Circling the Baobabs: Chinguitti: A city of sand

"The sand closes in on you in Chinguitti. An ongoing project by the European Union to haul sand out of the streets back into the desert leaves less than before, but I still feel it casacading in. The roads are soft, fine desert sand. Houses are made of sand/water combination. I'm buried in a sand castle here and it's easy to feel like time is in the middle between ending and beginning and I'm being pushed through the wings of an hourglass spat out and turned into rosy-colored mud." - Journal entry

We padded around the city in the late afternoon just as the sun was setting. It was much too hot to come out of our tents during the mid-day sun -- finally we were getting some real desert heat. It's a city with some running water, electricity only between the hours of 8 and 10 p.m., and a couple of phone lines. However sparse, it houses one of the largest collections of manuscripts written by the Prophet Mohammed in the 600s (supposedly since this is all somewhat debatable). It's considered the seventh holy city of Islam -- but as one peace corps volunteer put it: what's the eighth city?

It felt quaint as desert towns go. The sandy walls of the hundreds-years-old buildings still tweeter with the old tale that Chinguitti was once located a little farther to the north but it was buried in sand and so another city had to be re-started here. Our volunteer told us of prejudice he faced for not being Muslim -- some people in the city refusing to talk to him making it seem that perhaps sand is not Chinguitti's only enemy, but maybe the outside world. I'd heard the farther north you get in Mauritania the more devout the Muslims and the closer you get to Senegal the more "Christian" sarcastically speaking since Senegal is at least 95 percent Muslim, it's just some consider the form of Islam here diluted.

But we were two girls smoothed with travel intent that our path would take us where we wanted to go. The afternoon sun went setting and we trodded through the thick, heavy sand like it was a dance. We found a baayfall Senegalese vendor named Boubacar selling trinkets he offered to make us a good cup of homebrewed ataya (tea) instead of that weak sh*t they make here in Mauritania. We brazeningly said goodbye laughing that we were off to the desert tomorrow morning and he asked at the heart of our laughter: "What desert? This is the desert." Desert, yes, but we must get farther out and my faced turned to serious, out there I point to the now-not-so distant dunes -- we're going there.