The next morning we tried to meet the Canadian again, in case she got confused with the am/pm distinction. Travel can do that to you. But she never came. Our driver from yesterday offered to pick up, though when I say offered, he told us he’ll pick us up at 10, so we needed ouguiya to pay a reasonable price. He also might know where the Canadian was staying, as he knew her driver, and we thought we’d ask him so she could help subsidise our trip a bit. No money changers were open and the only bank didn’t have a functioning computer. However as we gazed mournfully at a taciturn money-changing shop, a man sidled up to us, like a Faustian apparition. He asked if we wanted to change money. We couldn’t lie given our hangdog expressions in front of the closed moneychanger so we followed him to his two-bit office. “Money changer” was written in twink on his glass door, and a picture of a world map was the only other sign that he was a money-changer. He also sold biscuits. The biscuits were the primary business venture. He gave us a good rate.
The driver picked us up at ten, and we drove around looking for the Canadian. We couldn’t find her, but we didn’t want to pay for the whole car. We asked if he could find one or two people to lower the cost. He said it’ll be “crowded”, but it would save us US$16 each which all three of us preferred. He found two people – they were uncommunicative twins, and they sat in the front. We thought that was it until he pulled over again and told us to move over. Two more people got in. Ivan was livid, and tried to bargain our price down four more dollars each. The driver refused. The car wasn’t big, four passengers in total would have been comfortable, five squirmy, but seven meant severe contortion and no movement.
We drove through the Sahara to Nouakchott like this. Seven hours. We couldn’t open windows because of sandstorms. I never understood it when people said time felt long, I was always too busy back home, but this was long. Ivan and Mitya complained the whole way, refusing to tone down their frustration, assuming the others didn’t speak English. I had the least amount of room, on account of being the smallest and most malleable there, but I didn’t mind much either. I kept on needling them by talking about how much I was enjoying the Berber music tape that was being repeated over and over again. This story would be repeated by all three of us, the dimensions of the car shrinking like a room designed to kill James Bond with each telling, extra passengers thrown in with little concern to plausibility, as people would scarcely believe we were in Mauritania in the first place.
I did find the lack of fresh air challenging, squashing seven people into a vehicle was going to guarantee a greenhouse effect. There were, as you’d expect in the depths of the Sahara, no people. We did go past a tyre shop, camping in the middle of nowhere, with no evidence of customers or friends. I bet he sits there every day, patient, waiting. But when someone is forced to use his shop, he could probably charge them enough to eat for a year.
