Travels

I’ve done so much traveling I don’t even know where to begin with this update. I’ll just hit the highlights I guess.
- Nouakchott, the capital city, is actually a city. I suppose that does not mean much, but it was the first time I had seen a restaurant for 6 months. There is even an American owned restaurant, which represents exactly half of the U.S. businesses in this country; the other is a book store. You can buy beer at a couple of places. There is a beautiful beach, that is completely undeveloped and no one goes there. This leads me to further believe that our definition of a good enjoyable life just does not match the Mauritanian definition. Perhaps because the whole country is kind of like a beach with no water, actual beaches are not that interesting.
- Christmas: It was hard not to be home for Christmas, but having almost all of the volunteers (100+, or over a third of all of the Americans in the country) together for a big party at our country directors house really made it a lot easier and enjoyable.
- Host family: After Christmas I visited my host family from training again. I know it’s unlikely but I wish you could all have the experience of having an entire village be excited to greet you at once. It is an amazing feeling and one of the ways that I prefer their culture to ours. After a few hours of greeting I still had not seen my favorite little girl in the village, Binta. I kept asking around and people were telling me that she was not around and I began to be pretty bummed out. However, just then she walked around the corner of a fence and saw me. As soon as she did, her jaw dropped, she put the back of her hand up to her mouth, and froze. It was one of the cutest things I have seen in my life.
- Saint Louis: First of all, we all were able to get out of this country to the more liberal Senegal. That in itself was nice. However, St. Louis is a place I would go to if I was vacationing from the states. It is a series of two small islands just off the coast. I’ll get pictures up when I can. The smaller, farther out island is split between a thriving local fishing industry on one side and beautiful beaches on the other, where Elise and I and a few other volunteers stayed. The larger of the two islands resembles New Orleans, with a square in the center and tons of bars and little shops. I spent most of my time on the beach and drinking beer, usually the two together, but when I was not doing that I was riding around on a rented moped. For the number of toubabs that were there, we did pretty well to only have one pocket picked/mugging/choking, only one girl punched in the face by an unprovoked guy, and only one person fall off a moped (that was me). I think we also scared the PCVs from Senegal with how intense we are, that is apparently a regular occurrence. St. Louis was definitely the highlight of the trip and if any of you come to visit me, I will take you there.
- Dieouk: After New Years we had another training in a small village not far from Rosso. This village is pretty much the model village for all of Mauritania. There were more trees than houses and the streets were lined with them. They had a problem with dune encroachment, but they stabilized them. They also have a huge garden that is extremely well managed by the cooperative. It gave a lot of hope to all the volunteers who are trying to make the same thing happen in their village.