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Published: June 24th 2005
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Since I last wrote I went through Marrakesh, Agadir, Laayoune, Dakhla, and then across the border into Mauritania where I have so far been to Noadhibou and Nouakchott. Marrakesh was pretty and interesting but too touristic for me. Laayoune and Dakhla are in Western Sahara, which is disputed, and there seems to be some tension between the Moroccans who are sort of occupying it, and the Saharans. The desert is really beautiful, and unbelievably huge.
The main even of this segment of the trip, however, occured between Dakhla and Noadhibou, where I was attempting to cross the border. I left around sunset, hoping to arrive in Noadhibou around dawn, and I knew it was a bad idea to travel at night, but I didn't want to stay in Dakhla for the night, so I jumped into the back of a windowless van full of tomatoes with an old woman and a young black Saharan.
We were going along quite well, and we were all sleeping in the back, when the I heard the tire explode next to my ear and felt the driver lose control of the van, and then I was thrashed around for a few spins
and thrown out into the sand, still able to walk. I sort of limped away from the vehicle and sat down in the sand. It seemed pretty comfortable, but i was gushing blood... my nose had been smashed first and then my leg maimed. I had minor cuts all of and one that was over an inch and a half deep and maybe txo or three inches long and triangular in shape. At first I thought it was the whole leg that was cut but when I cleaned off the blood I saw it was smaller. The other moderately serious cuts were on my head and wrist, and then all over my left leg.
It's really cold in the desert at night and I was shaking and shivering, and kind of aimlessly staggering around in the sand looking for my glasses (which I never found) The old woman kept cryng in pain about every three seconds, rythmically, setting the mood. There were 6 of us, and the three who were in front weren't very seriously hurt at all. But as it turns out the woman broke her back and is paralywed. The other young guy in the back had
an extremely deep gash in his head(I couldn't see the bottom) but he seemed to be alright. Everyone was cut up though, and I ended up tearing up all of my clothes and using them to mop up blood and cover wounds. The tomatoes were everywhere.
The moon was really bright, and the ocean was about 2 km or so away and I could hear the waves, and it was actually really peaceful after the woman, Zahra, went unconscious and stopped moaning... and I though about the friend of Flaubert who, while he was on his deathbed, looked out the window into the countryside and said 'Close the blinds, it's too beautiful.'
All in all a pretty bad situation, but an interesting experience. I rode to the nearest restaurant in a big truck, and the next day a French guy, Patrick, and his dog Bazouk gave me a ride to Noadhibou and waited for me while I got stiched up. For some reason they started cutting into my flesh without giving me anaesthesia... I tried to think for the next couple of days if I had ever experienced anything more painful, and I remembered one time when I
was about thirteen that I spilled some gasoline on my leg and lit it on fire by accident... that's the only time in memory I can remember myself screaming in pain like that. But anyway, afterwards they gave me anesthetic and finished, other than the first part it wasn't bad at all. The doctors stopped halway through my surgery when an eight year old boy came in, and they went over and circumcised him, and then they came back and put my leg in a splint. I was really proud because the Belarussian doctor came in, and only spoke a few words in English, so we conversed in a mix of Russian, Spanish, English, and French, I think my first quatri-lingual conversation.
The road to Nouakchott was good, Patrick and I sipping beer, smoking a little hash for the pain, and stopping for a picnic of calamari and ham, and for the sunset. So I made it here, where I am staying at a nice French auberge and enjoying life, reading, playing chess, smoking hash, enjoying good conversation and tropical fruit, and learning French, and of course listening to excellent African music. I suppose I can't complain. I think
I'm going to continue on to Senegal when I'm able to walk again, which hopefully won't be too long. I got an x ray and nothing is broken, so it's probably either a sprain or a severed something or other. I've also got some flash new African clothes.
I went to a concert the other night, wow, I really love African music and culture. Mauritania is a great miw between Arab north Africa and black southern Africa, and Islamic as well, so I like it here very much, though this is the second time I've been outside, the first to get money xrays. So I'm off for now, but hello and love to everyone who reads this
Alex
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Amelia
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Great to hear that you are alive and (tolerably) well. Your adventures seem pretty wild and detached from my reality, so it's hard to imagine the overall picture of where you are.. especially never having seen the Sahara in any context other than National Geographic specials. I admire your openness to your experiences, especially the painful, bodily damaging ones like having your leg stiched up. Has your accident made you a little more wary, or do you see it as one of those unnavidable, unpredictable risks necessary to the traveling?