While attending our "Mid-Term Reconnect"/"Consolidation Conference"/"Transition Conference" in Thies, Senegal, prior to our evacuation we had a training session entitled Mauritania Folktales/Stories/Folklore led by a few Mauritanian teachers who shared some local folklore and symbolism with us and a few illustrative tales. This morning I found my very...um..."interesting" notes (Mr. Sisco, I imagine you know exactly to what I'm referring here...). At any rate, I read through them for old times sake and stumbled upon to folklore page, on which I had taken the time to paraphrase two of the Mauritanian Folktales; I thought perhaps some of you out there might be interested in reading these, especially those PCRIM folks who unfortunately happened to be on vacation during this conference and missed out on this session. I'm sure I tried to write as close to what was being dictated as possible, so the wording is a little odd, as it is directly translated from French, either in my head, or the head of the teacher telling the story. Enjoy!

"A hare (symbolizes honesty, intelligence) had a cow and a fox (symbolizes cunning) had a bull. The cow became pregnant and the fox insisted on being the herder for the day of the birth. When the calf was born the said said it was his bull's calf. The hare knew it was his cow so they went to the judge, a squirrel (no idea what this symbolizes...), who said to come back tomorrow for a judgement. When they came back the squirrel made sounds like he was in labor. The fox said that was impossible because the squirrel is a male so the squirrel said 'okay, so give the calf to the cow.' MORAL: Calves are for cows, kids are for moms."

"Once upon a time a turtle (who represents patience, wisdom) worked at a blacksmith and he tells everyone to keep their mouth shut or he'll burn their mother, but a guy just says 'wow! a talking turtle!' and runs to the king and says 'look! a talking turtle!' The king says if he's lying he will be killed so he tries and tries to get the turtle to talk but he won't. They hang the man and right before he dies the turtle says 'keep your mouth shut or i'll burn your mother!' MORAL: Keep your mouth shut about other peoples business."

Yay for Mauritania!!!

Hey Everyone!

I'm updating everyone on my existence at a new address these days:

http://unemployedinasmalltown.blogspot.com/

Chronicling my adventures and misadventures seeking employment on a blog for all interested parties to enjoy! Please check it out~I'm looking for suggestions. If you know people who are hiring, send me their info! I'll apply and if the opportunity doesn't work for me I'll throw it up on the blog for others to check out!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to do so!

Shelby

Dear Followers of my blog,

For the past 14 months I have been posting the emails that i send to my friends and family on this blog in case i missed anyone on the email list that might be following the blog. I have to say that the comments have surprised me at times, i never thought very many people would see it or read it and i never thought it would be people who didn't even know me. I wanted to make one last post for you guys, the parents of other volunteers, other volunteers themselves, "future" RIM volunteers from the group that didn't quite make it ( so sorry we never got to meet guys, we were looking forward to it just as much as you were, but hey now you can be thankful because it would have been pretty miserable to get there only to be evacuated), and any others who read/are reading this.

Thank you for letting me tell you my story, it always feels good to have a story to tell that people want to hear. I will not be posting on this blog any more unless I decide to re-enroll in the peace corps and go somewhere else, but at this moment the chance of that seems pretty remote. I was immensely attached to my family and life in Mauritania and moving straight out of there and into a new community just doesn't feel like something i'm strong enough to handle any time soon. I know that I would be comparing these relationships to the ones i made in Mauritania and its not fair to go into a new community with that outlook. I was very lucky in the two host families that i had in mauritania, both during training and at site I was made to feel welcome and like a member of a family within moments of my arrival. I can't express how much this meant to me and i wouldn't trade these experiences for the world.

To all the prospective Peace Corps Volunteers out there that might be reading this: I know the application process is so drawn out its painful, there are people in my class who had been waiting 2 or 3 years for a placement. Just know that Peace Corps itself, the whole experience, will be long, drawn out, and sometimes discouraging and exhausting, just like the application process, but when you get there, if you have the right attitude, and your open to whatever might happen, i promise it can be the best decision you have ever made in your life.

Finishing Peace Corps, whether you're ready or not, is not like leaving any other job you will ever have. I may have left my heart in Mauritania but the pain of leaving is nothing compared to the joy of the experiences and memories that i brought back with me.

Good luck to everyone applying/transferring/continuing/debating service! I know I'll do Peace Corps again some day, but not until I'm good and ready.

