Yesterday we got some terrible news. Because of classified security reasons, Peace Corps will be suspending the Mauritania program indefinitely. What that basically means is it will be off-limits to all PCVs for at least 3 months, and we have several options. I'm not sure exactly what they are yet, since I'm in France and getting all of this info through phone calls and texts, but what I do know is that Peace Corps will fly me home from France on the 18th. What happens next is up in the air. I'm really, really hoping to finish my service in another country (Senegal, Mali and Niger all really want us because they know how badass we are), but that depends on a lot of factors (timing, placement, if John and I could be together, etc). I should know within a few days--we all need to decide by Friday. Needless to say there has been a lot of heartbreak and a lot of tears.

I want to say that I have nothing but thanks and warm thoughts for the staff of PC RIM. They have gotten us through so much in the last few months, and I don't envy what they've had to deal with. They have been so accessible to us and so kind, and I hope they all know how much that means to us. They love this country and this program, and I know we're all together in hoping that this is not the permanent end for PC RIM. I've also heard that the director of Peace Corps flew to Senegal to tell the volunteers in person, and I know that was deeply appreciated.

Also, please, please don't think of this as a reflection of Mauritanians. They are some of the kindest, most welcoming people I have ever met, and the vast majority want us there and have taken excellent care of us for the past year. (and only in RIM would a suicide bomber only kill himself and mildly wound 2 others while not even doing damage to the building). I respect and understand Peace Corps' decision, but the giant sandbox of a country that I have come to love is so much more than the problems we read about in the news.

I'll keep this updated as I figure out what I'm doing, but to any RIM PCVs who might be bored enough to read this, it has been so wonderful serving with you. I love you guys. And (more likely) if the families of my friends and sitemates read this, thank you for giving me the chance to know your children. They are fabulous. My wonderful regionmates Shelby, Sari, Tabatha (who will forever be Tako Guy) and Tim, as well as Kim, Morgan, Sam and Levin, made the last 13 months a wonderful time for me.

Alright, enough shmultz for now. John and I are, despite a 7 hour time difference between here and Iowa, working on our plans, so I'll let everyone at home know where I'll be and for how long as soon as possible. For now, I have to make the most difficult phone call of my life to my Mauritanian family and try to figure out how to get my dog.

OK, just to clear everything up that you may have heard in the news/parent group/other random sources that seem to have just as crazy a rumor mill has PC RIM has:

1) Our program has not been evacuated. We're doing a test of the Emergency Action Plan (kind of like a big fire drill) that moved our Mid Term Reconnect (as well as a few days of In-Service Training) to the PC Senegal training center. It's cheaper than putting everyone up in Nouakchott for 10 days, plus Senegal has a few benefits that we lack here (cough cough beer cough).

2) We aren't being shut down. Well, probably not. There is a safety team coming to evaluate the country, but that was planned a long time ago and will be looking at Mali and Niger as well. Our country director and all the folks at the embassy thing we'll be fine, and don't see a reason to pull us (or any change in the security situation). So, while there is a very small chance that our program will close, the vastly more likely situation is that the security team will visit our sites and see that our actual situation here is far from what they've read on cnn.com.

Everything clear? I swear, it's like being in middle school all over again sometimes. Information gets so twisted and confused, but it's hard to know what to believe. Americans are so used to relying on news sources, but honestly, most of the news articles about what's been going on in Mauritania have been blown waaaaay out of proportion and are written by people who don't really understand this country and its history. So, just to re-cap, I'm fine, the program is fine, and Mauritania is...well, as fine as it ever was.

Now that we're all on the same page, I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes! It's hard to believe I've already had 2 birthdays here in Mauritania. On the first, we found out where we would be placed permanently and backed up for site visit. Needless to say this year was a little less hectic. I had a wonderful day thanks to my fabulous sitemate Shelby and John (who, in about a month, will be my sitemate as well. That is, if he makes is through the region's hazing...mwahahaha), who cooked for me all day. It was great. Thanks guys! Our friends Serge and Virginie came over for dinner, and we had eggplant burgers, cheese popcorn and chocolate cake (sounds like a real meal right? I'm telling you, Shel and John are that good). Now that's what I call turning 24 in (Mauritanian) style. Speaking of John's upcoming move to Selibaby (I assume this isn't news to anyone, but check out his blog if you want more details--it's linked on my page), I just want to point out that not only did the Guidimakha not lose anyone to the IS option, we actually gained a person. That's right, we're that awesome. Unstoppable. Watch out. Now if we could just get a real road...

In other news, we recently had elections for the first time since the coup last August (we've been through a lot in our 13 months here...just making us that much more badass than PC Senegal). Election day was very calm in Selibaby--it was actually calmer than it had been in a while, since one of the candidates parked all of his campaign trucks outside of Shelby's house and played really bad music all day...we were glad for them to leave. Anyway, Aziz (who staged the coup) won by a majority, which avoided a run-off election in early August. The opposition complained that Aziz stole the election, and there were rumors about paying for votes etc., but the results have been confirmed and recognized by a lot of the international community. Basically, since the former president formally stepped down to allow a democratic election, Aziz is now a democratically elected president. We're all hoping that means the aid money will be restored to Mauritania, and now that the US has recognized Aziz as president and lifted travel bans on members of the RIM government, it's expected that all the visa problems will be resolved. We still might not get a new training class until June, but it's a step in the right direction.

For now, I'm just happy to continue my vacation. On the 2nd, I fly to France to meet up with my family for a couple weeks of wonderful food and maybe being clean enough to feel like a real person again (no promises). I can't wait!! I'll be sure to post pictures when I get back (although the majority of my readers will have been there...so it won't be that exciting). John will be home at the same time to see his family and meet his niece, and when he gets back we'll both head to Selibaby, hopefully find him a house quickly, and settle back into life as usual. And I'll still have a month or so before I have to go back to school. Haha, I got more vacation than anyone! Oh come on, this is the only chance I get to brag about how easy my job is, no one would be jealous any other time so let me have my moment :)

That's all the news that's fit to post. I hope everyone is well and enjoying the end of July!

So I'm sure by now you've all heard the big news. Our lives have been kind of turned upside down. It's been hard to deal with. Everyone's talking about it but no one really saw it coming, although I guess it isn't that surprising...but still, it's hard to believe the US soccer team lost to Brazil after being up 2-0 at the half. It will be tough, but I know we can get through this.

Anyway, it's been a crazy couple of weeks here in Peace Corps RIM. Other than the tragic soccer game, there was the minor detail of losing about 1/3 of our class. With the security issues that have been filling nervous parents with terror lately, our country director got permission from PC Washington to offer Interrupted Service. IS basically gives you the benefits of an RPCV without finishing the 2 years, and is generally offered (or sometimes required if a program closes) when there are safety issues in a country. For us, it was a choice, and I'm staying.

Before anyone starts thinking I've totally lost it, let me explain. Keep in mind that this is based on my personal experience, so if there are any parent stalkers out there (including my own!) who have heard other points of view, remember that each person's experience is very different. I do not personally believe that our security situation has changed. Of course there are always risks to living in an underdeveloped country, but there are also risks to living in any major city in the US. Yes, there was an American who got killed in Nouakchott, but the life he led here was very different from ours and he made some very, very different choices that ultimately led to his unfortunate death (he had received several threats before, and continued his work as a Christian missionary in an Islamic Republic). Some people in the North have dealt with unfriendly people and anti-American sentiment, but I have never experienced anything like that. Selibaby (and much of the south in general) loves Peace Corps, and I have a strong network of people who keep me safe there. I feel welcome and useful in my community. I think that if you gave the IS option to all PCVs worldwide at the one year mark, you would have very similar numbers. Two years in a foreign country sounds great in theory, but there are a lot of challenges that go along with it, and some people don't want to be in it for the long haul. I completely respect their choice, but it's not one that appeals to me. So to summarize, don't worry, I'm fine, and I'll see you all in 2010.

Meanwhile, in spite of all of this craziness, we're all trying to continue our normal lives. As a teacher, "normal life" right now means trying to get in as much traveling and time out of site as possible because once the school year starts I'm pretty limited in that. I went up to Nouakchott on the 29th, and after a couple days there headed north with John, Brian and Kristy. We went to Atar, which was very beautiful and so, so different than the south! It has a lot more money, which is evident in every aspect of the city, and the style of buildings is also very different. The next day we went to Chinguetti to visit Carl, who took us all around the city. We walked through the old part of town, which is mostly crumbling ruins dating back to the 1100s (just outside of town there are other ruins buried in sand that date back to the 700s). Chinguetti was a stop along the trade route from Mali to Morocco, and is a really amazing place to visit.

After a day in Chinguetti, the four of us headed out on an overnight camel trek. It was really spectacular. Once you get a little ways out of the city, all you can see is dunes for miles and miles. It's intensely quiet and beautiful experience. Plus, camels are really funny! They remind me a lot of moose, just with big goofy feet and in sand. John's camel was the most ornery of the bunch, and kept making gurgling noises whenever she had to sit down or stand up (and sometimes at random during the trek). The others were pretty friendly. We got to a little oasis around noon (it gets too hot to trek all day), and we spent the afternoon lounging in the shade of date palms. Around 4, John, Brian and I thought it would be cool enough to go sandboarding out on the dunes, but didn't take into account the temperature of the sand (scorching), so we ended up going down a few times and then waiting until almost sunset. Sandboarding is pretty sweet, although the whole carrying the board back up a steep dune part is a pain. Luckily a few kids came to help with that--come on, who can resist a group of toubabs trying to ride a snowboard down a dune?? That's worth carrying a board up a big hill! We spent the night just outside the oasis, lying under the stars. One of our guides made us bread (with just flour and water) that he cooked in hot coals; basically, he shaped a round loaf, got a fire going, then spread the coals out and buried the bread right in them. It was pretty good, and really cool to see it done. We left around 6 the next morning to head back to Chinguetti, and although we were hot, tired and I was down a shoe (a dune ate my flip flop, it got pulled off when I was walking down hill and after searching for about 15 minutes we gave up--it was just gone), we had a fantastic time. Plus, now I can cross "ride a camel" off my list of life goals!

We went back to Atar on the 4th, and after a couple days there headed down to Nouakchott. John and I got back to Kaedi yesterday, and will probably be here for a few days before heading to M'Bout and Selibaby. We both need to get our passports so we'll be ready for our trips in early August--as much as I love it here and am looking forward to heading back to my host family and my little house, I can't wait to see my wonderful family in France in a few weeks! Plus the wine and cheese don't hurt : )

OK, I hope this post finds everyone happy and healthy. Below are links to the pictures from my various travels, so enjoy!

