Hello Everyone,
I want to tell you the story of this morning, because it felt like a story that needed to be told. I woke at 4:30 in my mosquito net under the stars watching the horizon flicker with cloud to cloud lightning. Just as the sky was starting to lighten the clouds began to creep from the horizon and darken it again. I watched for nearly an hour as the dark clouds and lightning slowly stretched across the sky, eventually darkening (and briefly but frequently brightening) the entire sky. There had been almost no thunder, just a gentle distant rumble, for the majority of the morning; but at about 5:30 a bright flash in the distance was followed by the cracking thunder that I knew meant we were in for some real rain. Sure enough the drops started to fall shortly thereafter and though I tried to wait it out, by 6:15 the wind had picked up; time to move inside. Once the wind picks up here you know you're in for a good one, and I barely had time to pull the tent poles out of my net before the fat rain drops started to fall faster and faster. It's been pretty consistently pouring and blustering ever since. The power blinked a few times but seems to be holding steady now, so at 9:35 am I am still listening to the pouring rain on the tin roof while I compose this very message.
Perhaps that does not sound so remarkable to you, but let me share the most exciting piece of information about today: I'm wearing a sweatshirt. When the wind picked up it was so nice and cool I think everyone awake to feel it breathed a sigh of relief because over the course of the last several days it has become increasingly humid and muggy here. I had been sleeping in shorts and a t-shirt, outside with no blanket, waving my little hand fan, and sweating profusely as I have become accustomed to doing here, so today feels like vacation, like winter, like heaven. It won't last I know, but I thought I would share while I'm thinking of it because it's lovely. I however, will not be able to get online and send this until the river goes down, the road un-floods, and some of the inevitable glue-like mud dries up in the streets so that I can make the trip to the bureau without slipping, falling, or losing my shoes.
September 14, 2008
Things are a little drier around here today so I have made my way to the internet! Hurray! But before sending this email I wanted to add a few things, some recent emails and phone conversations have made me aware of how very little about my day to day life here you all know. I share with you the funny stories or antidotes but leave out all of the (to me) mundane details. I wrote these all up once in an actual letter to my brother for his birthday, but it seems it was lost in the mail so here goes again for all to see.
A day in the life of….an American-Mauritanian.
A standard night here is spent sleeping outside, under the stars, always in a mosquito net (although I've heard the insect population decreases considerably during the cold season, can't wait!) on a little foam pad similar to a camping mattress called a mattela. In the states I could never sleep without at least a sheet, here I have slept without a sheet, without a pillow, and without a mattela; here I can sleep under almost any circumstances. As most people sleep outside (when there is no rain), most everyone is up with the sun as well. Here, 9 times out of 10 I'm in bed by 11pm and up by 6:30am. Call to prayer goes off sometime around 5 (and during Ramadan also sometime around 3) in the morning; just a voice singing the call into a megaphone. Most days I sleep through it but some days I still here it. It also goes off 4 other times throughout the day and can be heard from several directions, one from each Mosque. Sometimes, on a good day if you're lucky, you will get to hear the prayer call-er's cell phone go off while he's doing the call to prayer.
Everyone here has a cell phone, and everyone here wants you're number. First guy I met at the hospital asked for my number, the cab driver, the baker, the tailor, a guy on the street who knows my neighbor. You get good at saying no, I still lie though, because I hate to come across as impolite. I say my phone is only for work, I say I don't give my number to men, I say I don't have a phone. I say these things because if you give them your number they will call, they will send you text messages in languages they know you don't understand, and they will give your number away so that other people who saw you one time or want to work with you or are just curious because your white, and those people will call you. Its not as creepy as it sounds, this is a culture where people interact that way. If you give someone your number its not just to be polite, its so they can call to ask how you are? How are you with the heat? How are you with the tiredness? How are you with the rain? The mosquitoes? Have you eaten? Found a room? Met their brother the dentist who works at the health center? They just want to know about you, because you are different and that's exciting. If you are an American woman the men want to marry you and the women will offer you their sons, not because you're an especially nice person that they would love to add to their family, but because you have VISA written on your forehead. White women are a way out and America is the Promised Land. They watch our television shows and movies and look at us, even the peace corps volunteers come here with laptops and i-pods and digital camera's and try to tell them that America is not that great.
