Hmm� didn�t realize until Word automatically brought up the date that it�s kind of a significant one in American history. And it means very little in my current setting, save that the Peace Corps truck just came to take a bunch of my stuff to the lycee, where I�ll be headed tomorrow after saying good-bye to the family I�ve stayed with for the last ten weeks.
I can�t say I�m particularly sad to go. I�m ready to move on to my own place, a place without goats running past my mosquito tent and waking me up at 3am, a place where I can do my laundry whenever I want and not worry about who else needs space on the clothesline, a place where there�s always a full makarresh in the bathroom (and it�s only used in the bathroom), and where I can get away from people without feeling like I�m being anti-social (though I still don�t �socialize� much with my family�my language skills don�t currently allow it).
Not that I had a bad experience with my family. They�ve been very nice and respectful and I greatly appreciate them, particularly after hearing about some other stagiers� (trainees�) experiences. I�m looking forward to returning to Ka�di at some point�perhaps to conduct a training for the new kids in stage next summer�when my language skills are better and I can actually communicate with them on the level I�d like. I think it�d be nice to actually get to know them, and to be able to allow them to get to know me. We haven�t been able to have much of a cultural exchange, given my limited ability to communicate about anything save the most basic needs. Though my friend pointed out that I have brought American culture into their household, albeit unwittingly�
We came back from site visit and training at the lycee about two weeks ago. I noticed that we seemed to be eating rather poorly (very little meat and vegetables), and that there didn�t always seem to be quite enough food. I thought this might�ve had something to do with the new baby, the expense of the baptism, or tough times in the moulafa business. I came home one evening and saw a color TV, but didn�t think much of it. We had a small black and white one before; this one was still small but in color. Then the next night, I came home to a motorcycle in front of our doorway and my family enraptured by a man working� on setting up their new satellite dish.
Having a satellite dish in Mauritania is by no means a mark of extreme wealth. But they must be expensive and I don�t know�in fact, I highly doubt�that it�s something my family could have afforded without the help of the relatively hefty sum of money they�re being paid by the Peace Corps to house and feed me. I had no idea something so common, both here and in the US, could stir up such emotions, but I was pretty upset. First, I was a bit disgusted by the fact that my family would likely become obsessed with television-watching, as is the case in other stagiers� households. And most of my family is around most of the day, so I couldn�t see them not utilizing their new toy. I was also irritated about the symbolism�Western culture is infiltrating Mauritanian�and I was disappointed to think that they�d soon be exposed to all the crap we are in the States. This line of thinking, though, struck me as rather ethnocentric and condescending, that they should not have the luxuries we have because I find romantic the idea of living without constant exposure to the West. And then there�s the money issue. I realize that not all 8000 UM/week are going to go toward feeding me, and I�m ok with that. But I was pissed off that I felt like I hadn�t been eating well and I�d been leaving the plate before I was full so the kids could have my leftovers because they didn�t seem to have enough to eat. I�d been feeling guilty and trying not to be in my room at night too much in order to keep their electric bills down because I thought the family was going through a tough time. And it turns out that it was, as most economic decisions are, simply a matter of priorities: they put TV before nutrition.
Meals have gotten slightly better, though I�m very much looking forward to a few days of lycee food and then figuring out who makes the best lunches in Maal and making friends with them. I�ve not been a fan of what the TV�s done to the family, particularly when it comes to meals, though. There was never a lot of conversation around the howli (the cloth we put on the ground that we put the plate on and eat around), and it�s all but disappeared now. And if I�m sitting in the wrong spot, I feel like I�m a nuisance because I�m blocking someone�s view of the TV. My family only used to watch TV in the evening, on and off, and now it�s out at least half the day. But� I hesitate to criticize too much because this is what life in the States looks like in a lot of households. Not mine (thanks, Mom and Dad!), but in a lot, and though I�m not a fan of it there, either, I can�t really hold it against my family here that they want 300 channels to choose from and Gwen Stefani videos and al-Jazeera news and subtitled mediocre-at-best American movies in their world. And in this way, says my friend, I�ve helped bring American culture to my Mauritanian family, thus fulfilling one of the three main Peace Corps goals. Hooray.
In other news� men here don�t often shake my hand. I forget to mention these things and I�m sure no one would ever think to ask, but Moors, unless they�re very liberal or part of your family, won�t shake hands with a member of the opposite sex. The Moors are the Hassaniya Arabic speakers who make up the majority of the population here. There are three main black African groups here as well, located mostly in the south: the Pulaars, the Wolof, and the Soninke. They are generally more liberal and will shake hands. Their clothing is also far more revealing than the Moors� (this is all relative, of course, and they�re not nearly as revealing as things many 6-year-olds wear in the States), though they�re all Muslims and most women still cover their heads in some fashion.