Camel Trek

Well, obviously the biggest news from here (well, besides political instability and election problems…but that’s not news) is that we aren’t getting new volunteers anytime soon. Since the government still hadn’t issued visas, Peace Corps decided not to make the invitees wait in limbo and assigned them to other programs. We pretty much knew they weren’t coming, so it’s good that they don’t have to sit around and wait to hear. If/when the government (which will be decided in next month’s elections Inshallah) decides it will issues visas again, Peace Corps will look into opening the program, but it will most likely not be until next June. Bummer. So basically, the 71 of us still in country will be alone for the next year. The details aren’t really clear yet, but I’m sure we’ll know more after the elections. After it turned out we weren’t going to Rosso for stage, John and I bummed around Kaedi for a while (and got rained in for a few days), then I headed back to Selibaby to say goodbye to my COSing regionmates and help move Shelby into the region house. I figured I would be there for a week or two, then head up to Kaedi en route to Nouakchott, then visit the north of Mauritania a little. There was just one tiny problem that I didn’t fully take into account in my travel planning: the rainy season. This is the first rainy season that we’re here for when we’re not traveling in and out of the Guidimakha in Peace Corps cars, and let me tell you, that makes quite a difference. It’s hard to plan a trip when you’re not sure when you’ll be able to get out of the region. I decided to travel on the 25th with the girls from the Selibaby Girls Mentoring Center, who were on their way to Nouakchott for the Girls’ Conference (each GMC sends 3 girls and a mentor to the conference where they get to meet strong, professional women, visit the university, see Nouakchott, go to the beach, etc.). Kim had already left Selibaby, so I took charge of the 3 girls and mentor. Sam and Levin were both on their way up to Kaedi, so they joined in as well. Then plan was for us to rent out a car in Selibaby, pick up the M’Bout crew on our way through, spend the night in Kaedi, then John and Cortney would take the girls up the rest of the way. Needless to say, it did not go well. We planned to leave Selibaby around 7:30. I spent most of the night before lying awake, watching lightening and dust storms off to the east and thinking “shiiiiiiiiiit.” The driver showed up at the house at 6:30, and let me tell you, this was shocking because Mauritanians aren’t always the most time-conscious people. He explained that he was early because he was worried about the rain, so we rounded up the girls and got on the road around 7. It took about half an hour to get out of town because the driver wouldn’t go on the main road (he didn’t want to pass the garage because he would have to stop and give the guys there some money), so we took random back roads and got stuck a few time trying to get out. OK, no big deal, we finally got on the road and headed out. This is where the real problem starts: the sky around us was getting really dark, mostly to the south and the east, and there was clearly a large storm rolling in. I had asked the driver before we left if he had a tarp to cover the bags, and he said he did. We ended up putting most of them inside the car (it holds 14 people and we were only 7 leaving Selibaby), but there were a couple on the roof. So he gets out and messes with something on the roof as the rain starts, and we keep going. Then the rain really came, and it came hard. Looking out to the side of the road, it almost looked like snow because there were huge puddles of water covering everything. Oh, and the car had no wipers. The driver kept putting his window down a little to wipe the windshield with a towel. Then he would put the window up and the car would immediately fog up, but no matter how many times Sam and Levin tried to explain it, the concept of hot air on the inside making condensation went way over his head. Oh well. The mentor, Haji, started yelling at him, and when I asked her what was wrong she told me that he didn’t have a tarp and was refusing to stop to put the two bags on the roof in the car. They both belonged to one of the girls, and held all her clothes and stuff for the next week. He kept saying he’d stop in the next town, but then wouldn’t stop, so we’d yell at him again. After a few river crossing adventures, we made it to a decent sized town, and the driver announced we’d stay there until the river on the other side receded some. Now, you have to understand, seasonal rivers here aren’t little streams. With as little as half an hour of rain, they become anything from slight annoyances to raging rivers of death that sweep away cars and trees. When that happens, there’s nothing you can do but wait. So wait we did. It was still raining, so I asked the driver to finally get the bags down. He refused. We started arguing, and he told me to get them down, so I told him that it was his job to which he replied that it wasn’t. So I called the guy at the garage who we had arranged the car with, and he yelled at the driver on the phone. Then the driver crossed his arms and refused to look at me or talk to me for a while before finally getting the bags down. Oh, and he pulled out a tarp that he’d had inside the car the whole time. Nice work. Sometimes drivers here are wonderful, and other times they act like they’re doing you a favor by letting you pay for a seat in the car, and you should really be thanking them. So he stormed off to have tea somewhere, and the rest of us sat around. When he finally came back, he was in a much better mood—he bought some meat to cook for us, and even apologized to me. It was seriously shocking. So he grilled up some meat and onions, and we all sat outside of a little boutique and ate. We stayed in the town for about 2 hours, then decided to try to road. We made it about 2 minutes outside of town before we got stuck in the mud. If you hadn’t realized by now, this driver was not particularly open to comments and suggestions. All he would do for about half an hour is try to get up this small, muddy hill, get stuck, try to back out, and try it all again. He wouldn’t turn the wheel or try a different way up (of which there were many) or put the car in the low 4 gear, all of which we tried to suggest. He pretended not to hear us. He kept yelling at a group of kids to come help, but it was a lot more fun for them to sit on a wall and watch him walk around the car again and again, staring at the tire holes. Finally he got one of the kids to bring him a shovel, and was able to fill in the holes enough to get up. We drove through the river and kept going. After a few more tough spots (such as a new bridge that is passable but not entirely done so therefore not open which crosses one of the raging rivers of death—seriously, we would have drowned or been stuck there for a couple days waiting for the water to go down—which was luckily solved by a phone call to our amazing friend Luis, who got the guard to let us pass on the new bridge), we made it to a town that (in non-rainy season time) is about 45 minutes outside of M’Bout. There are a bunch of cars sitting there, and everyone says the road up ahead isn’t passable. So we get out, sit under a tent, and wait. And wait. And wait. We end up spending about 4 hours there, and after we’d had lunch and slept a bit, everyone was eager to go. We finally found the driver, who had wandered off somewhere, and he said we were waiting to see if any cars got through coming the other way. Now, no one had actually gone to check on the road for a good 3-4 hours, and I pointed out that there was a good chance that the cars on the other side were doing the exact same thing we were doing, meaning we were all sitting there like idiots for no reason. I kept trying to convince him to let us try to get through, and if it didn’t look safe we could come back. He refused, yelled a lot, stopped talking to me again, then finally said OK. We all got back in the car, and about 2 minutes out of town saw the problem. A river had sprung up, and when one truck tried to get through, it got stuck. There were a lot of cars waiting around, trying to help or just watching, and they finally got the stuck car out of the river, after which several others crossed with no trouble. Then an army of giant trucks that carry road supplies went through, also with no problem. So at this point, the other side of the river was clear of cars, and all the drivers on our side were waiting around because no one wanted to be the first to cross. Good God. Finally one went through, and our driver followed. We made it through easily. Now, from texting with John throughout the trip, I learned that M’Bout was totally cut off by the river there (the bridge right outside of town is nowhere near done and there were about 20 feet of water), so our plan to pick them up kind of fell apart. We didn’t want to spend the night on the side of the road, so we decided to push through to Kaedi (the road technically bypasses M’Bout by about 2 kilometers even though all the cars go into town, so we could get by but not in and out of the town itself). A lot of cars came through right after us, so we ended up in a caravan of sorts, with each driver stealing the other drivers’ spots in line and trying to get ahead and nonsense like that. By this point it was dark, so we carefully crossed a few more rivers before something I couldn’t see stopped us. The driver got out, so Sam and Levin went to see what was up. A crowd of men gathered around what turned out to be a small bridge that had partially been washed away. It was only about 3 feet up, but underneath was rushing water. So the men drag a large stone over and prop it up in such a way that if a driver keeps one wheel on the broken bridge and the other on the stone they can maybe get over. Great plan right? I’m still in the car at this point, with no idea what’s happening, but Sam and Levin come back saying we’re stuck. Suddenly, our driver rushes to the car so we can be the second ones to make it over. The guys (smartly) don’t get in, and before they had time to argue with him we’re starting over the make-shift bridge. What I heard afterwards is that once our front tires made it, the rock gave out, so the driver gunned the engine and somehow managed to get across. The guys said it was the scariest travel thing they’ve seen in their two years here. Everyone else was really mad at our driver for ruining the bridge so no one else could get through, but we just drove off. We finally got to Kaedi around 11. The trip, which usually takes 5-6 hours, took us 16. So that’s been my latest adventure. Since it probably took as long to read this as it did for us to do it in the first place, I’ll stop here. I’m hopefully going up north for a camel trek next week, so stay tuned. Oh, and for being such good sports, here are some pictures. Enjoy!

updated albumnew album

After my mom's comment about posting everyday, here I am! Ha. But seriously, I just got some new pictures up so I thought I'd send out the link. They're mostly from St. Louis and around Selibaby, and there are a bunch of the Girls Mentoring Center end of the year party. Enjoy!

pictures

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, it's been a really long time since I've posted. I have several excellent excuses ready:

1) I was finishing up my first year of teaching, which included holding review sessions 4 days in a row for my kids and then giving and grading 150 or so exams

2) John and I made a last-minute, sanity-saving decision to go to St. Louis (Senegal) with a bunch of other volunteers for Jazz Fest, so we were out of the country for a bit

3) Our bureau has been without power for a good 3 weeks or so now because the cord that needs constant duct tape repair by the electric company guy stretches from our room into the room next door, and the man with the only key to that room left for Nouakchott for several weeks. Fun. Which brings me to...

4) My lovely home of Selibaby was without power in almost the whole town for 15 days straight, and then it came on for about 10 hours before going out again for another 12, then on for 10, then just off. Grand.

Now I'm in Kaedi with John and have no excuse, so here I am. We left Selibaby yesterday afternoon (inside a truck, fancy fancy!) and spent the night in M'Bout. That trip wasn't too bad, especially when we got traided about half way there to another truck which only had a cow tied in the back with a net, so we went pretty fast (poor cow). We left M'Bout this morning in the back of an almost empty truck, which is actually much worse than sitting on a huge pile of stuff because you feel the bumps a lot more sitting on just a spare tire (which was so worn that little bits of metal were sticking out all over it...yeah that hurt) than on a big pile of bags. The driver was also going way too fast, so we got jostled around a lot. I spent a good portion of the trip clinging to the side of the car with my boubou poofing out behind me like a cape (faster than a cow-laiden truck, stronger than a scary old woman's handshake grip! it's a donkey! it's a goat! it's super toubab!). We made it with the usual scrapes and bruises but in one piece, and went straight to the post office to pick up John's mail (thanks to Allison for sending candy and to my mom for the cheese box--it made it!). We got to the house to see our very excited Maggie dog, who has gotten so big!! She magically remembered all of her training once we had cheese and bagel chips in our hands (sorry pupper, I love you, but this is cheese....).

I'll be in Kaedi for about a week or so, then heading down to Rosso to meet the new trainees. That's so unreal. I can't believe that all of a sudden I'm the person who's supposed to know stuff (sorry in advance to anyone coming to Mauritania on the 18th! Ha). We're closing in on our 1 year Mauritanian anniversary, with 71 of the original 77 still here. And we've got the heat rash, dripping sweat and layers of dirt coating our skin to show for it!

All of this also means that our 2nd year volunteers are heading out soon, most in the next month and all by August 6th, which will certainly be a transition. In the Guidimakha, we're losing 4 of the 9 volunteers in the region, so that will be strange. They'll certainly be missed (like crazy).

OK, that's about all the news for now. I'll try to be better about blogging (big Inshallah for power and the like). I hope everyone's having a great start to the summer back at home!!

As my parents remind me regularly, it's been too long since I've written. I guess I've been too caught up in the baseball debate taking place on John's blog to pay attention to my own (GO RED SOX). Not too much is new here really, just trying to get through the rest of the school year. It got cut by about 3 weeks because of the elections on June 6th, so after this week I only have 3 weeks of classes. The downside of this is that I lose this time with my students, and it makes it tough to get everything done that I'd hoped to. And by tough, I mean impossible. But they've definitely made progress--they now mostly greet me in English on the street and have started arguing with each other in English in the classroom (I have to let them off the hook when they yell "that is my pen!" at the kid who took their pen).

John is visiting Selibaby this week, which has been great. He's used his time here to catch up on internet stuff, raid our book collection and chase children away from our wall. Oh, and along with Kim we spent about an hour yesterday pouring water down ant/termite hills. This is what we do for fun here. I'm not joking. Sometimes we draw on the dog too. The power has been out for a couple days now, so that cuts down on your options! Being bored takes on a whole new meaning here.

