BANDITS!

October 22, 2008

Hello Lovelies!

I don't know what to write to you all because I've written so much lately in journals and letters and emails and messages that I can't remember who I have told what but I'm going to tell you about the "bandits" at my house and if I have already told any of you this…too bad.

During my long and arduous search for a family and/or place to live I visited many a household (like 4), eventually settling on the one I love with now. When I went to drop off the lease we had Emily and her host sister Hawa with me and as we walked away Hawa told Kim and Emily all about how I should not live there and the neighborhood was full of bandits. We found this disconcerting and didn't return to sign the lease until we had taken the time to ask around to see if there was any merit to this claim. We found that my host family has been housing volunteers forever and ever (15 years-ish) and no one seemed to have any qualms with the neighborhood so I went for it and signed the lease. Ok, before you all freak out and think I'm totally crazy for moving into the bandit filled neighborhood you should also know that after proclaiming that my new neighborhood was full of bandits (my new neighborhood being college, the very same quartier Hawa lives in herself, and about a 5 minute walk from her house) she announced that I should rent a little house from them and move in there, so though I trust her, I had some doubts as to her motives.

So, lease signed, I moved in and got settled. The family consisted of my host mother, Leldo Ba, whom I adore, even though we don't really speak the same language at all, my host father, whom I refer to as father figure because I don't know his name and who also doesn't speak any language that I do but is very nice, 2 older guys, Ibrahim and Souleymane, whose places in the family I couldn't quite figure out until much later, (Souley being my oldest brother at 27 and Ibrahim's place in the family being the basis of this entire story), an older sister Amineta, another big brother, Adama, a younger brother Alieu, and a little sister, Hawa. I spent plenty of time trying to divine Ibro's place in the family, as I had plenty of time to spare, until one day he up and disappeared. Souley asked if I had seen him and I admitted that I had not, but he had only been missing since breakfast and he would turn up. So the following evening hw still has not turned up and a gentleman pulls up in a truck looking for him. Souley informs him that we have not seen Ibro in a few days and they talk in angry hushed tones for a few minutes and then the man leaves. Oh man, what was that all about, I think, but before I can ask Souley tells me.

Ibro (who is 42) is my brother Adama's (who is 24) friend from Senegal and he was staying with us against the wishes of my big brother, Souley, because my father refuses to turn a friend of the family away, even though Souley didn't trust him. Souley maintained his distrust and never left Ibro at the house by himself, slept in the same general area, and watched him like a hawk. Evidently just a few days ago Ibro left and never came back, with some money that belonged to the man who showed up in the truck and now the whole of Selibaby is looking for him. Mystery solved, bandit found, and suddenly I feel a whole bunch more appreciative of my big brother who made sure I locked my bedroom door every time I wasn't in there, or if I was in there but I was sleeping (at first I just found this annoying, but now I get it). Before you all freak out and think I'm living with dangerous people know this, my family watches out for me more than I know, they take turns walking me to work if they hear the kids yelling toubob at me, they make sure my room is locked and my windows closed and they help me keep even the termites out of my room, they make me sleep right smack dab in the middle of the compound so that I'm surrounded while I'm asleep, and when a sand storm or anything else picks up they make sure I'm safely relocated into my locked bedroom. People here don't steal from friends or family or people who are good to them and for the most part they only steal out of desperation, Ibro stole because he had nothing else. I believe that he would never have done it if he had any other options but he had only days before asked me to ask my Portuguese road worker friend to get him a job, so I believe he was desperate. Don't worry about me, the bandits are gone. I'm safe now, but I still keep everything locked up like fort knox just in case.

I gotta go now, but I'm happy and healthy and doin just fine, and I saw a monkey yesterday so my life is complete, love and miss you all,

shelby

ps. i almost forgot to mention, i got so many wonderful responses to my last message i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who wrote to me....i'm so lucky to have the friends and family i do! love you guys!

Thank yous!

October 13, 2008

Merry Christmas!

