“Where’s he going?” I asked my friend Yuba as our driver plodded down the dune.

“He’s going to get a bigger piece of wood to push under the tire,” he replied.

“But, aren’t the pieces there good enough? And shouldn’t he get the car to start before he worries about getting it unstuck?” Yuba shrugged. I ignored another guy squatting across from us as he tried to convince me of Islam’s importance and others of his education by conversing with the white guy. I just replied, “No, I’m not from England,” and drifted into self-loathing about my choice of departure from Kankossa.

Rather than taking a comfortable NGO ride, I decided to leave on Mauritania’s terms, a sort of catharsis. Since I arrived, it’d thrown obstacles in my path, as if I were a character in a Greek tragedy subject to the gods’ whims, and so far I’d managed it all. Through Mauritania’s fickleness, I’ve learned that happiness comes from despair. These last three months since COS conference, however, have been the most trying since my first three.

One May evening, my good friend Maliam Diallo followed me back to my house to retrieve some money that I was keeping for him. Islam requires charity and looks down on lying, so less fortunate tend to ask mercilessly for gifts from those perceived as wealthy. Most people have little difficultly giving a small amount, but the small amount grows quickly, so Maliam, an English teacher, decided that if he wasn’t in possession of his money, he wasn’t lying when he told people, “no”. I thought it wise as well.

When I entered my house and opened my locked storage box, however, I found only 3000 of the 5000 Ougiuya that I was keeping for him. I double checked. Everything looked the same. “Maybe I miss counted,” I thought. So I supplemented his money from mine and gave it too him. He was quite concerned that the money wasn’t there. “No,” I said, “I must have misplaced it. All of my CFA (currency used in most of West Africa except Mauritania) is there.” Still I wasn’t certain, but I insisted he take it.

After he left, I returned to my money bag and thought about my excuse. “That makes sense,” I reasoned. “Most of my money is in CFA. Surely a thief would steal that rather than a few thousand Ougiya.” Then I counted the CFA. My stomach turned. Half the CFA I’d saved was gone! My mind was chasing its tail. I analyzed everything. How could a thief get in my house and my lock box? I’d had other instances in the past where I’ve found things missing, but they were insignificant, and I couldn’t answer that question. Consequently, I blamed myself for miscounting or absent-mindedness. Besides, it was easier to blame myself than accuse a thief.

At dinner, I stayed silent. I scavenged my week for possible explanations. What I found were mistakes. A few days earlier, I’d opened my box to put Maliam’s money away, and I forgot to close it until the next morning. I slept outside my house, but I left my windows open because of the heat. “This must be it,” I thought. “But, what about the other times? My windows weren’t open then,” I countered. This was a good point. Previous times when I found things missing, my windows hadn’t been open. How could this be?

I slept a paranoid night. In the morning, I examined my house. No way in except to break in, and the thief hadn’t. Then I inspected my windows. From the inside it looked like I could grab the deadbolt from the outside. The two windows in my kitchen/living room/study were both like this. They opened upward and locked with a deadbolt, secured by a piece of wood, but it also extended into the mud covering my house. When I checked outside, I found the mud scraped away from both windows, and, as I suspected, I could grab the bolt, twist it from its locked position, and push it beyond the wood—silently in about thirty seconds.

The discovery was a relief. I felt that I allowed the theft through carelessness, but I could fix the problem. I still controlled the situation. And control was all important. I’d lost the money, but I could deal with that. If I could retain my present life, my habits, my friends, I could shrug off the difficulties. Kankossa had been too good to me for money to taint its pleasant flavors at the end of my service.

But I had to tell people, which meant, I was sure, that I’d hear about my carelessness. I dreaded that. I felt bad enough already, and Mauritanians don’t have much sympathy for misfortune. It’s just something that happens to people.

When I realized the drone from the pretentious travel companion had stopped, our driver was sliding up the dune with a flashlight and an ax dangling at his side. I laughed at his preference of brute force over subtlety. The route from Kankossa to Kiffa requires a driver to scale two dunes. We were stuck on the first. Initially, he charged up it with confidence, daring to move off the established track to find a harder surface on which to drive. Unfortunately that plan led us toward two trees, which he turned ninety degrees to avoid and landed us in deep, loose sand. In order to get out, he backed us over a large shrub, which grabbed the truck’s undercarriage. When he tried to pull forward, the truck died and remained dead.

Apparently, his plan was to cut down the shrub, and have us push him and the truck backwards, down the steep dune, to jump start it. I smiled at the possibilities: him missing shrub with the ax and striking the tire, us pushing the truck into another tree further down the dune, him loosing control of the truck, as it rushed between trees, and flipping, finally coming to a rest crumpled at the bottom. All those would have been appropriate. I prepared myself to spend the night on the dune. He started swinging. Thirty minutes later, we were back in the truck moving again. In Mauritania, it seems, bad only becomes worse to the point that it avoids catastrophe.

The first person I told, Yahya, my host father, reacted as I thought. “Well, if you left your windows open, what do you expect?” But everyone else surprised me. My friends, the police, Peace Corps, all consoled me. People were visibly shaken.

“This is terrible for Mauritania,” a friend told me.

Another said sadly, “My heart hurts for you.”

And others responded, “Some people are just terrible, stealing from a volunteer!”

The support I received erased all the bad. Oddly, I viewed their sympathy as appreciation and acknowledgement of the work I’d done in Kankossa, something which I rarely received during my service. Immediately, the theft was something I would forget in a month, but the proof of friendship will stay with me for a long time.

As I’d hoped, the theft didn’t change much about my life. Everything was normal except that I started to sleep at my neighbor’s house. I didn’t feel like the thief was a threat to me, after all we’d lived together for two years, but I slept much easier with people near. They were happy to have me, as if I should have been sleeping there all along. Perhaps they were right.

One morning, after sleeping through sand-filled wind, I awoke to rain. In and out of bed all night, I decided to move my cot back to my house so that I could sleep under my hangar. A surprise awaited me. As I exited my neighbor’s compound, I looked in my yard. A donkey was lying next to my hangar with another standing over it. I immediately suspected the truth; it was dead.

Having an animal die in my yard has been a recent fear. Ever since I my neighbor demonstrated that a calf, which had been spending a lot of time in my yard, was blind by running it head first into my well, which sits empty in the front of my yard, I’ve wondered how I would remove a dead animal and what I would do with it. A full grown cow would be impossible for me alone. I’d have to hire a truck and people to help, while the cow bloated in my yard under 110+ degree sun. The stench would overpower the neighborhood. I’d have to move, and all my neighbors would wish I was the one rotting. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but my mind often takes me to the worst possible scenario.

The donkey’s shocked eyes stared at my porch. Liquid was oozing from both ends. The other donkey, apparently her son, was standing over her waiting for her to wake up. I didn’t sleep in my hangar. In fact, I wouldn’t sleep at all. What to do with a donkey that died in my yard overnight dominated my thoughts. Finally, I went to my neighbor and best friend Moussa Barry for help. He told me to go across the street and ask them. Across the street, the children went to inspect the donkey’s brand. Ould Bava, they reported, you know, Sidi, your friend.

Thank God! I thought. Sidi will take care of the situation. I reported to Moussa my findings. “No problem,” he said. “They will come for it if it’s for him.” Seven o’clock, I went about my day. I jogged. I ate breakfast. I bathed. At eight o’clock, the donkey was still looking at me. Her son was still waiting for her to wake up. I called again. “They are coming right now,” Moussa said. “They are looking for a truck.”

“Surely they’ll be here within the hour,” I thought. Nine o’clock came and with it the sun. The donkey was still eerily staring at my porch. I felt like I shouldn’t mind. “Death happens,” I thought. It just happened in my yard this time. But I couldn’t help feeling it was bad luck, even bad publicity. I didn’t want to stare at its lightning-struck face every time I left my house, nor did I want people walking to the market to see a donkey expanding like an inner tube in my yard. I called again. “They haven’t come?” Moussa asked. “I will tell them. Don’t worry.”

I didn’t worry until children started to inspect the donkey, poking it with sticks, and running when I came to the door. I felt negligent. Surely my neighbors were wondering why I hadn’t disposed of it, and how long the intense sun would take to release the cadaver’s miasma. Even in my house the donkey was ever present, an invisible presence like an amputated limb. So I went to the market at ten hoping that it would disappear.

I gulped the last of the porridge and gave it to Ahmed Taleb. Magou had been so nice to me throughout my visit; I staggered to understand why I deserved such good treatment. Then, I heard her rummaging through her room. “She’s going to make me take something from her,” I thought. I hated this. Every time I went to Agmamine, Magou would try to send me back with a gift. My refusals rarely worked.

“Momiis, where did I put that pretty . . .,” Magou called out of the room. Finally she came out, evidently without having found what she’d hoped. She sat down next to me. “Here, I want you to take this,” she removed a black bracelet from her arm.

“I can’t take it,” I replied.

“You must! You’re leaving. You need something to remember us by,” Magou insisted. I didn’t argue. I find it difficult to refuse a gift when accepting it clearly means a lot to the giver.

Around twelve thirty, I returned from the market. I’d bought food to carry with me to Agmamine for my goodbye visit that evening. I was looking forward to the trip, but I was concerned that I’d have to leave with a stone-dead donkey in my yard. On my way into the market, I visited Sidi’s barbershop. I told him that two hours had passed, and it had not been moved. He apologized, claiming it belonged to his brother, and that his brother would take care of it soon. I wasn’t so sure.

Then I went to Moussa’s store. He asked whether it was still there. Then he explained that Sidi’s brother didn’t understand what the rush was. I was shocked. I listed the reasons it must be removed. “You are right,” Moussa replied. “It will become a problem for the whole neighborhood if it’s not removed.” I asked what Sidi’s family would do if it was in front of their hangar, and mentally started to form a worst-case scenario, a plan to rent a truck and drop it in their yard if it was still in mine when I returned from Agmamine.

I approached my house. The donkey was there and it had doubled in girth, threatening to explode. I couldn’t measure my anger or the disrespect I felt. I’d volunteered in this town for two years, and people still thought as little of me to leave a donkey rotting in my yard. I had to leave.

After lunch, I packed and started walking to Agmamine. I stopped in the market to voice threats of reprisal if the donkey hadn’t disappeared before I returned from Agmamine. Moussa again assured me that I shouldn’t worry, but I wasn’t confident in any Mauritanian at that point.

I walked on, beating my anger into the ground. I needed to arrive without my frustration. Perhaps the four o’clock heat would sweat it out of me. Forty-five minutes down the track, I stopped a truck, and they happily motioned me into the back. My anger started to wane; I’d arrive earlier than expected.

They stopped in the middle of town, and asked me where I wanted to get out. We weren’t at Magou’s yet, but I jumped out. I decided it would be more discreet, more of a surprise to walk in, and I needed their spontaneous smiles and excited words to assuage the indifference I left in Kankossa.

They didn’t disappoint. After the popcorn greetings, Magou guided me to their rebuilt hangar, damaged in a storm last year. I rested on their bed, and Magou sent the children for water and the tea set. A steady wind cooled the sweat from my body.

Magou asked her standard questions, “How’s Alioun? How’s Aicha? How’s Sam the dog? And Kankossa?” There’s only so much to talk about in a village that hasn’t changed much since its establishment in 1905. But I enjoyed the rest. Ahmed Taleb and Mini came to greet me. Magou shooed them, claiming that I needed the rest. Mini came back and took out a little pouch. From it she offered me some karo, the soft shell of a dum palm seed, a favorite food of children in the area. I ate a little to please her despite its awful taste. She took a glass of tea to Momiis and started singing, dancing, and then arguing with her. Mini came back later with black around her mouth. “Mini, have you been eating charcoal?” Magou asked. “Oh, you are only a problem. All you do is fight and eat charcoal and dirt.” I thought she looked extremely happy.

At dusk, Ahmed Taleb took my hand and guided me to Brahim ould M’Barek’s house, a friend of Caleb’s and mine who has a store in Kankossa. He hadn’t come to the market that day, so I was curious what he was doing. We found him, all six feet five inches and two hundred and seventy-five pounds of him, at his house, on top of the dune, raking the dirt in front of his house. “So, you’re actually working,” I taunted.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” he replied.

“I just came to say goodbye. I looked for you in the market today but didn’t find you.”

“I was repairing my house. After last night’s wind, I thought it might rain, so I wanted to fix it before the rains start,” he explained. He motioned me to his cot. I lounged there and greeted his wife and his children. He continued to rake.

Around his compound, I saw the old house he was repairing, a hangar, and animals everywhere. One cow in particular was interesting. It had a gris gris, or charm, strung between its horns, resting near its eye, a sort of pirate’s eye patch. I’d never seen gris gris on an animal, so I asked him about it. “Ya, that one’s dumb. I put the gris gris on her to protect her from herself,” he said.

“Like her owner,” I joked.

“Jeremy! gsar umr-ak, may God shorten you life,” he laughed.

Before dark, I woke Ahmed Taleb, who was sleeping at the end of the cot and returned to Magou’s for dinner. She’d prepared heaps of tajine, meat, potatoes, and onions, which we all ate heartily. Then she fed me baasi (sand couscous) and milk. I asked where the water was. She looked at me queerly, “You want water?”

“No,” I replied, “I was just joking about Alioun.”

“Ohh,” she chuckled. “Ya, he only ate baasi, water, and a little sugar. Bizarre. I don’t know how he did it. Oh, I miss him. You’ll say “hi” to him when you get back to America, won’t you?”

“Of course,” I said. After the meal, we went to sleep.

Shortly after Magou gave me the bracelet, a truck pulled up. Magou told me to get my stuff, I had to go. I hurried into the house to retrieve my things. When I came out, Mini was at the door. The three year old grabbed my hand and sadly stared into my eyes. “Mohamed?” she whined, asking if I was abandoning her like Alioun. Anxiety rose in my chest. This was her goodbye. Somehow she knew this was forever.

She walked me to the truck. On the way, we passed Ahmed Taleb. He wouldn’t look at me. He too knew I was leaving like Alioun. I felt like we’d been unfair to them. Two years of friendship didn’t seem to justify having to watch us leave forever. I felt like they’d given so much and we’d reciprocated so little. They could have protected themselves from the pain if they would have just avoided the attachment. It would have been safer.

When we reached the truck, Magou handed me another gift, a bag of baasi. Her generosity pained me. The truck started. Magou, Momiis, and Mini waved. Ahmed Taleb continued to look away. I was torn by the joy of being loved and the pain of leaving that love. Melting together, the contradictory emotions revealed their dependency, neither was as strong without the other, or rather neither was possible without the other. To guard against sadness is also to guard against happiness.

Again I was walking back to my house. This time I was scared. I feared finding the donkey rupturing in my yard and her son still waiting for her resurrection. Agmamine had left me floating above the road, but that sight would bury me again. Anxiety magnified the situation. It became a metaphor for my time in Kankossa, so that everything rested on that moment.

My heart pounded with each step, and my stomach tightened with my breathing. I prepared myself for disappointment; it has been a mandatory part of my education. Two houses and closing, I began to imagine what I’d do if I found the donkey. Would I really leave it in Sidi’s yard? One house away, my mind blanked, and I stared at my feet. I passed Moussa’s and forced myself to look up. A smile stretched my face. Moussa told me later that he and Sidi removed the donkey at seven the night before, over twelve hours after I’d found it. I entered my house and sat in my chair. I reached for my journal, returned to the morning’s memories, and the welcome pain of longing.

Site Report:

Nema

Jeremy Miller

03 July 07

Until this year, Nema has loomed as an unknown for recent Peace Corps volunteers, a place unimaginable, remote, and lonely. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard the whispers. In February, however, Brooke Olster cracked its opaque image, which inspired me to follow up in late June. Happily, I can give this advice: Don’t fear Nema! While I can’t argue against its obvious disadvantage, its distance from Nouakchott, I can attest to its advantages.

Cradled by opposing plateaus and separated by a wadi, which boasts palmeries that shape the eastern horizon, Nema is an attractive site. As I walked from the Road of Hope through the administrative district toward the wadi, first the bustling garage and then the old, market district opened before me, and I felt as if I’d forgotten my camel. More than any other regional capital in Mauritania, Nema feels like a Saharan market town. Its diverse, international population reinforces this impression. It has a significant Malian population (“It’s 200km from Mali and 1200km from Nouakchott,” one man reminded me), and I met people Ghana and Niger. Germans, French, and Chinese also work in town.

