Zenabou Gets Married

I returned a week ago to my village, having been travelling in the RIM and Senegal for about three weeks, with about a week of actual official work days in Nouakchott thrown in there.

 

I spent the muslim holiday of Eid al Adha, or Tabaski, with my host family from pst in Kaedi.  It was great to see them again, my host mother, by no means a small woman; still came running out of the hanger to give me a hug.  We ate meat, meat, and more meat.  Every family must kill a sheep on Tabaski.  Then in the afternoon after i told them that i had to return to the Trarza the next day, my sister hustles me out of the house and into a taxi.  No, it was not a kidnapping attempt, more like torture really.  They took me to the neighboring suburb of Tinza so that they could henna me up again.  I spent the next five hours lying in a very uncomfortable position on the floor while a girl with the tenderness of Nurse Rached twisted my feet and hands in unnatural angles, the better to paint them with.  Then commenced the hours long lying still doing nothing with my henna'd hands and feet swathed in plastic bags.  And naturally it is at this time that Greg, who also came in to visit his host family in M'Bedia, calls and says he has caught a car back to Kaedi, but can't remember where the regional house is.  actually, he texted me first, but texting is next to impossible with your hands in plastic bags.  anyway, i love giving directions here, landmarks are so much more interesting when you live in the slums, and you have to use landmarks because the streets have neither names or numbers.  so for example directions to the house in rosso include "turn right at the black puddle, go straight, turn left at the horse"  although that horse, which has faithfully been tied to a post two corners from the house was actually missing the other day, and my world was shattered.  in kaedi the directions include turning left at the meat guy, who is suspiciously located directly behind the hospital, go straight past the unreasonably large pile of trash, left at the tire pile, right after the purple house"  actually, the first time we tried to find that place during training we got lost and greg had to call james.  believe it or not, there were actually 2 purple houses in the same neighborhood.  must be the mauritanian equivalent of keeping up with the jones, keeping up with the Muhameds.

 

eventually, after dark; my sister returned me to our house, where greg joined us for cous cous and goat meat, yum.  fortunately since he was there i escaped having to spend the night with my family.  they are wonderful people, but my scary brother mustafa of the bulging eyes was back and trying to get me to teach english again, which signalled time to go.  with any luck i will see them in july or august if i get to come back during PST and teach the next crop of eager young minds who somehow fell afoul of the peace corps higher ups and got sent here instead of somewhere scenic, like madagsacar or cape verde.  yes, they actually have peace corps cape verde, serving for two years in a resort, nice.  i bet they have toilet paper too, posh corps wimps.

 

I expected to be yelled at upon returning home for missing the fete in the village, but no one said boo about it.  That was probably because they were too busy partying.  Tabaski usually lasts at least two days, but often three, and in Amy Helmicl's village it lasts 4.  And as soon as the fete was over, the weddings began.  I was back for 6 days before i had to come back in to Rosso to work on the stove project and teach at the girls mentoring center, but in those 6 days there were 4 weddings.  And I always found them by accident.  On Tuesday I had gone to school to talk to the teachers and look over the garden situation, when i meet my counterpart Cheikh.  I politely ask about his wife, who is tons of fun and had been out of the village since I got back, and he tells me she has returned; and brings me to a nearby house, where there is a ton of people and a freshly slain sheep in the yard.  Inside I find half a dozen women; including Dadou, Cheikh's wife, and Zenabou; the bride.  I proceeded to spend the rest of the day with them, which is as close to a bachelorette party as Mauritanian girls get.  The wedding itself is at midnight.  There was a lot of giggling and as far as I could follow, a lot of teasing of Zenabou as to exactly what she was in for that night.  I didn't really need my language skills to understand, the gestures were not exactly subtle.  Embarassing the bride seems to be a universal element to bridal showers world wide.

Then came the surreal part, where zenabou was covered not only in her own mulafa, a head to toe veil worn by all moor women, with the free end covering even her face, but her best friend draped part of her own mulafa over her head, and then the two of them were surrounded by five or six other friends and covered with a mosquito net before proceeding outside.  then, to complete the parade the rest of us followed behind, with one tall girl beating on a plastic water jug while they all chanted something in what i imagine was fairly poor taste, and judging by their giggles of glee and the counting that accompanied them; the chant was predicting exactly how much fun zenabou was going to have that night.  we all walked, slowly and stopping frequently, as is the case with all transport in this part of the world, to the douche, where the bride and a friend went into the small outhouse where she could take a bucket bath, while the rest of us sat guard outside, singing and drumming.

The wedding itself was a puzzle.  I came back at night for it, having bit the bullet and put on a mulafa, much to everyone's delight.  there was a tent and a light running off a car battery, a great deal of food and dancing, but no sign of a bride or groom.  I finally went home at 2 am, having reached my threshold for arabic guitar about an hour back.  I still have no idea if the bride and groom ever show up at these things, but at least I was well fed.