I feel that I could have come to Mauritania with nothing but the clothes on my back and I would be just fine. When you're lost you can walk right into someone's house, greet them, and tell them your situation. They will feed you, serve you three glasses of tea (a bitter one for death, a sweet one for love, and a perfect mix for life, each with a thick layer of foam on the top representing the how important of a guest you are, the more foam, the more time they put into making your tea), show you how to get where you need to go, and probably help you find a place to stay when you get there. That is in their culture, and they don't understand that just getting to the United States won't get you the life they see on MTV, they don't understand that if you just walk into a stranger's house in the states you will most likely be kicked out, and perhaps even arrested, maybe even hurt. As an example I'll share a story about today. Sari (my regionmate) lives in a village outside of Selibaby where the phone service we all got, Mauritel, doesn't work. Today we went into town to get her a new sim card for her phone for Mattel, a different phone company with service in her village. We tried to also buy her Mattel credit but the man with the card didn't understand what I was asking and we left in search of another boutique. A gentleman across the street saw our exchange and asked what we were looking for, he sold plastic buckets and could be no help to us, but I wanted to practice my French so I went over and told him the situation. Before I knew it the man had left his shop, gone across the way into the other shop and found us what we were looking for, just because he knew he could help us. He expected nothing in return, just wanted to be helpful.
Try to imagine what life would be like for the reverse, someone accustomed to life here going to the states and trying to make a life there? I have been adopted by families on sight, there is a woman who calls me her child because she saw me on the street and just knew I was peace corps, she's having me for dinner tonight, she's hoping I will rent a room at her house and really be part of their family. That's how it works; when you rent a room here you pay for the room and the family. The family is then yours, you eat with them, live with them, learn from them, they'll take you to the market and bargain down prices for you, walk you to the taxi place when you don't know how to get where you're going, send someone to come get you when you are out late at night and don't want to walk home alone. I have family everywhere here, in Rosso, in Nouakchott, Selibaby, and everywhere that my families have family, which is everywhere, because everyone here is family.
So, just to recap, here, life is difficult. Sometimes I see starving babies, sometimes I just really want a glass of wine, sometimes I'd give anything for a real shower instead of a bucket and a cup, or an actual toilet instead of a hole over a cockroach infested cesspit, or a bed instead of just a mattela. Sometimes I miss my family and friends in the states (okay, a lot of the time, pretty much all the time), I miss my car, I miss my apartment, my favorite coffee shop (Flavour Café, what I wouldn't give for a cup of real coffee and a plain bagel toasted with cream cheese to split with Anj), my favorite music venue (oh rev hall…), or just the simple act of overhearing a conversation somewhere and understanding what is being said. Sometimes I miss these things a great deal, and though it hasn't been bad yet, I know it will be at some point, I know sometimes it will seem impossible, but it won't be.
I wanted to write this to show you that I have people here that love me like you all do, I have times here that are amazing and exciting and everyday is an adventure and a challenge. I have a job here that's rewarding and coworkers that rise to this challenge every day. I have a life here. Life has ups and downs no matter where you are, so if I get all weepy and whiny at any point during my service, if I seem to think I can't rise to the occasion and finish up what I've started, if I try and complain about how hard my life is here, just remind me that that is life. Its never easy all the time, its messy and hard and exhausting and you can't always have what you want, even when you come from the great United States. And then think about how lucky you are every time you have one of those down days over there on the other side of the puddle between us; how lucky you are to have your life and your friends and your family and your neighbors and how lucky you are to know that you don't need any more than that.
That accidentally got wayyyy deeper that I had been planning on going with this note so I'm going to go before I go any further down that rabbit hole. I hope this email still makes sense, contrary to the mood that this email has taken I am very happy at the moment, happy and excited to go meet another family tonight and find another place here to call home. Happy to go to work at the hospital tomorrow morning and see if the babies have improved, and extra happy because my APCD called today and told me I don't have to go to the hospital every other week, I can work only at the health center if I want to and that makes everything easier! Happy happy happy! But as always, missing all of you so picture my smiling face and send me pictures of yours!
Lots of love,
Shelby
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