Misleading Africa

To anyone interested in African development, or development in general, from my experience I could not agree more with this article:

Misleading Africa

http://www.coss.fsu.edu/files/materials/MisleadingAfrica.pdf

"...The global development elite might just be the most innocently narcissistic group of otherwise intelligent people on the planet..."

To Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, and back

On the trip that we took, there are three categories of experiences that stood out; the places that we saw, the people that we met, and the food that we ate. I had expected the places to dominate the experience of the trip, but because I was already used to being in Africa, much of what would have been new and unusual for a typical Toubab tourist was sort of old hat for me. As such the people that we met and the food that we are were just as interesting as where we were. Therefore, I will break up my description of the trip into these three categories. However, I will give more attention to the places that we went than I did on the trip because I expect that they will be the most interesting to you and also because that is what I am best at writing about. First though, a little background on the trip.

We were four, Ginger, Rocco, Manna, and myself, all PCVs from Mauritania and all working in the environment sectors. It was Rocco who found out about the conference in Accra, Ghana that was the reason for the trip and it was him who planned and orchestrated the whole thing. Each PCV gets 48 days of vacation to use throughout their service and normally we could have not gone an extended trip like this, but because the conference was within our field of work, our bosses gave us free vacation days for the travel down, the conference, and the travel back. Without that the trip could not have happened. The conference, “From Conservation Science to Policy in Africa,” was hosted by the University of Ghana and the Society for Conservation Biology and our plan was to travel overland down to Accra, attend the conference, and then spend a week touring around Ghana before heading back to Rosso, Mauritania where we would meet up with the rest of the Mauritanian volunteers before attending the West African Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST) in Dakar, Senegal. Given the uncertainty of public transportation here in West Africa we were impressively able to stick to that plan. There were only a few times we ended up in the wrong place, bought the wrong ticket, were lied to, or overpaid. Yet, even throughout all of that we managed to more or less stay on schedule. In order to sum up a month’s worth of traveling through five different countries, I will give a description of the whole trip in three parts; the places, the people, and the food.

No Water

Broken water pumps, Muhammad's birthday, the president of Liberia visiting, and an enept government have conspired to leave my town of 8,000 people without water for the past three days. No one seems to expect the pumps to be fixed today either. Hopefully they come back on before the tree nurseries all die and before I start smelling too bad. Right now people are hauling jugs of water out of the river 3km away.

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.