Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen

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

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

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...

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

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

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...

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