there are these red poles and white, posed on the dunes, which is merely a semblance of a path. There are also those rare tracks that disappear under the gusts of sand.
But nothing more to mark a single track of 200 km, since Tijikja, connects the world to Tichitt, a city classified world heritage of Unesco, lost in the desert of central Mauritania.
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The vehicles are rare on this axis. “It happens that one passes a month without any car not to come”, said Sherif Mokhtar Mbaka, teacher of English at lycée municipal.
Planted on top of a small hill in the middle of a desert of black rocks, Tichitt old is made of houses of grey stone architecture unique in its kind, and sandy streets.
Tichitt, 2.470 souls for the 2016 census, is in the process of sinking. Its inhabitants look to the past wondering what could have happened.
During eight centuries, between the Eleventh and the Nineteenth, the city has been one of the major crossroads of the Sahara. The caravans of camels from Morocco stopped a few days before continuing their road to Timbuktu and the loop of the Niger river.
“The decline began when the trade started to prefer sea routes rather than land”, in the Seventeenth century, ” explains Sherif Mokhtar Mbaka. “Today, it is finished, and the people face many problems.”
gone are the days of trading. A single truck now joins the city each month, which caters to the local traders in rice, millet or pasta, and goes back loaded with salt from the salt flat in the basin, salt pan near always operated.
Memories of the rally-raid
Finished the time of the Paris-Dakar, car rally, which was a step to Tichitt and brought another caravan, made up of athletes, journalists and tourists. “The old landing strip bounded by the French in the colony had been refitted for the rally, there were dozens of small aircraft that came in,” remembers Mohamed Teya, a notable.
The race was moved in 2009 to South America due to the worsening security and the actions the jihadists in the Sahara. The track has disappeared.
Finished, finally, the time of the thought. Tichitt was for centuries a hotbed of islamic culture. Of this time still remain the listed buildings maintained with great attention by Unesco and the government that impose that the new buildings keep the style as well as old manuscripts, the pages yellowed and the writing, is applied.
Those stack up among everyone else, and wait for the dust, the wind and time will take over. A club safeguarding has been launched twenty years ago by the director of the local high school, Mouhamedou Ahmadou and a house keeps from old collections. But there is no means to preserve them.
“These manuscripts are as old men and children: they are fragile,” Mr. Ahmadou. Cities such as Timbuktu in Mali, famous for his writings, receive foreign funding, “sometimes even of rooms to maintain the proper temperature of the manuscripts”, compare-t-il. “Look here! it is at the heart of the desert and it’s hot!”
When he pulls the shelves of books written mostly during the arab conquests of the Seventh and Eighth century, while the world coughs and the dust flies away in the rays of the sun beaming through the windows.
The dust accumulates on the old manuscripts AFPRêve from elsewhere
“Tichitt is forgotten”, said laconically, its mayor, Hamadou Lah Medou, 38 years. His isolation there makes life more expensive, and, in case of hard blow, the inhabitants are struggling to go to Tijikja, the regional capital. “We need a road,” he explains.
Tichitt has a hospital that provides first aid and even an ambulance, “one of the six cars Tichitt,” smiles Mohammed Teya, the notable. But the gas station – two pumps and a sign planted in the sand – is often empty. As grocery store shelves half-stocked.
the service station is often empty and AFP
Some tourists still spend – a lot less after the area has been strongly recommended to travellers by France until 2019. But the streets are mostly deserted. Apart from the children who play in current and older who drink the tea in discoursing.
there is nothing more to do here. Young people prefer to leave Tichitt. There is “no work, no opportunities,” sighs Gildou Muhamedou Babui, 34 years of age. The young man, dressed in a boubou moorish blue sky, tried to find work in Nouakchott and Atar, these large cities attractive.
But nothing there. It is income and is now the accounting of the city hall after having chained the small jobs. “That is what we can do?”
Some, he says, work in the garden. Others are actively involved in the Sebkha where they cut out the salt, before you load hundreds of pounds on camels, all in a hurry by their owners who don’t want to hang out with. “But that’s all.”
The editorial team conseilleMauritanie: concern of Amnesty after the arrest of rights activists humainsClassée to Unesco, the royal chapel of Milot ravaged by fire in HaïtiÉdimbourg, Venice, Chan Chan… The Unesco’s alert on the sites which are threatened by the change climatiqueSujetsmauritanietichittunescoaucun comment
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