The group of people I served with were all amazing in their own way, and so talented and motivated that even though this feels like the end of something big for us (well, it is) and is also the beginning of something even bigger! Good luck everyone! Especially those that direct transferred and are continuing right now, I admire your strength and dedication.

To the parents of direct transfer folks, I bet you wanted them to come home at least a little bit, but I bet you're just bursting with pride in your awesome child for their decision to continue(Tim's mom, that ones for you!).

To Anyone Else who might be reading this: Does anyone have a job for me? Just kidddddding! I love you all, but I most likely won't write anymore.

Goodbye,

Shelby Perry, RPCV

Health Education Volunteer/Water Sanitation Engineer

Selibaby Mauritania

June 2008 to August 2009

10 August 2009

Dear beloved friends and family,

It has been wonderful corresponding with you all through email over the past 13 months, sharing my experiences with you and hearing your reactions has been such a rewarding part of all of this for me. I have missed you all dearly but i never could have done what i have been doing without your support and understanding and love. With that said i would like to give you the latest bit of bad news in a string of bad new-es...after a few security threats came to light on friday (confidential, they can't even tell me) and then suicide bombing in nouakchott on saturday night (that didn't kill anyone but the bomber himself in case you're worried) the United States Peace Corps has decided to suspend the program starting immediatly and continuing indefinitely. What does this mean? First that i am very very sad, we all are, i have cried a great deal all ready and i used up all my phone credit so i can't even call my parents of my host family until i go out and buy more but when i do i will cry some more. As long as we are continuing our career with peace corps we are forbidden from traveling in, passing through, or visiting mauritania at all. I have many options ahead of me, exactly what they are i will find out tomorrow morning in detail but they involve transfering to a different program, completeing my service and leaving, signing up for peace corps response, or interrupting my service, leaving the option to return open if the program reopens. I don't know what i'll do yet but i will know by friday because thats all the time i have to decide. This bomb was dropped on me just about an hour ago and i don't even really know how to process it yet but i will say this, i respect the decision of the peace corps, i will respect their wishes and not return to mauritania, but i want everyone to know completely and truly that this has nothing to do with mauritanians as a people, nor does it have anything to do with muslims, this is because of an outside threat that has been brought to the attention of peace corps. The director of peace corps herself, Jody Olsen, came here to break the news to us and she is a huge supporter of the mauritania program and told us how much our relationships and families mean to us and it was obviously very hard for her to break this news to us, so i can completely respect the peace corps side of things, and i know you all will too.

I know you will all be supportive to me in whatever capacity i choose to continue or discontinue my peace corps service and i hope you all know how much this has meant to me. Start planning my welcome home party, i could be out of here as early as friday and i want to see you all as soon as possible! Ann, tubing? Becky...i'll pay for half your flight up if you can come see me...Mom and Dad call me! i ran out of phone credit...i want to talk to you! Cory...thank you for everything! and i mean everything! all the packages, the harddrives, the phone calls, the support, the everything, you are the best brother imaginable and i know you had more to send and were going to keep supporting me through it all and it was your birthday even when we were talking about it so i just wanted to say thank you and i love you and thank you!

I love you allllllllllllllllllllll with all my heart, see you all so soon i can't even believe it. I have been evacuated. crap.

shelby

August 3rd, 2009

Hellllllllllllo!

Bet you’re all curious where I’ve been huh? Well okay maybe not but I’m going to tell you anyway! I’m on my little vacay, in Senegal, at a posh establishment enjoying all of the beer and cheese and ice cream Senegal has to offer in the company of 50 of my closest friends on the continent. So what have I done? I feel like a kid at camp…some days we have technical sessions, training activities, and other times we have trips to various attractions in the area including a company that hand weaves famous African art into huge tapestries the likes of which hang in the UN, the Atlanta Airport, and other rich folks home (they cost ~$1000 per square meter) and I vowed someday I’ll come back when I’m rich and buy one. The artist that scales them up or down for the patterns is waiting for me, he has faith, I’ll be back. The tapestries themselves are all woven by local women and though I went on a weekend and was unable to see them weaving, I saw photos of them working on huge looms and it made me think of Birdi (you would have just loved this place, I wish I could have shared it with you! What an amazing place!). We also visited a local artisan’s village but I found them to be way too used to tourists and seriously over priced…they wanted to speak to me in their broken English even though its much easier for both parties involved to do the bargaining in French, they tried to trip me by dropping the price and then when I counter they would ramp it back up and say it all excitedly like it was a fantastic deal for me to pay 2000 more than the price I just turned down, I’m guessing it works for them with tourists but I told them that I wanted to think about it and then peaced out, besides, my friend Dame tells me I should save my money to spend in Mauritania anyway, that’s where I live and work and I owe it to them to inject my money back into that economy, so I held off on purchasing. There was a little drum that tempted me a great deal but I couldn’t get the man below 5000 cfa (roughly $10.00) and I felt like it was a little bit much so I waited and found it from another woman that knows and loves peace corps Mauritania for 2500 cfa so I’m pretty glad I waited.

