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)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment