Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Merry almost-Christmas!! It definitely does not feel quite so much like the Christmas season in this 99.9% Muslim country, but now that it is so close I am getting excited all the same. I got into my regional capital last night and I am heading to
Time in Kankossa passed quickly between Thanksgiving and now. Gardens are growing, and I am pretty sure that the only sunflower that sprouted in my garden was about to bloom just before I left. Language has been going better-it is at least not a daily struggle anymore. I started a tree nursery at one of my schools-baobab, moringa, Neem, and guava. Also, one of my site-mates and I are going to start adult English lessons after break.
The highlights of the last 3 weeks were Tabaski and a trip I took to Tavra, a village an hour south of here. Tabaski is the biggest holiday of the year for Muslims, and they slaughter a sheep and buy new clothes. If people can afford, they do this two days in a row. They kill the sheep in the morning and then eat a plate of it grilled, and then a plate of it with potatoes, and then a plate with cous-cous. Even for a large family, a full-grown sheep is an absurd amount of food to finish in a day. Similar to the post-Ramadan holiday, I was sick afterwards, but it was worth it just for the fresh grilled meat and the protein boost. I spent the first day of Tabaski with my host family, and the second with a friend and his family. His brother is a diplomat in
A few days after Tabaski my site-mate Marta and I took a trip down to Tavra to visit another volunteer who lives down there. Tavra is a small Soninke village on the border with
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying the snow or rain if you have it! I am gone from my site until mid-January, so expect a few more updates before then!
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Happy Thanksgiving!
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!
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Back from en Brousse!
Finally I am somewhere with Internet, so I can update this again. I am in Kiffa for a couple of days after having spent about 5 weeks in Kankossa. Ramadan ended about a week ago, which meant that life in Mauritania has started up again. My first month here has been up and down, but it is definitely getting easier. School and the cold season are about to begin also, so I will have a little more to do. Here are some random glimpses of life in Kankossa:
A lot of Mauritanians here are interested in the U.S presidential election, and specifically Barack Obama. They always ask me if I am for McCain or Obama and discuss how Obama’s dad is from Kenya. Mauritania is very stratified along ethnic lines and has actually never had a black African president (they have all been white Moors of Arab origin), so the prospect of an African American president is really exciting for people here.
If there was a Mauritanian food pyramid, the five food groups would be: milk, bread, rice/cous cous, sugar, and meat. These things can be combined to make a surprising number of things, such as:
Rice+milk: ish
Small cous cous+milk: bossi
Large cous cous+milk+sugar: gossi
Milk+sugar: zrig
Bread+meat: taajin
The list goes on. Part of the reason for the limited diet is there is not a large variety of food available, but it is also cultural. Many Mauritanians, and particularly Moors, prefer a desert diet-basically just food you could find and survive on in the desert. It is considered more “pure.” We eat vegetables sometimes, but they are always very cooked; uncooked produce is for animals, not humans!
That’s all for now-I will updating this again for sure at Thanksgiving, and possibly earlier in November as well. There is a travel ban on Peace Corps volunteers for the first three months of service, meaning that we cannot leave our region and should stay mostly at our sites. This ends in December, however, and after that I will be doing more traveling for training, social stuff, etc, so as a result I should be able to update this more!
Monday, September 1, 2008
Real life begins
Monday, August 25, 2008
Almost a real volunteer
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Life Continues
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!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Back from Kankossa
Monday, July 21, 2008
Site Announcements
I don't know that much about it, but I am going there tomorrow to visit for a week. I do know that it is about 9000 people, they speak French, Hassaniya, and Puular, and it is by a lake. Earlier in training I talked to another EE volunteer who is just finishing her service there, and it sounds like she accomplished a lot, so I hope that I will be able to do the same!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Hennahennahenna
A cultural note: although women do henna just for fun, it is especially important for marriage. Most Mauritanian wedding pictures are extremely creepy photos of the bride with henna on her hands and the groom standing behind her holding up her hands. The henna party proved to be the perfect forum for more of the hilarious marriage talk that always goes on here, a good time for me to explain that I planned to study and work before I got married, and, as always, a good opportunity for people here to laugh in my face.