Sunday, September 28, 2008

updates

September 26, 2008

Well hello there friends!

Update time: I moved in with a family into a nice small termite infested (its actually kind of cool, they are surely natures architects!) corner room with a really great and friendly French speaking Pulaar family. Many of them speak bits of English and they are all very friendly and they all make a fantastic effort to talk with me and keep me entertained, which is why I feel really guilty right now for not having been there all day. I am back at Kim’s and I spent last night here because Sam and Sari are in from their villages so we all hung out last night, had dinner, and got caught up. We also went to the tailors and I got a blue and black embroidered sparkly type thing (although I don’t actually know what yet, my French is no good so I just tell the tailor to make what he would normally make with the fabric and let him use his creative genius to make whatever…I’ll find out what it is when I pick it up tomorrow) and Sari got one that’s blue green and yellow; whatever they come out to be, they will be our outfits for the fetes at the end of Ramadan. I am excited; I’ll surely have to take pictures.

In other news, I don’t have much other news. I’m still working one week at the health center, one week at the hospital. I have been teaching people to make neem cream mosquito repellant and that has been my only recent contribution. I’m going to read up on nutrition and malnutrition for a presentation me, Morgan, and Sari (Health People) are hopefully going to do with Levin and Sam (Agro-Forestry Folks) in the middle of October at a school in Gourat, a little village south of here right on the Senegal river.

I don’t really have any other updates so I’ll share a silly story. I was sitting the Peace Corps Bureau (Room with a computer in it where I can get online) the other day and in walked a gentlemen off the streets, this happens quite frequently as the person inside the bureau is almost guaranteed to be American, curious folks often wander in to make small talk. He tried to give me some perfume oil, first on the hand which I accepted and then he went for the cheek which I refused. He told me his name was Samba and he likes toubobs (for those of you that don’t know, toubob = white person) and wanted to know if I was American, which I obviously am. He told me that he knew a guy that met an American here and they got married and he lives in the United States now, which is pretty standard small talk for anyone around here, everyone knows someone who married and American and why am I here if not to interview interested parties? I said that was lovely and tried to continue my work. He then asked if I was talking to my family to which I replied I was composing an e-mail to them and he requested that I compose one for him in French to his friends (because he would much prefer me do it then have to do it himself and have to pay for the time at a cyber café) to which I replied that this was in fact an English computer and had the incorrect keyboard for composing French emails (which is a lie but he was trying to take advantage so I just told him to go to the cyber). The fellow hung around some more and then got to the point; here is our conversation in a nut shell:

Samba: So are you married?

Me: No, I have a fiancé, he’s waiting for me in the United States (also a lie, don’t worry)

Samba: Do you know any other white people?

Me: Some…I’m working now though. I have to do my work.

Samba: Yes, work is good. We’re friends now right? We can be friends?

Me: um…sure..

Samba: Good, I’ll give you my number, and when you get back to the states you call me. Help find me a toubob wife and then call me. I want a pretty one, who’s rich. I’d also like her to speak Pulaar. Very rich, if possible.

Me: Yeah…ok…good luck…there are tons of women like that in the states.

Samba: And your man, in the states, you tell him we’re friends too now. All three of us are friends. Next time he calls, you tell him that.

Me: ok….

Samba: And then ask him to help look for my wife, because he’s there and you’re going to be here for 2 years and I don’t want to wait that long.

So ladiessss….if anyone is interested in a Mauritanian husband I’ve got this friend here…

September 27, 2008

It seems like whenever I write these early in the morning they come out all weird and deep, but that just might be because it’s early in the morning and everything seems deep right now. At any rate, here are my “deep thoughts” for the day.

Every once in awhile here I slip up and without paying attention, an American thought pops into my head that doesn’t really apply here. Little shadows of the life I left over there just pass by and then they’re gone. This morning as I was closing the latrine door I thought “did I flush?” FYI, I haven’t seen a flushing toilet since I got here 3 months ago. Sometimes I see a piece of garbage on the ground and think, oh that’s just a plastic lid to a disposable coffee cup, or a bit of toilet paper, or a take out container, or some other remnant of the things I left behind when I came here. These little moments don’t make me sad, it’s not as if just the site of the piece of plastic piping that looked like a coffee lid made me start to examine all of the things I don’t have here, its just for that fraction of a second I forget where I am, and in a little place in my head I have the “land of plenty” mindset still intact. I still expect to find MacDonald’s wrappers in the garbage heaps, I still think “oh, if I make too much I’ll just stick it in the fridge and finish it tomorrow,” occasionally I even consider swinging by a café for a cup of coffee. Here though, there are no MacDonald’s, there is no refrigerator, and the only cafes we have are called cyber cafes and they are just buildings with a few computers in them where you can go and pay by the hour to surf the net. In fact there isn’t really even real coffee here, its all Nescafe, not my favorite.