In other news, we have all discovered that it actually does get "cold" here.  I sleep in a down sleeping bag inside in my house in the village, and my toes are frozen most of the day, since i brought no sneakers and refuse to ruin the few socks that I have by wearing them with sandals around town.  Of course, i mention this to Colleen Marshall, an old friend from Lake Forest who is now in Peace Corps Kyrgztan, and she says she wanted to hop on a plane an kill me.  but she also said she got to go skiing last month and her regional capital is 25 minutes away, so in terms of hardship level I think my underdeveloped coup-ridden-sandbox beats her developing-siberian-soviet-cast off any day of week.  plus i bet she gets to wear pants.

 

but i love the cold. i cherish the cold.  the cold i can deal with.  the hot season scares me.

 

thank you all for your letters and candy ,beefy jerky, wasabi peas, gum.  Mom, they absolutely went wild for the scone mix, you could see them salivating and trying to ask casually when I was going to bake that.  we ate them yesterday, they were delicious.  Aunt Lizzy, the flashcards are perfect.  Thanks to the Johnson clan for their Christlas card.  If anyone else is planning on sending out Christmas cards late, I have always thought that to be a perfectly acceptable and understandable practice.  and if the card has a picture I want it :)

love

amy

ps hope you all got to see dan's video.  he is apparantly working on one of just our region; so keep checking his site.  i steal most of the pictures on my blog from his.

 

 

The Shirts are White Because They are New

The Trarza Gang- This Time in Matching Shirts.

2006: The Year of No Big Macs

Or curly fries.  Or Texas Bar B Q.

 

For, as a drunken first year volunteer shouted in my ear not long after the countdown ended 2005 and rang in 2006 at the Iguana Club in St. Louis, Senegal, this year, 2006, is the year most of us will never see home.

 

That cheerful thought aside, it was as lovely a new years as we could have in West Africa.  Most all the first year volunteers, which includes me and all the poor unfortunate souls who went though training at the same time I did, and a few of the sage second years made our way to the glamorous city of St. Louis ("san louie") in Northern Senegal to ring in the New Year with beach and beer.  It really is a very nice city by West African standards, and after not seeing a sidewalk in 6 months I must confess I was a little baffled by the sheer brilliance of its existance.  There was also an abundance of good food, including ice cream, which was a fortunate occurance, since after staying there a week for Christmas we had left the poor city of Nouakchott completely devoid of a single scoop.

 

But we are all back now, and it seems this desert metropolis has found time to restock, since I saw the Sahara Cafe actually had all three flavors this afternoon.  As we speak my region mates Nicole and Christa are scouring the "toubab stores" for a pint of mint chocolate chip.

 

Little things mean a lot over here.

 

It is two more days of civilization as the new volunteers meet tomorrow to discuss our first 3 months and get another round of shots.  Then all the Agroforestry and Environmental Education volunteers head back down to the village of Dieuk, in my region of the Trarza, for 4 more days of technical training.  One of things we are going to learn about is how to make jam.  That's right  man, I'll be a jammer, I be jamming.

 

After that it is back to the village for a few days, probably just long enough to find out that my students have not been watering their tree nursery and have destroyed 50 perfectly good Moringa seeds before I am off again.  I want to spen Eid Ilham, or Tabaski, the high Muslim holiday, with my host family in Kaedi.  Trouble is, I don't know exactly when it is going to be yet.  Muslims go by the lunar calender, so sometime this week, inshallah, we will know whether Tabaski is the 10th, 11th, 12th, or 13th.

 

I have a new outfit and everything.  Apparantly a new outfit is very important, you HAVE to get one, so I sucked up the pain of haggling in the Rosso market and bought some fabric and went to the tailor.  It is a very pretty fabric, but the sleeves are Wolof style, rather puffy, and I have not yet decided whether or not I will allow myself to be photographed in it.  I feel a little bad about not spending the fete in my village, but I really want to see my family.

 

It probably won't make matters any better that starting in March I am going to be leaving the village every other Friday and returning three days later in order to travel to 15 villages in the region to promote the new healthier and more energy efficient stove developed by Trarza volunteers over the past 2 years.  I hate to admit it, but I like the idea of getting out of the village to go camping in the Trarza every other weekend.  Plus one of the villages is apparantly on the ocean.

 

Water is good.

 

Oh, and before I forget, last week the rest of my region went right back to Rosso after Christmas, but I stuck around with non-Trarza people for two days more in Nouakchott.  The morning we were scheduled to go back to Rosso I got a text from Dan, my Chinese break-dancing region mate, informing me that I had, quote: "enough packages down here to sink the Titanic."

 

I love you.  All of you.  That stack was the coolest thing I had ever seen.  My regionmates were wild with envy.  I hope Peace Corps doesn't make the whole lot of us completely dependent on material goods for happiness, but right now, material goods rock. God bless you, and happy New Year.

 

amy