In the outskirts of Nouadhibou’s grey-yellow flatness: the houses fancy or half-built, either stories of concrete or simple shacks made of wood, poles and tarp; goats wandering around, plastic and cardboard trash blowing by in the constant wind. Sand constantly in your eyes;
“It’s the Sah-hara,” Mama Aisethu remarks on the sand storms, anchoring me in where I am, where we are: the outskirts of the Sahara desert, unimaginably large. Even here people live and have lived for millennia.

Here lies NAD orphanage, my next home.

It is a big house. Only the wall facing the street is painted yellow; the rest is naked concrete bricks like the many other houses in the neighborhood. By the front porch a thin stick of a tree is reaching up and blooming in bright purple. The other tree, and acacia I think, is sporting naked branches in this season. Everything is dry, dry, dry. Black electrical cables hang down in arches. Blue plastic bags drifting through air or torn like flags by the wind when their edges are stuck in any crannie give one of the few bright specks of color to the otherwise un-saturated townscape.

The famous iron ore train, the longest one in the world, roars past several times per day on tracks a few hundred meters away. A screech of metal announces it minutes ahead and I can see it pass through my barred window. The sound is eerie and prolonged, metal grinding metal, hammering, wining. The window faces the back of the house and just below it is an empty lot, an inward dent in the street which is all sand. The empty lot is a landfill; every other space is a landfill. The trash is filling in the corners, nesting with and under the sand and rocks. The goats come to the landfill to chew, to search for cardboard which quickly disappears in between their working jaws. Later, in the market, I see cardboard pieces soaking in water in a makeshift trough in front of a donkey. Their staple, to my horror.

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A small room has been prepared for me on the second floor. Every day breakfast is brought up to me, a tray silently materializing on the big table outside of my room with bread wrapped in cloth, a thermos of hot water, sachets of tea and coffee, sugar, a small can of milk, soft cheese. Flies are buzzing all around as I pour the water into a cup. I have only that: black tea and white bread, nothing else. The white baguette weighs nothing as I untangle it from the fabric. I squeeze the bread into balls in my hand and eat the parts of it which aren’t air, slowly sipping the tea. Neither really tastes like anything.

The supper is usually some variation of rice with fried fish and is prepared by Binta, the Senegalese woman mama Aisethu hires to help out with everything around the house. The rice is brown and spicy or white and fluffy, the fish crispy and decorated with colorful slices of paprika, tomatoes and cucumber. It tastes divine. I am invited to sit and share the same plate as mama Aisethu and I watch the way she eats with her hand, forming the rice into balls in her palm and casually flicking it into her mouth. When I try eating with my hand like her I can manage the fish and the vegetables but grains of rice are squeezed through my fingers leaving my hand completely sticky and a big part of the rice in my lap.

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Mama Aisethu runs the orphanage. On her high heeled sandals she barely comes up to my shoulder but I look up to her from the moment I meet her. Her gaze is calm and her stride decisive without hurry; the energy of someone who has been a mother to over twenty children over as many years. Carried by purpose. She is instilled with the softness of unconditional, parental love, at the same time lifted by its strength and ferocity, ready to fight tooth and nail to get the barest necessities to all the hungry mouths, put shoes on all the pattering feet and send them off to school.

There are many bills to pay and running an orphanage is not something that brings in profit. Especially not in a country where having children out of wedlock is deemed so taboo that the official institutions are reluctant to even acknowledge the existence of places that care for them and hesitant to offer support. And that is the story of all the children here: many were left to die in landfills or dumpsters, many were left on the porch of the orphanage in the cold, in the middle of the night, the mother never to return.

It is mama Aisethu who is their mother now. Her husband has passed, leaving her alone with the orphanage. She is helped by Binta and together they raise the rowdy crowd.

Mama Aisethu has many businesses, investments and projects going on. Adjacent to the house of the orphanage is an apartment building which she is currently constructing and which she will rent to three families once finished, the rent providing a stable income to the orphanage.

