embracing the possible

I have found myself. Or rather my purpose. And not a week too late.

This past month or so has been a little tricky. I was stymied at work, isolated at home, severed from family miles and holidays away, and desperate for confidantes that didn’t exist in country. For the first time, I began to question: why was I here? Why did I leave the states? Was my service worthwhile to me? To Mauritania?

And then, a sea change. “What happened?” my mom asked. “Your voice, your spirits, I hear the difference.” It’s tough to pinpoint, but I see it as a culmination of events and successive epiphanies. Let me explain.

First, I suppressed my cultural instinct. Imagine walking down the street. Imagine, then, someone hisses at you. Gut reaction: disgust. Is it so difficult to speak in coherent sentences? To utter even two words? Hiss at animals, talk to people, right?

Wrong. In Mauritania, hissing is a perfectly acceptable means of gaining an audience with a friend, a stranger, a coworker at school, a potential customer or candidate for marriage. It’s not rude; it just is. What I interpreted as dehumanizing harassment was their way of saying hello. Suppress cultural instincts, minimize irritation, maximize interaction. Where I had previously felt attacked, I now feel welcomed. Where I had offended my neighbors with disinterest and disgust, I now reciprocate their attempts at friendship. More simple than easy, but well worth the effort.

Second, I ignored seasoned advice. Dozens of American volunteers and Mauritanian PC staff warned me against children. Most are disrespectful, truant street urchins, they explained. Talking with them will only undermine your credibility with Mauritanian adults who would never deign to converse with a young child. Moreover, nine times out of ten, they are only begging for handouts: money, pens, purses, glasses…

Children, I realized however, were not the problem. Nine times out of ten, these “urchins” were urged on by greedy parents. On several occasions, I witnessed a mother pushing her child toward me, whispering “donne-moi cadeau, donne-moi cadeau” (give me gift). Brats or not, credibility be damned, I was unwilling to ignore smiling, waving children. How could I fault them for impolite conditioning?

Instead, I began engaging children in the street, requesting their friendship before they requested a gift. It worked. I walk down the street now, greeted by name. Children approach me with “donne-moi cadeau” on their lips, and catch themselves, realizing they shouldn’t ask Khadijetou for 100 ougiye. They ask me how I am. They shake my hand. They yell at their friends for spitting nasty Hassaniye phrases at their teacher, their friend. It is better than the stereotypical Sally-Struthers-surrounded-by-children-singing-Kumbayah visions so many Peace Corps volunteers entertain before arriving in country. It is better than confirming seasoned advice. It is wonderful.

Third, I embraced the possible and let go of the impossible. I live in a big city. I cannot begin to express what a disappointment it was last summer to move from an isolated, welcoming, herding village in the south to a massive, touristy city in the north. Atar’s climate was infernal, the reception frosty. The carpet of small-town integration was pulled rudely from under my feet. My posting seemed less a deliberate attempt at grassroots development and cultural exchange and more like a psychological experiment. Could a volunteer cut it in Atar? Eh, we dunno, let’s try it out.

The answer, I am currently proving, is a resounding yes. Not only cut it, but productively and integratedly so. The impossible is a forty-person village, drawing water from wells, waking to cocks crowing, sleeping under crystal clear skies and drinking milk by the liter. As much as I loved Sabualla, I am letting it go. The possible is three schools, eager to work with a relatively inexperienced but vastly enthusiastic volunteer. The possible are families who, despite urban anonymity, invite said volunteer to dinner and tea. The possible is a cooperative school administration and welcoming municipal officials, all of whom gush over my projects and jump to provide needed resources and support. The possible are gardens and ecoclubs and girls’ centers and English lessons and Trash Clean-ups and Marathons. I embrace my busy schedule and the metropolitan environment that makes it possible. I am embracing Atar.

All these epiphanies mere days before I pack my bags for Christmas in Nouakchott and New Year’s in St. Louis. It is fortunate that I leave Atar on the highest note I’ve sung since stage, but it makes me… wary to leave. A Senegalese vacation will likely curb the momentum I’ve picked up at site: an unfair and unwelcome trade. I will approach the holidays with cautious optimism and take solace in the fact that, come January 2nd, I’ll be ready to return to Atar. Return home.

recess in mauritania

The volunteer knocked softly, unsure her polite raps would be heard over the chaotic din inside. To her surprise, the school yard door swung open immediately to reveal four wide grins in various stages of toothlessness. Smiling herself, she imagined a tooth fairy leaving ougiye coins under their matelas and made a mental note to try to import that bit of Americana to Atar. The boys – surprised in their own right, they were not expecting a nasraniye in a melifa – stepped aside in half-gawking wonder and let the young woman pass. Her veil fluttered in the winds pouring off the dunes and the sandy gusts left in the wake of sprinting children underfoot.

Cautiously, she approached the classroom which, during recess, served as a lounge for the female teachers. Although dressed in conservative Mauritanian clothing and decorated in gaudy Mauritanian jewelry – the epitome of integration! – she felt as protected in the hen house as an open sack of grain. Peeking in, she spotted Miriam. Miriam was appointed a “counterpart” in English, un homologue en français, a life line in the realm of Regis Philbins and million dollar games. In other words, a teacher specifically assigned to help the volunteer navigate the local language, culture, cuisine, educational system, eager tour guides and rock-tossing children. In two months, however, Miriam’s navigational help could be summed into one “how are you, how is the weather, how is [insert last year’s volunteer], why don’t you wear a melifa everyday, and I’d love to help but I’m so busy.” The volunteer was not entirely bitter, not entirely afraid, not entirely discouraged, but a noncommittal mix of the three.

She waved at Miriam and the other women, responded politely to the canned greetings – peace be with you, and with you, what’s new, nothing’s new, is there goodness, is there peace, yes nothing bad, there is goodness – and lingered long enough appear involved in their rapid-fire, i.e. unintelligible, Hassaniye conversation. After a few minutes of half-interested hovering, she opted for door number two, the director’s office.

There, scattered on the floor in boubous and collared shirts, she found the male teachers and the director. Some seated on the carpet, some propped against a wall, others on their backs entirely, the men were passing around bowls of cold zrig and loaves of fresh bread from the bakery. She had barely entered the room when the loungers, caught in casual if not compromising poses, began to clear their throats, collect their papers, and rise to greet the volunteer. Over the shuffling of boubous, she could hear one of the female teachers mutter through the wall.

“Hiye…[something]…rajil…[something].”

Although “she…[something]… man…[something]” should have been incomprehensible, the volunteer recognized it as a reprisal of last week’s dig: she thinks she is a man, snicker snicker. Resignedly, she accepted the strange truth that to choose work over gossip was to renounce her gender. She gathered her veil, slipped off her sandals, and entered the director’s office.

A chorus of salutations rippled through her male colleagues and she responded in kind, touching her hand to her chest to acknowledge each greeting. Out of the frying pan, she thought, and into the fire. Mauritanian men are friendlier, but sometimes treacherous in their cordiality. Unable to decipher potentially-loaded smiles or determine possibly left-of-center motives, she suddenly longed for the squawking hen house.

Between a visit from her program director the week before and hiking through dunes over the weekend, the volunteer had not visited the school in eight days. Already, a chasm of unfamiliarity had opened between her and the school director. Disapproval and distance flashed in his eyes as he mumbled a greeting and shifted his eyes to the floor, to his colleagues, and back to the floor. A Monday morning visit would have been impossible, she silently reasoned: she had been riding camels last night and a taxi brousse this morning. School had been first on her agenda, though, even before unpacking her sand-filled bags. Tuesday was not that much later than Monday, right? His shifting glances said otherwise. His shifting glances said, even if you came every morning, we’d still wonder where you were in the afternoon.

Eventually recess wound to a close. The teachers, both men and women, retreated to their classes, and the volunteer was left with her slighted director. He traded his place on the floor for a more dignified station at his desk. She sat opposite him and braved the topic she came to discuss in the first place.

“Mudiir,” she began. They always conversed in a mix of French and Hassaniye. “Je veux te parler de Miriam.” Director, I want to talk about Miriam. She recounted the failed attempts to garner an audience with her counterpart during Ramadan, during the elections, during her week-long headache. She didn’t want to be rude, but it was nearly December and half her projects had stalled in the wake of Miriam’s busy schedule. Slowly, the pinched line of his frown softened into comprehension, into concern. He too had noticed Miriam’s flagging work ethic. Had he been waiting impatiently for the volunteer to take action? Waiting knowingly for her to seek counsel?

“Shuuvi.” Look, he said. It’s simple: you tell her you want to begin your projects. If she wants to help, great. If not, she can step down as counterpart. She can’t hold the title without taking the responsibility.

“C’est tout?” It’s that easy? she asked reluctantly. “It’s not impolite?”

“Work is work. Work isn’t polite or impolite.”

The director went on to explain how pleased he was with the volunteer’s work, how motivated she was (despite counterpart-related delays), and how he was always available if she needed help or backup in this particular situation. She silently kicked herself for having waited so long to breach the subject. His candid advice at once eased her mind, authorized her to seek Miriam’s cooperation, and exonerated her week-long absence. Her thanks were genuine and profuse.

Suddenly, screaming. A woman stormed into the director’s office with the ear of a young boy in one hand, a belt in the other. Between the mind-boggling speed and ear-bruising volume, the volunteer understood nothing save the woman’s very apparent anger. The director, forever calm, assured her he would take care of it. “Whatever ‘it’ was,” the volunteer thought as the woman quit the office in a fury of fabric and curses.

“Wahaay.” Come here, he motioned to the trembling youngster.

The director commanded respect from behind his blue desk, but exuded compassion as he leaned over to rest his hands on the table, his chin on his hands. Now face to face with the boy, he whispered, “why don’t you want to come to school?”

Apparently, the boy had been caught truant by his reactionary mother, who had suggestively provided the director with a belt for any necessary disciplinary action. The boy’s eyes brimmed over with terrified tears, convinced he would face the leather before his lessons. To his surprise, the director hid the belt under the desk and offered a handshake instead. “Let’s agree,” he suggested “to come to school. I am your friend, right?”

Still in the gentle grip of their handshake, the boy reluctantly nodded at the director.

“And she,” pointing to the volunteer, “is your friend.”

She beamed; he nodded.

“Just like all the teachers here. Git-lak, tell me, do you have chalk and a writing board?”

The boy did not, so the director led him to the storage closet, provided him a clean chalkboard and fresh chalk, ruffled his hair and sent him to a classroom.