So through all of this I wonder, these few things that still pop into my head, they may fade with time, or stick around, who knows, but for every one of those little slip ups there are a thousand things here that don’t phase me anymore even though I would never have seen them in the states. These things, like going to a restaurant and being given one cup for all 4 people and a big bucket that says bob’s mayonnaise on the outside full of cool water to dip the cup in and share, or having to haggle and fight and bargain and sometimes walk out of stores just to get a good price on anything in the market, or bathing, doing laundry, washing dishes, and carrying drinking water all in the same bucket. These things are normal for me now, and will be normal for me when I leave here, so in 2 years am I going to be compelled to bargain for the price of a bunch of bananas or a kilo of sugar? Am I going to assure the waiter at a restaurant that I don’t need a water glass or my own, surely I can just share with my friend? I probably won’t try to do my laundry or my dishes or take my showers in a bucket, I do miss running water and the various machines we have there that do all of that stuff for us.

It’s a funny feeling to be torn between “the land of plenty,” as I like to call it, and life here, the land of very little but so much at the same time. I feel incredibly wasteful when I think about things I used to do there, but at the same time wasteful things happen here too. Garbage is everywhere, just tossed all over the ground. Every time you go to the store you are given a tiny plastic shopping bag to carry your purchases, these bags end up every where; clear, blue, green, pink, and white, all tangled in the thorny trees like so many Christmas ornaments. You can buy a tiny packet of 4 cookies, a tiny bag of raw peanuts, a bag of soda, a bag of cold water, a bag of 4 garlic cloves, or a bag of rock salt, and if you do buy one or more of these things they’ll put that bag in a shopping bag for you. I’d say probably 50% of my trash is various sized plastic bags. Volunteers try to find ways to reuse them, discourage the distribution of them, encourage the use of reusable shopping bags, anything, but we often fail. I’ll tell the merchant I can just put my purchases in my purse and they will put it in a bag for me to put in my bag. Little things like this are every where. These things frighten me because they represent the influence of the developed world, I remember having the same conversations about dealing with the huge quantities of price chopper bags we used to have around the house over there, but over there things are slowly starting to change, stores give you discounts for reusing bags, canvas shopping bags are showing up all over the place and the waste is becoming less; here though, it will take years for something like that to happen, because the current method is so easy and the negatives are not really a concern for people here. When you cook your dinners according to how well you can afford to feed you family today, the fact that the plastic baggy you got your potatoes in is going to be around longer than they are is not a major concern.

Those are just my thoughts for the day, I best be off now. Hopefully I’ll send this today or tomorrow. Love and miss you allllll!

Shelby

Friday, September 19, 2008

Just to set the record straight...

September 18th, 2008

Hello Hello Everyone!

First let me say that I am okay, the state of Mauritania is no different, and if I hadn’t gotten an e-mail from Obie, the country director, telling me that there 12 members of the military are “missing” way up north in a place called Zouerate, I would have had no idea. BUT on the off chance that you have seen the word Mauritania in the news and panicked about my well-being, think of it this way: This incident happened in the EXTREME NORTH of the country, that’s the tippy tippy top for those of you who are directionally challenged, I live in the Guidimaka, that’s the EXTREME SOUTH (very very bottom, practically Senegal) and the only reason Obie even sent an email was because apparently some form of media mixed up the location and incorrectly reported Nouakchott so he just wanted us to set the record straight. The actual extreme north of the country is extremely inhospitable (go figure…its not fun to live in the middle of the Sahara…huh) and very little like where I live, in the green jungle of Selibaby (for now, but the rainy season is officially over-so no more rain at all until June-ish….yuck!).

In other news, I found a home! Hurray! I’m getting a room with an amazingly nice family with nooooo little kids! Double Hurray! They had us for dinner and they were fun and talkative and jokey and teaching me Pulaar and helping me with French and when I got shy and became quiet because I could depend on Kim to hold up the conversation they would ask me why I wasn’t talking, which is good, I need to practice my language skills. We went back to discuss rent and things, its 6000 ouguiya per month (roughly $17) and that includes water and electricity (a tap on the property and one light and one outlet in my room!) and when we asked about meals (did that include food or did they want to add more onto my rent for that I was told that I am now a member of the family and as such I can eat there whenever I want and its just fine. I can’t wait, I move in on Saturday, inshallah.

Here’s another story about life here, just because I have the time. I work 3 or 4 days a week, every other week at the Health Center CREN alternating with the pediatric ward at the hospital. This week was hospital, but there were pas beaucoup de maladies cette semain (not many sick people this week) so I spent a lot of time making small talk with the pediatricians and nurses. When I work at the hospital I am supposed to be there at around 9 so I head out at 8:30 and make the 45 minute walk just in time to arrive at the same time as everyone else. My job as a pedestrian here is to walk wherever I damn well please and ignore the taxi’s, whose job is to drive wherever they damn well please and beep their horn at every pedestrian, goat, sheep, camel, or donkey in the road, other vehicle, and as turn signals. They drive on both sides of the road, going both directions, sometimes two or three abreast, through ditches, around potholes, through herds of goats, between people, around other cars, and well, everywhere. Sometimes people hit things, one time we hit a fence in the Peace Corps car, but it wasn’t very hard and no one cared, we just back up and keep going. One time we hit a wall when we were driving down a road so narrow I would have had trouble navigating it with my little Toyota Paseo (my babyyyyy…my heart is broken without my lil car) but this was in a peace corps land rover, so there was roughly a quarter of an inch of leeway on either side, and we just scraped off a little…well actually mud…from both the side of the car and the mud brick wall we were scraping.

