Journal of a PCV Parent cont. Mauritania (Almost)
Dave and I both feel that this was the most awesome day off all 5 weeks! After a taxi, bus, charet (donkey cart), and pirogue (wooden dug out canoe) and yet another charet and we arrived on an island in the middle of the Senegal River just across the river from Zach’s former village in Mauritania. A Fête was planned and a house was rented for the day and we met many of Zach’s Mauritanian family and friends. Zach had arranged to have a goat killed, but instead we got mutton, which was very good! As we arrived on donkey cart, Samba and Aseta came out to great us. They were the couple that became Zach’s family while he was in Mauritania. Aseta fed him wonderful food. I received a hug from her that you could drown in and we were both near tears. We were taken into the salon of the barrowed house and treated as honored guests all day. There were speeches given in honor of Zach and us by Samba who clearly loves Zach as a brother. The mayor/chief of the village gave a speech welcoming us (not to be outdone by Samba). We ate traditional food and later the women played dress up with me. See previous pictures (Sue in gold wax print). You could tell that Zach left an indelible mark on the Mauritanians, as did they on Zach. I told them Mauritania would always be in Zach’s heart.
Sue (Zach's Mom)

Journal of a PCV parent cont.

On to Saint Louis:
Saint Louis as explained in the Lonely Planet: “The Senegal River flows westward towards the Atlantic Ocean, but currents and winds have pushed sand across its mouth for thousands of years, changing it’s course. Now the final section of the river runs south, separated from the ocean by a long narrow peninsula – the Langue de Barbarie. The original city of Saint Louis was the first French settlement in West Africa (and maintains much of it’s French flavor.)” Zach loves this city and in retrospect, I do too but it took a while to get that perspective. (Many of the things I first experienced in West Africa became much better in my mind as we traveled on and got more experiences and perspective. The little Pelican hotel with thatched hut rooms by the sea, I now look back at fondly. We had a charming meal at this hotel our last night and met the artist who had done the colorful, figurative murals. Some thoughts, sights and perspectives from my journal will help you see my deliema.
- Watching horses, goats and people being washed in the river along with dishes
- Huge amounts of garbage dumped along the sides of the river
- A street cleaner with a wheel barrow attempting the impossible
- The children begging (Koranic students spend a period of time on the street practicing the humble art of begging)
- American, Senegalese, French and British aide workers providing health care for the above mentioned beggars (“Tali Bay” or “Can kids” spelling probably not correct)
- A huge beautiful beach strewn with garbage
- Friendly greetings
- Beautiful women (and men)
- Helpful assistance
- French food
- Senegalese food at it’s best
- An air conditioned Patisserie ☺
- Good natured joking
- Terrific new PCV friends (Bernard, Richard and Nick)
- Warthog sandwiches MMMMM
- Great scenery

So you can see my perspective changing even while I was there!

Journal of a PVC Parent Cont.

Journal continued:
This is an entry word from word from my journal:
“West Africa, the real West Africa, not just pictures we have taken but the real sights and sounds, smells, tastes, fabric and cultural clothing. The people, the poverty, illness and harshness of life contrasted to the grace and beauty in which it is lived. For me what stands out is the women enduring it all with grace and a sisterhood that seems stronger than family ties. To be a woman in West Africa means hard work, patience, grace and an aloofness that is easily broken with a kind word, act or a sympathetic smile. They have welcomed me into the group upon occasion and it is like being held on your mother’s lap. I am no longer a Toubab (white woman) tourist, I am a woman accepted by them and included in their pride of their child or sympathies for what I am enduring with them. Like the woman helping me run to the pit latrine even though the bus driver is angrily honking his horn. Or the woman on the bus this morning whose baby was making a connection with me, or the woman whose back I supported while she sat in the middle of 5 adults and 4 young children in the bus bench seat in front of me (9 human beings in one seat!) nursing her baby. Aseta, who loves my son and fed him for a year in Mauritania. The women on the Car Rapid (Old rickety bus that is far from rapid) who knew that the three toubabs were being cheated by too high a faire and stood up for us or the young mother who feed us in Zach’s village when she barely had enough for her little family. It is these moments when Africa is no longer overwhelming. It is their acceptance that makes me feel comfortable and safe and OK to leave my son in the grace of the people of West Africa. Most of the time I am shut out of this embrace, but when I am let in, I know that I am more than a tourist or a Toubab, I am one of them…a woman.”

Empty Classrooms

Its funny how empty classrooms give moments of pause and reflection...

It’s the 12th of December and I am sitting here in a empty high school classroom waiting for the time to come to give my part of a presentation on climate change as part of the global day of action on climate change. I will be talking about what is going on at the conference and screening An Inconvenient Truth. Today’s activities have been spearheaded by the Kédougou chapter of Les Amis de la Nature (Friends of Nature). I find it exceptional that they have taken the initiative to put this on, my role in the planning has been very small even though I will do a big chuck of the talking. For me its tremendously rewarding to be able to participate in an action on climate change as I was not able to go to the conference myself.

(A side note on going to the conference, the Mauritanian that I helped find funding waited until just a couple of days before he was supposed to leave to apply for his visa. Needless to say, he did not get it. Even now I am so pissed off that he wasted his spot that I haven’t been able to talk to him. However, through other completely independent means that I had nothing to do with, another Mauritanian youth is currently participating in the conference. So at least someone is going.)

It has been a while since I have posted I know. I think in the absence of having work to do while I was being kicked out of Mauritania and then while I was going through training the second time I stopped finding my life that interesting to write about. However, after this presentation I am going to go out to my new site for real this time. (I have been out there on four separate occasions, but never for long and never in a way that I could start preparing to do work.) I am looking forward to the work that awaits me with great anticipation. Its been about 120 days since I have been able to work on any of my own projects.

One of the activities that has kept me away from my new site was the month long visit by my mom (Sue) and stepdad (Dave). I think for all of us it was a remarkable experience. My mom is a good writer so I will let her share her experiences in her own words here. (ahhem, please keep posting mom.) First and foremost I was wonderful to see family, its been over a year and a half since I have seen anyone that I knew before I joined the PC. It was also very interesting to see how my perspectives have changed in ways that I had not noticed. What I considered nice accommodations and the fact that I am totally desensitized to seeing sick and/or malnourished children were two changes that stood out. They also surprised me with what they found interesting. Some parts of the trip that I worried would be the most difficult for them they really enjoyed. Although, other parts of the trip that I worried would be the most difficult for them they really hated. All in all, they survived (and enjoyed) my west African tour remarkably well. Perhaps the best testimony to their achievement is that every single PCV that met them or heard about them and our travel plans either said, “Are they/you crazy???” or “Your parents are amazing, mine could never do that!” Who says you can’t go off having wild African adventures for the first (and last I think) time at age 60? Well done Mom and Dave. I had a wonderful time with you here and I didn’t quite know what to do for the first few days after you left, for example I couldn’t stop automatically translating everything anyone said to me into English despite who was around. ;)

(Its now the time that the presentation was supposed to start and neither the organizers, the speakers, nor the participants are here. Sometimes I wonder why African nations are having difficulty catching up with the level of economic wealth of the rest of the world, sometimes I don’t.)

Speaking of travel, now that I actually live in a tourist destination and since my job is ecotourism I am putting out the call to everyone again that if you want to come to west Africa I will be your personal tour guide. When my folks came a round trip ticket cost about ~$1,600 USD and they spent about ~$200 per day which covered all three of us. They could have spent less but they could have spent more too. If you happen to find a cheap ticket, think about it. I’d love to host you.

