Trop sensible: it doesn’t translate how you might think

The SUV winds over dirt paths between dunes and palm fronds. Rocks, small huts and makeshift fences provide an obstacle course for a Mauritanian man, his three-year-old daughter, a Frenchwoman and me.

The small girl has collapsed on my lap, suffering from fatigue and a bronchial infection. My hand rests on her chest which vibrates uneasily with raspy breaths and weak coughs. I understand, at least a fraction more, what it means to be a mother. Fatimatu depends on me to hold her, to rub her arm as her eyelids flutter closed, to support her head as it lolls into my neck, to steady her as the car veers around potholes and over gullies. I want to protect her, guide her. I love her. Suddenly, I don’t understand how a mother could have more than one child. I don’t understand how a wife could love her husband after giving birth. In this moment, I love her and only her. I am consumed and she is not even mine. I love this little girl and I cannot imagine loving anyone else more fully, innocently, or purely. I cradle her and she trusts me.

Meanwhile, the two remaining passengers are lecturing me. They compete for aural space, determined to be understood at the loudest volume possible. They are lecturing me on girls’ empowerment – or the futility thereof – in Mauritania. Girls here, they explain, shirk employment and depend (feed) on their husbands.

“Mauritanian women are not necessarily encouraged to seek work outside the home,” I counter. “You know better than me: most families expect girls to complete household chores before homework, to find a husband before a degree, to establish a family before a career.” I know this phenomenon exists, not because countless studies document it, not because an entire governmental ministry is dedicated to it, but because I witness it. In elementary school, in middle school, in high school. Girls in my ecoclub, at the Mentoring Center, and in the community are all subject to a reproduce-at-all-costs mentality. If they would choose it themselves, you’d never know; they want desperately for options.

“Not true!” the Frenchwoman shouts.
“What are you talking about?” the Mauritanian barks incredulously.
My response is immediately interrupted. The francaise scrambles atop her soapbox and waxes ineloquently.

“You have seen nothing, so let me explain to you.” I do my best to listen politely. She reports how, despite the available means to escape poverty and idleness, Mauritanian women prefer to stay (rot) at home. “I know,” she boasts. “I live a truly Mauritanian life.”

Right. Is that why she must broadcast every five minutes that she is Muslim-oh-but-I-hate-the-word-conversion-which-seems-less-organic-than-a-religious-epiphany? Is that why her claims of clairvoyance and supernatural healing powers are met with sideways glances and concealed smirks? Is that why her half cracked schemes to end Mauritanian poverty usually involve indifferent tourists who would speak no Hassaniye and have no translators? Who would clutch their Gucci bags and be carted around “the poorest, lowliest neighborhoods” by donkeys? Who would distribute blankets and operate a portable soda fountain? A truly Mauritanian life? How truly out of touch.

And she dares explain that she has seen little girls who want nothing more than to chase boys and wear makeup and get pregnant. And they do so against their parents’ wishes. Forced and early marriages? Those shameless sluts practically oblige their families to “get rid of them” via fortuitous marriage. “I know Mauritania. If you spent any time with families, you would see the truth.”

Any time with families? I have been eating lunch or dinner – often both – with a family everyday since I arrived in September. Any time? She speaks all of five words in a local language. I converse readily in two, greet in two others. Any time? My free moments are spent drinking tea with my host moms and sisters. Hers are spent crocheting purses out of plastic bags in solitude. “You just don’t understand Mauritania.”

This evening’s host, a Mauritanian man and father of two girls, agrees wholeheartedly. “Just open your eyes. They run about, they gossip, they don’t go to school. Girls here are lazy and lack ambition,” he laments. He tells me no well-educated Mauritanian family would persuade their daughter to abandon her studies to have children. On that count, we are in total agreement.

In exasperated sarcasm, I admit, “apparently I’ve seen nothing, having only worked with girls on a daily basis since my arrival. I should conduct better research.”
Knowingly, they nod in unison.
“I have understood and learned nothing over a year’s time of intimate contact with this country’s young female population. What a shame.”
“That’s why I’m here,” he generously bubbles. “To show you how Mauritania really is.” Quel homme.

He continues to rail against what is obviously no longer the fairer sex, as I cradle his daughter in my arms. She is still feverish and now exhausted from staying up all evening. I want to shield her from these slanderous predictions. I want to clamp shut her ears against a poisonous destiny already decided. I want to protect her from her father and this ignorant Frenchwoman. Fatimatu’s fingers curl around mine, then go limp and fall in my lap. Her head rests on my cheek; her sweat drips down my neck and soaks my blouse. I kiss her forehead and whisper in her ear. “Sleep now, baby. You can fight later.”

It’s not until afterward, behind the rusted iron door of my compound, that my sadness mingles with her sweat on my breast. My tears fall and I realize I might be too sensitive for this kind of work.