my site visit came at the perfect time... after 5 weeks of sitting through tech sessions and struggling to learn pulaar and french i was ready for a reality check. the visit made me remember that im here to do something good and that i will be given a chance to do that something good just once i get to swear in august 28th. ill be able to use my training to do whatever i want and that kind of freedom and responcibility is both exciting and a little scary. what does or doesnt happen at the GMC is completly up to me. the food situation of being able to make good, american food (with relative ease) whenever i want is also helping me get through the next few weeks of food with my mauritanian family. dont get me wrong, my family has been extremely accomendating and i think im getting some of the best food out of all the trainees but after getting a taste of the possiblities of cooking for yourself its hard to go back to eating whatever people make for you.
so im trying to learn as much as i can these next few weeks but also counting down til swear in! only 29 days away....
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Site Visit
Site visit was an amazing blur of americaness that i didnt realize how much i had missed until i was there. complete with AMAZING american food, american tv (on dvds), electricity, fans, and best of all, an american party. my new sitemates are awesome and showed me around Boghe, took me to the tailor to get my first clothes made, and showed me the GMC (girls mentoring center) that i will be the director of. the girl who ran it before me just finished her service a few weeks ago so its all mine now. talk about about a ton of responcibility... i have my own building complete with computer room and will be in charge of a few dozen girls who come to the center after school with computer, english, french, health, etc, classes that im in charge of either teaching or bringing in people to teach. the building is in the same compound as the college and lycee (middle/high school) and has had a long, strong PC presence.
i stayed at the regional house in boghe which one person stationed in boghe lives each year and is the center for american things and get togethers in our region. its a small house but has a huge nice walled in front yard so we can walk around in shorts and tank tops and the locals cant see us. the front yard has a few trees, a hammock, a robinet (water spicket), and outhouse/shower. also there is a regional dog that lives at the region house named bailey! our first projects for revamping the house when we move to site permanently in a few weeks is to get internet at the house, buy a tv and oven, and build a garden- all stuff that im real excited to be able to use. the PCVs there right now are all such good cooks and made the most amazing food out of the most random things... turns out nearly anything is possible with some creativity. we had cinnimon pancakes with mango syrup and hashbrowns, spagetti with alfredo sauce and grilled veggies, spinach and artichoke dip, carrots sticks and ranch dressing, french fries and fried okra, and mexican night. you cannot imagine how good these foods are after only eating with a mauritanian family for 6 weeks.
ive decided to live with a family but pay only rent (most volunteers pay for rent and to eat with the family) and then make my meals at the regional house. the girl who is living in the house this coming year is a vegetarian and really open to letting me make my meals at the house which is great. hopefully i can find a good family to live with in the same neighborhood as the regional house because it is also the same neighborhood that the GMC (my work) is located in.
we also had some good, clean, american fun at the house with all the people in our region. the PCVs there were able to get some drinks from senegal and we got out a kiddie pool and spent the day/night blaring american music. good times...
also note that my address has changed. everything sent to the old one still makes it to me but the new one is more direct so should be faster. either one will work though!
i stayed at the regional house in boghe which one person stationed in boghe lives each year and is the center for american things and get togethers in our region. its a small house but has a huge nice walled in front yard so we can walk around in shorts and tank tops and the locals cant see us. the front yard has a few trees, a hammock, a robinet (water spicket), and outhouse/shower. also there is a regional dog that lives at the region house named bailey! our first projects for revamping the house when we move to site permanently in a few weeks is to get internet at the house, buy a tv and oven, and build a garden- all stuff that im real excited to be able to use. the PCVs there right now are all such good cooks and made the most amazing food out of the most random things... turns out nearly anything is possible with some creativity. we had cinnimon pancakes with mango syrup and hashbrowns, spagetti with alfredo sauce and grilled veggies, spinach and artichoke dip, carrots sticks and ranch dressing, french fries and fried okra, and mexican night. you cannot imagine how good these foods are after only eating with a mauritanian family for 6 weeks.
