sharing a meal in west Africa

One thing about food that I have learned in my african travels is that it is impolite, to say the least, to eat in front of other people without first inviting everybody around to share your meal. Unless I am sitting in a crowded restaurant I will always be faithful to this principle, and sharing food proves to be a great way to satisfy my curiosity for people and customs, as well as my hungry stomach.

This was always true until I traveled to Mauritania.
During an overland trip through sub-saharian Countries, my girlfriend Erika, my travel mate Baga and myself took some time to visit parts of inner Mauritania- towns and rural villages set hours apart from one another in the desert- before heading to the border with Mali.
My first impression was that people never seemed to eat. We never seemed to notice any activity related to food – nobody carrying, cooking or eating anything. Odd as it seemed, we grew hungry and offered to share our food with some fellow travellers and hitchhikers we had met on the road. We had some bread, tins of preserved fish and some dates we had previously bought in Nouakchott, but our guests would kindly refuse to join us every time we ate.

Eventually we noticed that some cooking was started around sunset- smoke rising in the twilight signalling mutton being roasted by the side of the road- and as we paused a few days in Atar and met some of the locals there, we learned that meals are usually prepared at dawn and sunset, because of the extreme heat during daylight hours. So, we were doing it all wrong then, eating at lunch time and driving in the afternoon's scorching sun! No wonder we needed all that drinking water and never seemed to grow a real appetite. Once we got our biological clock set properly, including our sleeping hours, travelling went on smoothly and yes, it was easy to meet some friendly people in Mauritania to share a meal with.