Internet

It may not be bothering you, but I am spoiled and it bothers me: Sorry about the lack of photos and the long response time to emails and posts, I just don't have enough time online to do everything I would like. Especially since it has been down for the last two days. I've read all the emails but I haven't had time to respond yet, hopefully I will before I leave to go back to my site. Just the way things are here.

"This is not food."

So I heard the following story direct from my friend Ousman, about lecciri and kosam (couscous and milk) that they eat A LOT here:

“Back when I was studying in the Ukraine, a group of us decided to go to Moscow for a vacation. It was a long trip so we brought some lacciri with us to eat along the way. When we got to Moscow and were going through customs, the officials confiscated it thinking it was a drug. We insisted that it was food but they didn’t believe us. At the time, Russia was still the U.S.S.R. and they sat us down between two attack dogs, who would growl every time we moved, for five hours while they did a chemical analysis. Finally they came out and said, ‘My brothers, we don’t know what this is but it is not food.’ We again insisted that it was, we ate it all the time in Africa, and it was culturally very important to us. They said, ‘That may be, but it is very cold here in Moscow and if you eat this you won’t survive, you need real food.’ Then they handed us the results of the chemical analysis: Vitamin A – 0.0000000001% Vitamin C – 0.000000000001% Protein – 0.00000000000001% etc. We asked if we could have it back and they said, ‘No we can’t give this back to you, it is not real food. There is plenty of good food here in Moscow, go out and buy some new food.’”

Aaaaand that is why people are malnourished here.

World Vision Visions

A few weeks ago I was invited to sit through a World Vision training about their sponsorship program. You know, the one that you see on TV for three hours on Sunday afternoons featuring kids with flies in their eyes and “For just a dollar a day you could provide food and education for a child.” It was pretty cool to see the ground level part of that program, having seeing the funding level part growing up. In fact, for a while when I was little, the World Vision “commercials” were the only real images of Africa I had seen. I think that could be true for a lot of people could explain people’s tendency to think that the whole continent is about to die from starvation. Nutrition is a grave issue here, but the entire population is not about to disappear. Anyway, pretty cool to see the other side of the first international development program I had ever had exposure to. Since I get pretty nutty about seeing how NGOs work, ormally I would write just about that, but during the presentation I had a massive brainstorm that I’d like to share. I don’t know what I ate, but it was one of those times when your mind seems to be working in overdrive. Here are some of my thoughts:

- Information, information, information is what PCVs have to offer. That and the time and ability to put it to use, but it is access to information that is our most useful contribution.

- The most valuable piece of information I have to share is that people in the US don’t enjoy their lives anymore than people here.

- Straight up international aid is a bad idea. Throwing money at a problem in a developing country and expecting it to solve all of the reasons why the problem exists in the first place is like removing a dictator and expecting a perfect democracy to just happen. You can’t jump too far ahead of the level that the people are at. For this reason, I prefer the type of development work where you are helping people help themselves. For me, its sort of like the approach that the martial arts form Aikido takes. With Aikido, the point is to simply redirect the energy of the oncoming person, not to fight it. I think development should work like that.

- Life is massive. That is, it takes momentum. Rarely does it change rapidly, but it is not static, like a gyroscope. To realize a change, it is better to prepare a path for life to travel down and then let it take its own course than to exhaust your energy trying to push it directly in the direction that you want.

- Good quotes are like little boxes with big truths inside that take a while to unpack.

- I relish living up to expectations, both mine and those of others.

- Development work is kind of like a drug. Its hard on your mind and body, but when it works it makes the abuse worthwhile.

- This is how I think my mind works; how I come up with ideas and solutions to problems: When I see a need or something that could be used, I note it. It then gets thrown into the mix with everything else that I know and am thinking about. Then after a while on a tumble cycle, things link up and an idea is created.

- I am improving myself to improve my life, the people in it, and everything that is touched by it. I am the one thing that touches everything else in my universe, so it makes sense to work from there.

- I like writing not for its own sake, but because it encourages and completes thinking.

All of that flashed through my mind over the course of an hour or so.

