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.