PANIC ATTACK! (just kidding)

July 24, 2009

Helllllo Friends and Family,

Here I go, playing with your heart strings some more! So I’m taking a little...umm…trip. To be exact it’s a country-wide peace corps excursion to Senegal! BEFORE YOU FREAK OUT I AM NOT BEING EVACUATED AND THERE IS NO SECURITY THREAT THAT CAUSED THIS TRIP! Okay, now that I have that out of the way, heres what happened:

I had big plans for this weekend, I hopped on a taxi late yesterday afternoon and headed out to Tabatha’s village, Coumba N’Dao, and we planned mosquito repellent making sessions, moringa powder demos, a pilgrimage out to the Pulaar village to visit some mutual friends, and some world map painting, plus some good old fashioned duck duck goose with the eco-health camp girls. Unfortunately, as frequently happens ‘round these parts, all of my big plans were foiled. About 2 hours after arriving, Tab and I were wandering from house to house in the town greeting every one of Tab’s friends that would be offended if we didn’t greet them the moment another volunteer arrived in town, me stumbling shamefully through Soninke greetings and Tabatha yammering away in her nonsense language as I like to call it (just kidding Tab, you know I appreciate the importance of Soninke, I’m just jealous because I can’t speak a local language!) and we get a phone call from Emily in Selibaby. Phone service was spotty at best and through the static, this is what I understand Emily’s side of the conversation to roughly have sounded like:

Sshshshshshsh(static)shshshsh very important news! Shshshshshs(static)shshshsh going to Senegal shshshshshshshshsh by the 27th shshshshshshshshshs probably coming back shhshshshshshs bring everything shshshshshshshshsh……(dial tone)

So naturally Tabatha and I had a panic attack, finished our greetings, because not doing that would be unspeakably rude, especially since we had already greeted some people and playing favorites is not a good idea, and then climbed up on the roof at her house and held our cell phones up in the air until we could get through to our APCDs and to Emily for more information and we learned that the panic attack was entirely unnecessary and a little over the top, but oh wellll. The “evacuation” is a test of the emergency action plan, we’re “evacuating” to the PC Senegal training center (apparently a 5 star establishment compared to our lovely Rosso spot) and hanging there on peace corps’ dime for roughly 10 days to discuss the future of the Mauritania program with our dramatically diminished volunteer population, which will probably involve consolidating sites that have only 2 or 3 people left in the region and a general, shall we say, coming together of peace corps Mauritania! As if we weren’t the closest most awesome group of peace corpions that ever there were…

Anywho, whilst we are gone a special crew of security evaluators are going to go through our country with a fine tooth comb (as they will be doing with all the sahel countries as a routine thing) to make sure all is well and good and that way when we all get back to our sites all of our parents can rest easy that our current living conditions are probably not sanitary or healthy but at least they are not in anyway threatening our personal safety and we can feel good and happy and maybe get some work done and stop playing games with your hearts. So there you have it, think of this as putting the lid on a big container that has all that crap that happened this summer in it and MOVING ON! Back to Peace Corps Mauritania business as usual!

After finding out what all of the hullabaloo was about, Tab and I canceled all of our plans, packed up all our things, said some goodbyes, and grabbed the first taxi back to Selibaby this morning. Now all 6 of my region mates are here, hanging out at my house, and tomorrow we move en masse to Kaedi and then Nouakchott where we’ll be meeting up with everyone else and taking a big ol’ bus down to our humble lodgments for a 10 day surprise vacay in Senegal. I went to my host family’s this morning to try my dandiest to explain what this all means in French and they didn’t really seem concerned at all. I brought them a baby mango tree, told them I’m going on a surprise trip to a Peace Corps conference in Senegal and I’m not absolutely positive when I’ll be back and they, being much better adapted to Mauritania’s tendency to mess up anything planned in advance, said “okay…safe trip! Hey wouldn’t it be funny if it rained tonight and you couldn’t go anywhere tomorrow?” (no….it would not.) And then they added “Hey! Lets braid her hair!” So that’s brings us to now, with a throbbing head full of very tight braids, packing my “most important things” to depart on an “evacuation” drill first thing in the morning, watching the horizon get darker and darker with threatening clouds and crossing my fingers that it won’t rain.