Below the building is a tailor’s workshop and boxes of clothing and fabrics donated from Europe. Here, the children who want can learn the trade of tailoring and thus have security in a skill which will grant them work and an income in the future.

Another business project is currently unfolding with a Moroccan friend of mama Aisethu’s who is a baker. Together they’re starting up a bakery for the duration of the upcoming Ramadan. She shows me the little space she’s rented in town and the industrial grade oven to be installed. She brings me on her errands to print the big sign that is to hang outside, we visit her friend and I get to taste the first batch of sweet, sticky cookies, beautifully curved as they plan, laugh and joke about how much they should charge.

Besides all the businesses and running the orphanage with all its administration, mama Aisethu is still a full time mother devoted to its duties, like driving the children to and from school, teaching the small ones to read and count, keeping an eye out for illnesses and solving conflicts about anything and everything. She gets up early and goes to bed late. The only times I see her staying still for more than five minutes is during her meals which she takes at irregular hours whenever she finds time, and during her prayers.

Everything, every effort and business of hers is to support the orphanage, to bring in income and to have securities in place for a time when she is no longer around. She says it like that, plainly, practically, softly aware of the movement of time and its unpredictability, the vulnerable situation of these children, the lives that depend on her, that would not be were it not for her and the lack of any future guarantees unless she creates the circumstances. I wonder if the fairly recent passing of her husband is making her more aware, but I do not ask.

After all these years her eyes still water and her voice shakes when she tells me about the babies found in landfills, almost frozen to death, barely breathing. She shows me videos of people excavating babies from the trash. It is painful to watch. In the background I can hear the constant noises of the children playing, laughing, fighting and tormenting each other, playing football, humming for themselves or moving things around in some silent project of curiosity. So much life.

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Quite suddenly time has come to a halt, dropped through a trap door into nothingness, floating in space. Like Alice after falling into the rabbit hole in that Disney movie it lingers and floats. Suddenly I am in whole new social situation; around 12-14 children and two adults in this house whom I am to get to know and with whom I am to find a dynamic. The children are all ages between 1,5 and 17, -ish; no one really knows their age. It is estimated to the year and an unknown month; in line with Islam, birthdays aren’t celebrated here.

I do not show my hair or my skin here. In the heat my clothes stick to me with sweat. The language is new, too; no more Darija here. In Mauritania the major Arab dialect is called Hassaniya and I can get by with the “salam aleikum” and “le’bess”, but the rest is different. No numbers, no shukran, no hooja; the children laugh at me when I count to ten in Darija and stop making sense to them already at “two”.

And I am still sick. The first days I pass by passing out, taking two, three, four naps each day and zoning out in between. Stubborn cough and runny nose. The overwhelming generosity and hospitality leaves me feeling guilty as I can barely engage with the children, play or give the English classes I planned to give. I do not even leave the house by myself, don’t know the neighborhood and I feel confined. The days drag on and I drag my self through, waiting for the time when I can go to sleep and waking up frankly not feeling any better.

On my fourth day everything changes. Two vans stop just by the porch outside of the house and the children gather curiously. One of the vans is big and white and the other one low, red and with a picture of Jimi Hendrix airbrushed on the side. Mama Aisethu has told me more volunteers are coming, not knowing exactly when. Now, two people jump out of each car, to couples, and they approach the house.

Within five minutes the energy is cranked up, children laughing and running, the new volunteers smiling and quickly finding themselves carrying at least one kid in each arm, more children are investigating the cars. I stand by and watch just having come downstairs from a feverish nap, somehow relieved to finally have more volunteers around.

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NAD orphanage is a real place and mama Aisethu is a real person. The struggles and precarity the children are facing are very real, too.

If you in any way can and want to support them, all help is always needed and appreciated. One way to support is by this gofundme campaign here. You can also find more information or contact mama Aisethu directly through this facebook page.

A short documentary was made about this orphanage and can be found here. Thank you for taking part in this story.

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(This story told in pictures.)