I also recently started a prep class for the 6th year students who will take the BAC in June. Basically, it's the end of high school exam that determines if you even get the option of going to college. Nationwide, about 10% of students pass. That number is usually lower here in the south and in other rural areas. So every Friday, I run an optional class to get students ready for the English section of the BAC. They never learn how to take this kind of test (during the first class, I gave them a practice test and most didn't understand the format of multiple choice questions...the real test is in 2 months), so I'm trying to work with them on how to go about answering reading comprehension, make educated guesses, budget their time, etc. Most students didn't even attempt the essay question on the practice test, and almost all of them said "teacher, it is very hard!" as if I had written it to torture them. It was a word for word copy of the BAC from 2004. I only have time to do 6 or 7 classes, but hopefully it will help a little and I can start the same class earlier next year. It's been fun working with older students too, and quite a change from teacher first years!

OK, that's all the news from here. But for being such good sports you get a new photo link! Enjoy!

new picts

Hi all,

We're back from Nouakchott with our sterile and surprisingly energetic puppy--you'd never know from looking at her that she had surgery 2 days ago, except for the little line of stitched on her belly. Poor thing.

Here are some new pictures--some from Shelby and Luis' birthdays, and then some from our trip. I put up lots of puppy pictures for you, Allison! She's a sweet dog : )

Enjoy!

Yes, that's right, I'm on vacation. I know a lot of you are saying, "AGAIN??" but come on, I live in Mauritania, do you really want to trade? Keep in mind it's over 100 in the shade everyday now.

It's the trimester break here, which not only means a week off but also marks the official countdown to the end of the school year. Funny how that doesn't change once you become a teacher. I gave my students their exam last Sunday, which was difficult because this time I gave it on schedule and therefor had all 3 classes taking their exam at once. The way it works here is other teachers proctor your exam, and you float between classes to answer questions. This wouldn't be a big deal except that some of my colleagues are shockingly less diligent about catching cheaters than I am. I know, you'd never see that coming! There several times when I walked into a classroom to find all my students talking, passing notes, etc., and the teacher sitting on a desk in the front staring into space. I just looking at them all and said "Seriously??" That tone of voice translates quite well. I asked them, "do you talk during my exam?" and got a chorus of "no teacher" and "pardon teacher," and I told the teacher to kick the next kid who was talking out of the classroom. They, of course, did not. To be fair, one of the three was actually walking around the class and trying to keep them in line, and that was very much appreciated. Needless to say, after it was done all 156 of my students and I were ready for a break.

That night, I stayed in town at Kim's house so that Tako Guy and I could leave in the morning (she went to Boghe and I to M'Bout). We bought our tickets at the garage, and were told that since the driver was coming from our side of town, he would pick us up at the house around 8 or 8:30. I gave them my number, and got a call later that night saying the car was actually coming at 6:30. So the next morning, Tako and I got up at 6, and by 6:30 were ready to go. We figured it would be a while, but usually they only change the time like that if they've sold out the car and aren't waiting for any more passengers. So we waited. And waited. And waited. At 8:30, I called the number that had called me the night before. The driver that answered said there had been car trouble but it was fixed (NEVER a good sign) and he was coming soon. So around 9:30, a truck pulled up to take us to the garage. We waited there for everyone to load into another truck, which is quite a process because they have to tie all the bags down before we can all get on top of them, but people are so eager to claim their spots that it gets a little rowdy. Tako and I claimed our space near the cab of the truck with our legs hanging over, even though lots of men kept telling us to get in the middle because a) they don't think it's safe or proper for women to hang their legs over and b) they don't want the middle because it's uncomfortable and you end up curled in a ball with people sitting on you. After a lot of pushing, shoving and refusing to get on the car unless that annoying man got his butt out of the seat we had rightfully claimed, we headed out around 10:30, putting us in M'Bout around 1:30.

Wrong. A little ways outside of town, something under the car started clanging around whenever we went over a bump (keep in mind this is an unpaved, unfinished road, so everything is a bump). The driver kept looking under the car, making people get down (which resulted in more arguments about seating arrangements) and driving a little farther. Finally, we pulled over in a town that should be about 35 minutes from Selibaby (it took us over an hour to get there) and the driver announced that we needed to wait for a new truck to come. Just grand. So we all sat under a little hangar near the road and waited for about an hour for a new truck. We rearranged AGAIN, and got on our way.

Now, I'm sure this already sounds like a pain, but keep in mind that we left at 10:30 and it was already well over 100 degrees. I'd guess that for most of the trip it was about 130 in the sun. There were 2 clouds the whole time. We ran out of water pretty quickly, and barely stopped in the towns we passed. Even when we did, I couldn't get down because the man behind me kept trying to steal my spot. He didn't want his legs over the back of the truck (cry me a river mister, people always have their legs over the back) so he kept trying to get me to move over so he could sit over the side next to me. There was no way he could fit there. So he complained the whole way, and he was sitting on a friggin' bag of pillows. PILLOWS. Good God. Anyway, then he started falling asleep and leaning his head on the back of my head or on my shoulder. I shrugged him off a few times, and he would start yelling at me for pushing him. Finally, I turned to him and yelled, "you spend all this time making noise about how you can't sit there, it's so uncomfortable, and yet you're comfortable enough to sleep on me!!" The other passengers got a kick out of that.

It ended up taking us 5 hours to get to M'Bout. It should take 3. We were on the car from 10:30-3:30 (the hottest part of the day). I thought I was going to pass out. John met us at the garage with water, and we ended up spending the rest of the day sitting in his house feeling sick and trying to re-hydrate. Fun.

Tako left the next morning, and I spent another day in M'Bout with John and Maggie dog, who is so big now! I'll put pictures up soon. On Wednesday, we took another adventure, this time with the pup, to Kaedi. It wasn't that bad, all things considered. I'm very grateful to have a dog that doesn't get sick in the car and benedryl to drug said dog with. Beautiful things. We've been here in Kaedi since then. The second-years are all up in Nouakchott for their Close of Service conference (so, so weird to think about), and we're heading up there tomorrow to do work at the Peace Corps office, get our mid-service dental and physical exams and get Maggie fixed and vaccinated. Oh, and eat as much pizza as possible. Yum.

That's all the news from here. If you read this before tomorrow morning, send us good vibes--we're taking a 6-8 hour taxi brusse ride with a puppy. Oy. And for John's family, he's alive and well, sitting right across from me but far too lazy to post on his blog : ) He says hi.

OK, here's an overdue update. As most people know, February is a favorite month here in Peace Corps Mauritania because for about a week we go to Dakar for WAIST (West African Invitational Softball Tournament). This means a week of delicious food, legal alcohol that doesn't come from a plastic bottle, meeting other PCVs and hanging out with the wonderful PC RIM volunteers who those of us living down in the Guidi don't see very often (funny thing about how off-roading discourages visitors). It was needless to say a wonderful week.

John came back with me through Senegal to Selibaby, which from Dakar is a 14 hour car ride to the river. We got to the garage at 6:45 AM and were told that there was a car with one space left. In Senegal, one space actually means one space, so we had to wait for the next one which ended up leaving around 10:30. We piled in the Sete Place (7 place, it's kind of like a mini-station wagon) and headed into the mass of traffic that is Dakar. We pulled over in the middle of the city so that another passenger could load his two giant rams onto the roof. This is how one travels with animals here--you pop it in a rice sack, tie it up and tie it to the roof of a car. For 14 hours. Try to picture this happening in New York. The sheep were needless to say not too thrilled about the trip. It's funny to look out the window of the car and see the shadow on the road--car hood, car roof, giant sheep horns, back of car. At one point, one of the rams was so intent on escaping the plastic bag that he almost fell off the car. He was thumping around a lot, and suddenly the people in the way back seat started yelling to the driver to stop. I looked out my window and the ram was hanging off the side of the car. So we pulled over, plopped him back on and kept going.

We got to Bakel, the town where we cross the Senegal river, close to midnight. We got the driver to take us to the bar that the Portuguese road workers usually go to when they visit Bakel, and since they know us there they let us spend the night. We set up our tent on the floor in the back hall of the bar. We sure know how to travel in style! We left Bakel around 7 and waited for a few hours on the other side of the river for a car to Selibaby, and after a rough but mostly uneventful ride of the back of a pick-up we got home. John stayed for a few days and then took Maggie home to M'Bout (we drugged her a little to make the ride easier, and decided to keep her on his lap rather than taking the rice sack approach. They made it without any big problems).

So now I'm back in Selibaby and back to work. It's hard to believe that the 2nd trimester is almost over! In a couple weeks my students will take their end-of-trimester exam, and then we get a week off. It's starting to get hot again, so I think I'll take the opportunity to get out of Selibaby for the week before heading into the home stretch of the school year (which also happens to be the hot season...good times).

I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of spring (or if you live in New England, more winter). And congrats to John's family on baby Eliana! She's beautiful :)

Yaaaarrrrrrrrrrr!!

I'm back from a few wonderful, piratey days in Dakar (which, by the way, is HUGE and has so much stuff). I'll write a longer post about it when I have more time, but I just wanted to post the links to my pictures. I'll put John's up here as well. Enjoy!

WAIST 1

WAIST 2

John's Picts

Just a quick post to put of the link to the pictures that I've spent all morning trying to upload! Sorry it took so long--sometimes the internet likes to work, other times it doesn't.

I took a long-weekend trip to M'Bout last week and had a great time with John and Cortney. Don't worry, he's alive and well :) We're all headed to Rosso and then Dakar next week for WAIST, so I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures.

Just want to give a quick shout out to my amazing friends who sent me mail! Lea, Elyse and Nat, you guys are the best :)

Enjoy the photos and be well!!

Xmas and New Years 1

Xmas and New Years 2

Ok, as my parents remind me every time we talk, I've been a bum about posting. The power in our office has been out for over a week, so it's not entirely my fault! At least I'm not as bad as John :)

The trip back to Selibaby from Kaedi was pretty funny, as most trips turn out to be here. I was with Shelby and Sari, two of my regionmates, and after a couple hours sitting around at the garage, we loaded into a truck (since we had to travel through the night, we dropped the extra money to sit inside the car--fancy fancy). Now, in Mauritania, any sort of car seat sits at least one more person than it would in America. We were in the backseat of the truck, which here holds 4 people instead of 3. The problem was, we were the only women going and none of the men wanted to sit with us. To be fair, some of them just didn't want to pay extra to sit inside, but there were two men who wanted to get in the car who switch 3 or 4 time before we left, arguing with the driver in between to get their money back and sit in the truck bed. The thing is, drivers don't like to leave unless cars are full, so he told the two guys that one of them had to get in with us or we weren't going anywhere. So finally one gets in next to me and pulls his hood all the way over his face, trying to get as much room between us as possible, the problem being that when you have 4 people in the back seat of a truck, room doesn't really exist. We ended up switching cars in M'bout because our truck was staying the night, so the three of us (along with some people from our car and 3 other trucks that were waiting there) pack into an aptly nick-named prison van. This is the kind of car we don't ride in during the rainy season because if they tip over in the water, everyone drowns because there's only one door in the back and it doesn't open from the inside. Fun. There are 3 rows of seats each with 4-5 people, the front passenger seat with 3 people, and two guys on the roof. That is not a joke. Shelby and I were in the back row, and Sari got squished in with some giant moor women in the front row. The ride was relatively uneventful until the woman next to Shelby started throwing up in a bucket when we were about 45 minutes outside of Selibaby. Needless to say we were thrilled to get out of the van and be home.

I've been back in Selibaby for a couple weeks now, and it's been really nice to be home. My family was really happy to see me, as were my students for about an hour before I gave back their exams--then some of them wish I had stayed in Nouakchott. Work has been business as usual, with my students cracking me up one minute and making me want to bang my head against the chalkboard the next. You take the good with the bad.