Update: over 300 people ended up showing up for the presentation and it was a wild success. 

What is happening at Copenhagen

Today is the first day of the international climate change talks in Copenhagen, to know what that means, I recommend reading this short four page brief that does an excellent job explaining what is going to be negotiated: http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/17074IIED.pdf

Also if you want to follow the negotiations a little bit, try these sites:
youthclimate.org
itsgettinghotinhere.org
grist.org

Pay attention the two weeks, this is important for us all.

Journal of a PVC Parent Cont.

A little note on Zach's training family. Neene (Mom) runs a tight ship with love and an energy that boggles my mind! This time we were traveling south to the Palmarin to an Eco Resort called the Lodge des collines de Niassan. This was a wonderful break. Three days of great French food, hikes, birds, hyenas, kayaking with an oyster and fresh fish lunch, but mostly getting to know Zach as the young man he has become. On our kayak trip we were able to participate in a mangrove restoration project by planting seeds we had picked up along the way.

Journal of a PCV parent cont.

Journal continues:
Arrived in Sangalkam, Zach’s training village and family. We had practiced the Pulaar greeting. This is a rough translation: After checking on the health of all relatives, and asking if you are in your skin, the message was, “We are all the same inside, we all live in and share this world, we all die (and by the way, Zach is a good boy!”) We were served the Senegalese National Dish, Cheboygan. It was delicious. Kajatu, one of Zach’s sisters, prepared the best I had. She made it because she knew if she did, Zach would stay longer! Aliou and Zach have a special relationship and Aliou’s tears could be heard through the whole village when we left☹. Waking up in our tents in the courtyard was a great intro to West African noises. We had fallen asleep under Orion’s Belt and woke to Roosters, donkeys, prayer call, increasing amounts of birds, goats and dogs. It is a wonderful cacophony! Bye for now. Sue and Dave

Journal of a PCV parent

Notes on a trip through West Africa with my son as guide:
Week 1 Journal Highlights
First day impressions… totally overwhelming, busy city, hot, street hustlers (Who are incredibly persistent!), very sub par transportation, all new colors, sites, smells and sounds. “Bus Garage” Picture junk yard, lots of people selling food carried in bowls and baskets on their heads, Tali Bay boys begging, men grabbing you shouting languages you don’t understand, but mostly saying “Lady, taxi? Come here” grabbing your bags, Zach negotiating, Dave and I being pick pocketed (We just lost a few carabineers), finally being stuffed into a Sept Place (7 seater) which is really a rusted out Peugeot that has to be push started after being loaded down by more people, baggage and sheep than you can imagine! However, pinch me, we are in Senegal, with Zach and having the time of our lives!
Sue and Dave

Feedback

I seem to have reached a point where I am mostly just describing what I have done in my blogs and I suppose that's not always the most interesting thing. If there is anything you are curious about or want me to write about post it in a comment and I'll be happy to do it.

Vacation

So now that training is over, what am I going to do? Go on vacation of course! Mom and Dave had bought plane tickets to come see me before they shut down the Peace Corps Mauritania and the timing worked out perfectly with the end of training so they kept them. They will be here in three days and I am EXTREMELY excited, its been over a year since I have seen any of my family. I can't even really picture what its going to be like to see them again. They'll be here for a month and we are going to do a tour of Senegal and I'll take them out to the Dogon too. They'll get to meet my family from training here, from my village in Mauritania, and they will spend my first week out at Segou with me. I am excited about how refreshing it will be to see West Africa through their eyes and I think it is going to be a lot of fun to play guide. Which reminds me, now that I am in a country that is actually a tourist destination, I want to invite you all to come visit. PCVs make excellent guides because we are sort of like tourists that just never leave and stay to help people instead. Also, cultural exchange are 2/3rds of my job here and the other 3rd is eco tourism so you would actually be helping me do my job by coming. ;) Round trip tickets are about $1,500 and budgeting 100 a day can be plenty.

Estage gasi

Hip-hip-hooray I am done with training again! It was a bit rough going through two months of training all over again, but my Pulaar really profited from it. I feel like I didn't really learn any more Pulaar over this past year that what I knew from training in Mauritania. I was much more interested in learning and using French. However, my new village is much smaller and there are a lot of folks that don't speak French, so I will probably end up using Pulaar more.

I am really looking forward to going out to my village, getting established there, and beginning to do something productive again. Its been three months since I had any work to do and I am itching for it. Although having spent those three months with Americans, its going to be a real adjustment to go back to village life, which is sort of funny because all of the other adjustments that I have had to make here in Senegal were getting used to things being nicer. Absolutely everything would be an example of that, and I am sure that the new Senegalese PCVs are tired of hearing it, but I'll just give one example. For our official swear in here in Senegal we had a Police escort to take us into Dakar so we didn't have to get stuck in traffic (I thought that this was a bit awkward since we weren't really doing anything that important and it seemed unfair to do just because we had the money for it, but I suppose it was more about not keeping the Ambassador waiting than us being a big deal). The swear in was held at the Ambassador's residence and it was attended by other Ambassadors and Senegalese government representatives. After there were fancy hors d'œuvres and we went to a bar with a pool. By contrast, for our swear in in Mauritania, we had to do it in one of the dorm rooms at our training center because there was sewage seeping through the floor of the room we would were supposed to have it in. No Mauritanian government representatives were there because the coup d'etat had just happened and the US hadn't decided how they were going to handle relations with the new government. After we had a party out behind a hotel outside of town because it was far enough away that we could drink without anyone seeing us and we danced like we had ants in our pants because the whole compound was infested with them. Things here are definitely nicer. Some one asked me the other day if anything was better in Mauritania, besides the people I knew there the only thing I could come up with was that the family I ate with cooked better a better lunch (rice and fish with a bunch of veggies and an amazing leaf sauce paste.)

Cassandras of Climate

This is important:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=2

Happily the beat goes on...

Nothing has been quite as rewarding as seeing some of the work that I started in Mauritania be carried on even though I left in the middle of it. When doing development work the ideal is always to have it be sustainable and in some of my early blogs I talked about how I wanted my presence in Mauritania to be a catalyst for development, a sort of Jujitsu development. Turns out I was able to do that, at least a little. Here are some of the ways:

- Woni, the amazing mother of my counterpart with whom I started a tree nursery, has planted another tree nursery of several hundred trees to sell. Given that you all know the saga of trying to get this project going, you can understand how happy it makes me.

- Samba, my tireless counterpart, is finishing the tree planting campaign that we talked about and that I dug forty holes for.

- Taban Lo, a random person who I met that has a rototiller, has followed my suggestion to rent out his machine to cooperatives and farmers and made half of the purchase cost of the rototiller back in the first week. Now another individual has bought a brand new rototiller just to be able to rent it out. This is a huge success.

- Last but most, I did not manage to send a Mauritanian Youth Delegation to the UN Climate Change Negotiations in Copenhagen, but I did get funding for one of them thanks to some volunteers and the Young Friends of the Earth in Germany. This is the success that really has me jumping out of my shorts. To this day, participating in the conference in 2007 was the most remarkable and life changing event I have experienced and I can only imagine it will be the same for a young Mauritanian. This is not a guaranteed deal yet, visas and other issues still need to be worked out, but the big problem, the money, is there. Still this is huge news and it is difficult for me to express the importance of this UN conference. It will be the most important event in the history of the fight against climate change as it will set the new international agreement until 2050, or not... It is imperative for the world that the negotiations go well. I encourage everyone to take a strong interest in following how the negotiations are going and supporting strong targets. A little sacrifice today is going to save the world a whole lot of trouble in the coming years.