Words failed the volunteer. The director had empowered her against Mauritanian professional reluctance and stunned her (and the boy) with a compassionate authority. Feeling as if her hair had been gently ruffled too, she left the office, walked lightly across the school yard and thought simply,

“He is a good man.”

Can’t you smell that smell?

I am a bad volunteer. I left a kilo of tomatoes in the bureau. The hot, stinking bureau. For a week.

The fellow volunteers tried to help with a friendly reminder here, a text message there. And each time, I’d gasp, thank them profusely, and swear to remember the sack of what was becoming unidentifiable organic matter. And then, I’d promptly forget.

Today, someone (not me) finally chucked the sopping green bag outside. Although I scrubbed the carpet and apologized ad nauseum, the tomatoes stain my record. I am unreliable, forgetful, and now painfully aware of these shortcomings just three days before my APCD is scheduled to visit Atar.

Tomatoes have little to do with environmental education, but they are indicative of my harried state of mind. Juggling three schools, girl empowerment activities, ecoclubs, out-of-town seminars… Tyler suggested I cut back, better to do a few endeavors well instead of many less-than-well. I took his advice and promptly excluded breakfast, journal writing, leisure reading, and sleep from my schedule.

I have no idea if my APCD will appreciate, or even acknowledge, my cramped calendar. If all else fails, I’ll take him to the bureau. Work-induced madness and fatigue smells faintly of rotting tomatoes.

Moments in a weekend

Saturday early afternoon

We sit in the bug-free zone of Kristen’s screened in porch. And by screened in porch, I mean a concrete overhang decorated with duct tape, nails, bungee cords, and cut up mosquito nets. She is mixing a concoction of delights: chocolate bars with an incredible melting point of at least 120 degrees, peanut butter that is little more than ground nuts in a plastic bag, honey made of dates but called whole fruit spread, and crushed graham-cracker-like cookies. I am sitting on the matela next to her, leafing through a special environmental edition of Vanity Fair from May 2006. Nearby, a radio plays a scratchy tape of NPR’s This American Life. Date unknown but the stories are timeless and hilarious.

“Here, try this one,” she says and offers me a bite of chocolate peanut butter cookie stuff.

I taste, nod, approve. “That’s pretty good.”

She looks at me, probing me for a more detailed evaluation. I admit, “It could use more cookie.”

Kristen keeps stirring, I keep flipping, the radio plays on.

A few minutes pass. “Ok, try this.”

I giggle and confess again, “Yep, more cookie.”

Stir, flip, listen.

Eventually, she hands me a star-shaped molded cookie thing. I pick it up carefully and nibble one of the slender star rays. “Yeah,” I say in between decadent bites.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. That’s the best yet. Holy crap, that’s good.”

Mauritanian butterfinger: delicious, comforting, worth its weight in ouguiyes. Or calories, as it were.

She stirs, I skim, we laugh.


Saturday afternoon

Almost five. I quicken my pace hoping to beat the clock. Nouha knows me well enough to know I’ll be a few minutes late for tea, but I make a labored effort through the sand anyway. Footsteps following me, no, chasing me, running after me. Fighting panic, I hold my pace and calmly turn to find a winded teenage boy next to me.

“Tissu, j’étais tissu,” he pants.

Cloth? He was cloth?

I tell him in French I don’t understand. Now walking beside me, he repeats himself, this time it sounds like “acheté tissue” – bought cloth, still gibberish to me. I tell him in Hassaniye I don’t understand.

“Howli?” he says, his voice agitated, increasing in volume. I understand this Arabic word – a headscarf men wear – but I can’t guess the context.

What do you want, I ask in French and then in Hassaniye. While he seems bent on confusing me, I am doubly intent on being understood.

“Tu comprends rien,” he spits and gestures rudely, too close to my face for comfort.

True, I think, I don’t understand anything. I don’t understand why you ran after me to speak nonsense in two languages. I don’t understand why you think it is ok for a man to speak to a single woman on the street of an Islamic country. I don’t understand why your subpar language skills require rude gestures and raised voices. I don’t understand.

I shake my head, continue walking, and stare straight ahead, the universal symbol for “thanks I’ll be on my way now, it was nice not communicating with you.” Oblivious to my attempted departure, he follows me and hurls a venomous mix of bilingual curses. I spin on him and demand, “why would you speak to a woman this way?” I explain that I am a woman and it’s rude to speak to me so crudely.

He counters, “you are a Frenchwoman.”

I am not French, I explain, ironically in French. I am American and who cares? Aane mra. Je suis une femme. I am a woman. You have to respect me because I am a woman.

“You aren’t muslim. Are you? Are you? If you are” he now switches to Hassaniye, screaming at me in the street, “then say Allah is great. SAY IT. SAY IT! ALLAH IS GREAT!”

I am dumbfounded, silent, disappointed. He continues his conversion efforts, and I continue walking. Eventually, he gestures toward me, peppers me with a few incomprehensible insults, and storms off. I survey the marketplace before I turn the corner to Nouha’s house. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty faces fixed on me, devoid of pity, of empathy, of shame. Just detached interest, as if “harassing the nasraniye” was a game they bothered to catch on tv before dinner. Or a commercial interrupting their favorite show. Hardly worth watching intently, not bothersome enough to change the channel. After all, I’m not Muslim, am I?


Saturday afternoon, later

I arrive at Nouha’s for tea, shaken from earlier harassment en route. She runs through the Hassaniye greetings: how are you, is there goodness, how is work, what is new, is there health, how are you? I offer culturally appropriate responses: I’m fine, there is nothing but goodness, thank God, nothing new, I’m good.

She asks again, but more intently, “how are you?” The angle of her head and the depth of her gaze indicate that this question is not merely a cordial salutation.

I spill.

She listens, not with the half-interested gaze and incomprehension that I expect. Instead, she nods eagerly in agreement, validates my frustrations with stories of her own, and offers the sentiment that “men are…” worth a roll of her eyes. We laugh in solidarity, not as an American and a Mauritanian, but as two women who have been subjected to harassment. Who have been disappointed by inappropriate pick-up lines, indecent propositions, threats to our safety, and challenges to our modesty.

She explains how she received a late-night call just last week, a male friend inviting her to tea. “Tea.” She politely declined: it is late, you are married. He pressed; her tone remained demure but her resolve firm. He hung up on her. Impressively, he had the gall to call the next day. When he asked where she was, she lied. When he asked when she’d be in town next, she said next month. But then she was moving. When he asked her if she was ever going to come back, ever going to see him again, she shrugged a disinterested no. I interrupt her story with incredulous giggles, “And that worked?”

“Hag.” Of course it worked.

I think on this and attempt a summary of her lesson. “So that is what you have to do? Lie?”

“No,” she says, “you have to protect yourself.”

Hag. Of course I do.


Sunday early morning

I walk up the stairs to the bathroom. Over the wall, even without my glasses, I spot a small Mauritanian girl. Her face blossoms in recognition; I cannot see it but I hear it in the shrill rise of her voice, “nasraniye!!!!!” she screams as she sprints toward my compound. Her small feet pound into the dirt road as I duck behind the wall. “Donne-moi cadeau!!!!! Nasraniye-ha!!!!” She jumps up and down at the base of the wall, demanding my attention, my gifts. I just wanted to use the bathroom.


Sunday morning

What am I doing here?

I’m in Africa, in a Muslim country, in a conservative city, in a Catholic church.

Sunlight refracts through stained glass in slender frames that run from floor to ceiling. Father Mark leads the meager congregation – six people including me – in a chant that echoes off the domed ceiling and reverberates into the courtyard. I rake the depths of my memory to remember the call and response in French, “et avec votre esprit.”

Over four years ago, I said these same words in Paris, at Notre Dame and at Saint Severin. I felt no less out of place amidst the throngs of faithful Parisians and disrespectful tourists than I do now sitting with two Mauritanian men, two French nuns, one Spanish nun and Père Mark. But I feel decidedly less harassed in here than out there. Out there, in the street, in the open, exposed in Atar. Less targeted as a source of money, cadeaux, Bic pens, handshakes, tea dates, English lessons, and entertainment.

I am not Catholic, or institutionally religious for that matter, but Father Mark’s voice is gentle, his sermon welcoming. His bare feet peek out from his robe and grip the dusty tiles. He helps me find the correct page in the French hymn book. He offers to deliver the sermon in English, “non, merci, je comprends bien.” He asks me to come back next week.

Before my arrival in Mauritania, I was so dedicated to cultural integration that I refused any contacts associated with missionaries or Christian churches. This was less a commentary on global evangelism and more a realistic approach to living in an entirely Muslim country. How would I integrate with the locals if I embraced something so “other?”

In retrospect, the question seems silly. Embrace something so “other?” I am other. In a veil, speaking Hassaniye, eating with my hands, drinking tea, averting my eyes in the street, haggling for a kilo of onions, I will always be other.

Sunday afternoon

It peaceful, lunchtime so the streets are mostly empty. As I open the metal gate to the Girls Mentoring Center, a car approaches, slows to a crawl and eventually stops. Its driver leans out the window and peers at me through a howli that wraps his entire face. I enter the gate, and close it behind me. The driver stares. I lower my eyes and lock the gate. The driver stares. I realize the gate can be opened all too easily from the outside and I wonder why I even bother to lock it. The driver stares. I walk deliberately to the office and wonder why its front door only locks from the outside. The driver stares. I hope Kristen arrives soon so I am not alone for very long.

The driver stares.


Sunday evening

Hawa’s restaurant serves dinner just after sunset. Usually, the volunteers meet here to avoid cooking and usually, the female volunteers take an escort home. As in the male Peace Corps volunteer kind to avoid the male Mauritanian tour guide kind. Inevitably, one or the other will follow us home in the dark and we prefer goofy PCV antics to other approaches.

One of the male volunteers mentions that he hasn’t walked me home recently. “I should really remember to do that.”

I politely decline his perpetual service; I feel guilty taking him fifteen minutes out of his way every night and anyway, “I will have to learn to fend for myself eventually, right?”

He is doubtful and explains why. Apparently, walking past the gas station outside the Girls Mentoring Center office Friday, I won the audience of the attendants. I was oblivious to their catcalls, but the aforementioned volunteer heard and saw their chivalrous wooing attempts. “They were mimicking you, saying something about the way you were walking.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, “I was wearing a melifa Friday. I was covered head to toe in a veil. There was nothing to see.”

