Six thousand kilometers to Nouakchott

Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen

2007-08-01T10:26:00.001Z

If there is one thing that is always certain about travel in West Africa, it's that it is never as simple as it should be. If there's a second certainty, it's that the biggest problems will always occur when you are either in a hurry, or carrying a large amount of baggage.

I had a bad feeling about leaving the village. I had said my goodbyes, several times as a matter of fact, because despite having informed my village at least once a week for two months that I would be leaving, they always acted surprised at the news. I had packed my bags, three large sacks, much to my shame. And I had covertly given away much of the contents of my house; covertly because news of white people giving away stuff spreads like a brush fire around here. My most coveted item, my wheelbarrow, had to secret away in the predawn light while most of the village was still asleep; but I knew the Watts would give it a good home. They never asked me for it, so I had already decided to give it to them when they offered to buy it my last afternoon in the village. I first had to use it to transport all my luggage to end of the street where the cars usually stop.

After saying goodbye to the Watts, and my wheelbarrow, taking the final pictures of the village, I went to wait on the riverbank near where all my bags were stacked.

It was around this time that one of the guards at the border post cheerfully informed me that there was no car to Rosso today.

Not good. I had dreaded this. Bala, who owns one of the two cars that run between my village and Rosso, had not gone to Rosso the day before, because his daughter had been getting married in a nearby village. But the wedding was one it's third day, and I assumed he would have one of his sons returning to business.

No such luck. Just as I was pondering how much I would be charged to row my baggage across the river, Maloum, the owner of the other car, pulled up. Machallah. He wanted me to put my bags on the roof. I laughed, explaining that they were heavy, I could barely put them in the back of the van. He sighed, and I got on the roof, ready to ride regally out of the village.

45 minutes later, and we had not yet left Satara. It was the rice harvest, and since every van in the Trarza was packed to the gills with rice sacks, everyone wanted on what turned out to be one of the only cars going to Rosso. 30 minutes later we had left Satara and were headed across the fields. I relaxed enough to put on my iPod. And I jinxed it. I had barely made it through the first song when the car stopped again, and we were all told to get out. The van was heading into the fields to pick up more rice, and the road was too bumpy to take with 20 people on the top. No problem I thought, it gives me a little more time to soak in my last view of the village. 30 minutes later I had soaked enough and was ready to get out of there. The van returned, packed to the gills with rice, inside and on top, my bags having long ago been tossed on the roof. I found a perch with the rest of the men and pressed the play button again as we approached the intersection that connects the little dirt road to Jiddi with the big dirt road to Rosso.

I really need to learn to stop playing my iPod. Just at the crossroads, we stop again. A flat tire, not that surprising when you consider the several tons of rice that we are carrying. We all pile out, where I meet my school director Bah. He has been waiting for 2 hours, trying to hitch a ride to Rosso, and there has only been one car. Not a good sign, normally there are a dozen at this time of day. Stupid rice harvest.

But the driver of our car looks active. The jack is out and they have raised the car, loosened the lug nuts, and then...nothing. They are, at this moment, engaged in that most infuriating of Moor activities: willful staring. As if looking at the flat tire is going to make it magically inflate. I understand why the inchallah attitude exists in Mauritania, I myself say inchallah several times a day, because it is true that you can never be really sure, and that it is ultimately up to God. Most things, anyway. But I absolutely refuse to believe that this same principle can be applied to automobile maintenance. If it was God's will that the tire went flat, you should be able to solve it with the spare that is on the roof. Oh no, we can't , the spare has been flat for weeks. At this point, as if I need reminding of the hopelessness of our situation, an irritating boy on a bike keeps reminding me, "Mariem, there is no way you are getting to Rosso today."

Like hell I'm not. There is no way I am going through the whole trauma of saying goodbye, again. Plus, by now word of who got the wheelbarrow is out, so I really can't go home again. But seeing as there has been one car in the past hour, and they only took one person, one out of 27 waiting by the road, my chances do not look good.

And then it appeared, noisy and dusty and bigger than a semi-tractor trailer. A camion. One of those steel behemoths that transport tons of sand or charcoal to Nouakchott. You could fit a school bus inside the bed of this thing. And it's stopping.

"Can I ride on that?" Most of the Moors look at me like I am nuts, but my friend Aliune nods.

I scramble on top of our decrepit van, grab the first of my bags, heave it over the side and order the first man I see to catch it and put it on the ground. And they obeyed, it was kind of cool. Aliune helped me drag the bags over to the camion, where I realized my first problem. The floor of the truck was just above my eye level, there was no way I was getting my bags in, let alone myself. Not a problem, apparently. Before I can think Aliune and I are passing my bags to one of the men already standing inside. Then I try and pull myself in. A comical and ultimately fruitless effort. "No, no no, Mariem, comme ca." Aliune says. Then the man inside grabs my arms and Aliune pushes my feet up and I fairly fly into that empty coal car. I'm in. And while I could spend the whole ride standing, looking out over the open top, there is an empty space on top. Outside the very front of the car there is a small ledge that comfortable fits four. Imagine sitting on top of a semi-truck, only the truck has no roof and you have your right arm permanently hooked around the bar that runs across the top of the car. I'd always wanted to ride on one of these things.

There is a scene in the very last episode of M*A*S*H, when the 4077th is packing up and everyone is leaving, but there isn't enough room in the cars. Winchester, a pompous New England surgeon, had lost his place in the last Jeep because of all of Nurse Houlihan's possessions, so Sgt. Rizzo asks him if he minds riding out in the garbage truck, the last vehicle left. Winchester's response: "Not at all, what better way to leave a garbage dump."

I'm not saying that Jiddi was a garbage dump, far from it. Nor do I consider myself pompous, although I am from New England. But as I clung to the top of that camion and watched the village disappear behind me, I heard those words in my head and smiled. What better way to leave the village indeed.

So that's my last story, and now it's done. It feels, strange. I don't think the fact that I am leaving and not coming back, at least not for a long time, has really sunk in yet. Maybe when I'm in the air, or when I arrive in a land where "public restroom" doesn't mean "patch of sand against the nearest wall."

But after week in the capital city my feet have almost regained their original color. I think it is important to re assimilate in stages.

I'll probably put some more photos up later, but there are two new albums for ya'll to peruse:

http://rice.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029220&l=d4210&id=3001710

http://rice.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029213&l=66e57&id=3001710

But for now, the newbies are coming through town on their way to site visit and before I can meet them for lunch I have to finish the absolute mountain of paperwork Peace Corps requires me to complete before I am released on that beautiful Royal Air Maroc plane this evening. I'll probably have to kick some smirking white moor out of my window seat, and I must confess, I'm looking forward to it.

Thank you all for your support, your letters, and your packages full of Gatorade and candy. It's been great.

waddatik il mulana

amy

We're Going on an Elephant Hunt

2007-03-12T13:09:00.000Z

Elephants are quiet. Did you know that?

I didn't. Until I went to Ghana and a herd of them literally sneaked up on our "safari." By safari I mean a hike through Mole national park with an armed ranger named Francis who spoke little English. But there we were, a bit disgruntled after having hiked for two hours and stopped short numerous times only to have Francis point out yet another deer, bush buck, water buck, or monkey, and sitting by the side of the waterhole watching a crocodile swim to the other side. It wasn't until Francis told us to get up because we were "in the road" that we turned and saw the group of elephants nonchalantly strolling through the trees toward the water.

That and the 45 minutes of gawking on the shores of the muddy pool while elephants played in the water mere feet away was my favorite part of our trip. That's why I decided to put it first.

Before getting to the elephants Nicole and I first arrived in Accra, and realized before our feet hit the tarmac that we had seriously underestimated the humidity in the wet tropics. Accra is steamy. We left soon after for Cape Coast, where we visited a very eerie castle that would more accurately, according to our guide, be called Cape Coast Dungeon, since it was the location where so many slaves were held in dark chambers underground before they were put on boats for America and the Carribean.

After Cape Coast we spent a day in the rainforest nearby, and walked on top of the canopy over a series of creaky rope bridges. I think I appreciated the height more than the others, since I spend my life so much lower to the ground than most. The women behind me wouldn't look down at all.

We then headed north to get to Mole and the elephants, then south along the eastern side of Lake Volta to the town of Hohoe, where we went swimming in a waterfall and watched the locals hunt bats. Hunt I use generously, they mostly had one person startle them then threw rocks until they knocked them into the water.

And those are pretty much the highlights. If that doesn't seem to fill two weeks keep in mind that I think Nicole and I spent half our vacation on buses. Which was entertainment in itself. Ghana is Christian, very much so, which is incredibly bizarre coming from mauritania. Outside our first hotel in Accra was "Rely on God Hair Cutting". next to it was "Jesus Saves Music" and "Holy Blood Ent"- a boutique selling cookies and such. All the cabs have "God Power" or "Rely on God" or "It's coming" or some other omnious allusion written on their back windshield, so I guess they really do have to rely on God to see what's behind them. And on our bus ride to Kumasi in the middle of the country a man came on and just started preaching as we were stopped at the garage. I guess we were a pretty captive audience. It was in Ashanti I think, so I didn't understand any of it, but he made a tidy little sum before he got off. Other people would come aboard and speak in the same evangelizing manner, and I thought they were preachers as well, until they pulled out a little of whatever product they were selling and you realized they were not trying to save our souls but sell us skin creme.

Ghana is very pretty, but in the end we were ready to come back to the RIM. This took some time, since Slok Air, the cheapest way to get from Accra to Dakar and back, is not a direct flight. You fly from Ghana to Monrovia, Liberia, then to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and then to Banjul, Gambia before you get back to Dakar. The airports in Monrovie and Freetown are literally in the middle of the jungle, kind of creepy really.

We arrived the day before the people of our beloved Islamic Republic voted in their first democratic Presidential election. There are 19 candidates, no one is expected to win a majority and there will surely be a run off. But it was an exciting time nonetheless.

You can look at my pictures here:

http://rice.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021930&l=9b2f5&id=3001710

If my hair looks strange it is because I had it braided for WAIST. Not just my hair, but my hair plus 4 packets of hair extensions. It's strange carrying around that much hair, but after you get used to it, it was kind of nice not to worry about having to do my hair. They took 4 hours to put in, and about 3 days to take out.

love

amy

Malnourished Intoxicated PCVs vs the USMC

2007-02-21T12:29:00.000Z

It's that time of year again. I am in Dakar, where we came last week for the West African Invitational Softball tournement. By 'we' I mean pretty much every volunteer in Mauritania except 4 or 5. Being a big group, we decided to rent out a few buses to drive down. We did this last year, it was a disaster. Eight flat tires and a detour for one hour in the wrong direction meant we didn't get into Dakar untill 10. We thought we would have better luck this year.

Clearly we had been out in the sun too long.

The buses themselves were actually fine, no tire issues, crowded, but not too bad. It wasn't until we had been driving for a few hours that we realised the problem: our driver was practically blind. It was hard to tell at first, because the sun wasn't up and those of us in the bus were all asleep, so only a few people noticed how Hamed would drive full speed at a slow or non moving object and then swerve abruptly when it was about 15 feet away. It was a little more obvious for those in the little bus behind us, whose driver had 20:20. Anyway, it was broad daylight when Hamed swerved to avoid something he was only able to make out when it was 5 feet away,lost control, and ran the bus off the road, nearly running over a family of five that was breakfasting in thier tent and smashing the bus into the only sand dune for 200 meters in any direction. No one was hurt, the bus was buried. It was as Hamed was sort of wandering around the bus in a confused manner that we realised how senile he was and that we were really quite lucky to be alive. Anyway, after about 12 attempts at pushing the bus out failed we called in our local super hero, Cheihk Gueye, our volunteer services officer, who was at the time 30 minutes away in Rosso getting our passports through at the border. He sent a tow truck from the phone company and in a truly spectacular sight, it freed the bus from the dune. But we were still afflicted with Hamed the Hopelessly inept. And his sidekick, the driver from the second bus, Moktar the Misinformed. It was after we left Rosso senegal that it was revealed neither driver had ever been to Dakar; and didn't knowthe road. We took one wrong turn because Moktar refused to listen to the volunteers who did know the road, and he drove us through the bird park to a village on the ocean, where the paved road ended. Moktar's response was, I kid you not; "they must have moved the road". He then got his bus stuck in the sand and the whole village was laughing at him for a good ten ,inutes before helping us push it out. We got into Dakar after dark, where it became evident that Hamed was terrified of the other cars, buses, and even inanimate objects that crowded the streets. he had a habit of stopping the bus in the middle of the freeway every time we tried to give him directions, and once when we had to turn left off an access ramp, stopped the bus across the lanes of traffic. Needless to ay none of us cared that he had no way to know how to get home, and kissed the ground when we finally arrived at the American Club.

As usual, we had the most eccentric, loud, rowdy, and generally obnoxiuos team at WAIST. In addition to a fat suit we had giant pirate flags that said "surrender the booty", a megaphone, a boombox, and a high blood alcohol content. I played on the B team, the swashbucklers. As scire keeper I was dissapointed to learn that i couldn't play because I had to keep track of all the batters stats, but I was good at it, and was still a part of the team, so I was ok. Then on the second day after a particularly rowdy party the night before we had barely enough people to field a team, so I was put out in left field. My sisters play softball; but I never did, so this was an experience. Luckily, the first game we played the team that had hosted the party so they were equally drunk/ hungover. I hit the ball twice and scored 2 runs. The second baseman kept a bottle of wine at the plate and gave every runner that got there a drink. Softball is fun.

