Monuments to visit South

Accessible from Kaédi by a good 115 km track, the Foum Gleita dam is located near M'Bout, a large agricultural village, a former colonial post that has kept a very particular architecture. This impressive work of 43 m height and 110 m length holds 500 million m³ of water. Completed in 1984, it has allowed the irrigation of more than 2,500 hectares of land, and facilitates the cultivation of rice for the inhabitants of the region. It is the largest dam in Mauritania, located on the Gorgol River.

Kaédi, the city where many Mauritanian ethnic groups live, has given birth to a colorful market. You must see this melting pot where Arabs-Berbers and Africans-Mauritanians of all origins and almost all conditions mix. These different populations have brought their goods and crafts, which are piled up in this market in which you can get lost because it is so well supplied! Fruits and vegetables, fish, fabrics, leather work, dairy products, cereals, everyday objects and others... A change of scenery and authenticity guaranteed!

On the track that leads from Nbeika to Matmata, about 25 km, we find on the left, a few kilometers before Matmata, a dozen astonishing small constructions of about 1.5 m high. They are granaries, still used nowadays, which would have been built by farmers, the Gangari, who lived in the region about 2 000 years ago. They seem to have been the ancestors of the Soninke. These cylindrical stone constructions, erected near cultivable areas (at the time), allowed them to store seeds.

Like Ouadane, Oualata and Chinguetti, Tichitt is full of century-old manuscripts with delicate illuminations, witnesses of a past and splendid period, during which the religious studied Islam, sciences and other fields, in the greatest seriousness. You can visit one of these libraries, modest in appearance but containing treasures of calligraphy, preserved with great difficulty for centuries. A guard will put on thick gloves before gently manipulating the pages of these manuscripts before your amazed eyes.

Like the three other ancient cities of Mauritania, Ouadane, Chinguetti and Tichitt, Oualata is home to treasures in its library, preserved by chance and with care by the inhabitants through time, sometimes with the means at hand! In the room to the right are old manuscripts belonging to the four families of Oualata. Opposite is the library of Taleb Boubekar, traditional chief of the city, who died around 1915. This library is full of centuries old writings, vestiges of another time.

There is no need to show you the way to get there: perched on a promontory, you can see it clearly while you are still 30 minutes from Oualata. Built in 1912, it successively housed the French army during the pacification of the region, then political prisoners from the independence of Mauritania. Since 1990, the authorities have closed this prison. The triangular building is impressive and appears to be in a perfect state of preservation, seen from the outside. Inside, around the courtyard, the prisoners' cells are scattered. It is hard to imagine what the conditions of the men incarcerated here were like not so long ago. A small opening allowing a little light to pass through, a living space reduced to a minimum, because the cells were crowded, the diseases, the heat and the mistreatment must have made the life expectancy very limited. One comes out of this fort with shivers down one's spine.

It is possible to admire Oualata by taking the stairs on the left, just after the entrance of the fort. You are then on the roof of the cells! Going back down from the fort towards Oualata, on the right, the French cemetery shelters a dozen graves, among which the one of Bonnel de Mézières who administered the region at the beginning of the ^XXth century. Passionate about archaeology, he contributed greatly to the excavations carried out at Aoudaghost and Koumbi Saleh.

Warning: Before considering a visit, inquire about the feasibility of the site with local tourism professionals.