He shrugged, adding, “It was pretty crude.” I expected as much. What I didn’t expect was his next comment. I wanted him to say, I yelled at them, I defended your honor, I gave them a dirty look, I wanted to punch them, something gallant.

“They did a pretty good imitation of you,” he said and laughed.

Clearance sales in Mauritania

I’ve discerned two possible paths for me in Atar. Either, I become a cold-hearted crone who trusts no one and assumes the worst. Or, I give people the benefit of the doubt and end up assaulted, mentally for sure, physically for maybe.

Already, I’m well on my way down the former path, having unsuccessfully tried the latter. The whole “come have tea with ‘my family’” or “I was good friends with the last year PCV, what’s-his-name” bit got old quickly, as did my strategy to ignore my better judgment and hope against logic that these invitations were well-intentioned. All I got by entertaining their lies and mine was a grave dug deeper by the day and an expanding list of numbers I wish Mauritel [Mauritanian phone carrier] would block.

Cultivating naiveté is apparently a group effort since the other husband-less female PCV is having similar issues. She entertained a string of meaningless ca vas with [insert her current stalker’s name] at lunch which quickly escalated to “bonsoir, bon appétit” at dinner. And four phone calls. And three text messages. And a picture message. And an invite to his butig. All this in the span of one day. And she has the luxury of being “married” (i.e. her fiancé in Brazil doesn’t mind posing as Mr. for her protection’s sake). Unfortunately, cordiality at lunch negates wedding vows, leaving her, me, anyone open to “special friend” propositions and private tutorials on the “secret night life of Mauritanians.” Be still my trembling heart, before these romantic gestures. Opportunistic cretins.

Even [insert established PC friend], who I thought generous, kind, aloof, even simple, is driven by his libido, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Apparently, I am in his heart night and day. Oh, except when he is trying to woo the other female volunteer in Atar. Right. The only thing restraining the blunt end of my rage is [insert established PC friend]’s singular status as peanut butter provider. If I find tigadiga (Pulaar for peanut butter) elsewhere in Atar, God help me, my wrath will be swift and unapologetic.

It’s not that I’m bent out of shape having to share his undying love; in fact, I’d love to distribute the weight of his passionate SMS confessions. No, it is the sad realization that what was once endearing, if a little obsessive is revealed to be the pathetic attempts of a Mauritanian player. J’ai ton nostalgie [sic]? Je veut etre a cote de toi toujours [sic]? Substandard pick-up lines in substandard French. A wise Chinguetti PCV said it best: “wish I had a department store wall to throw that against. No clearance sale in hell would make me buy that shit.”

Between disappointments with [insert established PC friend] and failed tea with [previously inserted tour guides], random harassment at school and in the street, my mind is closing and my eyes are opening; I’m ready for bandits and alert for scheming. And don’t you know, if you look for something intently enough, you’ll find it. That’s called self-fulfilling prophesies, folks. Or conspiracy theory paranoia. Or the first step on a long road to embittered skepticism. Welcome aboard.

Honestly, I don’t mind my heart turning malignant and black for now; my gangrene is my protection. But I do wonder: will this rot follow me across the Atlantic? Will my deliberate embrace of bitter now prevent the eventual purge in 2008? Will “normal” American gender relations be sufficient to thaw my anger? Or will every potential suitor be a [insert established PC friend] in disguise? Is this sour isolation par for the course for two years and beyond? …

Practice makes ...perfect only works in theory

I meant to finish my last entry. Procrastination rears it’s ugly head… and I, paralyzed with it, couldn’t bring myself to look at these pages, to remember the entry – ironically unfinished – about my hopes and plans also pathetically unfinished. Sigh.

So what have I accomplished since my self-chastisement on the sixteenth? Should I list a dozen or so inconsequential victories that – by little to no effort on my part – miraculously took place this week? Should I check them off as if they had been planned beforehand? Even though I only “scheduled” them in my calendar after they had already happened? Even though each check mark is indicative of my tight grasp on a manufactured sense of accomplishment? Yes. Check.

[after ten minutes of reviewing calendar]

Ok. I’m melodramatic. I meant to expand the rebuke of last Monday and further pummel myself into a hole. I realize however, I had an exceedingly full week, even though all did not go as planned. Board rollercoaster of Peace Corps emotion. Disembark. Promptly vomit. Check.

Within the last week, I…
- helped prepared an integrated lesson;
- took two language exams at the Alliance Française (botched the test à l’orale, rocked the written, typical of a French lit major…);
- met with the Director at Ecole 8 (received and botched an invitation to dinner, future invites with his family possible in future);
- met Sophie (adorable co-directrice at the Alliance Française) for dinner (future language exchange definite in the future);
- conducted a spectacular PACA session at Ecole 3;
- updated APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director, essentially my EE boss);
- discussed with Keith plans to pioneer a Girls Mentoring Center for the primary school girls in Atar;
- broke fast with Nouha’s family and shared giggles and gossip with her under the clearest night since Ramadan started;
- got some face time and merited special introductions at church;
- took a chance with a random Atar resident and found a semi-respectable if not well-connected family;
- shared dinner, tea, a cooking lesson, lunch zrig, and another tea with said family;
- attended traditional fight staged for the ciid (holiday) of Ramadan;
- celebrated at [insert established PC friend]’s (wore my moor melifa, apparently a Pulaar fashion faux pas, but I redeemed myself by sporting some jewelry gifted to me by the host, I suppose it’s even);
- received and declined an invitation to “biggest soirée de l’année” (this may have been wise, given the presence of alcohol at said fête); and finally
- shared tea with two of my new.. friends (?) [insert two tour guide names].

Check, check and check. Some planned, some not, most good, some… questionable. But check.

So why such a stern appraisal for this week? Why, when I began this entry, did I have such a self-loathing, a taste in my mouth I could not brush out? First, I was afraid to write. Afraid to see my black thoughts spilled out in black ink, undeniable once written. I have been overwhelmingly negative recently, not my usual self. It makes sense that I’d not want to look in my journal’s mirror: doubt and pessimism is ugly. Second, by owning up to this week’s accomplishments, I’d have to face what I thought would be a painful lack thereof.

Turns out, the only thing to face are expectations. My Peace Corps service is a ship of guilt and impossible expectation; I am the crew and my coordinator the absentee captain. I seek his approval so desperately, even after it’s already emphatically given. Each time I talk to him, I set the bar of achievement sadistically higher. When he tells me that I’m the perfect volunteer, I’m convinced he is compelling me toward my potential rather than complimenting me on my present. Anyone who knows me can rightly imagine a distraught volunteer unable to take a compliment, unable to let extremely well enough alone. Perfection is my assignment, during stage, here at site, yesterday, today, tomorrow. It’s a looming check, never accomplished…

Why leave tomorrow what you can criticize today?

I think I thought I could escape. My boredom, my idleness, my sickness, my procrastination. If I didn’t write about my days spent at the GMC typing, at home reading, at Tyler’s house socializing, at the bureau killing time, I might not have to own up to it later. Funny, the residue of guilt. It does not fade with time, it does not respond to deliberate attempts of suppression.

Honestly, I was ill. Whether or not cold viruses exist in the Sahara or not, my nose, head, throat and lungs were full of sickness. My voice was out of commission for a day and a half, my sense of balance was actually worse than Larium-normal. For this, my inactivity was somewhat justified.

Somewhat.

Unfortunately, guiltily, this justification began to wear thin come Thursday. Now that it’s Monday, I have run out of reasons but not yet out of excuses.

I procrastinate!
I hate it!

I had a conversation with my coordinator yesterday and it was characteristically wonderful. His encouragement is unflagging, his giggles infectious, his expectations motivating… and daunting. “If you were a perfect volunteer, which you are, this is what you’d do…” Right. Perfect in that I poured through a thousand plus page Stephen King novel last week? Perfect in that I threw two dinner parties and attended another, none of which were with families or teachers or neighbors like I planned? Perfect in that I rationalize my GMC computer time by typing my plan d’action (program for the year) and planning my calendar with fancy software? What’s the use if I plan more than I do? Anticipate more than I accomplish.

I procrastinate!
I hate it!

I meant to unearth all my notes from stage, written when I was still motivated and bright-eyed with ideas and delusions of grandeur. So I could remind myself why I was here, what I had planned, when I had hoped to accomplish the myriad goals set in the heat of July and August. Meant to. As in didn’t.

first day of school

I cringed away from the spectacle at the flagpole. Seated ten feet, one language and an ocean of culture away, there was little I could say to deter Muhammed or the enthralled spectators from the impending disaster.

Instead, I watched in silent nasraniye horror as the Mauritanian primary school teacher hoisted a slight moor boy up the flagpole. His slender arms wrapped around the teetering pole; his sweaty feet gripped and slid as he inched up. The student’s elevation above sea level correlated linearly with the bowing and tilting of the pole, first a modest eighty five degrees, then eighty, seventy three, and counting… The boy reached up with tiny fingers to lace the flag string through the eye at the height of the pole, and then, victory nearly seized, dropped the string.

The green fabric with yellow crescent moon fluttered tragically to the sand and the small boy, exhausted, shimmied down after it. For now, Muhammed would allow classes to begin without the tattered Mauritanian flag slapping overhead.

Ten minutes later, a half hour into the first day of school, several more children and a teacher trickled in, pushing attendance to ten and thirty percent, respectively. During Ramadan, a month during which Muslims fast ascetically during the day and feast gluttonously when the sun sets, I expected peu d’élèves (students_ and even fewer enseignants (teachers). Less people, I supposed, to witness students plummeting from flagpoles.

I sat patiently observing the marginally scholarly scene: small children arrived haphazardly (honoring the fluidity of 7:30am according to RIM-timepieces), They chattered excitedly in a dialect of Hassaniye I had not yet learned – high pitched, school children murmur – and admired crisp melifas, shiny shoes, new bookbags, empty notebooks, unused pens and intricate hair extensions. The few teachers that deigned to come to work lounged on the floor next to the director, who had been sprawled under his desk since I had arrived. Clearly, little instruction was going to occur, so Muhammed, the only teacher on his feet, threw open a rusty door and distributed small brooms made of dried neem tree branches and covered in a summer’s worth of cobwebs and dust. The students should have cleaned the brooms before cleaning the classrooms. And by students, I mean boys, since the girls were expected to sit and demurely adjust their veils while their male counterparts sprinted across the courtyard, flung open shutters, knocked over desks and danced through clouds of sand and each other.

