18th of December, 2017.
Everyone tells me that the driver, Azzis, is a trustful man. How I supposed to believe if I do not know the guy? I sit in front and at the first gas station, he asks me for the money. I thought I supposed to pay when we get in Nouakchott. He calls Oussama and after I talk to him I pay.
The whole travel sucks because since I am concerned about if I will ever get in Nouakchott plus with all my stuff, I could not relax at any moment. The fact that Azzis does not speak anything of English or French makes everything worse.
I eat some bread in the car around 10 a.m.
We reach the border around noon.
It is bigger and more chaotic than I imagined. With a lot of space, some shops and hotels, so many and different types of barriers and police officers.
The first step is for Azzis to bring us and our passports to make our exit of Morocco. A kind of nice policeman, who does not speak too much English, but enough to ask me basic information, finished the process. Azzis keep on going from one side to another, what starts to annoying me and also he keeps changing the guy in the back. Just one of them is with us since the beginning. Later I would discovery his name: Abdul.
At the Mauritania Embassy, as usual, they make me more questions than to any other citizen. When I showed them my hotel reservation, I started to get concerned because it looked like they were trying to get in contact with the hotel. I start to think an excuse to had cancel my reservation when they move me to another room. There, an old guy who looks like some kind of “big boss”, and does not speak English, make some questions while another guy is ridiculously lie down in a couch. After a few minutes, they let me go. With the Mauritania entrance stamp on my passport, I thought everything is finally finished. Oh, man…
When I get out of the building, the shock: where is the taxi? Where the hell is the fucking car? When we all got into the building, the taxi was parking exactly in front of it, and now was gone. At that moment, I start to think about everything I had lost, all my stuff was in the car. I had with me just my passport and some money. All my photos (which I keep in my computer and in the SD card) were in my bag in the car. After that moment, I start to think how all of them had planned that: put me inside, alone, so then the driver could leave without problems. What a hell I would do now? No one here speaks English, I had almost no money and nothing else. What would I do?
So ridiculous…
I come back inside and ask to one of the guards where the hell is the driver. He comes outside to check out, and when he talks with the guys at the gate, and I do not understand what they say but the guard tells me: “ The driver is coming”. I wait just a few minutes, while complaining with a guy, who showed interest in my case but unfortunately speak just a little bit of English. I come back inside to look for that kind of “big boss”. When I tell him the driver is gone, he also come outside and start asking people what is going on. It is when the stupid Azzis appears, crossing the gate with a big surprise face, do not understanding what is happening. Prat! According to him, he just had crossed the gate to look for a place to eat. The “big boss” smiles in relief, shakes his hand (they are kind of friends, both prats…) and order to him (do not ask me how but I could understand) to drive me until the hotel I had the reservation. Azziz and I walk away. He laughs. I want to yell at him and tell him to go to hell. I should! I could had done in English, Portuguese or Spanish and he would not understand. I didn’t.
Abdul came in my direction and started to say the same thing as Azzis, that they just crossed to eat and wait for me. It is when we introduced ourselves. Azzis then asks me to stay close to him all the time now. Suddenly, Abdul starts to talk with that other guy, the one who showed interest in my situation and when he sees me, he yells: “Mademoiselle!” I walk to them and we try to start a conversation. I ask for the bathroom, they walk with me. They keep checking on Azzis all the time now. The other guy, it is a truck driver going to Burkina Faso to delivery some frozen fish. He had just got married to a beautiful woman (he showed me pictures of the wedding) and has a baby of 12 days. Twelve days! Abdul is married to another beautiful woman. Both sounded like good men. We have tea. The truck driver goes to his truck and brings us yogurt. He take a picture of Azzi’s car. “Just in case”, he says.
I believe Azzis went to take a nap after lunch because we wait there for over two hours!
When we finally leave (now with an old man in the back with Abdul), another nightmare starts: each few kilometres, a police checkpoint stop us and ask for the passports. The problem is always me, of course. For some of them we pass quickly, thanks to the few copies of my passport I had on me. In the others, they are a pain.
It is the same ridiculous system that is more fail than to hide the sun with a strainer. They choose which cars they want to stop. It is just a chance game: when they pick up the right one, good for then! When they do not, probably most of the time, a lot of shit happen, with drugs and guns and bad guys getting inside the country, while some good people have to be patient for being interrogate about their tourist travel.
One of the last stops, the policeman asks for all of us get out of the car. For the first time, the problem it is not me but Abdul. The guy asks him to take his bag to the office, crossing the road, and wait for him there. My big backpack he did not even look at it. He takes a quick, ridiculous look in the whole car, while a few other ones just pass through. He then “talks” to Abdul, just asking a few questions, and not even checking his bag and let us leave. The human being is miserable.
After over an hour we are in Nouakchott. I call Moulayerchid from Azzis phone, so he explains to him where we should meet. There, while I am waiting, I eat half of my pasta (because of everything that was happening that afternoon, I forgot to eat and now I was starving!). When Moulay arrives, I take my bags, shake the old man hands and ask them to give my regards to Abdul. I forgot to shake Azzis’ hand. It was his punishment.
10 Years Around the World 