The Pirates, our A team, played really well, supported by the constant presence of 40 to 50 supporters lining the baseline, screaming; running the flag around the bases after each inning, performing a kickline in their underwear to distract the opposing team's players, and Michael D a Selibaby volunteer dancing around in an inflatable sumo suit. The championship game was Monday afternoon, against the Baobab Bashers; a Dakar team made up of equal parts employees of USAID and the embassy Marines. Or it was supposedly equal parts; I saw a LOT of buzz cuts. So yeah, 13 malnourished, dehydrated, unpracticed, out of shape, partially drunk irreverent volunteers against the pride and joy of the US Marine Corps. We creamed them. I think the final score was somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 to 7. We called our Country Director; who was in Mali dealing with the redistribution of the former Guinea volunteers who had just been evacuated, and he interrupted his meeting to brag to the heads of the other west african programs, a few of which had sent teams, that his volunteers had just won WAIST a third time. Which, in my opinion, is only fitting; since for us this is seriously the happiest time of the year. No one has more fun than us because no one looks forward to this as much as we do.

Nicole and I are hanging out in Dakar for a few more days before leaving for Ghana on Friday. The plan is to see an elephant or die trying.

love

amy

Oh the cleverness of me...

2006-12-23T17:26:00.000Z

It is actually incredibly difficult to concentrate on writing at the moment, I am constantly distracted. By the lack of sand, by the smell of furniture polish, the shiny glass windows, and the lack of dirt under my fingernails. For, you see, when I was trying to think of what to give my parents for Christmas this year, I decided that, really, there was no better present than me.

So I left my village on Sunday, and arrived in Rosso on top of the milk truck after my car broke down. I reached Nouakchott on Tuesday, and at1am Wednesday I arrived at the Nouakchott airport. Airports are stressfull places in developed countries. In Mauritania, it is a ballet of confusion and inefficiency. Especially since this is not a nation that has embraced the advanced concept that is the line. So they all kind of mob the door of the toilet-stall-sized office where a man sits and stamps passports. However, there are seperate mobs/lines for men and women. One woman goes, then two men, then a women, and so forth. There were very few women travelling, so when I arrived I was sent to the head of the mob and only had to wait about ten minutes. Bonus. Another unique aspect of this establishment that, apart from the ubiquitous miliatary presence, thanks to the military council for justice and democracy, the other employees have no uniforms. So when I was told to show my passport to a woman in a mulafa, I was somewhat suprised until she looked at it, and my ticket, and motioned me through the curtains into the waiting area. Nouakchott does possess what I consider a revolutionary baggage control method. You never have to worry about if your bags are going on the plane or not, because here in the RIM, when you walk out onto the tarmac- there they are! All lined up in the dirt, and you yourself put them on the cart to be put on the plane.

Getting seated is definitely a new experience, and makes me glad I got on early. You see, Mauritanians do not feel restricted to chose their seat from the one assigned them. They will just sit in the seat that they prefer. Old men will make younger men move to the center seat so they can sit on the aisle. If you confront them that they are sitting in you seat, they wil just tell you to go find another one. No wonder the nice Morroccan flight attendents looked grim. But finally everyone had a seat, and with many "Bismillah rachmana rachhims" we were away to Casablanca. I had a 30 hour layover there since Royal Air Maroc does not run daily flights from Nouakchott, so I went to visit a very large mosque and at the hotel had my first elevator ride in 18 months. As it happens, the airport's transit hotel was right across the street from the beach, and a McDonalds. I'm not sure which was a more beautiful sight. Got into New York around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon, and you could tell we were back in New York by the way no one was helping anyone else at the baggage claim. When I helped Aicha, a Morroccan lady travelling alone with her two year old, get a cart and load her bags on it, she was so happy she asked me my name and said, "It's 436 Mill Street, Apartment 208, Flushing. Come any time!" In Maurtania, any man would have helped her, and if she had been a Mauiritanian woman she would have expected no less and not said thank you. As it was we had a long wait in the Delta terminal until our flight attendent showed up, despite the fact that passengers were volunteering to give the oxygen mask demo, but we were airborne about 11 pm.

Dan picked me up at the airport around midnight and about a half an hour later I was in my home sweet home. That I had never really seen before.

When mom woke up and found me in the living room I think she screamed for about 2 solid minutes, but she didn't cry.

Did I mention that my parents and sisters didn't know I was coming home?

Pops didn't recognize me at first.

So now after five days of travelling I get to enjoy Oreos and peanut butter and potato chips and hot running water and toilet paper and toilets. Mom took me along to the supermarket yesterday, I couldn't stop staring at the produce section. I was completely disoriented until I found bananas and potatos, ahh something familiar. The disorientation was complete when Pops took me along to the mall and I realized that in less than 2 years in exile I don't understand any of the technology anymore. Oh well, I have 12 more days to catch up before returning to my sandbox.

And now I am going to go make a sandwich, on sliced bread.

Merry Christmas

love

amy

It's That Time of Year

2006-10-28T12:21:00.000Z

Happy Halloween!

It's a very happy time here in this, my beloved Islamic Republic. With Eid al Fetir (literally "Holiday of Tiredness") in Arabic, the end of Ramadan celebration last Monday, behind us, I am free to eat, drink, and be merry all the time. It is amazing how ridiculously happy I was to be able to walk down the street in my village munching on donut holes again- yes, technically eating and drinking in public is still somewhat rude, but I think they all forgave me this lapse as I was in the middle of me I'm-not-fasting-anymore-and-the-donut-lady-is-back-at-last high. This is also because during Ramadan, inexplicably, a man with an ice cream cart was glimpsed around town in Rosso. That's right, an ice cream cart. Hallucination? We all thought so, after all, the sun is hot, and we were thirsty. But no, Nicole looked inside one day and said that yes, there was, in fact, ice cream in there, and cones! I have yet to find him since the end of Ramadan, but the thought that I might see him at any time while I'm in town brings a smile to my face.

Things that don't bring a smile to my face, my continuing discovery of my own mechnical ineptness. The memory of my wheelbarrow failure is still fresh in my mind, and last time I was in town I purchased a mousetrap. I have no problem with the mice when they are only in my room at night, I sleep outside, and if they don't leave a mess on the carpet. But lately Mrs. Frisby and friends have been running amuck during the day- and they don't even seem that scared of me. The time has come for them to die. But when I brought my shiney new trap home, I couldn't figure out how to set it. There was the big bar you pull back, I got that part, but then there were three little bits that didn't seem to fit in anywhere. My only memory of mouse traps was Pops making me empty one when I was 12 after I had complained that I could hear the rats running around in the attic above my room at night. Mom thought I shouldn't have to do it, and I learned not to complain about the mice anymore. Tomorrow I'll just have to go to the store, buy another trap (retail value 30 cents) and make them set it up for me.

Other than glaring at unrepentant rodents and gorging myself, it has been a quiet time. School did actually start, but no one has come the week of the holiday, and with the election campaigns starting soon, who knows what will happen. but in an attempt to make school a more stimulating environment, I have been drawing a large map of the world on the wall of the 5th and 6th year classroom. it is 3 meters by 1.5 meters, and I had to draw the large grid first using a two foot straight edge, so it has taken some time, but it is going to be magnificent when it is finished.

Speaking of magnificent things to be finished, my community counterpart and I have been working on a project to renew the village health clinic. It's is basically falling down, and there are no toilets, or window shutters, or all that many windows for that matter. We put together a proposal and a budget and I have just finally gotten it through the several hoops Peace Corps Washington lights on fire in order to get a proposal approved. Through a program called Peace Corps Partnership, Peace Corps enables donors to contrrbute funds towards volunteer projects. As a requirement, my village is providing a little over 25% of the costs to rennovate the clinic. The rest, inshallah, will come from interested donors ( i.e. people like you). So if you or anyone you know is looking for a worthy cause to donate some funds to, you can find my project proposal at :

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.volproj

Just scroll down to Mauritania, and you should see my name, I'm the only volunteer in country with a project up right now. It is project number 682-079. Clicking on the link takes you to a summary of the project, and on the summary page there is a link to donate.

Every little bit helps, so if you were planning on sending me any Christmas packages or anything like that I would rather you save the postage and put it towards the clinic.

Now I'm going to go enjoy eating lunch.

love

Amy

The Caterpillar Jihad

2006-10-10T12:51:00.000Z

I was out of the village a lot this summer. I had work in the north, in the east, in the west, pretty much anywhere outside my village. That being the case it wasn't until the beginning of September, when the newbies were sworn in and settled that I got a chance to take stock of the state of the Moringa trees in my garden at the school.
The stock was not good.
They didn't have any leaves, or the ones that they had were all little and bad.
There was also grass growing wild all over the place, and as I crossed the garden every little step I took sent a cloud of grasshoppers flying up out of the grass to settle a few feet in front of me, where they would inevitably jump again with I reached that spot. I felt kind of like PigPen, but instead of clouds of dirt I sent up clouds of grasshoppers.
Aha, I thought, the grasshoppers are eating my trees. We had been taught that weeds are where unwanted pests come from, so I spent the next week going to the garden every morning and cutting and pulling up the grass all around the trees. I took a rest over the weekend and came back on Monday to find the trees worse than ever. As I sat there, willing the Moringa to speak to me and name their killer, rather like a forensics detective (CSI Mauritania, hmmmm), I saw a tiny movement down the trunk of the nearest sapling. A caterpillar.
Little light bulb goes on. Those leaves have the unmistakable look of being eaten by caterpillars.
Of course, I had no idea how to get rid of caterpillars, other than squishing them between my fingers. So that's what I did. Every morning for the next two weeks I went to the garden and looked above and below every single leaf of every tree. It's a good thing only 8 have survived or I would have been there all day. Needless to say I will never be able to read to my children that literary classic with the funny pages, "The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar," because the sight of its ravenous protaganist might make me burst into tears. By the second week I pretty much considered myself on a mission from God, like the Blues Brothers. God wanted me to kill these caterpillars, which were trying to destroy his delicate and fragile creation. So I embarked on the caterpillar jihad. In addition to simply hunting down and killing every caterpillar I could see, I also used chemical weapons- a insecticide made from the crushed leaves of the Neem tree. It didn't seem to work that well, but it did give me a day with 2 entirely caterpillar-free trees.
My father loves "A Prairie Home Companion," and plays it often in the car on long trips. There is a story that Garrison Keillor tells about Tent Caterpillars, and how a man from Lake Wobegone uses a rubber caterpillar placed on his neighbors tomato plants to terrorize the competition for the local fair. It was not until now that I was able to appreciate how truly sick he was.
The first day of school was last Monday, which means the teachers should show up this week and classes might be going by next week. Once the students return I hope to enlist legions of children to help me in my battle against all of larvae-kind.
Aside from the insect genocide the village has been quiet, and with good reason. September 24th marked the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Adults do not eat or drink from sun up to sun down. I had absolutely no intention of joining in these kind of reindeer games, until my counterpart told me I couldn't. "You, fast, Mariem? Oh no, you could not do this." So I did.
What am I, five?
I don't fully fast though, I drink water, because not drinking water in this climate is suicidal. And techinically Muslims are not required to fast when travelling, so when Nicole and I headed north, we stopped fasting.
We took a lovely 5 hour taxi ride to Atar, way out in the desert. As it turns out, several other people were already there, and planning on taking our same trip, so when we left Atar the next day for Choum ("chume"), we were 7 in total. Getting to Choum requires about three hours off road trek into the Sahara, but at least we were on the back of a pickup. It provided spectacular views when we were coming down off the plateau. Atar is on top of a plateau that is itself on top of a plateau, the result is that you never see it coming when you arrive, and when you leave, as you drive to the edge of the plateau, the worl just seems to end. Until you start down and the whole desert starts spreading out before you. I wish I had had my camera, we were all dumbfound- except for the one Mauritanian woman in the back who had her mulafa pulled over her face and kept her eyes covered with her hands until we were down the cliff.
Arriving in Choum we then got to wait, all day, for the arrival of "the train"- which was the whole reason Nicole and I had come north in the first place. The company that mines iron ore in the north ships it out of the port city of Nouadibou- and there is a long train (a kilometer or two in length) that transports the ore from Zourat, way up in the north, south to Choum and then westwards across the remaing third of the country to the ocean. Choum is where the train turns from going south to heading west. The train is well known, it has actually been written about in Lonely Planet- which is actually not that surprising considering how little there is to write for tourists about Mauritania. But whenever a tourist talks about the train, they always seem to think that you are supposed to ride the train east, from Nouadibou to Choum, in the empty cars. "You can't ride that train in the other direction, it's full of iron ore!"
Sissies. That's the only way volunteers ever ride this thing. Now, technically there is a passenger car on the end of the train, but it costs money and is usually ridiculously full. (After you have smelled an unwashed Moor you can then tell me how you would feel about riding in a enclosed car with them for the next 14 hours.)
The passenger car is for sissies. Here is how you are supposed to ride this train:
Just after sundown it pulls into the stretch of track that the village of Choum is built around. It stops for 10 minutes, during which time you climb onto an ore car, swing your bags up, and clamber on top of the ore. We were lucky, as you can either ride on top of pointy, rocky ore, or finer ore that looks like sand. We had a train full of sand. It was the devil when it got in your eyes, but it made for comfy sleeping. You then pull on as many layers as possible, wrap your hawli- or turban- around your head to keep your face from becoming back and save your lungs from the dust, and sit back and enjoy the ride. We even had a full moon, so you could see far out into the desert as we raced along. It was very cold at night, and we ended up all clustered together like kittens to go to sleep. We made good time, getting into Nouadibou the next morning at 8:30 and heading to the home of Mark, quite possibly the nicest guy in the world. (Who else would open up his house time after time to hungry, sleep deprived Mauritania volunteers covered in black dust?) He had a pot of soup waiting for us and a warm shower. This is yet another reason why riding the train in the other direction is stupid. Why would you go through that cold, miserable trip, only to end up in Choum- the armpit of Mauritania -and that's saying something- with nothing to look forward to but a rough and tumble 3 hours back to Atar? When you could ride the other way and get to Nouadibou, with its electricity, it's beautiful climate (70 degrees! I was cold in the middle of the day!), it's Chinese food, and its beer? I think all evidence points to the volunteer-wagons-west method being far superior.
Nouadibou is probably one of the coolest cities I have visited in Mauritania. It is on a peninsula, so it has a normal climate, as opposed to the rest of the country. And lots of seafood. And beer. And a Catholic church that had mass in English, French, Portuguese, and Wolof. In the same mass. I think the Lords prayer chanted in Wolof was one of the coolest things I have ever heard in church.
I enjoyed Nouadibou. I didn't want to leave.
But I did, and now I'm back.
The question is will the caterpillars have left me anything to salvage?
love
amy
ps. I think I still have iron ore dust in my ears.

