First week at site (and pictures!)

Here I am again, and this time there aren't clouds rolling in! When I first got to Mauritania, I thought it was interesting that when people talk about the rain, they say "the rain is coming" instead of "it's going to rain." After my first few storms, I can understand why. Rain here is an event. After cutting my last post short, I made it home just as the rain was starting. Earlier this week, I was not so lucky. Shelby and I went to the bank to get our checkbooks, and as we were leaving it started to pour. We hopped in a cab, and I figured I might as well get the guy to take me home instead of to Kim's house (I moved in with my family last week--more to come on that!). Shelby got out at Kim's, and I tried to tell the driver where I lived. That's easier said than done when the only route I know is walking! I asked if he knew where my father lived, and he didn't, so I started to direct him. He drove for about a minute, then said there was too much water in the road and we couldn't go that way. I decided to go back to Kim's and wait it out there. After about an hour, it started to let up. I needed to get home for lunch, so I decided to leave my bag at Kim's and risk the walk. I stuck my phone in one side of my bra and my key in the other and headed out. Since there had been some water in the roads on my way into town, I was expecting the puddles up to my ankles and even mid-calf that I walked through most of the way home. Towards the end of my 10 minute walk, there is a (usually) empty stream bed. As I got to it, I saw a man crossing through water up to his knees. "OK," I thought, "this isn't so bad!" I hiked up my skirt (yes, please keep in mind that I'm wearing a wrap skirt this whole time) and step down the bank, promptly sinking up to my butt in water. No joke. I started laughing to myself and kept wading--what else could I do?--wishing I had thought to take my shoes off. Somehow I managed not to fall or get my phone wet. When I finally made it across the now 7 or 8 foot long river, I saw two of my younger host siblings running toward me. They each grabbed one of my hands, and laughing we walked the rest of the way home. My whole family was worried but also thought it was hilarious.

My family. What can I say about them? They're absolutely wonderful. I've stopped being Fatima Sow and am now Hawa Sarre (renaming is a really important part of family integration. Within minutes, I was Hawa--which was also the last volunteer's name and is my sister's name. Moms, if any of you take in a foreign student I expect you to rename her Emily Nelson). Without getting into too many ethnic generalizations, Pulaar families tend to be more relaxed than Moor families. I have my own little house in their compound and I eat my meals with them (they cook really well!). The first day, my father asked me if I ate meat. I told him I never did in the US but that I knew I had to here. He then slaughtered me a goat. Good times. I still don't love eating meat, but I've started making an effort since I've been here because I know I wasn't getting enough protein. They killed another goat today, and I'm pretty sure I ate head at lunch.

Other than the goat head eating, I really love my living situation. There are a lot of kids in the family ranging from a baby to 20, and they're a lot of fun. My 20 year old brother is teaching my Pulaar (hopefully I'll find an actual teacher once Ramadan is over), and his twin sister took me shopping to get stuff for my house. I'm their third PCV, so they're used to Americans, which is really nice. I spend a good amount of the time with them, but can retreat into my house when I want without anyone bothering me about it. They only come in to bring me tea, and sometimes my sister hangs out when I'm in there. So far, I'm really happy with them.

Since I've mentioned both Ramadan and goat head, some of you must be wondering, "but don't people fast during Ramadan?" The answer is officially yes and actually sometimes. There are lots of reasons people don't fast: if you're too young or too old, sick, pregnant or nursing, have your period, have to do heavy labor all day, travel a lot, etc., you don't fast. This tends to get stretched here in Selibaby! Most of my family isn't fasting, which is nice for me. They try to make me eat a lot (no big shock there), but with everyone except for my mom, telling me to eat is just a formality; they'll say "Hawa, mange," but when I say I'm full they leave it alone. My mother insists more, but when I say "Um-hari!" (I'm full in Pulaar) she usually laughs and lets me wash my hands.

I guess that's about all that's new. Work hasn't started yet because there's no school during Ramadan. I'm hoping to find the school director at some point so I can know when it does start and what grades I'm teaching...minor details.

Oh, and for Didi and Laura who asked about my maybe-kitchen! The whole idea of a kitchen as we know it doesn't exist here, at least not in normal houses. The cooking is usually done outside on small, camping-style gas stoves or over charcoal. Dishes are usually kept in a shed somewhere. My little room off of my bedroom has a shower at the back (by shower I mean a two-inch wall blocking off a little area with a hole going outside for water to drain out), and then has some cinder blocks that I can make into a table if I get a piece of wood. I'll probably do that at some point.

