multi cultural Mauritania

 Invited to a Japanese dinner I arrived earlier so that I could sketch what went on in the kitchen. I didn’t expect the amazing menu our friends had thought up.

 No sketches of the final dishes as dinner was served in the terrace under the stars, too dark to draw the food too good to even try sketching. We were a mixed bunch from a Portuguese to British, French and Mauritanian and of course the very small community of Japanese.

 Last weekend at the beach a bunch of Mauritanian ladies using a jerrycan as a drum started singing clapping and dancing.

Quite unusual… I couldn’t help but join them and ask if I could draw but couldn’t help but joining in the clapping.

 In a week that has seen the different communities of Mauritanians ( Moors and black Africans) at odds due to a census going on which Black Africans find discriminatory towards their community. It has been good to see that in Medina 3, moors and blacks keep playing their daily games of draughts with lots of onlookers from both communities.

 As in other places the racial conflicts exist only at the levels of power where each fraction is fighting for supremacy and keeping hold of power and the richness it comes with it.