The streets are narrow and bumpy. They are filled with garbage and goats and donkeys and naked babies. If I watched my world through a black and white filter then I would be living in one of those Christian children’s fund commercials, strategically posed and filmed to show the sad little faces of children covered with flies traversing garbage filled streets in bare feet, that’s roughly my daily life save one thing. These kids are not just sitting around looking pathetic, they are smiling, laughing, playing, they all want to shake your hand and greet you, they build toys out of empty bottles and bottle caps and string. They laugh and smile and yell, they eat and sleep and work and play, and they are rarely too tired or depressed to swat the flies off their faces. There is one exception to this rule, well several but one prominent one, and that is a group of boys known as can kids. These kids come from the bush around cities to study the Koran. Not all Koranic schools work this way, but some require the kids to beg for food and for fees to pay for their schooling, they justify it by saying that it teaches the children humility. These children have been basically abandoned by their families to move to the city and depend on the generosity of others to survive. They carry with them old tin cans which they store any food they are given in. This can is often their only possession.

The system works for a number of reasons, the greatest being the lack of refrigeration here, thus when a family finishes a meal for which they have inevitably cooked way too much just in case someone happens to stop by within a few hours of meal time and can be persuaded to stay and eat with the family, the leftovers are generally given to the closest available can kid(s) and/or the goats. These kids are accomplished beggars and are quite capable of putting on the saddest little faces and holding out their hands with their big sad eyes, they know how to get you; but when they realize you have nothing to give, or you have already given them something, the act is dropped and they are usually just like any other kids. My host family in Rosso frequently gave to the can kids, who would walk into the salon during lunch and my father would take their cans and fill them with rice and vegetables from our cheb. Giving money to the can kids is discouraged but if I have food I usually share. This is one of the saddest things about living here, but as with all other hard things, it has simply become part of life here. The sad, happy, exciting, boring, busy, empty, friendly, well fed, ridiculous, amazing life of Mauritania.

In other news, I broke fast with a different family two nights ago and the woman who ate with us was very pregnant, but here they will never mention it lest it bring bad luck on the baby. So this pregnant woman cooked and served us dinner, never mentioning the pregnancy at all, and then after we left at about 11 pm she gave birth, finishing at about 1:30 am to a beautiful healthy baby boy. We got a phone call yesterday informing us, and we went to visit today, he’s adorable.

That’s all I got for now, much love and happy thoughts!

Shelby

Monday, September 15, 2008

beware...this is a long one

(Originally sent September 14th, 2008)

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

Quick note because i'm online

(originally sent september 9, 2008)

Hi all,
Just figured I'd send a quick update because i'm online and thinking of all of you. I started "work" on sunday (the mauritanian monday) but i'm really just observing right now. I'm watching at the feeding center where they weigh malnourished babies and track their progress for recovery. The first day I watched at the hospital one and it completely broke my heart, I saw babies so skinny they had nothing but wrinkled skin for a butt who couldn't hold their heads up or even stay awake during the short consultation with the nurse. This was really hard for me to watch and the image is seared in my mind now, about 2 out of the 6 babies I saw were extremely malnourished to the point that I was sure they would not still be alive for the weigh in the next week. I found this extremely difficult to watch and disheartening, surely the program isn't working if the babies still look like this? But what else can be done? The baby can't stay awake to eat, how can it ever recover? The next day I started at the health center and learned why sunday had been so discouraging: The hospital feeding center is where all of the extreme cases are referred for full time feeding and care and at the smaller feeding center I saw a great deal more hope, babies with steadily increasing weights and little round bellies to match their big round eyes (that get even bigger when they see a white person!). I observed again this morning and will go again on Thursday and the overwhelming-ness of it all is slowly falling into perspective. I am discussing a few trainings I can do with the staff at the health center already, making bug repellent from a local tree to slow the spread of malaria, and they have (I think, my french isn't perfect you know) agreed to purchase the supplies for me to do a demonstration in the coming week or so.

Even with all that going on, i still have a remarkably large amount of time on my hands. I think I'll be online every few days for the next few weeks so look for updates.

For my Family: Hi everyone! I haven't gotten many updates from you folks lately (aside from mom, dad, and cory, obviously) but I assume no news is good news and its certainly the busy time of year over there (though arguably the slowest time of year over here so its hard for me to relate...) but I just wanted to say hi and that I hope everyone is doing well. Dad/Mom-Cory says the photos printed from facebook will have no resolution so i'm going to work something else out for that, thanks though! I'll let you know when i figure it out, i think it'll involve mailing a memory card. I would love to receive photos from anyone over there though! Puppy photos, family photos, just little reminders of life in the states. Miss you all!

Much Love!
Shelby

wish list item of the day:
(outside of the ever-present wine, cheese, and chocolate but i know you can't send those things)
Minty chewing gum

First Email from Site

(originally sent September 5, 2008)

Hello Folks!