I decided to remedy the girls boredom; what better than with the presence of an unknown nasraniye?

Everything about me shocked and engaged them. Adults in Mauritania do not engage in conversations with children, who are too young to merit such attention. To their wide-eyed wonder, I smiled in their direction, greeted the girls in Hassaniye, and sat down between them. Despite my age, my young friends were dressed more conservatively than me. While they sported modestly colored melifas, I wore a golden yellow wrap skirt and a head scarf dyed in flashy Kaedi patterns. I was as silent as my outfit was loud, and they chattered around me, occasionally intelligible and constantly curious. Eventually they stood and organized themselves into a small walking party. I remained seated, unsure if this tour of the school grounds had an age limit. A small moor girl, young but self-assured and already stunningly beautiful, turned, adjusting her veil. “Wahaay she called to me and held out her hand. Come on.

What began as a leisurely walk around Ecole 3 eventually picked up speed. Before long, we were a colored blur of melifas, wrap skirts and shrieks of laughter, darting between school buildings and chasing each other breathless. I never had less than two girls per arm pulling me across the gravel, and three more urging me forward with shouts and giggles. We kicked up rocks and dirt with the boys. So much for being demure.

I have not seen Fatimatu since that first day of school. She has since fallen in line with the four hundred other students at Ecole 3, her piercing eyes and delicate features among dozens of veiled schoolgirls. I know as a teacher, I should not have favorites, but I look for her each time I visit the school.

like peas chicken and carrots

I am on a mission. Volunteers are coming to Atar from the south, more than enough reason for a dinner party. Nothing rowdy (the most exciting drink featured will be made of orange Fanta, evaporated milk, water and sugar – trust me and the Pulaars of Mauritania, it’s delicious) but definitely American-style-chicken-dish worthy. Sides to include farlic mashed potatoes and piles and piles of carrots. My mission is to secure the bird and beta carotene. A real chicken, you ask? You are in Africa, will you kill it yourself, bleed it toward Mecca, pluck it, gut it and cook it over open flame??

You’re damn right I… won’t. We get our chicken from a freezer for five hundred ougiye a kilo. Probably less romantic that you were expecting, but less sanitary than you are expecting. It’s still chopped chicken parts in a dirty chest freezer. Marginally exotic.

I kick hot dust as I shuffle through the market looking for carrots worth consumption. It is not yet noon, but already merchants are covering their wares and passing out in the hot sun. I expected irritability during Ramadan¹ but not this fairy tale narcolepsy. I am a sandy Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by bodies frozen mid-sentence, mid-sale, mid-transaction in a restless, sweaty slumber. Cooks doze by cooling kettles, merchants sprawl on linoleum and concrete floors, market vendors rest chins on piles of deep purple aubergines, orange slices of squash, brown puckered dates and bundles of bright green mint. No carrots under these cheeks, so I continue between the tents. Maybe the chicken place has some?

It’s probable since the chicken place has potatoes, gree banas, canned pineapple, evaporated milk, hair cream, phone cards, plumbing fixtures, irrigation tubing, nals and door locks. Oh, and chicken. All this in a 7x20ft cement box called a butig.

I stride up to the “counter,” a large, rotting wooden platform framed with rusted chicken wire. I call through the wire “asselaamu aleykum?” and wait for a dirty head to pop up from behind the piles of meat and potatoes (the raw and mildewed variety, not your down home cookin’).

I am brave and begin my order in Hassaniye, but tragically, momentarily forget the word for chicken. I complete my request in French, butchering both languages but communicating nonetheless. The merchant, lethargic, but not yet sleeping, rummages through the meat and entrails in the freezer.

“I need two kilos,” I shout through the fencing.

“Oh, so you speak Hassaniye?” a customer and/or loiterer asks. He is a wiry moor dressed in a howli (multi-purpose cloth that often serves as a turban) and a silk screened tee shirt with faded English and an unrecognizable decal on the front. I am modest and admit that, “yes, I know a little.”

We have a small conversation while I order some carrots. We talk about my work here in Atar, training in Kaedi and how my Hassaniye is zeyn hatte for a nasraniye. I am flattered and triumphant: not only am I navigating the market and an afternoon Ramadan purchase, but also a coherent conversation. I am high on my own accomplishment when I proudly ask “haddhe b’aash?” (how much). It is then I realize my error: I did not get per kilo prices for my purchases. For all my ramblings in Hassaniye, I’m about to pay tourist prices. After a calculated pause, he spits out a seemingly inflated price in French. Double whammy. I’m ripped off and rendered only bilingual in one fell swoop. I begrudgingly hand over seventeen hundred ougiye, mutter some goodbyes in bastardized Frassaniye and accept pseudo defeat.

There is one advantage to my thirty-second fishbowl memory. A stroll in the blistering sun with a bag of frozen chicken cooling my forearms quickly wipes the market shame from my recollection. I’ll not convince everyone everyday of my slowly improving language skills. Often, I’m the hardest sell for this peddled lie… So long as I can muster a smile despite my linguistic struggle, so long as this over-stretched plastic bag holds the chicken until Jen and Kris’ house, so long as I can revel in my American meal tonight, this day can be both a pseudo-defeat and victory. My glasses are usually half full anyway.

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1: Ramadan means no eating or drinking or sex from sunup at 6am till sundown at 7pm for an entire lunar month. Since Mauritania is an Islamic Republic, i.e. theocracy, all citizens are required to fast with the exceptions of pregnant women, young children, frail elders and sneaky middle aged men.

inspired!

Monday night
Recovering from a gluttonous meal in town, the volunteers shuffle home in the half-lit streets of Atar. We hear a small voice from the shadows call out: “hello there.” Being a female volunteer in a large, Mauritanian, tourist-ridden city, I am well accustomed to random greetings from the locals at night. I am also well aware that a response is culturally inappropriate if not promiscuous. We ignore the salutation until it registers: that hello was delivered by a woman with a crisp British accent. Our pace slows and we search the darkness, confused but curious.

“Hello?” we call out in our mother tongue (and hopefully hers). Two figures emerge from the shadows, a pretty young blonde and her taller companion, a Latino man with dark, curly hair. We exchange names and greetings, handshakes and hellos, unsure how five PCVs and two – no make that three as their small daughter leaps out into the street – tourists should interact in a dark Mauritanian alley. It is late and we are tired, so we let the superficial greeting suffice and return home.

Tuesday morning
I am celebrating my third day of fasting with a predawn cup of porridge. Kristen sleeps inside while I finish breakfast and clean up around the compound. I am inspired – for no especially good reason – to cut large bricks of recently-bought soap into more manageable pieces. It is unnecessary busy work, but will kill time until K wakes up. I tiptoe in the bedroom, silently retrieve my leatherman and sneak into the courtyard.

Cue disaster, ten minutes later. My right hand is clamped desperately tight to the now-butchered skin between my thumb and forefinger. Blood is draining from my left hand, my face, my brain, my consciousness… I hoist my mangled hand above my head and stagger to the bedroom.

“Kristen?”

She turns in her sleep.

“Um, I think I cut my hand. I think I might need your help. Soonish. Please.”

She leaps up from the matela with surprising speed, going from REM sleep to alert in 3.7 seconds. One look at my blanched face must have convinced her to action. “Sit. Now,” she orders. I remember all of three things: the feeling of sun-warmed concrete under my thighs, Kristen gasping in horror at my wound, and my would-be nurse calmly repeating “… and breathe.”

Not that I would have bled out without her help, but I do appreciate her helping me maintain consciousness. And scrubbing the bejesus out of my wound while I was still in half-numb shock. And not being the least bit queasy about a wound she later described as “fleshy.”

I have not yet seen my wound, but I have anthropomorphized it and given it a personality. At present, wound is clean but angry and wondering whether a vacation to the Nouakchott medical office would be nice this time of year.

Tuesday afternoon
I cannot adequately express the deliciousness of fresh tomato and Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow) cheese on baguette with pepper and celery salt. It can only be matched by homemade peanut butter and honey made of dates on baguette. You will have to take my third world word for it.

Tuesday evening
Atar volunteers meet at Tyler’s to have tea with the British couple from the night before. Not three miniature kaas (cups) of over-sugared minty Mauritanian tea but mugs of steeped Lipton, no milk (too bad) but no sugar either (too good).

We meet Karl and Tess and their three-year-old daughter Danani. Karl is from Guam, Tess from London and the three haven’t seen “home” for three months. Over the past few years, home has been a string of organic farms all across the globe. Gallivanting agriculturally was evidently too sedentary, leading them to take a months-long vacation through northwest Africa.

Incredible.

Everything about them is incredible. Karl and Tess are entirely in love but not sickeningly so; their daughter is bilingual and brilliant but not pretentious, perfectly behaved but charmingly curious; and they all passed through Morocco on taxis and trains with a few dinars, patience, rudimentary French and two small rucksacks for luggage. After they tour Mauritania and Senegal, this extraordinary family is destined for Greece to visit relatives, then Guam to settle down.

I feel like I’ve just been told the Earth is flat. This nomadic, worldly, incredible life simply cannot be feasible, yet I see these three travelers making their dreams come true. Providing a blueprint for my own dreams…

How have I never heard about this option in life’s course catalog? How have I never heard of Worldly Workers for Organic Farms, an amorphous online association of individuals who would relocate to a foreign country and work for room and board on organic farms? It is intense cultural assimilation like Peace Corps, but sans bureaucracy. How could I not be aware of a way to enrich your child and yourself while also saving the world? My head is spinning with a multitude of previously unbroken paths now sprawling before me.

I am inspired!

Tuesday late evening
I am seated at Hawa’s restaurant with the volunteers and the British family, engaged in thoughtful conversation about language and developmental aid organizations and bissap wine… my phone sounds in my bag with a number I don’t recognize. To my delight, it is Frances. My god, it’s good to hear her voice, to explode with excitement, finally able to thank her for the packages and letters and cards and pictures. My heart suddenly hurts, realizing how much I have missed her all in one joyous painful moment. We kill a better part of a phone card before I have to reluctantly return to my bean plate, now surely but inconsequentially cold.

When we hang up, I remember she once said, “it’s as if the entire Atlantic Ocean came crashing down between us.” I am both full and empty.