The biggest thing that's happened recently is, of course, the inauguration. Mauritanians love Obama, and everyone was talking about how as of the 20th he would be president. I went to work that morning wearing the Obama t-shirt my mom sent me, and everyone kept telling me how excited they were. I started thinking about all the things I wanted to say to my students about what an important day it was, not just for the United States but for the world, and how we live in a global community where everything we do changes the lives of those around us, for better or worse, and how they'll always look back on this day and remember that for the first time, someone who looked like them was the president of the United States. I had tears in my eyes thinking about all these things I wanted to tell them. Of course, since I teach in Mauritania none of that happened. The students staged a walk-out in support of Obama. They love an excuse not to go to school, so at 10 o'clock (as my class was supposed to begin), they started a happy riot, chanting Obama's name and causing mild chaos. I decided to try to have class anyway (I know, I'm an idiot), so I went to my classroom and started writing on the board. About half of my students came in, turned in their homework, asked me about Obama but sat down when they saw class was still on. One of them told me the students were all leaving, so I said they could go but that I was still having class. Only one left. The others figured that the coolest place you could be on Obama day was learning English with the American teacher (I seriously think it was the coolest I've ever been or will ever be in my life). So I start class, and after a minute a group of older students show up at my door. I ask what they want, and they tell me that all the students need to leave for Obama. I turn to my class and say, "OK, you can go if you want," and they start yelling "no teacher! We're having class! No! We're staying!" Pretty cool, huh? My students actually wanted to have class! So the group at the door left, only to be replaced by another a few minutes later. The same thing happened 3 or 4 time, and each time my students refused to leave. About 10 minutes after I had tried to start class, a group of 20 or so students came running in banging on things and yelling and literally pulled my students out of class. Oh well, at least I tried. The other teachers had the same thing happen to them, and were standing around the yard waiting for things to clear out or just heading home. One told me that there was some racial tension because a week earlier the black students marched out with the arab students to protest the bombings in Gaza (they really love to leave school), but even though everyone was excited about Obama, some arab students were refusing to walk out. It doesn't work so well if only half the students leave, so there was a little bit of yelling and rock throwing throughout the morning. Luckily for all of us, it doesn't take all that much convincing to get 10-20 year olds to leave school for any reason, so they all went home. Another teacher walked out with me, and was complaining about the students because, as he pointed out, it wasn't even a holiday in America and all the American kids had school, so why did the Mauritanian students get to leave? But at the end of the day, there wasn't a thing we could do about it. Shelby met me at Kim's and we celebrated by watching the L Word.

Anyway, that's about all the news from here. Happy belated inauguration day to everyone back home! I'm trying to upload pictures right now, so I'll post the links as soon is they're up!

It's hard to believe that 2008 is over and I've already been here for 6 months. This is the one full year I'll be in Mauritania--as John said, "that's a long time, I wish you hadn't said that!" Haha. After spending a week on the beach in Senegal, it's tough thinking about this long stretch in Mauritania.

After hearing about all the snow back home, I'm sure the only thing you're all thinking right now is "I can't believe you just spent a week on the beach!" Well I did, so haha. It was great. After a relatively uneventful trip (OK, we did have a bag fall out of the car and run from the police on the way from Nouakchott to Rosso. Seriously.), we made it to St. Louis, about a 1-2 hour drive from the border. It's a very cute, very touristy town. It was nice to wear jeans a bathing suits and order a beer or two (or more...), and it's amazing how much more stuff there is in Senegal. There's just more of everything--types of food, items you can buy in the market, everything. As they say, money makes the world go around...

Anyway, the downside of St. Louis is that it's a tourist town to the extreme. In Mauritania, cab drivers (and everyone else) tries to overcharge you, but they usually give in pretty quickly because some money is better than no money. In St. Louis, if you refuse to pay what they want, they'll go pick up a family of tourists who will gladly/stupidly pay anything. It makes it tough for volunteers there, both financially and just on principle. So even though I would have gladly stayed at the beach, I was ready to get away from tourists.

After leaving Senegal, all the first-year volunteers headed up to Nouakchott for Early Term Reconnect (ETR) and some training sessions. It was pretty uneventful, but we had a blast eating pizza and catching up with people we haven't gotten to see much since stage. Nouakchott has real grocery stores (one even has Ben&Jerry's ice cream!!!) and real beds and hot, running water. It took a long time for me to get used to it all and not make a scene everywhere. OK, so I never stopped making a scene, John was pretty embarrassed when I kept yelling things like, "look, capers!!!!" in the grocery store. But after 4 months in Selibaby, things like orangina and kidney beans and potato chips are really that exciting. My bag is stuffed with things like strawberry nesquick and canned cheddar cheese to get me through the next few months!

We left Nouakchott yesterday (lucky lucky John got to spend his whole birthday in a car!). It took us about 8 hours to get to Kaedi, which is much longer than it should have been. We ran into problems with the driver missing some ID, police wanting to write all our names down, the battery dying and having to get the car jumped, but in the end we were inside a car with all PCVs so no one weighed 400 pounds or smelled really bad. You have to focus on the good stuff. I'll be here until tomorrow when Shelby, Sari and I take a back of the pick-up truck adventure home. As much as I'll miss the food and the people, I'm glad to be going back to Selibaby. I miss my host family, and it'll be nice to be somewhere where I'm not a stranger. I'm even looking forward to teaching again, but we'll see how long that lasts before my students take any more years off my life! There's nothing like a vacation to make you appreciate home. I'm just trying not to think about the big pile of exams waiting for me...

Be well, and I'll post pictures as soon as I can!!

Since my last post, two very different but I'd say equally amusing things have happened: I gave my end-of-trimester exams and I traveled out of Selibaby for the first time. Neither of those sounds particularly interesting now, but read on!

I gave each exams during the class period last week, which means I could write a two hour exam. Well, kind of. I had to figure in the time it takes for me to write the exam on the board and for them to copy it down (again, no printers or photocopiers). The tricky part is that some of my kids can hardly write, and take a really long time to painstakingly copy each word. I also have some kids who finished the whole exam in 20 minutes, but there's no way I could make it take longer because it doesn't seem fair for some not to finish just because they couldn't write it down in time. So that was challenge #1.

Challenge #2 is the insane amount of cheating that takes place in Mauritanian classrooms. Some teachers out there must be saying, "well, sure, there's cheating everywhere!" but let me tell you, I have never seen anything like this before. And the best (or worst?) part about it is that they are so, so bad at cheating. It didn't even bother me that much because it was way too funny. They would do things like look up at me, open a book next to them, look back at me and write something down. I caught one girl with 3 cheat sheets in her lap, and she said she hadn't looked at them. Yeah, OK. One boy handed in his text with the cheat sheet still in it. Nice one. The school policy with cheating is to take the student's paper away and let them start again (if there's any time left--I caught some with about 10 minutes to go. Bummer).

I caught about 15-20 kids cheating in some way in my first class, and only about 5-7 total in my other two (my first class is always more trouble, no idea why). I'd say overall I did a good job catching them--I spent the whole two hours wandering the room watching them, and let's face it, they make it pretty easy to catch them--but there are a lot of obstacles to doing so. The desks they write on are in really bad shape, so they write with their paper on top of their little copybooks. I tried to say they couldn't, but it makes it really hard to write. I checked the copybooks as best I could and took anything with English away, but it's easy to miss something. The other big problem has to do with not letting them whisper to each other. Normally, when a kid's mouth is moving and noise is coming out during a test, you can be pretty sure that they're either cheating or cursing your soul for giving them an exam in the first place. But many of my students are barely literate, and what do beginning readers do when they read and write? They mouth or whisper the words to themselves. I figured out pretty quickly who was doing that versus talking to their buddy, but it's impossible to tell them to stop because it's the only way they can get the test done, which just made my job harder.

So that was last Tuesday and Thursday, and after my last exam I told the director I would hand in my grades when I got back (from what I've looked at so far, they range from 1/20 to 19.5/20) and left Friday morning for 3 weeks of vacation. This is the first time I've left site since getting to Selibaby at the end of August. Now, how exactly does one get out of Selibaby? Good question. You take a taxi brusse ("bush taxi"), which in my case is a pick-up truck (only bigger cars can really get in and out of Selibaby). And I’m not talking the big fancy man-trucks they advertise on TV during the Superbowl, I’m talking your run of the mill, small truck. First, they pile it high with stuff so that the truck bed is filled to the brim or over. Then, they tie a net over that. Then, we climb on. Some people pay double to actually sit in the car, but not PCVs. So I climb on the truck with 6 men and 1 other woman, and the driver was really nice and made sure I got a “good spot.” This means my back was up against the car part of the truck and my knees were bent to my chest. The only bad part was that I had nothing to hold on to. It’s kind of like a roller coaster in that you always feel like you’re going to fall off even though you aren’t. So I tucked one hand under my legs and held the rope under me. And the whole time, I’m wearing a skirt. Fun. I got to Mbout without any major problems, so it only took about 3 hours. I spent 2 nights at John’s house and finally got to see where he lives. Then this morning we waited for an hour or two for a car to Kaedi, John’s regional capital. This time there were up to 11 adults, 1 child and 2 babies on the back, more or less as people got off or on in the towns we passed. I got my back against the car again, but this time was on the edge because one of the two giant Moor women refused to move out of the middle and there was another one between her and me. Swell. John was next to me with his feet hanging over the edge, but when I tried to sit like that (which would have been more comfortable), one of the men told me I couldn’t. So it was knees to chest again for the first 2 hours, by which point the large Moor woman next to me was sitting on me. Seriously. So when we stopped, I swung my legs over the side (the man was gone). It was better except that the large Moor woman decided to lean on me, which nearly pushed me out of the truck because she was about 3 times my size. Good thing I get an upper body workout carrying my host sibling around or I wouldn’t have been able to hold on! So about 15 minutes outside of Kaedi, we get a flat tire. They change it, and when they’re done my seat (which used to be on top of a bag) had turned into a rice sack, which is pretty slippery. I climb on, and only the upper half of my thighs are actually on the car. John put his arm in front of me to brace me from the large Moor woman, and we rode the rest of the way. I was really glad to get off that truck! I’ll be here in Kaedi for a day, then we head to Aleg—that whole trip is on paved road, unlike the entire trip getting here, so I’m excited. If I don’t post before then, I hope everyone has a great holiday! And for those of you up north until a ton of snow, just remember that I’ll be spending New Year’s on a beach in Senegal. Ha, finally you’re all jealous of where I am!! :)

PS Laura, Taco (really spelled Tako) is a common Soninke name for women and guy is her father's name, often given as a middle name. And the white kitten has a body, or did when I left Selibaby! We have 5 new puppies now, so who knows what'll happen while we're gone...

Hi all/anyone who's reading this!

Just a quick note to share the links to my Thanksgiving/Tabaski pictures. I'll write a longer post later in the week.

Thanksgiving 1

Thanksgiving 2

Tabaski

Enjoy!

So I know it's not Thanksgiving quite yet, but since I have access to the computer all the time I figured I should let the brusse volunteers and out of towners have it this week--we're getting a bunch of visitors tomorrow, which I'm excited about :) But while I have a chance, I want to take a very cheesy moment to write about what I'm thankful for.

As cliche as it sounds, being here makes me realize how lucky I really am. Not just for everything I have in the US--I'm not sure I can even begin to be thankful enough for that--but for the opportunity I have here. I get to live here in this amazing albeit difficult country, learn new languages, be a part of a kind and welcoming family, try things I never would have before (goat for example), and just have this life changing adventure all the while knowing that I have a safe, comfortable life waiting for me at home. Sure there are risks being here; at any moment I could get kicked by a donkey or run off the road by a brakeless taxi or eaten alive by ants and/or my students. But the US government gives me malaria pills and everything else I need to take care of myself (the PCMO will even send you lotion of you ask for it). I get paid enough money to pay rent and have the occasional fanta. I've already had more education and seen more of the world than the vast majority of Mauritanians ever will. When I want peanut butter or People magazine or candy, my wonderful moms send it to me (even stuff they NEVER would have let me have as a kid, like cheese in a can). And after 2 years, I'll return to a comfortable life. Of course I'll have to work hard, but we really do live in a country of possibilities. Only about 10% of students here pass the Bac (the end of high school exam you need to pass to go to college), which means that only that 10% even have a chance at higher education. Had I been born here, I'd most likely be barefoot and pregnant (literally) with kids tied to my back, spending all day cooking and cleaning. My mom Judy wrote in a letter once that as stupid as the American Dream sounds, parts of it really are true. I've been thinking a lot lately about that, and even though not everyone who works hard gets ahead in life and is able to better themselves and create a better future for their children, it's a lot easier than it is here. So although I often feel guilty about all this, today I want to express my utmost gratitude for being able to experience life here and still have so much privilege waiting for me.

