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Mauritania: The Vanishing Oasis
| Length: | 57 min |
| Released: | 1997 |
| Ages: |
College Adult |
Beautifully photographed, this film introduces us to a couple, Baba and his wife Fatou, and their two children who live in a tiny oasis at the outskirts of Chinguetti, once a holy city of Islam. Ninety percent of Mauritania is desert which encroaches a little every day upon the remaining arable land. Barely twenty years ago, eighty percent of Mauritania's population was nomadic. Today only twelve percent can maintain the nomadic life.
Fatou had grown up in a nomadic family and struggles with her new sedentary life. The family lives as best it can by protecting their date trees which are constantly threatened by the ravages of sand. Drinking sweet tea to assuage their own hunger, they aim to keep their baby daughter plump so she can be married off at age seven. This is a memorable portrait of human beings surviving despite the forces of nature that buffet them.
Fatou had grown up in a nomadic family and struggles with her new sedentary life. The family lives as best it can by protecting their date trees which are constantly threatened by the ravages of sand. Drinking sweet tea to assuage their own hunger, they aim to keep their baby daughter plump so she can be married off at age seven. This is a memorable portrait of human beings surviving despite the forces of nature that buffet them.