The international (as Mauritania goes) atmosphere extends to the market where one finds a wide variety of goods and produce, even during the hot season. It also contributes to a friendlier attitude among Nema’s residents. I didn’t receive quite as much attention walking through Nema’s market as I have in some regional capitals, and people were often inviting when I approached them. This encouraged me to explore its serpentine lanes, squeezed by ancient, walled compounds. I quickly felt like an anachronism in an atavistic time.

Nema compliments its ambiance with sufficient amenities. Although more expensive than in other parts of the country, Nema has most of Mauritania’s offerings. Electricity works well, so the drinks are cold. The lycee and college are west of the market about 2km not far from the hospital. The government buildings, BMCI bank, the post office, and House of Books are all near the Road of Hope in the administrative district next to the city pool (just kidding). Apparently, Nema also has a Mattal cyber commune with 15 computers (I didn’t actually see this, but a polite college student assured me it exists). I also recommend the Malian Restaurant de Paix (their sign, not I, left out la). It’s on the right, on the hill heading toward the Road of Hope.

Work hard, learn Hassaniya, meet people, and Nema could be great.

Here are a few prices I collected while I was there:

Aioun  Nema: 3000 Mercedes, 2000-2500 Peugeot

Food: onions – 300/kg, potatoes – 400/kg, tomatoes – 400/kg

Water: This is important. Most people have water brought to their houses and store it in a cistern. They sell water by the beriga, or metal drum. Water from a well costs 400 and water from a son dash, or deep well with a motorized or mechanical pump, costs 500. Water from a son dash probably has less floaties but not significantly.

Site Report:

Oulata

Jeremy Miller

03 July 07

One hundred and twenty kilometers north of Nema, Oulata, at its height, rivaled Timbuktu and Djenne, Mali, as the transit capital for Trans-Saharan trade. In its present state, I found that difficult to imagine. Tucked in a dry-river bend against a rocky plateau, its Sonike style, colorfully (I’m not kidding) decorated houses seem hardly enough to house its 6000 residents (as quoted to me). The market was very small and lacking at the time of my visit in July.

Nevertheless, it is fully equipped with a college and lycee, famous Koranic school, House of Books, hospital/dispenser (I’m not sure which), and computer center. A military installation, once political prison, commands the opposing hill (I don’t recommend visiting or even approaching it). Electricity runs during the day. Water, however, doesn’t. It’s a problem during the hot season because the primary water source dries up. As in Nema, people have water delivered. They bring it from the Spanish Cooperation well (the only garden I saw in town), outfitted with a solar pump, for 100 OU/20L bidon.

The primarily Moor population relies on tourism and animal husbandry for income. Artisan women’s cooperatives also make and sell crafts, particularly clay replicas Oulata’s unique houses. Apparently a lot of gardening happens in the Spanish Cooperation during the cold season, but in July it was empty.

Cars leave daily from Nema, although I had to spend the night there because the car didn’t fill, and return in the morning from Oulata. The trip takes about 2.5-3 hours. A seat in the front is 3000 and 1500 for the back. The road is gravel except for the final 20km. One important note, the gendarme commandant refused to accept my Peace Corps ID. He wanted my passport and visa. He only let me through after I suggested we visit the hakim and call the embassy the next day. I don’t think he was just looking for a bribe.

In general I found the people very nice. They let me look around their houses. I drank tea at the gendarme compound. They invited me to lunch. I received more attention than I did in Nema, but children weren’t too bad. Mohamed Lemine, the driver between Nema and Oulata is nice despite his strict appearance. He even offered to let me drive on the return trip. Few people knew Peace Corps but seemed open to the idea. Some wanted me to move to Oulata and teach English. I’m not sure what possibilities are open to other sectors.

It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.

A week ago today, over a month since the second round of the presidential elections, Soulymane Barry announced before lunch, “Jeremy, we are now a democracy! Mauritania’s a democracy!” I smiled and wondered about Soulymane’s idea of democracy. Twenty-four, twenty-five, high school educated, and an avid BBC Arabic listener, I let him enjoy his national pride. In a similar way, I entertain his presidential aspirations. Clearly whatever his vision, he felt democracy was a monumental accomplishment; an act, a label, a measure that boosted the country to a higher echelon of development from which it does not have to strain much to look up and can rest its neck by looking down.

Sidi ould Cheikh Abdullahi defeated Ahmed ould Daddah in what international observers deemed a ‘free and fair’ election. Among the African climate of defunct elections, these were peaceful, well organized, and mature. The opposition candidate conceded defeat. His supporters did not protest. In fact, my friends who supported him acknowledged that someone had to lose.

Like Soulymane, my host Dad, Yahya Traore, took pride in the ‘free and fair’ label, treating it as a mark of civilization. He asked a friend after hearing the results, “What other African country’s done that? Everywhere else there’s always thieves.” He exaggerates. Many other African countries have held ‘free and fair’ elections. Recent successes are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Liberia. Past ones are Ghana, South Africa, and Rwanda. Unfortunately, countries that hold Democratic elections do not always remain that way. The Congo has slipped into violence, as well as, Iraq, Palestine, and Afganistahan. Russia smiles more and more on its Communist past. That’s not to say that Mauritania will crumble under the label, but the lackluster performance of democracies emerging from ‘free and fair’ elections begs a definition beyond its literal meaning.

If the monitors’ verdict only applied to the vote then it would be helpful. But it does not. The international push for democracy has lent the label connotations that extend beyond the polling station. It implies all that the phantasm of Western society represents in popular magazines, movies, and music videos, and tacitly cements the often deleterious social and cultural precedents. By plan or proxy, the ‘free and fair’ label attempts to horn countries into mismatched, democratic shoes.

The support provided by Western countries implies that democracy is a physical change. That once the people elect politicians in ‘free and fair’ elections, these politicians abandon the corrupt habits that made them successful in the past. Attitudes, however, remain the same. Democracy is a paradigm shift that requires time. It is a way of thinking and living as much as it is a way of organizing a government. Elections, whether or not ‘free and fair,’ are only a first step. They do not encompass democracy.

After all, these were not Mauritania’s first elections. The first occurred in 1960 when they elected Moctar ould Daddah by universal suffrage. He served an eighteen-year term before a successful coup d’etat in 1979. The new government wrote a new constitution that prohibited one party rule and established political representation across ethnic lines.

In 1984, Maaouiya ould Sidi Ahmed Taya led a coup d’etat after which he ruled as military dictator. In 1992, he held and won presidential elections, and continued to win reelection until another successful coup d’etat in 2005 led by Ely ould Mohamed Vall.

The optimistic slant, however, suggests these elections, municipal and national, were different. The military ruling party did not contend. Four strong, ethnically diverse parties provided varied choices that erased ethnic lines. International observers monitored the process.

Yet this is a slant that covers reality’s incongruities and belies Mauritania as a democracy. Optimism’s strongest evidence, that the military did not contend, is dissembling. While members of the Military Council did not run, Sidi ould Cheikh Abdullahi was their candidate and his Independent party, the military’s party. While Mohamed Vall, the Military Council’s President, did not publicly support a candidate, his tribe supported Sidi. Other council members voiced their support. To my friends, this suggested the military was not ready to abnegate power, and the election’s success would follow Sidi’s fate.

The second optimist claim, that the candidate pool was deep and wide, is also a half-truth. Nineteen parties did span Mauritania’s colors and flavors, but the top three out of the four realistic candidates were White Moor and represented traditional power lines. Sidi was the military candidate. Ahmed ould Daddah is Moctar ould Daddah’s younger brother, and Zeine ould Zeidane, who would support Sidi in the second round, represented Maaouiya’s tribe.

Finally, the international monitoring process is limited. It ensures that dead relatives and Mohamed ould Mohamed’s ten children do not vote. The process, however, neglects the social and cultural structures that precede the vote, which are often more accurate indicators of the vote’s legitimacy.

Mauritania’s recent elections illustrate such an attempt at physical change without a mental change. Certainly the elections were successful, but Mauritania is a country without citizens. While people hold ID cards and live within colonial borders, the population is a fractured mirror. Ethnicity divides the country’s reflection into five sections and each has different loyalties that are not Mauritania.

The Moors, who speak Hassaniya, align themselves with tribes, each with dominion over specific grazing land or desert swaths. Each tribe has its own history; some directly associate with tribes in the Middle East. Despite their common language, tribes are exclusive. Even among teachers at my school, White Moors tend to live and socialize primarily within their tribes. This loyalty often supercedes all others to the end that the tribe’s well being comes before the country’s.

The Black Moor society is an extension of the White culture. Former and current slaves, they have adopted their enslavers culture and abandoned their Black African roots. Black Moors usually remain tied to their enslavers’ tribe and retain the servitude role. In this way, they also retain their chattal stigma, in the country with the world’s highest rates of slavery , despite the success of some in education and politics.

The Pulaar, Sonike, and Wolof, while more cohesive than the Moors, each retain their own languages and loyalties. The Pulaar community divides between those in the country or the city, those on the Senegal River or in the interior. Dress and food often differ, varying according to how much of the culture they have lost to competing ones. Most Pulaar, however, identify more with Senegal and Mali than Mauritania.

The Sonike, a relatively small group, are isolationists. They live in tight communities that adapt but resist assimilation. They usually live among large families three or four generations deep, and choose to further constrict their families through familial marriages. Many families rely largely on members living abroad. The Wolof are Senegalese on the wrong side of the border. They live primarily in the southwest but spend time in Senegal as well.

Attenuating the ethnic cracks in the mirror are the Moor and Pulaar nomadic traditions. Many of these nomads have only started to settle since French colonialization. Kankossa, a town of 10-15,000 people, is actually a French settlement despite the perennial lake, which would suggest much earlier settlement. Before 1946, fishermen, who treaded up and down the lake, were the area’s only regular inhabitants except for Agmamine, a farming village settled in 1905. Most villages surrounding Kankossa are more recent, the latest having been established in 2000.

When people finally settled, it was only seasonal. Even now, Kankossa’s population shrinks considerably in the summer when many families migrate to the countryside for better grazing land and cooler temperatures. As a result, these urbanized nomads remain detached from the community, and stake their lives in family affairs rather than community ones.

Racial tensions have been the product of these disaffected groups’ close proximity. Distrust and land disputes culminated in the events of 1989 in which the Moors, White and Black, backed by the Maaouiya regime, tried to push the Black Africans, particularly Pulaar, out of Mauritania. In the years since, hostilities have ended, however, the government has not addressed the issues that sparked the conflict and strong feelings remain.

These feelings came out during successive lunches I attended before the municipal elections. The first lunch was with a group of Pulaar teachers. Before the meal, conversation was relaxed, but after lunch it turned to politics and race relations. Debate exposed two camps. The first argued that reconciliation was possible with time, dialogue, and democracy. The second argued that the elections were a sham to appease international ideologues. Moors, in fact, did not want democracy or to share power. Therefore, the only solution was to split the country with the southern half merging with Senegal.

The next day I lunched with three White Moor teachers. Again politics followed lunch. This time I instigated it by presenting a scenario in which a Black candidate could win the presidency. Conceivably the numerous White candidates could split the vote, allowing a Black candidate into the second round. Then if the Black African population consolidated, they could outnumber the Whites. Again there were two opinions. One teacher was diplomatic, arguing that Mauritania was not ready for a Black president. A second teacher insisted that Mauritania would never have a Black president because it is an Arab country and would always remain so. He explained further that Blacks were the Whites’ “Senegalese ants,” doing their grunt work. While most Moors would not express the relationship in such terms, his opinion is not a stretch for many.

Other examples of racism are easy to come by. On the Pulaar side, they generally believe Moors are collectively deranged. Talking to a Pulaar friend, I mentioned that I did not fully understand the Moor culture (nor do I Pulaar culture), and he admitted, “We don’t either.” Like unsocial neighbors, this incomprehension leads to distrust and suspicion. Many Pulaar believe Moors are liars, thieves, and xenophobes, prompting my Pulaar neighbor to warn me about the dangers of the Moor neighborhood at night. Another friend told me, “Mauritania is peaceful. It has no problems except for the Whites.”

On the other side, Moors consider Blacks inferior. They often view them as immigrants or slaves. In one instance near Kaedi in the South, our taxi stopped at a checkpoint, and a Black policeman asked to see our identification. One passenger, a teenage Moor, had forgotten his ID card. When the policeman pressed him, the Moor responded that he was white, and should not need his card, implying that only Blacks are foreigners. Eventually the policeman let him go, after paying a bribe. In another case, a Moor woman, traveling with a Peace Corps for a project, threatened to quit the group when she learned that the volunteers were thinking about inviting a Pulaar man to help.

During another visit, two Moor men asked me if the KKK was still active in the United States. When I affirmed this, one smiled, and then explained to the other the organization’s mission, white supremacy, burning crosses, and hangings. The other replied, “That’s great! We need that in Mauritania.” These comments amplified ones a friend overheard later. A Moor woman was discussing democracy with disgust. She said that before democracy Blacks could not share a mat with Whites. Now, with democracy, Blacks could sit right next to her children. “If this is democracy, I don’t want it!” she said.

This cracked visage distorts the real situation in the country and blurs the goal toward which democracy ideally struggles, a better life for all. Mauritanians, however, latch onto it as an achievement that legitimizes the country’s current state. They hail its advantages without understanding it. Herders and farmers have little use for the idea, and the government has made little attempt to educate them. Consequently, many people did not know how to vote in the municipal election. Even some candidates did not understand the political system they were vying to join.

Kankossa’s new mayor is a shining example. Member of the Sidi Mahmoud tribe, the dominant tribe in the region, he is uneducated, even illiterate according to some. He showed his metal during the presidential election when he refused to mark the ballot by dipping his finger in ink. Apparently, he wanted to use a pen, insisting that he was exempt because he was the mayor. Others tried to reason with him, reminding him that the current President, Mohamed Vall, had to dip his finger as everyone else. But he still refused. A power struggle ensued when the department prefect refused his vote. The mayor appealed to the national delegate, who shared the mayor’s party and tribe. He refused to intervene. Finally the police locked him in the polling station until he complied. People say that he held out for three hours before purpling his finger.

Another Mauritanian misunderstanding of democracy is vote selling. Blacks, in particular, uninterested, discouraged, or bound to their former master, prefer money to what their vote can bring. They trade their national identity cards to the highest bidder, who holds onto them until after the election to ensure that the person does not vote.

The disinterest that encourages these people comes from a passive citizenship. They generally look for quick rewards from the government and aid organizations and do not believe they can change their lots. Consequently, when nothing changes, they blame them and decide their votes are futile. Ironically they do nothing for themselves either.

Most indicative of Mauritania’s misunderstanding of democracy is its educators’ behavior. Days before the municipal elections, I found Maliam Diallo at his house angry. He had just returned from meeting to educate teachers on how to run the polling stations, and the meeting’s disorder had incised him. “Oh, Jeremy, it was terrible! It was chaos! And these were teachers. They’re supposed to know how to act! The prefect started the meeting by telling us that this was our chance to show the world we could do this. Then people interrupted him as he went through the rules. Eventually they were standing on tables, shouting over the prefect and each other. No one respected another’s right to speak. And these were teachers! People who should know how to behave! How can we have a democracy when the respected people in the community act like children?”

Soulymane was right to a point. Mauritania’s elections were ‘free and fair’, and Mauritania has democratic institutions. But Mauritania is not a democracy. It is hardly a country. French borders are all that unite people. Now they are championing a Western style government that few understand. This government will change very little from previous regimes because the powerful are comfortable and do not wish to abdicate their power. Unfortunately, democracy is not a top down revolution as its builders hope.

On the contrary, “Liberty,” Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the fledgling United States, “is generally established with difficulty in midst of storms; it is perfected by civil discord; and its benefits cannot be appreciated until its already old.” As long as Mauritanians are willing to remain passive citizens, they will be waiting for is more of the same. Only when they begin to think in the spirit of compromise and cooperation will ‘free and fair’ become more than a chocolate chip cookie from the West’s cookie jar. This paradigm, however, does not shift over years but over generations. And when this occurs, I’m afraid that I too will be old.

