Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello! I am in Kiffa for Thanksgiving-so far it has been lots of movie-watching and food-eating, which hopefully will continue for the rest of the week. I am too lazy to think of new stuff to write on this blog, so I am just copying and pasting from the mass email I sent out earlier today. So unfortunately this may be a repeat for some of the regular readers of the blog (my immediate family).

School started in Kankossa (where I live) on October 12th, although I use the term “started” loosely because it was about a week before kids showed up and another week before classes started. Regardless, it was nice to have a little more purpose to my days, compared to Ramadan. I am officially working at two schools-Ecole 1 and Ecole 2. They are both primary schools, which means 1st grade through 6th grade. The age range is about 6-15. Right now I am sitting in on classes and also starting school gardens, which is really fun. The garden at one of the gardens has started to sprout, even the sunflowers! The other day when I was working in the garden with the kids I had them get in a circle at the end and put their hands in, and then I counted to 3 and we all yelled “JARDIN!” (garden). It sounds silly, but they loved it. School is way different here, and by different I mean way less fun, so even a tiny fun activity like that is pretty novel to them. Working with kids outside the classroom is fun, but sitting in on classes is pretty uninspiring. There are some really good teachers here, but also some really bad ones. It’s not unusual to embarrass kids in front of the whole class if they don’t know something, and even though this is technically illegal now, they also get hit sometimes with a piece of rubber hose. Plus, the schools here are in bad condition. The Ministry of Education gives money to build schools, but no money for maintenance. This year all of the school supplies were donated from UNICEF. I think one of my bigger projects while I am here will be to help the schools find funding to do some repairs. Other plans for this year at least include: lots of tree nurseries, lessons on tree importance, painting a world map, and doing Earth Day celebrations. I hate taking my camera out around kids here because it creates a riot, but I will definitely try to post pictures of some/all of these things!

Since school has started I now have a loose routine to my day. I get up at 6:30 when the sun rises and the animals start making noise. I eat breakfast with my family, which is usually bread, peanuts, and tea. School here is 6 days a week from 8-1, so I do most of my work in the morning-going to schools and sometimes other offices around town. Then in the afternoon I spend about 3-4 hours eating lunch (rice and fish, rice and meat, or mafay (rice and peanut sauce)), either with my family or friends. Later in the afternoon I water my own (non-school) garden, read, visit people, and write in my journal. It gets dark around 7, and then I sit around with my family, eat dinner (always cous-cous), and then go to bed at about 9:30. The cold season is approaching, so even though it is still 100+ during the day it is cold enough at night that I have to sleep with a blanket.

Personally things are getting better here. My language never feels that good, but when I think about how much better I know Hassaniya now than three months ago, I realize I know more than I think. People here always ask me to teach them something in English, and then when I do they say “Aaah English is so difficult!” and I say “Yeah, see? That’s how Hassaniya is for me!” and then they say “No, you’re wrong, Hassaniya is not difficult.” Haha, I guess I will just have to come to terms with the fact that I will never be fluent, but at the same time I will never get stupider as long as I am speaking the language every day. I am constantly amazed at how I can be so happy one day here and then so unhappy the next, but that seems like a common Peace Corps experience. As work picks up I have less time to think about home and stress about personal things, which is good. Still, if anyone is interested, here are the foods from home that I crave most often: roast beef sandwiches, spaghetti, hot dogs (I thought I smelled one the other day), pop corn, chips, cheese, and wine.


I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. I am thankful for you!
Family and neighbors. The little boy bottom right, Papani, is the coolest kid in all of Mauritania.
A special shout-out to the Grabowski's with this one!