I will be living in what seems to be a particularly conservative Moor community in Maal, and am sure to find myself in a number of interesting�if not uncomfortable and/or disturbing�situations. Moor men are generally very respectful toward me, just not terribly talkative. The women in Maal keep well-covered and they all wear moulafas, which makes me a little nervous. I have had a few things made here, and they�re all in the black African styles. I�m hoping not to offend anyone with my Western or Pulaar clothing, but I think, after seeing me wear a moulafa once or twice, they�ll see how ridiculous it would be for me to try to wear one every day; I�m just not able to function (as in, walk without tripping over myself). I�ll wear them for special occasions and I will cover my head�and whatever else needs covering�every day, but I plan to establish from the outset that I have my own style that will include clothes a from a variety of cultures. I�ll be respectful, but I also want to be comfortable (well, as much as one can be while trying to cover nearly every inch of skin in 100-degree weather). I talked to my counterpart about the clothing situation and she said it�s not requisite that I wear moulafas as long as I�m well-covered. We�ll see, though�I may find that I�m not comfortable wearing anything else just because that�s what everyone else wears. Though I�ve never really been one to wear what everyone else wears�
Following my second-to-last night at homestay, I feel I am now, truly, a full-fledged PC RIM (Islamic Republic of Mauritania) trainee: I got my first blister beetle blister sometime in the wee hours of the morning. It�s amazing how many species of bugs there are, and, as the rainy season wears on, how many new ones appear. We heard horror stories of blister beetles from the current volunteers as soon as we arrived in Ka�di, but, until last night, I�d not had a problem with them. I�m still not actually sure what they look like and don�t quite know how I got the blister given that I was zipped up in my mosquito tent. Blister beetles, when provoked, secrete something (it�s often referred to as being �peed on� but I�m not sure if it�s actually waste or a defense mechanism of some sort) that burns the skin. It�s a minor burn, of course, that is only slightly painful, but it forms a blister. The fun part is that the fluid inside the blister is also caustic, so one has to be careful about it popping and the fluid then causing more blisters. As some other PCTs have found out, if one doesn�t drain and cover these blisters before they pop and spread, it can turn into quite the painful mess. I caught it pretty quickly, though, and cleaned it up as much as possible, so hopefully I won�t have any more problems. Inshallah.
Ah, inshallah, �God willing.� The inshallah factor is becoming a bit of a nuisance as our time in Ka�di comes to a close. It was rather charming before, but my tailor has been telling me for a week and a half now that he�ll have my clothes done �tomorrow, inshallah.� Well, apparently Allah is not willing when it comes to apparel, because they�re still not done, two and a half weeks and about three dozen visits after I gave him the fabric (and my money, which is tailoring in Mauritania mistake #1). My Sunday afternoon project may be going to his shop and sitting there while he makes the skirt for me, because it seems that is the only way it�s going to get done. Overall, I�ve not been impressed with the level of service I�ve gotten from many people here, but every once in a while I have a good chat with a vendor or feel that I�m actually being given a fair price despite my pasty skin, blonde hair, and presumed wealth.
My sister Rohaiya left the household the other day. She�s the one who had a baby about a month ago. It�s customary for a pregnant woman to return to her mother�s house for the month or so before she gives birth, and then stick around for a while afterwards. I�m slowly putting all the pieces of my family together, and have learned that Rohaiya has a house of her own, with her husband, somewhere near Ka�di. She and her three daughters returned to their house a couple of days ago, which has made things a bit quieter in my household. I also learned that the reason I�ve not been able to figure out who my father is is that he�s no longer living. Though not good news, it�s somewhat of a relief to me to know that I wasn�t just missing something.
Our health training has not been nearly as rigorous as some other sectors. I�ve not had to do a lot of work outside of training sessions, but we were required to give a health presentation in our local language by the end of stage. My two Hassaniya classmates and I did so yesterday, for a very small audience of a couple of (American) friends, a couple of family members, our language instructor, and our health coordinator. This was perfectly fine with us as, though our language instructor helped with the wording of the presentations, our pronunciation is still pretty lackluster. Mine was about basic nutrition and I don�t think anyone got anything out of it, but that�s ok. This one was really more about us: practicing and fulfilling a requirement. I found that I really enjoyed working on it, having something concrete and potentially useful to focus on, which gives me hope for the future. There are times when I�m not sure what I�m doing here, especially when I consider that my first 6 months or so at site are really going to center on learning the language rather than health work, but working on that project reminded me that I am here to do something that I actually do really want to be doing. It�s just going to take a little while to get to a place where I can do it. And I�ll have the help of my counterpart and other community members who learn to understand my accent and preposition-free sentence structure, so� someday I�ll do some �real� work.