We stumbled upon an old cemetery notched from the woods near Bear Creek while searching for a swimming hole a May afternoon in 2002. Bryan and I had been visiting all the creeks north of Branson hoping to find enough water to cool our bones. Bear Creek was our last stop. Only a few inches trickled under the overpass, jettisoned trash was more plentiful. So I turned the car back up the washed out road to the highway. Just before cresting the hill, however, we spotted a motley fence buried in the late-spring weeds. Cemeteries like this one are dotted throughout the Ozarks, gradually being overtaken by second-generation forests, thriving where farmers couldn’t. Habitually interested in what came before, we surveyed the stones, checking the faded, scrawled reminders on the dull ones and the sharp, chiseled dates on the shiny. The shiny markers suggested it was still in use. Towards the northern corner, overhung by trees, was a cinder block sized stone that arrested my eyes. “Died 31 January 2005.” Bryan’s eyes read the same. I shrugged. He shrugged. Then we left.

I’m now listening to the carpenter’s hewing strokes through the open window above my deathbed. Our close of service (COS) conference at Keur Macene, a Black African flavored resort on the banks of an arm of the Senegal River, was the first chip split from my future coffin by the carpenter’s adze. Easily the most useful conference I’ve attended during my service, the former ambassador’s wife, Ellie LeBaron, took us through sessions advising us on resume writing, job searching, saying goodbye, and readjusting. The conference also gave us time to tire of dancing to the same songs every night and sightsee at the beach and bird park. Back in Nouakchott, we split to follow different itineraries both now, after the conference, and later, after our service. There won’t be any third year volunteers from my class.

My itinerary took me to Tidjikja with Chris Fletcher. One of the most remote sites in the center of Mauritania, it was one of the main stops along the caravan routes before Tichit, a former hub in the Saharan salt trade. Presently, the Sahara’s swallowing it. Similar to the North, the region has its wealth of white sand and black rocks too, except on a smaller scale. An unlikely riverbed sweeps the rock from the plateau, separating the administrative district from the old town and undersized market. Toppled stone compounds mix with the new cement houses. Rock walls, intact and broken, constrict the alleys and hide the horizon creating a labyrinth of ancient wooden and new metal doors. From under the walls, plastic pipes release wastewater to filter through the otherwise tan sand. Camels walk the city’s numerous paved streets with the cars. Money abounds but seems to pass only between false smiles amongst an elite that spends most of their time in Nouakchott and uses Tidjikja as an umbilical cord to the desert—Bedouins enjoying the bathwater while waiting for the last caravan to arrive from Morocco.

The less wealthy are also dancing on this crumbling lifestyle but without a place to land. Chris told me about a family, a husband, wife, and two children, living in the desert that he visited on the vaccination tours. They were goat herders. They owned a bag of rice, a water jug, a cooking pot and a blanket. No lean-to, no tent, nothing to shelter them from the desert. Greg Coordes, the volunteer in N’Beika, a sizeable town between Tidjika and the highway to Nouakchott, visited a “village” to the north of him. A few families, they were living along a dry caravan route a few kilometers from town. They asked Greg for money to build a well to sustain their unsustainable lifestyle. He told them to move.

Reality sometimes comes with a hammer. As a death foretold, COS conference and the next three months are cushioning the blow I’ll receive. Two years anywhere is hard to leave but to leave two years that rarely slackened in intensity will require more care. Friends, family, students, children. A country I’ll remember more fondly for its difficulty. I’ve struggled to express why I’ve been happy here. The present and coming heat will make it even more difficult. But I have been happy here. And I’m happy to leave. As most from my class, I established a life and did my job. Now, moving on.

I’ve wound the metronome for the last time. Sidi Traore. Born 31 June 2005. Died 12 July 2007.

“Oh, you’ve come, you’ve come! Mohamed, Zeinabou, how are you? How’s your health? So nothing’s bad, I hope? Thank God! Oh, you’ve come! Mini, Ahmed Taleb, Alioun and Aicha have come! Alioun and Aicha have come! Thank God! Mohamed, Zeinabou, how are you? How’s Kankossa? How’s your work? Come, come! Put your stuff in here. Have a seat. Everything’s peaceful? Thanks be to God! Mini, Ahmed Taleb, come here! Bring the stove and corn! Alioune has come!” Ginger and I could hardly get in a word among Magou’s blitz of greetings as we approached her compound. Her greetings weren’t all that was hindering me. Tight lips from an impulsive smile also slowed my reciprocal greetings. The excitement with which Magou welcomed us, hands clasped, quickened pace, storied smile, made the seven kilometer trek in the heat through thick sand and heel piercing burrs to Agmamine a minor inconvenience. Her warmth and joy reminded me how Caleb tolerated two years in such desiccation, buried in the struggles and frustrations he had with much of the community. I believe he even left with a bittersweet defeat. Despite his projects’ potential, Agmamine never bought into his vision of a community working for the community rather than the individual; a mentality that scourges most of Mauritania.

His difficulties are common among Peace Corps volunteers. French volunteers with whom we spend time in Kiffa accuse us of being imitators. We come to Mauritania and integrate into our communities by learning their language and culture but that’s it. They say that our measurable impact on Mauritania is negligible. And many Peace Corps volunteers would agree. In most sites, visible evidence of our presence would be difficult to find. This suggests, perhaps, that the program is a failure. I disagree. I believe that we are more effective than our failed projects give us credit, but I wanted to see a post-Peace Corps site for myself. Agmamine was an easy choice. Formerly Caleb Judy’s, or Alioune Kane’s, site from 2004-2006, I have visited the village many times and written about its troubles. I knew what it was when Caleb was there; I wanted to see it when he wasn’t there. Ginger Tisser (one of my sitemates) and I set off in early February south on the road to Agmamine.

Gently settled in Magou’s salon, on mattelas with our sandals at the door, she sat at the doorstep with a stove full of gray-haired coals and quarter cobs of corn. She once again reviewed her greetings as if she wanted to commit our responses to memory. We gave all our news, explained why we didn’t visit every weekend, and passed on what we knew about Caleb. Throughout our reacquainting, she turned corn on the coals and gathered the cooked pieces on a plate, sliding it towards us when it was full. We grabbed a cob each and munched away while she reminisced about the days of Alioune. Piece after piece, we made it to the bottom of the plate. She reached to hide the bottom with more corn. We pleaded that we’d had enough, but she wouldn’t listen. We continued munching. She talked more and continued to cook. I thought she was cooking them for the kids. Then she plopped more on the plate. “Magou, Magou, that’s enough. We’re not horses!”

“No, no, that’s not enough. You need to eat more. You walked a long way from Kankossa. And the sun, it’s hot! Mini, Ahmed Taleb! Come here, Alioune came! Alioune and Aicha came! Mohamed, Zeinabou, I’m missing Alioune! How is he again?”

“He’s good but very cold. He’s working in Alaska, a place that’s very cold, cold like Mauritania is hot. He’s crazy!”

Magou laughed, “Ya, he did spend two years in Agmamine.”

Mini and Ahmed Taleb, Magou’s live-in grandchildren, came to the door, hiding behind the frame. “Alioune came! Look Alioune.” She pointed to me. This wasn’t confusion on her part. She was trying to pass me off as Caleb and Ginger as Adriana, a teacher in Kiffa from 2004-2006 who’d spent a lot of time in Agmamine. I’m not sure what she told them when they left last year, but the kids didn’t buy the imposters. They recognized me but were shy. I held out mandarins as bait. Ahmed Taleb warmed up and sat on my lap.

The pant-less wonder, he used to spend his days running around Agmamine without pants and eating jubejube fruit. Caleb went to great lengths to break him into the pant world, even sewing him a pair, only to have them thrown in an indistinct corner. I was surprised, then, when I didn’t feel little butt cheeks spread on my leg as he sat down. He was wearing a pair of red sweatpants with a well-positioned hole in the crouch. He hadn’t given up all of his pant-less conveniences.

Once Magou finished stuffing us with corn, she reached into her stash and pulled out a game board. Adorned at the corners with famous African soccer players, colored squares wound in lines around the board, ending in the center. Ludo, famous around West Africa, is a basic dice game where pieces move around the board according to the addition of two die, a six being the required roll to enter the game from one of the pictured corners and to end it in the center.

Magou took it very seriously. It was adult entertainment, a game for which my parents sent us children upstairs “to play” so we wouldn’t interfere. Ahmed Taleb and Mini tried to join, but Magou rebuffed them in typical, gruff Mauritanian style, “No, no, you can’t play. You don’t know anything. Ahmed Taleb and Mini don’t know anything. Their heads are just like rocks.” Wanting to include them, we let them play after Magou won the second game; Mini cried when we had to stop for lunch.

After the rice and beans, Magou brought out a plate of cooked peas twice the size of native cowpeas, or garden raised green beans. She said they were new. A relative from Atar sent her the seeds. “Atar?” I asked, “Have you been to Atar?” which is one of Mauritania’s nicer cities, clean and surrounded by mountains, about a three-days taxi ride to the north.

“Sure. I used to live there with my husband before we divorced. I lived in Kaedi as well.”

“Really?” I was surprised because rural Mauritanians, especially women, don’t travel much, “I think Atar’s a nice city.”

“It is.”

“So which is better, Atar or Agmamine?”

“Oh, that’s easy, Agmamine. I was born here. You always like best the place where you were born.” We smiled and nodded at her wisdom of someone who’d left and returned. I hadn’t the opportunity to talk with her so personally last year, partly because I couldn’t talk and partly because she left Caleb and me to ourselves, as I was Caleb’s guest. As Magou’s guests, we got all of her attention.

Around four, when the sun calmed its anger, she took us on a tour of the fields. Across the retreating lake, we visited women under makeshift hangars making tea and guarding their half-harvested fields from animals and birds. Telling us stories, pointing to her fields, she became excited when we walked upon something of Caleb’s. “This was his field his first year here. He planted all of this! Ohhh, missing Alioune.” Further on we came to his field the second year and heard the same litany, “Missing Alioune.”

Slowly, we left the fields and made our way to the cooperative garden, combined with the fruit orchard, nearly a football field long. There were a handful of plots, less than Caleb’s previous year, not that there were many then either. Magou had hers, which were sadly bare. “Bad seeds,” she said. We watered them, and then watered what was left of Caleb’s trees—some moringa and prickly-pear cacti, which were thriving. Magou continued with her litany. This time, however, she added another line complaining about the laziness of the women in the cooperative. Then we moved to the orchard. Out of the hundred or so trees they planted, we decided ten were still alive. Again the litany and derision of the cooperative women. Exiting the garden, we walked by one of the newer wells outfitted with a solar pump and basin built by a non-governmental organization. Oddly, the basin was dry. I asked Magou if the pump still worked. “Yes.” Then I asked why people didn’t use it. “I don’t know.”

Back at the compound, we hung around the hangar. I lay around with my camera secreting pictures while Magou was tending dinner and Ginger was playing more Ludo. The scene settled, and I noticed among the kids brutalizing each other outside the hangar one boy whose pants wouldn’t stay up. A couple kids would take off around the house, and he’d follow. When he sped up, however, his pants started to fall; his buttchecks, where his underwear should have been, took some sun. But he let his pants reach his ankles before he stopped to pick them up. This game continued until it became too violent and Magou broke it up. She put them to more industrious tasks. Mini and the boy with the falling pants started to gather trash into bowls and take it out of the compound on their heads. Again, the pants caused the boy problems. He couldn’t balance the bowl and hold his pants at the same time. So he’d walk part way, both hands on the bowl, until his pants impeded his progress, then he’d stop, carefully release one hand to pull up his pants, and start the process again.

Night came with dinner. And after dinner, Magou’s husband came by and renewed the old questions we answered upon arrival. This time, however, the children were around. Conversation moved to Caleb at which point Magou asked Mini, who’s about three years old, “Where’s Alioune? When’s he coming back?”

She whispered confidently, “Alioune’s in the city. He’s coming back soon.”

“Really? The city where?”

“There,” she pointed towards Kankossa.

“Oh, did you hear that?” she asked chuckling, “She thinks Alioune’s in Kankossa and he’s coming soon! Ehh, missing Alioune.”

The next morning we prepared to leave. A local girl came by to sell us beignets at four times their normal price. Of course we bought them. Then the truck for Kankossa came flying by. We gathered our bags and headed toward it with Magou in tow carrying a bag of her own. Magou handed it to us; cowpeas and corn filled the inside. I guess she didn’t want us to starve between Agmamine and Kankossa. We tried to refuse them with no success.

I hated leaving so quickly. I almost would have rather walked back to Kankossa just to have some more time with the family, but I convinced myself I’d return. And Magou insisted on this as we were leaving, “Greet Alioune for me, and you must come back soon!”

During the ride back, Ginger and I looked at each other. “Caleb has nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Certainly not,” I replied. “His projects might not have gone as he planned, but people will never forget him.”

So the French volunteers were right. Visiting the village, you’d have never known Caleb was there without seeing his signature on the orchard well he helped construct. Daily life in Agmamine probably hasn’t changed significantly from its creation in 1905 despite the wealth of aid it’s received. Unfortunately, however, the Frenchy’s accusation is self-abasing. I’ve seen very few, if any, outside projects that have impacted significantly life here, evidenced by Agmamine’s idle solar pump. Mauritania is a black hole for development work.

But the French volunteers were also wrong. While Peace Corps Mauritania is a poor development organization, it is a good people organization. Our close proximity to our communities often forces some degree of understanding among volunteers and Mauritanians. It’s not always successful. Some volunteers hate Mauritania and Mauritanians. Much of the time we fail to break through the Mauritanian bigotry that labels us as money trees rather than actual people. Our success on the interpersonal level, however, is still greater than our attempts at development work. In Kankossa, long time residents can list the twenty years of volunteers who’ve lived in Kankossa, even ones that left early or lived in surrounding villages. Ahmed Taleb, who takes Caleb as his father, despite the twists of imagination required for that, will always remember him. Without his language skills, without his proximity to the community, without his imitation, I doubt he would have been so successful. And I take comfort in that; imitator that I am.

You’d have thought that being covered in puke and losing out on the training job would’ve ruined my weekend.

Thursday morning, after visiting school to verify that the military I heard arriving the night before were actually occupying it, I accepted a ride to Kiffa that was leaving “immediately.” This find was lucky. Usually I have to wait until the afternoon for a ride, which puts me in Kiffa after dusk. Leaving “immediately” would give me an extra half-day to start on my work. I needed to write exams for my classes to protect against the uncertainty of school during the elections.

Around eleven, the car came by my house, and I hurriedly threw my bags in the back and slid in next to a Pulaar woman with a little girl on her lap. As soon as I was in, the driver took off. Bouncing around in and off the sand tracks, trying not to lose momentum, the little girl sunk between her mother’s legs, as if she were being birthed for the second time, in a lethargy that only children can achieve hiding in their dreams. Occasionally the mother pulled her up, almost to a sitting position, only to let her sink to the cab’s floor, exit the birth canal again. Up and over dunes, jerking in and out of ruts, we continued silently. A few hours into the trip, the mother pulled the girl up again. This time she awoke and turned to my eyes, as if I was nothing, and lurched, spewing a stream of white puke towards the open window. In the fractured seconds after, I had hope that most of it would reach the window, but my arm, attached to the support handle above the door, blocked its path. The puke splashed my arm and shirtsleeve, and then covered my pants, as a vanilla milkshake knocked off of a McDonald’s table.

We stopped. I got out dripping. The mother took the water and attended to the girl. I was still dripping. Finally she helped me to wash off my arm. Then I took the bottle and tried to wash off my pants. The water succeeded in drenching my pants but did very little for the puke. Then, we returned to the car. Everyone acted as if it was a nonevent. I was still dripping. My consolation was 30% humidity, which dried me fast enough. For the rest of the trip, my eyes never left the girl. Every cough, sudden movement, weird noise from her sent my nerves firing to get out of the way. The driver thought it was funny. The lack of concern the girl’s mother showed irritated me, but I could do nothing about it. Finally I reconciled myself to the fact that my clothes would wash clean.