Take home points are as follows:

1. Despite daily, trilingual harassment, don’t be too stubborn to return a friendly hello.
2. Don’t be disappointed about cutting your hand during Ramadan. So you can’t fast while your body heals? Big deal. Be grateful for friends trained in first aid. And the fact that you didn’t hit bone. Or nerves. “It could always be worse” is increasingly relevant.
3. Take joy in simple things without feeling simple. For gourmands like me, this means bruised tomatoes and processed cheese.
4. Seize the opportunity to be inspired. Never write off an idea or lifestyle as too crazy or impossible. But if you do, try to meet someone who can unequivocally prove you wrong.
5. Don’t be afraid to think of people who are gone for fear you might miss them. Because you will. And it will hurt. But it’s that good kind of hurt, like muscles after you run. Always exercise your love.

Can’t beat a Mauritanian sunrise

Day two of Ramadan. My alarm pierces the morning, the peace and near quiet, my sleep. In my half-consciousness, I remember: today is Ramadan. I am fasting from sunup to sundown. Must get up. If I am going to eat before 7pm tonight, must… get… up… I reach over and hit the snooze button.

Ten minutes later. Alarm shrieks out in what is no longer silence. Are those roosters crowing?! I am awake this time and in a semi-panic: must beat the sunrise! I plod sleepily but smartly across the roof in the dark, stumble down the steep concrete stairs to my compound and crash into the rusted metal door below. Silently, I curse the side effects of my malaria prophylaxis (god-awful balance and a strangely metallic taste on my tongue) and push my way into the compound. I scan the courtyard for a gas burner I borrowed from Tyler and realize I can see it by my bedroom door. By the faint light of the rising sun. Must. Beat. The. Sunrise.

I lug the stove into the kitchen and frantically measure out powdered milk, millet, water, strike match, light stove, burn the fine hair of my knuckles, drop lit match on floor, appreciate the layer of sand that extinguishes the flame, wait for water to boil, wait, wait, wait, duck my head out the rickety wooden door, contemplate time travel versus cheating on Ramadan, cook, stir, cook, burn hands on pot, slop porridge in cup, climb to the roof, sit down with still boiling liquid, prepare to chug. By this time, the sunrise is more than threatening; it is imminent, beckoned by the city’s resident flock of screaming roosters. The clouds, once inky black, become navy, drink my cereal, indigo, drink, royal blue, drink, drink, slate blue with the inkling of a golden sun, drink, finished.

I sit on my roof with my empty tin cup and a belly full of nshe watching – now leisurely – the clouds part to reveal a pale blue sky. The silhouette of mud brick houses assume their ruddy brown color in the new sunlight, the uniformity broken only by satellite dishes perched on roofs, brilliantly white and modern by contrast. Black feathery shadows of date palms in the distance breathe to life, increasingly green against the backlit plateaus. I am not from Kansas, but this is like emerging from Dorothy’s house, a Technicolor Atar.

I want to retrieve my journal and document this moment, but I can’t bring myself to walk downstairs and miss a moment of the sky’s palette shift. What is a perfectly accurate journal entry worth compared to a few more moments of early morning calm? It is the second time I hit my snooze button.

As I write these words (the pen and paper finally called me from my roof), the clouds continue to roll in. They are increasingly thick, blotting out the rocky formations that surround the city, then the outskirts of town, then the date palms a few blocks away. A small plastic bag blows overhead, higher than the flocks of agitated pigeons, and lazily rides an air current across the city. It’s unnaturally bright blue color fades in the dusty haze, falling victim to the incoming sandstorm. I squint my eyes against the gritty diamonds of sand kicked up in the gusts. My pen begins to crackle against the sand on my journal pages, and I realize it’s time to go inside. Already, I see the mountains coming back into relief a few kilometers out; the storm shouldn’t be long. Although my morning on the roof is cut short, I am thankful. Without this sandstorm to blot out the sunrise just a half hour ago, I would have never had enough time to cook and eat my breakfast. Seems as though, mercifully, nature has a snooze button of her own.

Novelty, in that shiny dollar store kind of way

I need to write more often, to chronicle the rapidly changing conditions of my vie en rose (I’m surrounded by concrete painted pink, remember?) and maybe to keep track of the date.

The theme this morning: how to combat novelty? In the past week, I have endured three invitations from my landlord (lunch, dinner, and the ever-so-sketchy “ride into the country”), an enthusiastic offer to help m carry shelves (the driver actually threw his truck in reverse to catch up to me), a smattering of more or less innocuous compliments re: my zweyne (cute) melifa, and an earnest – if not sweet – request to watch the sunset from the roof of a friend we met through a former PCV.

I realized last night, while receiving Mauritanian-style catcalls like “eywe, shiftu bidhani” (translates roughly to, “ooh, look at the pretty local and/or embodiment of white moor beauty”), that this unwanted attention comes regardless of my appearance. My landlord’s invite was offered to me after an evening of sleepless, violent illness – not a pretty picture. If I had accepted the sunset proposition, I’d have trekked to the roof in a wrinkled, dirty, PCV hand-me-down skirt and dingy grey tee shirt. My shelf-carrying melifa – apparently worthy of catcalls – is a faded periwinkle, painfully plain, obviously cheap and as integrated as my fashion ever gets. The point is, I used to accept a compliment, wherever its source, as exactly that: complimentary. Coming to terms with the reality of Mauritania, therefore, is a blow to my ego; these come-ons are less a testament to my beauty than to my novelty. And unfortunately, I am only capable of modifying the former.

A few days ago at the bureau, Kristen asked me, if there was one thing I could change about this country, magic-wands and all, what would it be? I said, with little hesitation, whatever is going on between me and Mauritanian men. She empathized and echoed my concern. “Yeah,” she asked hypothetically, “what can I wear so that you will leave me alone?” Our concern goes beyond cultural appropriateness; I want cultural anonymity. I want, more than integration, invisibility…

Considering my center-of-attention personality, it is strange to want to be ignored, to disappear into this dusty, bustling, pseudo metropolis. And by strange, my logic reminds me, I mean futile. Even with five of us in Atar, I am always going to be “the nasraniye” when I shuffle into the market, melifa or not, just like all the other PCVs. We are the main attraction in a two-years-long circus, and language skills, wardrobe and integration notwithstanding, all eyes are permanently on the center ring. Can novelty day in and day out become monotonous? And am I qualified to confirm this only having lived here ten days?

Thanksgiving in September, what’s a month early if it’s always summer?

After a sleepless night and overly wakeful morning, I am possessed to express how thankful I am. Ironic, I know. This country has surely ruined the chemical processes in my head.

First, I have a house. Oddly enough, after four grueling days of hunting, I have a house. House hunting in Mauritania is much like that in the United States, except three magnitudes more difficult and no similarities. Think language barriers, the unshakeable label of wealthy tourist, a feeble volunteer salary, landlords who offer “Arabic lessons” or “lunch at my place” or yes even “a ride far out into the country to see some beautiful property,” unpatched walls, broken locks, flooded toilets, rotting window frames, rusted security grates, repairs totaling two years of living allowance, bleating goats, screaming children, and so on. The point is, that after four days of all this, I found a house. The same one that had caught my eye during site visit but was not good enough for me to commit. Now, with enough hunting experience to last me a decade, this compound is more than perfect. Situated just north of the town center, chez Ellen is not more than ten minutes walk to the market, the best restaurants (I’m so domestic, right?), the hospital (God forbid this proximity is useful), all the volunteers en ville¹, and my newest and dearest friend Nouha (to be addressed later in this list of thankfulness).

My house is not really a house in the American, four-walls-and-a-roof sense; instead it is a compound: a large 25x40ft courtyard encased by hand-packed cement walls which form three “bedrooms,” a “kitchen,” a “shower,” and a “bathroom.” I employ the use of scare quotes for honesty and comedy. Not that the amenities themselves are scary, but their defining characteristics in this country are loose at best. The bedrooms are huge concrete boxes, about 10x15ish, some with windows at knee height, some not. All are outfitted with makeshift curtains left by the previous volunteer, squeaky ceiling fans (mashallah), and a pastel pink paintjob. The kitchen is a kitchen by virtue that it is half the size of a bedroom and was once used as a kitchen. There are no appliances or countertops or sinks or faucets, just four concrete walls, a metal shelf and a lightbulb. The shower (for which I’m largely thankful, even though I prefer bucket baths to showers) is another concrete box, half the size of the kitchen with a window that opens to the street and a door that opens to my courtyard. With both window and door propped open, the desert draft is delicious (if not alliterative) and makes for a refreshing rinse. The bathroom is up a crooked flight of stairs above the shower and consists of four low (chest-high) cement walls, a rickety wooden door heavy with decades of paint, and a flat ceramic basin with a hold embedded in the (you guessed it) concrete floor. It is actually swanky for third-world-Africa, and despite my comical contempt, I secretly love my kebine mshacshac (pronunciation: kuh bean ah im sha sha, translation: bling bling toilet). Easy to clean, easy to use, above nose height – I couldn’t ask for more. From the bathroom or the compound in general. I am unpacking my bags happily into one bedroom (three is so big!), making plans for vegetable gardens and flower beds, and falling in love with light pink. I am thankful and I am home.

Second, but extremely close, runner up on my list of blessings is the aforementioned Nouha. By whatever name you call a higher power, she is descended from him/her/them/it. Befriended by former Adrar volunteers, Nouha is gracious and hospitable by even Mauritanian standards (set quite high by my host family in Sabualla and my language facilitator Brahim). Take for example yesterday afternoon: Kristen and I dropped in on her unexpectedly just to say hello and return her phone call. Within ten minutes, we were surrounded by a mouthwatering spread of hot tea (she makes it more bitter than sweet, delicious), cool zrig (a local milk drink that she has perfected) and frozen balle bastiques (small plastic bags filled with frozen juice, this time sour baobab). The range of flavors and temperatures was exactly what our spirits needed to face the afternoon sun.

Before we left to brave the elements, Nouha extended her hospitality further and offered to accompany us to the market in the morning. This was an amazing offer for two reasons. First, I am my mother in that I hate going to the grocery by myself. Somehow, a trip up and down the aisles with list in one hand, cart in the other is not just tolerable, but enjoyable when with a friend². Second, the market in Mauritania is intimidating. With a capital I. Hell, all the letters are capitalized. Imagine narrow streets lined with garbage, goats, and buildings so densely packed there isn’t room for an alley. Imagine concrete walls punctuated by filthy pastel painted metal doors, swinging haphazardly open, barely containing the wares spilling from within. Imagine ramshackle tables covered in meat covered in flies, ribbons of crusted dates hanging above boxes of bruised tomatoes, waves of plastic sandals cascading from under displays of dusty, repackaged water meters and rusty nails and pipe fittings and imported radios and unidentifiable cosmetics and half-used paint cans and barrels of engine oil later used for barrels of cooking oil and musty jeans in teetering piles and plastic cups and bowls and pitchers and makarej in colorschemes that would shame rainbows right next to the rancid meat... Imagine all these items hocked in one hundred plus degree heat in at least three different spoken (shouted) languages, all without a single price tag. This, my friends, is a trip to the grocery. May God lengthen your life, Nouha, for alleviating the terror that is the Atar market for a newly-arrived etrangere. No wonder the current PCV frequents the local restaurants for every meal.