**NOTE: This email was written on my laptop at the house where I'm staying before reaching a computer so if you emailed me asking questions or filling me in on stuff that I ask about again in here its probably because I got your email after I wrote this one, so don't worry I did get them I just didn't write back to them at the moment)**

I've been putting off writing this email because I have almost nothing to report…aside from the fact that I have been sworn in as a Volunteer (hurray! No more stage!). So what that means is that I'm at my permanent site now in Selibaby (and missing my family and friends from home AND my new family and friends from Rosso!) doing well but mostly doing nothing at all. I have not found a house yet and I have not started work yet (Sunday, maybe...I get a tour of the health facilities at least and probably start going a few days a week…) but I have met my counterpart who is an amazing woman who works with malnourished children in the hospital and is incredibly motivated and excited to work with me and immediately gave me a new name (Hi, nice to meet you! My names Shelby Perry, except that's not right anymore, I'm Marieme Fall, oh wait, just kidding, now I'm Amineta Ba…) with her nom de famille, Ba.

Now before I continue let me share a little bit about Mauritanians and their names. Nearly every (or possibly every) Mauritanian name has another name (or several others) that they are somehow related to that they refer to as their "bean eating cousin." Being called a bean eater here is like a silly little insult that people tease each other with, and so every family has another family that they tease back and forth with the term "bean eating cousin."

I came to site with my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director, basically the guy in charge of all the health volunteers) Daouda Diallo, and was introduced to my counterpart by him. My counterpart wasted no time giving me my new name and Daouda turned to me and said "You're new name is Amineta Ba, and now I can call you my bean eating cousin!" So there you have it people, I am my APCD's bean eating cousin.

There is little else to report because I have done almost nothing since I got to Selibaby so instead of sharing stories about me I'll tell you about the little scorpion that could, Pinchy. A few days ago when I rolled up my mosquito net tent I found a pretty good sized (about the size of…hmm…I dunno…my thumb) scorpion squashed under it (I know what your thinking…eeeeek! But they aren't poisonous and if they get you it only hurts really really bad for a while, like a bee sting on crack so no worries…well…no major worries…). After mentioning him to the others and seeing that the other volunteers were unconcerned, I figured there was nothing to worry about and finished rolling up my tent until Sam said "oh man, he's still alive!" I turned around and sure enough the little bugger was racing around, tail and pinchers held high. I hightailed it out of there and Sam caught him in a bucket and little Pinchy became the mornings entertainment. Emily caught some bugs and tried to get Pinchy to fight them but when he wouldn't and watching him roam around the bottom of a bucket got old we sort of set him off to the side and forgot about him….until the brilliant thought occurred to someone, Lets drown him! That's the humane thing to do…right? (I should share that we didn't want to squish him because if he dies in one piece Morgan's friend would like to dry him and shellac him and make him into a necklace, apparently…) So we fill the bucket with water, watch him wander around at the bottom looking for all the world like a shrimp, and then got bored and wandered off to do other things.

A few hours later, when we all came fleeing back to the house to hide from/watch and awesome and impressive storm we found little Pinchy, at the bottom of a bucket of water, may god rest his soul. Sam put him in a Tupperware to admire then we set him aside to have dinner and watch a movie. Everyone went to bed and little Pinchy rested peacefully in his Tupperware coffin. (Now don't go getting soft on me and feeling all bad for little Pinchy because we gave him a cute name…he's a scary scorpion remember?) So the next day after breakfast and a morning of house hunting with my bean eating cousin and a few more hours of nothing another little rainstorm hit and we all headed inside to take refuge and out of the kitchen comes Sam with Pinchy in his little Tupperware coffin, or I guess in this case the more appropriate name for it would be cage not coffin because there was Pinchy, back from the dead, kicking and screaming. Well, ok, not screaming, but you get the idea. Anyway, that's the story of Pinchy. When the rain dried up a little and the roads became passable Sam headed back to his village (2 days late…yay for the Guidimaka!) with Sari for posting and with little Pinchy in tow and I have heard nothing of him since, or any of them for that matter, they don't have cell phone service in Wolumboni.

So that's my life at the moment…nothing exciting, at least nothing outside of Pinchy! But surely more to come! Right now its Ramadan so all the Mauritanians are fasting and tired all the time, but not me! No shuttle until October (and I'm told they're not terribly reliable here anyway…) which means no mail or packages until then UNLESS the Guidi volunteers pitch in and get a post office box here, which is something we're considering so keep yours eyes out for a new address, I'll email it as soon as I know. For now though the address is the same, except for one important detail, from now on when sending me mail please address it to:

Shelby Perry, PCV

Corps de la Paix

BP 222

Nouakchott, Mauritania, West Africa

Air Mail/Par Avion

Thanks to all of you who have already sent mail, it's really the most exciting thing ever to get mail here, even just a card or a few photos. I love it! I'm going to start writing letters and post cards soon, but you can only buy post cards in Nouakchott and I don't get to go there until Christmas so what I meant to say was letters, just letters.

