The French colonialists called Mauritania Le Grand Vide -- the Great Void. As far as they were concerned, this vast swathe of north-west Africa contained nothing but shifting sands and was fit only for their most maladjusted foreign legionnaires. Yet the isolation has preserved a nomadic culture already consigned to history elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East.
However, things have changed fast here in recent decades. Considering that slavery was only outlawed in 1980 and the practice of force-feeding women, in the belief that big is beautiful, apparently ended just a few years ago, that's probably an understatement, but the recent discovery of oil means that the pace of change is accelerating.
I headed into the capital Nouakchott which is so sprawling and chaotic it could only have been built by nomads totally unfamiliar with urban living. Countless thousands have migrated here in recent decades, abandoning their harsh existence herding camels and goats in the desert, turning what was little more than a village at independence in 1960 into a dusty metropolis of almost 700,000 inhabitants.
PHOTOS: AGENCIES
I had joined a group organized by Explore, one of the few companies operating treks in Mauritania. "For most people, it's like a trip to the moon," the company's literature said.
In the midwinter sunshine of the Sahara, Dah, the local guide who would take us into the remote interior, sat behind the wheel of the Landcruiser wearing flowing blue robes and a look which suggested he couldn't get out of Nouakchott fast enough. "Nomads always wish to return to the desert," he said -- a point he emphasized a few hours later when he swung the jeep off the tarmac road and headed into the sandy wastes. By sunset the ever-changing peach,
apricot and coffee shades of the Amatlich dunes loomed ahead in unending waves. We pitched camp and I lay on the soft sand that I would still be washing out of my clothes weeks later.
After a starlit night listening to the hiss of sand, the arrival of our camels shattered the morning calm. These groaning and complaining creatures suddenly appeared over a dune led by a cameleer with an equally miserable countenance and even worse teeth. Salt, gold and ivory caravans of up to 32,000 camels once traveled the trade routes in these parts, but just four of them were more than enough trouble for us. Dah waited nearby, puffing a small pipe and facing the desert armed only with a stick and a good sense of direction.
Over the next few days we trekked through stunningly desolate scenery,
resting under acacia trees or camping among the dunes. The region seemed unin-habitable, but within minutes of stopping people would materialize, apparently out of thin air, and we would be surrounded by a noisy huddle of women in the multi-colored shawls of villagers or the dark blue robes favored by nomads. In this most sparsely populated country in Africa, you clearly have to grab your chance to have a gossip. Meanwhile, the cook would bake delicious if somewhat gritty bread in the hot sand under the campfire or haggle with a nomad over the price of some unfortunate goat.
We climbed on to the rocky Akdar plateau, sometimes stopping to haul a bucket of cool water from an isolated well surrounded by small allotments of millet and melons. These tiny wells are vital for the survival of the nomads, and trekkers too, but they paled into insignificance compared with our next destination. Behind a ridge, in an explosion of greenery, lay the beautiful oasis of Twera. Even the camels stopped grumbling as they slurped at the stream trickling beneath the palms. This magical spot seemed the only truly uninhabited place we encountered and I sat in solitude with my aching feet in a pool, eating sticky black dates.
Back out in the desert we encountered a small encampment. An old, blind Arab nomad and his family must have been puzzled by the sudden invasion of their tent, but we were cordially offered the three cups of sweet mint tea that accompany any social gathering in Mauritania.
Less appealing was the bowl of zreeq, a mixture of well water and milk. I brushed the flies away and sipped politely while they explained how they moved every month, their contact with the towns limited to occasionally taking their herds of camels and goats to market. I couldn't help wondering how much longer these hospitable people could resist the pressures of the modern world.
At the end of our trek we descended into the White Valley, a canyon of pale dunes and black cliffs. We were rejoined that night by the jeeps and began to contemplate the now unimaginable luxury of tarmac. Dah insisted we celebrate the departure of the camels, which had gone off to graze, thankfully downwind. As I sat by the campfire watching the stars come out I realized how wrong the French had been.
In this dramatic setting, the Great Void was anything but empty with the dunes echoing to the sound of singing and the indignant grumbling of the camels.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and