I hope everyone back at home as a wonderful Thanksgiving. We're preparing a delicious feast here, and thanks to our spectacular families we will even be able to make pumpkin pie. And for the sake of Nelson/Posner family tradition, I also want to say that I'm thankful for the person who canned the pumpkin mix and who labeled the can and who shipped it to the supermarket and who put in on a shelf and the postal workers who got it here to us in Mauritania:)

Hi all,

Not much new to report, but I put some new pictures up. I'm including a link that works for the other ones too (sorry about that!)

Selibaby

Selibaby 2

After a week of teaching, all I can really say is wow. No, that’s not true, I actually have a lot to say (be warned), but wow is the overwhelming feeling. I started teaching last Tuesday. I got up early, aiming to leave my house around 7:20 to get to school around 7:30. I still had to check in with the director about class lists and stuff, find the classroom and start teaching at 8. By 7:30, my family hadn’t finished making coffee yet. I wasn’t surprised, but I wanted to set the precedent that I had to get to school on time even if my siblings didn’t leave the house until 8:10. At 7:35, I told them I was leaving. My father said, “wait for coffee, it’s only 7:35 and you don’t teach until 8!” He kind of chuckled at crazy toubab Hawa trying to leave so early. I said I really had to go, so they thrust a super hot cup of coffee and a piece of bread into my hand. I scorched myself for a minute, then took my bread with me and headed out. I got to school around 7:50 and was the only teacher there. I should really listen to my host father more. I found the director in his office, and he chatted with me a little until I asked if I should start teaching that day. He said sure, and called one of the kids in to ring the bell (or rather, metal inside of an old tire that you bang with a stick) to let the kids know they could come in. Students trickled in and headed to their classrooms, and the director showed me mine. Class lists weren’t ready yet because students are still signing up. Go figure. So I walk into my first classroom (the kids stay put and teachers move), which, like the rest, is a room with a crumbling blackboard and desks, the bench kind that sit 2-4 kids. Some of the ceilings are falling in, some walls are being eaten by ants and termites. None have electricity, so the only light comes through the door (which blows open and shut) and creating a huge glare problem. Some rooms have open windows (meaning nothing in them at all, no way to close them) and some are boarded shut. The kids are remarkable not distracted by all of this. At one point, a giant bee was flying all around the room and not one kid looked up at it. If a bee came in the room during one of my classes in college, the professor lost all attention because we all stared at the bee. They’re just used to it I guess. This isn’t to say that there are not other problems. When the word spreads that classes are actually happening, I will have 50-60 students per class. They range in ages, from 12-17, and abilities. They have no books, so they have to copy everything off the blackboard (again, glare and cracks makes this a challenge). Some can barely write and spend the whole class painstakingly forming each letter while others finish in minutes, have me check what they wrote and then have to sit there. It’s hard to figure out what to do with them because it’s not like I can give them extra work—where would I write it? I have no photocopier or printer, so literally everything (including tests) has to go on the board. I’m going to try to figure out something to keep them busy as the year goes on, but for now I’m trying to get a general feel for their pace and what they can handle in one class. This brings me to another point—I have each class once a week for a two-hour block. It’s hard to use the time well without overwhelming them! I start at 8, teach until 10, then go right next door and do the same thing until 12. It’s pretty tiring! I stand the whole time, either in the front or circulating to make sure they copy, and it’s not an environment that’s conducive to group work or conversation. I try to get them talking as much as possible, but often it’s just repeating me or reading a dialogue, so I talk a lot. Any teachers reading this probably feel pretty bad for me right now. But I have something that I bet any of you would kill for: enthusiastic middle schoolers. That’s right, when I ask someone to come to the board to write an answer to an exercise or read aloud, every hand in the room goes up. They snap, they yell “teacher teacher! Me teacher!” and some stand up. It doesn’t matter if they know the answer or have a clue what’s going on, they just want to participate. And these are 12-17 year olds! They repeat everything to the point where they start to repeat the directions I’m giving them. In so many ways, these kids have little going for them. Most won’t go to college, many will have trouble finding work, some won’t finish high school. But when they’re in class, they want nothing more than to answer the question. This of course creates classroom management problems, but I’d say it’s better than having 50 sullen faces stare back at you while you try in vain to get two volunteers to read a dialogue! So that was my first week. It’s wonderful and hard, and I’m really enjoying it! Check out the new pictures if you want—there are some new ones at the end of the Selibaby album (link below), and i'm hoping to get the ones of our halloween party up soon!

Selibaby

...well, kind of. Yes, as some of you may have heard through the grapevine (aka my parents), I started school. This is kind of a long saga, so be prepared!

The word on the street was that school started October 12. I knew that school couldn't actually start then because no one had been there at all during the week leading up to it. Except for me. I poked my head in everyday and walked around the deserted grounds of the college/lycee (that's like middle school and high school, a total of 6 years which is changing to 7 soon). But just in case, on the 12th I got up early and took a shower ("shower" means bucket bath of course), put on my most professional looking Mauritanian clothes (which happen to be bright orange with a crazy pattern...I love this country) and headed off to school. Just like any new teacher in the US, I had to take off my shoes to walk through a few huge puddles on the way. I got there and, sure enough, the gate was open. I walked in, greeted a few people outside, and went to the director's office. He was sitting at his desk with 8 or 9 other men in the room, so I nervously peeked in and said good morning (the concept of "someone might be busy, I'll just wait" doesn't exist here). He looked up and stared blankly at me, so I introduced myself as the new PCV. He said, "you're Amanda's replacement?" and I said I was. He greeted me and offered me a chair, gave me the book to sign in (the teachers, administrators and students all come the same day, so there's a sign-in book to see which teachers actually came back this year), and after a few simple exchanges, ignored me.

So there I was, sitting awkwardly in the office, totally unsure of whether something was going on that day that I should be there for or not. I've never felt so obvious and yet so invisible before--obvious because I was the only woman and the only white person within...well, however many miles away Shelby was at the time, and invisible because in the nearly 2 hours I sat there, 5 or 6 people acknowledged me. Seriously. See, many people who hold administrative positions, as well as a number of teachers here in Selibaby, are Moors, and are therefor much less likely to greet women. It didn't surprise me that no one would shake my hand (3 or 4 did out of about 30 who passed through while I was there), but I wasn't prepared for being completely ignored. Many of them wouldn't even make eye contact, and the few that did looked away quickly. And these are my colleagues. I few times I wanted to shout, "I know you see me! My skin is practically GLOWING I'm so white! Hello!!!!" but I figured I should tone down the crazy on my first day. It's hard because on one hand, it's cultural and I'm in no position to judge. But on the other, people I work with and the parents of my future students won't acknowledge me. Deep breaths. I just have to get used to it because, as my sister put it when I asked if there were female teachers, "there's one and you make two."

OK, enough gender ranting for now. Really, the first day wasn't all bad. The director introduced me to a few people as their new co-worker, and finally one of the other English teachers sKane, my community counterpart's husband who is going to teach Shelby and me Pulaar. He shook my hand (sweet) and chatted for a while, then got up and said, "OK, I'm going downtown" and left. Until that point, I hadn't known which of the men coming and going were teachers, so I didn't know if I should stay. Shortly after, Sy Samba (who was a language teacher during stage and teaches English at the lycee as well) came in, said hi, stayed for about 45 seconds and left. By that point, I had been there for almost 2 hours, so I stood up. The director asked if I was leaving, and I said I guess so, and he said to come by every now and then, maybe in the next few days. So that was the first day of school.

You might be thinking, "alright, so that was almost 2 weeks ago, school must have started by now!" in which case you've clearly never been to Mauritania. I spent the first week going every morning, watching students register, sitting in the director's office for 1 minute-1 hour, and leaving. Occasionally when leaving I'd ask if classes were starting soon, and he would say "tomorrow, Inshallah." So by the end of the week, I figured I needed a little more information. I went on Thursday (weekends here are Friday and Saturday) determined to find out when school would maybe start and voice my preference for what classes I'd teach. The first day, the director mentioned putting me with the younger classes, which is what I wanted anyway. So after my usual sit and be ignored time, I got up to leave. He talked to me for a minute, but turned to someone else before I could ask him anything, so I stood there awkwardly waiting. Like I said, the "when can I jump in and interrupt without being rude" question is pretty open here, and I still haven't figured it out. So after about 5 minutes, he turned to me and said "yes Emily?" so I asked if classes were starting next week, and he said they'd finish the schedule over the weekend Inshallah. So I said, "if it's possible, I'd prefer to teach the younger classes," to which he responded, "that's what I already said." So I thanked him and ran away before my showing up everyday and asking questions could annoy him more.

So that was week one. This Sunday, I was a little more prepared. See, an important life lesson in Mauritania is don't worry about things you have no control over. It's important anywhere, but vital to your mental health here. I figured since not many teachers showed up on any given morning, I couldn't be the only one who didn't know what was going on. I also realized that the kids were still signing up, so until that was mostly finished it would be impossible to make a schedule (you kind of need to know how many students you have). So I got went to school every morning this week around 9 or 9:30, sat around in the director's office, talked to anyone who would look at me (maybe one or two people a day), and left after about 20 minutes. On Monday when I got up to leave, the director asked if I was going, and I said "I think so, unless there's anything I can do here." And he cracked up. He turned to Kane, who happened to be there for his occasional 1 minute visit, and said, "Emily just asked if there was something she could do here" and then they both laughed. He said no, there was nothing, so I said I'd be back the next day. Yesterday there were a lot less students registering, and the director said my schedule would be ready Wednesday Inshallah. Kane came by again, and when the director told him schedules weren't ready, he told me he was leaving. I said, "OK, see you later," and didn't get up to leave myself. He smiled at me and laughed, giving me a look that said "I can't believe you're actually spending time sitting here." Ce la vie.

When I got there today, I figured nothing would be ready. I found the director in a different office with the Director D'etudes (he does most of the organizational work), and believe it or not they gave me my schedule! I was shocked.

So for those of you with enough sense to skim through my babbling, here's the real news. I have a great schedule--I teach 4 classes of first year (that is, first year of middle school, when they start English) for a total of 8 hours, Tuesday and Thursday 8-12. That means from noon on Thursday to 8 on Tuesday I have nothing. It makes no sense to start classes tomorrow, so they're starting on Sunday. So maybe by the next time I post, I'll have actually started working. Maybe. Inshallah...

Thanks for all the comments, and I hope this post makes everyone feel like their place of employment is super organized!

Anyone living in the US has heard the "well, they're in America now, why can't they just learn English?" argument made about immigrants. To anyone who's ever said that, thought it or even considered that it might have merit, I dare you to come to Mauritania. I double-dare you.

Don't get me wrong, I believe 100% that you should do everything you can to learn the language of whatever country you live in. The problem is, most Americans don't bother to learn other languages and have no idea how hard it is. Nor do they put themselves in situations which really make them feel foreign. This is why they should come to Mauritania. Most people here in Selibaby speak 3-5 languages. No joke. The kids in my family speak Pulaar, Soninke, French, some Hassaniya and some English they learn in school. The first question my brother asked me was, "so do you want to learn Pulaar and Soninke at the same time?" I stared at him blankly for a minute, then told him it would be best to just start with one. Now, I've only been in Selibaby for about a month and a half, and have had no official Pulaar lessons yet, but after studying with my brother I've picked up some basic words and greetings. This is a typical interaction on the street:

Emily: Umbalijamb (good morning)

Mauritanian: mumbles something in Pulaar

Emily: Noumbada? (how are you?)

