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West Africa, Malta and the Balkans in 1999

MAURITANIA

Bec
2004-09-18 19:25:59

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and decided to keep my distance to avoid being stuck with the role I was being asked to play.

I think that role-playing is normal. We all do it in everyday life but we have several roles to play. All of us can be dominant or submissive, serious or buffoon, according to the circumstances. As we switch between these roles and many others during the day, we don't realize that we are role-playing. Precisely because we're not stuck with a single role.

I think there is a multitude inside each one of us and that each one of that multitude deserves to be heard. Each one deserves to play his "role" on the stage of life. Roles are played for the benefit of the audience around us who generally can accept and understand only one of our roles at a time. Whether the environment we build around us is homogeneously narrow or pluralist and polychrome makes all the difference in the world on the survival of our personal multitude.

Our third bivouac was somewhere south of place called Chami. We had traveled 136 km that day.

This trip through the desert in the microcosm of a small isolated group gave me the occasion to see once again how social pressures limit the expression of the multitude inside of us. I am sure that Emma, Nicky, Ian and Lee have more roles at their disposal than those they chose to exploit or accept during this trip.

This is true for all of us, wherever we are, social pressures force us to limit the number of roles we choose to play with the unfortunate result that parts of our reality are never expressed.

Our German friends had a had the brilliant idea to stock-up on beer and wine and invited us to enjoy it. We gratefully accepted their largesse and pooled our resources to share a meal together (the only one in 5 days).

The wonderful thing about emptiness is that it presents no limitations to the free rambling of ideas, all of them becoming permissible as long as they are not taken seriously as "Truths".

Finally we reached the Atlantic coast. The crossing of the desert was almost over and soon, outside influences might bring variety to the stereotyped stage play the group had gotten itself into.

Nouakchott
There is a large market near the center and the great Saudi Mosque is an attractive building. Unfortunately the National Museum to which is reputed worth seeing was closed when I was there. I did find a cybercafe and spent a whole afternoon catching up on my e-mail correspondence. The city was created less than 40 years ago so it is not surprising that there is not more to see here. Since its creation, desertification has reached the suburbs and hordes of nomads have been forced to move into the city's slums by droughts.

Rosso
These black Mauritanian money changers invited me to share their meal of fish and rice as I was waiting for the border to open during the lunch break.

The Mauritanian border office finally opened. After stamping my passport, a uniformed official brought me to small room where he asked me what I had for him. Remembering an anecdote I had read somewhere, I immediately grabbed his hand and shook it saying to all I had to give him was a heartfelt handshake. He was so flabbergasted that I had time to scoot out of that room and move on towards the ferry to Senegal before he could react. I was lucky once again and he did not come after me. You may try that sometime, but don't blame me if it doesn't work, you might not be as lucky is I am.

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