We are scheduled to meet Nouha in an hour, when she can hopefully navigate the crowded passages, our strange shopping lists (who in this country buys more vegetables than rice?), and the inflated nasrani prices³. Glad to know I have someone to hold my hand through the process and a place to put my bags when I'm done.

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1: En ville (in the city) as opposed to en brousse (in the bush), i.e. small villages 30-360 minutes outside of Atar proper. With five volunteers en ville and six en brousse, the conservative, dry (alcohol and humidity), very Muslim, marginally inhospitable Adrar region is Peace Corps Mauritania’s most popular destination.

2: In fact, some of my favorite memories occurred in grocery stores thanks to the exceptional company. Dragging Mom to Krogers (yes, I pluralized it) since we have nothing for dinner and Gerry will be home soon, either curious over bare shelves or pleasantly surprised by full ones.

Braving the evil that is Walmart with my beloved Frances for cocktail weenies (great with grape jelly!... or… ew) against our will at midnight the day before my going away party and everywhere else was closed, we swear!

Running to the tiny market near our flat on Rue St Jacques with Ciara to splurge on crabsticks, granola, strong mustard (the only kind worth buying comes from France), Boursin (Colleen, that’s for you) and coconut drink.

Giggling though a world flea market in Blue Ash, picking up items for a dinner Jonathan and I barely know how to cook, but damned if we won’t eat it on placemats with napkin rings at our brand new dining room table with a bottle of wine recommended by the Times.

The mayhem caused by my brother and I screaming down the aisles (screaming as in speed and volume); pushing each other into displays of toilet paper and coffee and peanut butter; slamming the cart into each other’s kankles until Dad takes the wheel; catching up on college life in Boston, Chicago, Paris, Pittsburgh (yes, this bedlam was perpetrated when we were college-aged); shouting bids at the cash register, groaning when our guess was over, rejoicing when we hit the total within cents, impressed with the cashier’s knack for the Price Is Right Thriftway-style…

So long as I had a shopping companion, I’d happily live my life out in strings of grocery store moments.

3: Nasrani means white person or Christian, nearly the same thing in Mauritania. Our skin color falsely indicates a ridiculously large sum of money in our wallets. If only the merchants knew we worked for free.

sweat, internet

please, for my sanitys sake, dear readers, do me a favor: calculate what you earn in a day. no, dont tell me the sum; id surely turn green with underpaid-volunteer envy... or perhaps the local parasite thats been going around. instead, imagine walking into a cybercafe. sit down to a computer and try unsuccessfully to check your email for an hour. then, before leaving the cafe, hand that sum of money to the cashier. yes, the whole eight hours worth. ps, the cafe has neither air conditioner nor windows. oh and its pushing at least a hundred degrees. outside the concrete box you in which you are sitting.

do i sound bitter? thats the latter part of the oft-cited "the good, the bad, and the ugly." heres the first two:

i am a volunteer, officially affectated to atar, the northern most (proper) city in mauritania. to locate on an atlas, i recommend finding the continent of africa and looking under the capital "s" of SAHARA DESERT. yep, thats where i live. ish. /smile

when i learn to navigate the internet up here (a blazing 56k) i will catch up on emails and journal entries (hand written thus far). for now, please know that i am happy (good), healthy (good), and miss the following things (bad, but tolerable), in no particular order:

- beer
- cheese
- saying hello to people on the street without questioning cultural boundaries
- smiling at children
- petting cats without questioning disease transmutability
- sharing my innermost thoughts online with strangers (more to come, promise)
- baseball games, green couches
- reading o silent escort
- dancing
- (functioning) buzz clippers
- anyone who has written me a letter (gold stars and brownie points will indeed be awarded ~sept 2008)

signing out for now, but keep sending me positive vibes. im but 4000 mi away as the crow flies, and goodwill isnt diluted over such cosmically trivial distances.

Reading myself into emergency sex

I cannot lie, today is not what I would call triumphant. My tolerance for flies, heat and local cuisine is weak; my health is weaker still; and cultural integration today stopped just short of wearing a skirt instead of jeans. I have not yet stepped out of Tyler’s compound today and I refuse to feel guilty. Kinda. Ok, I am guilty but not wracked by it. Yet. Look, I’m allowed.

My manifesto of lazy thus laid out, I will nevertheless attempt redemption. I cannot help my immune system’s susceptibility to giardia or my sanity’s susceptibility to flies, but I will enrich my mind while I suffer. I just plowed though a three hundred page book in less than twelve hours. Including time for sleep.

The book caught my eye in a stack of dozens at the bureau: Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: a True Story from Hell on Earth. Far from a sordid tale of betrayal and friendship (so said the sensationalist book flap cover), this is a dense and gritty memoir written by three individuals whose lives intersect internationally while serving as UN peace keepers. This set of intertwining biographies takes place over a decade and a half, four continents and five genocides – a shockingly honest, gruesome account of what it means to be human in the face of inhumanity. It is an amazing read as a volunteer serving overseas in the name of peace just as it might be for someone in the States trying to understand international developmental aid. While certain elements are beyond my scope of experience – namely gunfire, flak jackets, mass graves and war tribunals – the author’s experiences abroad were still intensely relevant to me. For example:

Heidi’s fear before joining the UN that her life had been squandered, over after just thirty years of unaccomplishment. Andrew’s struggle with a higher power who “pisses prayers down to earth, leaving everyone to die” (248), his attempt to reconcile undeserved, pervasive destitution with God. Ken’s longing for admission into a society of knowledgeable, selfless, worldly people. The recurring themes of hopelessness in the face of ineffective aid structures; of recklessness of foreigners high on altruism, youth, and invincibility; of impotence against global entropy and egoism; of decadence given the astronomical buying power of even a measly aid worker’s salary; and of doubting the value and durability of your work both during service and after departure.

I know what it is like to be loaded with local currency in the third world, to fight beyond language barriers to hear a first-hand account of brutal, present-day slavery, to stare in amazement at a seven-year old girl cradle her naked baby brother with dirty fingernails and no complaints, to feel simultaneous triumph and failure. And I can foresee the estrangement I’ll have upon reentry in America. Substituting one metropolis for another, Heidi summarizes my exact fears:

“I used to have a lot of friends here in Cincinnati. Now most of them have moved on or are busy tending to their own lives. They go to work and come home and worry about paying rent and how many years it will take them to save enough for a down payment on a house in Blue Ash. I want to escape that for as long as I can. Ordinary life will always be here; I can come back to it anytime” (212).

She balances this loathing for “ordinary life” later with her own yearning to settle down and refuse “the privilege to stand in another field, another country, another war” (241). She craves normalcy and companionship and 2.5 kids and dripping mangoes beside lazy pools and creamy stouts drank on green couches… I can’t help but read myself in her words, project my own wishes into her memoirs. I too suffer from illusions of grandeur and cravings for domesticity and hard-as-nails pragmatism and youthful idealism and self-importance and self-denigration.

Clearly, I read this book in reference to my own experience, and perhaps ten years from now, these passages will have lost their poignancy and relevance. But at a pivotal moment in my life, I see myself in a woman who grew up in Jersey, but grew wise in Somalia, in Haiti, in Cambodia. At this pivot, my service in Africa represents one of two things. It is either a welcome break from suburban monotony; a chance for one last, cultural, developmental, life-changing hurrah before settling down in Middle America. Or, it is the first stone on the beginning of my path in Africa. I cannot bring myself to tell my mother, my brother, my best friend, but already I have considered a third year in Mauritania. Never mind that I’m just finishing my third month; I have found something I am good at, that is good for me, and that is ostensibly good for the world. How, then, will I return to a desk job in two years and leave this exotic life of altruistic, fulfilling service behind? And if I cannot, how will I endure the self-inflicted heartbreak when I leave those I love in the States? How can I weigh phone cards and professional gratification, loved ones and Arabic dialects, and what am I going to do with my life??

For now, I’ll bask (burn?) in the light of introspection afforded me by this lazy day in Mauritania. In a feeble attempt at nourishment, I’ll choke down a can of pineapple and maybe a bag of crackers. And try to stomach the unfolding (unraveling?) of my life.

RIM VIPs

After a late dinner last night, the volunteers slugged back home, ready to crash. On the way back, Tyler’s curiosity was piqued by loud music and festive chants coming from a neighboring compound. He returned after a brief inspection: “it’s a dance party!” he told us, his revelation muffled as he pulled a boubou over his head and went for the door. I called after him to wait, yanked my melifa from my suitcase and wrapped it hurriedly around my shoulders as I followed him into the street. I chuckled to myself as we trotted down the alley toward the noise. Living life ten minutes at a time, I realized, made for crooked melifas but unforeseen adventures. It was a tradeoff I was willing to make as Tyler and I approached the throng of Mauritanians crowded at the party entrance.

Fearless, we pushed our way toward the door and were suddenly escorted to the front of the line and into the compound. Apparently the novelty of nasranis in local garb was the price of VIP admission. I tried to catch my breath as all five senses were throttled: the band amplified over bullhorns hung precariously from cockeyed posts; one hundred plus Mauritanians clapping, smoking, dancing, sweating, the scent of which was strong enough to taste; a colorful sea of heads veiled in wax print and tye dye melifas encircled by a mass of blue and white boubous; the bustling crowd enveloping Tyler and me… it was incredible.