ive decided to live with a family but pay only rent (most volunteers pay for rent and to eat with the family) and then make my meals at the regional house. the girl who is living in the house this coming year is a vegetarian and really open to letting me make my meals at the house which is great. hopefully i can find a good family to live with in the same neighborhood as the regional house because it is also the same neighborhood that the GMC (my work) is located in.
we also had some good, clean, american fun at the house with all the people in our region. the PCVs there were able to get some drinks from senegal and we got out a kiddie pool and spent the day/night blaring american music. good times...
also note that my address has changed. everything sent to the old one still makes it to me but the new one is more direct so should be faster. either one will work though!
pictures are of me at work at the GMC (the peace corps-Boghe sign), the regional house (inside and outside), and some of the great american food we made
Monday, July 21, 2008
Final Site Placement: Boghe
after much gossip and anticipation, we got our final site placements today! the staff drew a huge map of mauritania out inthe sand with all the cities that we were placed in labeled and called us out one by one to stand in our new home for the next two years. i got my ultimate dream site placement: Boghe!! (pronounced bow-gay). its along the river, liberal (no mulafas for girls (head coverings)), big city (19,000 ppl), and vegetarian friendly. i met a girl whose stationed there now a few weeks ago and have been obsessing about the idea of getting placed there and then i was! shes a vegetarian to and lives in the regional house with a pet dog... my two favorite things!
we leave tomorrow for our site visit so i will be spending the next week or so getting to know my new site with my new sitemates (PCVs who are starting their second year). ive heard theres a lot of great vegetarian american food planned and i will pick out where i am going to be living (either with a host family or on my own). i have another new trainee going with me to boghe, mark, who is in the tech sector, and then there is a few other trainees stationed right outside Boghe. my sitemates during training at PK7 are all pretty close too (ryan is just a few km, julies about an hour out and matt is in kaedi) which is awesome.
more stories to come! wish me luck on site visit!
we leave tomorrow for our site visit so i will be spending the next week or so getting to know my new site with my new sitemates (PCVs who are starting their second year). ive heard theres a lot of great vegetarian american food planned and i will pick out where i am going to be living (either with a host family or on my own). i have another new trainee going with me to boghe, mark, who is in the tech sector, and then there is a few other trainees stationed right outside Boghe. my sitemates during training at PK7 are all pretty close too (ryan is just a few km, julies about an hour out and matt is in kaedi) which is awesome.
more stories to come! wish me luck on site visit!
pictures are of the map the PC staff made of mauritania in the sand at the training center in Rosso when they reveiled our permanent sites
Saturday, July 19, 2008
cattle and skys
this is a picture of my grandma with our longhorn cattle at sunset and then another picture from my bedroom window at 
sunrise
sunrise
modesty? pantless babies and topless women
I thought it was about time to post some of the cultural differences ive noticed since ive been in Mauritania.
1. modesty: god forbid you show off an ankle but women here whip out their boobs to breastfeed like nobodies business. Also, due to a lack of diapers, babies (or toddlers) go pantless until they are potty trained (about 3… a little old to be pantless all day everyday in any culture). And if they pee in the middle of the straw hut during dinner, oh well…
2. inshallah: everything here only happens if allah wills it and is solidified with the word “inshallah” that is said at the end every sentence. “we’ll pick you up for class tomorrow, inshallah”. If allah wills we get picked up for class then it will happen, not if the driver remembers to pick us up. It’s a good way not to be held responsible for anything.
3. if/when: in pulaar, if and when are the same word. I cant help but laugh every day in class when our instructor makes us talk about our daily activities and I have to start with the phrase “So mi finii”, in English “if I wake up…” Hahahah… not when I wake up, if I wake up. Goes right back to the if allah wills it, inshallah.
