Eddie comes to Africa!

So, I was trying to wait to post this blog until after eddie had sent me all pictures we took but my patience isn’t all that great so the pictures will just have to come later! Eddie has already uploaded some of them so here is a link in case you’re interested to look at some now… http://www.flickr.com/photos/edman24365/ . Also, apology in advance, i tried to make this as short as possible! wasnt quite very successful...

Picking up where I left off in my last blog post, on Eddie’s first day in Dakar we hung out with some of my PC Mauritania friends who had stayed behind an extra day so they could meet Eddie. First, we went to the artisan market and bought what became known as ‘the circus’ and then we went to the Dakar central market which can be described as nothing short of chaos. I am used to crazy African markets but this was like the Boghe market x100. Pickpocketing is a huge problem and I realized how much I took for granted the feeling in Mauritania that my belongings were always secure. Bargaining was its usual hassle and it felt great to throw in the line “I live in Mauritania, don’t even try to tell me that costs that much.” But in general, things in Dakar are more expensive then Mauritania, either because of their general better quality or big city atmosphere so I didn’t really buy anything (although Senegal wax prints are so hard to not buy!). We had a great night at our hotel hanging out on the private beach/patio area, watching the sunset and then having some drinks and playing cards while eddie enlightened us all with new American music and we enlightened him on the horrible selection of Senegalese beer/liquor.

The next day all of my friends left to go back to Mauritania and Eddie and I explored a little bit of Dakar. During WAIST I had seen some great sights, unfortunately only from the taxi, so we started by walking along the coast near central Dakar seeing both la Mosque de la Divinite and la Phare de Mamelles (lighthouse of Mamelles).

Dakar was a little too cosmopolitan, crazy, and hectic for my taste and we were happy to get out of the city and go to Ile de N’Gor, a little island right off the coast of Dakar. The only way to get to the island is by using pirogues, a small handcrafted African canoe. Luckily the ones in Senegal are powered by motors (in Mauritania all they have is paddles), but it was still pretty intense crossing a little part of the Atlantic Ocean in a wooden canoe. We were the only white people on the canoes so I felt better that the locals trusted these little canoes (and often with their babies strapped on their backs). Then I realized rationally I wasn’t too nervous about capsizing because I can swim (again, unlike the locals), but how much it would suck for all of eddies cameras and electronics to get wet haha… I didn’t want his first few days in Africa to have successfully ruined all of his prized possessions!

Ile de N’Gor is a picturesque little island that I would describe as “Venice meets the Caribbean”. You could walk the whole island by meandering through the little alleyways in about 15 minutes. Everywhere you look are beautiful views of cliffs leading into the Atlantic Ocean. Our little hotel was great with a private lounging area (away from the hassles of the public beach vendors) and a great Italian restaurant. And our room had its own private little balcony overlooking the water were we could sit out at night and watch the glow and chaos of Dakar, from a safe distance. The calm and tranquility of the island unfortunately gave us our first (and certainly not last) money dilemma when we realized that atms were few and far between and credit card machines at hotels are practically nonexistent…

After a few days of relaxation we traveled across Dakar to take a ferry to the Ile de Goree, known for its historical role in the slave trade. I was amazed by the architectural beauty of this island, perfectly preserved with brightly colored, 17th century French colonial buildings and cobblestone alleys. We visited “la maison d’esclaves” (house of slaves), a stopping point in the trans-atlantic slave trade. Slaves from mainland Africa were transported here before they were forced onto ships to cross the Atlantic. It was a pretty emotional place to visit as an American, knowing the dark role that it played in our history. While we were there, we crossed paths with an African-American man, around 70 years old and wearing an Obama-Biden pin, who was looking out of the famous ‘doorway to slavery’, with silent tears rolling down his face. The rest of our time at Ile de Goree was spent wandering the streets, admiring the art and architecture (and in eddies case taking a million pictures haha). There is a huge collection of artists and paintings and you could spend hours just walking around and admiring the work (not without the usual African hassle).

After Ile de Goree we braved the massive Dakar garage and took a taxi brousse to St. Louis. This was Eddie’s first public transport experience and I am confident now that he understands my dread of traveling in Africa haha… it’s a random, huge parking lot filled with empty “sept places” (station wagons with third rows that can fit 7 passengers) and little signs every once and a while pointing out the major cities you could go to. Luckily St. Louis is probably the most popular destination so we only had to wait a few minutes for the car to fill up with other passengers. But if you ask Eddie about the few minutes we had to wait he’ll tell you horror stories of bargaining for prices, people grabbing at your bags, people shoving food/trinkets for you to buy, can kids begging for money, and people yelling “hey toubab!”. For me it was one of the most pleasant garage situations ive been in, but I guess for a normal person it was understandably insane.