To those of you that know that when I moved into this house I inherited a VERY pregnant dog, no, she has not had any puppykins yet, and I have to leave her in a time of need, but I found her a very dependable dog sitter, and I’m quite confident that she’ll be fine. To those of you who get a hold of me on a regular basis, starting the 28th of this month I will be reachable only by my orange number, which I don’t know off the top of my head but I’ll text it to you. To those of you who are curious, I have not seen a giant spider since I moved in to my new house, and am being haunted only by the occasional mouse in cleaning up after me in my room and funny little toads that make weird old man noises hopping all over the place. And finally, to Tabatha’s Dad, Tab tells me you enjoy reading this, so I wanted to say thanks for letting me know that’s its worth posting these on my blog too…that and you’re daughter’s awesome, but I bet you knew that already :o)

Love and hugs all around,
Shelby

addressing concerns and eco camp!

July 10, 2009

Hello Everyone!

I hope this finds you all well and happy, etc. I am doing well…for
the few hours that I was undecided as to whether I was going to take
the IS and come home or not I thought there would never be a clear
choice, I thought I would always be wondering what if…no matter which
option I chose, but from the minute I made up my mind I’ve never been
more sure about anything in my life as I am that it was the right
choice for me. The emails and messages of support I’ve gotten from
you guys have made it that much easier for me, so thank you for your
continued support and concern…I’m positive this would have been much
more difficult if all of you hadn’t taken this news so well.

All told we are losing 20 volunteers from all over the country, these
people are leaving for various reasons ranging from personal issues at
home, to not wanting to be alone at site (with all of our second years
leaving that is happening for the first time to a lot of people) to
people who were on the fence already and thought they might as well
just go now because of all the benefits offered with the IS. Among
these were people with genuine security concerns, but I want to be
clear to you, these security concerns do not apply across the board,
many sites are far more difficult than mine, far less friendly places
to live. Selibaby is an incredibly diverse city in an incredibly
diverse region, sharing borders with both Mali and Senegal, the local
population is very accepting of other cultures and very accustomed to
being that way; more than that, they have been working successfully
with aid organizations for ages and French volunteers, German
volunteers, and others live in this region all the time. This is not
true for all of Mauritania, many sites are astoundingly un-diverse and
still others have grown up around industry, such as the mines in the
north where they have had the constant presence of foreigners but
often in a very negative context. Volunteers at these sites have
experienced security concerns involving petty theft and breaking and
entering, as could happen anywhere in the world, these are not
serious, but surely they are intimidating, especially to people who
will be alone at site for the first time. Volunteers who are going to
be afraid for the entire next year at their site should absolutely go
home, the peace corps is a wonderful experience when its done right
but its no reason to live in fear.

That said, I want you all to know that I do not. I’m cautious and
careful, I avoid large events, especially those with political or
religious leanings, I don’t leave the house after dark unless
accompanied by another volunteer or one of my host brothers, and I
have a dog living with me that scares the pee out of every Mauritanian
to set eyes on her but loves me to pieces. I’m careful, but not
scared. This is why I stayed, and when all is said and done I know
I’ll be glad I did. All 5 volunteers in my region are staying, and as
an added bonus we are probably getting another who will be moving down
from another site to run our girls mentoring center now that Kim has
finished her service. When I told my friends in the community about
having to make this decision they had no doubt that I would stay, even
before I felt the same way, but they still sympathized with a feeling
of unease that such an offer might create and many generously offered
to guard or find a guard for my house, but I have puppy and that’s all
I need. Please do not worry (too much) about my safety, I know its
difficult to understand from so far away with no real understanding of
the culture other than what you’ve heard from me, but I love life too
much to do anything stupid and Aunt Jen, if it ever comes down to it,
I’ll be home LONG before I’m scared. I love you all so much, I hope
this helps puts your minds at ease a little…

