The Mines of Mauritania

We left Morocco and entered an active mine field. And I don’t mean this in any metaphorical sense. The gutted, charred carcasses of old vehicles were quite literal. We had entered the infamous 3km no-mans land that exists between the Moroccan and Mauritanian border posts and it was an unnerving place. The thin film of cloud bleached the sky and landscape alike creating a Mad Max-like apocalyptic feel to it. What was distinctly unapocalyptic about it, however, was the care-free herd of wild camels that nonchalantly strutted in amongst these primitive explosives - blissfully unaware that every two-toed footprint may be its last. We asked our taxi-driver – who may or may not have been Ben Kingsley taking time off from making Santam ads – to stop so that we might behold the frankly awesome spectacle of a camel being blown to smithereens. But he wasn’t keen. I think he had seen it all before.

So from our very first moment in Mauritania it became apparent that the comfortable but somewhat unexciting journeys we had made around Morocco were no more. The Mauritanian border official who processed our paperwork hinted as much. After swatting away swarms of flies that seem to have materialised out of nowhere the minute we left Morocco and chasing a toothpaste-eating goat from the entrance to the hut, he finally attended to us. As his official stamp hit the plush page of the passport – the point of no return – he didn’t offer the usual immigration jargon of “Welcome”, “Enjoy your trip” or even the stoney silence of bureaucrats who know they are, in fact, your daddy. No, he looked us straight in the eye and, with no discernible tone to his voice, ominously muttered the words “Good luck”. I don’t think people skills are big in this neck of the desert.

We soon found out what he meant, though. Our first journey within Mauritania – to the desert town of Atar – had no roads linking it to the grimy coastal hovel of Nouadhibou. It did have a train though. Good news. At 2,3kms the longest train on the planet, in fact. Better news. But it’s not designed to carry humans. Not such good news. It is a train created exclusively to collect vast quantities of iron ore, eviscerated from the bowels of the Sahara, and lug it to the coast to be exported. Probably to Russia. They seem to like iron ore. And it seems that they accept payment in the unlikely form of Soviet condensed milk. Tins of which ply the shelves of every shop, household and dingy coffee den. It seems the Cold War has found an unusual outlet in Africa in the form of confectionary. Its unsurprising that it’s not produced locally as Mauritania has no industrialisation to speak of, so all it can rely on to fill its sandy coffers are its sparse natural resources consisting almost exclusively of iron ore and fish. Tinned sardines can only do so much to stimulate a nation’s economy so this ore forms the backbone of what pays the salaries of the vast armies of gendarmes manning the roadblocks. And reserves of it are apparently dwindling fast. This was in no way apparent as we found ourselves in an one of the thousands of open-air iron ore carriages, hurtling through the Sahara towards the vast mines of the intimidatingly-named Zouerat . We had imagined golden dunes slipping by, universes visible beyond the untainted starry sky, man-love. What we got instead was iron ore dust which not only blocked out all in its path but also managed to penetrate every bodily orifice imaginable.  We emerged after thirteen gritty hours looking like the workers of Zouerat and feeling like one of the camels of no-mans land. After they had stood on one of those mines.