Love and Kindness

I want to thank all of you yet again for your continued support. While I never know quite how to respond to it, people often generously state what a good thing it is that I am doing and that is very humbling. In all honesty, for me, its just what I feel I should be doing. I don't mean to try to shame other people by saying that, we all have good reasons for following our own paths, its just that for me, its not something extrodinary. All the same, I could not be here doing what I am doing without the support of all of the loving and wonderful people in my life. So remember, you have a hand in this as well even if you are not over here in the heat. For that, I cannot thank you enough.

You can lead a horse to water…

But you can’t make it drink. In this case the horse is the people of Bababe and the water is a 10 fold return on a minimal investment after 4 months. It has been an interesting lesson on the difference of the culture here. Let me start from the beginning:

As you know I my objective here is environmental education in the schools and the community. As schools are (still) just starting, I have spent most of my time so far thinking about community projects. It’s rare to find an environmental project that actually makes money and for every 10 good ideas I think I have I always find reasons why 9 of them just wouldn’t work, but my idea of a for profit tree nursery passed both of those tests.

Being that Mauritania is mostly desert, sporting more people that it can naturally support, and sheep, goats, and cattle eat any new shoots, its safe to say that reforestation is an important issue. Therefore, the need exists. In the two large towns surrounding mine there are tree nurseries, but they fail to meet the needs of my community for two reasons. One, they are not near the market in their towns, which is expensive to get to anyway, and the trees are overly expensive with a starting price of 200 UM ($1). Having already started my own small tree nursery in order to put some greenery in public spaces, I realized that trees can be grown for less than 10 UM ($0.05). You only need to pay for the bags to put them in and a little bit of water, all the other materials, sunlight, dirt, poop, and seeds, are free. Therefore, if a person had a tree nursery of 100 trees and sold just 10 of them for 100 UM, half the price that the tree nurseries were charging, she would get all of her money back, and still have 90 trees to sell. That’s a pretty big safety net. I liked the idea for two reasons, it would be a money maker for women’s cooperatives, and most importantly it would reduce the cost of saplings to the level where people in the community would buy and plant them on their own without any encouragement. (It’s too hot inside the concrete houses during the day, so people either build hangars or plant trees. I don’t think it would be possible to have too many shade trees here.) I talked this idea over with a bunch of Mauritanians and they both loved it and thought it would work. (A number of old ladies blessed me for doing it :) I had the help of Doudou Ba, a native Mauritanian who is currently working and studying in the U.S. with the translation of the whole idea into Pulaar so I knew that it was clear. All I had to do was give the presentation and it would be gravy. And that’s where it fell apart.

All along, I had been looking for why the idea might not work. The trouble was is that I was only looking at the idea, which is pretty much flawless and forgot about the people. It was a combination of two factors that doomed the first presentation; first, the failure of a few key people to contact the women’s cooperatives like they promised me to, second, call it satisfaction with the way life currently is, disinterest, or laziness, but of the many people who knew about it, liked the idea, and promised attendance, no one showed up. Given the amount of work that I had put into pulling this all together, researching the other tree nurseries, starting a demonstration nursery, arranging for tree nursery bags to be sold in the community, creating a presentation, translating the presentation, and promoting the presentation, it was pretty disappointing to not have anyone there. However, I may have lost the battle, but the war is far from over.

In reality it is only a minor set back and lesson on the community with which I am working. After Halloween I’ll give another presentation, only this time explain the project more clearly, target who I invite better, and make sure that the people “helping” me actually do. The actual process of setting up the presentation was not done well enough is all. It was good enough for the U.S. but not for here. I will take the time to do it Mauritanian style next time.

New School Year

I voted yesterday and it felt great! While I don't know the extent of everything that is happening at home, it felt good to feel like I was helping to make something positive happen. 

However, the real subject of this post is about school. Officially, school started here yesterday (the twelveth) I am obviously not at my village, but given the experiences of everyone else, I would bet good money that the schools in my village have not yet started. This is typicial and no one ever expects them to start on time, its when teachers and students just start showing up that school actually begins. Nonetheless, I am heading back to my village today to hopefully begin the second half of my job, which is working with teachers to integrate environmental lessons and run an environmental club. Its a scary and like starting over because I have not been able to make any contacts with the school director or teachers because they have not been around, it is entirely possible that they are still not there. Lets hope that they are and I can launch the other half of my work here.

