Love and Kindness

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

You can lead a horse to water…

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

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

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

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

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

New School Year

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

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

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

Working = Happiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hooray for having things to do!

A few thoughts on time

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

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

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

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.