Almost a real volunteer

I am back at the training center in Rosso now for a few days.  On the 28th we will be sworn in as volunteers, and then on the 30th we all leave for our permanent sites.  I just had my language test, which I think I passed, so now I am at intermediate-mid level in Hassaniya, according to the Peace Corps.  Leaving PK-10 was sad but it was probably time; we had started playing hangman pretty competitively...

My family's baby goat agrees to sit for a photo.

One night after a soccer game a couple of us hiked up to the highest point in PK-10.  This is a view of one of the greener regions of Mauritania-this is less than 10 kilometers from the Senegal River.

This was my home-stay family's present to me before I left.

My room at my home-stay.  

Who are those mashasha's?

My site-mates and I got together and combined our food to have an American feast.  The highlights were powdered mashed potatoes and cheese/tomato/Pringle/Tobasco sauce sandwiches.

My two host-sisters and I at the wedding of a neighbor's daughter.  We are wearing mulafas, which Hassaniya women wear every day and I wear for special occasions (at least for now).

Home-stay ends tomorrow, which is definitely bittersweet. I really like my family and I hate to leave now that I am finally able to carry on a conversation and get my own water. On the other hand I am ready (sort of) to start the next two years of my life.

I thought before I came here that I would become really critical of everything about the United States after living in such a different country. I have decided, however, that living in Mauritania highlights both the good and the bad things about the U.S. As far as pros, seeing all the trash in every Mauritanian city makes me appreciate the basic infrastructure that we enjoy at home. There are places to put garbage, and pick-up is regular and dependable. On a related note, my friend here went to the post office to buy four stamps, but the post office only had three. The fact that she managed to get to the post office when it was open was a miracle. Another thing I am more appreciative of in the U.S is that we have one language. People here speak at least one (and often more) of the following: Pulaar, Wolof, Hassaniya, Soninke, French, and Arabic. I can walk four kilometers from my home-stay village and be somewhere where I can’t understand anyone. Teachers are required to teach in French in primary schools, but school children don’t necessarily understand French. Basic communication is something I realize that I took for granted as I try to learn Hassaniya and live in a multi-lingual country.

Seeing the way that people live here, however, has also made me realize (or maybe re-realize) how materialistic Americans are. This didn’t come as a surprise to me and I don’t expect this to sound particularly insightful, but I am constantly amazed at how much less stuff people have here and how much longer they use the stuff that they do have. I think about this every time I take a bath and use a different type of soap for my hair, face and body, or when I do laundry and hang fourteen pairs of underwear to dry. When I came to Mauritania I brought 70 pounds of luggage in two bags, and then put one bag in storage for the duration of training. Now I can barely remember what was in that bag, which goes to show how much I actually needed it. Living here has made my rethink how much I need; the quality of life for people here is certainly different in terms of material possessions, but I would hesitate to call it worse.

Life Continues

I have been back at my home-stay site for a few days and it has been really nice to be back. It is the only place I have stayed in Mauritania for any extended period of time, so it feels more like home than anywhere else here. I didn’t speak Hassaniya much during the 10 day site visit and I think my brain needed that time to let the language sink in, because once I got back to my home-stay my language was much better. It is a really good feeling to be able to understand what people say (sometimes) and be able to respond to them. I also feel like now that I can talk I don’t have to dance for laughs anymore, so that is another reason I have been feeling pretty good lately.

As far as interesting news for today, there was actually a coup in the capital! Late last night the president of Mauritania decided to fire all of the military officials, and then they arrested both him and the prime minister. This doesn’t actually mean much for the Peace Corps, but it is pretty cool to say that I have lived through a coup d’etat…

I hope you enjoy the pictures, and thank you to everyone who has sent me mail so far-I just received a bunch in the course of a week and it made me so happy!

These are the other people in my language class.  They are pretty cool.

This is the henna that I got on my feet.  It is kind of faded because I took this picture about a week and a half after I got it.  This is also a good picture of my mosquito bites.

This is a picture of my training site.  It looks much more "out-there" than it really is-this is the part of the village with fewer houses/tents.

This is the practice garden that we have made at our training site. It is not the ideal place for a garden because instead of soil, there is sand. We added a bunch of crushed goat poop to our beds, however, so we have managed to grow some watermelon, corn, and okra.