I’ve decided the shirt I was wearing, a William Jewell shirt from my last year of college, was the problem. A few months ago, I was wearing the same shirt when Sam peed on me. I had just finished petting him at the edge of my compound and looked across the street to see his baby puppy crawling around near its mother. Excited, I went to visit the puppy with Donna, who was over for our Friday dinner. As we were ogling over the puppy, Sam tried to stick his nose in between. We, of course, ignored him, and he walked behind me, just out of my peripheral vision, raised his leg to me as he would a post or a tree and peed on me. I turned as he ran off with his guilt and jealousy. I’d been marked as if he was an estranged ex-. The women drinking tea behind us were rolling. When one of them finally stopped laughing, she brought over some water to pour on my mark. Still in shock, I asked her if she’d ever seen that. She shook her head and replied, “He’s a dog. What do you expect?”

So I got to Kiffa and checked my email. My heart quickened as I opened the one from the training coordinator to find another had been chosen over me. At first I was disappointed, I wanted to do the job, but I wasn’t surprised because the person chosen is very well suited for the position. Then it occurred to me that I’d be leaving three months earlier than I expected. I am essentially finished. This eased any pain I felt from not being chosen. Since, I’ve been exploring the many paths on which travel plans could take me and the people I could meet. As a result, everything has taken on urgency as I prepare to leave.

So the WAIST trophy is obscenely large. We're building a trophy case in our new office* to house our softball prowess. It will probably be bigger than the file cabinet that houses our shuffled deck of failed projects. Blessed with a supernal defense, women played third, short, and second, and I pitched, we were the best team, winning the championship game 16-2. Luck did serve us, however. Playing our best competition, a team of Senegalese players, we eked out a 7-6 victory thanks to an egregious mistake by their pitcher, who overthrew first base in the extra inning. Then they argued themselves out of the tournament by refusing to accept the umpire’s decision on a miraculous play made by Mike Thoms, one of our outfielders, in which he caught, lost, and then barehanded a deep flyball. Their coach was suspended, and they had to forfeit the next game, which knocked them out of the tournament.

But our stars are aligned that way--a sort of Deuteronomistic theology. Our luck or

God's favor rises and falls on a yearly cycle. Where it all starts, I'm not certain, but there are three phases. One phase involves us gloating about our trophy, putting our prizes at front of the office for all to see and envy. Then, on our trip down to Dakar, God punishes us for our self-aggrandizing. As retribution, fate, or God’s guilt, rewards us for enduring our trials with victory. Our glory is now three years running.

While winning and gloating are boring for those on the outside, everyone enjoys watching the wheel reverse fate. Last year, traveling in two buses as a group without much food or drink, between seven and twelve flat tires (the numbers vary, but most of us lost track) stripped our patience as sand paper does paint for seventeen hours.

This year, we ignored last year’s lessons and offered ourselves to group buses again. Flat tires, however, weren’t our curse but an octogenarian bus driver, who was old in the eyes and young in experience. An hour and a half outside of Nouakchott, he made this obvious when a broken wheelbarrow, designating the beginning of road construction, materialized in front of the bus. Instead of running over it, he buried us in the nearest dune. With another few hours until Rosso, the Senegal River crossing, we spent three hours with shovels, sandals, and hands clearing sand from the axles and tires to watch it return as if drawn by a magnet, effort as futile as our attempts to push the baggage laden bus out of the dune. Finally, Cheikh Gueye, our volunteer support officer, who frequently acts as a savior and was accompanying us on the trip, arrived with semi-truck and chain. Soon, we were back on the buses and off to Rosso where we reached the crossing barge just before their three-hour lunch break. We were still ahead of last year’s time by four hours.

Senegal proved as scary. Three hours later our bus driver parked for lunch with the rear of the bus dangling in a busy street of a St. Louis suburb despite the protestations of on-coming cars. A driving habit commonly accepted as a video game road hazard in Mauritania, this was the first hint that our driver had never driven in Senegal before. We were now three hours closer to last year’s time.

The other, younger bus driver wasn’t much better because he thought he knew what he was doing. Outside of St. Louis, we encountered a fork in the road, which signs explained well ahead of the turn. The signs don’t help, however, if the driver doesn’t know the Latin alphabet. Insisting that he’d been to Dakar four times and knew the route, he ignored our literacy and landed us in a sandbox off the road of an ocean front village center. He blamed the onlookers for not telling him about the sand.

Some of us laughed and some cried. The villagers saw capitalism at work and offered to push us out if we gave them presents. Others insisted we couldn’t leave and would have to pay their golden prices. We arrested our tempers and pushed. Unlike the big bus, this smaller one without baggage was easy. We flexed our muscles, proud of avoiding exploitation, and boarded smiling at the villagers’ frowns another hour closer to last year’s epic time.

Finally we reached the Dakar suburbs, four-lane roads, and traffic, all of which were unfamiliar to our octogenarian bus driver. Understandably, he freaked out. So did we. At one point, he tried to make a left turn across two lanes of traffic and nearly took us off an embankment. A ten-point turn later, he lost track of our lead car and just stopped in the highway; he did this each time we tried to talk to him. With each wrong turn he tried to make, screams from severed nerves rang throughout the bus and threaten to burst the driver’s heart and destroy us shortly after. At last, reason prevailed and a level head talked to the driver and kept the others quiet. We pulled into the Atlantic Club, our destination, at 9:30 pm, thirty minutes ahead of last year’s time, after leaving Nouakchott at 5:00 am. “Healthy and Wealthy,” (a new Christian movement) we feel we deserve our obscenely large trophy.

*The new office—two floors in Nouakchott’s largest and newest office building—has three elevators, one of which is glass, that baffle Mauritanians. They push buttons when they loose patience, even if they don’t know the buttons’ purposes, which stops the elevator in the middle of the shaft; they cringe next to the door in the glass elevator; they use them as toilets when they don’t know better. Surely the gods must be crazy.

Peace Corps Mauritania

5th Quarter Report

07 January 2007

Jeremy Miller

July 12, 2007

Kankossa

Assaba

Lycee de Kankossa

Director: Abdullahi ould Mohamed Lemine

Director of Studies: Soulymane Berry

Counterpart: Maliam Diallo

Landlord and host family contact: Yahya Traore

Social/Cultural Report

This quarter has been difficult in all respects. Ramadan and regional elections have proven both catalysts and inhibitors to my integration into the Kankossa community. After returning from a visit to the north of the country, I caught the last few weeks of Ramadan. Throughout that period, I continued to quietly represent a different belief system to the community by not fasting. I found this very easy. I received little pressure from people to conform to their tradition. Because of peoples’ tiredness, however, I found it more difficult to spend quality time with people.

This period culminated in what I consider a successful holiday. After eating with my host families, Donna Lenius (another Kankossa volunteer) joined me in a tour of my quartier. We circulated among numerous families, distributing candy to children and taking pictures. All of the families were happy to see us, and the team approach divided the attention we received to make it easier for us. The next day, I spent the afternoon at another friend’s house with a group of card players. The games were quite intense, so I didn’t venture into the game but simply watched.

Shortly after Ramadan, elections infected the community. I largely stayed out of them; however, I watched from the sidelines and tried to learn as much as I could about the process by talking to friends. Through these conversations, I learned a lot about the social currents among racial groups; how each group views themselves in Mauritania. The campaigning, however, made people in accessible. Schedules were never consistent and changed at a whim. As a result, I had only a few chances to visit people. Nevertheless, I had the opportunity to attend my first Pulaar wedding.

After the elections, school strapped my time as classes, six days a week, moved to the afternoon, one until six. I didn’t have many opportunities to visit families beyond my normal routine because I was either at school during lunch time or needed to go to school soon after lunch. Consequently, I made evening visits when I could. The next quarter looks to be just as challenging, so I will do my best to judiciously use my time.

Report on contact with Peace Corps

I had many occasions when I needed help from Peace Corps staff this quarter. In all cases they were helpful. Peace Corps drivers were around when I needed them, and I appreciated help in two cases in particular, a security incident and difficulty with my school schedule.

Technical Report

Interaction with students: Besides Ramadan and elections, extensive repairs on the lycee have disrupted school. The college and lycee now share the two primary schools with the primary students. As a result, we have school six days a week, Saturday through Thursday, six hours a day. We rotate monthly morning and afternoon schedules with the primary school. The odd hours have caused much confusion among administration, teachers, and students.

This has been my primary challenge. The broken situation has discouraged both teachers and students from taking the year seriously. Consequently, attendance by both parties is unpredictable. Only the very dedicated achieve any consistency.

Disparate attendance has slowed my classes, creating the need for lesson repetition, and inconsistent school discourages retention. In two of my five classes, we were only able to cover review material. In the others, I taught only two new lessons. For the compositions, then, I gave them ten point quizzes over the review and new material, as I did not feel the material warranted a full composition. I was able, however, to balance this with homework and attendance grades. For the purpose of maintaining the grading system, I will combine the quiz and attendance grades to make-up the twenty point first composition, as I feel the students who attended class faithfully during this broken term should be rewarded.

The realities of the school year have enervated both student and teacher motivation, including my own. Frankly, it was hard to glean the purpose sometimes. But I continued to attend classes and taught the students that attended. In 5eme C, we missed very few classes, and I felt progress wasn’t far behind what it should have been. In 5eme D, however, we only had seven hours of class the whole term. Consequently, I established rapport with some classes and not with others.

I feel that I had particular success in the two 4eme classes I picked up for an ill colleague. Other teachers have related compliments they heard from these classes concerning my teaching. One was especially satisfying, claiming that I was the only teacher in the lycee who took the time to ensure that all the students in the class understand the material. I believe the attendance in these classes reflects these sentiments.

On the other hand, I am still too soft with my students. I like them and their enthusiasm too much, which causes me to inconsistently enforce my rules. My hold on my classes is sometime tenuous. I have once again pledged to root-out this problem when I return, as I have the ability. I also plan to take more time teaching writing and speaking; skills which I intended to focus on but shied away from because of the limited class time.

Interaction with Teachers: The school situation also hindered my ability to collaborate with my colleagues. At the beginning of the year, possibilities for collaboration were ripe because we had six English teachers. As the term progressed, one was sent elsewhere and another fell ill. As a result, the remaining teachers’ schedules filled with the orphaned hours and arranging opportunities for observation and coaching became impossible. The distance between the two primary schools, about a fifteen minute walk, also caused difficulty. Next term, I believe my schedule will be friendlier to such interaction.

Our busy schedules, however, did not hinder our ideas exchange. I spent a lot of time, formally and informally, discussing teaching and extra-curricular ideas. We have agreed on the need and brainstormed ideas for a sustainable English club, extra help for weaker students, and BAC preparation classes. I have also shared teaching materials with them and arranged for another volunteer to participate in another teacher’s class, as I was unavailable because of my own classes. Through all these interactions, I also helped them with their English skills, some more eager than others for my help.

Extra-Curricular or Secondary Projects: This quarter has been a story of delayed or dashed plans. Coming into the term, I was highly motivated to initiate a number of extra-curricular and secondary projects. English club, BAC preparation, extra hours for tutoring, an adult class, creating an opportunity for poor students to receive cheap medication, and a Cereamine project. And in normal circumstances, establishing these activities would not have been challenging. For the first four ideas, however, I needed a room to conduct the activities, and since the lycee is under construction, the primary schools occupied from morning till night, the room had to come from elsewhere. With the help of my APCD, I eventually found a room with desks but not chairs that the school was renting for storage. Then, I arranged for to have access to the keys to this room. I made a blackboard. By the end of the term, all I was lacking were chairs. I hope the school director will supply these early next term. Until then, I plan on buying mats for students to sit on. This should allow me to start the English education projects.

Another idea that I had great hope for was to facilitate an agreement between World Vision, the hospital, and school to provide poor students with reduced-price medicine. All parties involved liked the idea. The school administration compiled a list of students. With the encouragement of my counterpart, Maliam Diallo, a former World Vision employee, I took the list to World Vision Kankossa. They consulted their superiors, who then rejected the idea. Apparently, they are only allowed to work with children between three and fourteen years old. The other NGO in Kankossa, PASK, only works with building construction. Barring a change of policy, I believe this promising project is lost. The nature of it requires close monitoring and with only a few local NGOs the possibilities are limited. I will continue to look for funding, however.

Cereamine was another priority for me at the beginning of the quarter. The potential for it faded during the campaigns, however, because my primary counterpart was on a party list. Throughout the quarter, he encouraged me to visit World Vision and market the product, but I felt we needed to go with something in hand from the cooperatives we trained last year to show that we were serious. He was not able to provide samples of Cereamine until late in the quarter at which time I did talk with the World Vision director who agreed about the product’s potential for children’s nutrition. We intend on returning to World Vision early in the year to encourage them to adopt and market the product as they did with moringa a few years ago.

I did have success with two secondary projects. First I completed an exchange with my World Wise Schools class in Sebring, Florida. I answered numerous questions from middle school students regarding Mauritania and my service. Second, I had three tutorials with a University of Nouakchott student from Kankossa.

Technical Report Summary:

Classes # of students # of students # of students # of tests % of M/F

Enrolled Attending Passing administered students

4C 20 16 14 1 13/7

4D 51 34 19 1 17/34

5C 13 7 6 2 9/4

5D 35 9 7 1 18/17

6D 34 17 15 1 19/15

Peer Collaboration

Lessons:

Created Individually: 4

Created with Counterpart: 0

Exchanged: Numerous materials

Observations:

Peer Observations: 0

Team Teaching:

# of lessons: I setup 2 team teaching classes

with my counterpart and another volunteer. I was unavailable to participate.

Maliam Diallo: December 19 and 21

Number of English teachers at site:

Male: 4

Female: 0

In-Service Training Ideas and Needs:

I believe the cultural training concerning the Moor community is lacking. There are numerous faux pas that I’ve discovered embarrassingly through missteps that are not the same in the Black African or American cultures. I could have avoided embarrassment with a brief explanation, which would lessen my frustration with that community and my fear of similar mistakes. Nearly every time I visit a Moor family I make a similar misstep, all of which are innocent. The cross-culture handbook simply does not touch upon the complexities of the Moor society that differ from American culture.

A recent example occurred when I was visiting a friend across from his store at an older man’s store. My friend is from Gerou, and his family recently came to visit Kankossa. So while we were talking, I asked if his family was still in Kankossa, a question that Americans would expect no matter the age, and he looked at me embarrassedly and ushered me across the street into his store. He then explained to me that he cannot talk about his family when older men are around, meaning the other store owner, who was not much older. I knew of other such rules in the Moor culture related to talking about women around older men, but I never thought they included family as well. Apparently, even with his father, he cannot discuss his wife or children, and if his children are around, he cannot acknowledge their presence.

Action Plan for next Quarter:

Action is the plan for next quarter. I spent this previous one waiting for events to finish before starting on projects, and I’m still waiting. I feel like January will be crucial. If I do not start English club, BAC preparation, and extra help session this month, they will not happen. The same goes with Cereamine. Politics and school schedules will make things much more difficult after January. I cannot let external situations disrupt my own plans.

It’s a beautiful day in Kiffa! I think it’s the first time I’ve thought that. The sun’s behind clouds, the air’s cool, around 80, and there’s a relaxing breeze. I just returned from the empty, midday market where I bought lots of cheap vegetables for chicken soup. Last night, I attempted to recreate my Dad’s chili for Clarice and Leah; it’s something I’d been dreaming about during the cold evenings in Kankossa. We didn’t have Ritz crackers, but I came close to what it’s supposed to taste like, which is not bad for Africa.

December. Time’s going quickly. This is my first trip to Kiffa since my internet debacle in October sometime. Thanksgiving in Selebabi was a great success but not relaxing. I helped to do a lot of the cooking, including our duckturkey, a new Mauritanian breed. We had between thirty and forty volunteers this year, which made for lots of food. Everything was a dieter’s dream, even better quality than last year. We played some football and lacrosse. Why we had lacrosse equipment is still a mystery. I also visited relatives of my host family, two families worth, who live there. Mauritanians seem to believe it’s very important to visit relatives when traveling no matter how miniscule the chances are that you’ll ever see them again. But it shows solidarity I guess.