Mauritanian: something else I don't understand

Emily: Mashallah (thanks to god)

I usually have no clue what just took place, but when I'm lucky, it works out. I just kind of insert what I know and hope for the best. Problem is, sometimes, people are just too darn friendly and actually want to talk to me. Bummer. They try to speak to me in Pulaar, and after I rattle of my few expressions and greetings, I bust out the blank, deer-in-headlights stare, followed by a meek apology for not being able to communicate. They usually laugh and slap my hand, thinking "oh silly toubab, you're not very bright." At least twice a week, someone launches into a speech about how important it is to learn the language, how I can't just speak French, how (insert local language of choice) is so easy. And all I can do is nod and sneak away. I tried telling them that I've only been here for a month, I really want to learn and I'm starting Pulaar lessons as soon as school gets going (Inshallah!), but that doesn't matter. The first few times this happened, I was frustrated. I would walk home thinking, "oh come on, give me a break, I speak more languages than the average American and I just learned French!" But then I realized two things 1) It doesn't matter to them because, no matter how valid my excuses are, I really don't speak a local language yet, and 2) no one in the US would listen to the excuses of a foreigner either. As obvious as this seems, it's one thing to know this and one thing to feel it. I want so badly to communicate with people in their language, and the insinuation that I'm just not trying is maddening. Life in a foreign country is overwhelming--wonderfully, excitingly overwhelming--and things like picking up a language are 27 times harder than they would be otherwise because your brain is on overload with new information and situations.

So next time you hear someone talk about those darn foreigners who make us put signs up in Spanish and never try to learn English, send them my way. I've got extra matelas waiting!

Hi all (or my parents, who might be the only ones reading this!) It’s been a little while since I’ve written because we’ve had major computer problems. We had to move our office here in Selibaby because of Peace Corps budget issues, and we’ve had trouble with the electricity at the new place. It might be figured out finally (Inshallah) but we’ll just have to wait and see! Not too much has been going on here. I still haven’t started work. School is set to start on the 12th, which may or may not happen. When we heard the date, my sister said “well then it won’t really start until November! No one will go yet.” Most people don’t know when school starts, so students kind of trickle in and word spreads that classes have started. Sometime this week I’m going to go meet the director (if he’s there, Inshallah) and find out what I’ll be teaching (again, Inshallah) So what do I do with my time? I sit. A lot. Mauritanians have an amazing talent for sitting around doing nothing, and I don’t mean the American sense of doing nothing by watching TV or reading or chatting. I really mean nothing. Sometimes they talk a little or put music on, but often they lounge around and drift in and out of sleep. I’m not being sarcastic when I call it a talent—try sitting doing nothing and see how long you last! I still get bored sometimes and I read a lot, but I’m getting better at the art of being a blob. I’ll be a little busier once school starts, Inshallah. The only real news has been the fete. Ramadan ended this week, followed by three days of holiday/party/eating, emphasis on the eating. When I originally asked my host brother what we do for the fete, he looked at me like I was an idiot and said “we kill a sheep.” Duh, of course, what else would we do? Then I asked my father. He leaned forward and said very officially, “well, first we kill a sheep.” He then described other things we’d eat, and added that there would be music. When I asked my sister, she told me “we kill a sheep. Then we visit people. You need new clothes.” So I wasn’t terribly surprised when right after we finished our bread and coffee, my father and brother slaughtered one of our three sheep. After they finished dragging him out of the pen, I swear all the goats stood at the fence watching and the other sheep hid in the back. I found myself wondering, how do they know?? But then I remembered that they’re goats. Although they have figured out how to break through the wall of my hangar and escape their pen…I’ll have to keep my eye on them. Anyway, I left the deviously plotting goats and watched the men strip the sheep down, layer by layer. I figured we’d have some of it for lunch, so when my mother and sisters started cooking, I thought they were getting a head start. Not so. We ate our first plate of meat and potatoes around 9:30 AM. Now, as most people know, I’ve been a life-long vegetarian. I ate meat for the first time here in RIM, and I’ve been slowly trying to make myself eat more of it so I actually get some protein. During the first day of the fete, I probably quadrupled the amount of mean I’ve eaten, ever. After our first plate of meat and potatoes, we had another when my father got back home about an hour later, then had binaf (meat, potatoes and onion) for lunch and again for dinner. Whenever I tried to say I was full, my family would say “Hawa, this is the fete where we eat.” And that was that. Three days of being fed intense amounts of food everywhere I went. OK, that’s all for now. More news on work soon Inshallah!

Here I am again, and this time there aren't clouds rolling in! When I first got to Mauritania, I thought it was interesting that when people talk about the rain, they say "the rain is coming" instead of "it's going to rain." After my first few storms, I can understand why. Rain here is an event. After cutting my last post short, I made it home just as the rain was starting. Earlier this week, I was not so lucky. Shelby and I went to the bank to get our checkbooks, and as we were leaving it started to pour. We hopped in a cab, and I figured I might as well get the guy to take me home instead of to Kim's house (I moved in with my family last week--more to come on that!). Shelby got out at Kim's, and I tried to tell the driver where I lived. That's easier said than done when the only route I know is walking! I asked if he knew where my father lived, and he didn't, so I started to direct him. He drove for about a minute, then said there was too much water in the road and we couldn't go that way. I decided to go back to Kim's and wait it out there. After about an hour, it started to let up. I needed to get home for lunch, so I decided to leave my bag at Kim's and risk the walk. I stuck my phone in one side of my bra and my key in the other and headed out. Since there had been some water in the roads on my way into town, I was expecting the puddles up to my ankles and even mid-calf that I walked through most of the way home. Towards the end of my 10 minute walk, there is a (usually) empty stream bed. As I got to it, I saw a man crossing through water up to his knees. "OK," I thought, "this isn't so bad!" I hiked up my skirt (yes, please keep in mind that I'm wearing a wrap skirt this whole time) and step down the bank, promptly sinking up to my butt in water. No joke. I started laughing to myself and kept wading--what else could I do?--wishing I had thought to take my shoes off. Somehow I managed not to fall or get my phone wet. When I finally made it across the now 7 or 8 foot long river, I saw two of my younger host siblings running toward me. They each grabbed one of my hands, and laughing we walked the rest of the way home. My whole family was worried but also thought it was hilarious.

My family. What can I say about them? They're absolutely wonderful. I've stopped being Fatima Sow and am now Hawa Sarre (renaming is a really important part of family integration. Within minutes, I was Hawa--which was also the last volunteer's name and is my sister's name. Moms, if any of you take in a foreign student I expect you to rename her Emily Nelson). Without getting into too many ethnic generalizations, Pulaar families tend to be more relaxed than Moor families. I have my own little house in their compound and I eat my meals with them (they cook really well!). The first day, my father asked me if I ate meat. I told him I never did in the US but that I knew I had to here. He then slaughtered me a goat. Good times. I still don't love eating meat, but I've started making an effort since I've been here because I know I wasn't getting enough protein. They killed another goat today, and I'm pretty sure I ate head at lunch.

Other than the goat head eating, I really love my living situation. There are a lot of kids in the family ranging from a baby to 20, and they're a lot of fun. My 20 year old brother is teaching my Pulaar (hopefully I'll find an actual teacher once Ramadan is over), and his twin sister took me shopping to get stuff for my house. I'm their third PCV, so they're used to Americans, which is really nice. I spend a good amount of the time with them, but can retreat into my house when I want without anyone bothering me about it. They only come in to bring me tea, and sometimes my sister hangs out when I'm in there. So far, I'm really happy with them.

Since I've mentioned both Ramadan and goat head, some of you must be wondering, "but don't people fast during Ramadan?" The answer is officially yes and actually sometimes. There are lots of reasons people don't fast: if you're too young or too old, sick, pregnant or nursing, have your period, have to do heavy labor all day, travel a lot, etc., you don't fast. This tends to get stretched here in Selibaby! Most of my family isn't fasting, which is nice for me. They try to make me eat a lot (no big shock there), but with everyone except for my mom, telling me to eat is just a formality; they'll say "Hawa, mange," but when I say I'm full they leave it alone. My mother insists more, but when I say "Um-hari!" (I'm full in Pulaar) she usually laughs and lets me wash my hands.

I guess that's about all that's new. Work hasn't started yet because there's no school during Ramadan. I'm hoping to find the school director at some point so I can know when it does start and what grades I'm teaching...minor details.

Oh, and for Didi and Laura who asked about my maybe-kitchen! The whole idea of a kitchen as we know it doesn't exist here, at least not in normal houses. The cooking is usually done outside on small, camping-style gas stoves or over charcoal. Dishes are usually kept in a shed somewhere. My little room off of my bedroom has a shower at the back (by shower I mean a two-inch wall blocking off a little area with a hole going outside for water to drain out), and then has some cinder blocks that I can make into a table if I get a piece of wood. I'll probably do that at some point.

And last but not least, more pictures!

End of stage 1

End of stage 2

Selibaby

Enjoy!

Well, here I am! I officially swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer last week, and am now at my site. It's so great to be here, although it's weird to think that I won't see most of the other volunteers until Christmas. There's a great group of 9 of us in the region (4 second year and 5 1st year volunteers), and three of us are actually in Selibaby. I signed a lease on my little house yesterday, so I think I'm moving in tomorrow. It was built by a PCV, and I'm the third to live there. It has a bedroom with a little shower room/kitchen maybe off of it, and a porch under an awning. It's in a family's compound, so really I get the best of both worlds.

Uh oh, it's about to start pouring! Just wanted to let people know that I'm here and everything's OK. If I don't leave now I'll get stuck, but more to come soon!!

The moment my moms have been waiting for/asking about non-stop since I got here/threatening me about has finally arrived. I spent most of the afternoon for the last 3 days uploading pictures, so enjoy! Here's the link--they're on facebook but you should be able to see them even if you're not (in other words, mom, please don't make a facebook page).

First album

Second album

Enjoy!

...and I'm pretty happy about it! Don't get me wrong, it's been a great few months, I'm just so ready to move on. My family has been...ok. For the most part they're nice to me, although I'm pretty sure one of my aunts is crazy even by US standards and yells at me at random. No big. There are some days when I'm sitting there surrounded by people all talking at me in Hassaniya (they know I don't speak it, but that doesn't stop them!), kids climbing on me, eating weird food and I can't help but think "OK, where the heck am I??" But then there are days when I'm sitting there surrounded by people talking at me in Hassaniya, kids climbing on me, eating weird food and I know I'm going to miss them. I won't miss the pancake batter with pasta in it for dinner though. Eew.

Anyway, the only real news recently is that model school is over! It was really great to have three weeks actually in the classroom, working with real kids. My class was really small (we had a record 8 of them show up for the test), but even so I learned a lot about the kind of problems I'll no doubt run into. The girls can be painfully shy and hide in their mulafas when you try to get them to answer questions, even when they know the answer. It's considered OK here for kids to snap their hand and yell "teacher! teacher!" when they want to get your attention/ask a question/give an answer. Might not sound like a big deal, but it is when 60 of them do it! I'm fine with the snapping, but I'm making a no yelling teacher rule from day one. We'll see how that goes. Of the 8 kids who took the test on Friday, we had 6 pass. That's considered really good. We (Mike and I taught 5th year together) were really happy with it since one girl who failed only started coming for the last week (she got 3.5/20, and they were totally lucky guesses...she filled in some vocab blanks to make sentences such as "Shakira is very jump," and "I don't know where the post office is, can you score me?") The other kid who didn't pass stopped coming by the end and only filled in half the test. If he'd bothered to do the rest of it, I'm sure he would have passed, he just didn't for some reason. But at the end of the day, our students who came to class did well. That's a good feeling. And I taught them the word awesome, so what more do they need?