Love and hugs for all of you,

Shelby/Marieme/Amineta

PERSONALIZED PS's:

Dad and Mom: Love you tons and miss you bunches! I'm going to try to put up more photos soon and I wanted to ask a favor of you guys…if its not too much trouble, which I know it might be so no worries if it doesn't work out, but if you could save some of my photos off of facebook and print them on my photo printer (you can even just put them on a pen drive and stick it right in the printer and do everything on the touchscreen) I should have left enough ink for at least a few and plenty of photo paper, and mail them to me (ok as I type it I realize that this is kind of asking a lot because you'll have to go to the library to get them and my printer might not even be out anymore but if it is, you guys can use it as much as you want, and if you can do this I would be very thankful but if you can't no worries at all!) I would just love to have some photos of Africa here with me to give to my family back in Rosso and such. How's everything else? Keep sending me pictures of my lil Josey! I was looking at my photos from summer on my computer the other day and she's so tiny in all of them, I can't imagine what she must look like now! Is the apartment almost done? Mom, how're things going with the whole work thing? Good so far? I'm doing amazingly well all things considered, I'm not nearly as home sick as I thought I would be having nothing to do all the time and therefore lots of time to sit and think, but I'm sure that will come later…for now I'm feeling good, overwhelmed but excited and starting to put things in perspective. I did have giardia, have had it this whole time (though it goes dormant and then comes back for awhile then goes away, etc and I didn't have all the symptoms just bad days and good days) but at any rate I'm on an antibiotic now that made it way worse for a day and now I'm feeling good! Not really much else to share…love you!


Cory: I sent you another e-mail, but i just wanted to say thanks again no matter what you decide to do and i'm so sorry i jumped the gun on that, i really thought it was toast! i hope school and everythings going swimmingly! I'm at the peace corps bureau right now and i found that theres a webcam here so if i can figure out how to make this work maybe we can skype someday or something...i'll keep you posted!

Becca: we g-chatted...you know whats up..but i miss you anywho! have a rocking time in thailand!

Becky: Wow! sounds like you had an amazing journey! i'm doing okay with the weather, but its the rainy season right now which means humid humid humid! when thats over i head its gorgeously cool (dropping down to something like 70 in december!) and thats when there are lots of veggies in the market and i'll have a salad again....omgosh i can't wait! as far as the conservative scale goes mauritania is right below all those countires that make women wear burkas except here they don't have to cover their face with it and its called a mulafa, but lucky me! i'm in the south, which is basically senegal (don't tell them i said that, thats the standard insult for anyone even remotely annoying around here..oh they must be senegalese!) so its on the less conservative side of things, in fact its a down right party compared to the north. I can sometimes even go out without covering my hair! and i can wear pants is i have a shirt that reaches my knees! its crazyness! thats all for now..miss you! love you! tell eric i said hello and have some good times down there in the dirty south for me!

Merry Mer: Oh how i miss my old stomping grounds! i can relate to the wishing you were still in school thing, all those worries seem so small now that we have to decide what we're doing with the rest of our lives! lucky for me i put mine on hold to go find myself here in africa, crazyness i know! keep your chin up, the whole job thing will work out i'm sure. if you ever need a reference you just send 'em right to me, i'll say glowing things about you if they want to call me in africa! love you! miss you! tell all the plattsburgians i said hi!
Rose: its been too long my friend, i hope vegas is treating you well and don't let me forget to send the rest of my emails to you, approximately the longest email update from africa you could possibly imagine when you put them all together! hope alls well with you, miss you and love you!

Hobbit: MY LOVE! no i did not get the package because i won't get any until october but now i'm WAY WAYYYY excited for october because i know i have a bunch of cool stuff headed my way! i'm so soooooo sorry to hear about you and Takis...whats his deal? doesn't he know you're the best thing that ever happened to him? its okay though, you'll get through it cuz your tough and you still have me and phat rabbit! love you! miss you! i'll write a real letter as soon as i can!
i'm really out of time now, so i'll respond to everyone else next time!

I can't believe I've been here more than 2 months!

(Originally sent August 24, 2008-Happy Birthday MOM!)

Helllllooooo!

I know it's been ages since I've written but ya'll are gonna have to get used to that because Saturday I cruise out to Selibaby and internet will not be very reliable there. First I have to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! I wish I could be there, love and miss you TONS!

So so soooo much has happened that I don't even know where to start but I'll do my best to give you the interesting parts. First, today I left my host family to move back into the center for 6 days for swearing in and various other business. Before I left my family sat me down and told me that when I move to Selibaby I am to introduce myself as Marieme and not let my new family change my name. I'm super sad to leave them, they were more than I could ever have hoped for but c'est la vie, its time to move on! My sister says when she comes to the states she'll faire la cuisine Mauritanian for all my friends and family and I would really love to see that day. I have phone numbers for all of them and an e-mail for my big brother who goes to school in Nouakchatt and I promised to keep in touch. I also have lots photos that I'll put up as soon as I'm able.

