On Transport, Part Deux

For the first time in my life, I hate traveling. It's awful. Several months ago I wrote about traveling to and from Atar each month in the back of a pickup. That was bad enough. Traveling to Nouakchott – the capital city where one finds cold beer and cheese – is sheer torture.

The first time I watched people climbing into a bush taxi, the typical mode of transportation, I thought back to late-night Wal-Mart runs during college where perhaps ONE extra person was squeezed onto a lap or into a truck. However, the first time I watched four grown adults climb into the back seat of a standard car, I thought there must be some mistake. They were going on a seven-hour journey. No, it wasn't a mistake. That's how people travel in Mauritania. Then I watched two people cram themselves into the front seat. This wasn't one of those cars with extra seating space between the passenger and the driver. It was a bucket seat. The poor souls cradled each other, praying the rickety doors didn't pop open.

In winter, layers of clothing take up precious breathing room. But those layers of clothing also provide some cushion between bony hips. During summer there is little padding. Each time your neighbor moves a leg, you feel the muscles contract and relax. Hip bones remind you that at a certain point it's impossible to squish yourself any narrower: four adult pelvises simply take up a certain amount of space.

Summer's an extra treat: 130 degree temperatures ensure that you sweat all over everyone until you no longer know whose juices are whose. If you are lucky enough to travel in a vehicle with functioning windows, and if the other passengers in the car are nice enough to roll down their windows to let in a breeze, then you are guaranteed to be covered in a thick layer of sand by the end of the day, which coagulates with your group-sweat until you are swimming in a small pool of mud. Nevertheless, that's still preferable to an airtight car [read: oven]. For some reason many Mauritanians insist it's hotter with the windows rolled down. The only possible explanation is that they are so dehydrated that they don't sweat, and they therefore don't realize how good the breeze feels.

I feel bad for my companions: my 6'5” frame is no nimble figure with which to coexist. But, they grin and bear it with no complaints, at least not to my face. I'm also thankful for my physical health. A good friend of mine has a bad knee and has to stretch every couple hours. I'm amazed he goes anywhere in bush taxi.

If we fill a car with six Americans the drive is more tolerable. Moors are not great about using soap. This makes their juices less enjoyable.

I'm thankful I'm not a girl. Since this is an Islamic Republic and people are so conservative, most Mauritanians refuse to sit by anyone of the opposite sex. This works out well for small-statured males. Females, though, are notoriously large (the bigger the better, right?). I can't imagine sitting between three grown Moor women in the back of a compact. My female friends do it all the time. Again, in the winter it's not so bad. I've been told the cushioning is preferable to bony hips. Summertime is quite a different story. Extra layers of skin mean extra heat, sweat and smell.

Every time I cram myself into a back seat I think, “Oh, this isn't as bad as last time.” I plug in headphones hoping to drown out the noise that is “Moor music”, pretending to be in my own little world, even though my body knows otherwise. My knees begin to hurt. My buttcheeks fall asleep. One time the entire lower half of my body fell asleep. If I move, I must check with my neighbor to make sure his or her ribs can still expand sufficiently to breathe. My neck begins to ache from being hunched over. And then I remember why I hate traveling so much.

Nevertheless, after a certain number of hours you develop an unspoken understanding with your neighbors. You've each moved a little, much to the others' chagrin. You've all got each others' sweat smeared across your faces, arms, thighs and legs, so there's no point in apologizing anymore. You know each other's contours as well as their most intimate partners. And when you finally peel away from each other at the end of a voyage, you taste freedom together. You leave with the sense of having endured some great hardship, and you're pretty sure that the only reason you survived is because your neighbor wasn't a total inconsiderate ass along the way. You still dread the next trek, but that won't stop you from going. Cold beers and cheese are calling.