1. modesty: god forbid you show off an ankle but women here whip out their boobs to breastfeed like nobodies business. Also, due to a lack of diapers, babies (or toddlers) go pantless until they are potty trained (about 3… a little old to be pantless all day everyday in any culture). And if they pee in the middle of the straw hut during dinner, oh well…
2. inshallah: everything here only happens if allah wills it and is solidified with the word “inshallah” that is said at the end every sentence. “we’ll pick you up for class tomorrow, inshallah”. If allah wills we get picked up for class then it will happen, not if the driver remembers to pick us up. It’s a good way not to be held responsible for anything.
3. if/when: in pulaar, if and when are the same word. I cant help but laugh every day in class when our instructor makes us talk about our daily activities and I have to start with the phrase “So mi finii”, in English “if I wake up…” Hahahah… not when I wake up, if I wake up. Goes right back to the if allah wills it, inshallah.
- picture is of the baby goat i saw being born last week.. hahah it makes the funniest baby goat noises that i ever heard so i had to chase it around the yard and pick it up
- picture of my one room cement house with my family's straw hut in the backround
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Mailing tips
so after talking to the current PCVs about mailing tips i have a few good ones i thought id share with whoever was interested in sending me something.
- big envelopes are less likely to be opened and rummaged through than small boxes
- on the custom slips (needed for anything bigger then a normal size envelope), write things that are undesirable for mauritanians to steal ex. "letters from home, tampons, etc"
i know the thought of receiving letters doesnt sound like the highlight in your day back in america but here it def is so only 94 cents could make my day!
- big envelopes are less likely to be opened and rummaged through than small boxes
- on the custom slips (needed for anything bigger then a normal size envelope), write things that are undesirable for mauritanians to steal ex. "letters from home, tampons, etc"
i know the thought of receiving letters doesnt sound like the highlight in your day back in america but here it def is so only 94 cents could make my day!
- picture is taken out my front door of my little one room house of the family's front yard, cattle and straw huts
Sunday, July 13, 2008
nglobes!
along with the camel spiders comes the daily migration of camels (nglobes in pulaar) during the rainy season whoch is soooo amazing. each day around sunset about half a dozen wonder through our little village. no matter where we are hanging out all the little kids come find us and tell us that the camels are coming through because they think is it hilarious to see how excited the toubabs get over seeing a camel. hopefully when i come back to the center next week for a few days i will have time to finally upload pictures... im crossing my fingers!
last night i went to a wedding party in my village- of a 12 year old girl to a 20 year old boy - eww. it took everything in me to try and get the pit out of my stomach and just enjoy mauritanian culture for what it is. luckily i got out of forced awkward dancing in front of the whole town although my sitemate julie wasnt as lucky hahaha....
grandma fatimata took me to the market the other day and bought me a woodaire (sp? in pulaar), a type of cool wrap skirt that the women wear here with boubous (huge sheet like shirts) over top of them. grandma tried to get me to get a boubou too but i convinced her that i was fine with my american fitted tshirts. some of the other girls who are living with more conservative families (and who will most likely be placed up north in the more conservative part of the country because of their language placement) have to wear mulafas (full body/head sheet dresses). im really enjoying knowing that whereever my final placement is it wont be in a place where i have to wear stuff like that. on that note, we find out our final site placements next week!!! look for a post!! ill find out where ill be for the next two years and then i go on a site visit immeadiantly afterwards and pick out where im going to live in my town and meet who i am going to be working with... exciting!
last night i went to a wedding party in my village- of a 12 year old girl to a 20 year old boy - eww. it took everything in me to try and get the pit out of my stomach and just enjoy mauritanian culture for what it is. luckily i got out of forced awkward dancing in front of the whole town although my sitemate julie wasnt as lucky hahaha....
grandma fatimata took me to the market the other day and bought me a woodaire (sp? in pulaar), a type of cool wrap skirt that the women wear here with boubous (huge sheet like shirts) over top of them. grandma tried to get me to get a boubou too but i convinced her that i was fine with my american fitted tshirts. some of the other girls who are living with more conservative families (and who will most likely be placed up north in the more conservative part of the country because of their language placement) have to wear mulafas (full body/head sheet dresses). im really enjoying knowing that whereever my final placement is it wont be in a place where i have to wear stuff like that. on that note, we find out our final site placements next week!!! look for a post!! ill find out where ill be for the next two years and then i go on a site visit immeadiantly afterwards and pick out where im going to live in my town and meet who i am going to be working with... exciting!
