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.

---

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.

---

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.