Okay I know its not Christmas but that’s what today felt like here: shuttle day. When the shuttle driver saw me collecting my packages he said “oh tu es tres content maintenant n’est pas?!” Which means you are really happy right now aren’t you? I got Packages and/or letters from: Mom and Dad, Cory, Meaghan and Jilly, Elly, and Grandma and I want to give a great big heartfelt thank you to all of you, it was amazing! Boxes and letters and cards and magazines and so much more, so much more than I could even have hoped for so here are some individual personalized thank you’s:

Mom and Dad: Thank you so much for everything! You remembered everything, even the pictures for me to draw and the first thing I saw when I opened the first box was a jar of peanut butter and that was all it took, I was smiling ear to ear. I read every one of your letters mom, dad where were you on that? Too good to write to your little girl? Get on that! The letters are my favorite part, I love to hear what is going on there and I would love also to see photos if have any you could send! Thank you also for the water bottle, that’s amazing, its got the life straw water filter built right in! So cool! And how could I forget, the puppy treats! Puppy loves them, I gave her three and made her sit for them and she did, usually she won’t but I told her since they were special American dog treats she had to sit to get them and she did! I took a picture of me feeding them to her so you can see, but she looks creepy in it because her eyes are glowing yellow. At any rate shes perfectly content and sleeping on my feet right now and its adorable. You’ll never know how happy it made me to pick through my boxes of silly goodies, so thank you thank you thank you!

Cory: You have outdone yourself again, I was incredibly excited to get the letter in the first package with the rock from the grand canyon and the Sedona rock and the memory card full of amazing music which I’m listening to right now and the letter about your time at home, tell Eddy and Ali that I said hello and that I hope all is awesome in NH and happy belated graduation, I’m so sad I missed an old fashioned Peru woods party! Tell anyone else you talk to that I say hello too! The second package, the one you sent from school, there are no words to describe my happiness with that package. Obviously the i-pod (Awesome name choice by the way, Dayanand is the perfect next name in the saga of my ipod owning history, for being such a worldly ipod right from the get go!) is amazing and I’m am so lucky to have you and I know that but you went above and beyond by filling it with amazing music and movies and tv shows and everything, my regionmates have figured out how to watch them on the computer and are watching the Bourne Identity right now, I was too but I couldn’t concentrate on a movie with so many thank you’s running around in my head so I figured I would write this and then watch when I’m done. As if the ipod wasn’t enough, you also stuffed that box to the very top with so many amazing things! I’m very excited to have tea tomorrow morning that’s not served in a shot class and composed of 50% sugar! The spices are great and were immediately added to the collection we have going here that I have been going through so quickly with all my cooking that it felt awesome to be able to contribute back. Oh what else, the camelpak, I’m told will be great for carrying extra water on long taxi trips and I also have now made it a personal goal here to go on a camel trek in the sahara while wearing my camelpak and the moment I do you will be sent photos. The baby toys are going to a baby that lives with the family Emily, my site mate, lives with. The baby’s mother died during or shortly after childbirth and the baby is now being watched by Emily’s family during the day and spending the nights at the neighbor’s house, which I gather was her mother’s compound when she was still alive. She is so tiny, she just learned to roll over a few days ago and has been getting into all sorts of trouble ever since so I can’t wait to give her some toys to keep her busy. Thanks so much for all of it again, I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to have a brother as awesome as you, all the other volunteers are jealous!

Elly-belly!: I am better now that I have gotten your card and I found your letter adorable and hilarious! I love you tons and I’m so thankful for your thoughtful card and package fully of yummy granola bars and the like, I had no idea it was coming and the surprise made it that much better! Your card is going up on my wall for sure and the next time I get all artsy (almost once a day here…I have a lot of time on my hands) I’m making you a card and sending it out your way! Love you tons! I hope RPI is treating you well! Hugs and Kisses!

Meaghan and Jilly: Your package brought much mystery and much more happiness into my life. I can only assume that the card you sent separately went with this package because there wasn’t one in this package but the envelope didn’t fair very well and theres a chance it could have gotten away…I can also only assume that the M&Ms got away because I’m guessing you didn’t send an empty bag, but that’s what I got, an empty M&M bag with a little hole in the end…I think it spent a lot of time in the mail room and was visited by little mice friends, or a sketchy local character who was hungry, either way whoever got it probably deserved it a lot more than I do anyway because I have been so blessed to day any more would have been ridiculous! All the other goodies were intact and amazing, right down to the frosted animal crackers that reminded me so strongly of Meaghan Gallagher I almost broke my face in half I was smiling so wide. LOVE YOU SO MUCH! Write again and tell me how your doing, I so love to hear from either one and both of you! I will send you each a card as soon as I can that you will have to staple into the Lamb-gina journal for future smiles! LOVE YOU! XOXOX