So tomorrow morning I leave my house in Satara for the last time (I really hope my family fully understands this...they've been know to be a little slow/forget that I've told them things) and go to the model school cerimony, then to the center. It will be nice to have a week or so all together before heading out to Selibaby. I'm excited to start my real life here, although since it will be Ramadan right as we get to site, it will be a slow beginning. Maybe my new family will teach me some Pulaar. Good thing I had those 3 weeks of Hassaniya! : ) Megan and I did set a record with a total of 5 different teachers during stage. Pretty impressive!

That's all for now. John, who's sitting across the cyber from me, just informed me that he's stalking my blog so I better post this for him. Creep : )

Don't worry, I'm OK! things are fine here. It was actually about as uneventful as a coup can be. Here in Rosso you wouldn't have even known. People are still having some trouble getting in and out of Nouakchott...but other than that and the old president and PM being under arrest it's business as usual! There seem to be really mixed opinions about it here, and depending on who you talk to you could get a vastly different answer.

In other news, I started actual work this past week. We spend 3 weeks teaching at Model School--basically classrooms with actual kids who get a certificate for going to English school over the summer. I taught 3 days last week, and teach1 or 2 hours a day for the next 2 weeks. It's hard because we skip around between classes, and it's so hard to know where the students are at! These are seriously multi-level classrooms. So far, I've taught 1st year (they start the first year of middle school), 5th year and the adult class. It's a ton of work, but I really, really like it. I spend my nights making lesson plans, which include things like how to set up the chalk board and stuff that I never thought I'd plan out, but it's so important to keep control of the class, especially here. Next week, I'm switching between 4th and 5th year, and then will stick with 5th year for the last 7 days.

I also started learning Hassaniya, which is fun and intense. It's hard to learn a non-written language! The Peace Corps basically made up an alphabet with French letters to make it easier for us to learn, but there are so many sounds we just don't have. It's also really interesting learning one foreign language in another (the class is taught in French). My family really likes that I'm learning, even though I haven't had much time to study yet! The whole switching languages and starting school at the same time thing was a lot for one week, plus the whole coup thing and just general toubab fun...it was a really busy but wonderful week.

OK, I hope all is well at home! Keep in touch! And thanks to people who have sent mail! I got a letter from Natalie and a bday card from Linds, and it rocked my world. And as always my moms are the best mail senders :)

Lots of love!

Hi all,

Sorry I've been out of touch! On my birthday I got the wonderful gift off finding out my site where I'm going to be for the next 2 years. I'm going to a town called Selibaby, down towards the south of Mauritania (if you look at a map, there's a little part of the country that dips down by the border of Senegal and Mali--it's by there). We left to go to our sites for a week on th 22nd. It was quite a trip! To get there, we went from Rosso to Boghe, then to Aleg, then through Kiffa and spent the night in a tiny little village (maybe 10 houses) outside of Selibaby. Most of the trip between Kiffa and Selibaby was done with no road, literally going through rivers and bouncing around so much that one of the Peace Corps guys with us threw up out the window. It was certainly an adventure! It took about 16 hours.

Selibaby is wonderful. It's a regional capital, but it's small. Much smaller than Rosso. I'm going to be living and teaching in a part of town that's mostly pulaar, which means two things: 1) the hassaniya i'm starting to learn on sunday won't be as helpful and 2) I won't have to wear a mulafa when I'm there!!! So as usual everything as ups and downs. I plan on learning Pulaar when I get there. It's very green right now in Selibaby because it's the rainy season, and I guess the trade off for being nearly impossible to get to is that there's grass and trees! The current volunteers there are great, and the other 4 people coming to the region with me are wonderful. It will be really nice to get there and finally be in one place, not living out of a suitcase! There are definitely some challenges, like the trip to get there and getting used to not having all the things we do in Rosso (less veggies now, but there will be some during the drier season, general smaller town things). But there is a guy in town who makes sandwiches on Pita bread!!! You have no idea how exciting that is. A vegetarian sandwich here is pretty funny: french fries, sometimes egg, ketchup and mayo on bread. I kid you not. It's actually really good, maybe just because it's different but don't knock it til you rock it! What else can I say about it...I had my first run-in with a blister bettle. Basically they crawl on you and release an acidic liquid which give you blisters. I got it on my neck. Good times! Really we're all covered in weird skin things, bug bites, sand all the time...you get used to it!

The trip back to Rosso was shorter because there hadn't been rain for a few days and we could take the other road to Kaedi and then spent the night in Boghe with some other volunteers. I got back to my family yesterday, and they were really happy to see me. The two little kids came running to me and threw themselves on me, as did my aunt when she got home (about an hour and a half later she was yelling at me to give her a gift even though I had brought back food for the family...she does that from time to time, I think she's a little crazy. After a little bit she was totally happy with me again). It's nice to be back, but I'm also glad it's only for 3 more weeks. I'll be living in my own little place in a Pulaar family's complex in Selibaby, and in general they're more relaxed than Moor families. They were kind of upset to hear I was going to Selibaby for 2 years and kept saying how far away it is, but I promised them I'd visit. They loved hearing my stories, and after a little while it was back to normal at my house--they spend a lot of time debating which other toubabs I should marry, and I just tell them I can't get married here because my mom would be mad! Tonight we're going to a wedding in the neighborhood so that should be fun.

OK, that's all for now. More to come soon!

Hi all! I'm here in the cyber between lunch and class, and I thought I'd try to actually give an update on my life here. I guess this is what I can think of that's new:

--I still try to eat as little meat as possible, but now when I walk down the street and see a goat (which is always) I think "I could eat you. I might even eat you tomorrow!" I don't know what it is, but I kind of like the idea that I can eat that guy if I want to. What power! So far I'm not so into the taste, but then again it is goat and camel...most people seem to love the camel thought.

--My family still refuses to speak to me in French. Well, not exactly. After the one day when they literally wouldn't speak to me in anything other than Hassaniya, they've started translating again, but only after the first few times they say something. I just kind of shrug, and then we all laugh and they explain it.

--The new craze at my house is dance parties. When there's something on the TV that's playing music, they get me to get up and dance. They're teaching me some Mauritanian dance moves. It's good times

--One week from today we find out our permanent site. That's so hard to believe! It'll be 1 month down, 26 to go :)

--My family is still great. They got me yet another mulafa, and when I came out wearing it yesterday they kept telling me how nice it looked. Even though it's basically a giant bed sheet, it makes them so happy that I don't even mind that much.

--We have baby chicks at my house now to go along with the goats, sheep and cats (the cats don't live there, but they come in and out). And speaking of animal stories...the other morning I went with my prof and one of the other people in my class to watch the camels and cows being slaughtered. Really, really interesting/horrifying/amazing to see. When we got there (around 6:45 AM) the camels were already dead, but we saw them kill a few cows. Then they skin them and take them apart bit by bit to bring to the market. They didn't scream or make any noise really, which I think is really good--I'd have a Silence of the Lambs moment if I had heard that ("are the camels still screaming, Emily?"). I'm really glad we went because a) it was pretty cool to see, I don't care how morbid that sounds and b) it's interesting to know how the meat actually gets to our big communal bowl.

--The food is...well, tedious. We eat the same thing all the time, and at this point I would kill for a salad and stir fry! Or some real cheese. Or anything that's not oily rice/pasta with goat/fish/camel. The other part of this problem is that my family wants me to get fat. They've told me so many, many times. Big women are hot here because it's a sign of wealth. My family tells me to eat constantly, even when I'm in the middle of a bite, and then makes a getting fat gesture which ends with blown out cheeks, arms up and waddling back and forth. I try to say I don't want to have to waddle, but they're not into that. You just have to be forceful, lick your hand (polite to do after a meal) and wash up as quickly as possible.

--I'm starting to miss things like grass and water to swim in, but also getting very used to my surroundings. Walking over trash and avoiding the donkey pulled carts is second nature now, as is greeting everyone when you walk in a room--I shake hands with all the women, and basically ask how they're doing in many different ways, falling back to "Ca va?" when my limited Hassaniya runs out. It's a nice custom when you think about it.

--Going back to food (which we talk about all the time pretty much), in class today our prof was talking about a place in the north where the basically just eat bread, sugar and meat with rice. I mentioned that they didn't seem to get enough vitamins, and he told me I was totally wrong, that they had meat, bread and milk so what more did they need? I suggested veggies, and he said they sometimes eat unripe watermelon seeds or potatoes...I was floored. The whole concept of "good for you" is totally different here. He finally just said "well they're alive, so it must be fine." I let it go rather than trying to explain malnutrition.

I guess this is enough for now. I'm trying to write about the most interesting things, but know that on a daily basis I'm happy and (mostly...kind of) healthy. Mauritania is such an underrated country. If anyone has the chance to get here, do! More to come soon! Keep in touch--I got my first mail the other day and I can't even say how exciting it was! And emails are wonderful too.

Well after checking my email and seeing 2 worried emails from my mom, I thought I'd write a quick note saying I'm fine and everything is still going well! French is coming along, although my family seems to have decided to only speak to me in Hassaniya...so that makes things interesting! Still really liking it, although there are moments when you stop and think what am I doing here when I could be eating good food on a nice tropical beach?? But then you drink a fanta (fanta is a big part of our lives here), play with some toddlers (they're now getting the 2 year old at my house to run over and kiss me, and she loves that her hair is braided like mine), and just look around. It is really amzing to be here. My family loves to dress me up in mulafas and braid my hair (which PS hurts like no other!), I'm kind of their child/doll. I've started going running (well, kind of...we jog) with another PCT and when I come out in pants they always ask if i'm going to Faire du sport, and when I say yes they get really happy about it and also confused about why I run up the street and down it again. That's how people seem to feel about us in general--happy, excited and confused.

Sorry this is so jumbled--I'm about to get cut off and my family wants me home anyway. All my love!!!! And keep the comments and emails coming! Feel free to ask questions if you want me to post about something specific!

Wow, there is so much to write and I don't even know where to begin. Last Friday, after a few great days of Mauritania summer camp at the Peace Corps center, we left for our host families. I'm about a 15 minute walk from the center and the market. My family is great--there are tons of kids ranging from about 1 year old to 16, and i think some others who live in other towns. I'm still not sure whose kids are whose...there are several adults in the house, the mom's sister lives with us, but all the kids are just like everyone's kids. They're really nice to me, although they spend a lot of time talking about me in hassaniya (the local language i'll be learning after some more french). I hear blah blah blah Fatima (the name they gave me) hahaha! It's all good.

My best story so far happened the first day. I call it "how i accidentally converted to islam and then unconverted in one day":

About a few hours after I got to my house, I got mulafaed. I mulafa is basically a giant sheet of fabric that gets wrapped around the women. I wasn't surprised because a lot of the families do it to their toubabs (white people). THey had been making me repeat things in hassaniya all morning because they want me to speak it right away, so I just kind of went along with it. Mostly they would say something, I would repeat and then they'd explain: bread, peanut, come here, etc. But after they wrapped me in a mulafa they had me repeat something, and all of a sudden I hear "Allah" and I start thinking hmmm..... Then my mom sits me on a little bench and has me wash my hands. It was almost time for lunch so I was like yeah, OK, but then she told me to do it 3 times and then my face and feet. So I start thinking "oooooh shit" because this is what you do before praying. I told her I didn't understand but she just kept pouring water on me. Then she brought me over and told me to repeat again, and I kept repeating in French that I didn't understand, but my father was like "Fatima! Just repeat!" So I did. By the time I had realized what was going on, it was too late to go back. After praying we ate, and I took a nap. When I got up, Nana (my mom) brought me to the bench to wash my hands again, and I was like "No, I'm not supposed to." She didn't understand, and called over my father (who speaks better French). I explained to him that because we didn't grow up doing all the things that Islamic kids do, we don't know enough to have the right respect and we shouldn't pray. He liked that ("Ce bom Fatima, ce bom") and we moved on. They haven't made me do it since. Word spread fast among my fellow trainees, and I really made everyone's day.

