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05.04.04

Overland Trip To Senagal 2004, Day 6: Nouâdhibou

Thomas Morgan
2006-04-26 11:42:45

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Mahmoud is our roommate as I said, but he doesn’t like the little Ghanaian kids Frenchy and I befriended. He clearly doesn’t have kids of his own, so I won’t even bother asking him that in Arabic; go to the trouble of finding it in the phrase book, pointing to it and saying it. Last night was quite fun. We stayed up after dinner playing with the kids and talking to their Dad on the couch in the hallway. Mahmoud is sleeping with his back to me. The conversation touched on various topics, beginning with travel stories and advice.

Breakfast was nice, just like the hostel in Casa – bread, butter and jam, and coffee. It wasn’t very nice coffee, though I’ve never liked it. I spent a bit of time trying to talk to Mahmoud, utter frustration, but pleasant breakthroughs here and there. We played football on the roof of the hostel with the kids looking out onto the town, surreal. Doing little things with the bloke who works here, buying a turban for 800 oigyun, or however you spell it. Kids, who’d want them. Why in your right mind. The little girl is a squirming nuisance, only occasionally enjoyable. We eventually walk to an internet café. Experience… the little girl irritates, like with the eggs at the coffee shop, pictures of the African cup of nations, ’02 World Cup and Marc Vivien Foé, the coffee in a tall glass is delicious. The children are insatiable, why have kids I wonder, struggling with them. They’re fun, carefree, but a handful. Walk to a fly-ridden restaurant and have lunch, taxi to the music store, food store, little girl screaming. Back in the room, kicking the ball and knocking her yoghurt to the ground, screaming, wailing, cleaner cleans it and doesn’t look at me when I say sorry, just cleans. Hot, tired and bewildered, wrapping my head around being somewhere I never knew existed for all but a few weeks. Poverty and hard work here, flies and goats, dog shitting in the gravel path, woman tossing rubbish like ...