My first environmental club

I finally had my first Eco Club and I think it went reasonably well. The participants were 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th graders, 24 in all with equal representation from each class and each gender. This one was at Ecole 2 and the director helped me teach it, while I taught the lesson in englishized French the Director translated into Africanized French and Pulaar. Had he not been there the students would not have understood much. The point of the lesson was to demonstrate just how little of the earth is fit to support human life. (Roughly 3/4ths is covered in water, less than 15% is not to hot/cold/mountains/etc, just about 3% produces most of our food, and 0.03% of the water is potable.) In theory it was a great lesson, but I failed to anticipate that none of the students would not know what “the planet Earth” was. I should have thought about this because I know some adults who think that the U.S.A. is just south of Senegal, which is easy to scoff at until you remember that most Americans have never heard of Mauritania and if they had to guess where it was they would likely say Eastern Europe. Given that I had simultaneously explain that the Earth is round, has continents, etc, I think they understood the lesson reasonably well, although again only because of the help of the director. As we decided it’s a partnership, I bring the motivation and the information and he makes it comprehendible. While it was not perfect, I will take a decent debut to the most exciting part of my job.

What is Zach up to?

Another reason that I conspicuously contented right now is that my work has been enjoyable. I cannot say that it is going well, because I know by now to wait for it to be finished before making such a bold claim, but I will say that all possibilities seem open. Here are some things that will keep me overly busy:

-         Environmental clubs, one for each school with 20 students doing interactive science lessons and gardening will be starting in a week

-         Financing school gardens, Peace Corps does not give us a budget; instead they set up a system for us to ask our family and friends for help. I’ll tell you more about that when the time comes.

-         Financing and painting world maps, some Mauritanians think America is the country south of Senegal, although I bet some Americans think Mauritania is on Mars. At any rate, I am going to use the block painting technique to paint accurate maps of the world and Mauritania onto the walls in my schools.

-         Selling trees, my tree nursery project has succeeded so far, but if I do not sell the trees it will all be for nothing. I just need to find a woman in the market to sell them for my friends who grew them, inshallah.

-         Tree planting, separate of my other project I want to start a massive tree planting campaign around town. I was initially against this idea when I came to site because I was sure that it was bound for failure, but I think if it is supervised by the neighborhood chiefs and is the right price I think it could work. I also want to use it as an incentive to get more people to have experience with tree nurseries.

-         Fiddling with biogas, I will probably tinker with this until I leave and even after then I will still be thinking about it.

-         Trying to grow a copy of the Eden that is Cubalil, a small town/mango forest 9km from here. I could swear the place is in Burkina Faso not Mauritania.

-         English lessons, I am still promising people I will start doing them and still have not started.

-         Building one of these: http://www.dirtsurfer.com/en/products_int.asp?cat=1&subcat=3&id=1

-         Building a pool table

-         Continuing to learn guitar

-         Finding more things to put in a freezer and eat.

To name a few things.

Happy to be here

Hello once again. I will start the tale of my journeys from the end. I am now well situated back at site and have been quite happy to be here ever since I came back to site, which is the longest stretch that I have been completely happy to be in this country. On the little tour of West Africa I just took I realized that I had over-structured myself out of an enjoyable life and that I was becoming depressed. In fact, it got to the point where everything I did required conscious debate, including deciding that I needed to use the bathroom. This is the problem with being left mostly alone for six months. The good news is that I realized I was going crazy, stopped, and am back to normal now. The better news is that not only will this not happen again but it has left me with a really good outlook on being here; I have finally relaxed. Also, before I left all of my social interactions felt like work, and since everything here is a social interaction, everything felt like work. I decided this was stupid and to just let it be fun.

 

Really though, the best news is that more and more people are buying refrigerators which mean more popsicles. Popsicles just might top the long list of things that I once appreciated in the States but no where near the level that I do now. Today I spent more on popsicles than I did on breakfast. High speed satellite internet, like the connection I am currently using thanks to my good friends at World Vision is also on that list. In fact, it’s quite a weird dichotomy to be using satellite internet in my town; I get up in the morning, shower in a bucket, wipe my butt with my left hand, but once the power turns on at noon I can go to the World Vision office and sit in an air conditioned room with wireless internet while chatting in English to a guy from Saudi Arabia who is listening to Celine Dion. As they say in Pulaar, ine heewni (it’s weird/interesting).

 

It is of course still tough to be here without my family and friends from home, especially when I find out that Becca and Kyle are engaged, but besides that I seem to have lost all other reasons to be unhappy, except the heat; the “hot season”, which I have not yet experienced, is just starting. Even that might be alright though; I have plans to build myself a mud pit to wallow in.

Alive and Back in Mauritania

I am alive but trying to get back to site quickly, so I will post everything in a couple of weeks.
Miss you all.

Ouagadougou

Hello from Burkina Faso

Day 6 of traveling finds us in the capital of Burkina Faso. It seems that the farther away from Mauritania the better our lives get. I just had strawberries for the first time since leaving the States. I would love to give a full update on our travels but of course do not have a lot of time on the internet. I will have to settle for the highlights:
- Seeing the regional capitals and other volunteers of Mauritania on our way through
- Finding volunteers along the way in other countries
- Getting a "direct" bus that included two vehicle changes and one expected overnight
- Buying beer from a brothel
- Delicious street food (all you can eat for $0.50)
- Watching the world get greener as we go south
- Passing through a village at the time that Obama was being inagurated and seeing a parade that included 20 ft tall puppets

I will give more of an update and put up pictures when I can. Today we are going to try to make it into Ghana after we take care of some visa issues, hoping to be in Accra for the conference in a couple of days.

Travels to Ghana

How to know when you are leading a good life: when your breaks between vacations are not long enough to post photos of them. I had really hoped to get them up, but internet is slow and I spent most of today making a new door for the bathroom of the house in Boghé. I have become known as McGyver here. Now I need to get back to site because in 4 days I am leaving for this http://www2.ug.edu.gh/ecolabconference/index.php environmental conference in Ghana and a bit of traveling around the country. Then as I said before I will be going to the West African International Softball Tournament. I feel bad being done for so long, but I don't know when I will be in Africa with time to spare again so I am trying to make the most of it. I promise I will get pictures of all of my travels up when I get back. Also, sorry I haven't had time to get through all of the christmas emails or respond to the christmas cards. I will get to them and know that I appreciated them all very much.

Talk to you in February!

z.

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.