Sandpiercer to Choum

I’m in Atar, waiting for some voiture to Chinguetti to show up.

I arrived in Atar before 6am, driver just let us sleep in the minibus from Choum. The town was still asleep bar the muezzin calls coming from many sides.

As I walkes around asking for transport to Chinguetti, I was told there is a bus going at 11. I left my rucksack with the agence and left looking out for coffee. Now that I’m back at 10am I hear the busses have left and all I can do is wait for a car to show up with one place available. Communication, ugh. Or my French, ugh.

There is a cafe, La Pause, just at the main roundabout. It has coffee and croissants and pain au chocolat. They served me Nescafé. Fine, I’ll live. Then since I thought I have plenty of time I ordered another coffee and I got another Nescafé. And then the gentleman running the cafe, Osman, comes and shows me a proper bag of coffee beans and starts explaining that he also has THIS coffee but noone likes it so he serves Nescafé. Ugh.

The ride from Choum to Atar with all the loading of passengers straight from the train and coming back for more passengers and unloading passengers in Choum, including a white couple who travelled on the train in one of the ore carriages, took 2hrs or so. The woman told me they travel without any money, sleeping rough and either walking or hitchhiking. The conductor of the minibus couldn’t quite understand what they were doing and told me “here autostop doesn’t work”. The bus to Atar cost me 200UMR.

The train ride was a joyride. I mean the train was brutally basic yes, no glass in any windows, it was shaking and even worse, often violently pulling the carriage as if it tried to accelerate, or brake. But the company of people was unforgettable. They are all very friendly and chatty. In some compartment people carried stove with them and we’re making tea. One compartment even cooked their own couscous. Our compartment hired a train serviceman to prepare the tea for us. The guy was incredible, constantly pouring tea from glass to glass to make a froth (apparently it’s to prevent dust from the tea). He wouldn’t miss a drop even with all the train shaking, he would move around his body to avoid any spillage. He even had a phone with Mauritanian music recorded, which he played for us. Quite a spectacle and it lasted for maybe 30mins, each of us had 3 glasses of perfectly prepared (one third tea, one third froth, one third empty) tea.

Then in one compartment there was a party. Guys had drums and a megaphone. They somehow attached a phone or music player attached to the megaphone and there was some serious dancing going on.

Then the train stopped. There was a full moon. We got out of the carriage onto the untouched light sand. There was some dusty mist in the air. Some men used the opportunity and started praying. You could hear single voices in the dark. It was a mesmerising experience.

People prayed on the train as well. As far as I understand of water is not easily available for prayer ablution, one can use a stone free of unclean elements, tayammum, and perform the ablution in a way that involves the stone in order to be able to pray. My compartment companions found a stone like that in our compartment. The whole carriage was using it! At various times people were coming in with torches (of course there was no light in the train) looking for the stone.

Then the train tried to sleep. People lied together on the benches in twos, on the floor, wherever they could. Not sure anyone got much sleep, the train was occasionally shaking badly.

And then at 3am we arrived in Choum.

PS There will be photos but the mobile network in Mauritania is horribly slow, the wifis that I experienced were even more horribly slow and all my photo uploads fail. There is no LTE/4G network here.