and buyers from the surrounding area, and this trade is being supported by ongoing road repair schemes in the region. For instance, the International Monetary Fund noted in a 2011 report that - with Chinese aid - Mauritania was "starting rehabilitation and extension works on the Kiffa-Tintane road", Tintane being a large town of 100,000 near the Mali border and about east of Kiffa. The same report also noted the planned building of a 50 MW solar power station at Kiffa, although at 2015 there have been no further reports on the progress of this. There was a U.S. Peace Corps house in Kiffa which hosted young American volunteers until 2011, when terrorism fears caused the Peace Corps to officially close its programme in the country. Kiffa beads The south region of Kiffa was home to one of the most notable beadmaking centres in West Africa, famous for its now-antique Kiffa beads, made exclusively by women from secret recipes involving powdered glass. Raymond Maun documented most of the local bead making process in 1949, but was unable to discover the special "glass-cream recipe" still kept secret by local women. Jill Condra in her book Encyclopedia of National Dress: Traditional Clothing Around the World (2013) notes that "There is evidence that Kiffa beads may have been made in Mauritania as early as the ninth century" but that "The last of the traditionally trained bead makers died in the 1970s, so it is a lost art". However Jurgen Busch has given a detailed account of the beads and their place in regional trade, in his 2013 article "Kiffa Beads of Mauritania: A Fall From Grace", and his article also claims to have found a remaining very-old traditional beadmaker living south of Kiffa. Affolle mountains The Affolle mountains or Massif de l'Affolle near Kiffa covers a region of more than . The mountains are populated in tiny agrarian settlements that are usually centred on a spring emerging from the foot of a high escarpment. The largest settlement is Tamchaket located at the northern-western edge and Tintane at the south-eastern edge. The nearest substantial town is Kiffa, on the plain about to the west of the mountains. The Affolle mountains are steep-sided massifs of dense Devonian sandstone, with relatively flat plateaus at their summits. The Affolle also has steppe and desert canyon bottoms, and several large wetland areas. The mountains have more rain than