Space devils

As an Environmental Education volunteer, my place is primarily at school. I run ecoclubs, plant school gardens, develop curriculum, and teach general tree-hugging to elementary school children. But, being a multi-tasking, masochistic overachiever, I am rarely satisfied with “enough.” Enough activities, enough commitments, enough work… it’s usually just short of my overbooked ideal.

As a result, I overextend myself by working at our Girls’ Mentoring Center (GMC). Last month, I conducted a session on astronomy. A few short years ago, astronomy was my passion. I was willing to endure the tedium of introductory physics and the aloofness of a university-run star gazers’ club. Well, for at least two and a half quarters. Short lived as my astrophysics career was, spiraling galaxies and exploding nebulae still stir my heart, so I asked the GMC girls to humor me. Those brilliant points of light dancing above your heads each night? Yeah those, I can tell you what to call them.

How did it go? I think the girls were more eager to learn than I was to teach. They devoured the vocabulary, extending their slender fingers in the air to define, translate and explain luminous bodies, planetary orbits, and interstellar dust. They were star-struck; I was impressed.

At one point, I was explaining that, given the vastness of the universe, an Earth-like planet with thoughtful, sentient beings is statistically guaranteed. To this, the girls gasped in French, “Non Madame! Surely they must be devils!”

“Ok then,” I suggested, “imagine on this planet that looks a lot like Earth, there is a classroom that looks a lot like this one, full of young girls who look a lot like you. Right now, these girls are telling their teacher that we – me and you and you – are devils.”

Their heads craned at me, their gazes thoughtful if bewildered.

“And are we devils?” I asked.

“Non Madame, bien sur non!!” they shrieked, hands clasped to their cheeks.

“No, of course not,” I smiled.

The earth revolves around the sun revolves around the galaxy moves through the universe filled with extraterrestrial beings. Sufficiently comprehensive (read: controversial) for a conservative Islamic Republic. Provided they Peace Corps doesn’t administratively separate this heathen volunteer, I count the lesson as an astronomical success.

Cleanses memories, leaving no residue

Living in Mauritania, there is never a shortage of visual stimuli: scrawny men draped in large boubous pushing taxis to a sputtering start, herds of goats just short of savage devouring tee shirts, plastic bags dancing in violent updrafts gusting off the plateaus, calloused bare feet chasing rusted hubcaps and giggles after school… my eyes are so gluttonous, I often forget to listen.

Today, though, I broke from my aural stupor. Walking home from school, I heard clicking. Nearly inaudible at first, the noise increased in volume, approached me from behind. A clicking roll, cadenced at a quick walking pace.

Click, click, clicking, clicking.

And immediately I am in New Richmond High School’s parking lot, listening to my soccer cleats pounding against the asphalt. I am late for practice or catching a bus for an away game or walking toward my rusted blue Chevy Celebrity parked in the gravel, but they are my cleats and I can smell autumn and I am not in Mauritania.

And then, just as suddenly, click click clicking I was in Mauritania and the clicking finally passed me on the paved road. A small boy wearing battered soccer cleats turned over his shoulder and looked at me suspiciously. I waved and stammered a local greeting, to which he immediately warmed. He returned my smile and trotted off.

This is an entirely human tendency, but I – more than most others – strongly associate sounds with periods in my life. Music especially, but apparently clicking soccer cleats too. Occasionally, certain songs are so loaded with temporal meaning (read: baggage), I listen to them in different settings in order to cleanse them.

Oddly enough, I do the same with certain smells. Most recently, I was rocked with nostalgia by a jar of Noxema¹. The last time I had smelled its trademark camphor and menthol was a decade prior while playing in an orchestra touring Europe. The time before that, I was twelve years old organizing the medicine cabinet while my parents took an afternoon nap. Still, so vividly, I can see the plaza framed by my shower’s porthole window in Austria-somewhere. I can feel the vibration of the red plastic bin sliding on white wire shelves.

By using Noxema in my concrete-lined shower, am I cleansing my previous memories? Or simply adding baggage to this olfactory trigger? Impossible to tell. At least partially now, cleats and camphor belong to Mauritania.

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1: I’m sure there’s some sort of TM needed here. Consider this my feeble attempt at corporate CYA.

From Nouakchott to St. Louis to Dieuk and back again

Christmas means snow and stockings, candy canes stolen from decorated plastic pine branches, scarves and hats and candles burning sweet smells into air warmed by fireplaces, outburst and vegetable trays and buckeyes, hugs and family and card tables from the basement and pushing cars out of snow drifts.

Christmas in Nouakchott, then, simply isn’t. The weather is mild, the company is friendly, the soft drinks are hard, and the carols and decorations seem contrived. Not all bad, but not at all Christmas.

New Year’s in St. Louis, Senegal, on the other hand, is stereotypically and perfectly New Year’s. Alienating, anonymous, something from which to recover. The vacation was not all bad: lazy days counting seashells and digging my toes into sand, adopting and naming faithful beach dogs, shivering against crisp winds off the ocean, braised lamb in basil cream sauce, savory Vietnamese tamarind soup, peeling labels off 1000cfa beers, pulsing to reggae beats at the Embuscade, and eating camembert and cherry preserves on fresh baguettes. But the moment when 2006 became 2007 and the hours thereafter were… skippable.

Luckily, detox couldn’t have happened against a more perfect backdrop. This year’s In Service Training (PC-acronymized as IST) for Environmental Education and Agroforestry was in Dieuk, a small Wolof village outside of Rosso. Nearly Peace Corps perfect,¹ Dieuk boasted motivated counterparts, organized cooperatives, tree-lined dirt roads and gardens thick with plump tomatoes, ripe bananas, sweetly decomposing palm fronds and flowering moringa. Before the training sessions, I huddled with volunteers waiting for the early morning sun to soften dawn’s damp chill. In the afternoon, eucalyptus leaves rained down in gentle gusts while I ambled along swampy creeks, disturbing warbling birds and alligator-sized lizards. Evenings were spent under the stars, stealing conversations on the balcony with my counterpart. Monsieur Ba and I slapped at mosquitoes and listened enviously to wind rushing through dense forests that would never take root in Atar. “Let’s stay,” he whispered. “Let’s not leave here.”

But we did leave². There was work to be done, children to teach, expertise to be shared. We returned to Atar saddened but rejuvenated, detached from our desert-born colleagues but bonded in our verdant nostalgia. Back in time for lunch, we shared a bowl of chebugen in silence. Hawa’s restaurant was less magical than a star-lit porch, more practical, more quotidian. Our bowls empty, we gathered our bags and attempted to return to normal life. “See you Monday?”

“Yeah. See you Monday.”

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1: Peace Corps perfect, i.e. sustainable to the point of no longer needing an outsider to help execute community development projects. Peace Corps’ ultimate goal is withdrawal: autonomous communities and unemployed volunteers.

2: Our car left in the morning, with eight people crammed in a Mercedes. Yes, eight people in a compact car that normally holds four adults. Four people in the back, two people in the front passenger seat, one person hanging out the window and sitting on the driver’s lap. Eight. Seatbelts be damned. Eight.

On the six hour drive home, Ba bought us cartons of milk, and I managed to doze off and drool on his shoulder. This was less mortifying that you might expect. Ba tolerated it gracefully and my sitemate KM cackles raucously each time I retell the story.

why is it a new year if so little has changed?

I saw someone looking through photographs today, stolen away and tucked between pages of her journal. She didn’t see me see her smile fall, see moistened eyes betray her sorrow, her nostalgia, her loss. Someone at home, her mother, her brother, a lover is missing her and her them and we all have given up so much to be here.