Swear in!

On Thursday morning I was sworn in as a member of the Peace Corps! It has been a crazy past couple of days… the swearing in ceremony was more emotional then I thought it would be with almost all of the returning PCVs, our teachers, sector directors, PC country director, and American Ambassador there to watch us take our oath to uphold the US Constitution. All of the trainees were decked out in our best Mauritanian outfits and it seemed surreal to be repeating the oath after the Ambassador along with the 76 people that Ive spent the last 10 weeks training with.

After the swearing in we had a great lunch and then got to have a pretty long q & a with the Ambassador and his chief of security to discuss the current events (the coup, US counter-terrorism efforts in Mauritania, and the recent closure of one of the provinces to PCVs). I was really impressed by the Ambassador… he was very friendly and interested in talking to us and also answered all of our questions very well (plus his wife was hilarious). Me and Julie felt like dorks but still asked if we could take our picture with him :)

After he left we had a few sessions on finances (got our move in allowances and first 3 months pay!) and then spent the rest of the afternoon resting and cooking the great American dinner that we had at our swear in party (make your own taco bar!) Our party was at a hotel right outside the city and all the PCVs were there ready to help to initiate us into PC Mauritania. It was a great/crazy night full of American music, food, dancing and drinks…

Friday we were given all day to recover from Thursday night (which was much needed), had a final session on posting, and packed up the PC SUVs with ALL of our bags to move to our final sites! I just got to Boghe a few hours ago and im starting to settle in a little. The next few weeks will be spent looking around to find a host family to live with and starting to prepare to start to work (school, and my GMC, starts after Ramadan in October). Until then, I will be living at the regional house (where we just got the internet installed!!!) the picture below is of all my new region mates in Brakna South including both the new PCVs and returning second years.

day before swear in...

Good news! the language test went well (as well as i think it could have gone) and i passed!! that was the last major barrier between me and becoming a volunteer tomorrow morning. preparations are now under way for our big day tomorrow... swear in in the morning, lunch with the ambassador, amazing american meal (cooked by us!) for dinner, then celebration party at night. its weird in one day i will be a real volunteer and in just four days i will be leaving for good for my final site.

on a side note, in a letter that i just recieved today from reenie i was reminded of something that ive been meaning to post on, the mauritanian opinion of barak obama. its funny bc when i bring out my american magazines the kids in my family all think that every man (no matter if he is 70 or black) looks like my male sitemate ryan and every women (even if she is chinese) looks like me or my female sitemate julie ann. but they can point out a picture of barak obama from anywhere. they may not really know his policies but they know he is black and has african roots and they love that.


picture is of my four sitemates and our teacher, baila, during our last evening class (evening class was always outside, on a mat, next to bailas house)

Leaving my homestay

So its been about a week since my last post and a TON has happened. According to my family, now Ko mi Pule (I am a pulaar). I left my training homestay for good this morning and they have spent the last few days creating me into a pulaar women. They gave me traditional pulaar earrings (red and gold yarn hoops with nails to go through your ear) and gave me fabric to make a boubou from (look at the picture with the green and black fabric to see both the fabric and the earrings). In the picture though im wearing it like a mulafa (what the arabs wear in this country) because I am going to have to take the fabric to a tailor once I get to Boghe. The picture was taken in my little one room house with my host mom. Grandma, uncle, two little brothers, and host cousin (my favorite- little 11 year old Fatimata). Little Fatimata also gave me traditional pulaar beaded bracelets that you can see in a lot of the pictures. Unlike what you would think, they are not stretchy at all and took about 5 minutes to squeeze each bracelet on (two were broke along the way). They also don’t have clasps so I guess im wearing these for awhile!

on our last night at site we threw all of our host families a little fete to thank them for being so generous and welcoming over the past two months. The day started off with killing the sheep we got for the party (picture is of the sheep, while still alive hahaha). I made sure to slip away during the actual killing. I taught Fatimata how to take pictures with my camera so we finally got a good picture with all four of the American PCV trainees at my site. Me and Julie made sure to wear our “yoodi no feewi” (very very beautiful) Mauritanian clothes.

As night fell and our little fete started, the kids were off the wall dancing and going crazy so we thought it would be a good idea to make some super sugary Mauritanian fruit drink bissap. god you would have thought we spiked the juice with everclear the way these kids got with that much sugar in them. one of our favorites in a tiny little girl, Maimouna, who kept us entertained for a good part of the night... here is a pic of her and us around the bissap.

And as an end to the night and as a last step of me becoming a pulaar, they decided to give me henna (or poudi in pulaar). Turns out Mauritanian henna is not near as delicate or intricate as the Indian henna that were used to seeing in the states. They did both my feet and only my left hand, wrapped them both in plastic bags, and then to my surprise told me that I couldn’t take them off until morning. Its kind of difficult to pack up your room, get ready for bed, and go to the bathroom with both feet and one hand tried up in plastic bags. And I think I might be allergic because now, almost 12 hours later, my hands and the bottoms of my feet are still tingly and kind of burning… pain really is beauty here…

Also, here is a picture of some of my family on a normal afternoon. It was hard to describe in pulaar that I wanted a candid photo (bc they loovveee posing for pictures) but I think this is a pretty good representation of them. Naked little baby, a kid haphazardly sitting in the prickly tree, and everyone sitting around the lesso (mat) under the tree to escape the sun and enjoy the breeze.