In the artisans village I met a gentleman named Booboo who spoke a good amount of English but was not exactly fluent and he kept calling me back to show me his wares, I told him I was just there with my friends and I wouldn’t buy anything so I didn’t want to go look and he relented but then called me back over later and asked “excuse me, can we do the friendly?” which I think meant that he wanted to be friends. Just to be sure I asked what he meant and he clarified with “you know…for….possibility.” I’m still not exactly sure what this entails but I said no just to be safe.

Yesterday we were bussed as a group out to a monastery to tour the gardens and watch the service if we wanted, and sample their Besop wine and goat cheese, it was beautiful there! We walked through grapefruit and avocado and cashew orchards, in vine-draped, tree-lined paths around the whole property. After that we boarded the busses again and took a driving tour around Lac Rose, a pink salt lake where men in dugout canoes were scooping salt off the bottom like sand and filling buckets that women carried to piles on their heads. It was really neat to see, especially the goats climbing the 10 or 20 foot high piles of salt. When we came out the other end we continued on to the beach and had a picnic with chicken sandwiches and apples and then swam in the ocean and played Frisbee...it was fantastic. So clearly folks, I’m living a very rough life here and deserve your sympathy! Oh, hey and thank your Mauritanian government because the delay in visa processing for the security team has extended our vacation and we will be spending a long weekend staying on the shore at another beach community where other volunteers have offered to give surfing lessons and huts on the beach sell cold beers. I’m really suffering…seriously.

If all goes according to plan we should all be back in Mauritania by the middle of the month with our noses fitted snugly to the grindstone, trying to catch up on all the work we’re NOT doing right now. I feel like one of those people that join the army picturing the deserts of the middle east and ends up getting stationed in Hawaii...pinch me, this is surely too good to be true!

Okay I’m running out of computer battery but love and happy thoughts too all, I’ll write more when I know!

Shelby

ps. Puppy had 6 puppies...so i'll have that waiting for me when i get back too!

July 24, 2009

Helllllo Friends and Family,

Here I go, playing with your heart strings some more! So I’m taking a little...umm…trip. To be exact it’s a country-wide peace corps excursion to Senegal! BEFORE YOU FREAK OUT I AM NOT BEING EVACUATED AND THERE IS NO SECURITY THREAT THAT CAUSED THIS TRIP! Okay, now that I have that out of the way, heres what happened:

I had big plans for this weekend, I hopped on a taxi late yesterday afternoon and headed out to Tabatha’s village, Coumba N’Dao, and we planned mosquito repellent making sessions, moringa powder demos, a pilgrimage out to the Pulaar village to visit some mutual friends, and some world map painting, plus some good old fashioned duck duck goose with the eco-health camp girls. Unfortunately, as frequently happens ‘round these parts, all of my big plans were foiled. About 2 hours after arriving, Tab and I were wandering from house to house in the town greeting every one of Tab’s friends that would be offended if we didn’t greet them the moment another volunteer arrived in town, me stumbling shamefully through Soninke greetings and Tabatha yammering away in her nonsense language as I like to call it (just kidding Tab, you know I appreciate the importance of Soninke, I’m just jealous because I can’t speak a local language!) and we get a phone call from Emily in Selibaby. Phone service was spotty at best and through the static, this is what I understand Emily’s side of the conversation to roughly have sounded like:

Sshshshshshsh(static)shshshsh very important news! Shshshshshs(static)shshshsh going to Senegal shshshshshshshshsh by the 27th shshshshshshshshshs probably coming back shhshshshshshs bring everything shshshshshshshshsh……(dial tone)