My escort recognized someone in the mob and started a conversation in broken French, barely audible over the yips, yells and drumbeats. His friend led us toward the dance floor and its pulsing audience. He shouted in thick African French “you have to get closer to see!” I collected the folds of my melifa and shuffled deeper into the crowd. The women danced in their veils, seductively modest and stunningly beautiful. They were prey to their male counterparts flamboyantly flapping their boubous like great blue dancing vultures. I was so taken by this courtship that I forgot to notice my surroundings. Tyler was still by my side, but I, in my olive and plum melifa, was perched in a nest of blue boubous. I stammered a quick explanation and apology, stumbled into the now-unmistakable aisle segregating the men and women, and made my way toward the swarm of veils seated on the floor. The last thing I heard Tyler say was, “wow, you’re brave…”

I nestled myself between two women, gritted my teeth and greeted them in the clearest, loudest Hassaniye I could manage. Their reception was not immediate, nor was the conversation meaningful, but we did laugh and clap and cheer together. And it was wonderful. The obvious questions were asked and answered without episode: where are you from? Are you French? Do you like your melifa? And of course, is Atar/Mauritania/this dance party zeyn hatte? Wallahi, everything was very good.

We stayed until nearly midnight, refusing to leave until our eyes were closing, our chariots turning to pumpkins. Exhilarated, exhausted and dripping with sweat, we returned home, tiptoeing through the compound so as to not wake the other volunteers.

Designer tee shirts

I came to the unhappy conclusion that occasionally, Mauritanian children are merely uncouth little versions of their parents. Uninhibited by social boundaries, RIM kids launch easily into inquiries that would otherwise be reserved for more intimate relations than passing strangers: are you married? Do you have kids? Are you a virgin? All within the two-minute commute to class, screamed from a tire swing by voices unfamiliar and seemingly uncaring. Fare from a greeting laced with curiosity or even a hello peppered with unintentionally insulting questions, my Sabuallan sabeyiin (children) go for the jugular. They barely await a response, since the goal is in the asking, not answering.

I am learning both resilience and diversion tactics, the best of which is to fire back the same questions. Asking a seven year old “candak mint?” (do you have a daughter?) is sufficiently baffling that I’m halfway to class by the time my would-be interviewers recover their wits. If my strange response doesn’t catch them off guard, it at least tickles their funny bone, and I’d always prefere a chuckle to confusion.

As to other solutions, undoubtedly necessary in Atar, a city whose source of children is inexhaustible, I am thinking of a secondary project of silk screening tee shirts. My first batch would read:

“Wallahi, ele maa candi rajil, laa ishshashra, laa cadeau. We nte?”
(Nope, don’t have a man, or kids, or a present. Do you?)

Screening calls more difficult than flies

What a blur this weekend has been. This past month has been. EE model school was Saturday, was success. To see a “real” class situation was nothing if surprising. The lesson plan preparation, students’ responses, teachers’ questions, volunteers’ involvement in games and learning – I could have predicted none of it. Eventually I would have been introduced to the Mauritanian educational system, but I am thankful to have been seated next to my coordinator during my first exposure. Keith communicates enthusiasm and confidence like a disease; if he couldn’t answer our questions, he at least shared in our confusion. As much as I want to fly, the sky looks ominous from my nested vantage point.

And number one reason to fear leaving the nest: gender relations. Characteristically, I goofed another male-female interaction, a recurring and I’m afraid enduring issue. After only fifteen minutes, my assigned counterpart in model school asked for my number. Although my coordinator offered sage advice – give him the wrong number – I caved when Yebde caught me with my phone in hand. Great, he said in Hassaniye, I will call you right now and test the number. Guess he was savvy to the wrong number tactic.

He has since called five times. In one week.

It’s not that I mind ignoring advances or screening my calls, but I worry that professional relationships will be thusly impossible with male counterparts in Atar. I was wholly prepared for rejection due to cultural differences and yet-unachieved integration. I could not have predicted that my inappropriate behavior and RIM-naivete would result in proposals and come-ons. Surely, I could have withstood rejection better than this constant unsolicited attention. Likewise, I could support “unwanted harassment” à la Peace Corps trainee videos from strangers better than deliberate, directed affection from coworkers. Not sure how this will pan out… maybe I’ll just buy a new SIM card?

Lesson plans went so smashingly, Keith rewarded his EE girls with the zenith of Mauritanian eats: pizza. Three of them. We were gluttonous pigs and we didn’t share and we didn’t feel bad. Indigestion notwithstanding.

For all my anxiety, CBT animations elicited much praise from our coordinators, but my self denigrating tendencies lead me to question their approval. Was tree transplanting successfully presented or was my ego was mercifully stroked? Was our Hassaniye coherent or were we simply humored by Peace Corps and Sabualla alike? The truth may never surface, but it’s just as well: whether I did ok or failed miserably, my ability will be laid naked in Atar. And I suspect I’ll find my footing just in time for me to COS¹ and relinquish my position to the next volunteer.

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1: COS, another blessed acronym, stands for close of service, that fateful day when I turn in my hippie Peace Corps badge and return to the daily grind of corporate America. Mine happens to be 28 Sept 2006.

Fencing isn’t perpetual, unless it’s a circular field

I went to the fields with my mom this weekend, taking advantage of an opportunity to spend time with my family in their element and to contemplate sustainability in development.

Since I arrived in Sabualla, my mom has been trying to communicate her lifelong dream to have a garden of her own with date palms and mango trees, adlegaan (cowpeas) and kilkash (melons). It would not be enough to work in a Sabuallan coop, of which there are two; she wants an oasis in her backyard, protected from livestock by meters of perfect, shiny, metal fencing. If only I had fencing, she says like a child eyeing a bike in a toy store window, I could have a huge huge huge garden. I finally conveyed to her that PCVs don’t work for money (hence the whole volunteer thing), but she is convinced, when I am patron (rich land owner, verging on pimp in translation) in the US, I can call her cell phone every day and send her money for fencing.

Her aunt has fencing and her cowpeas are plentiful and unharassed by donkeys. With this successful example of fenced gardening, Teitta surely knows the advantages, i.e. she does not want griyaj (fence) for griyaj sake. So the question is, how can I help in a sustainable way? Can I afford fencing, either now or later? If so, should I buy her some even if I can’t continue to do this over decades? In buying her “fish,” am I preventing her from learning to fish herself? If I simply provide her this luxury with no work necessary on her part, will she maintain it or patiently wait for the next gullible trainee? How can I support her enthusiasm without just throwing money at her?... Clearly, my questioning phase is still in full throttle…

Since when is “idealistic” pejorative?

I have been thinking more and more about development, now a near obsession sandwiched between the [insert nongovernmental organization] debacle and CBT animations. I want Sunday (due date for animations) to be more than a linguistic exercise, something beyond a test of my own technical expertise. How amazing would it be, I wonder, if our families could actually learn something?

How improbable, my rational self answers. How unnecessary, fellow volunteers answer. How idealistic, Peace Corps staff answers. Do the animation, don’t screw up your Hassaniye, don’t expect comprehension or interest on behalf of the locals.

Belatedly, I realize the animation’s purpose: a chance to screw up before animating on site. In this new knowledge, I am overcome with guilt, with unrealistic expectations. Deduction indicates that the entirety of training was for this exact purpose, combat with blanks. It fuels my nagging suspicion that Peace Corps is taking advantage of our CBT sites. True, our village benefits culturally from our presence, but from a developmental perspective, we are perpetually dangling carrots that do not exist.

Trainees practice PACA with no intention of following up on requests for technical assistance. We record their most pressing environmental concerns, but present solutions to half-interested PC staff in the theoretical safety of the Kaedi training center. My guilt would be at least marginally assuaged if we could provide them just forty minutes worth of useful information in the pedagogical format of animations.

I suppose my hope, my silent plea is that the trainees vi Sabualla one, care enough to prepare a quality presentation, and two, muster the linguistic capacity to deliver something comprehensible. Even if we only live here for two more weeks, our animations might be longer lived, inshallah.

80% chance precipitation, 95% chance integration

Today, I was feeling unintegrated, not in that exasperated antisocial way, but more in that slightly eccentric restless way. I decided thus to buck social norms and play in the rain.

Mauritania is in the desert. I know this much is obvious to our geographically enlightened readers, but it bears repeating. Especially since I have observed a morbid fear of rain chez les Mauritaniens. If there were grocery stores and meteorological reports (and televisions for that matter), forecasts of sprinkles would send Sabualla residents racing to clear shelves of toilet paper (if that existed here…) and bottled water (ok, the metaphor is a stretch). In a climate where temperatures peak one hundred every day, people run from a cooling drizzle.

And run they did. When the rain started, only the livestock scattered more quickly than my family, running for overhangs and dry tent flaps. I looked skyward, smiled, and sat on the yellow hsera in the rain.

Eventually, my little sister (eight years old and thus unencumbered by socially-constructed shame) joined me. We cackled madly as the rain soaked our clothes through, happy to be uncharacteristically chilled in this usually arid wasteland. The adults in my family looked on in curious confusion and reluctant jealousy. Separate as I was from my peers, it was a moment of pure friendship and giggly integration with Khadijetou sqiire. These bonding moments are so much sweeter when unexpected, unplanned like Saharan downpours.

Iron Chef would have my head

I am a cooking fool. And by cooking fool I mean clownish but optimistic culinary failure. My skills are so subpar, whether in a modern American kitchen or over a Mauritanian gas stove. Like many volunteers, I optimistically listed “learn to cook” as one of my goals here in country. To that end, the trainees of Sabualla gave the domestic thing a shot last Tuesday, with horrendous results. Laughably horrendous, but horrendous nonetheless. After a quick trip to the Boghe market, we assembled at Donna’s house with bleached vegetables, soaked beans and melting butter. Our envisioned meal was spaghetti and garlic bread; our actual meal was macaroni the consistency of glue, crunchy vegetables swimming in a kilo of tomato paste (we thought we had bought peeled tomatoes) and stale bread dipped in liquid butter. We could barely eat over the shameful giggles – the meal was much more fun than edible.

Today was my chance for redemption. After hearing the story of failed spaghetti, Teitta made my culinary education her top priority. My host mom was going to teach me to cook. Great, I thought, some indigenous knowledge and a Mauritania-friendly recipe, exactly what I’ll need to survive in Atar. Luckily, I was an excellent student and prepared everything to Teitta’s standards. Unluckily, the meal she chose to teach was nothing short of revolting: maaru we il ham during a food shortage, i.e. overcooked rice with goat guts, no veggies. My lunch guests were ravenous and appreciative (zeyn hatte!) but I could barely eat my own concoction. Tomorrow, Teitta and I tackle nshe together. I’m not sure how I could foul up Mauritanian cream of wheat but I’ll not underestimate my own talents.

A flash in the development pan

This afternoon, [insert nongovernmental organization] graced Sabualla with:

1. a brief nutrition seminar,
2. a cloud of dust behind a speeding (and incidentally Peace Corps-white) 4-wheel vehicle,
3. and a good dose of small town drama.

