Camel Trek

So as mentioned previously, for Thanksgiving I headed up to Atar to spend the holiday with the volunteers from there and some from Nouakchott. As expected we did not have turkey , but we did have pumpkin pie!! I was able to see some friends that I haven’t seen since stage, which was fantastic… but it just wasn’t the same as being in the US with the family. But the consolation prize was a camel trek in the Sahara Desert! I went with 3 other volunteers up to Chinguetti to start the trek. The sand dunes literally roll right into the city, and apparently the oldest part of the city has been covered and buried by the sand. It is one of the oldest cities in all of Mauritania, with the oldest standing mosque, and the 7th most holy site in Islam. Kinda a cool place. So anywhoo… we left early in the morning Saturday with our two guides and 4 camels. They probably thought we were just crazy nuts cause we used one camel as a pack camel and then also had stuff on the sides of the other three. The two guides on the other hand each had a blanket and the clothes they were wearing. What did we all have to bring you ask??? Well… we brought a snowboard and boots along, food, mattresses, sleeping bags, and tons of clothes to prepare for the super coldness. And we’ll go back to the snowboard here a second. Some Korean tourists apparently brought it and decided to leave it a few years ago, and was then inherited by Peace Corps Chinguetti!! Note though that you can’t really board on sand like on snow. So we went trekking though the desert to an oasis. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, with only desert around for miles. There wasn’t any standing water or anything, but just underground water – but enough to make you think you were in the tropics! So we stayed there a few hours. About 4 or 5 ladies came out and sat around us at our tent to try to sell their little trinkets. I felt bad that I didn’t buy anything as this is their only income (and it’s even worse for them now with the huge decline in tourism), but it wasn’t real nice stuff. We took a nap and then hit the dunes. Tried the snowboard… but there’s a lot more friction on sand… and the Koreans (or someone) had mounted the board goofy. So we tried a bit… pretty much the only thing you could do was to point it straight down and get a push down. We then wised up and decided to just use it as a sled. So we went sledding. The kids of the town thought this was the coolest thing, and so they came over to play with us for a bit. They would chase us down the hill and then bring all the stuff up for us!!! It was like the best deal ever! (we did let them try it a few times too!) And ever so graceful me, on my first slide down (sled style), I stuck my foot out to stop myself, and a got a huge thorn in the bottom of my foot. Hurt slightly to say the least, but it closed up pretty fast. So after the oasis we went an hour or so out to avoid the bugs for the night and picked our favorite dune to set up camp. The guides made bread right there (and you thought you would need an oven?!?!? – nonsense). They took the ingredients we brought, needed the bread, patted it into a disk like shape and buried it in the sand where they had some coals. Then they covered the bread with sand and coals and started a fire on top. They flipped it once, and there you had bread! And the stars that night… were simply amazing! Saw everything… Orian, dippers, Venus, Jupiter, and the Milky Way! So then in the morning the guides went to go find the camels and we went back to Chinguetti. Let me share with you that the saddle of a camel is not the most comfortable thing in the world, and we all walked some. So back in Chinguetti I went to see the mosque, and then we headed out back to Atar (yep… in the famous taxi bruisse). On my ride from Atar back home I was in a car with 3 women and one man. The woman sitting next to me was breast feeding, the woman in the front spat out the window (only for the spit to go back in the window behind her and on to my face), and we almost hit a camel right after they had stopped to pray. An eventful trip… but I’m back. Oh yeah… and the taxi on the way up to Atar… we had a goat in the truck. Baaaaaaa…. But they’re all going to get killed this coming week with Tabaski. (It’s probably the biggest holiday in Islam to commemorate the story of Abraham who almost sacrificed Issac, but instead a nearby goat at God’s command. Hence all the goats will be eaten.) So now I’m back at site for a few weeks before Christmas – but not expecting to do much work because Tabaski starts next Monday I think and runs for 3ish days. So clearly that means that it just won’t make sense for anyone to work on Sunday, or on Thursday cause that’s just one day! So we’ll just take the weekends too then… and there you have yourself a nice holiday! This is just what I’m told… we’ll see how this all works out…

Pictures: I'm not sure how these are posting but there are the following pictures: There's some pictures of the Sahara, Me on a camel, Oh how many clothes I wore in Chinguetti cause it was so cold (I had on two shirts, fleece, sweatshirt and jacket). The sad part is that it was probably 60ish.... I think I've adapted to the heat. There's the kids carrying the snowboard up the dune, me snowboarding, the mountains coming down from Chinguetti to Atar, the oasis in the middle of sandness, and also the picture of the mosque in Chinguetti.