When I returned from Thanksgiving, my director had a surprise for me. One of our English teachers is sick and in Nouakchott, so I got six of his hours to bring my total to fourteen, a lot for volunteers. What makes this difficult is that we are going six half days a week now, alternating between morning and afternoon based on the month, because the high school is under construction. We are sharing the primary schools. No one knows what’s going on, especially the director. So these fourteen hours are spread throughout the week, which gives me little rest or time for secondary projects. I’m doing my best.

And then, with the election, it just becomes laughable. Two days before it, I went to class at eight AM to find a soldier guarding the entrance with a Soviet era machine gun. I had a hard time taking him seriously. Others were behind him just hanging out, so I asked them if we were having class. There was some discussion. Finally, one took me to my classroom. In the room, I found ten military still sleeping. The other tried to get them to leave, but they protested, so I decided I wouldn’t teach for the day. The day ended up being a week.

Throughout the process, school had been difficult because many teachers were elsewhere and some just didn’t teach, so it was hard to round up students for class. Only the dedicated few came. The elections, however, were “free and fair.” Everyone was proud of the international recognition. I’ll have something to say about that later before the Presidential elections in March. I hear I’ll have a lot of time to write then.

Besides the elections, Kankossa’s on the brink of modernity, sort of. For the last week, workers have been putting electric poles in the ground and claim that they’ll finish early next year. Later the same day, I was at a school administrator’s house, and watched his 65-70 year old mother chase a cow around the compound with a stick. I feel lucky to be able to witness the first coming of electricity, as there isn’t many places in the world one can witness that anymore. The contrast between the old and new is very interesting.

My new site mates, Ginger and Donna, are starting to become more comfortable in Kankossa. They both spent nearly two months at site before visiting Kiffa. Most people would call them crazy. We occasionally have outings. A few weeks ago we hiked to an island outside of Agmamine that has rare tree species that couldn’t survive the past droughts anywhere else. Otherwise, we all live about twenty minutes apart, so we’re never in each other’s hair and can have our own lives.

A few stories:

Before school started, back in October, I was returning from Wulinga, two hours south of Kankossa, in an ancient SUV with loose shocks. The driver had put two sheep on the top toward the back, with their feet tied and attached to a rail. Just outside of town, the driver started to pick up speed when we hit a dip. I heard a thud, then an outcry from people in the back. I turned around and one of the sheep was bleating in the back glass, hanging upside down. The driver got out and fixed the situation. Twenty minutes down the road, a dip tossed the sheep over once again. This time the sheep slipped from its ties and shot off into a field to join a large herd grazing. The owner went after it and with the help of three other shepard boys, ran it down twenty minutes later.

Two weeks prior to the Wulinga visit, I was sleeping in my mosquito net, underneath the hangar, which similar to a tiny pavilion, on my bamboo bed. About two AM, I heard something, woke up, rolled toward the side facing the road, and saw a bald, bearded man, almost my height and twice my width, sitting on the corner of my bed with his back towards me. Without thinking, I greeted him loudly. He jumped, put his shoes on, and hurried out of the hanger. Before he could get too far, I called after him, asking what he wanted. “I don’t want anything,” trailed behind him. What to do, what to do, I felt like I needed to do something; I couldn’t sit still, but what? What did he want? Was he a thief or worse a pervert? Why did he have his shoes off? That was very bizarre. I knew he was from the countryside because he had an old metal flashlight that few people use anymore.

Finally, I decided to follow him. I knew I wouldn’t sleep if I didn’t at least find out where he was going. I looked under the hangar and found his footprint, perhaps the only good thing about sand, and followed them. Foot by foot, I’ll never forget the impression; I found him five minutes down the road! He was sitting on a bench in front of a closed store. Again, he had his shoes off. I approached him. He denied that he was under my hangar, but I saw his metal flashlight. I asked again, and then noticed that he was nursing his foot. He had a blister in the middle of it. Everything came together. He was walking in from the countryside and had to stop somewhere because his foot was hurting him. At least this satisfied me for the moment. I even started to feel sorry for him and offered him my Mauritanian sandals if he preferred them. Clearly I was still half asleep, so I left for bed.

The morning came and my explanation still satisfied me. I went to visit my friend, Moustapha, a storeowner in the market, and told him the story. He insisted the man was a thief. His argument was why would a stranger enter another’s hangar at two AM without letting him know he was there? He couldn’t have had good intentions.

So I went to the police, and they agreed. They drove to my house and examined the evidence. Meanwhile I asked around and found out, from my description, that the man was a local crazy who wanders all around the neighborhood on his way into town in the middle of the night. Everyone knows him, and he’s harmless, they told me. I still bought fencing to put up around my hangar. Since then I’ve seen him around, and he’s definitely crazy, but he’s smiled and greeted me every time.

A few weeks after returning from Wulinga, I had another visitor in the night. Again I heard noises. I opened my eyes and found a dog inside my hangar. Again, this was bizarre because Mauritanian dogs don’t approach humans as most Mauritanians beat them. Through my sleepy vision, I decided it must know me so I reached out to pet it. It hesitated, came closer, and then I realized that I did know this dog. He was Sam, the dog that Caleb adopted in Agmamine, seven kilometers south of Kankossa.

This made sense; he would know me because I’d spent enough time there. Last December, he ran off with one of my Chaco sandals, which I had to walk around at five AM to find. But he was very sweet. He put his front paws on my bed, and I petted him for five minutes before he slept outside my hangar.

In the morning, he was there to greet me and follow me twenty minutes to school. On the way, we ran into a band of neighborhood kids who were eager for a new victim. Sam cowered by my leg. I told the kids that he belonged to me, so they shouldn’t throw rocks. A few came and petted him.

Things went like this for a few days. I didn’t feed him because I didn’t want to make him dependent and that wasn’t his motivation for visiting me. Every night about twelve, he would come in my hangar, jump on my bed, and paw my head until I petted him. If he wasn’t satisfied, he pawed me again. I didn’t mind the disruptions; they made me feel special. So I got used to them.

Then one night he didn’t come. Two nights, still no Sam. I began to worry. Mauritania isn’t a nice place for dogs. Cars are reckless and children deal the beatings they receive from older siblings to animals. And maybe he thought I abandoned him when I went running that morning. He looked awfully sad and disappointed when I just kept going. I was trying to break him from following me so much. I couldn’t imagine betraying a friend that came seven kilometers to find a new home after Caleb left. I couldn’t imagine his excitement at finding me, or his disappointment at losing me.

And then I found out he was just chasing women. He had a girlfriend that lived across the road with another family. I was relieved. I didn’t feel like a terrible person. I went over and visited. He looked up and kept sleeping like I was a tree. I began to pet him and stopped. What he did next made him a celebrity. He went to slap me with his paw, as he always does, but this time I caught his paw. Two older boys from the neighborhood were watching and thought he was greeting me. They were amazed. Even better, Sam repeated it with them. They fell in love with him and now make sure that none of the younger kids in the neighborhood bother him.

Ever since, Sam has lived with that family. All the kids love him, and he gets more attention than he needs. I don’t worry that he’ll follow me to school. The only time I really see him now is coming from dinner at my family’s. When I least expect it, he comes pounding up behind me in the dark, making my heart skip, and then jumps on my leg. I do my duty and pet him till he’s had enough. Then, he gets restless and goes to chase women.

During the election, two of Yahya’s grandchildren came to my door one morning and told me, “Jeremy, there’s a white person who came this morning from across the lake. He’s coming to your house.” I walk out my door and find a guy with a large backpack tangled in my broken barbed-wire fence. Dirty, smelly, his hair in messy dreadlocks, I invite him in. He tells me he was only looking for water when people brought him to my house. He was going to Hamoud that day on the way to Capetown, South Africa except he was walking in the wrong direction. I gave him water and offered him water to bathe, which he accepted to my relief. While he was bathing, I decided to offer him a place to stay for a few days since the elections would restrict his travel.

He accepted my invitation. Then we started to talk. His name was Dainius Kinderis, a travel writer from Lithuania, and he was on a mission to reach the four corners of Africa hitchhiking! If possible, he didn’t want to pay for transportation. I started thinking of all the countries he would have to hitchhike through that I would be hesitant to simply travel in: DR Congo, Nigeria, possibly Chad, Angola, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, Algeria. All of these are either very unstable or don’t allow solitary foreign travelers. When I tell the story to volunteers here they say, “Well that’s just stupid.” While I agree, I do see the attraction. Most people in Africa are very welcoming. It’s just the guerilla factions that are looking for rich Westerners to take hostage that I’d worry about. I suppose if he’s very careful to plan his trip well, as large parts of those countries are safe, and lucky, he could make it.

I showed him around Kankossa, all of the sites. I asked around for the best route into Mali so that he could reach Dakar, the first corner (for some reason he was going to have to wait two weeks in Nouakchott for a Senegalese Visa, which explains the convoluted route if anyone’s wondering). I took him to friends’ houses. He took pictures. We had interesting conversation. I was impressed that he was willing to commit to something in which the colossal difficulties were obvious but the payoffs unknown. In general, he found Kankossa refreshing after two weeks of desert. And then Monday came and I took him to the road heading south and pointed, “Well, good luck!” We shook hands, and he walked off. I don’t know where he is, but I have his website. I’m sure he’ll do fine until he has to cross Nigeria.

So I’ve attached more to read, if you haven’t read enough already. The first is an essay about development work. I think everyone should read it, and I’ll be interested to hear responses. Encouraged by positive responses to other trip emails, I put more effort and words into my most recent trip from Atar to Nouadhibou. You all have seen the pictures, now you get to hear about it. It’s in three parts in case you need a coffee break. I will also post all of this to my livejournal, to which I realize I’ve given you all a bad link. It’s http://exumbris.livejournal.com. My next opportunity to use the internet won’t be until Christmas, so happy holidays.

Take care, stay safe,

Jeremy

Part 1

The afterburn coated my lips like Blistex and further inflamed my tongue and throat. But my grandparents used to tell me the worse a medicine tastes the better it works. So I figured the sensation affirmed our action and erased the bad luck we left in Nouakchott.

Amanda, another Mauritanian volunteer, and I were too late to buy tickets for a last minute flight to Casablanca. Jess and Kathy, Benin volunteers, met a man in a blue boubou wielding a homemade knife at seven AM on their way to Atar. He didn’t use it, but he delayed their plans enough that our new ones coincided with theirs.

After a taxi ride with a garrulous driver, who stopped at every rainy season puddle to play, we were happy to arrive at Tyler’s house. The only second year volunteer in Atar, his arms are always open and he has a quirky personality that’s not ashamed of his passion for Warcraft, gigabytes, and programmable, robotic Legos.

Shortly after inviting us into his house, he invited us to his birthday party the new volunteers were holding. They cooked chicken fajitas and told the story of Tyler’s mythical conception in the back of a green Pinto. “Happy Birthday” followed and the chicken bowl emptied. Tacitly, Jess, Kathy, and I decided to drink the grease. Jess, a People magazine nerd, followed the impulse. I was next, thinking it couldn’t taste worse than dried fish. Then Kathy, who used to track hurricanes on a map according to National Weather Service reports at four AM, finished it. The porch light glistening from the bowl was a good omen that our bad luck had passed.

Seven AM came faster than one, and Tyler left us with his combination—21-3-21, or drink, Jesus, drink, according to Sam’s numerology—and went to work. We met our driver from the day before, who agreed to brave the rough road in his Mercedes. Camels, readings from The Common Book of Prayer that Kathy stole from our office’s restroom, and two go-cart turns later, some passers-by and I were pushing the car out of the Chinguitti sand.

We left our baggage at Sam’s house and found the best restaurant, which the sun convinced us was the closest. The proprietor/host/cook happily greeted us. We were probably his first customers in some time. He took us to an isolated room on top of the building with mats and a bathroom sink.

Ahmed, our host and former geology teacher, bought the former Chinguitti House of Books, which died in a town where people don’t read, according to Sam, and turned it into a hotel of sorts from which he books camel trips. He was attentive and spoke French, reluctantly at first. After he brought us our ‘spaghetti bolognaise,’ canned vegetables and macaroni, he showed us letters from various tourists praising his desert knowledge. We were skeptical, since the desert is mostly sand. It turned out that his “desert knowledge” consisted of two facts: there are 182 qualities of sand and anything green is “camel grass.” But the sun persuaded us to keep him.

The next morning, the girls were excited to go. Jess said she’d dreamt of riding camels since discovering them in children’s books. Kathy’s interest was violent. She enjoyed beating them with a stick her first time in Niger. And Amanda was afraid her mother wouldn’t speak to her if she lived in the Sahara for two years and didn’t have a picture of herself on a camel. For me, however, once at the zoo was enough. I didn’t see how riding them for twelve kilometers would change the experience. But Jess, prodding me toward something I’d appreciate later, wouldn’t let me stay.

I was right. We rocked in camel saddles, shaped like two perpendicular horse saddles, for two hours to an oasis and two back. The experience reminded me of riding the fifty cent mechanical horse at Wal-mart except this included real sensory experiences. The camels screamed and gargled, as if someone forced their snouts underwater, and mine saturated its tail with urine and flung it in my face. Black goo oozed from bumps behind its ears, which Ahmed told us meant that he was horny. Unfortunately, we weren’t given sticks to beat them.

Our destination was interesting. There weren’t springs, like Tirgit, but it had a large palmerie and shade. Despite the grass huts waiting for the Big Bad Wolf, numerous wells and motor pumps hinted at money. I learned from an older man who’d worked there for twenty-eight years that patrons from Chinguitti own most of the date palms that are worth several hundred dollars each.

After lunch, the girls were napping and I was reading when three white moor twenty-somethings appeared from the underbrush dressed in Hawaiian beach shorts, stylish sunglasses, and white, slip-on Nike shoes. They greeted everyone in “Saturday Night Live,” homosexual inflection and mannerisms. Then they exited as mysteriously as they came into the opposite underbrush.

Shortly after, Amanda awoke. Ahmed noticed and suggested that if we wanted to bathe in the “piscine,” we should do it soon.

“Piscine?” I repeated.

“Well, its like a pool but smaller. You can get in it and swim.” I imagined a cow trough. But we wanted to see this, so he pointed in the direction the moors went. Sitting across from the straw huts, at the entrance to the palmerie, we heard a motor pump, and then saw the large basin it was filling. Inside were our moor visitors, splashing and hollering. They invited us to join, but the flash of butt cheeks was too inviting. We hurried back to tell Ahmed we weren’t swimming.

About three, we left the oasis on foot to avoid riding up the steep dunes. This gave Ahmed time to show Jess his Mauritanian machismo despite his education. Women in Mauritania are generally not respected but considered useful for their domestic skills. And the only relationships between men and women take place in mosquito nets.

Thus, Ahmed nagged her for five minutes about her Chinese heritage. He couldn’t seem to understand that she was actually born in America to Korean parents. Then he failed to notice her irritation and tied his camel’s lead rope to her headscarf. He couldn’t hide his scheming, school boy giggles, or see that Jess was about to bite.

The games ended without any injuries when we reached the top and mounted the camels. The ride out was like the ride in, just hotter and sorer. Little conversation took place because of the dry air. So I stared at sand.

Rather than assimilating, however, the sand separated into whites, reds, and greens, waves and corrugations. Wind had carved the dunes to mimic mountains. Angles changed to delineate structural densities—boulder fields, scree, and solid faces. We tight-roped ridges and followed the passes as I’ve done on trails in the Rockies. The shaping forces, led by the wind, had carried the same style, using different media, to another continent. I felt displaced in time and space—much closer to past experiences from across the globe than I should have.

The saddle rubbing my thighs, as if scaling a fish, brought me back, as Chinguitti peaked over the dunes. The thirteenth century mosque mumbled the prayer call, “Allah huwa akbar, Allah huwa akbar . . .” over the town, shadowed by the sunset. As we entered, Kathy admitted that once at the zoo was enough for her too.

After recovering from our trip, we were waiting outside a closed restaurant when a teenager greeted us. I started speaking in Hassaniya, and he answered in a perfect American accent, “Oh, you speak Hassaniya? That’s great!” We found out that his family had hosted all the Peace Corps volunteers in Chinguitti. So we asked him if he knew Sam. He answered, “Yep. He’s my beeest friend.” When he learned we were expecting him from Atar, he started looking across the wadi towards the other side of town. Minutes later he yelled, “Sam, you butthead! Get over here!” And then asked us, “What is douche bag?”