- picture is of the camels that come in around sunset everyday eating in matt and julie's compound
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
so... rainy season=camel spiders
im in rosso today for a GEE tech session and begged my way into having an extra 30 min at the center with air conditioning and wireless internet... niicceee. since the "rains" have started the camel spider population has come out of hibernation and now terrorize us at night. although our host families tell us theyre harmless (they still bite but they cant kill which is i guess harmless to mauritanians) me and my sitemates are all still scared shitless. they are about as big as your hand, a shade of white, and like to come into our little one room cement houses at night, the perfect time to interupt our nightly euchre games or make us freak out as were getting ready for bed.
so far i have been blessed with really good health (knock on wood) and havent had to spend too much time in the open air cement closet/hole in the ground that we call a bathroom. i got some sand in my contacts yesterday which irritated my eye a little but thats all i can complain about (the whole village was extremely concerned why the toubab, the mauritanian word for foreigner, had a damp cloth across her eyes).
a few funny stories about life en brousse at PK7. during the sandstorm we all boarded ourselves up early, about 8 pm, and i got ready for bed expecting that my family wouldnt be able to cook dinner in a straw hut during a huge storm (im never that hungry for dinner since its at like 10 pm every night anyways). the rain was so hard you couldnt even hear yourself think. normally my family comes and gets me for dinner and they didnt come that night so i just went to bed. at like midnight my 70 year old grandma is whispering/yelling my african name through the cracks in my door and shinning her flashlight. i told her i was in bed and id see her in the morning and fell back asleep. turns out she wasnt satisfied by that felt the need to go to our neighbors house, during the storm, where another PCT is staying and inform him and his whole family that i didnt want to eat dinner. she didnt want him to come convince me eat, jus wanted to share the info. i never thought id meet ppl so concerned with my eating habits.
my little sister fatimata is my saving grace. she is soo smart and has nearly perfect french and picks up on my english really quickly. she helps me get my point across, either in pulaar or french or a mix of the two, to the rest of my family and when i come home from my tech sessions in rosso i can always depend on her to know exactly where all the toubabs are hanging out.
heres a website with some pictures that my friend amanda has taken so far... theres a few from our training center in rosso but her homestay village is a little bigger and different then mine www.flickr.com/photos/amandainafrica/
and a link to camel spiders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_spider)
you tube has some crazy stuff as well!
*(picture link now works - updated by Eddie)
so far i have been blessed with really good health (knock on wood) and havent had to spend too much time in the open air cement closet/hole in the ground that we call a bathroom. i got some sand in my contacts yesterday which irritated my eye a little but thats all i can complain about (the whole village was extremely concerned why the toubab, the mauritanian word for foreigner, had a damp cloth across her eyes).
a few funny stories about life en brousse at PK7. during the sandstorm we all boarded ourselves up early, about 8 pm, and i got ready for bed expecting that my family wouldnt be able to cook dinner in a straw hut during a huge storm (im never that hungry for dinner since its at like 10 pm every night anyways). the rain was so hard you couldnt even hear yourself think. normally my family comes and gets me for dinner and they didnt come that night so i just went to bed. at like midnight my 70 year old grandma is whispering/yelling my african name through the cracks in my door and shinning her flashlight. i told her i was in bed and id see her in the morning and fell back asleep. turns out she wasnt satisfied by that felt the need to go to our neighbors house, during the storm, where another PCT is staying and inform him and his whole family that i didnt want to eat dinner. she didnt want him to come convince me eat, jus wanted to share the info. i never thought id meet ppl so concerned with my eating habits.
my little sister fatimata is my saving grace. she is soo smart and has nearly perfect french and picks up on my english really quickly. she helps me get my point across, either in pulaar or french or a mix of the two, to the rest of my family and when i come home from my tech sessions in rosso i can always depend on her to know exactly where all the toubabs are hanging out.
heres a website with some pictures that my friend amanda has taken so far... theres a few from our training center in rosso but her homestay village is a little bigger and different then mine www.flickr.com/photos/amandainafrica/
and a link to camel spiders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_spider)
you tube has some crazy stuff as well!