Last night I hung out with a bunch of my N'Diourbel friends here at Tessa's house, a bunch of guys that are absolutely hilarious because the only English they speak is what they have seen on tv and in music ("I'm sorry mama", "Sit down and Shut up!", "My Darling") and what I have taught them ("Peace out homeslice") and when people come in the compound the guys will yell sit down and shut up! But no one knows what they are saying and its pretty hilarious for Tessa and me. I fear Tessa and myself are getting to used to spending time with people who don't speak English and being able to just talk about people right in front of them, we are worried for when we return to the states and lose the ability to have the inner dialogue to all of our conversations. There is this one guy that comes over all the time and just talks over everyone, everyone knows we don't like him and they all say "he's just Senegalese" which is the Mauritanian word for anyone annoying or shocking or abrasive etc. and when he gets right in my face I love to tell him how annoying he is in English because he has no idea, and its very funny for Tessa and myself.

Which brings me to my next point, come Saturday I will be going to site and I won't see Tessa and Adam for at least three months and that pretty much breaks my heart, those two are my bestest friends here and I'm going to be heart broken without them! We just had our final language test, last time I got intermediate-mid so hopefully I do better than that this time but that's all I need to pass out of the language requirement for service so I'll take it. I feel like I speak a lot of French right up until I start speaking to a native French speaker, then I'm totally lost. I got in an all out franglais discussion with my big brother (he speaks a little English) the other day about men's work and women's work here in Mauritania that was pretty frustrating and made my petite vocab very apparent. I don't mind so much though when I'm arguing with him because then I just try to tell him in English and he gets as frustrated as me trying to speak in French so I don't feel so bad anymore.

Yesterday Tessa and I tried to cook American food for some Mauritanians (Aminetou, our French speaker, Souleymane, a guys who teaches in Selibaby but lives here in Rosso during the summer so lucky me, I already have a local friend to show me the ropes!, and Yacoub, another friend from Rosso). We attempted omelettes and French fries and ended us with scrambled eggs and home fries cause the pans here are stickyyyy but Adam, Tessa, and I thought it was delish and the Mauritanians ate some but I have a hunch it was just to be polite.

Anyway afterwards Adam and Tes and I had Mafe, a fantastic rice and peanut sauce dish that's apparently Malian that Aminetou made for us and then we all went and spent the evening with our families and then off to watch Tessa's 19 year old uncle, Brahim, play a final soccer match at the stade. The stade was the standard affair, lots of getting stared at by little kids, a little name-calling (toubob = white person and Nasarani = stranger) and a healthy amount of staring, but not nearly as much as last time! At the end of the game we stayed in our seats for a minute to wait out the excited crowds (Brahim's team won!) and the guy in front of us turned around and informed us that the match was in fact fini and it was time for us silly toubobs to get up. We said we knew and he asked for a cigarette and then when we said we didn't have one he asked Adam for me (cette madam la) to which Adam replied basically the equivalent of sure why not? And all the Mauritanians found that totally hilarious.

Not much else exciting to report for now, but I'll write more later! Peace Out Homeslices,

Shelby

PS: More packages? Please? Got my first and it was amazing! I shared the M&M's (which made it in amazingly good shape, and by that I mean the candy shell was intact but all the chocolate was totally melted so they were extra delish) and the cookies with my friends and family and my little brother says "biscuits ZANE!" (Arabic for good, and pretty, and yummy, and all sorts of other terms of endearment) which was pretty adorable. Tessa got three jars of peanut butter though and I'm totally jealous! LOVE YOU ALL! Keep the emails coming, I love to hear about your lives! Keeps your eyes out for photos, hopefully soon!

I can't believe I've been here a month!


(Originally sent July 29, 2008)

Hey Folks,

So this week was site visit, and I wish I could describe it all to you in this email but so much of it was indescribable you'll have to be satisfied with only the highlights. My permanent placement site (ie where I'll be living for the next 2 years) is a regional capital known as Selibaby in the deeeeeep south of Mauritania. My region is called the Guidimaka and it is the southern-most region in the whole country, 45 km from the Senegal River. So here is some background on the site, for those of you that don't know there is a saying in the rest of the Peace Corps along the lines of "at least we're not in Mauritania." This would be because it is hot here (duh!), very conservative (long skirts and sleeves and covered head in 110 degrees, not my idea of a good time), and (horror of horrors!) alcohol is illegal.

That said I'll add to it this, I am in one of the most difficult countries in the whole Peace Corps and I have been placed in the most secluded region. To get to my regional capital, where I am placed, there is no road. There are a few ways to go about this, 6 hours of off-roading from Kiffa (what we did on the way in, 9 of us in a land rover going 80 km/hr over puddles and pot holes and rivers and valleys and fields = actually a lot of fun) or a "road" from Kaedi known as the Garfa (not sure how that's spelled) on which there is a bridge that is generally impassable during most of the rainy season. The Garfa is a bridge with no sides over a river that frequently floods over the bridge, when the bridge is submerged I'm told its as good as invisible and cars and people have to guess where it is and wade over at their own risk, I am told that at least once during my service I will likely be washed off of it and have to swim (or be carried by the current) to the bank and let the locals pull me out…woo! But wait! Don't panic yet, theres one more way to get there…across the Senegal River and up the 45 km via bush taxi. This is the method my region mate, Morgan opted for most recently and shared with me this story, she got a taxi that was first caught in a sand storm and had to stop, then caught in a downpour and had to stop, then broke down, got fixed, started again and then got stuck, got out, and then broke down for real in some random Pulaar village. From the village they caught a truck that promised to take them to Selibaby but just outside of this village they hit a rainy season seasonal lake that the truck refused to take them across. The truck headed out and drove through it, forcing all the passengers to wade through the lake on their own. Morgan said she got going and felt like she had been walking for a while when she asked the guy next to her how much longer they had to go, to which he replied "oh about a kilometer." A kilometer later with her bag on her head Morgan emerged to find the truck waiting for them on the other side. The truck drivers informed the soggy crowd that they had wanted to make sure everyone made it but they don't want to take any passengers anymore so with that they left. Now Morgan's car-full and all the passengers from the truck were without a ride but it seems the eventually scored a truck back to town. Sounds like fun doesn't it?! Yes, it does! Can't wait to make some stories of my own to scare the crap out of you folks back home!