Grandma: You’re letter made me so happy! I love that you are trying to be greener and using the canvas grocery bags, and the fact that they are the ones Cory and I made so long ago makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! I’m so happy Jen sends my emails to you, I was hoping you would be kept updated. Its funny to me how my being on the other side of the world has shown me how easy it is to keep in touch with everyone that I used to be so close to that I took them for granted, now I have such an appreciation for family and friends, because they mean everything here, that I’m desperate to hear from you guys way back over there! I hear from Ann and Jen and Kathy more now than I ever did before and I had no excuse not to be in touch, I just never made the time because in the states communication is so easy its completely taken for granted…why would I call or email now when I can do it just as easily any other time? That attitude let me feel okay about barely talking to you guys anymore and I’m sorry but that’s just dumb! You are my family and I hope if I take nothing else from this trip across the ocean, that I will at least learn to stop taking my family for granted and do a better job of keeping in touch! So there you have it, and to anyone else (like you mom, because I know you read every word of all my emails J ) reading this I think you should do the same! Family is family, whether through marriage or blood or adoption or whatever, so don’t let them forget how much they matter to you! I love you Gramma, and I’ll send you another card soon!

Okay, now I’m done with those, so the rest of you can stop pretending like you didn’t read that last part and keep reading here. One more quick thank you, to all those of you who have written me emails, if you have written and I have not responded it is not because I haven’t read them or don’t want them, I just sometimes have limited computer time but I love each and every email I get and I read all of them religiously because it’s the closest thing I have to being there with you guys and it makes me so happy to hear from you, you have no idea! Every time I go into the Peace Corps office and use the computer its like being in Americaland for a little while and it’s a nice break from Mauritania. It always feels weird to walk out after an hour or two on the internet and still be in the dusty, goat-filled streets of Mauritania. Not that I don’t love it here, I do, I just love it at home too, so I love to live the culture clash that switching gears from your emails to greeting random strangers wearing giant white or blue or green boubous in Pulaar causes in my head. You should try it sometime, its great, just make sure you’re okay at laughing at yourself because you’re going to have to do a lot of it here. When you talk to people, about 50% of the time you are both speaking a language you are not 100% comfortable with and most of time they know about as many words in English as I know in Pulaar/Soninke/Hassiniya/Wolof. It seems almost everyone here knows how to say “How are you? Fine!” in one big long string, because they learned the question and the response all at the same time, which I thought was funny until I realized that most of the time when they greet you in any of the languages here they do it in a similar manner, for example, if you learn French in Africa you are liable to greet someone in french by saying:

Bonjour! Ca va? Ca va bien? Comment allez-vous? Et votre travail? Et vos famile ? Ca va vos famile ? Tu va bien ? Bien alhumdulilah !

Which can be roughly translated as :

Hello! Hows it going? Its going good? How are you? And your work? And your family? How is your family? You are well? Well thanks be to god!

And they’ll say all of that, even if all you say in response is ca va once or twice. So now when I get text messages from my English-speaking host brother from Rosso that say:

“Hello. How are you? You are fine I hope and your family is nice and that you are fine. I hope you are fine. Good bye.”

Its totally normal, and only a little bit funny. Mauritania is awesome. I’m done writing now, love you all, I’ll write more later!

Shelby

Silence speaks louder than donkies...

October 11, 2008

I risked life and limb to get here this morning, just to write to you people, and to translate my resume into French for an NGO. It rained again last night, and I’m not talking a few shimmering sprinkles. The sky opened up and dumped water on this dried up little town like a freaking bucket. The streets are a mess, and my toes are coated in the deliciously squishy clay mud that this town is made out of.