Realizing the restaurant wasn’t opening and the person Sidi was yelling “butthead” at wasn’t Sam, we went with him to a different one across the wadi. There we learned that he loves Tracy Chapman, the guitar, and Western culture but wants to return to Chinguitti as a doctor. Then he helped us buy tickets back to Atar the next day and showed off more of his slang, such as “mission impossible,” “g’day mate,” and “good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

He attributed his language acuity to his Peace Corps teachers, and his ease with slang proved they played a part. It was clear, however, that he has an incredible gift for languages. In fact, he claimed to speak French better than English, which I couldn’t judge. But I’ve never met a more natural non-native English speaker.

Talking with him for the small time we had, I noticed that his personality changed as he went from English to Hassaniya, something I’ve noticed in myself. It seems that languages and our comfort with them effect how we communicate. Beyond the obvious difference in working vocabularies, Hassaniya is a terse, blunt language, which doesn’t tiptoe around meaning for politeness. I’ve tried my native circumlocution in Hassaniya, but have always failed to convey my meaning. Too many words created too many opportunities for mistakes, and the concept of politeness is foreign.

As a result, I became more direct, cutting words I didn’t need, and my personality in Hassaniya did the same. I don’t backtrack as I would in English for subtlety. Instead of, ‘If you have time and it’s not too much trouble, would you bring me some water,’ I say, ‘Give me water,’ how Mauritanians would say it. Thus, I say things with authority and my confidence follows. Similarly, Sidi took on a softer, politer personality in English. After telling someone, “May God shorten your life,” a common Mauritanian insult, he quickly turned to me and explained that he only uses that with his friends. He impressed me with his awareness of Western sensitivities.

So after Kathy entertained Sidi on his guitar, we left Chinguitti the next day, and spent the rest of the day laughing at ourselves in Atar before leaving for Tirgit the next morning. The oasis was still as I left it—lush, electric against the drab desert, and intemporally cool. We ate tuna, desiccated Laughing Cow cheese, and energy bars as a picnic and Kathy practiced her imitation of a chamelier and his camel.

When we returned to Atar, she demonstrated it for Sam. Jess, the chamelier, lowered the camel, Kathy, by tapping her on the head and pulling down on the invisible rope attached to her nose ring. The camel screamed, as if the chamelier was asking her to lie on a bonfire. Then she rocked forward violently and back until she hit the ground with a sigh and a thud as if Jess planted her. I had to cover my eyes at the unnatural sight, like a compound fracture, and look through the slits between my fingers. Sam couldn’t stop laughing. But that was nearly our last laugh. I missed their company for the rest of the trip after they left for Cape Verde and we left for Nouadhibou the next day.

Part 2

The Sahara subjected me to the coldest and wettest night of my life. My previous extreme was a bike trip with friends outside Oxford, UK, in 1999. We rode all day in a torrent until we reached a pub where we setup a tarp tent in the same torrent across the street. We stopped dripping inside, went for dinner, and then sleep. Before sleeping, however, I kicked out the flap of the ground tarp we’d curled over to ensure it wouldn’t collect runoff from the top one. I only realized my clumsiness when my sleeping bag was soaked.

Without options, I asked the pub’s proprietors for shelter. They pointed me to a hippie trailer we’d noticed earlier on the other side of their property. It lacked a front window, inviting the cold wind, and it lacked a block to support the hitch, which caused it to slant and see-saw on the axle when I moved inside. Wet and cold, I shivered through the night under a quarter-length, soiled blanket I’d found in the trailer. I didn’t laugh with my friends when they woke me in the morning.

Amanda and I left Atar the morning after Tirgit. The ride to Choum took us through sunburnt and sand-covered mountains, cowering under a panoramic sky. The ground of red rocks raced to outdistance the sky.

Despite the land’s warning signs, the demand for free passage to Nouadhibou supported a small market in Choum. A road bisected two rows of shops, restaurants, and waiting areas. The tracks, then, split the town into residential and commercial as an afterthought for people who lived by waiting for the train.

We arrived early, found a restaurant, and a waiting area near Mauritanians for peace from their impish children. When a pre-ordained time came, all the Mauritanians woke and left while motioning us to come. Soon we found ourselves waiting by the tracks. Shortly after, the train arrived, the caboose 2.3 kilometers behind the engine.

The train, the longest in the world, runs from Zouerat to Nouadhibou, 675 km along the Western Sahara border carrying iron ore. I overheard one man say that our train was carrying between sixty and eighty tons. It’s Mauritanians oldest industry and was a frequent target for the Polisario, a group fighting for Western Saharan independence when Mauritania was claiming a portion of it.

As soon as it stopped, two men from our group climbed the ladder. The rest hurriedly tossed them baggage, not sure when the train would leave. On top, we kicked large chunks of ore from the mound to reach the smaller, less painful gravel. Then they laid down blankets and offered us a spot.

From the mound, I felt very exposed. I was the closest link between the sky and the ground. Waves of sand bombarded us constantly. With enough clumsiness, the train could’ve jettisoned us. We were at the elements mercy.

Yet our position also left the elements exposed. Nothing could hide. I could see fires other passengers had started for tea, the occasional Bedouin tent in front of dust shrouded mountains, and whisps of sand racing the train as if stirred by phantom stallions. The phantasmagoria we were leaving and approaching threatened to swallow us as a cave swallows light.

Then the wind’s ammunition changed from sand to rain. At twilight, we raced through a burgeoning storm but stopped at a village to let it catch up. When it did, it was full-grown, and threw us, fully clothed, into a pool. We endured it until I realized hypothermia was a threat with the thirty miles-per-hour winds that stole the heat from our saturated clothes despite the relatively warm temperatures. My body couldn’t retain heat.

So I looked around and saw the obvious. All the Mauritanians were under their blankets. I quickly told Amanda to crawl under the one we were on. She answered with a chattering jaw. With less wind and water and more body heat, I relaxed a little and didn’t care about the blanket’s wet goat smell.

After thirty minutes, the storm passed, but lightning and thunder were closing in on us from all sides. We awaited the impending as a patient awaiting a needle. And it arrived as promised with a third clamoring behind. The third passed, and we sat, waiting for the tracks to dry, I was told. Finally, the train crawled forward about twelve. My short-term memory dumped the last three hours as we progressed. The fourth storm, however, revealed our progress a chimera. About one thirty, we stopped for the night.

The wind and rain were miserable, but our stagnation was torture. We were powerless to escape the storms coming on all sides. We just huddled under the blanket, whining softly with each new storm. During an interlude, I changed clothes, which kept me relatively warm, but I doubted the sunrise after five hours of perdition.

The fifth and sixth storms brought a new problem. Our benefactor, who curled up in his side of the blanket, became our enemy. At some point, while he was snoring, he rolled and took more of the blanket with him. This left me with my right leg exposed to become a waterspout. Amanda tried to win some back, but Mauritanian social mores wouldn’t allow her to get too close to him.

In the drizzle between the fifth and sixth, I left the blanket and tried new places between the lip of the car and the ore. Then after three AM, the sixth storm came, and this time Amanda gave me the inside, which worked well because I could snuggle up to our man. I even greedily tried to pull some of the blanket from him without success.

Around five I think I may have slept for thirty minutes, but my position woke me. The gravel that was much softer became much harder as gravity pushed it against my ribs, hips, and tailbone. And my six-foot frame had to become a turtle in its shell.

At six, I finally left the blanket and descended the train to dry some of my clothes. I walked around in the brisk, desert wind until we started moving at seven.

The night was over, but the rain spat intermittently and the sun didn’t escape the clouds until ten. I stood with other passengers on top of the mound, sending our head wraps to dry in the wind like streamers on a ship’s main mast. The soggy bread we ate for breakfast was discouraging.

Once the sun came out, it reminded us we were still in the Sahara. The clothes that hadn’t dried all morning were dry. The thermal wind created a small blizzard of sand, which covered everything. Within hours, we were sheltering ourselves from the sun rather than the rain.

Before starting at seven, I figured that we’d only traveled half way in twelve hours because the whole trip usually takes twelve. So if we stopped for six, then that’s how much time we had left with the wind, sand, and sun. Nevertheless, I slept most of the time. Amanda became excited when she saw the ocean. I didn’t. We were still on the train. Finally, at two PM, we passed through Nouadhibou and stopped along the main road with desert on one side, ocean on the other.

Part 3

“I spent five years in Spain learning to mend nets,” Ahmed boasted, pointing to a mass of squares and knots. He approached us as we were emerging from the labyrinthine market and stacks of octopus traps, open, black canisters with cement on the side to weigh them down and create an illusory home for an octopus, and anchors near the harbor’s wall. The typical white moor, short and matted black hair, beard and moustache, five feet eight and skinny, we normally would’ve kept walking to avoid the usual ridiculous demands—American Visa, money, our clothes—Ahmed, however, had an excited look that didn’t say ‘give me,’ but ‘I want to meet these people.’ I also thought he could answer some questions.

He took us to his shop, offered us drinks, and told us his history. Besides Spain, he’d never traveled outside of Nouadhibou. But he’d hosted French tourists in the past and enjoyed foreign guests. He then offered us a place to stay and dinner, but we declined. As we were leaving, I asked where we could take pictures. This resulted in a tour of the port.

He took us to the harbor’s edge, as the beach meets the ocean, and showed us the original Spanish buildings, the first European development at the port, the modern European boats docked next to the colorful Mauritanian skiffs. The boats stretched across the harbor, bunched so that I could’ve walked on them across it. Ahmed told us that the large number of boats was due to a government ban on fishing during the breeding season—September through October—because years of unregulated, European fishing had depleted the stocks. Heading away from the harbor, rows of shops extended to the outer wall and then to the police post at the wall’s only opening.

Just off the beach, towards the open water, was a ship graveyard, corpses that were beached, rusted, lost. They rested at various angles in the sand, appearing discontent, even sad, as if they knew their burial wasn’t proper. Time raced. Ahmed asked us back for lunch, but we had to say goodbye and meet Mark for swimming.

That night, the Nouadhibou volunteers, Amanda, and I were relaxing around a table in the walled courtyard of a Chinese bar/restaurant. Oriental lights weaved among trees and skipped across the courtyard to a table where the proprietor and his friends were sitting. Otherwise, the restaurant was empty. Normally a popular stop for Spanish fisherman, the first language in the Chinese bar is Spanish, they’d all left town with the three-month fishing ban.

We were enjoying each others company, Peace Corps gossip and politics, when a moor woman, followed by a twelve to fourteen year old girl, both wearing saggy mulafas, entered the courtyard from the street. The older woman scanned the tables, as if this wasn’t her first visit, and the girl clung to the entranceway, neither in nor out. The older woman’s face was desert-worn and fleshy like her typical white moor body. Her black hair matched her opportunistic eyes. The girl’s features were still innocent of moor traditions and desert abuse. She had a soft, full face and anxious eyes. Her figure was showing the curves of maturity, which she was adopting gracefully. Disrupting the Western setting, they were misplaced puzzle pieces.

The woman approached our table. She greeted us, shaking everyone’s hand, which is usually inappropriate in moor society. Men and women that aren’t family shouldn’t touch, especially during Ramadan of which we were in the first week. She continued to greet us, trying to determine exactly what we were by switching between fragmented French and Spanish. Among the flurry, John asked her how she was with the heat, a common greeting, to which she responded, “May God shorten your life, you bandit,” and threw a match at him. A playful response insinuating a connotation of heat that John didn’t intend.

The greeting dragged on, as if she was waiting for us to respond to a presupposed question. Finally, she dropped her ingratiating act and asked us to buy her a beer. I let the others politely refuse, and watched the girl. Backed against the wall, she’d crossed her arms and her face. She was pinching back tears, trying not to watch. When I returned to the woman, Mark was telling her, “We’ll buy you a beer next time.” She reminded him before leaving that God heard his promise.

With that she tried the other table while the girl stayed behind. They welcomed her, and she sat down and started smoking, which is discouraged for women and forbidden during Ramadan. Shortly after, she called the girl over and introduced her. We were still speculating about what was going on when the waiter brought her a beer. Mark was just assuring us they wouldn’t, as it is illegal to sell alcohol to Mauritanians, so we were shocked when they did.

About that time, a puppy came from behind a curtain near our table, and our attention and conversation shifted to it. When it returned to the curtain, I noticed the girl was gone too. Looking around the courtyard, one of the men was missing as well. Erin, who was sitting on the opposite side of the table from the puppy, said they’d left together five minutes before. Fifteen minutes later, one followed the other from inside the restaurant. She sat next to the woman, who gave her a cigarette, and the man returned to his place on the far side of the table. Once she finished the cigarette, they walked out the door, saying as they passed us, “We leave you with God.”

* * * *

“This is where people embark for the Cannaries,” our driver indicated, “They pile, like animals, into skiffs early in the morning and aim for the Islands.” He pointed to the tracks leaving the dirt road over a hill to the Atlantic. Andy Deer, a volunteer near Boghe, and I joked at one point about making the illegal trip when we finished our service, but now I preferred our current destination, the first after the train, Cap Blanc, the peninsula’s terminus and a hangnail from the borders of Mauritania and Western Sahara.

We stopped at a dilapidated lighthouse. It looked scared, sitting between expanses, the Atlantic and Sahara, that swallow its warning. The cliff raising the lighthouse dropped to a beach that dwindled to an apparition, a beached ship. Guadalupe, the Spanish saint reincarnate, guarded the triangular point against the Unnamed. Only the repulsed waves proved she occupied the space, and a rust color on her stern, formerly white, stained by sand blown from the cliffs, was the only hint of her age. Naked on the sand, she ignored my presence as if I was a fly and she was posing for a still life against the ocean.

I decided to explore between the black surf rocks and malted milk cliffs while Amanda remained on higher ground. From the beach, the cliffs exhibited contrasting attitudes: Sharp corners chipped by coarse wind, and smooth faces, convex and concave, sanded by the same. Down the western side, strawberry veins layered the milky white. Below it, retreating waves played and gurgled in rock crevices and pockets.

Eventually, I came to a small cave. Neon algae colored the entrance and faded as the cave entered the shade under the cliff. Waves rimmed the cove, running into the cave, before reaching a break where the water escapes to the back wall. The violence with which the waves crashed into the walls shot water into the air, white foam against the black rocks. Each wave came with a different personality and angle, and thus the surprise of a fourth of July display. As a result, I often misjudged the waves and found myself wet.

The scene, however, only partly satisfied. I needed another pair of eyes to confirm my wonder. As much as I enjoy solitude and nature, knowing that another is enjoying the experience as I am presses the pencil twice as hard. The feeling leaves twice as much behind. I could only take pictures to prove I’d been there.

Then, I turned back, up the cliff, and followed it along the western side where the sliver of beach disappears. As I walked, I turned from the waves hammering the cliffs and realized the cliffs were the desert. The Atlantic and the Sahara—massive, harsh, and inhospitable. The same picture, the same artist but drawn with opposite hands. I imagined a thirsty wanderer surviving the Sahara to reach the Atlantic, endless water that he couldn’t drink, and decided neither wanted me there.

We took the hint and returned to the shelter of Mark’s apartment. It’s amenities defy it’s inhospitable setting. Tile floors, refrigerator, a shower with hot and cold water, a real toilet, couches, and satellite TV quickly made me forget I was unwanted. More importantly, Mark is generous with his luxuries, having sheltered many unwanted volunteers in three years. Once in Mark’s hands, the trip became easier. Good restaurants, swimming, snooker, and good conversation with him and the other Nouadhibou volunteers filled our time.

I felt as if we were eating our tail, back to where we started in the open arms of friends, saved from enemies. Yet this wasn’t accurate because people helped us the entire trip. And while some people take advantage of others vulnerability, we all rely on each other to survive nature, which is oblivious to our existence. Without others, humans would never have risked the leviathans or mirages that often led to our greatest discoveries.

