As soon as I get off the taxi, the stench assaults my nostrils penetrating deep into my lungs. For a few seconds I hold my breath to digest the impact. I exhale, and try to breathe on taking another breath of air but the retching interrupts it. I need a few minutes to absorb the smell of fish guts and the river of blood mixed with salt water that runs between my feet on the floor of the pavilion. A symphony of dissonant blades colliding against the surface of the stone tables resounds all around me. The executioners shout out the prices of the day as they butcher the fish with the same lightness with which a librarian files books. The clients, for their part, examine the corpses making counteroffers. I make my way through the crowd trying not to slip on any guts, until I finally come out on the opposite side from which I entered. In front of me, I find hundreds of barges parked on the beach. I am on the shores of the Atlantic, at the Nouakchott fish market.
Successive years of harsh droughts during the 1980s led to the death of tens of thousands of goats and camels in the interior of the country. With them, the main source of food for the populations of the heart of the Sahara was lost. Consequently, a large part of its inhabitants was forced to move to the coast to find in the sea the source of protein lost in their homeland. The population of Nouakchott increased radically and its urban structure grew without plans or prior planning, in the form of settlements that extend over the sand until they dissolve in the diffuse horizon of the desert.
Since then, the fish market has been the gateway to subsistence food in modern times in one of the most inhospitable regions on the planet. There, the social display rivals that of the center of any cosmopolitan capital in the world at the height of rush hour, only here it takes place on the sand. I try to get to the shore looking for a space between barges wide enough to walk through, but there aren't that many, so many walk directly on their deck’s planks. In that same maze of wooden hulls painted in colourful Wolof designs, I run into those who are deep in their work. Some mend the insulation of the boats, others are greased up with half a body inside the engine. I can't stop for long because the first moment I get distracted, someone staggering in with a 30-liter can of gasoline on his shoulders yells at me to move quickly out of the way.
When I reach the bow of the last barge, right in the space that opens up in front of me, hundreds of people interact in the small strip of sand that the high tide leaves free. From the crowd and their clothing, from the barges and their designs, from the fish and the ocean in conjunction with the force of the wind, a cacophony of colors, smells and sounds emerges overwhelming my senses. There are men chatting spread out in different groups, they debate and argue until the furtive ball from the soccer game that children are playing a few meters away falls on them and interrupts them. Mauritanians of Arab origin wrapped in pristine sky-blue daraâ and tagelmust trade with black Wolof and Fula fishermen. In the shade below the bows, some rest lying belly up on the sand looking over the children who play jumping from one barge to the other as if they were airplanes. It is a universe of men in which some women appear here and there. There are those who come to sell food and those who carry large buckets to collect fish, but all without distinction gossip to kill time. Between them all, a legion of porters makes their way with their metal carts pushing, stepping on and displacing anyone who does not listen, until they reach the shore where the epicenter of the action is.
Shortly after mid-afternoon, armies of barges begin to come ashore. Loaded with crews of up to 30 fishermen mounted on a loot of hundreds of kilos of fish, they arrive sailing carrying the weight of small titanics, with their waterlines well below the water level. In the last 100 meters, the captains show off their skills standing at the stern right behind wheel, taming the fury of the Atlantic until they reach the shore. They arrive soaking wet, having spent more than 24 hours on the high seas, fishing through the night and throughout the day. There are no ports here, not even docks where they can disembark. The barges stop when the force of the last wave causes them to run aground with their hulls on the sand. It is the critical moment in which the entire crew, except for the captain, quickly descends to tie up the ship. Once on the ground, they immediately reorganize with the efficiency of an army. One of them runs to the side uncoiling a rope that is tied to the stern at one end and to the anchor at the other. Once he reaches full extension he drops it so that it buries itself with the very same tension. About 40 meters to the other side, the rest of the team assembles in a line holding tightly to another rope that is tied to the bow. Singing, they pull on it as in a tug-of-war to contain the successive pounding of the ocean that destabilizes the barge. In this way the barge is held together on one side by the anchor that is buried on the ground and on the other by the fishermen pulling and releasing, thus adjusting the tension according to the tide.
While they deal with the arduous task of keeping the boat stable, those who once socialized now rush to it like pins to a magnet. Among them is the legion of porters who jump into the water with empty crates on their heads until they completely surround each barge. Those who remained on board are armed with a long metal poles that have a basket-shaped net hanging from one of their ends. As if they were large spoons, they scoop the fish out until filling the crates to the rim. Meanwhile, the porters (some of them submerged up to their chests) endure a sustained struggle against the ravages of the sea, trying to keep their feet on solid ground so that the ocean does not swallow them. The arrival of each wave hits them all at once like bowling pins. It knocks down the less experienced and drags them around like rag dolls before the rip sucks them in to sea. When the crates of those who are still on their feet overflow with fish, the odyssey begins to run away as quickly as possible from the currents that keep trying to suck them. The escape is a show of balance between the successive explosions of water and foam while wading through the others without colliding, without falling, so they are able to reach the carts to unload before they start over.
Hundreds of kilos later, when the barges are empty, including the accumulated water, the remaining fishermen get off to park them. It is a task that requires the joint work of 20 to 30 of them to be able to park these boats that are up to 20 meters long. Under the command of one of them shouting the instructions like an orchestra conductor, with their boots buried in the dense wet sand, they push in perfect synchronicity, singing in unison, invoking every possible source of energy. With each push, their legs sink to their knees reflecting the magnitude of the force they impart, and as if the weight and the sandy surface did not offer enough of a challenge, the sea continues to hit them mercilessly until the last moment of contact. The joint action between the remnants of each coming wave and the fury of the wind cranks up the challenge of the task and conspires against them. It shakes the barges until their wooden structures creak in pain. Sometimes it even knocks them over on their sides forcing everyone to start from scratch to reposition them. However, no storm is enough to break the spirit of the team. Everyone keeps singing and no one surrenders until they manage to line them up perpendicular to the beach, at which point they can finally pull them out of the water completely. From there, it is just a handful of meters more on firm sand until they are mounted on a two-wheeled cart that will facilitate the transfer to the space where they are parked.
The barges keep arriving one after another until the sun descends over the horizon, turning golden the foam that drifts over the surface of the water. The birds flying low hunting for fish are silhouetted against a sky the colour of fire. The fraying flags hoisted on the bows flap aimlessly, waiting for a stillness that never comes. The wind perseveres beyond sunset, churning the water over which it spreads the Saharan sands and making the golden drops that slip off the fishermen's waterproof suits dance in the air. It is the immanent buzzing behind the ears of all those who keep on doing overtime late on the beach. They continue their tasks as a team, now regrouped to untangle and fold hundreds of square meters of nets in disarray. There always seems to be yet one more task that stands in the way between them and a break.
Finally, at dusk, another day of work ends at the Nouakchott fish market. The fishermen have sailed and fished, disembarked and parked their boats. They have also cleaned, repaired and conditioned them and have folded neatly all down to the last net. Still, they keep singing. Their singing prevails until the arrival of nightfall. It is the joint symphony that offers resistance to the constant roar of an enraged ocean and nourishes with energy this legion that, from sunrise to sunset, gets in line to face the rigours of an inclement job to earn a living.
