Home sweet home

Ok, as my parents remind me every time we talk, I've been a bum about posting. The power in our office has been out for over a week, so it's not entirely my fault! At least I'm not as bad as John :)

The trip back to Selibaby from Kaedi was pretty funny, as most trips turn out to be here. I was with Shelby and Sari, two of my regionmates, and after a couple hours sitting around at the garage, we loaded into a truck (since we had to travel through the night, we dropped the extra money to sit inside the car--fancy fancy). Now, in Mauritania, any sort of car seat sits at least one more person than it would in America. We were in the backseat of the truck, which here holds 4 people instead of 3. The problem was, we were the only women going and none of the men wanted to sit with us. To be fair, some of them just didn't want to pay extra to sit inside, but there were two men who wanted to get in the car who switch 3 or 4 time before we left, arguing with the driver in between to get their money back and sit in the truck bed. The thing is, drivers don't like to leave unless cars are full, so he told the two guys that one of them had to get in with us or we weren't going anywhere. So finally one gets in next to me and pulls his hood all the way over his face, trying to get as much room between us as possible, the problem being that when you have 4 people in the back seat of a truck, room doesn't really exist. We ended up switching cars in M'bout because our truck was staying the night, so the three of us (along with some people from our car and 3 other trucks that were waiting there) pack into an aptly nick-named prison van. This is the kind of car we don't ride in during the rainy season because if they tip over in the water, everyone drowns because there's only one door in the back and it doesn't open from the inside. Fun. There are 3 rows of seats each with 4-5 people, the front passenger seat with 3 people, and two guys on the roof. That is not a joke. Shelby and I were in the back row, and Sari got squished in with some giant moor women in the front row. The ride was relatively uneventful until the woman next to Shelby started throwing up in a bucket when we were about 45 minutes outside of Selibaby. Needless to say we were thrilled to get out of the van and be home.

I've been back in Selibaby for a couple weeks now, and it's been really nice to be home. My family was really happy to see me, as were my students for about an hour before I gave back their exams--then some of them wish I had stayed in Nouakchott. Work has been business as usual, with my students cracking me up one minute and making me want to bang my head against the chalkboard the next. You take the good with the bad.

The biggest thing that's happened recently is, of course, the inauguration. Mauritanians love Obama, and everyone was talking about how as of the 20th he would be president. I went to work that morning wearing the Obama t-shirt my mom sent me, and everyone kept telling me how excited they were. I started thinking about all the things I wanted to say to my students about what an important day it was, not just for the United States but for the world, and how we live in a global community where everything we do changes the lives of those around us, for better or worse, and how they'll always look back on this day and remember that for the first time, someone who looked like them was the president of the United States. I had tears in my eyes thinking about all these things I wanted to tell them. Of course, since I teach in Mauritania none of that happened. The students staged a walk-out in support of Obama. They love an excuse not to go to school, so at 10 o'clock (as my class was supposed to begin), they started a happy riot, chanting Obama's name and causing mild chaos. I decided to try to have class anyway (I know, I'm an idiot), so I went to my classroom and started writing on the board. About half of my students came in, turned in their homework, asked me about Obama but sat down when they saw class was still on. One of them told me the students were all leaving, so I said they could go but that I was still having class. Only one left. The others figured that the coolest place you could be on Obama day was learning English with the American teacher (I seriously think it was the coolest I've ever been or will ever be in my life). So I start class, and after a minute a group of older students show up at my door. I ask what they want, and they tell me that all the students need to leave for Obama. I turn to my class and say, "OK, you can go if you want," and they start yelling "no teacher! We're having class! No! We're staying!" Pretty cool, huh? My students actually wanted to have class! So the group at the door left, only to be replaced by another a few minutes later. The same thing happened 3 or 4 time, and each time my students refused to leave. About 10 minutes after I had tried to start class, a group of 20 or so students came running in banging on things and yelling and literally pulled my students out of class. Oh well, at least I tried. The other teachers had the same thing happen to them, and were standing around the yard waiting for things to clear out or just heading home. One told me that there was some racial tension because a week earlier the black students marched out with the arab students to protest the bombings in Gaza (they really love to leave school), but even though everyone was excited about Obama, some arab students were refusing to walk out. It doesn't work so well if only half the students leave, so there was a little bit of yelling and rock throwing throughout the morning. Luckily for all of us, it doesn't take all that much convincing to get 10-20 year olds to leave school for any reason, so they all went home. Another teacher walked out with me, and was complaining about the students because, as he pointed out, it wasn't even a holiday in America and all the American kids had school, so why did the Mauritanian students get to leave? But at the end of the day, there wasn't a thing we could do about it. Shelby met me at Kim's and we celebrated by watching the L Word.