And last but not least, more pictures!
End of stage 1
End of stage 2
Selibaby

Enjoy!

Selibaby!

Well, here I am! I officially swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer last week, and am now at my site. It's so great to be here, although it's weird to think that I won't see most of the other volunteers until Christmas. There's a great group of 9 of us in the region (4 second year and 5 1st year volunteers), and three of us are actually in Selibaby. I signed a lease on my little house yesterday, so I think I'm moving in tomorrow. It was built by a PCV, and I'm the third to live there. It has a bedroom with a little shower room/kitchen maybe off of it, and a porch under an awning. It's in a family's compound, so really I get the best of both worlds.

Uh oh, it's about to start pouring! Just wanted to let people know that I'm here and everything's OK. If I don't leave now I'll get stuck, but more to come soon!!

Pictures!

The moment my moms have been waiting for/asking about non-stop since I got here/threatening me about has finally arrived. I spent most of the afternoon for the last 3 days uploading pictures, so enjoy! Here's the link--they're on facebook but you should be able to see them even if you're not (in other words, mom, please don't make a facebook page).

First album

Second album

Enjoy!

Last day of homestay...

...and I'm pretty happy about it! Don't get me wrong, it's been a great few months, I'm just so ready to move on. My family has been...ok. For the most part they're nice to me, although I'm pretty sure one of my aunts is crazy even by US standards and yells at me at random. No big. There are some days when I'm sitting there surrounded by people all talking at me in Hassaniya (they know I don't speak it, but that doesn't stop them!), kids climbing on me, eating weird food and I can't help but think "OK, where the heck am I??" But then there are days when I'm sitting there surrounded by people talking at me in Hassaniya, kids climbing on me, eating weird food and I know I'm going to miss them. I won't miss the pancake batter with pasta in it for dinner though. Eew.



Anyway, the only real news recently is that model school is over! It was really great to have three weeks actually in the classroom, working with real kids. My class was really small (we had a record 8 of them show up for the test), but even so I learned a lot about the kind of problems I'll no doubt run into. The girls can be painfully shy and hide in their mulafas when you try to get them to answer questions, even when they know the answer. It's considered OK here for kids to snap their hand and yell "teacher! teacher!" when they want to get your attention/ask a question/give an answer. Might not sound like a big deal, but it is when 60 of them do it! I'm fine with the snapping, but I'm making a no yelling teacher rule from day one. We'll see how that goes. Of the 8 kids who took the test on Friday, we had 6 pass. That's considered really good. We (Mike and I taught 5th year together) were really happy with it since one girl who failed only started coming for the last week (she got 3.5/20, and they were totally lucky guesses...she filled in some vocab blanks to make sentences such as "Shakira is very jump," and "I don't know where the post office is, can you score me?") The other kid who didn't pass stopped coming by the end and only filled in half the test. If he'd bothered to do the rest of it, I'm sure he would have passed, he just didn't for some reason. But at the end of the day, our students who came to class did well. That's a good feeling. And I taught them the word awesome, so what more do they need?



So tomorrow morning I leave my house in Satara for the last time (I really hope my family fully understands this...they've been know to be a little slow/forget that I've told them things) and go to the model school cerimony, then to the center. It will be nice to have a week or so all together before heading out to Selibaby. I'm excited to start my real life here, although since it will be Ramadan right as we get to site, it will be a slow beginning. Maybe my new family will teach me some Pulaar. Good thing I had those 3 weeks of Hassaniya! : ) Megan and I did set a record with a total of 5 different teachers during stage. Pretty impressive!



That's all for now. John, who's sitting across the cyber from me, just informed me that he's stalking my blog so I better post this for him. Creep : )

Coup

Don't worry, I'm OK! things are fine here. It was actually about as uneventful as a coup can be. Here in Rosso you wouldn't have even known. People are still having some trouble getting in and out of Nouakchott...but other than that and the old president and PM being under arrest it's business as usual! There seem to be really mixed opinions about it here, and depending on who you talk to you could get a vastly different answer.

In other news, I started actual work this past week. We spend 3 weeks teaching at Model School--basically classrooms with actual kids who get a certificate for going to English school over the summer. I taught 3 days last week, and teach1 or 2 hours a day for the next 2 weeks. It's hard because we skip around between classes, and it's so hard to know where the students are at! These are seriously multi-level classrooms. So far, I've taught 1st year (they start the first year of middle school), 5th year and the adult class. It's a ton of work, but I really, really like it. I spend my nights making lesson plans, which include things like how to set up the chalk board and stuff that I never thought I'd plan out, but it's so important to keep control of the class, especially here. Next week, I'm switching between 4th and 5th year, and then will stick with 5th year for the last 7 days.