New and improved village

A while ago I mentioned that if anyone was looking for a vacation, or just had no work, they should come and spend some time in Mauritania. I can't say that I am surprised that no one took me up on that. It was not exactly a tourist destination; the town where we had our training was described by Lonely Planet as "a sleazy border town with a sinister feel" and the book recommended generally avoiding the whole country. I don't agree with any of that but I do have to admit it wasn't the hottest tourist destination. Senegal, however, is. So you should all come to visit especially since my work is about bringing more tourists. When you think about it, you coming to vacation in Senegal is going to help me with my development work, so do a good deed and come bum around Senegal. Seriously.

For more information check out the tourism section on www.pcsenegal.org
and http://www.lonelyplanet.com/senegal

Additionally, I just got back from visiting my site. Someone asked me to describe what it was like in a word: Perfect. Somewhere in between swimming at the base of 400 foot waterfalls, walking around the small paths between the corn rows in my village, planning hiking trips around the mountains, seeing my new excessively large hut, talking with my work partners who have already starting doing the work I am going to help them with, chasing around my host mother's monkey, shooting the shit with the elders, strolling through the forest, and hearing chimpanzees I compared what my new site is like and what my site in Mauritania was like and I nearly cried. I cannot complain about anything as long as I am here. I don't have photos yet, but the photos section on the region's website: www.pckedougou.org

Easier the second time around

Yep, life this past few weeks has been pretty easy and relaxed, but not boring. I have to say the second time around, everything seems to be a bit easier. Of course it helps that the physical environment of Senegal is better in every way. Also, learning a different dialect of a language you already know is cake by comparison to learning a totally new language. Still, I am finding it very interesting to relearn a different Pulaar. It is helping me learn and understand grammatical structures that I wasn’t able to pick up the first time around. Additionally having already been through and gotten over most of the cultural differences makes a huge difference. I just a few weeks I am at the level of integration and comfort with host family number three (Therno, Therno Hamidou, Kajatu, Kajatu, Hawa, Hawa, Bilow, Aliou, Neene, and many other of course) that it took me several months to reach with my host family at site and I never reached with my first training family. It also helps that I feel more at ease in the, by comparison to Mauritania, liberal Senegalese society. Its sort of weird to be able to have physical contact like shaking hands with women again. Sort of like I can finally relax after a year of being on edge and always having to remember that any public contact could be offensive depending on who was around.

At the same time, starting over for the second time with a year still to go feels about as long as starting for the first time with two years ahead of me. Although I know this will be a fleeting feeling based on how quickly the last year went by. Actually I expect this year to go by even faster largely due to the fact that structure, staff, and direction of PC Senegal seems to be more conducive to more work achievements. I hold the staff of PC RIM in high regard, especially Obie, the country director, and Aw and Kane, my bosses, what they were able to accomplish and maintain up until the end in Mauritania was nothing short of remarkable. Yet, for a variety of reasons, Senegal is easier to operate in and therefore more is possible.

As of yet I have not had much technical training on what I will be doing as an eco-tourism volunteer but I will be going out to my site in a few weeks and should have a better idea after that. Most likely I will be working on improving a tourist lodge in my village, working on trails to the waterfalls, and promoting my site as a tourist destination. I am more excited about the physical work and the purpose it is trying to achieve than I was with my old position. Apparently when I get posted to the site I will be living with the village chief, and will be changing my last name for the fourth time. (Sow to Sall to Ba to Diallo for those who are keeping track.) As always, I will be keeping my first name of Amadou just for simplicity’s sake. Its sort of funny, at my old site everyone was trying to get me to change my last name to Ba because the name of my town literally meant “the place of Ba.” Now that it is finally my name I will soon be changing it to Diallo, which is currently the last name I am supposed to want because “Diallo’s only eat beans, leaves, and dirt” I have to say. This brings up the joking relationships between families and friends that exists here. I believe I have mentioned this before but it is work ruminating on again.

They love to pick on each other. At first this seemed crass and socially “undeveloped” to me, but I have come to appreciate it in the wider context of how the culture operates. Can you imagine going up to a Smith in the states that you didn’t know and saying “your last name is no good, you’re whole family is dirty and eats trash” just because your last name is Thomas and expect the person to not think twice about it? One of the great advantages of a culture that places high value on community is that it takes a lot to disrupt the social equilibrium. My old landlord and I used to get into vicious verbal fights about the rent every month because, and the whole village agreed with this, he was crazy. Still no matter how upset we were with each other that day he never held a drudge into the morning. Personally I believe that part of that was because he had to recognize that my position was pretty reasonable and he was just trying to extort money from me, despite the fact that he always ended every argument about trying to get me to pay more that we had agreed to with “in the end money does matter it is only God who judges us.” Which I thought was pretty ironic. Whatever the reasons were, the fact that he never was angry the next day is very typical for West African culture and that I hope has positively rubbed off on me.

New Life

First of all, thanks again to everyone for all your support through the last few weeks and especially to my family for your loving concern. After having to chose from a lot of options in a few days, a process that was greatly facilitated by PC Washington staff, I settled on finishing my service as a Small Enterprise Development volunteer doing eco tourism work in southern Senegal. All things being what they are, I am pretty excited about this opportunity since it will allow me to do more of my favorite type of work. My new site will also be pretty sweet. It is near three large waterfalls and chimpanzees frequent the area. Perhaps I will get the chance to live in what we all think of as "Africa" after all. I will be going through training again but first I am taking the opportunity to go to the village on the Senegalese side of the river from my site where I will be able to invite my friends and family over to say goodbye. All and all I am happy to be finishing my service in Senegal and look forward to the new adventure. Senegal is definitely a nicer place to be in but I have a feeling my heart will always be in Mauritania; hardship accompanied by wonderful people has profound affect. I hope to have the opportunity to return there as a volunteer and especially to help train a new class of volunteers.

For now, I am living in the moment and relishing this new adventure as much as I can.

End of Service Speech

I read this speech last night at our final dinner all together as a group of PCVs and staff:

I volunteered to do say something tonight and realized that is an impossible speech to make, there are just too many milestones that are passing. We have to deal with PC RIM being suspended, saying goodbye to PCVs, saying goodbye to APCDs, saying goodbye to Obie, and saying goodbye to Jody. The challenge is to meld all of these strands that are somewhat perversely twisted together here and produce some sort of catharsis that I feel like we all greatly need. Whether you are a PCV, APCD, CD, or THE D, you have been involved in the process of transition for at least three months. I know for us adopted Mauritanians, we have had this day in the back of our minds ever since it was announced there was no new stage class. It has been a long time dealing with uncertainty, guessing at what was going to happen, and plans interrupted. Some how I don't think my great talent of being able to recite all of the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby is going to suffice in this case.

Fortunately one of the benefits of this crux in the transition between the adventures in life is that it makes the true importance of what we value clearly stand out. More than any other facet of our busy existence, our relationships and connections to each other are what shine through in this difficult time. They have kept us in high spirits through tough situations and have brought us to tears when we knew the worst was true. In fact, I think perhaps when describing the Peace Corps there is no better framework to use than that of relationships. Today sum of us were asked to write our elevator speech about our experience in the Peace Corps in preparation for our return to the US. I would like to share mine with you now.

