27 February 2007 - 11:27
Life in Mauritania has been getting exciting lately. Not for me personally, but just in general…exciting things have happened in the last couple of weeks, such as…
Exciting Thing #1: Hijacking!
Last week, a man boarded an Air Mauritania flight from Nouakchott to Nouadhibou with two handguns, a fact which surprises only those who haven’t flown out of Nouakchott’s airport and experienced the total lack of security there. I once arrived three hours early for a flight to Morocco (because it left at 3 a.m., and it’s nearly impossible to get a taxi at that hour), and the metal detector and bag scanner hadn’t been turned on yet when I went through them to get to the boarding gate. The guards showed up an hour later, after about 20 people had gone through and sat down in the boarding area, and announced that everyone who was there needed to go back through the security checkpoint. About 15 people did, and the rest of us pretended to be asleep. I’m sure that wasn’t an entirely isolated incident, so I wasn’t surprised to learn about the guy with handguns on the plane.
Fortunately for the crew and passengers, however, the hijacker was Mauritanian, which means he didn’t put too much thought into his endeavor. He demanded to be taken to France so he could claim political asylum, but the plane didn’t have enough fuel, so it flew to the Canary Islands to refuel. Mid-flight, the pilot figured out that the hijacker couldn’t speak French, so he made an announcement over the intercom in French (which most of the passengers spoke) that, upon landing in the Canaries, he would be braking hard and then accelerating rapidly to knock the hijacker down. The plane landed, he braked and accelerated, the hijacker fell down and dropped one gun, the crew threw boiling water from the coffee pot on him, and then ten guys jumped on him and beat him senseless. Not kidding.
But, as the Star Trek guy on Reading Rainbow used to say… “Don’t take my word for it…”
Exciting Thing #2: Jailbreak!
A couple days ago, 36 Mauritanian prisoners escaped through a 12-foot tunnel they had dug underneath the walls of the main prison in Nouakchott. As of today, 12 of them have been caught. I had no idea that people could actually still dig their way of prison – how exciting! No word yet as to whether or not the plane highjacker was amongst the escapees…
New Zealand Herald story
Exciting Thing #3: Explosion!
A mine exploded last week around the Mauritania-Moroccan border, killing a French guy. There are signs posted all over the place up there that say that there are mines in the area (left over from the Mauritania-Moroccan war in the late seventies), and that you shouldn't leave the road, but I guess these two French guys didn't believe them. One of them survived the accident, but the other wasn't so lucky. According to the newspaper I read this in, within the last year, a child has been injured by a mine, and a camel was killed last November by a mine in the same area. Note to self: take airplane to Morocco.
Slightly Interesting Thing #4: Tents!
Traditional Mauritanian nomad tents are starting to pop up around the city like mushrooms in a forest after a rain, which means that IT’S ELECTION TIME!!! Unfortunately for me and everything else with ears, that means that the arrival of loud Moor music played all day and all night for weeks on end is soon to follow. You see, Mauritanian elections are decided much as are their arguments and musical contests – the loudest is the best, no questions asked. More on the elections soon…
I know I’ve been really bad about keeping in touch with everyone and writing posts lately – January and February were really packed, but things are a little slower now, so I’ll be writing quite a bit more this month to make up for my lack thereof over the last several, and I promise to write everyone back that I owe emails to by the end of the month. Until then…mb
