First Official Email From Africa!

Dear Everyone!

(Part one, written yesterday)

Oh my god, I'm in Africa! Yes, I made it safe and sound and I am on the floor of the girls dormitory at the training facility typing this letter in Microsoft word to send to you next time I have internet. It's hot here, and (yippeeeee) humid like you wouldn't believe. Evidently we have just missed the hot season and got here just in time for the rainy season, which means seriously high humidity and seriously large quantities of rain with no where to go causing extensive flooding. I'm not even going to venture a guess as to what the temperature is right now but lets just say I'm not in Vermont anymore.

On the bright side, the more I learn about what training and service is going to be like, the surer I am that this is what I want to do. I was getting a little nervous at staging, where I learned that all the other volunteers say "at least we're not in Mauritania" when they are feeling low and also that they only send the young and healthy volunteers here (with the exception of one, Philip, in our group who has children my age) because of the conditions and the heat and the health requirements. All that said, the current volunteers here are incredibly nice, at least the ones that were here forming our "welcoming committee" and they are incredibly excited for us to be here. They are pretty much going to hold our hands through this entire process and on Friday they will be moving us in small groups into our host families/villages where we will become best friends with our "region mates" and do alllll kinds of hard work like learning the language(s) and getting lots of shots.

No pictures could have prepared me for what Senegal and Mauritania actually look like, even though they look just like the pictures, right down to the goats eating garbage and the little children waving at the big buses full of white people. I'm in way over my head, surrounded by unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar culture (where this left handed girl has to learn that left hands are for potty business ONLY) but my group is amazing and I feel like I've known them all forever already. Hayley (if this makes it to you, i don't have an email address for you so if anyone knows it forward this please?), I met Diego almost first thing which was awesome, he is such a nice kid! We all partied pretty hard during our last few days in the states; Atlanta will never be the same! I have lots of pictures which I will share at some point or another. My staging room mate was Cat from Hawaii and she is incredibly sweet. The other wat/san engineer, Nick, is also very nice and everyone else in the health sector is going to be so much fun to work with.

I learned how to eat my first Mauritanian meal moments ago, by squishing balls of oily rice with your fingers and popping them in your mouth whole. The process was both messy and delicious and difficult again, being a lefty and all.

For those of you who know about Donny Strong I'm pleased to say the myth continues. He is almost certainly the work of some current or returned volunteer with far too much time on his hands but it is clear that no one is ever going to tell us which one. Donny goes on in our hearts though, and recently just sent us an email explaining that he missed staging because of a medical emergency that needed attending to back in Boise, Idaho and will be joining us in Mauritania later for training. This is almost certainly completely false but it is the almost in that sentence that makes Donny Strong amazing. He was in every one of our capstone skits (which were hilarious) and was waiting for us here in the form of a poster with wise words from Donny and a stick figure with big muscles walking into the sunset. "Live strong, Donny Strong" has become the tagline of our group and will probably be made into t-shirts before we leave.

(Part two, written now, all fast like)

So I slept outside under the stars last night, with about 60 other people, all in our little mosquito nets. It was interesting to say the least, Mariah Carey and Justin Timberlake sang us to sleep from the neighbors blasting radio. At one point most of us were woken up by what sounded like a whole bunch of marching feet, but we aren't really sure what it was. Some animal was making sounds on the other side of the wall that inspired some creative debate, Diego and Brandon were pretty sure it was a scorpahawk, i thought maybe it was a donkey and brandon said that there was a slight chance it was not actually a scorpahawk, but he was 100% sure it was not a donkey, so perhaps we will never know. At 5ish we all awoke to the call to pray and listened to some gentleman screaming "Allah! Allah! Allah!" rapid fire into a mega phone, twas lovely.

More Mauritanian food, making balls of cous cous and rice, and you'll all be proud (or sad, if you're Becca) I ate meat both last night and today for lunch, in fact probably the same meat as they have a tendency to re-use anything and everything. I almost committed a major faux pas by trying to fish a bone out of my mouth with my left hand but my friends stopped me...whew! crisis averted.

Right now I am in Rosso, at the training center, which is in the extreme south of the country, the part that looks a little green on the satellite maps , which appears to be an optical illusion as while they do have a lot of wonderfully soft sand here, they have precious little in the for of vegetation....as in pretty much none. The food is amazing though and the people are nice and today i learned to greet people in Hassinya, Wolof, Pulaar, and Soninke! All of them different and thoroughly confusing, but a lot of fun to say. Heres a sample:

(Phonetically, because I haven't leaned to spell yet)

Guy: Assalam Allaykum
Me: Allaykum Salam!
Guy: A moxo?
Me: Ma jem!

thats Soninke, all of them start the same and have different questions...but you have to greet everyone you see, whether you know them or not. I'm also not allowed to touch members of the opposite sex, often not even to shake hands. Ladies are not allowed to lie on their backs, show any leg above the ankle, show shoulders, or, in some places in the north, show hair. A tailor is coming today to make slips for the girls and then on Thursday we are having a cultural fair where a bunch of tailors will come and start making us a bunch of outfits for around here, I am so excited for this! African fabrics are SO FUN! all bright colors, mixing and matching encouraged, tie-dye and everything! PERFECT for MOI!

Much more to tell, but i'm too hot to sit with this computer on my lap any longer! I'll write more later, please forward this to anyone i missed, I will probably be doing this by email instead of blog because there are tons of content rules for blogs and i'm lazy...but perhaps i'll change my mind later.

Having lots of fun, even though it's gross and sticky here, and of course missing all of you!

Shelby

PS: Cory, i got an email back from Toni, my HP boss in response to months ago when i asked about that camera and apparently it mine, I won it at the huddle meeting and they never even told me so this whole time i could have been using it but instead i was bringing it to work as a demo cam! Anywho, its yours now, worry free, so take good care of it! I'm glad you like that CD and hahaha your shoes! too bad for your carpet, your apartment is gonna smellllll!