Mauritania

Mauritania in springtime.

Mauritania is a sand dune in Africa. Sometime in the late 1980's, it declared itself an independent republic, and when nobody seemed to care, it waged war on a neighbouring sand dune, losing roughly 310 million inhabitants.

History

Mauritania was discovered by Marco Polo in 763 BC while he was searching for the Holy Grail. Around 5 AD, it is widely believed by historians that Mauritania destroyed itself in the first one-sided civil war in world history. As a result, the country was wiped off the map for centuries.

Marco Polo, however, discovered it again on August 9, 1776, this time whilst searching for the source of the Nile. This time, he claimed it in the name of The Imperial Wonderland of Portugal. The Portuguese, curious about this new country of theirs, took the first census in Mauritania. The results were as follows:

77 people

1,465 camels

31 ostriches

A small colony of vicious cyborgs armed with AK-47s

By 1945, the cyborgs had died out, primarily because they were living in the middle of a godforsaken desert. However, the human population by that time had risen to roughly one billion people. Efforts to convert Mauritania's camel population into juicy, delicious steaks that would solve its problems of mass starvation fell far short. As a result, not only are the people of Mauritania still starving, but they have no transportation, either.

In 1988, Mauritania declared its independence. Alarmed that the fact that this valiant effort to achieve freedom was relegated to the second-to-last page of the Arts section of the New York Times (right above the crossword puzzle), the leader of Mauritania, General Lando Calrissian, declared war on a sand dune to the west, popularly known today as the Republic of New Idaho.

In the bloody battles that followed, lasting a smidgen more than a year, New Idaho's special forces, primarily consisting of overtaxed potato farmers wielding rusty hoes, proved to be too strong for Mauritania's army, which was composed primarily of Marines, who are notoriously ineffective when fighting in the desert.

Though many of New Idaho's precious potato deposits were burned and destroyed, driving up world prices, Mauritania lost over 310 million people in the war, while total casualties on Idaho's side added up to approximately 15. Today, Mauritania is best known as that stupid unknown country south of Morocco that never seems to do anything even remotely important.

Inhabitants

Mauritanian Capital City of Nouakchott.

Mauritania is populated almost exclusively by fundamentalist Muslims. Exceptions are the small Mormon community living on the coast and the upper class, composed entirely of Richard Branson clones.

Government

A dictatorship was in place until a few years ago. Mauritania's leader at the time had been busy trying to escape a scandal that arose when it was found out that he was actually one of the undead. When he was chased out of office, the first election in over a decade was held. Bill Clinton was the surprise winner, running on the Sexual Education ticket. He beat out an old, tattered copy of the Koran and a Al-Qaeda operative dressed in a clown costume by mere percentage points.

Infrastructure

Up until the 1980, there was only one elevator in Mauritania, and it was kept running by the top engineers of the country. I'm not making this shit up, go search for it, there's even a National Geographic article on it. So in other word, it was pretty bad.

Aside from the occasional tent erected by the government to simulate signs of development for the spies, there are some nice Roman era roads in the north. All one need to do is get the 2 meter of sand covering above it everyday to keep the road open, but other than that, there's some nice brick roads.

Economy

Mauritania's chief export.

The main currency of Mauritania is sand. However, there is so much of it in the country that everyone is wealthy. The main exports of Mauritania are mayonnaise and those cool little bottles of sand that are all coloured in layers. The National Bank of Mauritania claims to own the World. This caused quite a stir in many financial districts, particularly when a group of investigators gathered and decided that since this could not be disproved, it must be true. Thus, all are at the Bank's infinite mercy. In late 2005, Mauritania attempted to convert their currency to the Euro. This attempt was thwarted by the European Union; however, when they were asked why they denied Mauritania, they couldn't think of a coherent reason. It is generally assumed that the fact that Mauritania is not actually in Europe was NOT taken into consideration at all.

Tips for travelling to Mauritania

1. 1 tip - Do not, travel, to Mauritania

Other tips - Native Mauritanians are unfriendly and will shoot visitors on-sight. There are no roads, airports, or hotels in the country, either, making a visit to Mauritania quite a challenge. On the off chance that it does fancy you to visit a country where your mere presence will cause the inhabitants to act like...well, people holding grenades and submachine guns, a visa can be obtained at the Mauritanian embassy in the United Spades of Amerika, conveniently located at 221B Baker Street, London, England. No-one seems to be quite sure why the embassy isn't actually located in the U.S.A., but at the same time, no-one seems to really care, either.

The Milk War of 2009?

At this point, it seems inevitable that Mauritania will declare war on Morocco in the next few months. This will kick off the first Great Milk War. The problem is that Mauritania's national milk (2%) differs from Morocco's (skim.) The United Nations has issued a formal statement of disapproval, but every delegate secretly wants this to happen so that they can howl with laughter at the stupidity of both countries.

Countries of Africa