rubber gave almost no protection, as it was now only a couple millimeters thick. I didn’t notice at the time that this was the reason for lagging behind. I had assumed it was my short stride and weak hiking abilities. Once again, I tried to keep an eye on Jonathan and Susan, but they got far ahead of me, and even seemed to separate, if my eyes were reading it correctly. Just at the point where I lost sight of Jonathan’s red shirt over a hill, I started seeing camels a few hundred meters to my left. They were coming towards me, and eventually their herder materialized in the distance. I wanted to run back to him and see if we could go with him to his camp to fill some water bottles, so we wouldn’t have to go all the way to town. But with Jonathan out of sight, there was no point. The camels grew closer as I tried to catch up to Jonathan. Eventually, though, they stopped to graze on the bits of grass in the area, and I had no chance at getting within sight or earshot of Jonathan. I was angry, and trudged on through the sand, letting the crazies start to creep in.



I reached the top of a dune where I could see the village far in the distance, and the path to our camp off to the left. I could not see Jonathan or Susan anywhere. I stood on the crest of the dune for a few moments, trying to see, but I was getting dizzy from dehydration. I was savoring the last half-liter of my bottle. I couldn’t see any sign of Jonathan or Susan. I was just about to descend and head back to camp, assuming that is the way they had chose, when I started to hear something. I scanned the land again and saw a spot of red, Jonathan’s shirt. They were in the direction of the village, sitting together. I went down, angrily, wondering why we hadn’t all stayed together, like we had planned.
When I reached them, I knew I probably seemed some sort of drunk, not that Jonathan was doing any better. I was angry, and had trouble getting words out. I yelled at them about staying together, and they seemed humored by my reaction. They were smoking, and started to explain, but I just wanted to confirm that we were going to the village. Yes. I tossed Jonathan the remainder of my bottle, knowing that even though I was starting to feel crazy from dehydration that he needed it more than me. I had energy from my anger, and got a head start on them as they finished their cigarettes.
After ten minutes, I turned around and saw that they were following. Ten minutes more and I checked again. At first, their figures were dancing. Then I could distinctly see them fighting, then parting directions. I couldn’t tell if Susan had turned around toward camp. Then I was sure she was. I watched her figure shrink as she walked away. Then they were back together all of a sudden. It was my eyes. When they arrived, I asked them if they had parted ways, and they looked at me like I was crazy. I was. No dancing, no fighting, no parting directions. Just walking together the whole time. It was scary to realize what state I was in. We had just started to walk again when we heard the rumble of a motor. Another hallucination, I assumed. We turned around, and a truck was hurtling toward us. When it got close to us, we flagged it down, and the driver stopped. I tried to speak with him, but my words must have come out in a slurred mess of awful French. The white Moor had 4 women in the truck with him, and he pointed for us to jump into the bed of the truck. I immediately started to come to my senses. Susan and Jonathan explained that since they had disagreed about which path to take, they went separate ways, and trying to prove their path better, were going as fast as they could in a childish race to show who was right.