Given that I have a penchant for quotes as a way of explaining the truths in life in the most elegantly concise manner, if I were to sum up my PC experience in a sentence I would use Alfred Tennyson’s axiom of “I am a part of all that I have met.” I do not believe that I could find a more authentic sentiment about my time in the PC than that. In fact, I would challenge you all to do better. After all, at its heart, the PC is about establishing relationships. It says so directly in its 2nd and 3rd goals and the 1st instructs you do to just that in order to accomplish its own objectives. I have a good feeling that most of the countries in which the PC operates also implicitly teach the same lesson. The reason it takes a half an hour to walk across a small village in Mauritania is because that when you really think about it, whatever pressing activity you are going to do is almost never really more important to you than your friends and family. It is this lesson that the PC teaches us that keeps APCDs around for decades, makes a CD want to stay past what is allowed, and makes it very painful for a director to step down and say good by to an organization that does nothing but give.

Yes, I do believe that Tennyson spoke truth but I also believe that his quote is unfinished. If I may be so bold I would like to say that the full quote ought to be “I am a part of all that I have met and therefore all those that I know will remain with me throughout my wanderings.” As our shared time together fractures apart and we all head off to new and differently great adventures we can rely on the connections we have made and the relationships we have formed to carry us through this difficult transition period. At least as long as the PC keeps buying us phone credit.

Unfortunately most of us will not be able to share in person with our Mauritanian friends and family how much our connection to them means to us. However, we do have the opportunity to share that feeling with each here to night. To my fellow PCVs I’d like to speak for us all when I say that you guys mean the world to me. I can’t express how amazing it has been have become instantly close to you in the first few days of stage and then for that connection have grown so much stronger. We have all survived the worst hazing that Mauritania has to offer and have become closer and stronger for it. To the staff that is here with us tonight, we cannot thank you enough. You have consistently proven that the PC is not a job but a connection to service that one is called to. You have tutored us, aided us, and even sent us on paid vacation. For all this and more on behalf of the current RIM PCVs I would like to offer you all a small token of appreciation of the connection you have taken the time to build with us.



Tennyson says, “I am a part of all that I have met,” and I know that I will be connected to all of you for the rest of my life. In honor of that connection I would like to close with a poem and blessing that my father wrote to me when he first heard the news that PC RIM was being shut down:

The deck, it appears, is being shuffled yet again. May hope, peace,
and joy that passes all understanding sustain and flourish in you. The currents, and eddies of history are often capricious.
In all things love abides

Done

PC Mauritania is indefinitely suspended.

Fortunately the Mauritanian staff will keep their jobs until the program reopens, but no one is holding their breath for that to happen. The country has taken a serious dive in the direction it is heading and it will be a long recovery process when it turns around.

In the next four days we will be pumped through sessions on our options, medical evaluations, final reports, and lots of other procedures and then some of us will be returning home on Friday. Personally, I intend on coming home, but not that soon and then returning to somewhere to finish out my second year, probably West Africa because less than 1% of Americans speak French and they really need volunteers who do. I am in no way ready to be done with the Peace Corps and I am even less ready to say goodbye to my host family. How do you tell some one whose life was saved by a PCV when he was a child, said that Allah put love for the Peace Corps in his heart, and has since devoted his life to voluntarily and doggedly supporting any PCV he meets that not only are you abruptly leaving he might never see a PCV again? Needless to say, despite the fact that we all saw this coming, we are quite shaken up. You have to understand that this is not just our job that was canceled, but our lives as we know them.

As I figure out what happens next, I will let you know. Right now the only things I am sure of is that I am going to sleep, will eat breakfast tomorrow, and then start dealing with a whole new reality.

Thank You

This morning another RIM PCV who reads my blog commented to me what good support I have from friends and family back home, I fully agreed and I am very grateful for that. To those who comment, email, and write often, thank you for all of your insights and kind words. Having that connection to folks from home means more to me than you can know. To everyone else who follows this blog I thank you for your interest and quiet support. Without all of you being here with me I could not do what I do. Thank you.

Not Good News So Far

Lets review:

End of June: I get a call from PC RIM saying that Eco Health Camp, which was for 40 6th grade girls that I was hosting at my site, is canceled because they wanted to consolidate all of the volunteers at the end of the July for a conference and perhaps offer us the option to go home. I get this call while I am talking to the Mayor about the conference. Five minutes later I get another call saying not to worry, they are not going to cancel the camp and I finish my meeting with the Mayor.

The American was killed. It was of course terrible, but anyone who is proselytizing Christianity in a 99.9% Muslim country has to know that he or she is putting themselves at a serious risk.

Beginning of July: All the PCVs that are in country are offered the chance to terminate our service early and receive full benefits. About 20 PCVs decide to take this offer, mostly not because of security concerns but because of difficult work situations where they feel they could not make a difference. Since there are no new volunteers because the Mauritanian government did not offer visas, and many of the second year volunteers have left the country since they finished their service, there are now only a third of the total number of volunteers that would normally be in country. Some regions of the country only have a couple of volunteers left in them and most of the remaining volunteers are the ones along the Senegal River. Spirits are very high among the group that is left after the Interrupted Service option was offered even though our numbers are reduced because we now feel more badass for sticking around.

Middle of July: I dedicate all my time to making the final preparations for Eco Health Camp. Aziz, the one who led the coup d’état, is elected by a landslide over the other 8 candidates. The general perception is that while there was some fraud in the voting, it was not enough to swing the election because he won by so much anyway. The real fraud that occurred was during the campaigning.

They catch the guys who killed the American, I believe someone was killed during a firefight and one of them was wearing a belt of bombs at the time.

End of July: After a couple of days of running around, all the preparations for the Eco Health Camp are made, I am in a shop buying food for 70 people for 4 days and handing the clerk the money when I get a call from PC RIM saying that the camp is canceled because all of the volunteers have to go to the capital and then leave the country. I put the money back into my pocket and begin undoing a $4,000 USD project in two days that took two months to put together. Fortunately we can sell off or return without payment almost everything, although we do get stuck with 4,000 doughnut balls that we made. I start giving these out by the handfuls. If you ever wanted to see an example of a highly effective communication system, start giving out free doughnuts to kids and see how long it takes for a hundred of them to come to your house.

The reasons for the need to go to the capital and especially to go to Senegal are not exactly clear and we are not told how long we will be in Senegal for. However we are told to pack as though we are not coming back even though we are promised that we will be back. I pack up everything, which fit in a bag and a half, and tell my friends in my village that I will be back soon. When we arrive in the capital we learn a number of interesting bits of information. One is that PC Washington had put out a call to shut down PC RIM a couple of weeks ago but then after talking to PC RIM they quickly rescinded that call. We are told that we will be in Senegal for 10 days while folks from PC Washington come in and do a security assessment of the RIM. Why it was necessary that we leave our sites as they do this assessment is still not clear.

We leave for the training center in Senegal, how everything can be so much better in a country that shares a border with Mauritania is confounding. Upon arrival at the training center and talking with the representatives from PC Washington who are here we realize that we are going to be here for longer than 10 days and our chances of going back are starting to look not so good. We settle into a routine that more resembles summer camp than any summer camp I have ever been to. We sleep in dorms, have a movie room, sneak around, have organized sports, shoot fireworks at each other, steal peoples clothes, have classes, and rent out a bar all in an effort to stay entertained and motivated while we await our fate. The strong feeling among the volunteers is that we want to go back. No one wants the program shut down and while we recognize that there are security concerns we believe that they are vastly outweighed by the positive contribution we can make. We are not being cavalier with our lives, just serious about the mission behind jobs we signed up to do.