Details are unclear, but apparently only half the village was invited, leaving the other half (my family included) less than pleased. Really, details are unnecessary; the take home point has less to do with specific Sabuallan politics and more to do with development in general.

I wonder how many hours and dollars were spent on this nutrition campaign, only to end up with more hostility than information conveyed. Seeing [insert nongovernmental organization] storm in with their safari clothes, loud cars and fancy notebooks (read: logo-ridden propaganda, distributed like so many cadeaus) gave me a guilty sense of superiority. After all, I am Peace Corps, an organization focused on sustainable development and community-driven, grass-roots initiatives. Until I remembered I too had arrived in a noisy vehicle, decked out in a skirt bought in Philadelphia.

Perhaps Peace Corps sets itself apart and redeems itself through the unique goal of cultural integration. In a way, we aim for reciprocated development, that of the village and that of the volunteer. My greatest wish is to effect change on both fronts, in myself and Sabualla (and eventually Atar). My greatest fear is to be little more than a flash in the development pan, an unwelcome and uninformative distraction from what would otherwise be normal Mauritanian life. True, I’ll not change the world, or even the Gorgol, but if I could proudly serve as a link in a long chain of semi-effective volunteers, that would be enough.

So, how can I play my little part in successful development? A weighty inquiry to tackle just days before our CBT animations.^1,2 Nothing like adding manufactured pressure to already frayed nerves right? But this stress is relevant to our animations. Even if it is just a training exercise, I don’t want our presentations to have a [insert nongovernmental organization] effect. After I leave Sabualla, I pray that more than half the town remembers me fondly and no one uses my fancy notebooks as flyswatters.

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1: CBT is Community Based Training, or the ten weeks prior to the two years of service in our permanent sites.

2: Animation is one of many Peace Corps-isms. This term – not English, not French – means presentation, usually one given in front of dozens of foreigners who do not speak English and cannot understand your garbled [insert local language]. Often, you do an animation with the help of a translator, i.e. a local who does not speak English and cannot understand your garbled [insert local language]. Successful animations are those that are either short or include a break (or three) for mint tea. More importantly, successful animations are required of trainees before we are sworn in as volunteers.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might also remember the terms stagaire (trainee), stage (training), refectoire (cafeteria) and affectation (placement of a volunteer to his or her permanent site). All stolen from French, all ubiquitous in PCV speech. We like our acronyms and made up frenchie words. I should really make a glossary for my constant reader.

If happy and crazy had a love child

back in Sabualla

Bipolar as my existence tends to be, I am making an attempt – in certain areas – to strike a balance. My quest for the middle ground is framed by two of today’s happenings: a melifa presentation and an afternoon garden visit.

My family this morning was all smiles when I stepped out of my room in a new Kaedi dyed melifa. Teitta could hardly contain herself as she applauded my fashion sense and proclaimed me Mauritanian for the day. The enthusiastic reception confirmed both my decision to wear the melifa at all and my decision to wait a few weeks before unveiling my veil, as it were.

Confirmation was welcome since the melifa is a tricky beast. These full-body veils are usually administered by force, host mom tenderly restraining you while sisters wrap you head to toe in nine yards of cloth. For a Mauritanian volunteer, it is the equivalent of a tattoo: once inked, you can’t easily go back. Each day thereafter, the skimpy three yards of long skirt and head scarf is painfully inadequate; your family expects more. Like it or not. Because I actively decided to wear a melifa, though, I could embrace it on my own schedule. Because I deliberately (miraculously) delayed the event, I was not fulfilling my family’s expectations but rather giving them a gift. That, and I was practicing for the inevitable melifa required in the conservative city of Atar.

Strange then, that volunteers in Atar do not wear melifas. Reeling is a forceful word, but I am certainly processing my revised fashion destiny. Why such shock? Why not relief? Initially, I thought it was the loss of an expectation: I had already resigned myself to the unwieldy mass of fabric and now had to adjust back to Old Navy skirts. I quickly realized though, clothing was not the issue. The issue was culture.

Why don’t we have to wear melifas? Why is it acceptable to reject local culture, especially for something as clear-cut as appropriate dress? My fellow volunteers and trainees were quick with a response: we don’t like melifas and we just collectively refuse. Implicit in this unanimous reply was a request verging on threat: don’t cave in to the melifa and ruin it for all future volunteers. When I proposed wearing a mix of local and American clothing, I received only hostile glares.

Which brings me to balance. I can understand occasional resistance to the melifa; even the simplest activities become agonizing events with so much extra fabric. I bear witness to difficulties from the khyme to the garden. But if clothing plays a role in integration, why should we make no effort? Why should I be chastised for participating in Mauritanian culture? Isn’t that why we are here? Each time I search for advice on this subject, I am instructed not to “ruin it for all of us” and each time I consult my gut, it is either silent or indecisive.

Awaiting melifa resolution, I’ll move on to the second happening of the day that revolves about the issue of balance. Tonight, the trainees visited our plots for the first time in two weeks. We expected dried up watermelons or half goat-eaten cowpeas or maybe under watered tree seedlings. What we found, however, was largely unexpected: our small gardens almost entirely tilled over. Granted, my yields were short of spectacular, a meager spread of cowpeas and an okra or two. But what remained resembled the aftermath of an agricultural apocalypse. Burms destroyed, okra and the start of small peanuts buried, grass and dirt chunks littered everywhere. Erin’s loss was more pronounced; she mourned the death of melons, peas, carrots and almost sprouted beets, two plots mercilessly tilled.

I am well aware that out plots grew on borrowed land and that we asked the cooperative to water the greenery in our absence. It is possible, nay one hundred percent probable, that their tilling efforts were well-intentioned. Hence a shrug and a helpless giggle on my part after I had a minute to digest the destruction. Regardless of intentions, this miscommunication merited a brief discussion with the coop, if only to ensure that the same thing does not happen to next year’s volunteers. Surprisingly, my site mates did not agree. “This is a good lesson for future PCTs: don’t expect to maintain a pristine plot if the land doesn’t belong to you. Let them learn the hard way, like us.”

Which brings me again to balance. Why such an extreme lesson? True, our loss was meager trivial; a few plants still remain and training is nearly over. Still, there must be a grey area between forcing the coop to sign an eighty page contract and allowing them to rip up our plots at will. Beggars should not be choosers, but are we really beggars? Although we are borrowing the land, doesn’t this community benefit from our presence? By resolving this issue with the coop, are we really robbing next year’s PCTs of a valuable lesson? Don’t we experience enough failure and loss without purposefully manufacturing it? Can there not be a mix of protection and exposure, especially during training?

I suppose I should consult the Peace Corps calendar. Clearly, I missed where “question everything” is scheduled… Despite my best efforts, I expect the onslaught of questions to continue while answers remain elusive. And I’ll take it with a slightly disoriented but persistent smile. It will be my own personal balance of happy and crazy.

A good volunteer is a happy volunteer

Exactly one week later and no journal entries. I knew site visit would be busy, but I do wish I had written more down… where to start? I traded my healthy status in for an illness, traded the illness in for silliness (late night water fights and debaucherous parties are good medicine), traded in silly for somber as we lost another trainee to ET¹.

Crystal was an agroforestry trainee, impressive with her agricultural knowledge, indispensable for her cynical wisdom and wit. She was not the first to throw in the towel, but she was the first volunteer I mourned with tears. Her departure was more shocking and sad than I would have expected. Unwelcome as it was, it prepared me for Doug’s announcement that he was ETing. Another environmental education volunteer going home. And then there were three.

I talked to both Crystal and Doug at length, offered them a listening ear, hashed out life goals, reexamined what PC service meant, pushed them to hang in a little longer… as much as I tried to convince them to stay, I’m glad I failed. By participating so intimately in their ET process, I realized two large truths:

Africa is not for everyone.
A good volunteer is a happy volunteer.

The latter truth is one I’m taking to heart, especially since my own happiness been less than effortless lately. I had so few expectations for my service, making disappointment rare if nonexistent. But after seeing what will be home for seneteyn il jaayat (the next two years) I realize expectations are unavoidable, understandable and thankfully adjustable. I started my training with a family in a small village nestled in the middle of Mauritanian nowhere. Inadvertently, my mind’s eye fabricated a similar location in which I would spend my service. Fittingly, Peace Corps chose an absolutely dissimilar location: an overwhelmingly huge, tourist-ridden city sans trees, family, rain or milk. My technical training in gardens, mudstoves and PACA anything² now seems ill-adjusted to urban life, as does my hard-won resilience to unpasteurized milk. Somehow, I must translate my skill sets and learn how to tend my “garden” vi iddeshra (in the city). This adjustment, though thoroughly vexing to my now disoriented mind’s eye, will occur given patience and time. I think. Inshallah.

I am definitely up for the challenge, especially having met my “counterparts” in Atar. Between Nouha, Muhammed Abdelahi (school director), Zeynabou at the Girls Mentoring Center (GMC) the Adrar PCVs and the promised support of wiser third-year PCVs from Nouakchott, I know I am in good hands. While a home stay might not be in my PC future, the Adrar PCTs have already bonded into a makeshift family, with Kris claiming the ridiculously endearing namesake “Poppa.” Regionally, plans are brewing for communal meals and oases vacations. What-will-I-do-spastic-self be damned. I am happily part of a solid group of volunteers who will brave the sandstorms and relish in camel sandwiches. Ijaazi-ne b’il kheyr (may God bless us).

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1: ET stands for early termination. Peace Corps is a two year commitment, but occasionally a volunteer has reason to terminate his or her service early: an illness untreatable in country, the death of a relative, a better job opportunity, or, as is usually the case during training, the realization that Africa is not as doable as previously thought. It is a phenomenon approached with caution, disgust, shame, sympathy, and other unidentifiable emotions. ET is a way out, ET is a loss, the death of a fellow trainee, a poison that reduces our numbers, a rumor that reminds us of our own fears and vulnerabilities.

2: PACA stands for Participatory Analysis for Community Action. It is a Peace Corps approach to development that encourages communities to identify and mobilize against their own problems. The volunteer thus facilitates sustainable and self-directed activities executed by and for Mauritanians. Usually, PACA activities begin by assembling community members in manageable groups, e.g. local women, men, elders, or teachers, etc. and prompting them to examine local issues and solutions. PACA aims for a consensus of ideas and a unified action plan. Easily envisioned in a small community of a few hundred people, more than daunting in a city of 30,000.