Back to the village

We zoomed through two km of dirt and sand before arriving where the man, Mohamed, lives right next to the tracks. We were shocked to see a large, fairly modern compound, where he parked his company issue truck. We realized that he worked for the train company, and this was the home of all the train workers. He coldly instructed us to use the showers, of which there were three, two unoccupied. He gave us each brand new bars of soap. Jonathan and Susan went first, while I chugged a liter and a half of water. Mohamed told me to go into the salon while I wait. I walked through a hallway with new tile to arrive at a fan-cooled blue-carpeted room lined with shiny couches and satellite TV. A few young men lounged around in their baby blue robes. I felt incredibly dirty. It is this kind of travel that lets you feel fine about going days without showers, then immediately regret it when you are tossed into a situation in which everyone and everything around you is clean and respectable. I no longer felt like I was in the tiny village of Ben Amira. The train workers are set up very well.
After we all cleaned ourselves in the nicest bathroom we would see in all of Mauritania, we asked Mohamed about when the next train would be coming in the direction of Choum. Something about our French didn’t mesh well, and I had a difficult time understanding his explanation. It seemed simple to me. Would it come tonight? Yes, no? If yes, what time? His answers were maybes, and if so, not sure when. He started drawing lines in the sand to explain, but none of it made sense to us. He realized that it was hopeless, so he said that he would drive us back to our camp, then if the train was going to come and stop, then he would drive out and get us. After all, he worked for the train company and had radio contact with the trains.
When we got to our camp, Mohamed told us he would be back between eleven and twelve if the train came, so we should be ready. He also gave us a box of 12 1.5 liter water bottles. We said it wasn’t necessary, but he insisted. We took them, not feeling too bad as he probably got as much bottled water from his work as he could use.
We cooked a quick dinner, then packed our things, waiting for Mohamed to come. A little after eleven, we heard the train coming, and although we couldn’t see it in the dark, we heard it stop. We assumed Mohamed would be coming any second. But he never came. So when we heard the train leave, I set up my tent to protect myself from the camel spiders, of which I had seen more of that day. We all settled in for the night after our long day.
An hour later, I was rousted from my dozing by Jonathan and Susan yelling about a train. I could hear, faintly, the sound of it approaching. Of course, we couldn’t make it in time if it did actually stop. And it did. So we waited, wondering if Mohamed would actually come out to get us. Susan spotted a headlight in the distance. I tore down my tent and started stuffing everything haphazardly into my pack. We watched as the headlight seemed to have stopped, then turned into a taillight. The train pulled away, and we gave a second chance at trying to get some sleep.
In the morning, we relaxed, knowing that there would be no trains coming, as they supposedly all came late at night. However, at around ten, we could see another train coming in the direction we wanted. Sure enough, it stopped, and Mohamed’s truck was nowhere in sight. After this, we decided to ditch Mohamed, and take the advice of the shopkeeper, who had said that we would have to wait next to the train at night, and wait for it to stop.
During the day we got a few visits from inhabitants of the nearby nomad camp. The first was from two boys with a herd of goats and surprisingly good French. Susan invited them to paint some rocks with her, which they did, but only because they thought she would give them something afterward. They were disappointed when they found out that their only “cadeaux” was the rocks they had just painted. They left the painted stones and continued on with their goats. Soon after a man in his twenties with very poor French came by saying that there were two goats missing. We told them we had seen two boys with goats, but no loose goats. He invited himself to tea, so Susan pulled out her box of exotic teas. She picked one coming from the Himalayas and tried to explain to him that she would be preparing one that was different that what he was used to. He waited anxiously, and when he took the first sip, he simply said, “This is not tea.” He then put down the unfinished cup, got up and left.
So in the afternoon, we packed up, and made our way back to the village. We arrived just before sunset, and went to the shopkeeper’s home, to fill up some water bottles. We had used about 13 of our 19 bottles of water. The shopkeeper let us hang out in his compound while we cooked our dinner. At some point Susan walked through the village and saw Mohamed, who avoided eye contact and turned the other way. We assume that for some reason or another he had to break his promise and felt guilty. Or maybe he just forgot about us. No hard feelings, since he had already done so much for us.

Waiting for the train

After dinner, the shopkeeper, who must have been the second wealthiest man in town after Mohamed, invited me into his TV room to watch some satellite TV. Al-Jazeera and a history show about Mauritania from the local station. Of course I couldn’t understand it, as it was all in Arabic, but it was entertaining enough. At eleven, we went out by the tracks to wait, and within the hour, our train arrived. However, we had to wait an hour and a half for the train to actually leave, and this was when I understood why Mohamed couldn’t give us a straight answer about when the trains came and whether they would stop or not. Ben Amira village was one of the only places with more than one rail, so if a train were coming in the opposite direction, this train would have to stop and wait for the other train to pass on the other tracks before continuing on.
So when the Noadhibou train hustled past us at 1:30 AM, we knew we were on our way. The car seemed even dirtier than the previous, and we were destined to be covered in the black cloud that formed in the cars as the train moved. It was only a two hour trip, but we slept anyway, lulled to sleep by the slightly violent rocking of the train. We arrived in Choum at 3:30 in the morning. It is not a big town, just significant since it is the closest point of the train to Atar, the biggest town in Mauritania’s Adrar region.
Our surroundings were silent, and we weren’t even sure we were in Choum, as there was nothing to tell us for sure. We hopped off and wandered toward the only light we could see, from the compound that appeared to be the train office. It too, was silent, but enough wandering and loud talking eventually got a guard to emerge. We explained that we were looking for the road to Atar, or maybe the cheapest public transport that goes there. Susan still wanted to hitchhike, but considering the hour and the fact that almost surely no private vehicles go between Atar and Choum, Jonathan overrode her.
The guard took us to the lot with all the transport (pickup trucks), and we took our time bartering over the fare. They told us the price was 3000 Ouguiya ($10) per person, but after arguing, they said we could ride in the bed of the pickup for 1,800 Ouguiya ($6). It was still not a great fare for a two hour journey and only 80 km, but there was really no other option. We balked at the price again, and the military officer overseeing the deal got annoyed. We had thought he was on our side when he was arguing with them in Arabic, but soon realized that he was just trying to get his cut, and didn’t like our price-gouging one bit. We paid up and jumped in the back of the pickup, only to be told to get back out. They still had to load it with the bags of the passengers that would be riding up front. And fill it they did. Before we even got our bags in, they filled the entire bed to the brim with luggage. We gave one last ditch effort to argue about the price, saying that they had not told us that we would be sitting crammed in with a load of cargo, but it was useless.
As we started to hit the dirt road, I adjusted my turban to protect myself from the dust and the cold that came with desert nights. It might have been that we were moving at night, or that we were exposed to all the cold air, sitting high on the luggage, but it felt like we were moving dangerously fast. We started to twist up heavily rutted and potholed roads, up toward the plateau of the Adrar region.
Just as the sky started to show light in the east, we arrived in a small village outside of Atar. The morning twilight revealed a long row of buildings built from flat stones. A few of the passengers unloaded at their doorsteps, and we pressed on.