We run out of entertaining things to do at the training center so they send us all to the beach for 3 days where we rent out two houses on the government’s dime. (Remember to pay your taxes everyone :) The beach was amazing, we all had a heck of a time, clean up the entire beach (I love PCVs), and are pretty blissed out by the time we return to the center. After dinner we have a briefing where we expect to hear the plan for the next day when we will find out that the first suicide bombing in Mauritanian history just took place outside the French embassy in Nouakchott. Only the suicide bomber was killed. This happened on the last day of the security assessment and seems like so many nails in the coffin for PC RIM, but is by far worse news for Mauritanians themselves. It potentially screws up my next year but this trend has long term implications for the future of Mauritania and its peoples. We are told that instead of getting the briefing the next day, they are pushing it back and we are being moved from the training center to somewhere that is closer to the airport, the same place that PCVs from Senegal right before they go home at the end of their service. That brings you up to today. The only thing going on now is a volleyball tournament.

Its impossible to have a clear plan of what I would do if the program was shut down, but I would definitely go back to my site to say goodbye to my family and friends there. I would also be looking to transfer to another PC program hopefully just for another year. It is likely that the transfer would not happen right away, in which case I would probably bum around Africa or somewhere else in the world for a bit.

It is not definite that PC RIM will be shut down, but things are certainly not looking good. Theoretically we should know definitively what is going to be happening tomorrow night, but we all know better than to expect that to happen. It will likely be a few more days until we know...

The direction we are taking

The very first time I visited a developing country the most burning question in my mind was "how do the people feel about their lives?" I had seen the oppressive poverty on TV but I had not witnessed how people mentally responded to it. I had imagined that they were constantly upset, dissatisfied with their lives, and distraught. Having visited a few developing countries and having lived in one for a year, that view point seems laughably naive. The real answer is that people generally feel the same way about their lives as we do (whoever we happens to be). Point is, you adapt to the situation you are in whether or not you make a few dollars a day or a few million, your daily attitudes and thoughts are remarkably comparable. I should say that I am speaking in generalities and in no way am I trying to trivialize real poverty that does profoundly peoples lives in a very sad and unjust way. What I am saying is that in the developed world we have this concept that on a daily basis our lives are immeasurably better than those of people living in impoverished nations, when the reality is that I cannot say that my friends here are less happy or enjoy their lives less than my friends in the states. In fact, looking at what some of my friends in the states have gone through, if I had to choose I would say that on a daily basis people enjoy their lives here more than my friends in the states. I am not sure why exactly, but despite this truth, we are still so convinced that our lives are so much better that descriptions and reports on this topic only register at a superficial level. We say, "huh, yeah that is true. How interesting." and then move on. Think about the phrase "money does not buy happiness." We all know this to be true but we still chase after money as if it did. Also, if we know this to be true how come only a few of us have attempted to answer the follow up question "If it doesn't then what does?" Its like we forget to ask and just go with the last answer we had, money. With the current crisis we are crazy not to rethink this situation but not that much more crazy than not rethinking it even without the crisis. It was stupid before the economic and climatic crisis and it sort of slaps you in the face now. Lets review, the system we use to chase after false progress is falling apart and it is ruining the physical world we exist and survive in. Perhaps this false idea of progress is the real crisis? At the same time we are terrified of anything that "would be a step backwards." Reduce consumption? "That would ruin us!" Which is a flat lie and many of us know this. The problem is that we think of it only as loosing something without ever considering what we gain in return. If getting and using more money is what we are looking for then it is certainly a reduction. Yet, if happiness is what we are looking for many of the changes are not reductions but increases in our quality of life. Why does that seem like such a crazy idea?

As you think about that, read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/jul/15/technofix-climate-change

"Instead of asking how to continue to grow the economy while attempting to cut carbon, we should be asking why economic growth is seen as more important than survival."

PHOTOS! PHINALLY!

Ok, I'll admit, I am really bad about posting photos. But here are some now.

Ghana trip:
http://picasaweb.google.com/z.swank/Ghana#

Mali v. Ghana World Cup Qualifying game:
http://picasaweb.google.com/z.swank/MaliGame#

Dogon Country, Mali:
http://picasaweb.google.com/z.swank/Dogon#

This album showcases why I bought the expensive camera. I really like photography because I really like art and I believe that there is a tremendous amount of art to be found in our world. Photography does not allow me to create art, just to capture a bit of what is already out there. I will periodically update this album and many of these are repeats from other albums:
http://picasaweb.google.com/z.swank/BestPhotos#

Interrupted Service

As of the end of this month, the number of volunteers in Mauritania will be about 1/3 of what it was just a few months ago. The majority of this is due to the fact that the second year volunteers have finished their service and there are no new volunteers because the Mauritanian government did not grant them visas. This is old news. What is new is that we were just offered the option to take interrupted service. If we accepted the volunteers from my class would return home and have the option to re-apply to another country or just finish their service with full benefits. This was offered due to a variety of factors and many people on the ground here view it as an overreaction. I can see how a country with an unstable government and religiously motivated killings of Americans can seem pretty scary to people at home. However, I can not discern any change in the security situation of volunteers since we arrived. I also have complete confidence in our Country Director, both that he has the best information available and that he will make the best decision based off of that information. I thought briefly about going home and trying to go to a different country since I was considering doing a third year as a way to see more of the world and that would just be the reverse of that; 1 year here and 2 years somewhere else. However, after the initial novelty of that idea wore off, it was very clear that I am committed to being here. I enjoy the work that I have created and I enjoy the level at which the Mauritanians have engaged in my projects. It will be sad to loose more volunteers but the ones who are sticking around are the ones who are generally happier about being here, so we have a good crew left. For some people it was a good thing that they had this option, but for me it will be difficult enough to leave here a year from now and it is impossible to walk away from now.

To my gardening friends and family

I was told that I would hit my stride being here and working here at the one year mark. Having just passed that date, I have to agree. I am comfortable with the conditions I am living in and the projects I am working on have improved in quality and are coming along easier than before. One idea that I have had for a while but have not done anything about is buying vegetable and plant seeds in the states and trying them out here. I've sat on this idea mostly because I am not sure where to being looking for desert varieties, although I am sure that if I had enough time on the internet I could find out. This is where you all come in. I was wondering if you could help me research, and then send to me, good varieties of vegetables and ornamental plants that will grow well in dry (200-300 mm of rain per year) sandy and clay soils. I am thinking that if you could get your hands on a seed catalog that is intended for people in Arizona, that would be the best bet. When they garden here, the three most popular things to plant are mint, watermelon, and lettuce. Which is interesting because all three of those require lots of water. They have to varieties of mint here, small leaf and smaller leaf. They would probably poop their pants if they saw the type of mint that grows wild back home. After sugar, water, and tea leaves, mint is the final ingredient in the daily rounds of tea. If you could get your hands on a variety of mint that has big leaves or can tolerate a LOT of sun, since they have to cover the mint they currently grow here, I would be a god. A varieties of lettuce and watermelon that can tolerate lots of heat and sun would be amazing as well. Frankly any variety of vegetable that can tolerate excessive sun and heat would be awesome.

