MAURITANIA II

Long walks alone up the valley which was cold and beautiful.  Mist passing over a silvery sun.  I am again feeling the pangs of restlessness, and am planning to go to Mauritania.  The only country that nobody seems to have heard of.  I know where it is, said Penelope [Betjeman].  It’s in Eastern Europe and we all used to see it in ‘20s films.  They wear white uniforms.  “You’re thinking of Ruritania” – and she was.

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I have the most itchy feet and want to go to Niger – more nomads, the Bororo Feuls, the most beautiful people in the world, who wander alone in the savannah with long-horned white cattle and have some rather startling habits like a complete sex-reversal at certain seasons of the year.  So I may be off.

Bruce Chatwin in Shakespeare/Chatwin, 1999

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