I was woken up by the complete absence of sound at around 4am. That’s the first time that has ever happened here, total silence except for the quiet little plopping sound of toads jumping around on my mat, there was nothing else. It was creepy not to hear a single donkey bray and goat cry or dog bark or anything, and I just laid there in my mosquito net watching the moonlit yard. The lightening had already started in the distance at that point but I couldn’t hear any thunder, that’s how fast storms move around here. By 4:30 I was up, with the rest of my family, dragging all of our bedding into our rooms because the wind had picked up and it was laden with sand making sleeping outside uncomfortable to say the least. Once I was inside and settled back into bed the wind slowed down again and I considered moving back out, but thought better of it. By 5:15 not only was the wind back, but big fat rain drops were starting to fall. A few big fat drops of rain have fallen before during sandstorms, so I thought little of it and got up to shut my door to keep the toads from taking refuge in my room. Well by 5:30 it had picked up full scale and started downright pouring. The wind drove the rain in through the termite holes in my walls where it proceeded to melt the mud bricks and form little mud rivers down my walls, so I got up one more time and dragged my net into the very middle of the room and put buckets under the termite filled sandy mud puddles and thought about how crazy my life has become that this was not odd at all, simply tedious and annoying when I’m trying to sleep. In an effort to better appreciate the moment I snuck outside by myself into to morning darkness and pounding rain and just watched the power of the storm for a little while. I was cold and wet (though not soaked, I stayed under the eaves and refrained from dancing in the rain like I have been known to do in the past) and alone and gloriously ridiculously happy to be where I am right now living this every day.

A few nights ago, after a fantastic dinner of (here comes a combination that would be considered amazing only here…get ready) fresh live oysters with lime juice, amazingly strong and flavorful soft brie, and cold beer (all courtesy of Luis), Pot pie by Levin, and (my pride and joy) home made cream-filled, cinnamon sugar doughnuts freshly fried up by yours truly, myself, Luis, and the other volunteers who were in town become engaged in a big long conversation about peace corps service and how we all feel about what we’re doing and whether or not we’re doing any good and how fundamentally selfish it feels to me to be here (though no one else seemed to feel that way) and all of that jazz. Following the conversation, during which I learned a lot about myself, I wrote a big long journal entry that was accidentally even more revealing about my true character, sometimes when I get writing I write things about myself that I didn’t know were true until I see them committed to paper and its always a little bit scary to re-read them later. Without getting to self-help book on you, I’ll share this: I think I feel bad about my presence here because I was on some level hoping that when I got here I would find people in dire need of my help, however unrealistic and border-line sadistic that hope is, I wanted them to need me so much that I would come out of this service feeling like I had done something so wonderful, that I had helped so many people who couldn’t help themselves (it sounds worse and worse every time I put it into words). The reason I feel so bad about it now is that I have come here and found that they don’t need me, not really, not in the way I had sort of decided they would. I don’t feel needed, and therefore I have tipped the scales in the opposite direction of the way I was hoping.

I wanted to come here and do great stuff for everyone else and then as a lucky side effect, I would have this amazing experience and opportunity to grow as a person; but instead it’s the other way around. I am here growing and learning so much and taking so much out of this experience for myself, and as a lucky side effect I might do a few good things along the way. This is something that I’m having a hard time coming to terms with because I thought I was being selfless by coming here but clearly that’s not the case at all. So there it is, my daily dilemma, and for now, until I can think of a better way to deal with it, I’m just going to work on being okay with whatever comes out of this whole thing, and rely on the wisdom of Levin to make myself feel better, his wise words being something along the lines of: “How could you be doing harm here? I mean I guess if you try really hard you could mess things up pretty bad, but I don’t think it could happen on accident.”

So there you have it folks, I’m going to do my best not to accidentally make a big mess here, all the while appreciating all the wonderful things my service means to me.

Much love and as always, more to come,

Shelby

PS. A few new photos up on facebook if anyone is interested

Lies Lies Lies...

“Hiya Friends!

I have some extra time on my hands what with it being a holiday weekend here, and though I spent the first three days of this weekend, which just so happened to be the 3 day fete marking the end of Ramadan, gorging myself on mass quantities of food, I am content to spend the Saturday on the computer, away from endless greetings and various drinks and meals with random people. I have these moments all the time where I think ‘I should write about this in my next email’ and then I get here with my computer and all those moments have completely left me and I end up writing to you about whatever random event pops into my head. Well, I wish I could say this time is different but alas, I have nothing for you, so here’s another heap of random observations for your reading pleasure, or annoyance, whichever the case may be. For the record, if you are reading these hoping for some life changing insight or amazing and inspiring story of hope and wonder from the wilds of Africa, you’re reading the wrong e-mails. I don’t even know what I’m going to do here, I mean I’m hear with all this training on things that are important but how to do them is not what people need to know.

