Listen to Africa is a 24,000-kilometre cycling expedition, recording African sounds and voices.
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The good, the bad and the indestructible One way or another – with the odd casualty – we’ve reached Nouakchott, meaning we’ve now crossed the Sahara in high summer. What next? Ah yes, West Africa in rainy season…
Wildlife: Subdesert Toad 
We’ve tentatively identified this toad as Bufo xeros, the Subdesert Toad. Our identification was visual and based on written descriptions of the toad’s call but, as always, we are happy to be corrected. These toads were numerous and very vocal through the night and in the early morning at Terjit Oasis in the Mauritanian Sahara.
Species: Bufo xeros
Common name: Subdesert Toad
Date and time recorded: 06:20 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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Mauritanian music 
While we had Terjit Oasis to ourselves at night, during the daytime it thronged with visitors from around Mauritania, in Terjit to visit the oasis or for the date harvest. The day we were there, a Mauritanian woman and her daughters had hired a group of musicians “from the desert” to come and play. They set up under the date palms, powering the rickety soundsystem with a car battery borrowed from somebody in the village.
While one woman sang most songs, in this song (chosen from the three hours of recording we have) she took a rest and four young women sang. A man played a tidinit (a Moorish lute). Two other women played drums made out of oil drums and goatskins (t’bol) and a third played an upturned …
Soundscape: Water in the Sahara One of the biggest joys of recording sounds is that you start to learn to listen. Our whole journey is turning into a (very long) soundwalk. Recording these drips percolating through rocks and dripping down ferns into a little stream at Terjit Oasis, I found myself deeply impressed by the musicality of the water (an impression that was probably amplified by the fact this was the first naturally occurring water we’d heard in our two months in the Sahara, apart from the ocean). One Mauritanian who’d never been to Terjit before said to us: “I never knew this kind of place existed: infinite water, coming down from God.”
Date and time recorded: 09:00 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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Soundscape: Morning at Terjit Oasis 
Ah, Terjit. On the evening of the day we left Atar, we crawled into Terjit Oasis – almost literally – with broken bikes and suffering bodies (more about all that soon, in the blog). Streams, rockpools (to swim in!), date palms, toads, glow worms, fireflies, cicadas, birds: a feast for our ears and eyes after two months of deserts and cities.
Date and time recorded: 06:50 local time, 9th August 2009
Location: Terjit Oasis, Mauritania (view on map)
Copyright: Listen to Africa
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