Let the Rain Come Down...

2006-08-20T16:17:00.000Z

The deluge continues here. Being in the city is an entirely different experience from being in the village, better, and at the same time, much, much worse. On the upside, our family here lodges on the second floor, so I feel much more secure and safe during the storms (I actually stay dry!) and rely less on the comfort of show tunes. On the downside, Rosso turns into one gigantic open sewer, and pretty much stays that way all during the 3-6 days between rain. Navigating Rosso is accomplished by means of strategically placed bricks, tires, cement and tomato paste cans. What I forsee is "puddle jumping" becoming the next major Olympic sport. Demanding speed, agility, balance, and quick thinking, this just might be Mauritania's ticket to that elusive gold medal. All this hopping makes getting to the bank and back while still keeping your toes clean an achievement one can comfortably bask in for the next few hours.

On rainy days, we are seldom so lucky. I was working late at our office last week, printing out certificates for the participants in our 11 day potter training. Nicole had left before me, and as I was about to leave, she called me (on the phone I no longer have) to warn me to wear the boots home. It had been raining earlier in the evening, but it was fine now. The boots in question were a pair of heavy rubber things that had given me blisters the day before because I had no socks to wear with them. They were still at the office because I couldn't bear the thought of wearing them home that morning. So I pull on the boots and venture out into the night. I actually make it from one paved road to another before the rain starts. And then the floodgates opened. It came down so fast that the sunscreen was running into my eyes and my glasses were completely useless- my own myopic vision was actually better on its own. By this point I was soaked to the skin and rain was filling up the boots- most of the "bridges" (ie that trail of cement bricks) were under water, and in the dark it was hard to find my way along the "good" path back to the house. The "good" path from the paved road to our family normally consists of : hopping across the stones that span the perpetual puddle in front of the mosque. Then you hop from a bit of cement to a tomato paste can to a brick to a rock to high ground while leaning against the side of the building. High ground ends and you hop onto a tire, a brick, high ground again. This takes you to a path that weaves into the intersection and back out again, the rest is puddles, then carefully crossing on top of the cement bunker that covers a septic tank, then a bit of high ground, cross the street on a string of about 6 bricks, then follow a narrow strip of high ground along the wall of a compound, carefully walk around the cement outcropping, hanging onto the wooden fence, cross through the boutique, and carefully slide on the mud to your door. Is it any wonder I botched this during the storm? Missing the stepping stones wasn't such a big deal, but when I lost the path where it veers out and inward, I landed in a lake that poured up to my knees and into the boots- this also being in the selfsame block where I had seen a man emptying his toilet into the street with a tomato paste can the night before. I arrive at the door only to find that the water pouring off the roof creates a charming Victoria Falls-effect, so by the time the door is opened and I make my way up the stairs- which bear a striking resemblence to the Colorado river, complete with rapids- I am well and truly drenched. But I like to think that that last bit, with the waterfalls and rivers, washed away a good part of the filth that I had been slogging through for the past twelve blocks.

Nicole put it nicely when she commented "You realise that we are playing in cholera."

Water sports aside, it has been an interesting few weeks. We had a conference in a village outside of Rosso to train local potters in how to build a big kiln, which will eventually be used to fire bricks for our improved stoves. There was an expert from the states to teach the actual technical details, I was logistics. And by "logistics" I mean a combination of camp counseler, translator,babysitter, and prison guard. It was all kinds of fun. And when Nicole, who was gone on vacation in the states for the first week, called and told me her baggage was late and she would be waiting another day in Nouakchott- I cried. The kiln expert- Manny, and his assistant Nathan were really nice guys, but didn't speak French. This made persuading them to do things like go buy water at the store next to the hotel, difficult. As a result, it was kind of like having pets- I had to remember to feed and water them. One night I went home and fell asleep, only to pass out completely and discover the next morning that the guys had not eaten, despite the two restaurants on either side of the hotel. Apparantly they do not subscribe to the point and grunt school of cultural exchange.

After ten days, two lost to rain, the kiln was built, although never fired. But I did learn how to make a clay whistle and didn't kill anyone, so I consider the whole a affair a rousing success. I dropped Manny and Nathan off at the Nouakchott airport, mindful of the men with guns not to step onto the curb, since I did not have a ticket, and fairly tap danced back to my hotel- where I had the whole room to myself- because it was finally over. I danced all over the suite and fell asleep contentedly under a blanket with the air conditioning on full blast. I had a pillow too.

Yesterday my training class had our "Mid Tour Recconnect" or MTR. Normally this one day event is held in Nouakchott- ours was held in Kaedi, because, well, the Nouakchott office is moving (in about three months) and because apparantly our country director hates us. Back at the same local high school we had trained at last year, it was like stage all over again. But we did learn that the irritability and hostility we feel toward Mauritanians is all a part of the process of culture shock, and is perfectly normal. Good to know. Of course, when the presentation described the duration of this part of the phase as "a couple of weeks", people started to shift a little uncomfortably. I think this process takes some of us longer. Amel, one of the nurses, who is from Tunisia, says she is still in culture shock, and she has lived here 14 years.

Oh, and I got a letter last week. This letter is special for a variety of reasons. First, it is from Mrs. Audie Lawley, my best friend's mom, so it is automatically cool. Second, it contained both news AND Kool Aid, a lovely combination. Third, it had been sent in March, damaged at JFK and then sent on to the Republic of Mauritius. For those of you unfamiliar with Mauritius, it is an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of South Africa. It is tiny. It gets many more tourists than Mauritania. And a healthy chunk of our mail as well, it seems, But it did get here, becoming the most well traveled piece of mail to reach Rosso. Congrats. And Fourth, because Mrs. Lawley's letter was the first piece of mail I have recieved since May. Nicole knew I had been haunting the post office for months, so when I came back from dropping off Manny she said, "You got a letter!" Which totally made the fact that I had to run through a sand storm to get home all the more worth it.

Time to get a car back to Rosso.

love

amy

Quiet Reflections on Tranquil Domesticity

2006-07-26T20:19:00.000Z

I think, besides the whole indoor plumbing and consequential lack of people defecating in the street that sharply divides America from Mauritania, the second biggest difference that is going to take me a while to get used to is the ability to sleep through the night, without moving, regardless of the weather.

After returning to the village my evenings took on a simple routine. I would return from visiting friends and drinking tea and take a bucket bath in my blessedly clean douche. Read, listen to the BBC, and then crawl into my mosquito net outside. It being the rainy season I have already abandoned the use of the thin foam mattresses, my door being covered in mosquito netting and a matila being too big and bulky to get through there quickly. Instead my net itself sits on top of a reed mat that lives outside, and inside is the plastic mat that used to cover my floor in my old house. It is now folded to a third of its width and rolled up, I simply unroll it a few feet and sleep on that, with the extra roll as a pillow. Sleeping on the ground is good for your back, right? Anyway, depending on how loud my neighbors are listening to their radio I either fall asleep peacefully gazing at the fuzzy stars – I miss contacts-, or listening to the dulcet tones of "Tunia FM" the Senegalese station.

If I am lucky, I wake up in the morning when the truck leaves to take the radio boys out to the road construction, or when the goat that has burst through the back door starts munching near my net.

If I am not lucky, I wake up to find the stars gone, replaced by dark and angry looking clouds, and the wind gusting so that the palm trees in my yard thrash back and forth as if the Tyrannosaurus Rex were about to burst through at any moment and eat Jeff Goldblum.

This is my cue to grab my torch, collapse my mosquito net, and run for the house.

When I said the rain had come in my last letter I had no idea. That had been a little shower, a pleasant drizzle. We have had two real rains since then. Real, flood the streets, bend the trees, destroy the kheimas, Amy-cowering-in-the-corner-singing-the-complete-score-from-The-Sound-of-Music-type rains.

This was about the time I discovered that Thomas's house leaks. Well, not so much leaks as the window shutter is wired open on the outside wall with no way to close it and the door doesn't close from the inside. This means that when the wind blows the rain in there is precisely two square feet that are not soaking wet, which is where I sat hugging my pillow and trying to think like Julie Andrews. By the time I made it through "Eldelweis" I was all right, although I can't honestly say if that was from the singing or from picturing handsome Captain Van Trapp coming to my rescue and carrying me over the mountains to Switzerland (when I was seven Alexandra Vastardis and I would watch this movie and we always fought over who got to be little Gretel, although Brigita was also a favorite of mine).

Broadway scores aside, I spent a good part of the week adjusting to life in the rainy season. My window had to be dealt with, which I did, rather ingeniously I must say, by constructing a shade out of palm fronds, duct tape, string, and a plastic coloring mat sent by Tia Marita that I never got around to using this school year. You see, this is why Peace Corps Volunteers are banned from being on Survivor- we're just too good.

After that there was the dead goat that suddenly appeared in my backyard. Truth be told I never really used my back yard since I moved in, it was a kind of lush wilderness, but a lush wilderness of an overgrown date palmery, and date palms, like all African trees, are pointy and painful and do not encourage exploration. But after the first rain the village chief and the man who had fixed my door, Malik, arrived in my yard, apparently discussing the yearly maintenance of the property- it being a date palm garden and this being the ghetna, or date harvest. It was as they were poking around my yard that I followed them and discovered the dead goat lying in the kitchen building.

"You should get rid of that, Mariem."

"That is not my goat. I don't have any goats; that is not mine."

"It can't stay there, it would be bad, smelly."

"Yes."

"You should get rid of that, Mariem."

The chief said he would pay someone to take it away, then that someone demanded 1000 ouguiya, and suddenly I had to pay. I needed to think it over, and the man left. And that was when I discovered it. Every person has a line, a boundary, a limit, if you will. And I discovered that, big, brave, brouse volunteer that I was; my boundary stopped about six inches before "hauls away dead and bloated animal carcasses". If it had been my goat, maybe things would have been different, but it wasn't, and I mean, you really can't put a price on that kind of work, now can you? So it was as I was going to find the chief to tell him I would pay the bandit's price that I passed by the boutique of my lovable landlord, Siddi Moktar.

"Mariem! Yatma says you have a dead goat in your yard!"

"Yes. It is very smelly, but it is not my goat."

"But it is in your house, you must get rid of it. Take a string, tie it around, and take it away."

I did not dignify this suggestion with a response. And, as if sensing my reluctance to play with festering corpses, one of my students popped up from his seat on the steps and said he would take it away to the forest for 200 ouguiya.

"You," I said, "come with me now."

"And you will pay me 200 ouguiya?"

"Absolutely."

On the way he changed his price to 300. But after watching him tie a string around the goats one remaining horn and drag if across the yard, heave it over the threshold, up the hill, and across the soccer field, the string repeatedly coming loose and having to be retied, I gave him 500. The goat was bigger than he was.

I had no end of visitors that week. The very next day Siddi Moktar, that colorful character, and Myelika, a woman related to the family that owns the property, came by to further discuss the maintenance of the palmarie. They found Thomas's trash pile, the cement ruin next to the kitchen-of-the-dead-goat where he had been tossing his garbage since 2004.

"You should clean that Mariem."

"That's not mine! That's from Thomas."

"But Thomas left."

"Yes, to America."

"You live here now."

"Yes."

"You should clean that Mariem."

"You never made Thomas get rid of that."

"Thomas is a man."

"Yes, but you never made him get rid of it."

"Thomas is a man."

"I suppose."

"What?"

"Yes, yes I said."

"Men do not sweep, women sweep. Sweep up the trash into your wheelbarrow and take it away."

"No. It isn't mine. And if Thomas didn't have to do it than I certainly won't."

"It is not good to live with this."

"Thomas did."

"Thomas is a man."

"I thought we already established this?"

"What?"

"Yes, yes he is."

"Men can live amongst the filth. Women can not."

