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.

Back to the village

My little American holiday has been much needed and it is time to bring it to a close. I don't know that if this will actually be the last time I use the internet before I leave, but it might be so I thought I would post this up just in case. It was great to hear from everyone, especially the people I had the chance to chat with. I don't think you know how important it is for me to catch up will all of your lives. It partly enables me to live vicariously but mostly it cuts down on the feeling of being isolated over here. Yet, even more importantly, being here is really teaching me the value of the relationships you have and the way I see things in my life is changing to reflect that. There is something about a person who makes less than $1,000 per year telling you that you don't need to pay for food to eat with them because "money is like water, its friendships that matter" that makes that point hard to miss. So thank you all for being in my life and for continuing to remain that way.

I don't know exactly when I will be back online. I will probably be back in to my regional capital in two or three weeks, but IF World Vision gets internet in my town it will be sooner. I'm not holding my breath for that one though.

Talk to you soon!

z.

Obama

I am currently listening to the presidential debates in real time over NPR that I am getting through a cell phone connection to the internet. Its a pretty remarkable thing. However, its not the technology I want to talk about. People here know more about the American elections than they do about the political situation in their own country. This is because it is likely that the U.S. government has more affect on their lives here than there own: coup d'etats make it difficult to govern effectively. However, its more than that. Obama has not just captured the hope of the American people, but without trying he as also won over the world. A lot of people are aware of this and much has been written of it. However, I'd like to confirm that it is in fact true. When I meet people in my village, one of the first, if not the first, question they ask me is who I want to win. I get news about the race from people on the street. Paint is expensive here and it is therefore rarely used, but walking around my town you can find Obama's name painted on things from fooseball tables to shops. Obviously, a significant portion of this support is because he is black, but it is not all of it. Its pretty remarkable to see people of another country rally behind our potential leader in such an enthusiastic way. It is certainly true that we should not let the world vote for us, but we would be stupid not to pay attention to what it is saying.

My Mood by Song

Courtesy of Jimmy Cliff:

Sitting here in limbo
But I know it won't be long
Sitting here in limbo
Like a bird without a song
Well they're putting up resistance, but I know that my faith will lead me on

Sitting here in limbo
Waiting for the dice to roll
Sitting here in limbo
Got some time to search my soul
Well they're putting up resistance, but I know that my faith will lead me on

I don't know where life will lead me
But I know where I've been now
I can't say what life will show me,
But I know what I've seen
Tried my hand at love and friendship
But all that is passed and gone
This little man is moving on

Sitting here in limbo
Waiting for the dike to flow
I know that it will
Sitting here in limbo
Knowing that I have to go
Well they're putting up resistance but I know that my faith will lead me on

Sitting in limbo
Sitting in limbo
Sitting in limbo, limbo, limbo

A Day in the Life (volunteer version, Ramadan special)

5:30 – Guy walks around singing to wake everyone up for Ramadan breakfast. Go back to sleep

7:30 – Wake up, pack up my tent, go inside

8:00 – 9:00 – Try to get BBC world news on the radio, give up, bucket shower, make tea, eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich and dates for breakfast.

9:00 – “Ok now what am I going to do with my day?”

9:00 – 12:00 Study language / meet with people before they get tired / clean house / watch other people work to see how its different here and out of boredom. My favorites to watch so far are cell phone repair, jewelry making, and home construction.

12:00 – 1:00 Go to eat lunch at Samba’s house

1:00 – 3:00 Sit under Samba’s sun block thing. Read, write, or nap

3:00 – 5:00 Computer time: writing a proposal for a project, writing blog posts, or reading PC info / listening to music

5:00 – 6:30 Go to the market or the sandwich boutique (25 cents for a fish paste sandwich that almost tastes like a cheese steak sub minus the cheese and the steak!)

7:00 Break fast with my roommate

7:30 – 9:30 Dinner and tea with Samba’s family or with some one else that wants to know why I haven’t been over recently or at all yet.

9:30 – 10:30 Duck out of where ever I am early, and go hang out with my roommate and listen to Mauritanian music

10:30 – 11:00 Watch an episode of House while my computer charges

11:00 Bucket bath again, set up tent, hope that it is not too hot to sleep.

Repeat.

That’s obviously not what I do every single day, but it’s a good average. I expect it will change significantly once Ramadan is over and once I start working more in the community. Right now my “work” is a lot of language studying and reading PC documents on environmental education.