Sleep brought our last night, and our alarum took it away. Nouakchott taxi drivers swarmed our city taxi trying to grab our bags, fighting for our money. Finally, we had seats next to a young man with a pockmarked face and wandering teeth, who said he didn’t speak much Hassaniya or French but some English. He was Polisario and gregarious. He told me all about his plans to create an off road race through the Western Sahara and Northern Mauritania. At that moment, however, he was going to Akjoujit to find work. He didn’t know anyone there, so we disappointed him when he learned that we weren’t going his way. Between his phone, his only possession that I could see, the driver, who he argued with constantly about the fairness of doing favors at the expense of others, and us, he monopolized the car. Through all his talk, I learned that he actually didn’t have any family. His parents were dead and his brother didn’t want anything to do with him. He was alone. The driver dropped him and his phone off at a main roundabout in Nouakchott. As I watched him thumb a ride, I looked forward to the hotel rooms waiting for us, arranged by Peace Corps.

She’s sitting in the DMV with mother and father. Her mind’s running between the banal lessons of drivers’ training and the excitement of chauffeuring her friends next Saturday night. Her new freedom her worries her parents. Before the test, their thoughts, child’s and parents’, converge on a shared concern: What car will she drive?

The question is a headache. Should the parents buy the car and pay the insurance? Should she? Should they split the costs, one buy the car and the other pay the insurance? What kind of car? New, used, junkyard bound? Lumina, Mini, 300M, or Landcruiser? Expense, safety, looks, reliability, what’s the most important for the parents, the child? Who should be happy? What message does each choice send? Does requiring her to pay all expenses express love or parsimony? Encourage self-sufficiency or disdain? Does a Volkswagen Rabbit encourage recklessness or responsibility? The only certainty—time will judge the parents’ decision and the child’s maturity.

Compelled by suffering of the poor and the comforts of the rich, the developed world feels a parental responsibility to guide developing countries to maturity. The decisions are as complex as those parents face when their child turns sixteen. The risks and rewards are as dramatic. Failure wastes time and money, but success would solve one of humankind’s greatest conundrums.

Unfortunately, there is no precedent. We have to invent and fabricate with what we have and encounter. And there’s a crowd that wants to join this grand experiment. Celebrities and the traditional players, the IMF, World Bank, UN, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have made development work chic without always understanding what they’re promoting. From Live Aid for debt relief to lifting war orphans into Hollywood decadence to monetarily rewarding presidents for good governance, this multi-partied effort has led to fractured, misguided solutions. William Easterly, formerly of the World Bank, comments in The Elusive Quest for Growth that economists have tried for years to find

the key that would enable the poor tropics to become rich . . . from foreign aid to investment in machines, from fostering education to controlling population growth, from giving loans conditional on reforms to giving debt relief conditional on reforms. None has delivered as promised. (xi)

The developed world has failed thus far to drastically improve the developing world’s situation. In some cases, the aid has even hindered development by creating dependency. The problems facing the developing world are more complicated than experts thought. And the easy solution, money, doesn’t hold the power that the developed countries believe. Time is the only certainty for change. Change happens at the developing world’s pace.

Mauritania is a great example of our attempts at development to date. A former French colony with French imagined borders, the country has changed very little since independence in 1960. Ethnic violence, which led to war with Senegal in 1989, two droughts, and a series of dictators have setback the country despite international aid, averaging 23 percent of the country’s GDP per year between 1982 and 1989, according to Easterly (107).

Almost fifty years of independence has amounted to five paved roads, electricity and running water in most cities, the most expensive prices in West Africa, cellular phones, and DSL in a few cities. Mauritania, however, is not a poor country. For years, Europe has enjoyed the rich fishing waters off the Northern coast, and the US, the North’s iron and gold rich desert. And now, the Australians are helping Mauritania to feed the world’s oil appetite.

Despite these natural resources, the daily life of most Mauritanians hasn’t improved. The country imports most of its food while arable land in the South remains unused. Industry is almost non-existent. Most goods come from Senegal and China. The lack of roads discourages trade between villages and increases ticket prices. A ticket from Kankossa to Kiffa, seventy-five kilometers of 4WD terrain, costs 2500 Ouguiya while a ticket from Kiffa to Nouakchott, about six hundred kilometers of paved road, costs 5000 Ouguiya.

Where does the money go? Walk through the richest section of the capital, Nouakchott, and the answer is easy. Corruption has eaten most of Mauritania’s wealth. According to Mark Huband of the Financial Times, the government privatized the country’s industry to four oligarchs, which also own all the banks. The IMF recently put the new regime on probation, threatening to withhold debt relief if they didn’t open their financial records and increase transparency. I see food aid marked, “USAID WHEAT: Not for exchange or resale” in friends’ stores for sale. The new government and the Australian oil company, Woodside, recently renegotiated a lopsided contract that had given the majority share to Woodside. The former Oil Minister is now in jail.

The developed world, however, is doing little to help their aid organizations. Despite outward concern, developed countries prop-up these corrupt regimes. The United States backed the former Mauritanian dictator, Maaoya, in exchange for support of the War on Terror and the Israeli state. China has recently promenaded through Africa negotiating energy contracts with its most notorious dictators. Western influence is adding to problems in the oil rich Niger delta region of Nigeria. Convenience seems to be the developed world’s policy.

Locally, where NGOs provide much of the aid, the problem telescopes. Ikem Osodi, in Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe, argues, “Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged” (155). Often aid justifies the wealth of the giver more than it helps its recipients. This has resulted in reckless spending and little accountability because people give passively without concern for how the organizations use the money. They just want to feel they’re helping.

NGOs in the Assaba (my region) are prime examples. A good friend of mine who translates for a local NGO, told me about past projects that built schools in areas without teachers and hospitals, fully stocked, without people to run them. He claims that in these cases the NGO knew about the deficiencies. In Kankossa, an NGO recently built two, white-tiled, covered markets for local women’s cooperatives, which stand empty because they lack secure storage space. The NGO apparently failed to do their research. South of Kankossa, in Agmamine, a local NGO gave a cooperative a solar pump for their well. The pump itself is a great help, but I wonder what will happen when it breaks, as solar panels have a short lifespan. Who has the knowledge to fix it? Who will buy the expensive parts? Perhaps the NGO will monitor the pump, but I have seen little evidence of the follow-up with other projects.

These blunders reflect a common attitude that monetary band-aids solve the poors’ problems. Many of the NGOs equate money spent with people helped. Often they don’t research or follow-up on projects and congratulate each other when the budget’s spent. The problem is more complicated than negligence. It often originates at the top, in Europe or North America. The myopic money spent = success tautology pressures the local chapters to spend the money budgeted for them whether there is need or a viable project. If they don’t spend the money, it might be sent elsewhere the next year. In this way, NGOs practice self-deception.

In NGOs’ defense, every community, like every child, is different, which makes assessing their needs difficult, and communities are often willing to help NGOs deceive themselves, which compounds the problem. I witnessed the spectrum of possibilities while traveling to villages near Kankossa for Cereamine trainings with my good friend, Mohamed Lemine.

Agmamine was the first village we visited. It sits between an invading dune and a rainy season lake. The expanse of sand between the dune and the lake, blown in from the dune, stretches the sky and miniaturizes the village’s mud houses. Home of another Peace Corps volunteer (PCV), I had many opportunities to visit the village, and the imbalance between aid and impact has always struck me.

The cooperative garden, just across the sand bed, is the aid centerpiece of the village. The cooperative has a membership of seventy to eighty women, representing most of the village. The garden’s size corresponds to the sizable membership. A recent addition, a local NGO financed its construction, including fencing, multiple wells, and a solar pump lacking a water basin. The NGO also financed a multi-strand barbed-wire fence along the lake to prevent animals from invading the fields on the other side. And this year, the PCV organized and financed, with a twenty-five percent contribution from the cooperative, the beginnings of a fruit orchard. This involved doubling the garden’s current size, constructing another well with a basin, and purchasing a hundred seedlings.

Agmamine has received other aid as well. The Chinese constructed a beautiful well just outside the garden. This year, UNICEF donated fencing to the primary school. A PCV in the 1990s helped construct a chicken house in the village. There’s also a foot pump well, on the village’s edge. As a side-project to the orchard, the current PCV also helped finance a well and fencing to start a tree nursery for a local farmer, and a barbwire fenced woodlot for another. Each contributed twenty-five percent of the cost.

Unfortunately, the aid’s impact has been minimal. When we visited toward the end of the gardening season, the cooperative garden was barren except for prickly-pear cacti lining the front fence, which the PCV planted last year.

The solar pump sports a new basin after two previous attempts to build it. The first was made when the NGO financed the original well. They gave money to the cooperative to build it, but the money disappeared. After finishing the new well for the orchard this year, the PCV gave the cooperative president a leftover bag of cement and 11,000 Ouguiya to build the basin, but they also disappeared. When the PCV asked members of the cooperative where the money and cement went, they said the president had them. They wouldn’t retrieve them in order to keep the peace. Finally, another branch of the same NGO came back and built the basin.

Behind the garden, the barbedwire fence protecting the fields from animals has fallen because people insisted on going between the strands rather than around. People also destroyed the brand new fence around the orchard by climbing over it, instead of going through the door, to get to the well. As a result, goats jumped the fence and ate most of the trees. Since, the trees are surviving because of a good rainy season and the women fixed the fence; however, the trees’ chances during the hot season are bleak.

Years ago, adults in the village allowed children to throw trash in the Chinese well because the water was salty. When the PCV went around to families this year to collect money for gasoline to empty the well and remove the debris, people refused. A thousand Ouguiya divided between the village families, very little per family, was too much for a closer water source. The chicken house has vanished.

The next week we visited Kellebelli, which has received little aid. The village, southeast of Kankossa, sits on a dune, split by a dry riverbed. It extends for a few kilometers along the dune with small, fenced gardens and date palms sprinkled in the riverbed.

After the Cereamine training, Mohamed Lemine and the cooperative president took me to see their three gardens, each a fraction of Agmamine’s. A mix of chain linked fence, donated by a rich relative, and thorns guarded them against goats. Each had a hand dug, seasonal well, similar to a hole dug to the water line on a sandy beach, which they used for both watering the garden and drinking. They, however, had vegetables.

As we walked between gardens, Med Lemine told me that Kellebelli has received little aid. I didn’t see any large, fenced areas or barbed-wire rows. The only aid I’ve heard about Kellebelli receiving came from a PCV who introduced the Moringa tree, whose leaves are vitamin rich. They’ve had to rely on their own resources for survival, and done well without aid.

The next village we visited, Hamoud, touches the Malian border on a bed of rock with a seasonal river to the south. With a house for the Prefect, a clinic, and a police stop, Hamoud is the largest of the three. Because of its size, it has received some aid; however, the aid groups did a poor job of administering it.

Once again, after the training, Med Lemine and our host took me to view the gardens. As in Agmamine, there was nothing growing. They told me, however, that they had no water. The inch of water at the bottom of the only well in the village attested to this. Our host told me women visited it at all hours to supply their families with water. I’ve since heard that an NGO is digging a new one.

Down the riverbank from the overstretched well, are the remnants of another well filled with dirt. Our host told me it was a Chinese well, the same project as the well in Agmamine. Apparently it worked well for a time; however, they built it too close to the seasonal river. When the rainy season came, the river covered it, filled it with mud, and washed away the basin. Similarly, the Japanese built a foot pump well that never worked properly. All this aid has amounted to poverty.

Unfortunately, these failure stories are only local to my region, which suggests they would multiply across the country. But a few success stories come out of my region too.

The first, the Traore family, is well-known in the area for their garden. They cultivate a one hundred and sixty square meter plot three times a year and a one hundred and twenty square meter plot once during the rainy season. They produce a variety of vegetables and fruit, which they eat and sell, along with seedlings and seeds. Yahya, a retired veterinarian and the patriarch, prepares the soil and plants the seeds while the other family members help to water and harvest. Yahya claims they were the first to garden in Kankossa, which now has gardens lining the perennial lake.

Their gardens, however, wouldn’t be the same without external aid. His fencing came from a US embassy grant, which provided much of the fencing in Kankossa, and another aid organization, FLM. They have two motor pumps, and at one time they had three, all of which were donated. Often he receives free seeds from the Mauritanian government or a local NGO. And recently, he built a new well in his smaller garden with the help of Peace Corps. In Kankossa, he’s the first stop for aid organizations.

The second stop is Mohamed Lemine, whom I’ve mentioned. He’s a tailor in the market in the morning, and then a farmer in his fields and garden in the evening. As a farmer, he’s not as accomplished as Yahya, but he’s more creative and ambitious. He has one garden, two Moringa tree lots, and fields for peanuts, beans, corn, and occasionally rice. He also tends a small palmerie and two Senegalese turkeys.

From the trees, he makes Moringa powder and soap. He experiments with breadmaking, and produces Cereamine, new multigrain flour. His social conscience, however, sets him above most. He’s volunteered for vaccination tours and at the school canteen and speaks two black African languages, which is rare for a white moor. Med Lemine believes that ideas trump money.

While difficult to compare, I believe aid has benefited him more than Yahya. His sewing machine came from a local NGO. The fencing for his garden and fields, as well as, a drying hut, a covered pavilion, and storage came from the same NGO because of his commitment to Moringa. According to him, Peace Corps volunteers taught him how to garden and gave him the recipes for Moringa soap and Cereamine. Much of his livelihood started with aid.

With all of the aid failure in Agmamine, Issa ould Baba is an exception. Young and open-minded, the Agmamine PCV discovered him during his service and immediately recognized his work ethic. He has a large garden, fields, Moringa trees, a tree nursery, and a date palmerie. He also receives some help from his family. Otherwise, his profession is farming. He even sleeps in his fields during the harvest to discourage animals.

This year, the PCV helped him to double his garden’s size with barbedwire and dig a new well. He also started a tree nursery and a small fruit orchard. While he’s still establishing himself, Issa has quietly taken advantage of aid and ideas, which will hopefully profit him.

Their success is not from what they’ve received but who they are. All these men and families share five traits that attract aid. First, they’re self-motivated. They’d be successful without aid. Next they’re hard workers. They consistently out perform, outwork, others in the area. Third, they are open to new ideas. They’ll try new methods and techniques. This contributes to their ability to market themselves. They are proud of their work. They want to show it off and tell people about it. And finally, when they receive aid, whether ideas, equipment, or money, they use it judiciously. They continue to work hard and improve their situation. In these cases, aid empowers rather than supports its recipients.

This, perhaps, is counterintuitive. Aiding the successful, however, is reward good behavior, which encourages others to adopt those behaviors. The community might be jealous of these people but few question their work ethic. They just want to find aid for themselves. As Yahya claims, everyone copied him, and now people are comparing their gardens to Med Lemine’s, who a few years ago, “just threw seeds on the ground.”

I mention these success stories to argue that aid and development work are worthwhile when administered with knowledge and care. Just as parents should consider the questions I posed when buying their child a car, governments, NGOs, and volunteers should understand the traditions, culture, social and economic dynamics, and the history of those they’re trying to help.

Even when development workers consider all factors, success is uncertain. As the parents’ decision about their child’s car, time will judge their decisions. Children and developing nations must mature on their own; changes will happen from within.

Change will emerge from four sources. The first is government. Africa has a lot of rich dictators. They treat themselves, family, and friends with money their countries desperately need. The officials under them follow their lead down to the police guarding checkpoints. Corruption starts and will have to end at the top.

The second is Africans in diaspora. More and more Africans are finding opportunities to study and work in the West. They often send much of their earnings back to their families, which they can apply to their specific needs. A Mauritanian PCV is studying the effects that members of his Sonike village living in France are having on daily life in the village. This particular ethnic group is known for benefiting from overseas money evidenced by their solar panels and motor pumps. According to him, money from family members contributes more directly to what people need than outside aid.

Sending money from abroad is great, but returning from abroad with ideas is better. Africans, who have lived abroad, have seen what good governance and hard work offer. They have seen that trash collection works, that technology makes life easier, and that Western medicine is lifesaving. They’ve experienced reality, rather than just magazine photos, and hopefully have an idea how such systems work. Accompanied by a passion for their country, they can make changes. The current Liberian president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard grad and former World Bank member, has such visions for change.