So naturally Tabatha and I had a panic attack, finished our greetings, because not doing that would be unspeakably rude, especially since we had already greeted some people and playing favorites is not a good idea, and then climbed up on the roof at her house and held our cell phones up in the air until we could get through to our APCDs and to Emily for more information and we learned that the panic attack was entirely unnecessary and a little over the top, but oh wellll. The “evacuation” is a test of the emergency action plan, we’re “evacuating” to the PC Senegal training center (apparently a 5 star establishment compared to our lovely Rosso spot) and hanging there on peace corps’ dime for roughly 10 days to discuss the future of the Mauritania program with our dramatically diminished volunteer population, which will probably involve consolidating sites that have only 2 or 3 people left in the region and a general, shall we say, coming together of peace corps Mauritania! As if we weren’t the closest most awesome group of peace corpions that ever there were…

Anywho, whilst we are gone a special crew of security evaluators are going to go through our country with a fine tooth comb (as they will be doing with all the sahel countries as a routine thing) to make sure all is well and good and that way when we all get back to our sites all of our parents can rest easy that our current living conditions are probably not sanitary or healthy but at least they are not in anyway threatening our personal safety and we can feel good and happy and maybe get some work done and stop playing games with your hearts. So there you have it, think of this as putting the lid on a big container that has all that crap that happened this summer in it and MOVING ON! Back to Peace Corps Mauritania business as usual!

After finding out what all of the hullabaloo was about, Tab and I canceled all of our plans, packed up all our things, said some goodbyes, and grabbed the first taxi back to Selibaby this morning. Now all 6 of my region mates are here, hanging out at my house, and tomorrow we move en masse to Kaedi and then Nouakchott where we’ll be meeting up with everyone else and taking a big ol’ bus down to our humble lodgments for a 10 day surprise vacay in Senegal. I went to my host family’s this morning to try my dandiest to explain what this all means in French and they didn’t really seem concerned at all. I brought them a baby mango tree, told them I’m going on a surprise trip to a Peace Corps conference in Senegal and I’m not absolutely positive when I’ll be back and they, being much better adapted to Mauritania’s tendency to mess up anything planned in advance, said “okay…safe trip! Hey wouldn’t it be funny if it rained tonight and you couldn’t go anywhere tomorrow?” (no….it would not.) And then they added “Hey! Lets braid her hair!” So that’s brings us to now, with a throbbing head full of very tight braids, packing my “most important things” to depart on an “evacuation” drill first thing in the morning, watching the horizon get darker and darker with threatening clouds and crossing my fingers that it won’t rain.

To those of you that know that when I moved into this house I inherited a VERY pregnant dog, no, she has not had any puppykins yet, and I have to leave her in a time of need, but I found her a very dependable dog sitter, and I’m quite confident that she’ll be fine. To those of you who get a hold of me on a regular basis, starting the 28th of this month I will be reachable only by my orange number, which I don’t know off the top of my head but I’ll text it to you. To those of you who are curious, I have not seen a giant spider since I moved in to my new house, and am being haunted only by the occasional mouse in cleaning up after me in my room and funny little toads that make weird old man noises hopping all over the place. And finally, to Tabatha’s Dad, Tab tells me you enjoy reading this, so I wanted to say thanks for letting me know that’s its worth posting these on my blog too…that and you’re daughter’s awesome, but I bet you knew that already :o)

Love and hugs all around,

Shelby

July 10, 2009

Hello Everyone!

I hope this finds you all well and happy, etc. I am doing well…for

the few hours that I was undecided as to whether I was going to take

the IS and come home or not I thought there would never be a clear

choice, I thought I would always be wondering what if…no matter which

option I chose, but from the minute I made up my mind I’ve never been

more sure about anything in my life as I am that it was the right

choice for me. The emails and messages of support I’ve gotten from

you guys have made it that much easier for me, so thank you for your

continued support and concern…I’m positive this would have been much

more difficult if all of you hadn’t taken this news so well.