Here's a sum up of the rest of my first week with my family:

-I ate goat. That's right, goat. It's chewy. I try to avoid it and eat around the meat and fish, but it's hard when you eat with your hands out of a communal bowl filled with rice, cous cous or pasta, meat or fish and sometimes veggies. They all push food at me, Fatima mange mange! They want to make me fat so Mauritanian men will like me. For breakfast we have what tastes like warm pancake mix. MMM. There are some good black eyed peas, though, and overall the food is Ok.

-The other thing they try to give me is milk. But we're talking the most intense whole milk ever. Also to make me fat. Yesterday we found a baby kitten on the way to my class and took him to school with us, so we give him my milk now. He's pretty gross and probably dying, but we like him. They let him stay at the school for now.

-We all sweat all the time here. Like all the time. You get used to it. Kind of.

-Kids follow me a lot on the street, and they love to shake your hand or talk to you a little. They ask for money sometimes, and we ignore them or say "what are you going ot give me??" They laugh at the toubabs a lot. It's all good.

-the most important thing here (other than filtering water...haven't been sick yet inshallah) is going with the flow. If you let things get to you, you will go crazy. People talk to/about you in languages you don't understand all the time, you're always covered in sweat and sand, there are bugs everywhere, trash covers all the streets...but if you just take things as they come, you enjoy yourself. You learn to love the little things, like being able to barter in the market, watching insane arab TV all day with your family, buying cold juice or ice cream, running into other PCTs on the street, remembering a few words your family teaches you.

There are so many things I want to say and to write, but my time is almost up. Hopefully I'll get pictures up soon! Also, if anyone wants to send letters or things, I will love you forever. Legit. Especially if it's candy. :) My address is:

Emily Nelson, PCT

Corps de le Paix

BP 222

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Please keep in touch, emails and comments are great. Phone calls are sweet too!

I'll end with I'm happy, healthy, sweaty, overwhelmed and looking forward to going home and taking a bucket bath! Mauritania is amazing.

All my love!!

Just to start out, this is the weirdest keyboard ever so please hang in there with my typing!

Im sitting here in computer place in Rosso. What can I even say to start... we have been here for a few days now, and it is amazing. Mauritanians are so nice and friendly, and the people i am with are great. it is super crazy hot and sandy, but at night when we sleep outside in out little mosquito net tent city it gets windy and cool and beautiful. we eat out of communal bowls with our right hands and so far at the center they have been ,aking veggie food for a group of us. it is so good! the bathroom thing you get used to... they use water in a little tea pot instead of TP and you squat over a little hole. the first time is daunting but after that it starts to seem normal. we have showers here but often no water in them, so i have been taking bucket baths. not bad at all really.

i wish i could put Mauritania into words. Rosso is considered a city rather than small town, but it is full of small, often crumbling buildings. there is no trash system so there is trash all over the street, and usually a few goats eating it. cars go along side donkey pulled carts. people wear beautiful clothes and greet each other for several minutes each time. nothing you would picture fro, this can capture ,y new home. i will put up picts asap. i love it here. i wouldnt wznt to be anywhere else§

ok this took about 20 min to type so i have to go. i have a cell now 011 222 459 68 91. all my love!

Hi all (or maybe just my moms who may be the only ones reading!)

This will have to be a quick post, but I just wanted to write a little bit about staging. I got to Atlanta on Tuesday evening, and have just spent 2 days with an amazing group of people. Many of us met in the airport and took a shuttle to the hotel. It was really funny to see how a lot of us found each other--basically you would see someone with a huge backpack, make awkward eye contact, look away, look back...finally one of you would say "Peace Corps?" or "Mauritania?" to the other, and then start the introductions for the millionth time. It was pretty amusing.

But really, I feel so lucky to be with this group. Although the past few days have been really, really long, we're all having a blast for the most part. Some training sessions can be long, but the other Mauritania trainees are better than I could have hoped. And not just because some of you might read this (hopefully it will be Donny Strong!).

Tomorrow we head to the airport at 10, and then wait for our 3:45 flight. It's hard to believe that tonight is our last night in the US (and in a real bed!!). My roommate and I have been taking full advantage of our big comfy beds, the hot shower and FOOD most of all.

I hope all is well with everyone at home. Don't know when I'll be able to get on the internet again--we fly into Dakar and then take a 5-6 hour bus ride to Rosso, where we start training and live in dorms for 5 days before meeting our host families. Hopefully after 5 days I'll have enough of the language to at least communicate a little!

That's all for now! Lots of love!!!

I want to preface this by saying that everyone’s application process is different. When I was in the middle of it, I spent a ton of time reading current volunteer’s blogs to find out how long it took them to get their medical clearance, invite, etc. to figure out how much longer I had to wait—this can help put your mind at ease, but it totally depends on your individual application.

I started the whole process in January 2007. I think I finished my on-line application by the end of January or early February, and then I had an interview up at school (I went to Middlebury College in VT). I was nominated on May 7. I didn’t start my medical/dental paperwork until I got home from school, but I sent it in at the end of June (I think they got it on the 25th or 26th). At that point, I didn’t think it would take very much time for me to get medically cleared. I have never had any serious medical problems and am ridiculously healthy. I got my dental papers back about a month later saying that I needed some cavities filled, but since that doesn’t hold up the invitation process I decided to wait until I got back from school (I spent the summer studying Portuguese). I tried to tell myself that it would take time and not run to my mailbox every day, but it was hard to put out of my mind.

The waiting continued through the summer and into the fall. I didn’t want to call the medical office because I didn’t want to come across as pushy, so I just waited. Finally by mid-September I decided that I had to figure out what was going on, and I called. They told me something about having to wait until at least the end of December or beginning of January to receive clearance, and I got off the phone feeling incredibly frustrated. How could it take six or seven months to review my very simple medical file? Well, it turns out that whomever I talked to must have been confused because I received medical clearance about four days later. I have no proof of this, but I think he must have been confused and looking at the date my file would be considered for an invitation based on the program date. I’m also convinced that if I hadn’t called, I would have waited even longer. I would advise anyone in this situation to give it a reasonable amount of time, but then to call and check in. Everyone says you should start your application early, but since I sent it in about a year before I wanted to leave I was at the bottom of the list in terms of priority.

So then the waiting continued, and I spent the majority of my free time scanning the internet, trying to figure out how long it usually took from receiving medical clearance to getting the invite. I then started getting emails from the placement office asking for an updated resume and for a confirmation of my earliest date of availability. Since I was graduating from college that February, I had originally said that I would be available in mid-May to give myself some time. However, after waiting so long I figured I would tell them that I could leave as early as the second week in February to give myself the best chance. I had a long series of back and forth emails about this date, and finally the placement officer just told me that he would add it to my file. Then I continued to wait.

By the end of December I was getting a little panicked, not because I was desperate to know where I was going but because no one could tell me if I was definitely in or not. They said that the majority of people who are medically cleared get invited, but no one could give me a guarantee. The problem was the timing; I was a little more than a month away from graduating, and started to worry that I wouldn’t get in and then would be jobless. Peace Corps was by far my first choice, but I worried about what would happen if I didn’t get in and hadn’t applied for anything else. When I went home for winter break, I decided to email the placement office about my concerns to see if there was anything they could do. That’s when the real craziness started. After several confusing emails, the guy from the office that I had been talking to told me to call him so he could explain everything. He told me that the program I had been nominated for (Community Development, Portuguese-speaking Africa, April 08) had been moved to late June, which was causing the hold-up in my application process. The Peace Corps reviews files by date the applicant is scheduled to leave rather than order in which the application is complete, which I can understand but is still really frustrating for those of us trying to plan ahead and get everything done on time. I felt like I was getting screwed for getting my application in early and that people who waited until the last minute were getting preference. I then found out that the program had again been bumped back, this time until late July. The problem, the P.O. explained, was that they didn’t consider applicants for the July programs until at least early February. At that point, I tried to explain without bursting into tears of frustration that I couldn’t wait until February because I wouldn’t be able to plan my post-grad time (for example, I thought about traveling but wouldn’t be able to make plans because I could receive an invite saying I was leaving in as little as six weeks). He then asked me if I had finished my medical forms, and was totally shocked to hear that I had been medically cleared for three months. He told me to hold on for a minute, then came back and told me that if I would be willing to teach English instead of community development and to learn French, he could move me to a program in a Francophone African country and consider my application immediately. I think my response went something like this:

Emily: “Uhhhhh.....what? How do I learn French?”

Smooth. He told me that it didn’t have to be at Middlebury, that I could take a class anywhere and have the teacher give them an update on my progress. I considered it, and then told him yes. He said to write him an email with written confirmation of my agreement to learn French (since I told him that I didn’t want to sign up for a class until I knew that I would actually need to). It was around the 16th or 17th of December at this point, and when I asked how long it would take to consider my file, he told me that guy who makes the official nomination switch was in that day but that he probably wouldn’t be able to get to it right away so I would have to wait until the end of the month or early January (they were about to leave for the Christmas holiday). I didn’t really know what to think at that point. I had gotten kind of attached to leaving in April and going to a Portuguese speaking country, but I realized that the only reason I felt that way was because that was what they had originally told me. In my application, I said I would go anywhere and I meant it. I started to look at the on-line map and read about the countries I could possible go to, and I got really excited. So I resigned myself to a few more weeks of waiting.

Then, for the first time in the whole application process, I got lucky. The next day, my on-line toolkit reported that my application review was complete and that my invitation had been sent. Unfortunately, I hadn’t updated my address because I didn’t expect it until I got back to school, so it was on its way to Vermont while I was in Massachusetts. I had to wait until after Christmas, but luckily my parents were going up to Vermont on the 27th and agreed to go to the college and check my mail for me. We weren’t sure if they would let her get my mail or not, and I was totally prepared to get hysterical and cry on the phone to the people at the mail center and beg them to give her my mail. But one of the best things about going to a small college in the middle of Vermont is the trust—they gave it to her without any problems. She called me and told me that I was going to Mauritania, and I can honestly say that I have never been so excited.

So that’s the long story. It took about a year from submitting my application to receiving the invitation, but it was worth the wait. For anyone going through this, I would suggest keeping in contact with the Peace Corps whenever you have questions or worry about the status of your application. Don’t be unreasonable about it (it will take time, that’s just a fact), but if you have questions about what’s holding up the process, don’t hesitate to call or email them.

I hope this helps! Feel free to ask any questions!

So I feel a little weird posting here already because I haven't left the US yet, but I figure it's a good idea to get everything up and running before I leave. I can't wait! At some point soon I'll write a post about my application experience and everything--reading other people's blogs was really helpful when I went through it.

As for right now, there's nothing too exciting to say. I'm trying to learn French, which is going...well, it's going OK I guess. My class is a lot slower paced than I'm used to (anyone from Midd, regular midd or language school, knows what I'm talking about!). I'm hoping to spend a week in Montreal doing an immersion program at the end of this month, so we'll see. I feel like if I could get just a little more under my belt I could just use the Rosetta Stone and find a conversation partner here in Boston. It gets so frustrating because I can read a lot and my brain feels like I should be able to speak it, but that's not quite the case. Everyone keeps asking me why the Peace Corps didn't send me somewhere Spanish or Portuguese speaking, but I'm really looking forward to picking up new languages. I just hope I'm not totally incompetent when I get there!

Alrighty, that's all for now. More to come soon!