*(picture link now works - updated by Eddie)
Friday, July 4, 2008
la fete d'independance
today all the PCTs were brought back to the center to celebrate the 4th of july, complete with hamburgers and americans. so far i am lovinnnnggggg my homestay. my family is awesome and the other 3 trainees are a ton of fun. our village is a lot smaller then i thought, around 50 people who all say theyre in the same family but can articulate how. although the peace corps is paying them, i still feel bad that they gave their single room cement house for me to live in for the next 2 months while they are living in straw huts.
life is finally settling into a pattern with language classes starting at around 9am-1pm (with our prof taking little nap/smoke breaks about every hour of so). then its back to our families from lunch and a nap (a good time to go in my room and put on some shorts to cool off) and then language classes again from 530-730. pulaar is soo different then any other western language but im starting to pick it up. my family is having a hilarious time trying to teach me phrases and words at speeds that are impossible to keep up with. me and the other trainees hang out and play some cards til dinner at about 9 and then its off to bed.
the rainy season started earlier this week and it is nothing like what i experiences in cameroon. by rainy season here they mean huge sand storms and monsoon like rain for a few hours every night then they same hot and dry weather during the day. my village is literally a beach with houses on it so water doesnt do much at all but soak immeadiantly. but when the storm comes it really comes. all my roommates can imagine me alone with the wind blowing like crazy and the rain pounding on my tin roof kind of freaking out. im not a fan of storms at home either but at least here i comfort myself knowing that no matter how fast the winds start going tornados only happen in north america and im not the one sleeping in the straw huts.
the food has been pretty good so far and i think my family is happy that they get paid the same amount to feed a meat eater as they do to feed me. the past week as been all vegetarian foods all the time and they dont seem to mind at all. lots of rice, couscous, beans, carrots, potatoes, onions, green beans and bread. ive run out of all my granola/protein bars so any of those added in a care package would be greatly appreciated!! (peanut butter flavored anything especially). we havent gotton mail yet but it should be here soon!
ps. happy bday hattie! sorry i missed it again hahahha
life is finally settling into a pattern with language classes starting at around 9am-1pm (with our prof taking little nap/smoke breaks about every hour of so). then its back to our families from lunch and a nap (a good time to go in my room and put on some shorts to cool off) and then language classes again from 530-730. pulaar is soo different then any other western language but im starting to pick it up. my family is having a hilarious time trying to teach me phrases and words at speeds that are impossible to keep up with. me and the other trainees hang out and play some cards til dinner at about 9 and then its off to bed.
the rainy season started earlier this week and it is nothing like what i experiences in cameroon. by rainy season here they mean huge sand storms and monsoon like rain for a few hours every night then they same hot and dry weather during the day. my village is literally a beach with houses on it so water doesnt do much at all but soak immeadiantly. but when the storm comes it really comes. all my roommates can imagine me alone with the wind blowing like crazy and the rain pounding on my tin roof kind of freaking out. im not a fan of storms at home either but at least here i comfort myself knowing that no matter how fast the winds start going tornados only happen in north america and im not the one sleeping in the straw huts.
the food has been pretty good so far and i think my family is happy that they get paid the same amount to feed a meat eater as they do to feed me. the past week as been all vegetarian foods all the time and they dont seem to mind at all. lots of rice, couscous, beans, carrots, potatoes, onions, green beans and bread. ive run out of all my granola/protein bars so any of those added in a care package would be greatly appreciated!! (peanut butter flavored anything especially). we havent gotton mail yet but it should be here soon!
ps. happy bday hattie! sorry i missed it again hahahha
- picture is of my teacher Baila during our daily afternoon Pulaar language classes
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