Finally, change will happen over time, as new generations replace the old; new ideas oust old ones. People are weary of change. They relate habits to identity. New ways of living aren’t only a change in government, they’re a change in mindset. In the US, we see this with the internet. My grandparents Allen have a computer but refuse to venture onto the internet. All of their children, however, use it. Similarly, a professor friend of mine will read this essay as a printout made by students who check his email for him since he’s not interested in it. What we need in the developed world is more patience not money. Time is the only certainty for change.

Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah. Nairobii: Heinemann, 1987.

Easterly, William. Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. This book is full of real research and does a much better job presenting a similar argument than I. It’s also a relatively easy read.

Huband, Mark. “Building on solid ground.” Financial Times. Dec. 4, 1998.

*Much of my information is a product of memory, either mine or another’s. Consequently, some of the information is probably inaccurate. In any case, I don’t believe it would discredit my argument.

So I’ve taken to eating road kill and peanut butter straight from the jar since returning to Kankossa. Both were treats. One afternoon last week, Molly McCollum (one of the volunteers in Kankossa before me) and I went over to the Traore’s (our host family) house for lunch and found a large plate of fowl. I’ve eaten bird only a few times at Yahya’s house, so we asked him about the occasion. He said that a car ran over their lone duck the night before—ran

over its leg.

This was the duck that had developed a routine with Yahya. Every night it would sit at the edge of our mat for a dinner handout. And every night Yahya would shoo the bird, irritated by it’s hovering. Then just as the duck backed back off, he would throw it a handful of couscous from the bowl. Thankfully, however, we found out later that the delicious bird we ate wasn’t actually our nightly entertainment but one of the guinea fowl they raise.

I’ve spent a week and a half in Kankossa since I came back from the US. I also spent a week between Nouakchott and Kaedi, the training site. Stepping down from Nouakchott to Kaedi to Kiffa to Kankossa allowed me to wean myself from luxury slowly.

Returning to Kaedi was the highlight. Since leaving the place, I’ve always remembered it with a hint of hot, wet garbage. My three months there were my most uncomfortable. The place had beaten me down so that I lived in a haze of social dysfunction and intimidation. I got along. I wasn’t completely miserable, but I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t establish any of the habits or comforts that made my life predictable in the US. Both the people and the place made things difficult for me.

The second time around, the tiger had shrunk to a house cat. The primary difference was language. I actually understood most of what was going on around me. I could engage people rather than back away. I visited my host family and understood almost everything they said to me. This new Kaedi helped me to measure the distance I’d traveled in a year.

I observed this further at the training center. My purpose for the trip was to present a technical session and help facilitate others for the new education trainees. This was a time machine. I saw myself as I was a year ago using older eyes. This gave me the chance to brighten some dark spots on the maps of their service unfolding before them. I passed along some of what I’d learned, giving them the chance to start in a better position than I did. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished.

And this is important because my vacation to the US reminded me of what I left, my home. Family, friends, gorgeous scenery. My brother’s wedding brought together much of my family, spread all over the country. Many people traveled long distances and spent lots of money to attend the event. Grandparents and aunt Mary came from Florida, aunt Judy from Indiana and aunt Kathy from Michigan, aunt Jane and uncle David from Oklahoma, aunt Martha from Tennessee, cousins Seth and Kirk from Ohio, Ana from Michigan, and Lena from Illinois, our brother Trey from Louisiana. Many others from Missouri. It was really a wonderful event created by wonderful people, my brother and Christy.

After the wedding, I toured seventy-five miles of central Missouri following the Missouri River on bikes with my best friend, Shane Andrews. The Katy trail, built on an old railroad bed, runs through railroad towns that have since shrunk to nothing, leaving many of the old building and railroad structures intact. Since the close of the railroad, trees lining the trail have grown over it to create a tunnel of vibrant green. Bluffs line parts of the trail and information signs point out the route Lewis and Clark took west.

I have pictures of more interesting parts of the trail, as well as other new pictures and old group emails, on my new livejournal: http://www.exumbris.livejournal.com. Some of the highlights were the Rocheport railroad tunnel, blasted through a mountain and completed in two distinct sections. Half of it is raw rock and the other plastered with cement. Another is a springhouse just outside of Rocheport. Built around a spring, people used the cold water as a refrigerator. Further down the trail are some old pictoglyphs on a tall bluff overlooking the river, which Native Americans used to designate a fresh water source. Shane also showed me an intact engine roundhouse in Franklin, Missouri, which the railroad used to turn their engines around.

From the Katy trail, I spent a week in Branson with my grandparents from Florida. The next week Shane and I hiked the Upper most part of the Buffalo River in Arkansas (picture on my website). On the fourth of July, we floated the Elk River in West Missouri. The next week, we hiked in Springfield, Missouri with Jackie and Terry, friends from OG, floated the Spring River in Eastern Missouri and Arkansas, and spent a day at Mammoth Springs, Arkansas where we ate at a wonderful German restaurant. Stopped at Grand Gulf, a collapsed cave with an enormous natural bridge in Thayer, Missouri (also on my website). From there, we went back to the Buffalo River and searched unsuccessfully for original log cabins in the area. Back to Branson. Saw more friends, but not all that I wanted. Went back to Lawrence and stayed with Bryan and Christy before flying out the next day.

I’m sure most of these places and people are unfamiliar or mean nothing to many of you. But the point is that I had a great time. I had little trouble forgetting Mauritania. In fact, it was like a repressed memory. I couldn’t remember things I wanted to. Airtravel allowed me leave one culture and arrive in an antithetical one in one day. I doubt landing on the moon would be much different. I didn’t really experience culture shock; I hadn’t forgotten what Ben and Jerry’s tastes like. The noise didn’t overwhelm me; car horns have nothing on donkeys at midnight. I felt like I slid in as if I’d never left.

But there was a difference. Everything had a different sheen. I decided that I was viewing what was once my culture as an outsider. I was oblivious to many of the details that tended to clog my life in the US. This struck me immediately my first day back. I was at the post office in Lawrence, at the ‘out of town’ slot, trying to mail all of the letters I brought back from Mauritania, about thirty. And it took me a minute to figure out how many I could fit in the slot. While I was experimenting, an older lady came in behind me with a letter of her own. I reduced my stack by half, and then by two or three still with no success before I noticed the woman was a little impatient. She didn’t say anything but looked fidgety. I couldn’t help smiling at both my difficulties and the lady’s impatience. I stepped aside and let the lady mail her letter, and then tried to think of a reason why she was in such a hurry. Just a few more seconds and I would have had all my letters in the slot. Apparently these were precious seconds taken by some life detail that I didn’t see.

I’m impatient too. I don’t wait in lines; I come back later. I want things when I want them. And this hasn’t changed. I tolerate waiting better than I did because waiting is life for most in Mauritania, but this wasn’t the difference I felt in Lawrence. I simply didn’t have details bothering me that would put me in such a hurry. I didn’t have a movie time to make; I didn’t even know what was playing. I didn’t have a job to go to. I didn’t care if it was illegal to jaywalk. These were details I didn’t worry about. I wasn’t apart of this culture at this point. I could view things with a curiosity that I wouldn’t have paid attention to before.

I realized, however, that these details are what establish one’s life in a place. And this is why I really had little interest to stay longer than a month. I didn’t have a job, a house, a wife or kids, involvement in local society. I guess these are what people call roots. Family and friends aren’t roots in the US anymore. They don’t keep you in one place. They are branches. Most people search to make themselves better; fill out their canopy. Perhaps I’ll deepen my roots later. Good or bad? That’s probably a bad question. It’s our situation now. We’re not as dependent on our families for survival as people were in the past or are now in Mauritania.

That’s why I appreciate my family and friends. I can go back to Branson and feel loved without having a life there. This isn’t the case with other places where I’ve spent significant amounts of time. I loved the year I spent in England, but I would have a hard time locating many people there. Even in Liberty, my college town, people spread so quickly after graduation that the only people I’d find are the professors.

In Mauritania, however, I have roots right now. I have a job. I have a community in which I’m involved, and these are the reasons I didn’t consider staying in the air conditioning.

Education Quarterly Report

Peace Corps Mauritania

Name: Jeremy Miller Date: 02 July, 2006

School(s): Lycee de Kankossa

Classes and levels taught Total # of students # of boys # of girls # passing

4eme A 27 12 15 5

4eme C 15 11 4 8

4eme D 41 21 21 7

5eme C 11 8 3 7

5eme D 29 17 12 11

6eme D 21 15 6 1

OUTSIDE THE BOXES…

Extra-curricular Activities:

Ceramine:

The last week in April, Maddie England, Caleb Judy, and I conducted a second Ceramine training with our lead cooperative in Kankossa. Since that training, the head of the cooperative, Mohammed Lemine, and I have disseminated it cooperatives in Agmamine, Kellabelli, and Hamoud.

We traveled to each village the night before to prepare the cooperatives for the training. The next morning, we started about eight and finished before twelve. For Agmamine and Kellabelli, which are about seven kilometers from Kankossa and don’t have local grinders, we returned to Kankossa in the early evening. A cooperative member, then, accompanied the mixed grains to Kankossa the next morning where she met Med Lemine to grind them. In Hamoud, which is about thirty-five kilometers from Kankossa, we ground the grains at a local grinder and caught a truck back to Kankossa the next morning. In order to complete the project, Med Lemine will train two other cooperatives, one in Wulingel and Kankossa. Unfortunately I will be absent for these trainings.

My absence from the trainings, however, shouldn’t dilute their potency, as Med Lemine is the star. While I give the project an American/Peace Corps face and an extra set of hands, Med Lemine provides the enthusiasm and direction. He totes Ceramine with a conviction that he derives from his penchant for sustainable ideas and his general concern for those poorer than himself. He sells the idea with greater conviction and authenticity as a Mauritanian than any outsider could, and his connections within these communities have made communication and visits effortless. With him at the head, these trainings are truly Mauritanian generated; Mauritanians working to help other Mauritanians. Identifying and empowering Med Lemine as a vehicle for Ceramine has been a success in its own right.

Kankossa Fruit Tree Project:

Early in the quarter, the project experienced frustrating delays. First, my counterpart, Younis Traore, who works for World Vision, and I had difficulty finding conjoining days off from work to open the project account and withdraw money from the bank in Kiffa. Next, we had to wait for our well diggers, relatives of the Traore family who live in Selebabi, to finish a project there before traveling to Kankossa. Consequently, they didn’t start the well until the first week in June, a week before I left for Noukchott to fly to the United States. Initially this caused some worry for me; however, the well diggers worked professionally and diligently with help from the family. As a result, I feel very confident that the project will end successfully in my absence.

Atar Trash Pick-up and Marathon:

In early April after second term exams, I traveled to Atar to participate in the trash pick-up. Around thirty other volunteers and I worked in conjunction with the local government and workers at cleaning up roadsides through and around the market. In general the local population appreciated our efforts and even joined us at times.

Lesson Plans:

I typed two lesson plans for a potential revision of Lesson Plans that Work on the Unreal Conditional and Relative Pronouns. Both subjects are absent from the current version.

Teachers and You:

As this term progressed, I found myself spending less time with teachers at school because of the heat. Instead I spent more time at their houses. These visits, however, were for pleasure rather than work. I had only a few instances when I actually discussed work. In one case, my counterpart who taught the other sixth year class, 6A, and I collaborated on the final BAC Blanc in order to give the same exam, which he thought important.

In another case, the same teacher attended two of my sixth year classes that I held for both tracks (6A, 6D) since he had finished the program with his class. Initially, many of the students from his class attended, but because of unavoidable circumstances an Arabic teacher had to use the block for his 6A class. Occasionally, a few students from his class would come for thirty minutes before the Arabic teacher arrived.

We also decided to end the adult class for the year because of the heat and schedule changes at school. I feel that this is indicative of their interest. The students want to learn English, but they don’t put in the time to do so. If they want to continue the class next year, I will be happy to, but they will need to come to me. I did find a pen pal for one of my adult students.

School Resources:

No change. I continue to lend books and magazines to students in my adult class.

Communities:

No change. My plans for restocking the infirmary are stagnant as is construction on the new school buildings, which are necessary before we can reestablish the infirmary. I will leave the list of medicine with one of the PCMOs before I return to the United States with the hope that she can pare down the list to the essentials and perhaps provide prices.

I did attend the school-league soccer championship between 2nd and 3rd year with many of my colleagues and students. Everyone was happy to see me, and I believe it solidified my position among the teachers in the students’ eyes. Unfortunately, adults from the community didn’t attend.

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE…

Contact with students:

The relationship between my students and me continued on its rocking-horse trend. Some days went well and others saw as many disciplinary problems as I’ve had all year. I believe these problems string from multiple sources: some students view me as a friend rather than the teacher, the heat during afternoon classes, the proximity of summer vacation. Some of my more intelligent students also would become impatient and consult other students when they didn’t understand the lesson immediately. I had trouble encouraging patience in the students, which made lessons more difficult for everyone.

Despite these difficulties, I am proud that the students who attended class regularly understood the challenging concepts I taught, which built upon knowledge from previous lessons. Many students performed laudably on their final exams, which I considered to be the year’s most difficult. My goal for the exams was to find a median that would allow average students who studied and attended class to pass yet also challenge the strong students. Consequently, the range of grades encompassed all possible scores; however, the lower end far outweighed the higher end suggesting a general decline.

I attribute this decline to poor attendance. While I can improve as a teacher, any improvements I make are moot if there aren’t students to teach. The most telling statistic is that the number of students that completed half of the homework I assigned closely corresponded to the number that passed the class. Beyond checking comprehension, homework also served as a reward for attendance. Obviously, then, success is bound to attendance. Those who attend seem to be excited to learn.

The administration did make an attempt to encourage attendance by starting school an hour earlier to avoid some of the heat. This, however, was only an attempt. They didn’t actually enforce an attendance policy and left the secondary subjects until later in the day, which gave students an excuse to leave early because of the subjects’ low coefficient. The administration’s complacency suggests their attitude which trickles down to teachers and students towards their jobs in general.

I feel badly for the students who put more effort into their education than many of the teachers and administrators.

Contact with Peace Corps:

Scott never informed me that my SPA application was approved. I didn’t learn about its approval until the money was in the bank, three months after I applied. The system shouldn’t have these problems and should be improved next year.

Contact with yourself:

What is your overall sense of yourself as an English teacher?

I continue to improve. During this quarter, my success teaching complicated concepts encouraged me to challenge students further, and many kept up with me. I continued to give homework to substitute for smaller exams. I also tried to introduce the essay at all levels to give them an early start on preparing for the BAC. In my 6th year class, students were very weak in that area. I also started to introduce different question types that they might see on the BAC.

Discipline is the primary area where I need improvement. I believe that if I can get a handle on this, everything else with fit together. My primary problem is that I like my students. Most of them are good kids. As a result I tend to give them more wiggle room than I should, and they take advantage of this. In order to curtail this, I am considering a rule that requires them to speak only English. I’m not sure if I have the will to enforce this, but I certainly need to change my approach.

Next year, I also intend on taking copybooks, which I didn’t do this year, to give students other chances to earn points, although it seemed that only the poor students cared that I didn’t take copybooks this year.

I also felt that there were a few students I didn’t give enough attention to. They are the slower learners who seemed to put in the effort. I simply went too fast for them. I think that the solution for this is to offer an hour on Saturday to help them with difficulties rather than slow down the class. If nothing else, this will relieve my conscience.

Along the same strand, I would like to start an English club to give more attention to the good students. I often felt awkward talking to them out of class because I wanted to retain the student-teacher relationship. Starting a club will allow me to maneuver within the interstice more easily.

What did you learn technically or culturally in the past three months that would help others?

Simply making conversation is the easiest way to improve language. I did a French course this quarter, but I was too busy and the weather was too hot to put a lot of time into the course. Most of my improvement came from special efforts to make conversation. I found this approach better than dripping sweat while looking over a list of vocabulary words. I hope to concentrate on the language more when the weather cools.

FINALLY…

Write your ACTION PLAN for next quarter.

What do you hope to achieve, where do you wish to accomplish it, and what do you need to get it done?

The next quarter will commence in the United States during a vacation to attend my brother’s wedding. The rest of the break from school will revolve around many floating possibilities. I will wrap-up the well project paperwork, present a session for Stage, and contribute to the new edition of Lesson Plans that Work. I also hope to welcome the trainees to Kankossa for site visit and placement.