Joe Camel Lives

The town of Nema recently added a new service- trash collection. Now, instead of taking your bag of rubbish out of the house and into the street, or hiring a kid with a donkey cart to haul it out of town, you just wait for the trash men to come. It’s still a donkey cart, but nicely painted.

The payment schedule for the trash men isn’t quite the same as back home. In the states, for a job like that, you normally are paid on a monthly basis. Here, the trash men are paid weekly. And back home, a salary is usually enough to maintain a home. Here it’s a bit of rice or grain. I want to be clear. It’s not enough to buy rice or grain, it actually is rice and grain.

Trade in-kind isn’t unusual here. Money often isn’t available, so trading a service for food, or paying with goods rather than money can make more sense. Even in the stores, there isn’t a lot of money lying around. If I bring in a thousand ougiya bill, I will be sure to wait ten minutes for the shopkeeper to hunt down change (a thousand ougiuas is about $4).

Rather than keep money, or put it into the bank, people find other ways to hold onto their savings. Camels and sheep are popular systems. Here in Mauritania’s ranch country, you will find enormous herds of camels or cows. A wealthy individual may not have two 100 ougiya notes to rub together, but he’ll have over 100 camels, each worth between 150,000 and 350,000 ougiyas (at $1,500 apiece, that’s a $150,000 herd).

Whether your money is in the bank or on the hoof, a rich person will probably want the trappings of wealth. The other day, a friend of mine who works out in the countryside told me about a transaction he’d recently seen. A sheep rancher wanted a nice car, a Land Rover. So when the opportunity came, he paid for the car with sheep.

When I came to Mauritania, I thought that this was an incredibly poor country. I was told that the RIM was wealthy compared to neighboring countries, but it was always difficult to believe, seeing the people around me. Now, I finally understand. There is money in the hands of some wealthy people. But it’s often the less-liquid Camel Cash.