Over all, it was a great last week to my Peace Corps training experience. Im still going to be at the center for the next few days in Rosso with some wrap up sessions and language test (wish me luck!) If all goes well I will swear in on Thursday, August 28th and finally make the big move to Boghe on August 30th.

Lunar eclipse

hahahha so ... mauritanians dont enjoy watching lunar eclipses. We (me and my american sitemates) were pretty excited two days ago when we saw in our calendars that there was going to be a full moon because en brousse, the middle of freaking nowhere, full moons light light up the entire sky and village (that doesnt have electricity). but much to our surprise there was a lunar eclipse instead. turns out mauritanians are verrrryyyyyy superstitous about eclipes. the men went to the mosque and prayed while the women muttered prayers to allah under their breathe while they were making dinner. they believe that allah is punishing them and so they must pray to allah to get the moon back. interesting.... even though some of the people in our village are very educated it seems to be a superstition that still hangs on. we tried to describe to them how the earth is just passing inbetween the sun and the moon and it is our shadow that is temporarily covering the moon, but you can imagine how that would be difficult to describe in pulaar (not to mention hard to believe).

good news is that allah accepted their prayers and the moon was given back.

some pics of PK7

pictures are of a sunset at PK7, PK7 during a dust storm, and the inside of my little one room house

coup update- of lack there of...

so nothing much as really happened since i posted last... you guys in america with regularinternet and news access probably know more about whats going on then i do. nothing in my everyday has changed and life continues as normal in PK7. people seem to be pretty split over whether or not they favor the coup but i have yet to meet someone who really is passionate one way or the other.

My life has gotten a little crazier since model GMC started today. for the next week and a half i am going to be going into rosso each morning then having language classes back in PK7 each night. the GMC (girls mentoring center) is where all girls education volunteers work and the PC has created a little mock GMC to help us practice lesson planning and test out some of the lessons that we create on girls here in Rosso. im kind of nervous because ive never planned a lesson before, im by myself (everyone else is teaching in pairs), and it has to be done in either pulaar or french. i dont know if i said this before, but of all the 15 girls eduation trainees, 14 are learning hassaniya and i am the sole pulaar speaker. so naturally when it comes to presenting our lessons we were partnered with fellow language speakers and i got the shaft. its good practice though because i am also one of the few girls ed trainees who is by themselves running the GMC at their final site (or at least thats what i keep telling myself).

picture is of my little host brother tizine... after about the first week here he began to recoginize me and started smiling when i came in the room and my grandma declared that now, i was family.

coup d'etat

within 6 weeks of living in africa, i have experienced a coup d'etat. it actually wasnt as thrilling and exciting as it sounds (which is good) and so far everything is very calm. Its kind of cool and kind of scary at the same time... The state radio and tv stations were turned off before the president and P.M. were arrested and so the people really dont know what is going on... thank god for shortwave crank radios and bbc world news (thanks val!) Ive heard that Nouakchott is realitivly calm and that the military is patroling the streets but that is about all the information i have. out en brousse (rural sites), you never could have guessed that a coup even happened and everyone just went about their everyday business not at all nervous about the political situation. there was hope in this president because he was the first democratically elected in mauritania (last year) but the food crisis and rising prices hurt his popularity. here is an article from CNN and BBC (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/08/06/mauritania.coup.ap/index.html) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7544834.stm) (about 8am wed.)

there have been coups in the past, although none have been serious enough to bring about PC evacuation from Mauritania. PC evacuated during the six day war in Israel in 1967, the gulf war in 1991, and had a voluntary evacuation following the events of september 11th and the invasion of Iraq (all because of a possible threat on american lives due to the status of Mauritania as a muslim state, not because of the unstable situation of Mauritania). the other PCVs and members of the staff dont seem to nervous about all this and hopefully it will bring about changes for the best.

i finally just my first round of packages which was amazing and luckily nothing was tampered with or missing. Turns out the packages get to the capital fine then sit in the PC bureau for a few weeks, which would explain the delay of all of our packages and letters. my new mailing address is supposed to bypass the bureau so hopefully things will get here a little quicker. either way i was really happy to see that nothing was messed with and everything got here safely. thank you meredith for your bday gift! im finally got it in my first package (it arrived at my house the day after i left for the PC) and im wearing it right now. thanks to lindsey too for the cherry koolaid! (you did well teaching your brother how to share). you all cannot even understand how happy your letters, pictures from home, and packages make me! thanks!

look close! the picture is of me at man-loin, a little sand dune/canyon that me and my sitemates found about a 15 min walk from PK7