Monuments to visit Mauritania

10 minutes from the center, discover the artisanal fishing port and the fishermen's beach, with its multicolored wooden boats in the colors of Senegal. You have to go there according to the tides, when the boats come back loaded with fish and they are spread out in front of the barge. The others jostle each other, apostrophize each other, while the fishes are still wriggling. It is a real dive into the life of Nouakchott, a bath of crowd and fish! A word of warning, however: pickpockets can sometimes slip into the crowd.

You will understand why the cell phone market is nicknamed "hot spot" when you find yourself in the middle of the crowd! This is where you will find SIM cards for the 3 Mauritanian operators: Mattel, Mauritel and Chinguitel. The galleries host all the trades related to the purchase and repair of phones and electronic equipment. In the courtyard, music sellers are at war with each other with decibels, tea sellers wander from one store to another ... One of the places where the change of scenery takes all its meaning.

In the center of Nouadhibou, in the old quarters, the central market is a real anthill where you can find superb handicrafts. Chests, bracelets and jewelry are offered for sale. You will have to take your time and have a good sense of negotiation! You will also find beautiful fabrics, which seamstresses will be happy to work on to make the garment of your choice. The most difficult thing will be to choose among the countless colors and patterns available!

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.

Several private libraries exist in Ouadane. You will discover there superb manuscripts. One of the most interesting is certainly that of Sidi Mohamed Ould Abidin Sidi (✆ +222 44 95 52 10). He likes to repeat that the conservation of these treasures faces many obstacles, the first of which is himself! So there is no reason to blame him for showing only manuscripts that are only 2 or 3 centuries old: he has the rightness of mind to keep the oldest ones safe, to show them only to researchers. Who can blame him?

We should rather speak of the buildings of the fort, because it is a set of several constructions that constitutes the former French garrison at the time of colonization. In January 1909, Chinguetti fell into the hands of the French legionnaires who, 10 years later, built Fort Claudel, in honor of one of their commanders. The most important building of the fort is made up of imposing pillars that support beautiful arcades. The Claudel post, rehabilitated in 1983, bears witness to the colonial architectural heritage in Mauritania.