This last bit is an interesting observation.

What followed was more affirmation Thomas was a man and I was a women and in Mauritania women swept and cooked and washed the clothes and took care of the children and gathered the wood and made the fires. I asked Siddi Moktar what men did.

"We pray. And eat."

In the end I continued to make fun of Mauritanian men and their apparent fear of real work until they left, and ultimately the same very sweet mute man who cleared out the brush also took away the trash. I now have a pleasant little oasis with huge palm trees that seem to grow along the ground and then up, making for good seats to sit and read.

This is where I spotted my owl. Last night at dusk a large white bird swooped out of the palm tree over my head and flew across the street. Sorry Rice people, but it is not named Sammy. This being a snowy white owl, it could only be Hedwig. I had suspected he existed since I spotted what resembled owl pellets and the carcass of a small mouse in the far side of the yard that morning. His presence is really vastly reassuring, since it means that those disembodied screeches that I hear in the night are not actually, as previously assumed, a pack of velociraptors. Although when the donkey's bray it still sounds remarkably like the T-Rex and I begin to glance around anxiously for tell tale ominous ripples in nearby puddles.

That is about all the fun news from the rainy season- oh! Wait, with all the fun at my new house, I forgot about my old one. With the rains flooding the streets, navigating Jidrel Mohghuen to get by beignets in the morning has become a kind of maze, I feel like I'm in a video game a la Chip's Challenge or Zelda. Only certain paths lead all the way on dryish land, and you frequently have to turn back. One path takes me by my old house, and after the first storm I noticed a pile of the shiny corrugated metal that they use to make the roofs here, and some familiar looking beams. Then I realized they were familiar because I had been sleeping under them this past year. The roof had blown off the veranda of my old house. A peek inside showed more falling beams, one spearing down exactly where I once slept.

If that isn't God's way of showing me that I was meant to move to Thomas's house, I don't know what is. Despite the fact that Thomas's house also has a resident bat. Although this one seems slightly more clever: he only circles the room once or twice, and he never bangs into things. As a result his display seems more like an assertion of dominance as opposed to the blunderings or my old, myopic bat, whose pathetic and prolonged flights always seemed like more of a cry for help than anything else.

And that really is all. I'm going to by a can of ravioli and a Snickers.

Love

amy

We love you Miss Hannigan!

2006-07-16T12:53:00.000Z

I still see them in front of my eyes. Running. Yelling. Eating up all the juicy black dates before I can sit down leaving only the nasty red ones that taste like dust. And that was during the "rest period." It's really a miracle any of us are still alive.

It was pretty fun though.

The event to which I am referring is EcoCamp, a five day funfest for elementary school girls that has been organized by Peace Corps Volunteers in Mauritania for the past three years. Every village with a volunteer is invited to send two girls and a chaperone for a week of environmental lessons, games, and activities. This year it was organized by Keith, a man with superhuman speed and endless energy (he is also the stage coordinator for the new EE trainees, so during the first real "break" he had once the newbies went off to homestay, he instead ran EcoCamp)- formerly a volunteer in the northern city of Atar for two years. Therefore, the camp was held up in that area, in a little village about 30 minutes away called Tawaz- the hottest place on earth. As volunteers at the camp we were put in charge of logistics, like keeping the plastic water jugs filled and the burlap casing wet to cool the water, and monitoring the level in the cistern so it could be filled before we ran out.

I was put in charge of breakfast. Unfortunately, we had no large pot to heat water in for coffee, only a little jug that held about two litres. So I would start heating up batches of water at about 6 o clock and by 7:30 I had filled the bucket with enough hot water to satisfy at least the adults. We had bread delivered, and I enlisted the help of volunteers in Pulaar villages to make "zrig" also known as "toufam"- basically water with sugar and powdered milk. I would then walk out into the middle of the school yard with a bucket of bread and a bucket of sugary milk- I felt like I was dropping off steaks in the lion pit. The children would fall on the bread and jam like ravenous wolves, while the chaperones would recline on their mats and "psst" and snap at me, pointing for me to bring them a bowl of milk. Ha. I don't think so. Honestly, the children were better behaved than their chaperones, who seemed to have confused EcoCamp with "day spa."

The children were all divided into teams for activities, with 2-3 volunteers in charge. My team was the Lions. It included Pulaar, Hassaniya, and Sonnike speakers, so I'm not sure how many of the little dears actually understood what I said, but they smiled a lot. They were a fiercely competitive group, and absolutely hated losing. We arrived back second from the scavenger hunt – the first group back included 5 girls from Tawaz, and in my opinion should have been penalized as dirty, dirty cheaters- only to discover we had forgotten an important item, and came in 4 ^th out of 5. The Olympics were better. Fadila, a girl from my village, was assigned to the first race. All the other girls are hunched over, ready to start, and Fadi is just kind of standing their, looking bored with it all. Then Keith yells go and the sandals fly off and she is miles ahead of the other girls. She wins, smiles, and then goes back to looking unimpressed. They also won the relay race. And one of the long jumps. But the coolest moment had to be the high jump. This event involved Loic and Adam holding a piece of cord tight and the girls jumping over it and landing on a pile of mattresses. I was one of the people standing behind the pile- I'm not sure what we were supposed to do if a girl jumped beyond it, but thankfully this was never an issue and all we did was rearranged the mats after each jump. One of the Lions, Hawa, a Sonnike girl from Michael's village, had already cleared the cord and was now going for an even higher level. Up til now she had, like all the girls, jumped over the cord by pulling up her knees. On this jump, suddenly she hits the jump point, spreads her arms, and flys like superman over the line. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Especially as Nicole, Mike and I were standing behind the line and saw her flying towards us. She didn't win, but there was no one to match her style.

So we come to the last activity, the girls came in second in the Olympics, btw, and they are rearing to go. It is a treasure hunt. Ten flags have been hidden for each team outside the village, and by following clues the girls need to progress from flag to flag until they find all ten and then race back to the school. I handed the clues to Mike, since I didn't speak Pulaar, which over half of our girls spoke, and our Pulaar speaker, Nicole, was assigned to help monitor the teams. The idea was that Mike's girls could translate from Sonnike to Pulaar. Unfortunately for me, this meant I had no idea what was going on. From the word go Mike would shout out the clue in Sonnike and the girls would be off like a shot. Of course it helped that, being the lions, our color was yellow and the easiest to spot, so often they didn't need the clues. Also, keep in mind, these are the girls that won most of the running events the day before, and Mike's sisters are incredibly fast- often they wouldn't bother to translate for the rest, they would just take off. What resulted was me and Mike frantically sprinting after manic twelve year olds who had scattered across the rocky desert field, pleading with them to stay together and slow down. By the time we returned to the school, Mike and I were nearly dead. But we were at least dead and in first place.

Needless to say, by the time Friday morning came around we were exhausted and ready to leave. I had taken to singing Carol Burnett's song from Annie "Little Girls, little girls, everywhere I turn I can see them…" The pick up trucks that would pull up at the gate to the school yard began to closely resemble helicopters landing in Saigon. I eventually got out on the third round of cars, sitting high atop a stack of matilas. The cars dropped us at the garage in Atar. Six hours, two flat tires, and a lift in a pick up truck later, we were in Nouakchott, land of the shower –due to the water shortage in Tawaz, most of us hadn't bathed more than once all week. I spent a blissful afternoon cleaning off dirt and watching cable television in the air conditioning. Then Keith arrived and took his hard working crew out to dinner in the fanciest restaurant in town. I had stuffed crab and white wine and fell asleep in a bed. It was incredible.

And now I'm back, looking forward to a week or two of quiet before a two week long training I'm handling for the stove project (since Nicole will be on vacation in the states) in August. However, the good thing about it – other than the valuable skills it will provide for Mauritanians and the opportunity for cross culturalal blah blah blah- is that events like this will make Nicole and I masters of large scale planning, so that when we do EcoCamp next year in the village of Dieuk, it will be nothing we haven't handled before- inshallah.

Oh, and two of the newbies have left, including the one that was supposed to be posted in the village between me and Nicole. Sadly, that means no new girl nearby to entertain Zack. He'll get over it eventually.

It rained last night, alhamudulilah. I never thought I would be happy to see this place turn back into a sewer. But eight months without rain is too weird. Plus I know the little anklebiters aren't watering the Moringa trees and I don't want them to die.

Still hot though.

~amy

Great Balls of Sand

2006-06-21T13:58:00.000Z

I never thought I'de be so glad to leave Nouakchott.

Two days of meetings to discuss the future of the Environmental Education Project in Rosso was about one and a half days too many. I lost the toss among the Trarza volunteers, so while Nicole spent her Nouakchott days on the computer and watching TV in the air conditioning, I got to listen to French for 12 straight hours each day, desperately trying to comprehend the discussion- this was somewhat complicated by the fact that I was sitting behind a man who would not stop talking; a very large, very loud Pulaar school director bearing a striking resemblance to Jabba the Hut.

We eventually decided to keep the program autonomous, and it remains to be seen what changes will occur. The team that had evaluated the program in the field presented their findings, as well as their reccomendations for what kinds of changes should take place, including what type of volunteers should be recruited. They suggested volunteers with a high level of maturity, a strong level of French, and previous classroom experience. At first I was discouraged to find that I no longer fit two of the three criteria to hold my job- then I remembered how I alleviated my boredom during the meeting by making origami swans and quoting Star Wars with Ben. So I guess I just completely fail the profile now.

It's kind of like at Rice when we all assumed we were the admissions mistakes.

In less mind-numbingly-dull news, the storms are brewing down south. The other evening I looked up from where I was reading in my house and saw orange clouds rising in the sky over my compound wall. I ran out the door and up to the river bank to see orange, seething clouds boiling over Dagana, Senegal across the river. The river was still blue and relatively unpreturbed at this point, so it was fairly pretty. The clouds kept growing larger, and it is somewhat disconcerting for someone who always thought clouds came from the sky down not the ground up, and inside you could see blackness behind the swirling dust. As the buildings along the far side of the river were obliterated the rest of my village, including the occupants of the canoe that had just arrived -after pulling for all it was worth across the river, began to shout at me to get inside. When the clouds began to move across the river I picked up my skirts and ran. By the time I reached by door it was already dimming outside and within five minutes it was as dark as night, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Naturally I wanted to see everything, so I stayed outside to watch the sky turn back from red to orange to yellow to white. This, of course, meant that I was rubbing dirt out of my skin for the next four days. But all in all it was pretty cool.

A few days later Christa decided to quit.

Thus ended an interesting week in the Trarza.

The newbies are coming in at the end of the month, I'll be going back to Kaedi to meet/teach/scare them their first week in country. I'm looking forward to it, plus I get to see my host family.

Internet has been lousy, so I'm taking advantage of the computers here at the office. I also uploaded some more pictures, you can find them here:

http://rice.facebook.com/photos.php?id=3001710&l=7f895

love

amy

Life in the Peace War

2006-04-28T17:40:00.000Z

It's hot.

I just need to get that out of the way, I decided to limit myself to two descriptions of the weather in this e-mail. Sometimes Nicole's mom, when she calls, asks if we know how hot it is right now. We don't. Deliberately. Someday, when I am back in the states wearing shorts and a tanktop and drinking a frozen strawberry limeade while simultaneously watching HBO and surfing the net on a high speed connection, I fully intend to look up the temperature data for what will by then have become a distant period of my life. But right now, ignorance is bliss.

Not much has changed in the litterbox that is my home in the past few weeks. We have been out visiting villages for the stove project this past week. It has its highs and lows. On good days they buy stoves and we dance all night. On good days we get there in time for a nap. On good days the village has water and bathrooms. On bad days they steal our fish and we end up cooking dinner for ourselves and the guys after a full days work. On one of the stoves we failed to sell. In the dark. With very dull knives. My little jar of liquid bandages has never come in so handy. Although, I still feel bad giving it to Mauritanians. Americans understand that the better the antiseptic is for you, the more painful it is to apply. The burning means it's working, no pain, no gain. This is not a concept Mauritanians understand. Our driver, Iba Low, scraped his foot while unloading a stove in Fass, Amy asked me for my liquid band aids. Iba has the sweetest nature of any Mauritanian man I have ever met, he takes care of us, he's like a dad. So I was really, really loathe to apply liquid fire to his foot. I tried to explain to him, "Haathe lahi yewga hatte" aka "This is really going to hurt." He smiled, "Manni khayiv" "I'm not scared." I think I protested and told him that, no, really, this was going to hurt a lot, hatte hatte. I was up to four "hatte's" befoer I finally caved in and painted the fingernail polish like substance on his scrape. Iba didn't flinch or make a face, but I was shaking and had to run off, after apologizing profusely.

