• Visit date: October 31 2022
• The visited post office: Nouakchott Post Office
• Cost of sending mail: Europe 440 MRU (1,12 EUR), USA 550 MRU (1,40 Eur)
• Postcard availability: Even though there were multiple bookstores, we only found a small selection of postcards in one bookstore located far from the post office. They weren’t sold in the souvenir shops or at the post office.
• Out of all the postcards I sent to different countries, the one sent to Germany arrived the fastest, in only 10 days

Mauritania’s postal history began in 1906 when the country issued its first stamps. Before that, they used stamps from Senegal. The 1906 stamps had a common design used in all the French West African territories. Mauritania’s first stamps as an independent nation were issued on January 20, 1960.
During our trip to Mauritania, we visited the post office in the capital. We chose a hotel close by, conveniently located right across the street. Stamps were sold at the post office.

Mauritania had a currency reform in 2018, which involved a decimal shift. However, the latest postmarks are still dated 2018.

The post office closed with German punctuality, leaving some of our postcards unstamped. We dropped those off in the postbox later, using different stamps, and they’ve all arrived.

The post office was located across a busy road from our hotel, but close enough that we managed to drop off the last postcards in the mailbox in the dark. We were surprised to find that our postcards (and the entire post office!) were under military guard at night. Apparently, this was because of the postboxes on the side of the building. An armed guard escorted us to the postbox and back.

This wasn’t actually our first visit. We were here in December 2019: That time we arrived by plane from Gran Canaria. A lot had changed in the year and a half since then: the cars in traffic were much more modern, except for the taxis which still looked like they were held together by sheer willpower. A couple of new restaurants had also appeared, looking like they could be in Europe or America. What hadn’t changed was the post office; it had the same business-like atmosphere as before, and the Mauritanian himself – as we were told – a true Mauritanian dreams of going to the desert on holiday (we in Estonia dream of going to the forest).

And so, it was time to leave this country. Looking forward to our next post office visit! 

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