Anyway, that's about all the news from here. Happy belated inauguration day to everyone back home! I'm trying to upload pictures right now, so I'll post the links as soon is they're up!

Happy 2009!

It's hard to believe that 2008 is over and I've already been here for 6 months. This is the one full year I'll be in Mauritania--as John said, "that's a long time, I wish you hadn't said that!" Haha. After spending a week on the beach in Senegal, it's tough thinking about this long stretch in Mauritania.

After hearing about all the snow back home, I'm sure the only thing you're all thinking right now is "I can't believe you just spent a week on the beach!" Well I did, so haha. It was great. After a relatively uneventful trip (OK, we did have a bag fall out of the car and run from the police on the way from Nouakchott to Rosso. Seriously.), we made it to St. Louis, about a 1-2 hour drive from the border. It's a very cute, very touristy town. It was nice to wear jeans a bathing suits and order a beer or two (or more...), and it's amazing how much more stuff there is in Senegal. There's just more of everything--types of food, items you can buy in the market, everything. As they say, money makes the world go around...

Anyway, the downside of St. Louis is that it's a tourist town to the extreme. In Mauritania, cab drivers (and everyone else) tries to overcharge you, but they usually give in pretty quickly because some money is better than no money. In St. Louis, if you refuse to pay what they want, they'll go pick up a family of tourists who will gladly/stupidly pay anything. It makes it tough for volunteers there, both financially and just on principle. So even though I would have gladly stayed at the beach, I was ready to get away from tourists.

After leaving Senegal, all the first-year volunteers headed up to Nouakchott for Early Term Reconnect (ETR) and some training sessions. It was pretty uneventful, but we had a blast eating pizza and catching up with people we haven't gotten to see much since stage. Nouakchott has real grocery stores (one even has Ben&Jerry's ice cream!!!) and real beds and hot, running water. It took a long time for me to get used to it all and not make a scene everywhere. OK, so I never stopped making a scene, John was pretty embarrassed when I kept yelling things like, "look, capers!!!!" in the grocery store. But after 4 months in Selibaby, things like orangina and kidney beans and potato chips are really that exciting. My bag is stuffed with things like strawberry nesquick and canned cheddar cheese to get me through the next few months!

We left Nouakchott yesterday (lucky lucky John got to spend his whole birthday in a car!). It took us about 8 hours to get to Kaedi, which is much longer than it should have been. We ran into problems with the driver missing some ID, police wanting to write all our names down, the battery dying and having to get the car jumped, but in the end we were inside a car with all PCVs so no one weighed 400 pounds or smelled really bad. You have to focus on the good stuff. I'll be here until tomorrow when Shelby, Sari and I take a back of the pick-up truck adventure home. As much as I'll miss the food and the people, I'm glad to be going back to Selibaby. I miss my host family, and it'll be nice to be somewhere where I'm not a stranger. I'm even looking forward to teaching again, but we'll see how long that lasts before my students take any more years off my life! There's nothing like a vacation to make you appreciate home. I'm just trying not to think about the big pile of exams waiting for me...

Be well, and I'll post pictures as soon as I can!!