Besides perfecting my Florence Nightingale impression, I developed other skills over the past four trips. I have always had the ability to fall asleep in strange places. I credit my theatre experience where I had long rehearsals and, never being the lead, lengthy pauses between when I was required to be on stage; pauses in which I could catch a quick nap in the fourth row or on a convenient piece of discarded scenery. In Mauritania, I have parlayed that ability into a knack for falling asleep on all kinds of transport, from Peace Corps cars to taxi brouse. My favorite place to ride, on top of the cab, however, was usually unavailable on stove trips. On our second trip, the ill fated drive to the ocean, Nicole, Crista and I were able to ride on top of the cab of the truck, only because we had to take two cars and the sound equipment, which has always traveled strapped to the top of the cab so as to ensure nothing is packed on top of it, was on the other truck. On all animations since, the top of the cab has been covered with the generator and sound boards. But, after its failure to work in Jigena resulted in Abdu having to rent a car and drive out after dark from Rosso to fix it, things have moved around a bit, and now those three mysterious black boxes with all the shiny silver plugs have been moved to the passenger seat, leaving my favorite spot open again. And I consider it a proud achievement that on Thursday morning, as we headed out to Gani, still drowsy from Wednesday night's Breun dance party that lasted till past one in the morning, I found myself once again napping- on top of the cab of a pick up, on hand on the bar,while bouncing over an unpaved road. I may consider a career on the rodeo circuit if that whole higher education thing doesn't pan out.

Other amusing moments include me trying to help cook dinner in Jigena. I had lost my beloved Pretzl headlamp in Atar, so when I needed light to see what I was cutting, I had to clamp my cell phone between my teeth and unzip the case enough for the little lightbulb on the end to be exposed. This could not go on for long because a) holding the cell phone in my teeth makes me drool, not a plus in food preparation, and b) I was helping Amy cut meat, and after a while I thought it would be better for my appetite NOT to see what I was going to be eating. Ignorance can really be bliss.

Highlight of the week, however, has to go to the package I recieved from Aunt Maggie. It seems that cousin Megan Wade's class had written letters to me. Imagine my surprise when I opened the first letter, which had an American flag drawn on the front, fifty stars clearly painstakingly drawn in, and the words "Thank you!" in purple marker. There was also a piece of the right side mising, which, when you opened the card, made a hole in the shape of a heart in the middle of the letter, which read: Dear soldier, thank you for keeping our country safe! From, Indian Grove School."
I then found the note from Aunt Maggie, explaining that the class had been writing cards for me and two other cousins in the armed forces, and the kids apparantly got confused. In the end I ended up with 5 letters addressed "Dear soldier" and SIX addressed "Dear Amy." So if you know any Marines that end up with cool construction paper cards from Mt. Prospect, IL, tell them bismillah for now but I want those back when they come home.
The children were very creative. Here are some selections from my favorites:
"Dear Amy, I am happy that you help farmers and make medicine I like what you do it is really helpful. From Amina"
"Thanks for helping evry one, keep it up. Your a good porson." From Jake Capute
But the Grand Prize goes to Jaclyn Stassen, who not only wrote the most, and wrote her letter to me, but who changed marker colors every single line. That's dedication.
"[Green]Dear Amy, I think you are very brave [Blue]! How are you in the Peace War [Red] You are doing somthing good, teaching and helping farmers in [Orange] Mauritania! Love, Jaclyn Stassen"
And of courseI loved the personal message from my cousin Megan, who misses me and wants me to come visit soon. Even though I think she was a baby the last time I saw her. What can I say, people get attached to me.
Anyway, clearly these children are discerning, insightful, and brilliant beyond brilliant. I think we can expect great things from the following: Megan Wade, Jaclyn Stassen, Elyse Baptiste, Jake Capute, Rapolas (don't know if that is a first or last name), Amina, Patryisa, Michaela (who kindly included a phonetical spelling of her name undeneath her signature so I would know how to say it after thanking me, the soldier, for "representing us in the war"), Maggie (who wishes a soldier somewhere Happy Holidays), and to Adam Hauser,who actually wanted to talk to our cousin Brian about what his job is and why he is learning Korean, he even included a return address. I may write to him anyway.
That was awesome Aunt Maggie, thank the whole darn school for me. The letters are going up on the wall in our office.

It's still hot.
love, your little soldier
amy

Comings and Goings

2006-04-06T11:06:00.000Z

Ahh, back to the Wonderland that is Nouakchott. Electricity, running water, ice cream, silverware... but, as my region mates in Rosso like to remind me, these are luxuries that really have no place in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer.

I'll try not to enjoy them too much over the next few days.

It has been a little strange in our corner of the sandbox. Due to a mysterious informant complaining about the presence of village volunteers in the regional capital, the higher ups at Peace Corps decided to close the house in Rosso where village volunteers came in to check the mail, use the internet, make phone calls, and take showers. Bummer. An even bigger bummer is the drama of eighth-grade proportions that has ensued between the Rosso volunteers, essentially inaffected and happy about the change, and the deprived villagers who now have no access to those simple things the others still get every day. It has not been one of our prouder moments, I'll say that. In the end it seems that for the moment the best option is to avoid Rosso as much as possible. Mom doesn't need to cry her eyes out yet, though, since while I am still working on the stove project I will have to be in Rosso to work. Lodging is temporarily solved for the next two months, after that, who knows. But the important fact remains the same, all my packages and letters still come to the same address. It will just be up to our regional coordinator to put them on the car to my village every week or so since I won't be coming in very often. I will appreciate those words from the real world all the more.

So aside from the unexpected return to middle school, I had a flashback to college when Brian Littman-Smith, a fellow Sidizen, came to visit. Most people would fly to Mauritania from Europe. Brian took a boat, a car, and a train, as in he crossed the desert. Rice people: what can I say, we're different. Far from having a restful visit, we put Brian to work hauling stoves on project animations in two villages. Then he got to come back to the Rosso house, may she rest in peace, and listen to us argue and whine and then help us move all the furniture out. "I think this is a good place for you," he said. "Why?" I asked. "Because you like to complain, and there is plenty of material for that here." Ouch, but not entirely untrue. Will make valient efforts to whine less in future.

Anyway, after far too much time spent lifting things we finally got out of Rosso and headed to the village. Of course, we missed the car to Jidrel Mohghuen and had to take the pick up to Tekane, get out at the crossroads, and walk for 45 minutes. Not a problem for me, but seeing as Brian was carrying all his possessions on his back, he was pretty tired by the time we reached home. But, as promised, there was nothing we had to do and nowhere we had to be the whole next day except for heading out to eat lunch with my host family. For a vegetarian, Brian did admirably well.

We went out into the forest in the late afternoon because Brian wanted to see the monkeys I speak so much of, and the lizards. After walking until near dark, not a single one was spotted; my animal friends had chosen the path of lameness. Spiteful little things that they are, I have seen monkeys nearly every day since Brian left.

Work in the village goes as always. The hot season has begun in earnest in the Trarza, bringing with it a hot and dusty wind off the desert. But last week I stepped outside and was amazed at how good the air smelled, it smelled really, really good. Nicole later filled me in, it was probably because the rice fields, which have been flooded using the water pump these past weeks, have sprouted and I am smelling the long forgotten scent of grass. It smelled like spring whatever it was. I went out to work with the women's cooperative, I cut grass around the banana trees, planted a mint patch, and planted eggplant seedlings. The last job was particularly fun because I got to squish around in the flooded field barefoot shoving little sprouts in the ground. The women were particularly amused.

This meant, of course, that I actually had to take a bath that day, highly unusual. But it wasn't too painful. A part of this experience is that I now once again have the ability to empathize with 6 year olds everywhere. Maybe I'm regressing. Oh dear, by the time I get home I'll be spitting out peas and carrots.

Happy Easter to all. If I can find food coloring somewhere in this city I fulyl intend to dye eggs.

love

amy

Dangerous Dinosaur Mud

2006-04-06T10:58:00.000Z

It looks solid...

...until you drive a truck carrying 2 tons of steel across it. Then the ground goes squish.

Oh the Places We Go

2006-03-23T19:17:00.000Z

Well I'm back. There's a new cyber in town and it is living proof of the saying "If you build it, they will come."
Things have been busy on this end of the sandbox that is the Sahara. First, our stove project is off to a running start. We have visited four villages; spreading peace, love, improved cooking technology, and the Macarena. Much to my dismay there is photographic evidence of that last item. And, as always; a great deal of travelling means a great deal of travel adventures. These trips were no exception; and made more entertaining by the fact that I was riding on top of the car a majority of the time. Riding on the cab of a pickup is actually a pretty good arm and ab workout; especially since none of the village we visited were on a paved road. The prettiest trip so far was the drive to N'diago, which is 128 km from Rosso; on the ocean. We left at one in the afternoon; we arrived after dark. The majority of the trip was pretty, we drove through a bird park and saw giant pelicans and about 5 warthogs. About two hours before sunset we turned onto a flat stretch of ground full of cracks. It reminded me of The Land Before Time when the earth dries up and cracks leaving a grid of irregular hexagon type chunks of earth. Anyway, the important point here is that it looked perfectly dry. Then the first car drove across it and the back left tire just sank. It was all mud underneath. Nice. This was followed by a great deal of rocking the car and bringing sand to throw under the tire, which was not possible at first because the whole tire was buried. Then it was decided we had to unload it. This truck was carrying 45 stoves; weighing 60 lbs each. Once they were all unloaded we rocked the car some more; added the sand; pushed, pushed again; and finally succeeded in dislodging it from the mud trap. Our driver; Iba; then sped across the not-really-solid land to solid ground. As the car moved off, you could actually see the ground give under the weight of the car and then spring back, like Iba was driving over a sponge. Land shouldn't do that.

Then we began the torturous process of hauling the stoves over to the car, about a 100 meters away. I had just carried one over with Christa when I hear Abdu M'bye; one of our metal workers who builds the stove, shout "Imbecile!" I trust no one needs a translation of that one. I turn around to see that the second driver; who was just hired for the day because the village had ordered 60 stoves, had driven his truck slowly over the same area; and was now stuck.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So after hauling 67 stoves - we always bring 5 more than they estimate and 2 to raffle off- and all the bags; and the tent and poles; the sun is setting as i drag myself back on top of the car and we begin the 19 km left to reach the village. It was dark by the time we could hear the ocean. At this point the road becomes treacherous because dunes have overtaken the road. Iba made everyone get off the cars while they drove to clear ground. So as the moon rose Abdu and Mamadou; the two stove makers, had all of us "faire du sport", and jog behind the cars over the sand. Between lifting the stoves - I tried once to carry a stove all by myself by putting it up on my shoulder. The guys all do it and then Amy H. tried and so did Christa, so I figured no problem. I told Mamadou to help me put it on my shoulder. He looked at me like I was nuts, but put it up there. I got about 15 steps before I realized I might not make it. And it was at about that time I head Dan and Nicole yelling "Amy put that stove down!" To which I admitted the embarrassing truth that I didn't know how to put it down, and had to wait for Nicole to get it off my shoulder.- so between that and the moonlit jogging we figured we got a pretty good cardio and weight training workout.

We got another the next day when we discovered that the site for the animation, where we sell the stoves and play music, was in a part of town too sandy for the car, so we had to carry the stoves up the hill. We did; then found out later that the women who had surveyed the demand for that twon had not told the people the price, so no one knew the stove coast 5000 ougiya. They asked us to lower the price; which was particularly poorly timed since we had just hauled over 2 tons of metal over 100 kilometers. Anyway, I about cried at the thought of bringing all those stoves back. In the end we sold 52. We were then presented with a bill for 38000 ougiya. Oh yes, it seems the clever people of N'Diago had conspired to take the white people for all they could get. They charged us for everything from the water we bathed with to the little plastic bags they put the donuts in, which we didn't ask for. Apprantly the four women we had trained about the stove had told the town that no one should buy a stove; that way we would have to lower the price and everyone would only have to pay 2500 each. It wasn't until we told them that the stoves would not be staying there; that we would be selling them in Daara, the village we were scheduled to visit in four days; that people started to buy. So all in all; we were not that impressed witht he village, although the ocean was very pretty.

Daara turned out to be an awesome village, they had prepared a skit about the stove and everyone who had ordered a stove had paid in advance. They danced the Macarena and I danced to Senegalese music with a baby tied on my back.

So in short I am exhausted but happy. And completely out of internet time.
love
amy

The Donut Thief

2006-02-16T19:52:00.000Z

I apologize for the length of time between e-mails. West Africa reared her ugly head, and when the phone company attempted to improve the Rosso internet connection to a higher speed, all they achieved was in destroying it entirely. We have not had access since early January. The reason I get to type now is because I am in Nouakchott, along with every other volunteer in-country. This makes the computer room a bit crowded.

The past few weeks have been happy ones, despite the fact that I was robbed. Twice. Don't freak out mom, I'm fine, and I have shiny new locks on the doors, so this will never happen again. The first time I was robbed was back in January, when I took the stoves into Rosso and was out of my site for 4 days. I came back to find that someone had come into my house, not that hard since one of the doors didn't lock, and taken my bag of cfa, the west africa currency they use across the river in the Dagana market, as well as my bottle of bleach. So whomever the thief is, he is sparkly white. I harassed my landlord as best I am able in Hassaniya, he promised to fix the locks, then told me I owed him 60,000 ougiya. My rent is 5,000 a month. He wanted a year in advance. Right Siddi Moktar, like that's going to happen. I told him no, he's getting 5000. I fully intend to move into Thomas's house come July, so there is no way I am paying out that much, especially since I don't have it. Anyway, so I resign myself to the dimmest of hopes that Siddi Moktar will fix the locks and move on with life. I plant a few Moringa trees for my neighbors, tutor Mariam across the street (she loves the flashcards by the way Aunt Liz and Uncle Steve, thanks a lot) and fret about my tree nursery, which was being overwatered and now slightly resembled a swamp. I went back to Rosso the first of February to meet Steph's parents who came from Japan and to eat the Chinese food that Dan, recently returned from the USA, was preparing.

