Update and my site!

Hi all,

Sorry I've been out of touch! On my birthday I got the wonderful gift off finding out my site where I'm going to be for the next 2 years. I'm going to a town called Selibaby, down towards the south of Mauritania (if you look at a map, there's a little part of the country that dips down by the border of Senegal and Mali--it's by there). We left to go to our sites for a week on th 22nd. It was quite a trip! To get there, we went from Rosso to Boghe, then to Aleg, then through Kiffa and spent the night in a tiny little village (maybe 10 houses) outside of Selibaby. Most of the trip between Kiffa and Selibaby was done with no road, literally going through rivers and bouncing around so much that one of the Peace Corps guys with us threw up out the window. It was certainly an adventure! It took about 16 hours.

Selibaby is wonderful. It's a regional capital, but it's small. Much smaller than Rosso. I'm going to be living and teaching in a part of town that's mostly pulaar, which means two things: 1) the hassaniya i'm starting to learn on sunday won't be as helpful and 2) I won't have to wear a mulafa when I'm there!!! So as usual everything as ups and downs. I plan on learning Pulaar when I get there. It's very green right now in Selibaby because it's the rainy season, and I guess the trade off for being nearly impossible to get to is that there's grass and trees! The current volunteers there are great, and the other 4 people coming to the region with me are wonderful. It will be really nice to get there and finally be in one place, not living out of a suitcase! There are definitely some challenges, like the trip to get there and getting used to not having all the things we do in Rosso (less veggies now, but there will be some during the drier season, general smaller town things). But there is a guy in town who makes sandwiches on Pita bread!!! You have no idea how exciting that is. A vegetarian sandwich here is pretty funny: french fries, sometimes egg, ketchup and mayo on bread. I kid you not. It's actually really good, maybe just because it's different but don't knock it til you rock it! What else can I say about it...I had my first run-in with a blister bettle. Basically they crawl on you and release an acidic liquid which give you blisters. I got it on my neck. Good times! Really we're all covered in weird skin things, bug bites, sand all the time...you get used to it!

The trip back to Rosso was shorter because there hadn't been rain for a few days and we could take the other road to Kaedi and then spent the night in Boghe with some other volunteers. I got back to my family yesterday, and they were really happy to see me. The two little kids came running to me and threw themselves on me, as did my aunt when she got home (about an hour and a half later she was yelling at me to give her a gift even though I had brought back food for the family...she does that from time to time, I think she's a little crazy. After a little bit she was totally happy with me again). It's nice to be back, but I'm also glad it's only for 3 more weeks. I'll be living in my own little place in a Pulaar family's complex in Selibaby, and in general they're more relaxed than Moor families. They were kind of upset to hear I was going to Selibaby for 2 years and kept saying how far away it is, but I promised them I'd visit. They loved hearing my stories, and after a little while it was back to normal at my house--they spend a lot of time debating which other toubabs I should marry, and I just tell them I can't get married here because my mom would be mad! Tonight we're going to a wedding in the neighborhood so that should be fun.

OK, that's all for now. More to come soon!