That�s one of the things I�m struggling with a bit here. I came here to work. Yes, I wanted to learn another language and be in a different culture and knew those things would take time to adjust to, but I, unlike a number of my colleagues here, did not come to Mauritania to �find� myself. Not that I know exactly who I am or that I don�t think some improvements could be made, but my main goal in coming here was to get stuff done, personal growth being a perk of the whole experience, not the point of it. This makes life a little difficult right now because I�m not getting anything done and my very American obsession with activity doesn�t consider personal challenges and linguistic growth �anything.� Though they are, of course. I�m just going to have to constantly remind myself of that while I struggle with the language and feel entirely unproductive on the work front.
The language is coming along slowly. I�ve had some bad interactions with the dude who works in the boutique near me in the past couple of days; he likes to tell me and anyone I�m with that I don�t speak Hassaniya well�or at all. So that�s always fun. But my sister was able to understand a bit of my presentation yesterday, or so she said, and I�m pretty comfortable buying things in the market now, which I definitely wasn�t a few weeks ago. So progress is being made. PC will pay for some language tutoring at site, so I�m planning to find someone in Maal who�ll teach me the Arabic alphabet and go from there. It�s supposedly a lot easier to learn Hassaniya when write it in Arabic; though it�s not a written language, it can be�and much better in Arabic than Roman letters. I�ll probably try to learn Arabic at some point, once I get better at Hassaniya, and I plan to work on French as well (while attempting not to completely lose all my Spanish� not to mention English). There are some French speakers in Maal, my counterpart being one of them, and I�ve picked up a bit since getting here. I�m hoping to learn more so I don�t make a complete fool of myself when I travel to other parts of Francophone Africa. But Hassaniya is, obviously, the priority, and I don�t think I�ll have too much trouble finding people willing to help me out with it. Inshallah.
And on that note, I will wrap this up with this: God willed that, if I sat there and watched the tailor make it, my skirt would be finished today. MASHALLAH.
September 3, 2005
Only a week and a half left, then we return to the lycee for a few more days of training and language tests and final evaluations� then swearing-in as volunteers and a party that will include the first drop of alcohol to cross my lips since leaving the States, inshallah.
Then we�ll be posted to our sites, which, as exciting as it is, is a little scary. When we went for site visit, we were unable to get there on the first try because it'd rained pretty heavily the night before. The tracks in the sand/mud that usually lead to Maal were washed out and our driver lost the way. I'm not sure there really was a drivable way that day, either. Shortly after our driver threw in the towel and decided we'd head back to Aleg, the regional capital, and try again the next day, we hit a patch of mud that held up even our nice Peace Corps SUV, and ended up spending 45 minutes digging it out with our hands. I�m hoping that I love the community so much that I�m willing to stick around for weeks on end� because getting out during the rainy season is going to be tough. They say it�s ok during the dry season, but I�m still not looking forward to the long ride over rough terrain in the back of an old pickup. These are the adventures I came here to have, though�
Coming back to Kaedi after site visit has been a little difficult, in that we�re all anxious to get to our new communities and start our lives there� and, eventually, start our work. My "community counterpart" will likely be the assistant midwife. This doesn't mean I'll work with her all the time, but she'll be the one I go to, particularly at the beginning, with both work and community questions. She works at the little medical center there, but it�s kind of far from where most people live and is really dirty, so I don�t think I�ll be spending much time there. I�ll probably study at my house and try to find someplace in the community to hang out and be visible, so I can start to get to know people. I�ll be eating most of my meals with families, though I�ll be living on my own, so that will help with integration (and language, of course). Ramadan starts Oct 2, I believe, so that�s going to eliminate the afternoon meal, but breaking fast in the evening is, apparently, a great way to build community. I�m not sure how well I�ll do with it, but I plan to fast like everyone else (from sunup to sundown, no food or drinks) if at all possible.
I�m hoping that the house we found during site visit will be there for me as promised. We had a little trouble negotiating the price and I�m concerned they�ll back out, or demand a lot more money when I arrive. It�s a nice house, though it�s not entirely finished (I�m thinking I may take up masonry and put in some concrete floors and spackle the walls myself� I�m going to have a lot of time on my hands). A couple of the rooms are done, though, which is plenty of space. The fact that I might have some degree of privacy, my own bathroom, my own clothesline, and an area for a garden, is more than enough. I�m hoping to grow a bunch of vegetables and learn to can (well, jar) them so I�ll be stocked year-round (if anyone has expertise in this area, I�m open to suggestions). I�ve never gardened in the desert before, so I�m a little concerned, but� it�s definitely worth a try. I may not have vegetables otherwise�the only ones available year-round are onions and, usually, potatoes.
In Maal, there�s a large seasonal lake from which they get what they claim to be really good fish, so I�m looking forward to that. There�s plenty of fresh milk in Maal and a dairy farm that�s no longer in use (kind of makes me wonder if they didn�t place me there b/c I�m from Wisconsin and my interest in eating cheese will be a great motivator); I�m going to see what I can do about getting that restarted�though without electricity to keep things cool, it may be tough.