Steph's parents are adorable, by the by, and were lots of fun to hang out with. I finally got back to the village on a Sunday morning. Wednesday I left my house unlocked when I went to schoo at 10. When I returned at 11, someone had been in my house again, the 100 ougiya note (about 30 cents American) was missing from on top of the mat, and it was obvious someone had lifted up the mat to check undernead for more money. So I made a mental note to go yell at Siddi Moktar again, right after breakfast. I had purchased 6 beignets, little donuts, kind of like fried dough, that morning. I had eaten 3 with my coffee, and saved 3 for after school. I had been looking forward to their sweet, oily goodness for the last 25 minutes.

Or so I had planned. When I entered the other room, I realized it was not to be.

The thief had eaten my breakfast.

I was at the police station in 30 seconds. You don't screw around with the white girls' food.

The one english speaking gendarme took me to see the hakem, who called in Siddi Moktar.

I had new locks within 4 days.

I made them put in the official report that the bastard had eaten my breakfast, which the police didn't seem to find very important but which I considered the most heinous aspect of the crime.

So when other volunteers ask me how I have been, I inevitably end up telling them the story of the robber who stole my breakfast.

Don't worry, I am now the owner of two very safe locks.

Of course, at the same time that three men were working on my doors the people who own the property arrived from Nouakchott and decided to spend the day. Nora mint Mahlfoul and her husband were wonderfully cheerful and friendly white moorswho arrived in their own car, and they fed me twice, which I appreciated. I find it easier sometimes to make friends with the wealthier members of Mauritanian society, simply because I don't have to wonder whether they are talking to me because they want to get to know me, or because they want me to give them things, which sadly, is what some of the less well off people are sometimes really after. It can be very frustrating. So it was nice to spend time with a couple who actually seemed to like each other, another rare phenomenon in this country. They were shocked, however, to hear that my parents were still together (I chose to consider this a reflection on how easy and often Mauritanians get divorced, as opposed to assuming that any parents of mine would be so distraught they would inevitably separate). I promised them I would come see them while I was here, but unfortunately I never got the chance. I hope to see them the next time I'm in town.

We all head out to Dakar tomorrow, well, 62 of us in any case, to take on the other white people in the West African Invitational Softball Tournament. I don't play softball, but I'll be supporting our two teams, the RIM Pirates, and the RIM Swashbucklers. As a supporter, I get to wear a T shirt that says "RIM Seamen, a Quest for Moor Booty".

The desert does things to you, what can I say?

We get to face teams like the Tigers, the children of missionaries, most of them about 14, most of them girls. Last time they played us the score was 13-0. They won. They are our first game in Saturday, as our team captian warned "They will be sober. They will have practiced."

It's going to be an interesting weekend. Apparantly Dakar is like a real city.

~amy

Zenabou Gets Married

2006-01-20T15:56:00.000Z

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

2006-01-03T19:23:00.000Z

The Trarza Gang- This Time in Matching Shirts.

2006: The Year of No Big Macs

2006-01-03T18:47:00.000Z

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

Some Assembly Required

2005-12-23T21:54:00.000Z

When my boss came to visit last month, he brought with him a long awaited set of garden tools. A rake, hoe, shovel, hand trawl, pick, watering can, and whelbarrow.

In what was apparantly a monsterous joke, the wheelbarrow was in pieces.

I consider myself a fairly self sufficient person. I once assembled a doll house that Santa brought for one of my little sisters. Did not Lindsay and I rearrenged and put together our own furniture last year when we moved into our dorm room?

The wheelbarrow proved to be slightly more complicated, there were more options, less certainty, but I put it together as best I could, providing the neighbors kids with a loud lesson in english profanity at the same time.

what can i say, i am a multi tasker.

i pushed my creation the 2 km to my counterpart's house last Thursday evening, so that he could fill it with manure from the neighbors cow pen and bring it with his students to the fields friday at 4 to make a tree nursery for the 5th and 6th year class. along the way a part fell off, but i didn't think it was a large problem, it didn't look terribly important and the matching part on the other side was still there.

when they were not there at 4:20 the next afternoon i started to get annoyed

then at 4:30 they appeared, carrying the hobbled wheelbarrow, which was in terrible shape. My somewha haggard looking counterpart gave a sad shake of his head. "Mariam, haadhe maa zeyn." which translates to, Amy, this is not good.

apparantely creativity in putting together simple machines does not work out well.

i expect a letter from Rice any day taking back my honors. or maybe bacherlors degrees do not include agricultural equipment assembly techniques.

my counterpart eventually fixed it, and i have wheels once again.

Other than that debacle my village time has been going well. Two classes have made tree nurseries; and after the new year i will hopefully do the same for the younger students. i also started tutoring my neighbors daughter in math. it requires minimal language skills, actually few skills of any sort really since she is learning addition. the first lesson was spent hammering the concept of "zero" into her tightly braided skull. that 2 and 0 did not make three or did not make zero was responded to with a "huh?" that implied in saying this i was being violently unfair. By the second lesson word had apparantly gotten out that the white girl was having class. 12 kids showed up, all shoving their pieces of paper in my face and stealing pens and demanding i teach everything from the alphabet to french. It was a very loud lesson, with some children trying to add sums and learn to carry over in the tens collumn while one first year simply sat out of range of the lantern, but could be heard repeating "A! B! A! B!" for two hours. Last night I snuck over later to just tutor mariam, the little girl, and brought some flashcards i had made to help her learn sums by memory. the kids don't even cheat right. if you ask what 9 and 7 make they will write nine little hash marks on a piece of paper, and then seven more below thsoe; and then start at the beginning and try to count them all. it takes three times as long as counting on your fingers and they always mess it up. When I took away Mariam's paper, I caught her trying to do the same thing usuing her toes.

Which brings me to my first new request. if you find yourself with a burning desire to send me a package here, i would love some of those math flashcards for addition subtraction, multiplication, division, etc. you probably still have some lying around the house from when you or siblings or children were younger. I made some from index cards, but they are much to easy to cheat with , which mariam will do. actually any elementary school learning tools would be wonderful

which also brings me to a request for crayons. Two weeks ago I watched while the sweetest girl I have yet met in the village, a 10 year old named Fama, became terribly ill. She couldn't walk, her grandmother had to haul her up by the arm to move her from the house outside to where we eat, and one day during lunch she had to guide Fama's hand to her mouth because she was so weak. The same child that used to lead me home by the hand like a puppy and as always asking questions, now just lay on the mat with an expressionless face. It was horrible. Every time I came back to the family she was worse, it was terribly frightening to watch helplessly while she faded away. You can imagine how happy I was on saturday when I came to eat at the home and found fama feeling better. She wasn't quite recovered, you could tell because they were not sending her off to fetch something every 2 minutes, but she was up and about and smiling. I had brought a notebook and a packet of crayons with me, and gave them to her as a gift. It is a thing that every american school child has, but Fama looked at me like i had handed her gold. We volunteers often do not pay for meals we eat with families, instead we give them gifts every so often. i usually gave fruit from rosso, since it is not widely available in the village, but it never occured to me to give little things like crayons. I would like to do this more, but I only brought two boxes of crayons, and need to use the other for work.

That's about all that is new from around here. I am in the capital now, most volunteers came in for Christmas. It is really hard to believe it is here already. Thank you for all the letters and packages these past 6 months, letters mean more to us over here than you will ever know. But as you rip open presents on Sunday morning, remember that feeling, that is what it is like every month when we come in to the post office in Rosso.

Merry Christmas

love

amy

Feasting in a starving land

2005-11-26T16:36:00.000Z

To answer a question I recieved via email, no, we did not eat goat for Thanksgiving.

We ate Bob

Bob being the turkey, he gets a name because when we bought Bob he was still feathery,and beakey, and, well, alive

But we fixed that

Bob was delicious, as were the 3 pumpkin pies, the mashed potatos, the cranberry sauce, and the rest of Thursday's feast

Other than the holiday, it has been a quiet month in the village, My school director continues to attempt to make me a substitute teacher, and to show how devious he is, one morning he invited me to sit in on his class, then proceeded to give each child 8 cookies, turn to me and announce that I was to teach the little anklebiters "something about a tree" as HE was going to another town

Any man who gives 62 kids sugar and then leaves them to be managed by a 5'1" woman who can't speak their language is going to need to pray a lot more than 5 times a day if he wants to attone for his wickedness

I was at a baptism a few weeks ago, the baby was named Mariam,which is also my name in the village: There is anothernew baby girl, she is named Mariam as well,

This trend is starting to worry me

Unfortunately, the computer I am using has a broken period button,two of them actually,and the space bar is starting to go, so Ihavetostop

Hope everyone had a good holiday, I will try to send a better letter next weekend

love

amy

Under the Trarzan Sun

2005-10-15T00:53:00.000Z

<<2>>

There is a nice scene in the movie Under the Tuscan Sun where Diane
Lane, having just purchased a run down villa, describes all the
nightmares of fixing it up. It begins with, "I have bought a house in
a foreign country..."

I too, have bought, or rather, rented, a house in a foreign country.
And I too am dealing with all the joys inherent in cleaning and fixing
and generally making it fit for human occupation.

Not that that should really be important since at the moment there is
a menagerie of cats, bats, frogs and monkeys camped out in and around
the place, so the human is pretty much hopelessly outnumbered.

But before I described my Trarzan villa, I should probably tell you
how I got there.

If you can remember that far back, you might recall that I described
the joys of the bush taxi in my last letter.

Oh how little I knew then.

I think I have also previosly mentioned that in the rainy season there
is no road to Jidrel Mohgheun.

Well, a week and a half ago, when it started to rain 30 minutes
outside of Rosso, I found out why that is.

We left at quarter to four, me, a five year old girl named Fatou,
Fatou's dad, a guy riding on the roof, the driver, and Baboucrene, a
teacher at the college, or middle school.

They started to push the car at around five, after 40 minutes of
helping other cars get out of the same bog.

They then continuously pushed the van until dark, took a rest, and
pushed again. Meanwhile; Fatou and I fell asleep.

At 10:30 I was shaken awake by Fatou's dad, telling me to get up and
get out of the van, we were leaving. I had thought we were sleeping
there, and had really not had a problem with that idea.

So I left my bag, took my shoes in my hand, and hopped out the door to
sink seven inches into the mud. Oh yeah, the van was going nowhere.

None of the other people in the van had a flashlight, so my headlamp
became a valuable commodity, and it was as I was helping them untie
the goat from the roof that I saw another headlamp bobbing down the
road towards me.

It was Nicole and Zack, my fellow volunteers, apparantly their car to
Tekane, 25 km past my village, was stuck just behind ours. We were
all in it together. So we set out, into the pitch black night, on a
random road in West Africa, my shoes in one hand, and the sticky palm
of a digestively challenged severely malnourished Senegalese five year
old in the other. You could barely walk on these roads, let alone
drive on them. so we slipped and slid and waded in water up to my
knees and Fatou's waist towards some destination that the Mauritanians
seemed to know, but we didn't. I couldn't see where my fellow white
people were, and occasionally Zack would shout back to make sure me
and poopy butt were doing ok. I sang Yellow Submarine. Eventually we
veered off the road and out of the darkness a few buildings appear.
Later I would learn that this place was called Bayon. Nicole, Zack
and I were pointed into one of the two cement houses in town. By
house I mean 4 walls and a roof. We rinsed our muddy feet as best we
could, crawled into a mosquito net with 4 other strangers, all men I
add, and tried to fall asleep on the cement floor using our bags as
pillows.
Needless to say, none of us were keen on waiting around the next
morning for the roads to get better. We grabbed our stuff and started
walking. One man told us Jiddi was 10 km away, another said it was 4,
and guy in my village said it was 7km. We walked for about two and a
half hours, and were then picked up by a couple of Chinese guys in a
truck. They took off at ridiculous speed, swerving and throwing up
fountians of mud, and generally enjoying themselves until the truck
became stuck. We were in sight of the village fields, so we hopped
off and decided to cut across. I forgot about the canal that is in
those fields. After stepping in thorns that remain in my foot to this
day we were picked up by a tractor that took us the rest of the way to
my place.

The journey wasn't over for the Tekane kiddies, they still had to get
back to their village. We got to my town at 10:30, they reached home
about 8 that night.

This whole splendid journey was just the beginning of my day. Still
covered in mud, since there wasn't any water at my room where I was
staying at the time, I got to go negotiate the surrender of my house
with Sidi Moktar, the evil landlord.

The house is nice and in a compound with a well. However, at the end
of this compound, in what was an abandoned boutique last time I was
there, is now the home of who else but Sidi Moktar and several men of
unknown relation and horrible hygeine who work at the boutique.

They are my closest neighbors.

But that is a story for another day.

Welcome to the Trarza

2005-09-27T10:47:00.000Z

So I have been at site for almost two weeks.

Well, kind of. A more accurate way of saying that would be I have been in the region for a week and a half, and of that I have spent 2 days in the village. The rest of the time I have been in Rosso, my regional capital, a mere hour and a half's leisurely drive sitting in the back of a van with 21 strangers perched on a sack of rice and trying not to prevent my head from smacking against the metal sides of the van too much.

The dusty Rosso market has never looked as good as when I climbed out of that blue death trap.

Did I mention I get to ride back in it this afternoon?

This is my life.