In terms of plants, these are a bit trickier because I don't want to be the guy who becomes known for introducing the invasive species that has now taken over everything. You would think that would be difficult to do in dry land areas, but someone brought over a species of cattail that is now choking out canals here. Really what people want are ornamental flowering plants. Enough bushes and trees exist here that I do not want to mess with them by adding anything new. Also ornamental flowering plants tend to be pretty benign. My requirements for flowering plants are that they tolerate heat, sun, dry sandy or clay soil, and most importantly, that goats do not like to eat them.

The rainy season is just about here, YAY!, so I wish I had sent this out earlier, but that's not really important. If you are interested in helping me research this, let me know what you find or where you are looking and I can help out. Also, please forward this to anyone else you know that might be a good resource, aka someone from Arizona.

Thanks for the help!

Not everyone is all up in everyone else’s business.

Recently someone from home asked me how the situation in Iran is going to affect elections here and what people here thought about what was going on there. It was at that moment that I realized that I have never heard anyone here talk about what is going on in Iran. I asked a Mauritanian friend about why there wasn’t any discussion about what was going on in Iran and he said that it wasn’t Mauritania’s business. When I thought about it more I realized that in general people here do not have strong interests and opinions about what is going on internationally. The only events I can remember people talking about since I came here a year ago were Obama’s election, the short/long war between Israel and Palestine, soccer games, Michael Jacksons death, and the economic crisis. That is not to say that they are not informed. In fact, with all of the news they listen to on the radio and on TV, I would wager that they are more informed about what is going on internationally than most Americans. The difference is where as Americans have an opinion on everything that happens in the world, even though we might not always act on that opinion if there is not enough of a vested interest, Mauritanians simply don’t. They are concerned with what concerns them directly and do not have an overarching feeling that the world ought to act politically like them. Of course, they have a very strong opinion on how the rest of the world should act religiously but that does not seem to extend to political events. As I am writing this, I realize that what I am saying might only be true of the black African ethnic groups and not the Moors, they tend to have strong opinions about how everything should be. At any rate, I have not been able to decide if I like that they are not overly concerned with the affairs of the rest of the world or not. On one hand, we Americans are nosy, are sure that we are the pinnacle of civilization, and are easy meddling in more countries than we ought to be. In that sense, it is nice that Mauritanians seem to be content to let other countries run their own affairs as they please. On the other hand, this feeling of apathy towards goings on in the rest of the world also extends to political events in Mauritania. Even as apathetic as we are towards politics in America, compared to other developed democracies, our level of interest and involvement still blows Mauritanians out of the water. Both sides of the issue are germane enough that I am reserving a value judgment and will chalk this up as another thing that is just different.

More News

Ok here is the run down of new developments, nothing major. The connection is slow so I can't post links, but you can google all the stories.

Apparently the N. African wing of Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for killing the American teacher, although the officials doubt that it was actually them. The PC and the embassy are monitoring the situation. The FBI is also getting involved in the investigation of his death. At the moment there are no further security measures that are being reccomended besides being vigilant.

After reaching and agreement about the upcoming elections and then breaking it and then reaching a new agreement 3 or 4 times, it seems that the different political factions have come up with an agreement that is going to stick. Elections are set for July 18th.

The volunteers that were supposed to come here have been reassigned to different countries. It does not seem like my class of volunteers will be going anywhere. At this point the most likely scenerio is having a new class next year that is twice the size of a normal class since it will take the PC 6 months to find a new class once the Mauritanian government decides to grant visas again. This is going to make it harder to win the West African Invitational Softball tournament next year, but we will just be all the more vicious because of it.


Here are some exerpts of recent news stories:

Mauritanian Political Solution In Sight - Mediator
NASDAQ - New York,New York,USA
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AFP)--Rivals in Mauritania have agreed on a way to overcome all the obstacles to a political settlement and achieve a new ...
See all stories on this topic
N. Africa Qaeda says it shot American in Mauritania
Reuters UK - UK
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North Africa wing claimed responsibility for the shooting of an American aid worker in Mauritania, saying it was done in ...
See all stories on this topic

Organisation de la Presse Africaine (Communiqué de presse)
MAURITANIA / US Department of state Daily Press Briefing
Organisation de la Presse Africaine (Communiqué de presse) - Lausanne,Canton de Vaud,Switzerland
QUESTION: A faction of al-Qaida has apparently taken responsibility for killing an American in Mauritania and saying that he was proselytizing. ...
See all stories on this topic
MAURITANIA: Controversial opinion writer jailed for writing about ...
Menassat - Beirut,Lebanon
Considered one of the most vocal critics of the Mauritanian regime, dissident writer Hanevy Ould Dahah was jailed last week and charged with defaming ...
See all stories on this topic
Mauritanian journo detained
Le Mali en ligne - Mali
Mauritanian journalist Hannefi Ould Deha, who runs the online information site "Taqadoumy", is being held in a prison in the northern suburbs of the capital ...
See all stories on this topic

Bad news

Today an American aid worker was killed in Nouakchott, the capital. At this point I don’t know any more details than what is in this story: http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSLN880180._CH_.2400
but I do know that I am still safe here. I am more safe in my village than I am in Buffalo or driving through the Adirondacks. Keep in mind that people are killed in the states every day for all sorts of reasons. Also, although the Peace Corps sucks at sharing information with us they have direct access to the embassy and can get (not give) the best intelligence the government has. If there is any real threat to my security, they will take the appropriate measures. For the moment, no one is going into the capital.

Its funny how hearing that some one from your country doing your type of work was killed in the country you are currently in affects you in ways that other news of peoples demise does not. For example, when I was just in Mali and we received the news that an British man was beheaded in Timbuktu, that did not phase me, but this hits home. Our lives are not always as hunky dory as we personally like to believe they are.

Addicts

For anyone who checks my blog the first thing every morning when they get up (Mom, Dad) you can now subscribe to a rss feed from my blog. To anyone who doesn't understand what that means (Mom, Dad) you can google it. Anyway, the link is on the right hand side panel near the bottom.

Milestones

On June 18th two milestones happened. The first was that I have been in Mauritania for a year and the second is that for the first time in its over 50 year history Peace Corps Mauritania does not have a new class of volunteers coming in. To explain how that happened I will give you a rough history of recent political events here based on my understanding. (Disclaimer, any opinions expressed are completely my own.)

1984: Military Coup which lasts for 21 years

1989: Some Pulaar herders from Mauritania and some Pulaar farmers from Senegal get into a row (some one is shot) that sparks a larger row between the Black African and the White Moor populations in Mauritania and Senegal. Both countries allow atrocities to go on and the Mauritanian army kills and deports many Black Africans. Refugees are still coming back from Senegal. This event is not directly relevant to the current political drama but it is so significant it is worth mentioning.

2005: Military Coup

2007: Sidi becomes the first democratically elected president

August 2008: Sidi’s control over the government and his popularity are slipping and he becomes worried about a coup so he fires all the top military commanders at 3am one night. They proceed to carry out the coup that he was worried about. Aziz takes power.

Fall 2008: All of the aid money and projects that were coming to Mauritania because they had a democratically elected government for the first time leave. Sanctions are put on the coup leaders. Aziz promises a return to democracy. There are minor crises with the cooking gas and fishing industries as the government tries to regulate them.

Spring 2009: International sanctions are tightened and for some reason the Mauritanian government decides to stop granting tourists and foreign aid workers visas.

June 2009: Elections are scheduled for early in the month but an international mediation group works out a deal to move the elections to July to allow the opposition parties to have enough time to organize for legitimate elections. Under the agreement the military junta will step down, Sidi will take power only to resign, and a coalition government will be appointed. The elections are moved but nothing else happens as agreed to. Currently a second round of negotiations might be needed.