The trip to St. Louis is only a few hours and Eddie got to see a lot of the traditional African landscape including the encroaching desert, endless amounts of goats/cattle/donkeys, the random group of camels, and his favorite- baobob trees. We checked into our hotel which was located on the ocean and had a nice pool/lounging area (which came in handy after Eddie got sick and leaving the hotel really wasn’t an option). We visited the St. Louis market, which is much more do-able then the Dakar market. Eddie had fun picking out crazy African fabric to get things made from back home while like usual, I had to be continuously bargaining and using phrases like “J’habite en Mauritanie, je connais le prix vrai!” (basically, I freaking live in Africa, don’t try to rip me off buddy).

Through our hotel we arranged to go on an overnight camping trip in the Desert de Lompoul sand dunes. We took an amazing private SUV with a great French couple to the desert, stopping along the way to look at baobobs and take photos of some of the herds of camels. Once there, our guide took us on a hiking trip in the dunes up to the highest point where you can see the ocean miles away. We ate lunch in a huge khima (Mauritanian style tents with sides) then had the rest of the afternoon to explore the camp. Right around sunset we took a camel ride through the dunes, me on the saddle and eddie on the camels ass haha. Dinner was an amazing 3 course meal, a perfect mix of traditional Senegalese and French food and topped off with a bottle of wine.

Getting from the desert campement to our next destination, a small fishing village south of Dakar called Toubab Diallo, was a little bit tricky and included a military size cargo truck, sedan circa 1982, 7 place (that popped a tire midtrip), and then finally another sedan. How we actually made it in one peice and in better time then I imagined is completely a mystery haha. At first look, Toubab Diallo just seemed like all the other small fishing villages we had passed along the way but once we got to the hotel area I found out why the travel book had so highly recommended it. I don’t even know where to begin to describe the amazing hotel, maybe something like a combination of an artist colony and an oasis. Every square inch of the hotel grounds (which is more like a campus setup) is covered with handcrafter sculptures, mosaics, gardens, and artwork. The artisits (both visual and musical) are paid to live and work at the hotel and you can wonder through their workshops and the never ending little nooks and balconys overlooking the ocean. The restaurant was amazing and the beaches were the cleanest and most beautiful that I saw on the whole trip.

The hotel staff also helped us coordinate a trip to the Reserve de Bandia, a safari like trip complete with our own personal (English speaking) tour guide and driver. We were lucky enough to have sightings of most of the major animals they had there including giraffes, crocodiles, warthogs, gazelle, buffalo, ostriches, monkeys, and rhinos (before our tour guide spotted them with us they hadn’t been seen in over 3 days!). Plus countless amounts of birds and baobobs, two of eddie’s recent obsessions.

Toubab Diallo brought a sad end to our amazing trip and we headed back to Dakar to pack up and do some final shopping before we both had to head home (me for cheese and alcohol, him for souvenirs haha). Saying goodbye the second time was so much harder than the first back in June when it hit me that Eddie would be leaving and I would have to face the Dakar garage and public transport in the morning by myself like I have been doing for the past 9 months. I am so fortunate to be able to share this part of my life with him so that Africa can become a little part of his life too. He was able to meet my friends, learn some French/pulaar, experience countless of my daily frustrations, understand my African inside jokes and appreciate the luxury of private transportation (although being on the coast in the cold season gave him no experience in Mauritanian heat haha). I couldn’t have asked for a better vacation… and now it’s less than 4 months till I come home for my summer!

Eddie and my vaca

So i dont have pictures to put up yet and im working on a blog post now but here is a website that eddie uploaded some of his pics on... http://www.flickr.com/people/edman24365

Hopefully ill have time to update this soon!

Day in the life of me...

so my mom said that i dont talk enough about everday life/work/etc and just about vacations and parties, which is pretty true, so here is a little look into the daily life of me...

7am: woke up. luckily its still a little cool in the mornings (only a few more days left of that). went for a run along the canal next to my house which offeres the perfect amount of privacy so that i feel comfortable running in pants but also close enough to the houses so i feel safe.

8am: shower. cold bucket bath that is. then getting ready for my day!

9am: walk to the market. i basically do this everyday kind of out of boredom/exercise/continuity. visit the post office to see if we have mail (the post man and me have a love/hate relationship), buy some veggies at my favorite veggie lady and go to my favorite "jumbo" boutique where the owners act like everytime they see me is christmas day. its good to start your day with mauritanians who you can trust and dont rip you off because youre white.

11am: spent some time at the regional house watching greys anatomy and reading

12pm-3pm: eat lunch at the house of one of my center girls with mark. surprizingly, she actually understood what vegetarian ment and we enjoyed an AMAZING mauritanian vegetarian meal (which i never thought was possible!) started with salad (weird to eat with your hands!), vegetarian maffe (a traditional african meal i didnt even know you could make vegetarian), little african cup cakes and fresh fruit, and lastly three rounds of atie (tea). **Normally i would eat lunch at the regional house and then hang out in the saloon at my host family's house in the afternoon**

3pm: more time lounging around the regional house

4pm-7pm: teaching english at the center. I teach the first hour and half class for the older girls while mark teaches the younger girls for the second hour and half (i have to chaperone marks lesson). my lesson was on food and maket vocabulary and conversations, went pretty well i think (inspite of the low attendance due to the fete this week).

