Nouakchott
Capital of MauritaniaWikipedia
10
MENTIONS
6
EPISODES
6
PODCASTS
Search complete. 10 mentions across 6 episodes found for "Nouakchott".
Sep 11, 2026
Shirin JaafariCORRESPONDENT
25 years ago, Mohamed Oud Salahi was thousands of miles away from New York City.
Shirin JaafariCORRESPONDENT
He was in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, sitting at a computer, working for a German development organization.
Shirin JaafariCORRESPONDENT
He was installing computers, connecting networks, doing the kind of ordinary work that disappears into the background of a normal day.
Shirin JaafariCORRESPONDENT
And then his colleagues started coming out of their offices.
Shirin JafariCORRESPONDENT
25 years ago, Mohamed Oud Salahi was thousands of miles away from New York City.
Shirin JafariCORRESPONDENT
He was in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, sitting at a computer working for a German development organization.
Shirin JafariCORRESPONDENT
He was installing computers, connecting networks, doing the kind of ordinary work that disappears into the background of a normal day.
Shirin JafariCORRESPONDENT
And then his colleagues started coming out of their offices.
5 MINS LATER
Shirin JafariCORRESPONDENT
there was another thing he wanted to see, something he'd been denied most of his adult life, being locked up.
Mohamedou Ould SlahiSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
In 15 years in prison, I never saw the sunrise or set.
Shirin JafariCORRESPONDENT
He went back to his hometown of Nouakchott, which sits along the Mauritanian coast.
Mohamedou Ould SlahiSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I went to the ocean and I watched the sunset as I looked toward Guantanamo Bay because the only thing that separates Mauritania from Guantanamo Bay is the ocean.
David HansenGUEST
One-way tickets.
David HansenGUEST
I got all the way to Nouakchott, and then we were detained because of Trump.
MattHOST
Oh.
David HansenGUEST
April 1st last year, we were 48 hours in the fucking airport, sitting there in the, uh, departure lounge.
29 MINS LATER
David HansenGUEST
That's where I was about April 1st.
David HansenGUEST
I was getting f- We were on our way to Göbekli Tepe after going to Mauritania, but because of the detainment, we canceled that trip and those tickets just lost their value.
David HansenGUEST
If I fucking hustle, maybe I can still get those tickets, but the, the last I checked, I had to go to Nouakchott to leave from Nouakchott to get the standby ticket to Göbekli Tepe.
PhilHOST
Ah.
Jordan FlagelGUEST
I'd also, there's one, I think, really impactful story I could tell really quickly, but just how kind of my thinking changed on this, where when I was in grad school, I did a, I hitchhiked across the Sahara, so basically from the tip of Morocco down to Senegal, and I was in the middle of the Sahara in Mauritania, and there was just garbage just everywhere.
Jordan FlagelGUEST
It had been blown, and I got to Nouakchott, and there was just piles of garbage, and I just got really, down and I thought, what's the point of doing any of this work or trying to make the environment better or trying to work in this field if this is what's happening and we can't fix it, we can't clean it? And I got really down about that.
Jordan FlagelGUEST
But then it really hit me that if we have a solution, it doesn't have to be done linearly.
Jordan FlagelGUEST
We don't have to go clean Mauritania and then Morocco and then Spain and then the UK and It can be implemented all at once and done by actors in each of these places.
speaker_7NARRATOR
In the south, the border is marked by the Sahel savanna, where the average annual rainfall increases to 900 fumpsic millimeters.
speaker_7NARRATOR
Significant urban centers are located throughout the region, including Nouakchott, Tamanraset, and Timbuktu.
speaker_7NARRATOR
Other important desert towns include Agadez in Niger, Ghat in Libya, and Faya Larjo in Chad.
speaker_7NARRATOR
These cities often serve as hubs for commerce and regional administration within the desert landscape.
Mende SoundHOST
Columbus, Ohio.
Mende SoundHOST
[upbeat music] Norishitanya, Nouakchott, Barcelona.
speaker_3SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
[singing] Streets show me love, love, love.
speaker_3SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Streets show me love.