Oh wait, I sorta already have one! On our way to my site visit we wanted to get as much of the off-roading part out of the way on the first night so our driver wouldn't have to do it all at once on the second morning, so much to the unhappiness of all the trainees, we cruised right through Kiffa (where we would have had dinner and stayed the night with other volunteers) and bounced our way down the lack of road until dark at which point we opted to stay the night at some random family's compound in the middle of nowhere. We roll up to this compound, bust in and climb up on their bamboo sitting platform (that's the technical name, its like a bamboo dock in the sand, I think its supposed to keep the bugs off or something…) and us 5 (I have 4 region-mates in my training group and 4 already there starting up their second year) toubobs (Wolof word for white person and all of our permanent nicknames here) sit around and start talking in English with each other while our Peace Corps escorts make small talk and the families children huddle behind us and gawk and whisper in French and Hassiniya (standard response). Its pitch black (no electricity this far out) and we're staring at the amazing night sky that has more starts in it than I have ever seen before not to mention the brightest rendition of the milky way I have ever laid eyes on and all is quiet; so you can imagine my surprise when the kid behind me whispers "oh shit." I told the other trainees what I had heard and they all convinced me I was crazy and hearing things and there was no way these kids would say that, I must have misheard and, believing myself to be crazy, I dropped it. A few minutes later I swear I heard one of the kids whisper "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7!" But AGAIN no one else hears it, so just to mollify me Emily asks the kids in French if they speak any English and they say no, that they speak French and Hassiniya only. Pretty convinced I'm losing my mind I drop it and continue my conversation with the other trainees; moments later one of the kids whispers "San Franciso!" and FINALLY someone else hears it and confirms that I am not actually crazy. A few more gems from the children ("Washington DC" and "I love you baby") confirms that the children have at some point in their life come into contact with a television and are simply regurgitating phrases they have heard with no idea of their meanings for a hilarious evening of teaching the children fun phrases like "bumble bee tuna", "what up!?!", and "Scranton, PA." In the meantime our Peace Corps escort informs us that the family has offered to make us dinner and would we prefer macaroni or rice. We choose macaroni and moments later they inform us that they actually don't have macaroni, so we graciously accept rice, or rather their offer of rice which they then retract saying they don't know how we like our rise and they will bring us what we need to cook it for ourselves. At this point it is close to 11 and we decide to politely decline (while they serve us the traditional 3 cups of tea) and set up our bug nets outside for bed.

By 12 we are all set-up and sleeping sweetly under the stars, by 3 we are all awake again and get our nets down and under the family's Hyma (sort of like a permanent circus style tent many families have in lieu of houses) with only minutes to spare before we are hit by a monster sand storm following by pounding rain. Sweet!

Long long longggg story short we all made it, hit the road bright and early, and were in Selibaby by 11 am. We had a delicious dinner of chicken fajitas, prepared by the current volunteers at our site and a few smuggled Senegalese beers (tisk tisk I know!) with some French volunteers and Portuguese road workers. My site is amazing, aside from the mass quantities of bugs, it is gorgeous and green and there are hills and clay (exciting because it's not sand) and rock piles to climb. It is also pretty much as south as you can get and still be in Mauritania which is exactly what I wanted because it is far less conservative which means a totally different style of dress that doesn't even require me to cover my hair at all times! It is also more black African and less white moor (more Arab population) which I like because I am a woman and white moors tend to be very very conservative so if I were in the north they wouldn't greet me or look me in the eyes and I would have to be totally wrapped in fabric all the time. Pictures will be up on facebook as soon as I can so check the last link again because that's where I'll be putting them. Love and miss you all more than you know (I'm struggling through my first bits of homesickness right now because site visit made this commitment all too real but don't worry I'm not too sad, I just miss your smiling faces and encouraging voices so please please please feel free to call me whenever you want!)

Shelby

Mom and Dad: I got my glasses yesterday, I learned a little more about the mail system here, that address is where my mail will be going for the next 2 years and at least once a month a car will bring my mail to me here in Rosso, while I'm here, and then to Selibaby when I'm there. Please send mail whenever you want, I get so totally jealous when other people get mail!