As a side note, I should be back online the 28th and I have been having phone problems this past week but that should be fixed today. 

Working = Happiness

Ever since returning to my village since my last trip into town I have been much happier there than I was before. This is because the break was over due and also because I have had productive things to do almost every single day. I am still very much in the PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) phase, where my work is going around and talking to people about the community, what is good and works well and what isn’t. However, I am beginning to develop project ideas and start to act on them. Some of the ideas that I like and seem to fit the best are:

- Soak pits for grey water generated by “showers” that currently pools in the streets and serves as a breeding ground for mosquitoes

- Teaching women’s cooperatives how to run a tree nursery as a profit making venture. People here are aware of deforestation, know that it is illegal to cut trees, and love to have them in their compounds, but as near as I can tell no one knows where to get trees to plant. This strikes me as strange since tree nurseries are pretty simple to maintain and the trees could be sold for 300 UM (~$1.50) which is very affordable. In fact it strikes me as so strange that tree nurseries don’t already exist that I am taking extra care to find out if there is a good reason before I launch into it.

- A tree planting campaign throughout the public spaces in town. With the exception of maybe 10 trees, all of the other trees in town were planted during a previous campaign financed by an NGO a few years ago. I would like to replicate that on a smaller scale, focusing on public spaces that were neglected. This campaign would be tied with an environmental education campaign, yet to be determined. Ideally, enjoying the benefits of having an “overly” green town demonstrate what the surrounding lands could be like with the proper management.

- Restarting the trash collection system that was originally financed by the PC a few years ago, but was recently abandoned. I have not fully investigated this but I believe it is an issue of management and not materials, which is good because given the amount of money the PC has previously put in; I am not going to dig the financial hole on this project any deeper.

- Promotion of the use of manure and compost. These two things just make so much sense and are so free that even though they are not easily accepted I am going to push for their use.

- Biogas! I’ll admit, this one isn’t exactly practical, but given that it is such a “perfect” environmental solution and I am happy to devote some energy to trying to make it a viable alternative to charcoal for meal preparation. I saw a simple system that another NGO is testing out and of course have some ideas of how it might be improved.

- Small enterprise projects: hammocks, potato peelers, two piece camp chairs

All of that is in the domain of the community half of my job description. School “starts” the 12^th. So the teachers and school directors should be back in town on the 11^th. After I go back I will begin PACA activities with them to determine what my role in the schools is going to be.

Hooray for having things to do!

A few thoughts on time

So I am realizing that my concept of having lots of free time here doesn’t exactly represent the reality. Before arriving I pictured moving at the American pace, which I quite like, while everyone else moved at the Mauritanian pace. I quickly realized that it was not going to be possible. Not only would I drive myself crazy with impatience, but it physically wouldn’t work because the people I work with and interact with operate with a difference conception of time. I hear the word “faad” which means “wait” a lot. For example, immediately after eating lunch a friend was getting up to go and our host hold him to “faad ngam hirtari” “wait for dinner,” which at that time was seven hours away!

However, the fact that I am going to be operating on a different time scale is not what is really interesting to me. What I am still trying to wrap my head around is how I spend so much of my day not doing anything but don’t feel that I have that much free time. It seems entirely counterintuitive to me. The best explanation I have for it is because I spend so much time waiting for an event to happen, some one to show up, the hour long tea round to be finished, etc, in my mind that time is tied up in the activity that I am waiting for that the intervening hour(s) don’t feel like free time, and pass without anything happening because I continue to wait. My solution for this is to never be without a book, but at the end of the day I often find myself wondering how I did so little while feeling like that I was doing something the whole day. (Cara you were right about this.)

I think it also has something to do with the fact that during the first few months after I arrived here, when didn’t really understand the language, I developed an ability to sit for hours not doing anything and not notice the passing of time. That is, not be bored out of my mind. I can’t say that it is a preferred activity, but it is a valuable skill here.