7pm-9pm: hang out at regional house and make some dinner. usually involves some sort of movie/tv show marathons.

9pm-11pm: hang out with the host fam and/or read before bed.


So thats my day! some are more frustrating then others but today was a good one so i felt compelled to write about my normal day.. hope you enjoyed!


heres are some pics from julie ann's bday party a few days ago! on the right is a pic of the amazing bday meal that me and yates made for julie and our other regionmates (its like olive garden but better! lasgana, salad, brucshetta, and garlic bread) and on the left is some of us jsut hanging out at the regional house (i guess i didnt get the poker face memo).














on the right is julie ann's bday cake made by our adoptive regionmate amanda and then julies bday cupcake!

W.A.I.S.T

So my huge vacation started off with a few days at the Rosso training center with all the other Mauritanian PCVs for a safety and security meeting before WAIST (west African invitational softball tournament). It was weird to be back at the center for the first time since swear in and felt a whole lot like summer camp. A hundred volunteers living in two huge rooms, segregated for boys and girls, with free standing mosquito tents and only a few latrines and no running water in the sinks. Thank god we were only there for a few days because as you can imagine the novelty wears off pretty fast haha … We left early Friday morning for Dakar in two huge coach buses and although the trip was long, a stop at a liquor store in Senegal and the sing alongs that soon followed made the trip much more pleasant. We arrived in Dakar around 5pm and went straight to the American Club, the country club like venue where the tournament is held. We were all in awe at the first American amenities we had seen in 8 months- tennis courts, bar, restaurant, swimming pools, sand volleyball court, and softball fields. At the club they introduced us to our host families that we would be staying with for the tournament (American expats who live in Dakar). I was placed with Julie and two other Mauritanian PCVs with a Gabon RPCV (retired peace corps volunteer) in a really nice western style apartment in the neighborhood of Yoff, right on the ocean!

The actual tournament was such an insane 3 days… theres nothing I could compare it too except something like a derby days mixed with Dayton to Daytona. Mauritania has 3 teams that compete- our A team the Pirates, B team the Buccaneers, and C team the Scallywags. I was on the 4th team, the Poopdeck Seaman aka cheerleaders haha… there are other teams there from PC Mali, Senegal and Guinea, along with some expat teams (whose family friendly teams didn’t appreciate our all day drinking). We spent our breaks between the games lounging by the pool/bar and having impromptu dance parties on the pool deck, upholding our Mauritanian PC traditions. Another crazy thing about the Mauritania teams is that we all get soooo into the whole thing. So many of the girls got ridiculous African hair extension and ive never seen so many mohawks/crazy facial hair creations before. I completely understand now what the second years volunteers meant when they said that other teams were scared of us… we come in with mob of a hundred people who are partying like there is no tomorrow (because really there isn’t since we have to return to the alcohol free giant sand box of Mauritania after the tournament). Also, our director doesn’t make us take vacation days, while all the other countries have to, so nearly every mauritania volunteer comes. Our A team made it all the way to the championships and chaos broke out when we won with everyone storming the field and beer spraying everywhere (poor mans champagne) hahaha. A great way to end a great presidents day weekend!

After the end of WAIST, some of my friends stayed in Dakar for a few days so they could meet Eddie when he flew in! We spent the first day (before he landed) laying out on the Dakar beaches and the second day (when he was there) going to some of the markets. Me, Eddie and my friends went a little crazy buying sculpted animals, which we dubbed “the circus”. We also stayed at this really cute place on the ocean that had beautiful views and cool rocks to climb on. I was soooo happy for my friends and Eddie to finally meet each other although one day was way too short!

on the right some of me and my friends at the A team game and on the left the back of my shirt, “thanks Washington placement office” haha... Mauritania isnt the most sought after placement

on the right me and matt going along with the pirates theme and on the left me, Julie Ann and Ryan at one of the field next to the ocean.

on the right the cheerleaders for the A teams championship game and on the left the winning team looking pretty bad ass in their pirates shirts and matching chayas (short, Aladdin like pants worn by the moors in Mauritania)

on the right freezing at the awards banquet (Mauritanian volunteers are creative, yes we are wearing table clothes haha) and on the left Julie Ann and Amanda discussing “natures fridge aka the wet sand” while trying to get our beers cold on the Dakar beaches

notice the “Obama’s cookies” brand of ice cream and me and Eddie in front of the presidential palace in Dakar

On the right, the circus! (a collection of Yates, Julie Anns, and me and Eddies carved animals) and on the left, me and some of my friends on the rocks (a picture that Julie calls “girl band”