Anywho, now that I got that out just thought I would also write a
little about what I have been up to lately. These past 5 days I have
been at Eco-Health Camp in Kankossa. The camp was a world vision and
peace corps sponsored event for girls to get away from home, have some
fun, and learn a little too. I brought 2 girls from Selibaby and my
host sister as their chaperone, and Tab brought two from Coumba N’Dao
(her village) and a chaperone as well and Sari came along to help out
too. Getting out of Selibaby is a little tricky during the rainy
season and our prayers for good weather were not heeded by mother
earth because she rolled in a big storm at around 3 am the night
before we left and continuing until we were halfway to our final
destination. The “road” between here and kankossa is a rough track
through rocky rugged terrain slashed with the gullies carved by
seasonal rivers. If its raining upstream, one of those rivers can
postpone your travels indefinitely and in that respect we were lucky.
We got stuck in the clay-ey mud only one and our driver took off his
shoes and white boubou and laid his metal grippy strips in the muck
barefoot because no one wants to mess up perfectly nice shoes when
feet are so washable. He hopped back in the car and gunned the engine
with his clay-encased toes dripping mud all over the pedals and floor
of the car (no ones real concerned about messing up cars though…) and
we zipped right out of the mud and, after the driver rinsed his feet
and donned his shoes, continued on our merry way. The camp was what I
would call a wonderful success because you can’t expect these things
to go perfectly and we had the following things working in our favor:
an awesome volunteer team who did all the planning and setting up for
us before we got there, lots and lots of yummy food, important lessons
paired with fun activities, and an amazing sports activity every night
(the favorite among the girls: duck duck goose). That said, here are
some things that went slightly differently than planned: The cooks
robbed us mercilessly with their magic traicks, making meat, powdered
milk, and vegetables disappear, price gouging us on veggies that they
were selling at their own stall in the market and knew we would have
to buy, and making certain items and utensils appear magically in
sacks or buckets like the 2 dirty knives we put with the dishes to be
washed and then found in a sack, hidden, presumably from us. That
made me sad, because these are not bad people, they can just get a
little greedy and are very good at exploiting an opportunity. One of
them even had the audacity to interrupt our closing ceremony and
demand one of the backpacks for herself that was the participation
gift for the girls, and she was decidedly not a girl, but rather very
well could have been old enough to one of their grandmothers.

At the end of the camp we negotiated a car back to Selibaby for 7 as
Tab and Sari were staying behind to do some visiting, and got a Helix,
which is a truck with room for 6 inside and one lucky member of our
traveling group in the truck bed (I couldn’t do that to a girl or a
chaperone so that lucky member was me). Cars usually leave for
Selibaby in the evening and often stay a night on route and because we
didn’t want to do that we were forced to buy out the car for an
exorbitant amount, as always when we travel, but I was okay with that
because I would have the back to myself and not have to fight for a
good position on a truck bed taking rough dirt roads at 70 km/hr,
course I was not all that surprised when I found out I wouldn’t have
the back to myself after all, but that the garage guys brother would
be hitching a free ride part of the way with me…I made some angry
noises, he assured me it was only for an hour or so and so I let it
go, not worth fighting about. Now, I’m not sure whether I should have
been surprised or not when we reached the city limits and picked up
two more, clearly told ahead of time to be expecting the car, clearly
expecting a free ride. I was tired and angry and we had fought with
the garage guy a lot about the price of the car, him insisting that no
one would want to leave on this particular trip in the morning and he
wouldn’t be able to sell ANY OTHER PLACES in the car so we would have
to pay for them all…so I had a few choice words with this gentleman
who promised to pay me and acted all indignant that I was so upset…I
asked him to see things from my side and couldn’t he see that it was
stealing? Then I put on my headphones and calmed down, remembering
that it was world visions money that had paid for the car and any
money he gave me should be for them or I would be stealing too and
then I worried if I was too mean to the guy and maybe I shouldn’t have
said stealing because that’s very offensive here, maybe he hates me
now, I need to be more careful. I was polite but not overly friendly
the rest of the trip and when he got off the car at his stop I thought
I was out here giving Americans a bad name when, as we’re pulling away
he wished me a good trip and safe travels and then starting forward a
few paces while we left him he the dust he yelled “oh I forgot to give
you my phone number…” No man or woman with old enough sons can stay
mad at me in this country; their perceived possibility of marriage is
far too tempting to burn any bridges.

I can see that this message is getting long and you’re probably bored
so I’ll finish up, I got back to Selibaby safe and sound and all the
girls and chaperones got back to their respective houses without
problems. I never did see a penny from that chauffer, even though we
picked up two more people on route but I was still given my space in
the truck bed and it even felt a little better with company, even
though we didn’t talk at all, so I saw no need to fight over a few
thousand ouguiya. Got home to find puppy looking very pregnant indeed
(anyone want an African puppy?) making her all the more feisty and
also needy for attention (I was woken up many times in the night to
her sleeping on or trying to tunnel into my mosquito netting, and when
I finally let her in a goat jumped up on the wall and she almost tore
it all down trying to chase him away). I’m happy, slightly less than
healthy with the dregs of a cold still hanging on making my nose run
and my head ache in the heat of the day, and I’m glad to be back in
familiar territory with my host family and all my friends here. I’ll
write more as soon as I have a good story to tell,

Love,
Shelby