I also started learning Hassaniya, which is fun and intense. It's hard to learn a non-written language! The Peace Corps basically made up an alphabet with French letters to make it easier for us to learn, but there are so many sounds we just don't have. It's also really interesting learning one foreign language in another (the class is taught in French). My family really likes that I'm learning, even though I haven't had much time to study yet! The whole switching languages and starting school at the same time thing was a lot for one week, plus the whole coup thing and just general toubab fun...it was a really busy but wonderful week.

OK, I hope all is well at home! Keep in touch! And thanks to people who have sent mail! I got a letter from Natalie and a bday card from Linds, and it rocked my world. And as always my moms are the best mail senders :)

Lots of love!

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!

Hi all! I'm here in the cyber between lunch and class, and I thought I'd try to actually give an update on my life here. I guess this is what I can think of that's new:

--I still try to eat as little meat as possible, but now when I walk down the street and see a goat (which is always) I think "I could eat you. I might even eat you tomorrow!" I don't know what it is, but I kind of like the idea that I can eat that guy if I want to. What power! So far I'm not so into the taste, but then again it is goat and camel...most people seem to love the camel thought.



--My family still refuses to speak to me in French. Well, not exactly. After the one day when they literally wouldn't speak to me in anything other than Hassaniya, they've started translating again, but only after the first few times they say something. I just kind of shrug, and then we all laugh and they explain it.



--The new craze at my house is dance parties. When there's something on the TV that's playing music, they get me to get up and dance. They're teaching me some Mauritanian dance moves. It's good times



--One week from today we find out our permanent site. That's so hard to believe! It'll be 1 month down, 26 to go :)



--My family is still great. They got me yet another mulafa, and when I came out wearing it yesterday they kept telling me how nice it looked. Even though it's basically a giant bed sheet, it makes them so happy that I don't even mind that much.



--We have baby chicks at my house now to go along with the goats, sheep and cats (the cats don't live there, but they come in and out). And speaking of animal stories...the other morning I went with my prof and one of the other people in my class to watch the camels and cows being slaughtered. Really, really interesting/horrifying/amazing to see. When we got there (around 6:45 AM) the camels were already dead, but we saw them kill a few cows. Then they skin them and take them apart bit by bit to bring to the market. They didn't scream or make any noise really, which I think is really good--I'd have a Silence of the Lambs moment if I had heard that ("are the camels still screaming, Emily?"). I'm really glad we went because a) it was pretty cool to see, I don't care how morbid that sounds and b) it's interesting to know how the meat actually gets to our big communal bowl.

--The food is...well, tedious. We eat the same thing all the time, and at this point I would kill for a salad and stir fry! Or some real cheese. Or anything that's not oily rice/pasta with goat/fish/camel. The other part of this problem is that my family wants me to get fat. They've told me so many, many times. Big women are hot here because it's a sign of wealth. My family tells me to eat constantly, even when I'm in the middle of a bite, and then makes a getting fat gesture which ends with blown out cheeks, arms up and waddling back and forth. I try to say I don't want to have to waddle, but they're not into that. You just have to be forceful, lick your hand (polite to do after a meal) and wash up as quickly as possible.

--I'm starting to miss things like grass and water to swim in, but also getting very used to my surroundings. Walking over trash and avoiding the donkey pulled carts is second nature now, as is greeting everyone when you walk in a room--I shake hands with all the women, and basically ask how they're doing in many different ways, falling back to "Ca va?" when my limited Hassaniya runs out. It's a nice custom when you think about it.

--Going back to food (which we talk about all the time pretty much), in class today our prof was talking about a place in the north where the basically just eat bread, sugar and meat with rice. I mentioned that they didn't seem to get enough vitamins, and he told me I was totally wrong, that they had meat, bread and milk so what more did they need? I suggested veggies, and he said they sometimes eat unripe watermelon seeds or potatoes...I was floored. The whole concept of "good for you" is totally different here. He finally just said "well they're alive, so it must be fine." I let it go rather than trying to explain malnutrition.

I guess this is enough for now. I'm trying to write about the most interesting things, but know that on a daily basis I'm happy and (mostly...kind of) healthy. Mauritania is such an underrated country. If anyone has the chance to get here, do! More to come soon! Keep in touch--I got my first mail the other day and I can't even say how exciting it was! And emails are wonderful too.