Peace Corps is apolitical so since there was never any personal security threat to our presence none of this impacted us until now. However, since there are no new volunteers the future of the program is a little uncertain. Personally I believe that the PC will stay here until they are absolutely forced to leave. Officially the PC is waiting until after the elections in July and hoping that visas will be granted before they say anything about what would happen. However, if Mauritania continues to not grant visas even after the election, the PC will cease to exist in Mauritania when my class of volunteers leaves a year and three months from now, or as some people believe, soon after the elections. At any rate, if the program is shut down I expect that they would reopen the program as soon as possible.

Living with this kind of general uncertainty about the future is not something I have ever experienced in my life. At first I was excited about every new development but since I had so little actual information about what was going on (thank you Peace Corps) I have had to pretty much give up on speculating what was going to happen because it was too wild of a rollercoaster that never went anywhere. I will let you know what is happening when something concrete actually happens. As for now all of the volunteers in my class are preparing to spend the next year here by ourselves.

Back

(I will put all sorts of tales here as soon as I get through my inbox.)

MALI! SOCCER!

So the school year has just finished, or is finishing depending on whether or not the schools are actually observing the end dates of the school year. My Eco Clubs have finished and I am very pleased with how they went. For the last lesson I did a review of all of the lessons that I had done and while no student retained all of the pertinent information I tried to teach, as a group they could answer all of my questions. I also gave out certificates of participation, quite possibly the only certificates/diplomas they might get in their lives. They loved them.

Now that I no longer have the obligation of teaching, I still have the 15 or so projects that I have started, but none of them require my presence at any given time. This means I can go to the World Cup qualifying match between Mali and Ghana in Bamako on the 6th of June and participate in second quasi annual soccer match between Mauritanian PCVs and Malian PCVs on the 12th. In between I am going to book it down to Dogon Country to hike around with some other volunteers. Everyone who has been there raves about it being the coolest place they had visited in West Africa. I post more info and pictures of those adventures after I have them.

Always a Best Friend

Journal Entry from the 15th of May

“For all of the time and events I have experienced, both good and bad, it is this moment that finds me writing here again. I have gone through and reflected on much, but not in these pages. Currently I find myself searching for an inner calm that transcends balance and rests firmly in the domain of peace. To keep one’s life in balance is a struggle, but to live in harmony is to resonate with that which already exists.
“Last night I found myself deeply in need of a friend, someone that I could really “play” with. As I was walking home from my friend Macina’s house after watching the Last Samurai, feeling lonely, and avoiding talking with the people in the road, Abba’s dog found me and started to play with me. While I was initially resistant, he was insistent, bobbing and weaving trying to get me to chase him. It was exactly what I needed at the time; the magical moment lasted through him accompanying me all the way home and then him not returning home until I returned the courtesy.
“As long as I keep pushing along the ridge line alone, I lose the opportunity for others to support me when I falter. Yet if I descend and take the valley path instead, I do not loose so much in purpose and vision as I gain in fleetness of heart and foot from traveling with companions.
“(This was written while covering the journal with sheets of paper because even though it is midnight, I am still dripping sweat at a constant beat.)”

Update: Abba’s dog now follows me around town everywhere. If I am walking across town, I will stop by Abba’s house and “pick him up” and then we’ll walk together. I also have started calling him “Sehil” the Pulaar word for friend. People around town are starting to know him as “Zach’s friend” and think that it is funny that I pet him because the closest relationship I have ever seen between a Mauritanian and a dog is one where the dog did not get beaten and that was it.

Gettin Angry

When talking about my experiences here, people often say, “You must be learning so much!” I feel that I am, but often the lessons are so experiential that they are hard to share. Yet one lesson that I can share with you is how being here is teaching me to use anger.

Normally I pride myself on being a generally patient and tolerant person, perhaps to a fault. For example, if someone is slighting me, I generally shrug it off. However, being out of my culture and being in a situation where I feel that I am often slighted or overlooked, I am learning that it is not appropriate to bear every situation, sometimes it’s good and wholesome to get plenty pissed off and to make sure other people know. This may seem like an obvious statement, but for a long time I was pursuing a path where I was hoping never get “irrationally” angry. What I have realized now is that a lot of what I thought of “irrational anger” is pretty rational. Here are some examples of situations where I have profited from getting angry at rather than just dealing with:

Kids – I don’t know if you have ever had 20 or so kids follow you around town chanting “white person” to no end, or if this has ever happened to you everyday. When I first arrived I tolerated it because they did not know any better, even though they should have. Now, I give them the option of greeting me and chatting for a bit and then moving on and if that does not satisfy them, I give them a physical message that it has to stop.

Lines – There is no concept of lines or “your turn” in West Africa. I have spent hours sitting on busses while the driver and sometimes police sorted out where people should be sitting because no one sat in the seats that their tickets said, these being people who can read and have ridden busses before. They just don’t get the concept of that sort of orderliness. I used to tolerate it and let people budge ahead of me, now I don’t put up with it. If I piss people off by yelling at them for treating these situations with complete anarchy, so be it.

When people lie – It is not exactly accurate to say that people lie a lot here. It is more like they don’t always mean what they say. The difference is subtle but important. Since the culture is so indirect, often it is more impolite to tell the truth in a situation than to lie. For example, it is generally impolite to refuse anyone for anything, if you get an invitation to visit someone’s house and you don’t want to go it is general practice to accept the invitation and then just not show up. People take that better than saying you would rather not go. People also view life as very uncertain, a lot depends on Allah. So maybe you say something that you don’t really mean or maybe you did mean it but the will of Allah interferes. I used to take these situations in stride, but because it makes it difficult plan a day, I now let people know how displeased I am that they did not show up or do the work they promised to do.

In all of these situations I have been surprised to find that people actually respond positively to my anger and will often modify their behavior. I liken it to someone poking you with a stick. Perhaps the person does not know that it is bothering you and if you share a little of how you are feeling, you can get them to modify their behavior rather than trying to learn to like being poked with a stick.

This is how I am learning to use anger.

So I spoke to soon

Alright, I may have jumped the gun on denouncing my friends and their tree nurseries. While I was busy complaining about their in action, one of them, called Woni, went and sold over 50 trees for a profit of more than she could make off of an entire garden in a year! Needless to say, I am very happy. Yet, I was even more happy to learn that one of the persons who bought a bunch of trees was the director of the one primary school that I do not work in! Turns out my work here is not needed after all ;) That's of course not true, but it would be great if it was. Ideally the goal of every PCV is to work ourselves out of a job. I just may have succeeded in creating a sustainable project. If I can just get Woni to buy some tree bags while she is in the capital, the cycle will be complete.

Woohoo!

I'll put it this way...

I have blisters on my hands from picking up tools that were sitting in the sun while I trying to make a washboard (I made the folded metal part just fine, but the wood frame is giving me some problems because the only wood available here most closely resembles balsa wood.)

Also, the tops of my feet are burned from touching the insides of the tops of my sandals.

yup.

Updates, observations, and other interesting news

THANKS FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY WISHES!

