Poste Maurice Cortier, better known in the Sahara as Bidon Cinq, is as
remote a spot on earth in which man has ever lived. Some 750 kilometers
to the south is Bourem on the Niger river. If you go west of Bourem
another 363 kilometers, you reach Timbuktu, the nearest thing to a
city in that part of the Sudan. If you travel north from Bidon Cinq
1,229 kilometers you reach Colomb-Béchar, the nearest thing to a city
in southern Algeria. There are no railroads, no highways. The track
through the desert is marked by oil drums filled with gravel so the
wind won't blow them away. There is an oil drum every quarter of a mile
or so. You go from one to the next, carrying your own fuel and water.
If you get lost, the authorities come looking for you in aircraft.
Sometimes they find you.
In the latter decades of the Twentieth Century, Bidon Cinq became
an outpost of the Sahara Reforestation Commission which was working
north from the Niger, and south from Algeria as well as east from
the Atlantic. The water table in the vicinity of Bidon Cinq was
considerably higher than had once been thought. Even artesian wells
were possible in some localities. More practical still were springs and
wells exploited by the new solar-powered pumps that in their tens of
thousands were driving back the sands of the world's largest desert.
Johnny McCord and Derek Mason ate in the officer's mess, divorced from
the forty or fifty Arabs and Songhai who composed their work force. It
wasn't snobbery, simply a matter of being able to eat in leisure and
discuss the day's activities free of the chatter of the larger mess
hall.
Derek looked down into his plate. "Hiram," he drawled, "who ever
invented this here _cous cous_?"
Johnny looked over at the tall, easy-going Canadian who was his second
in command and scowled dourly. He was in no humor for their usual
banter. "What's the matter with _cous cous_?" Johnny growled.
"I don't know," Derek said. "I'm a meat and potatoes man at heart."
Johnny shrugged. "_Cous cous_ serves the same purpose as potatoes do.
Or rice, or spaghetti, or bread, or any of the other bland basic
foods. It's what you put on it that counts."
Derek stared gloomily into his dish. "Well, I wish they'd get something
more interesting than ten-year-old mutton to put on this."