Here is my package wish list for when you folks are feeling generous (I do not by any means need all of this, just a list of things that are un-gettable here):

CHEESE! Powdered cheese products or spreads or crackers or anything that will make the trip, I've also heard that real cheeses in wax will make the trip, though they will be a little worse for the wear when they get here

Solid color T-shirts, any fit or size to wear with crazy local skirts

Peanut butter (the sugar packed kind, like Jif, the PB here is bitter from the Senegalese peanuts)

Single serving powdered drink mixes like the kool-aid ones I got at the dollar store (I'm supposed to drink a minimum of 3 liters of water a day and its tough to choke down that much warm water every day) Lemonade would be great too!

M&M's – any flavor or variety, they are the only kind of chocolate that will make the trip

Dried fruit/nut mixes, protein bars, granola bars, any packaged food would be good to have since Ramadan starts right as I get to site and all the locals will be fasting so food will be hard to come by during daylight hours (not impossible, I'm told people will still make it for me/sell it to me I just would rather not ask them too…)

Letters/pictures/updates/post cards/love notes from all of you!!!!!!

My Address again is:


Shelby Perry, PCT
Corps de la Paix
BP 222
Nouakchott, Mauritanie Africa Par Avion


and my phone # is: 011-222-420-3986 (i'm pretty sure thats right...) service is spotty and calls don't always go through so feel free to call and call and call until you get me!

FEET!

(Original sent July 16, 2008)

Hello every one!

Sorry i have not written in so long but as you know I have limited access. Right now I am sitting at the center, in between tech sessions typing this email on my computer to copy and paste into an email later because I have limited internet time. I miss you all BEAUCOUP and boy do I have some stories to share!

I will start with this one, not for those with weak stomachs, but instead for all those people who used to poke fun at me for my vegetarian ways, so that I can now say that I am way more hardcore than you. I ate feet. I kid you not, 4 feet, 1 potato, spicy sauce, and some bread for dipping. I think it was cow feet meat but I remain unconvinced that they were in fact edible at all. They looked like feet, and they tasted like the really spicy sauce, probably intentionally designed to cover the taste of the feet themselves. Here in Mauritania NOTHING goes to waste, not even cow feet. YUCK. I was eating only the sauce and the potato and my family noticed and started ripping off chunks of the feet and tossing them to my side of the bowl, a gesture of hospitality the came across all wrong considering it was not food that they were throwing, but bits of cooked feet. I decided that I came here with the express intention of embracing a new culture so I dug in, and the result was not pleasant. I will spare you the gory details and leave it at this, I would not recommend them under just about any circumstances.

Another story…language barriers are funny things, sometimes I am truly impressed at my French skills and my ability to convey my messages and at other times I fail miserably, always with humorous results. One of my more humorous failings happened recently when my sister told me she liked my sunglasses and I tried to let her borrow them and accidentally gave them to her. Ce n'est pas grave, since they were a $5 pair from the Christmas tree shoppe, so I cut my losses and moved on. My sister wore them for 5 minutes then put them somewhere and they were gone. That night at dinner my dad was wearing them (for those of you that don't know them they are the gold/brown pair of very girly aviator style shades that I have had forever) and he said he thought he looked like a police man, much to my enjoyment her wore them for all of dinner even though we eat at 10 pm and it was very dark (we eat outside on a mat). Since that fateful day those shades have been showing up at all the weirdest moments. The other day I came home from French class to find Yousef, a neighbor boy that I would guess is in his twenties. Sometimes my petit frere, Mohammed will wear them and dance to rap videos on the TV. Occasionally a sister will where them when she's sweeping or cooking or whenever. I love it, well worth the 800 ouguiya I paid for a new pair of "Gucci" sunglasses at the market.

I put all of these stories in my journal which I write in every night and when it is full I'm going to mail it to the states for anyone who wants to read it (that's you mom and dad, and anyone else, I dunno how interesting my life will be but feel free). That's my contribution since I'm not going to be able to update you via email very often. I will be online a lot this weekend because I will be at the center for three days and hopefully have an opportunity to upload some photos soon. This Sunday I find out my site assignment, as in my permanent site, for the next two years, and then Monday I head out there for a week long visit with the volunteers currently there, to meet local health professionals, school administrators, etc, and hopefully lots of fun!

Theres much more to tell but I am out of time so fini for now,

I love and miss you all but not so much that I'm not able to enjoy my time here. I'm happy and healthy and sweaty and smiling and I have a gecko that lives in my room named Skeeter!

Bye bye for now!

Shelby (Marieme!)

AND ONE BIG PS:

I am getting all of your emails but i get them after i have already written my next email so if i forget to respond i'm sorry! Jen, I did get the picture of the girls! They are so pretty and doing well i see! I also got the letter grom gramma ev but am in a bit of a hurry and have not been able to read it yet, but it is saved to my hardrive so i can get to it later. Kate (and anyone else interested) for the rast of stage (through august) my mailing address is as follows:

Shelby Perry, PCT
Corps de la Paix
BP 222
Nouakchott, Mauritanie Africa

I would love anything anyone would want to send me, but save yourself some money and try to keep it in envelopes (even the big padded ones) rather than boxes (way cheaper!)

Glad to hear everyones well, i have about 30 other emails to wade through and then i might try to put up some photos but we'll see, i'll try to let everyone know if i do.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

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!