Yesterday I was having this discussion with Luis, a friend of ours from Portugal here working on the roads. I say I don’t know what I’m going to do here not because I’m feeling exasperated and overwhelmed already, on the contrary I have been loving it here so far and even though I feel I have done very little, I know I’m not supposed to have done anything but observe and learn right now and so that’s what I’m doing, but here is what I have observed (and also the source of my confusion on what I will do with my time here): In training I learned how to make a cream from a local tree that repels mosquitoes, how to make fly traps, proper methods of hand-washing, what foods a child needs to eat to combat dehydration and malnutrition. I learned how to run an animation or give a presentation showing how easy these things are to do and why they are important, but here’s what training didn’t tell me: People here have a hard time sparing water to properly wash their hands when they have to haul every drop from a well a few kilometers away from their house, or when they pay what are for them vast sums just for the privilege of a running water tap on their property. People know that mosquitoes are bad and should be repelled, but to ask these women, who prepare 3 meals a day from scratch, do all the laundry by hand in buckets, haul all the water, wash all the dishes, sweep the whole compound, care for their numerous children, goats, sheep, cows, donkeys, gardens, and all other household chores every day, to spare the hour or so it takes to mix up a batch of neem cream is essentially asking them to give up an hour of sleep in many cases, they work so hard. What I am beginning to see is that I have been given a tool box full of band-aid solutions to solve problems with roots so much deeper than can possibly be addressed by one volunteer, even with 2 years to live and learn these problems inside and out.

I have always been the type to try to shoulder burdens that I can’t possibly handle but this may very well be my biggest one yet, and the hardest part: On the surface everything looks fine. On the surface these people are poor, but that doesn’t matter to them, after all they have never known any other way. What I see when I’m here is that despite the precious little they have in material goods, they are rich beyond my wildest dreams in kindness and community and generosity; and here I am, a little American girl, with my backpack full of useless gadgets that I thought would be so handy to have here, that I paid more than the average Mauritanian makes in a year for, trying to tell them that everything will be better if they just wear neem cream every night and wash their hands with soap. As far as I’m concerned right now I’m doing more damage here than good, providing these people with a living, breathing, metric of the American dream, against which their life couldn’t possibly measure up in any visible way. Of course when it comes to the invisible means I have a hunch that the “American dream” leaves much to be desired. I hope that I’m doing at least a little bit of good for myself and maybe even the people I’m sharing this experience with (ie. You kind folks) just by seeing and showing how having so little can give you so much. Of course Luis says people here are so nice and so happy because of all the green tea they drink, but for whatever reason, on the surface everyone here is one hundred times happier than anyone I’ve encountered in the states.

Anyway the point is, I come here toting my American ideals and they have no place here, and if by some chance I plant some seeds here, when they grow into whatever they’ll be, I doubt they’ll be beneficial in any way to anyone here. Now before you all go getting worried that I’m feeling depressed about my choices or my service, know this, nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m so happy here Luis teases that I’m going to stay when my service is done. I know I just got here and I can’t let it get overwhelming yet, I’m just taking every step of every day as a learning experience, and hopefully, if nothing else, I will come out of this with a new understanding of finding the root of problems for any future aid or NGO work I might be able to do. So if nothing else, I’ll gain something from this, and hopefully I won’t mess anything up too bad while I’m here!

So, on that note, I’ll try to talk about something a little more hopeful! I have a little project, I’m making posters for the hospital pediatrics office about neem cream, moringa (an amazing tree that has every imaginable nutrient a malnourished child could possibly want in it, not to mention a million other uses), and oral re-hydration salts. I’m blundering my way through the French translations and will hopefully have the body of the posters written up and the basic layout done by the end of the week. I spoke to some Mauritanians about the wonderful moringa tree when I was trying to compose part of my poster, and I found that they have a lot of misinformation when it comes to moringa, at least I think its misinformation because if its not then it’s Mauritania’s best kept secret. I had my dictionary on my lap and I said to my friend Souleymane, “If someone asked you why Moringa was so good, what would you say?” Well he reached right over and took my dictionary and said “Moringa cures over 160 diseases” (Which could be true, it’s roots and seed pods have been found to have remarkable antibiotic properties) but then he continued, flipping through my dictionary on the French to English side, he found what he was looking for and pointed, “it cures this” he said, and pointed to the English translation: Cancer.