I wasn't actually being delinquint, though. All the Environmental Education, Health ,and Small Enterprise development volunteers were brought into Rosso for a workshop funded through the EPA to help create improved cookstoves in Mauritania. The stove project is the baby of Julie and Amy, two volunteers who are extending their service a little longer. Amy was also the training coordinator for the EE stagierres this year. They were both in this region, but now live and work in Nouakchott. Since Julia leaves in December and Amy in March or April, and the EPA grant ends April 2007, the whole shebang is getting handed off to us newbies.

Talk about being thrown into the river to see if you can swim.

The workshop was interesting, or so I hear, it was all in French. We were basically there to get a feel for it, not really to participate.

Although Dan and I were called upon by Robyn, the "EPA lady" to help her present by doing a skit. We pretty much just sat there and nodded while she talked. It was so good we were called upon by John, the "NGO guy" to perform the sequel.

Do they give out Tony's in Mauritania? I'll have to find out.

Anyway, other than listening to a lot of French I did manage, I think, inshallah, to find myself a house in the village. The owners don't live there, the previous tenent died, and the mean man who holds the keys gets delight out of telling me it will not be rented. However, suspecting that this man was, in fact, a dirty, dirty liar, my counterpart Cheikh, in whose house I am renting a room right now, gave me the phone number of the owner. during the conference I had Kane, the Agroforestry training coordinator who speaks 7 languages, call the mysterious owner. They said I could have the house.

I can't wait to go back and smile at the mean man at the boutique who holds the keys.

Pray that Kane is negotiating me reasonable rent as we speak, and there are minimal hiccups. I really need to move.

Why, you ask?

Because it is wild kingdom in my room right now. The family does not sleep outside, there is no hanger, and their animals run loose so I have to sleep in my room. Drenched in sweat. I am safe from the bigger animals, but every night I get visited by a dozen frogs and a cat.

The frogs I don't mind so much, I'm just afraid I'll step on one.

I'm allergic to cats, and when I get up the thing hisses and runs into the corner. Which makes me irrationally angry because, hey; you came into MY room, the least you could do is be nice to me. But oh no, I then chase it from behind one bag to the water filter till finally it bolts out the door.

Only to come pawing around an hour later.

Whomever said cats are intelligent obviously wasn't talking about severely malnourished ones.

And that's all the news from the Trarza. A side effect of being away from the village is being away from my shortwave and the BBC news. I had no idea that Houston was evacuated until today. I hope all my Rice peeps and the Lawley/Huerta clan are all doing well. If you need pointers on living without running water let me know.

On a side note, we were a little amused and bemused by the EPA lady. she had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Swaziland 10 years ago, but to meet her you would never think she had lived in the third world. She came over to the house for dinner the other night and almost immediately asked where the bathroom was, followed by, "You have running water, right?". I showed her the door and said yes, we did have running water ,but it was still a turkish toilet. I guess she didn't hear me. Poor woman must have been expecting a porcelin bowl. She walked into the bathroom, and two seconds later walked right back out. Now, compared to the latrines in the village, the tiled floor in the bathroom in Rosso is pure luxery, but I guess she didn't think so. We've come a long way baby.

Are there toilets in Swaziland?

love

amy

Five hours of pain well worth it...

2005-09-16T12:43:00.000Z

Profile Image Upload

Il Hamdullilah!

2005-09-15T20:11:00.000Z

Well, we did it.

This morning as the sweltering heat and humidity turned our best and newest clothes into colorful sweat rags, 41 Peace Corps Trainees stood under a tent and took the same oath that all soldiers, sailors, and other government employees in the foreign service take; vowing to defend the consititution against all enemies both foreign and domestic etc.

After that we were no longer PCTs, we were now bona fide PCVs: Peace Corps Volunteers.

That's right, no more of this kids table shit, we were ready to go.

In a few days we all leave for our respective regions and our future sites.

Until then, we get to party.

These last few weeks have been a little different. My language facilitator Brahim, my foster father as it were, seemed to feel that he had finished work a week ago, so we didn't have real language class that week, we just hung out and drank tea.

He was right too, I guess, everyone in out language group scored Intermediate High on our final language test: Intermediate Mid is all that is required to become a PCV, and ours was the only class where everyone got that high of a score. Brahim says that is because he is the best. I think we might have had something to do with it too.

My host family sent me off in fine style, they gave me a big present in the form of henna, fancy and elaborate, on my hands and feet. It took 5 hours; but they looked fantastic. I have pictures; which I hope to post soon.

I want to thank everyone for the lovely, lovely packages. The other volunteers are all very impressed with my family. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa, the fruit snacks and Wurther's were a wonderful touch; thanks Papa John and Aunt Margaret Mary, thank you Aunt Liz and Uncle Steve; thanks Vanek Clan and cousin Jimmy for your packages as well; I feel so blessed. And so do my fellow trainees, who faithfully consumed an entire package of Twizzlers in one hour, it was great.

I still love mail. My new address will be:

Amy Conley PCV

Corps de la Paix

BP 40

Rosso, Mauritania

West Africa

I would love pictures; they are light and easy to mail and since all the family photos were packed when I left (and because my family develops film once a decade) I didn't have many recent photos to bring with me. Other little things are spice mixes like Mrs. Dash, garlic salt; pico de gallo, taco seasoning; sauces etc. You can't get them here.

Other Amy wish list items:

a pair of drawstring pajama-type pants, like at Old Navy. To show the tailors. I had him try and make me a pair from a sketch, they looked like MC Hammer pants. Since I have to climb a water tower to get cell phone reception, I don't want to do it in a skirt.

Likewise a pair of jeans, I am probably a size 8 or 6, because you can get away with wearing them in the regional capital; and it gets really muddy and skirts are a pain in the mud.

Dangling chandelier earings. I have not gone crazy, it is just that when all the girls were getting dressed for the ceremony today they were putting on make up and jewelry and I realized I had none. I am currently wearing a pair of glintzy gold chanderlier earring that I would never be able to wear in the states, but which look good here. They make you feel like a girl again; which is not always easy when you smell like a donkey.

I don't mean to sound greedy, letters by themselves are fantastic, but you always ask what I need, so there you have it.

Thanks for the letters; the emails; and the gatorade.

love

amy

So close

2005-09-05T15:14:00.000Z

One more week of staage. This time next week I will be free, free, free of my host family. Not that they aren't very nice, but after a few months, certain things start to wear away at your soul.

Things like:

The family constantly complaining after every rainstorm that I don't close my windows, when, in fact, I do. The greater problem lies in the fact that the windows don't latch, making closing them in a strong wind somewhat pointless. Not that the windows being open harms anything, rain doesn't come in. If they want to know where those puddles are coming from they should look to the large holes in the roof where the water pours in, that might be our culprit.

Watching the family prepare tea and wash dishes and hands with the self same pot that they fill and take with them behind the shed or against the wall to wash themselves with when they do their business. I am the only one who uses the hole in the shed in the corner of the compound.

Avoiding my older host brother, who seems to think it is my job to teach him English.

Eating plain maceroni for dinner night after night.

Eating cous cous and oil night after night.

half a million other small oddities that will almost surely be replaced by fresh annoyances in my new town, but at least there I will have the possibility of escape.

I can't escape here. The last time I ate dinner with a different family, my host mother threatened to beat me.

I think she was kidding, but I'm glad I only have a week left anyway.

We're So Damn Photogenic

2005-09-03T09:38:00.000Z

The Trarza Gang.

We take our work very seriously.

Roads? Where I'm going, we don't need roads...

2005-08-28T18:44:00.000Z

So a little less than two weeks ago 43 frightened stagierres were led
outside to the grounds of the Kaedi lycee, where a map of Mauritania
had been ominously drawn in the sand, cities and villages labeled, and
anxiously prepared to meet their fate.

It was time for site announcements.

By regions our APCDs, basically our bosses, in charge of the
volunteers in their sector, called out our names and the name of our
village or city. Then you went and stood on your village, so by the
end you had physically a very clear view of who you were going to hang
out with a lot the next 2 years, and who you would almost never see.

It was nerve racking in the extreme and the staff was enjoying that
way too much.

I am going to the village if Jidre el Moghen "jid-ree moe-gen", to be
henceforth referred to as "Jiddy" in the Trarza region.

That is the bottom left corner of the country. My regional capital is
Rosso, which you will find on a good map. You will never find Jiddy
on a map, but it is directly across the river from the city of Dagama
Senegal, which is usually on the map.

Dagama is nice. I know because I have been there already.

It is the rain season, I know I have mentioned this, and in the rainy
season many things happen:

Grass appears
Cows give really good milk
Mosquitos come out in droves
Rosso becomes the Venice of Mauritania (or the Bangladesh, if you
aren't feeling quite as romantic)
And most important, there is no road to Jidre el Moghen. Not until November.

So how do you get there, you ask?

You get to be the very first PCT in your class to cross into Senegal.

This actually sounds a lot more fun than it actually is. Crossing
borders in West Africa being sometimes a bit of a hassle. You take
the bac, a barge which reminds me a lot of the rafts you see the Coast
Guard intercepting from Cuba off the Florida Coast, from Rosso
Mauritania to Rosso Senegal. It feels kind of like beirut, or what I
imagine Beirut to be like.

When you reach the other side a policeman yanks your passport out of
your hand and you stand in line at the station for them to stamp it
and give it back.

Then you pile into a van that really should have died 10 years ago,
and you and 15 strangers drive to the town of Richard Toll, where you
hop into another van with another 17 strangers and drive to Dagama.
In Dagama you take a horse cart to the landing, and wait for a canoe
to cross the river from Jiddy. You wade in, hop in the canoe, which
feels like it will constantly tip over, with another 15 strangers, and
are rowed ashore to Jidre el Moghen, my home sweet home.

Then, to go home to Rosso, you do the whole thing in reverse, only
getting off the bac is a whole lot more annoying coming into
Mauritania, and getting your passport back takes an hour.

The travel aside, it is a cute little village with a forest and
monkeys and seems like it will be a nice place once everyone forgets
how perfect the volunteer I am replacing was.

And Rosso, my regional capital, is great. We have a lot of fun people
in our region, and Alexis, a health PCT who will be living in the
"house", is terribly sweet and promises to make it a nice place for us
poor "brouse" volunteers when we come in from our villages to get some
work done (and take a break). It is already nice, the current
volunteers made us pancakes and ice cream and chicken and provided us
with "libations". Being so close to Senegal and all things infidel,
we have certain responsibilities in the supply department, if you
catch my drift.

Another bonus is Dan, who will also be in Rosso. Not only is he a
nice person, although something of a Peace Corps Princess, but he is
our technology guru ,and is really good about uploading photos. So
check out his websites,
http://photobucket.com/albums/v142/stellargiggs/Africa/?sc=1&multi=4

and

www.livejournal.com/users/giggs106

There are some great pictures of Mauritania, and there are some of me
in the Rosso house with our regional group. If I'm looking svelt it
is because I lost 15 pounds on the giardia diet the week before we
came back to center. Gotta love the parasites, I'm ok now, il
hamdulilah.

We only have 2 more weeks of staag, and that's pretty terrifying. My
new address will be
Amy Conley, PCV
Corps de la Paix
BP 40
Rosso
Mauritania
West Africa

I may also use a PCV in Dagama's mail box, since apparantly mail to
Senegal gets here in a week (!), I'll keep you posted.

Thank you to everyone who is sending me mail, I feel so special!

amy

Of tanks and tantrums

2005-08-15T19:53:00.000Z

This is really just a relatively quick note to say that I am alive and kicking.

Everything is normal here in our little corner of West Africa.

Seriously, this was just about the most boring coup in history, il hamdulilah.

At first I thought it was a joke, we were in class and my language
teacher Brahim comes up to the roof and says, "So, there is coup."

Just like he would say, "So, there is tea," or "So, it is raining."

And then we were not allowed to be anywhere interesting for two days,
and then it was completely normal again.

We really didn't understand why anyone would worry, until I listened
to the BBC and realized that "The military has overthrown the
government of Mauritania" really can't be qualified with anything that
is going to make it sound better.

The only real difference around here is that the 15 pictures of the
old president have been removed from where they were posted around the
walls of the internet cafe. He is now on permanent vacation in the
Congo and not scowling at me as I type.

Vive le liberte.

Elections are in 2 years, inshallah, and if that happens it will be a
very exciting time to be in country.

Right now is a very exciting time for PCTs. Tomorrow we find out
where our permanent sites are going to be, and we have a week to go
visit. It is also a bit scary, as you find out who is in your region;
and who you won't be seeing for a year at a time.

Thanks to everyone who sent mail. Mom, I got the crystal light today
and two of your letters. Lins; I got three letters last center days,
and Kevin that postcard was such a bonus because I was totally not
expecting it. I had one of the most impressive piles at mail call, I
was so proud. I hope to be better with the physical mail once
training is over, we just don't have a lot of time right now.

ps i have been getting some mail returned because of the wrong email
addres from Lins, so if anyone can give me her current email; i would
love it.
back to the heat
amy

Montezuma's Revenge Is For Wimps

2005-07-30T21:08:00.000Z

One of my fellw trainees commented that one of the hardest parts of
training is adjusting to the fact that nothing, absolutely nothing, is
done in a similar way to how it is done in the states.

Sleeping? No, beds are a distant memory, as are sheets and soft
pillows (I brought a pillow from home, but I'm saving it in my stored
luggage as a present for getting through staage.

