18th to 31st of December, 2017.
Liz invite Shawna’s family to come with us to this Christmas party we were going at night. So Cid drives us back home just so we could get ready, get Moulay (Med is not coming because he is not a big fan of places full of people) and then come back to their home and get Shawna. She would bring some of those delicious treats with her.
The party is in a Indonesia family house and Mimi is the hostess and Santa Claus. Everyone looks really nice and the food is great! Of course I could not wait to eat the sweets! So delicious…
I meet this peculiar man, Ali, who looks like a lot with Andy Garcia. He is from Lebanon and has lived in Spain, Uganda, Tanzania and now Mauritania. He tells me that Uganda is the most beautiful country in Africa and gives me some names and phone numbers around that area just in case I needed some help. He also tells me about his wife, a Romanian woman, and his three kids who are leaving in Spain now.
I talk just a little bit with Mimi but she looks like a really kind woman, who is just trying put all her friends, and friends of her friends, and nice people together. I even won a Christmas gift! A great veil!
Back home, in the car, we have so much fun with Shawna and Cid, singing some old songs including Eminen, Lose yourself.
I get excited because we supposed to have Christmas dinner with then on Monday, so me and Liz decide to buy some stuff to make a tabule with Hummus and some tortillas. Unfortunately, Shawna it was not feeling good that night so she had to cancelled. We eat, the four of us, at home and Med bought some cake for desert. We watched The Gremlins and Home Alone. They watched some Christmas movies every year.
Tuesday morning I supposed to come with Moulay to the University. It is the only one in the whole country so I had to see it. I am also excited to take one of those North American yellow buses which they have here. We eat some Bennas in the bus while waiting.
There are just three buildings on the campus of the University, which is kind of far away of the city: Medicine and Pharmacy, Science and Technology and the Moulay’s one, Literature and Human Science. The Law one is near to the city.
I have to say that it is bigger than I imagined but the infrastructure is quite bad. I cannot even talk about the women’s bathroom. What I can say is that I have been to a lot of road Gas Station that look like a five stars bathroom compared to the University ones.
They have this small Coffee which definitely do not support the big number of students. That, by the way, it is the best thing about it: the number of students is pretty big.
Of course, because they are still under a strong society and religious manipulation (or doctrine, call as you prefer), they still have their minds pretty narrow. Having me in there, a white bald girl, it is a completely weird thing to most of them. And again I have to deal with the whole kind of inappropriate and indiscreet looks.
The worse part is when this young boy approach and start to say a lot of silly things. He believes that Portuguese and Spanish are the same language and does not matter how much I try argue with him, he insists on that that stupidity. He also believes that Brazil is just about football and sugar. You know, I feel now that I should have argued more with him about that, but why exactly? So the last stupid thing he says it is, of course, about relationship: I should have babies and find someone to warm me in the cold times. I do not know how I should laugh in a book, but just know it that I am laughing now as I was in there. To finish the conversation, I just told him that I could buy some blankets.
On the contrary, the three girls who stay to talk a bit, Moulay’s friends, they are pretty smart and nice. Oh, women! How luck I am for being one.
The other bad news is Moulay would not have any class that morning! Of course we could go back home earlier but I really wanted to watch at least one class. I might not understand anything but I would get the system. It did not work.
Back at home we take a nap and decide that after lunch we would go to a place nearby, with some dunes, and I could feel at least a little bit like in the desert. When we are leaving the house around 3.30 p.m. we bumped with Elhajd (the linguistic guy who studied in Turkey) and for no reason he decide to come with us.
It is not that his presence is unpleasant, but he is too arrogant and think he is always right. It takes us two hours walking to get in there. In the end it worth it because the place is really beautiful and I love to sink in the dunes. Unfortunately, it is a little dark and pass five already. But I take some good pictures and I felt a little peace over there.
We have to get a taxi to come back. At eight o’clock we would meet Sara (the CS who could not host me) in a Coffee.
Moulay is looking kind of nervous to meet Sara. The biggest sign is that he does not want get in there late! I mean, I have not talk about that yet, but this is the Mauritanian style: nothing here it happens in time.
Sara is nice. She is also kind of shy but speaks with all of us without any problem. We stay for a while in the Coffee Shop. She tells us that, as the same as Liz, she was travelling around here just for a few days but fell in love with the country and decided to come back to live. She is living here since February this year. I have no idea how people do that. I mean, just to get inside the country it is so complicated that I cannot even imagine asking for a resident visa and a work visa and all those stuff. There is one thing that she says that upset me: “You vegetarians are mean because you eat the animal’s food”. My problem is, when I hear something so dumb like this, I simply freeze or maybe I just lose the hope of arguing with someone who say something like that. I mean, even if she does not really believe in that, why the meat eaters always have to attack the vegetarians? I never ever attacked anyone. If you come with the excuse that you always are attacked by vegetarians, try to be a little smarter and just attack those ones back and not anyone that you meet.
We supposed to watch Die Hard that night but after me and Moulay come back from walking Sara home, Liz and Med were tired and they slept after 30 minutes of the start of the movie so we all went to sleep.
I do not know exactly what Liz and Sara see in Mauritania. Both of them used the term “relaxing” to describe what they think about it. I would use “chaotic”. For me everything here is chaos: the traffic, the food, there is no order at all in anything. And you are listening this from some one with Anarchic principles. But I am organized. I like to be in time. I like to have a plan and know how and when I will do the stuff. Mauritanian people live in a weird kind of Carpe Diem, with no organization at all, a lot of dirt and sand. They do not eat healthy, they do not exercise at all, and simply go everywhere by car (the taxis are cheap but of course they could save the money of five rides for two good and complete meals).
Last night Moulay said something that maybe make sense: they might not get concerned about the tomorrow because they know that if anything goes wrong, if they need money or anything else, they can find help with the other Mauritanians. Not just family or friends, you can also find help on the streets from strangers. So this fact kind of make them become lazy. And this is not a racist thought from a foreign, it came from a Mauritanian. So maybe Liz and Sara felt in that way about not planning the future, the tomorrow, and that is why they like it here so much.
For a few years now, I developed this kind of necessity to be organized. It used to be worse before I started to travel, of course, but is still with me. It is something that makes me to like that movie with Ben Affleck, The Accountant, for example. Right now I have at least an idea of a ten years travel plan. But also it is not a big deal because I do not plan to have a job, to save lots of money or something like that; or an official travel route that I cannot change. I am adapting all the time. But anyway, I definitely could not live in Mauritania for longer than two weeks.
10 Years Around the World 