“It can’t possibly cure all cancers, maybe some but there are many types that have no cure at all,” I said.

“Perhaps not all, I don’t know, but some.” Okay, I’ll give him that, maybe. He continued flipping and selected another word, which he showed me, “this too” he said, pointing to diabetes.

“Hmmm…really? I don’t think so…at least they never said that in our training” I said.

“I think so” Souley replied and searched some more, coming up with his third and final example of the wonder cures of moringa: paralysis.

That was enough for me to realize that he was doing the traditional Mauritanian thing and trying to answer the question just to be nice, even if they don’t know the answer, because they don’t want to let you don’t by saying they don’t know. They’ll do that also with directions, if you ask someone how to get somewhere the peace corps recommends that you ask 2 or 3 people and take the general consensus as people here would prefer to give the wrong directions that have to tell you they can’t help you.

Teachers will do that too. As a teacher you are in a place of authority and respect, you don’t want to tarnish the reputation by not being able to answer the questions of your students, so whether they know or not, they’ll always give an answer. Its been going on for so long sometimes ts hard to tell if someone is making up the answer because they don’t know, or if they think they know but the person who was teaching them made it up because they didn’t know, and so on and so forth. Its really not as bad as it sounds, people don’t ask many difficult questions around here. There is no ponderings of the intricacies of life or science, most of those questions are answered by religion and here that’s basically law and as a rule, not questioned. That leaves silly questions (like how old are you) for people to lie about. Everyone lies about their age, at least all women; and some of them don’t actually know. My 13 year old host sister says she’s 9, Emily’s sister has a twin brother who is 20 but insists she is no older than 16. My sisters in Rosso told me at least 4 different ages each, and even after 3 months of living with them the only one I know the real age of is Saratou because my host parents told me she is the same age as me, she would never admit that though.

When people here ask my age and I say I’m 22 they assume that by that I mean 26, and if I’m 26 why aren’t I married? And if I’m not married, would I like to be? And if yes then would I be willing to marry an African? Will I live here after I’m finished with my service? And just like that I understand the lying, it’s just easier, I can’t answer these questions, and even if I could I don’t know that I want everyone here to know the answers. Now I lie, because I’m integrated (Je suis une vrai Africainne!), and it’s easier.

Am I married? No, but I have a fiancé, he’s waiting for me in the United States. He calls me every week and we don’t know when we’re going to get married but probably right after I’m done with my service here. He’s not going to visit because that’s expensive and we’re saving money for our wedding, you can’t talk to him when he calls because he doesn’t speak any French, or Pulaar, or Soninke, or Hassiniya. He has a job in the States but I can’t tell you what it is because I don’t know the word for it in French, but it’s something with cars. I won’t live here after I’m done, at least not right away, because his job is there and when I’m done I will miss him so much I won’t want to live with an ocean between us anymore. I’m a pretty convincing liar now, so that’s something else I can take away from this experience, easy guilt-free lying about my marital status.

Okay I think that’s enough for today, this has been another long one! I hope you guys haven’t run out of patience with my rambling e-mails yet! Someday I’ll get together all the emails that I have written and all the journals that I’m filling each day, and all the letters I’ve written and all the sketches and paintings of plants and cows and tea services and goats and I’ll put them all together in the worlds coolest scrap book that I’ll want to read over and over again to relive these days of my life but no one else will have any desire to see haha….it’s going to be great! You just wait and see! I love you all, keep emailing me you’re love! I have so much to look forward too: 2 weeks until shuttle day when I get all my mail and packages! So to anyone who as sent something that I’m going to get on this shuttle load, THANK YOU! I’m fully confident that this shuttle will make my month! Now I must go and compose an email to the PCMO to request more malaria pills on that very same shuttle.

Peace, Love, and Ice Cream (Jess, I still wear my Ben and Jerry’s bracelet everyday, my host family can’t believe I worked at a store that sold nothing but ice cream, I’m confident their disbelief is simply cleverly disguised jealousy)

Shelby

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

Just to set the record straight...

September 18^th, 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

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