The trees in the two tree nurseries that I helped people make are selling like hot cakes, unfortunately, despite that fact the people who own the trees and would benefit from their sale are reluctant to take them to the market. After telling a kid to take them myself for several weeks and thereby proving that people would buy them I stopped ordering the kids to transport them and asked them to order their own kids to transport them. This apparently was to much to ask and having tried to take the trees once and found the store closed, they have not been able to problem solve taking them at a new time on their own. At this point I have resigned myself to let them sell them at their own pace which means that many trees will die in the nurseries before they are sold. I have decided this because the act of actually selling the trees is a key part of growing trees to sell and they need to do that for themselves. Also, I have proved that the idea of growing trees to sell works very well and can therefore try with new people as soon as seeds are available again. I should clarify that I do not believe these people to be stupid or lazy, in fact they are some of the most active and intelligent friends I have here, they are just Mauritanian. Some how they miss the importance of actually making the final effort of selling the trees to the whole process despite the fact that there is a lot of money in it and this is the reason that they grew them. It is purely a cultural phenomenon and one that I cannot beat. All in all, I am happy because as far as I am concerned the project has worked; we were able to grow the trees, can now profitably sell them, and they are being sold, although painfully slowly.

For the last week it has been over 120 degrees in the sun and 110 in the shade. It will stay about like this until the rainy season starts in July.

Having found a washboard that a previous volunteer had left, I am now attempting to get some one here to start making them and selling them cheaply. It’s funny what technologies don’t exist here. It’s also funny that whenever I try to make something here, people tell me that what I want to do is absolutely not possible. Twenty minutes later after I have made it, I tell them they are absolutely wrong.

Getting your kid to eat all of the food on his plate by saying, “There are starving kids in Africa” works well until that kid goes to Africa and always finishes his plate, leaving none for the hungry kids who would eat what he does not. ;)

Together with a bunch of other volunteers I will be holding a three day environmental and health camp at my site in the end of July. There will be about 50 girls from all over Mauritania attending.

The group of students from MIT that might have been bringing 100 laptops to my site did not have their project approved. This is too bad but also a relief because it would have been a HUGE project to manage.

I am starting to investigate another HUGER project: taking 15 Mauritanian youth to the UNFCCC Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, where the next international climate change agreement will be decided.

UNDP has some how decided to fund a local NGO to build another set of biogas digesters in a different village for the 5th time although they will be using the same design that has failed in all of the other villages. I am desperately trying to get that NGO to some of that money (20,000 dollars) to fix one of their old systems rather than use it to build a new one that they already know will not work. By my calculations, at this point UNDP has given them over 50,000 dollars to build biogas systems that they should have known would not work. I am not really pissed at the NGO for continuing to build them, but at the UNDP for continuing to give them money.

Since I arrived here with the intention of acclimating to the experience the novelty of being here did not last long. However, there are still times when I have been reading a book in my room, using the internet at the World Vision office, or talking with some one from home on the phone and I step outside into the blinding sun and oppressive heat into a world where half of the houses are made of mud and think “ok, this is still pretty surreal.”

I will soon be experimenting with two different means of getting rid of shower water which currently runs into the streets and provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes. The first is to make a vertical garden by stacking old tires on top of each other, filling the center with dirt and the very center with a column of rocks. Vegetables would be planted in holes around the outside and it would be watered from the top. That way the used shower water would never touch the parts of the vegetables that people would eat. The other idea is to plant a bush that animals do not eat right next to the pools of water in the street hoping that the bush would both use the water and also loosen up the soil so the water could drain into the currently compacted ground. I really like both of these ideas because they cost absolutely nothing.

A friend of a previous volunteer who visited here earlier this year is giving me 15% of the profits she made from the photos she took which means that I now have enough money to very large maps of the world and of Mauritania in each of the three primary schools over the summer break.

Photos

I finally got my world vision friends to let me install wireless internet in their office, which means now I can upload all of those photos I have been promising to put up.

The first is the West African Invitation Softball Tournament in Dakar, Senegal. WAIST is the biggest event for all of the volunteers here, nearly everyone goes and we look forward to it more than christmas. We also always cause the most rukus and generally always win. The pictures capture parts of the experience but in no way do it justice. http://picasaweb.google.com/z.swank/WAIST#

The second is from a celebration held in a town near mine for the new village chief. Technically it is two towns, one in Mauritania and the other across the river in Senegal, but that is just because when the colonists came they ignored the fact that the river was mainstreet and not a dividing line. http://picasaweb.google.com/z.swank/Fonde#

The third is of the oasis I went to in Terjit. This place fullfilled every expectation of what a desert oasis would be like. http://picasaweb.google.com/z.swank/Terjit#

Rototiller

Tell me what you think of this idea: buying a rototiller.

After helping the students in my school dig 45 1 meter by 3 meter garden beds (unquestionably child labor) I began to dream of having a rototiller here and I think it is a realistic idea. There are four types of farming that happen around my town (in order of least to most successful):

- Large scale acreage

- Womens cooperative gardens

- Small plots in the courtyards of houses

- Farming by the river

All of these are done by hand, which means at most the top 4 inches of soil gets aerated and turned. This soil is almost completely devoid of organic material. Also a lot of farming does not happen because it is too much work to bring more plots under cultivation. IF I had a rototiller, I could rent it out to cultivate new plots and to mix in organic material. Currently the most fertilization they do is throwing some manure on top of the soil, where the sun breaks down a lot of the nutrients. The really cool thing about this idea is that it is concievably a sustainable idea. Here is how the economics break down:

- Cost of a decent rototiller: 700 USD

- Cost of shipping: 200 USD

- Cost of gas: not that expensive per use

If you convert that all to Ouguiya you get a maximum of 300,000 UM. Divide that price by 600 hours of use and you get a price of 500 UM per hour. That is, if I charged 500 per hour I would completely pay for the rototiller in 600 hours. Now, 500 UM is too much for tilling a garden plot that might only yeild 1,000 UM of produce. However, 100 UM is not too much and even though that would change the break even point to 3,000 hours it is still concievable that it could break even, or in other words, be sustainable. There is no need for this to be completely sustainable and it makes sense to find financing for it, but the fact that it COULD be makes it seem like a pretty viable project. What do you think? Also, anyone know anyone in West Africa that has a rototiller I could talk to? Haha.

Food Crisis

Each year Mauritania imports 60 to 80 percent of its food + corrup and inept government = 

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=31125

I do not delude myself...

The reduction in the frequency of my posts is a direct result of my increased level of integration to life here; the more I am comfortable living here, the need for contact with home becomes less pressing. That said, I think I have reached a turning point in my integration. Up until now I was trying to participate and appreciate everything, but having attempted that for half a year I can now comfortably say that there are certain things that I am just not ever going to enjoy so I can stop trying. This is a liberating feeling that will ultimately result in a more enjoyable experience. For example, I will never go to another dance here (think “dance monkey dance” in front of hundreds of kids), I will stop waiting exorbitant amounts of time for other people, I will stop worrying about waiting for the third round of tea before leaving, etc. All of these things may be technically culturally inappropriate, but I know of no person in the world who is totally culturally appropriate. The downside to this change in attitude is that it is the recognition of the fact that I will never be totally comfortable here. I do like it here, but I cannot picture ever being completely contented here, even if it was not so hot. I agree with Barry Lopez that, “each culture is a repository of some good thought about the universe; we are valuable to each other for that,” and at the same time I agree with his reference to Wildfred Thesiger’s statement on traveling with the Bedouin, “I was happy in the company of these men who had chosen to come with me. I felt affection for them personally and sympathy for their way of life. But though the easy quality of our relationship satisfied me, I did not delude myself that I could be one of them. They were Bedu and I was not; they were Muslims and I was Christian. Nevertheless I was their companion and an inviolable bond united us.”