Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Nouakchott

17º59.037' N
16º01.988' W



Nouakchott was pretty uneventful. My most vivid memory of the city wasn't even in the city; it was on the boat.

As we got close to the city, we noticed more and more flies in the boat. We tried a few homemade solutions (e.g. honey in a jar with saran wrap) before resorting to the flyswatter, but there were simply too many to get rid of. Their numbers just kept growing. Also, since we were anchored far from shore and it was evening when we arrived, we didn't bother trying to take the dinghy to shore the first day.

That night, the flies were nice enough to leave us alone -- I guess flies have to sleep too -- but by the next morning, they had tripled in number. By mid-day, there were at least 500 flies in our boat. Several times, I was able to kill 7 flies with one swing of the flyswatter. Gh-ross! (a la Napoleon D.) Added to the 95° heat and the pungent drafts of smoke from a nearby landfill, life was pretty miserable on the boat. But we were stuck there another day, since we needed to wait for Bujari to make arrangements on shore before we could disembark.

The third day, we finally went into the capital to get our passports stamped and to re-stock on food and supplies. One thing we made sure to get was a chemical spray called "Fly-tox." Afterwards, Annie and I spent the afternoon in a restaurant, escaping the heat and talking with a Senegalese man who later proposed to Annie several times. In the meantime, LouLou and Bujari brought the supplies back to the boat. LouLou sealed all the windows and doors, sprayed almost the entire can of Fly-tox inside, and spent the afternoon fishing.

The Fly-tox did its trick, thank god!, but we still had over 500 flies in the boat, except now they were all dead. There were fly carcasses everywhere -- on the stove, in the sink, in my sheets, under my mattress...everywhere! LouLou had graciously cleaned up most of them from the dining area, but we were still finding dead flies in various nooks and crannies a week later.

The next day, we expected the flies to return, but to our pleasant surprise, no more came. We concluded that it was one of three reasons:
1) there was still the lingering smell of Fly-tox to drive the flies away
2) the flies had somehow communicated to each other that our boat was a fly extermination chamber
3) all the flies in the city had been in our boat, and we'd just killed them all

I like to think it was reason 3, in which case we probably deserve some sort of medal :)

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