Nouadhibou
Nouadhibou is one of these fascinating places, where someone can not even be surprised by an enormous world map from the sixties in russian, hanging on a wall in an exchange office. Here the pasts are condensed in the present and the present does not come into being. Everything flows. There are worlds that coexist according to the rules of an never-ending permeability, like the boats that pass. Clear warning at the entrance to the Artisan Fishing Port. No cameras, no photos. For sure not to make you less obsessed with taking pictures diminishing the emotions that the visit arouses. In the end you are grateful for it as an unforgettable experience that no picture deserves to carry.
We are full of a certain timidity to cross the streets. I stare at a slender masculine bodies, whose bubus shine with the blue and the white. A monotonous sing of muezzin, like the wind that crosses spaces leaving its traces and comes back to blur them. It stuns, wakes up to invite to hold oneself back. One of the five mosques is a few steps from the house where we stay. Sitting on the terrace we leave our perceptions to dissolve in the dust of the street. I regret to arrive without having any sensation to conclude. Without the need to conclude anything.
Nouadhibou is also the port to set out towards the ocean of the desert. Tomorrow we set sail. A monster awaits us, the train that will take us to the entrails of the desert, to the mines of Zouerate.
Streets of Nouadhibou
We are going to the city, Nouadhibou. I watch. On the right-hand side there is a bay spatted with a naval scrap. More than 150; some lie on the sea bottom, others emerge over the surface. They will never return to the sea. They could never be used; fruit of hipocrisy in the supposed bilateral fishing agreements, agreements that only benefit one part, a part that gets rid here of her own shit and leaves the problem to others.
A customary visit for all wealthy westerners that turn up in Nouadhibou: Centre de Pêche Sportive (Sport Fishing Center). Ridiculous place with a restaurant, a witness, where the yearbooks of the glorious feats are piled up. From his pages look silly eyes of the bloody fool happiness of those, who have catched the biggest fish. Behind those pages there is the slavery, the misery, the contempt.
The song of muezzin takes up again a sequence that we stopped to hear for a while. The wind crinkles bubus in the laundry in front of us. Brings the fragrance of the soap. We drink an intense and sweet bissau, thiouraye perfumes the room, the goats choke on the plastic bags that fly through all the spaces of the city.
At the other side of the street.
One of the very small shops of the district.
These cliffs take up the inner part of the arm, on which Nouadhibou lies.
People on the shore. The light hurts!
Nouadhibou's market
Spanish Cooperation Center