Eating? Nope, we use our hands. In fact, our first meal back at the
lycee when we all came in for 2 days of training was actually served
with forks. None of us was sure what to do with them, I used my
hands.

Recreation? My younger brothers amuse themselves by taunting the cow
and rolling tires. Today the youngest one came home with a shaved
head and part of me wonders if he did it just because the cow was
missing and there was nothing else to do. Then he tried to ride a
donkey, which provided entertainment for the whole family.

Using the bathroom? Hell no! I dream of porcelin bowls, especially
last tuesday night when I was sick and didn't sleep. Of course, since
I was at the lycee I was able to go into teh air conditioned infirmiry
and drink cold Gatorade. NOTE To anyone who loves me, send packets of
powdered Gatorade. It tasted like heaven and prevents dehydration,
bonus. Orange was really good.

I was well enough to leave in the afternoon, although I was loathe to
leave my cot, sleeping above ground is so luxurious, but there were
people far worse off than me. Poor Leah had to go to Nouokchott to
get better, and a few people were in and out all week. You need a
strong stomach and stronger intestinal tract to make it in West
Africa.

On a more positive note, during our luxurious stay at the lycee, the
current volunteers challenged our trainee group to a game of softball.
This is the same group that won WAIST, the West African Invitational
Softball Tournement, last February, so we thought it would be tough.

We slaughtered them.

Well, actually, I should say THEY slaughtered them, they being the
trainees that played while I cheered and heckled.

The important point is that I contributed to the victory.

Despite the cocky volunteers cheating at every turn. If that is what
2 years in the desert does to you than we should all be afraid, very
afraid.

Before I forget I should add that at center the mail came, and the
cell phone I purchased. My number is 695-8527, and from the states
you would dial 011-222 before that. So if you really love me and want
to call, go ahead ,but I don't really expect anyone to call except my
parents. But I will add that it is cheaper for you to call me than
the other way around.

And send mail, I had a pathetic showing, and resorted to delivering
other people's mail because it made me feel loved (we live for mail,
telling Mike T. that he had a big stack of letters from his girlfriend
earned me a hug, scandalous in the RIM, and made me feel like Santa
Clause.)

My address, again; Amy Conley PCT, Corps de la Paix BP 222,
Nouakchott, Mauritania, West Africa.

That's it, complete. Zip code systems are for nancy westerners.

If you send goodies, god bless you and send them in padded envelopes,
since due to a tax on boxes ,envelopes go through like letters, and
boxes sit in the post offive in Nouakchott for months until someone
from the bureau goes and pays for them and picks them up.

Gotta love them government institutions.

Anyway, we are all back at homestay now, and in 2 weeks we return to
the lycee, find out our sites, and go visit for a week. Inshallah.

And, for the record, it's really hot.
amy

The Rain Comes Down In Africa

2005-07-24T18:02:00.000Z

Ahh the rainy season. I guess since we brought it with us we have no
reason to complain.

But I'm going to anyway.

I love rain storms, I really do, I always have.

And our first night in Kaedi, when we were sleeping in the dorms and
ran wild in the rain like children was a whole lot of fun.

But I sleep outside now, and getting up and moving everything into the
house 20 seconds before the storm hits, and yes, my family cuts it
that close every time, is seriously cutting into my sleep time, and
anyone who knows me can understand how much I value that part of my
day.

So yes, the rainy season means water, and mosquitos any day now, and
humidity, and it means that the path to my garden is flooded and
becomes the river schisto (ahhh, schistomiasis, which we are all
deadly afraid of, but that my training coordinator says everyone ends
up with anyway, apparantly you jump up and down before they test you
for it, to release the eggs. Such is the glamorous life I lead)

So I am torn today between not wanting to have to flee inside from the
rain; and at the same time really wanting a storm to cool it off,
since right now anything seems better than drowning in my own sweat in
the stillness of the past two nights.

And that's the weather report from Kaedi.

In happier news, 6 of we city folk took a walk out to the suburbs
yesterday, to visit our friends in Billinabe.

Billinabe shall from henceforth until forever be known as Malibu,
those three are living the high life in new houses with two floors and
private latrines. And doors.

Not that I don't like living in the South Central Los Angeles of
Mauritania, but I definitely had no idea of what I was missing.

I shouldn't complain; since on the walk to neighboring town Rindiao
with the Malibu three we met the poor unfortunate souls who live in
Mbedia. Only 2 of the 3 are left; and James and Greg live in mud
houses that fall apart when it rains; and they eat gruel and no
vegetables. We will imagine Mbedia to be the Tiajuana of Mauritania,
only without the alcohol. What, you ask, is TJ without cheap Mexican
beer? Exactly.

For those Rice people out there I will try and put this in terms you
can understand. The Billanabe people are living in great digs with
great people, so basically Sid. The people in Rindiao don't have it
quite as nice, but still pretty good, so we will say they are in New
Weiss.

Us in Kaedi are living with a lot of people in somewhat similar
surroundings, so we would be Brown; or Jones. Some of us are in the
old part, and some, namley Tyler, are living in the new section.

The people out in Joel, a town 15 km out, live in beautiful
surroundings, lush and green, so they are the Martelians, especially
since people have been moved there from their original sites.

The guys in Mbedia, they're living in Will Rice.
(Crap food, crappy college that's falling down.)
Pray for them, they are really very nice guys.

The field trip was fun; although it gave me a wicked headache, but
that was an excuse that meant they only told me to ewkli twice at
dinner, than left me alone in my pain. I really like my family, even
scowling Mustafa, but they're persistance in seeing me stuffed like a
Thanksgiving Turkey is starting to grow wearisome.

But at least my Hassaniya is getting better. The only positive note I
can add to Veronica's sudden departure from PC RIM due to a emergency
back home is that I was able to explain the situation and where I was
going and why to my mother in her Arabic dialect. She was so
surprised she almost forgot to ask me what I wanted to do about
dinner.

Almost.

We will miss you Veronica. Come back with Tommy and be the Mary and
Derrick of another group of stagierres.

But tonight we are having maceroni and chicken, so I have something to
look forward to.

Unless it rains.

Take Me To Your White People

2005-07-20T15:32:00.000Z

That was pretty much the situation three days ago when Amanda, a PCT
living nearby, and I ventured into a new neighborhood to try and track
down fellow trainees at their homestays. Since our combined French
and Hassaniya couldn't navigate us out of a cardboard box, we brought
her homestay brother Musa. We didn't know the house, so he basically
started asking children if they had seen any Toubabs, and where were
they living?

We did find the eventually.

Other newsworthy events incude Musa's attempting to teach us the
Mauritanian way to make tea and my attempts at gardening. The tea
episode ended in a mess, I'm actually not that bad, but Amanda is
hopeless. It sucks to be a south paw here.

As for the garden, it is important that it be level, or all the water
runs out of your plot. I learned this the hard way, and so was
already aggrevated when I went to fix it in the afternoon. The
children of the neighborhood are really amused by us, and press their
faces against the fence and shout at us in French while we work. That
day it was just me, so I had their undivided attention, and the whole
pack would follow me from the well to my plot and back, like puppies
in a pet store window. Finally, I got frustrated, at about the same
time I realize I need more dirt. So I toss down the watering can and
snatch the shovel in both hands, holding it like the swor of a samari
warrior.

And fifteen children run screaming into the street.

Sometimes it's good to be me.

Some days are fine, some are a little harder, and sometimes at 3
o'clock on Fridays, the holy day of Islam, I am still seriously
tempted to shanghai the loudspeakers at the Kaedi mosque and blast
Back In Black.

But I don't think that fits the Peace Corps definition of culturally
appropriate.

Nothing to do but sip mint tea until the impulse passes.

Aane esmi, aane esmi, aane esmi naaza-naaza-nazaaraani...

2005-07-13T16:17:00.000Z

Ok, so maybe "My name is, my name is, my name is Slicka-Slicka-Slim
Shady" sounds a lot catchier, but Eminem didn't have to speak
Hassaniya. Aane esmi Naazaaraani means "My name is Naazaaraani" in
the dialect of Arabic I am learning here in Kaedi. Naazaaraani isn't
my name, actually, my host family calls me Amy most of the time, it's
easy for them to say and not as confusing as calling me "Mah", which
is my Hassaniya name, which they gave me despite the fact that it is
also their eldest daughter's name. Naazaaraani is the Hassaniya term
for "white girl". Literally translated it means Nazereene, as in, you
know, Jesus.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the comparison.

Nazaaraani is what is sometimes shouted at us as we walk down the
street. It doesn't bother me, and it is a nicer sounding word than
"Toubab", which is what they shout at the trainees in the Pulaar
speaking neighborhoods.

We are all split up now, and living with families, so aside from the
PCTs in our language class, the trainees don't see each other much.
Gossip, however, travels at the speed of light. Whoever said that you
can't keep secret in the desert sure wasn't kidding.

To recap the past 10 days:
Number of PCTs remaining after 5 days of homestay (of original 45): 43
# goats at my house: 6
days it took our bags to come: 6
sandstorms since we arrived: 2 large ones, assorted minor ones NOTE:
for the past 3 years, the first rains of the season have come on the
night the PCTs arrive in Kaedi, and we were no exception. The
Mauritanian staff was saying that we brought the rain. Combined with
the meaning of Naazaaraani this makes me very uncomfortable. If there
is a drought am I going to be blamed?
local languages I can greet people in: 4
local languages I can count to ten in: 1 (waahid)
local languages I can carry on a one minute conversation in: 0
camels sighted: hundreds
glasses of mint tea consumed: oh, thousands (it comes in shot glasses)

I am in the city till September, inshallah (God willing), so I will
try and take advantage of the internet access as I will surely not
have it in the village that will be my permanent site.
love
amy

Camels, and Beetles, and Donkeys, Oh My!

2005-07-03T09:59:00.000Z

Arrived in Nouakchott yesterday afternoon after flying from New York
to Paris and then on to this, the capital of Mauritania. My seat
buddy and I were looking out the window as we descended (you know you
arew going to be in trouble when it is 73 degrees outside at 6000 feet
up!) and we thought we were in a cloud.

Silly Peace Corps newbies.

It was the sun reflecting off the desert.

We were all still wondering how it was possible that we were there
when we hit the tarmac, looked to the left, and saw the sand dunes.

Definitely NOT in Kansas (or Connecticut, or Texas) anymore.

We were met by many sage and seasoned current volunteers. Including a
married couple that were leaving that night. The husband was updating
his name tag with an hourly countdown to his return.

The general attitude seems to be: glad I did this, glad I'm leaving.

We've had "sessions" since we arrived. Most of them are pretty basic,
and last night we were all so tired we basically slept through one.

We leave for Kaedi this afternoon, where we will have PST- Pre Service Training.

As any government institution, Peace Corps is acronym happy. It's
become a joke.

We live together for a week at the center, and then we are sent out to
host families.

So, to recap:

Hours in Africa: 18
Bags recieved from Air France: 0
Camels sighted: 1
Donkeys sighted: 4
Number of times the power went out at the hotel: 2
Cups of mint tea: 5
Numer of white moors who slowed their cars and honked at the group as
we walked to the hotel: 6
Times I forgot shoe etiquette and either wore them on the rug under
the tent or wore them in the house: 4
New friends made during staging: 45
Times called home since I left CT: 5

I'll update from Kaedi, where e-mail is neither free nor reliable, but
I'll make do.
love
~amy
PS: I'm sending this to everyone whose email I have. Send me love
back if you want to keep hearing by mail. Otherwise, if you go to
http://6000km.blogspot.com, I'll post this to my blog.

2005-06-19T22:21:00.000Z

Lesley and Kurt Icenogle. Photo compliments of Melissa Arong.

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Icenogle!

2005-06-19T22:07:00.000Z

Had this thing existed yesterday I would have used it to say congratulations and best wishes to Lesley and Kurt. I'm sorry I couldn't be there for the wedding, but in addition to being a week before departure, it was also my little brother's high school graduation. From the pictures Mels sent me it looks like it was a beautiful day, and Lesley looked gorgeous. I'll probably upload one or two, since I'm playing with this new feature while I have a semi-modern computer at my disposal. So, in case you two ever read this, have fun in Hawaii, and I swear to God your present is on its way!

2005-06-19T21:58:00.000Z

Profile Image Upload

You're going where?

2005-06-19T19:16:00.000Z

Don't feel bad if you can't locate my future home. In the weeks since I recieved my invitation, I have yet to meet someone that had not traveled to Africa who knew where Mauritania was. I myself could place it only because I was forced to label every country in Africa for African Studies back in sophomore year of high school, and, well, anyone can tell you I have a memory for inane details.

I add the "someone who had not travelled to Africa" caveat because two days ago I ran into an old friend from high school. As it happens, she had just withdrawn her application with Peace Corps to take a job with an NGO... in Senegal and Guinea. If you haven't pulled out a map yet, when you do you'll find that Senegal is immediately south of Mauritania. Small world, isn't it? Lissy had spent a semester studying in Dakar before she graduated from Yale, so she also has an excuse for her excellent knowledge of the geography of West Africa.

By the way, in case you would like to calculate how far it is from your home to mine, I refer you to the very useful website. I find it interesting that my mother is so much more worried about this trip, when it is nearly 3 times as far to get to Dunedin New Zealand than it is to Nouakchott. I'm actually closer to home.!

Back to packing.