All told we are losing 20 volunteers from all over the country, these

people are leaving for various reasons ranging from personal issues at

home, to not wanting to be alone at site (with all of our second years

leaving that is happening for the first time to a lot of people) to

people who were on the fence already and thought they might as well

just go now because of all the benefits offered with the IS. Among

these were people with genuine security concerns, but I want to be

clear to you, these security concerns do not apply across the board,

many sites are far more difficult than mine, far less friendly places

to live. Selibaby is an incredibly diverse city in an incredibly

diverse region, sharing borders with both Mali and Senegal, the local

population is very accepting of other cultures and very accustomed to

being that way; more than that, they have been working successfully

with aid organizations for ages and French volunteers, German

volunteers, and others live in this region all the time. This is not

true for all of Mauritania, many sites are astoundingly un-diverse and

still others have grown up around industry, such as the mines in the

north where they have had the constant presence of foreigners but

often in a very negative context. Volunteers at these sites have

experienced security concerns involving petty theft and breaking and

entering, as could happen anywhere in the world, these are not

serious, but surely they are intimidating, especially to people who

will be alone at site for the first time. Volunteers who are going to

be afraid for the entire next year at their site should absolutely go

home, the peace corps is a wonderful experience when its done right

but its no reason to live in fear.

That said, I want you all to know that I do not. I’m cautious and

careful, I avoid large events, especially those with political or

religious leanings, I don’t leave the house after dark unless

accompanied by another volunteer or one of my host brothers, and I

have a dog living with me that scares the pee out of every Mauritanian

to set eyes on her but loves me to pieces. I’m careful, but not

scared. This is why I stayed, and when all is said and done I know

I’ll be glad I did. All 5 volunteers in my region are staying, and as

an added bonus we are probably getting another who will be moving down

from another site to run our girls mentoring center now that Kim has

finished her service. When I told my friends in the community about

having to make this decision they had no doubt that I would stay, even

before I felt the same way, but they still sympathized with a feeling

of unease that such an offer might create and many generously offered

to guard or find a guard for my house, but I have puppy and that’s all

I need. Please do not worry (too much) about my safety, I know its

difficult to understand from so far away with no real understanding of

the culture other than what you’ve heard from me, but I love life too

much to do anything stupid and Aunt Jen, if it ever comes down to it,

I’ll be home LONG before I’m scared. I love you all so much, I hope

this helps puts your minds at ease a little…

Anywho, now that I got that out just thought I would also write a

little about what I have been up to lately. These past 5 days I have

been at Eco-Health Camp in Kankossa. The camp was a world vision and

peace corps sponsored event for girls to get away from home, have some

fun, and learn a little too. I brought 2 girls from Selibaby and my

host sister as their chaperone, and Tab brought two from Coumba N’Dao

(her village) and a chaperone as well and Sari came along to help out

too. Getting out of Selibaby is a little tricky during the rainy

season and our prayers for good weather were not heeded by mother

earth because she rolled in a big storm at around 3 am the night

before we left and continuing until we were halfway to our final

destination. The “road” between here and kankossa is a rough track

through rocky rugged terrain slashed with the gullies carved by

seasonal rivers. If its raining upstream, one of those rivers can

postpone your travels indefinitely and in that respect we were lucky.

We got stuck in the clay-ey mud only one and our driver took off his

shoes and white boubou and laid his metal grippy strips in the muck

barefoot because no one wants to mess up perfectly nice shoes when

feet are so washable. He hopped back in the car and gunned the engine

with his clay-encased toes dripping mud all over the pedals and floor

of the car (no ones real concerned about messing up cars though…) and

we zipped right out of the mud and, after the driver rinsed his feet

and donned his shoes, continued on our merry way. The camp was what I

would call a wonderful success because you can’t expect these things

to go perfectly and we had the following things working in our favor:

an awesome volunteer team who did all the planning and setting up for

us before we got there, lots and lots of yummy food, important lessons

paired with fun activities, and an amazing sports activity every night

(the favorite among the girls: duck duck goose). That said, here are

some things that went slightly differently than planned: The cooks

robbed us mercilessly with their magic traicks, making meat, powdered

milk, and vegetables disappear, price gouging us on veggies that they

were selling at their own stall in the market and knew we would have

to buy, and making certain items and utensils appear magically in

sacks or buckets like the 2 dirty knives we put with the dishes to be

washed and then found in a sack, hidden, presumably from us. That

made me sad, because these are not bad people, they can just get a

little greedy and are very good at exploiting an opportunity. One of

them even had the audacity to interrupt our closing ceremony and

demand one of the backpacks for herself that was the participation

gift for the girls, and she was decidedly not a girl, but rather very

well could have been old enough to one of their grandmothers.

At the end of the camp we negotiated a car back to Selibaby for 7 as

Tab and Sari were staying behind to do some visiting, and got a Helix,

which is a truck with room for 6 inside and one lucky member of our

traveling group in the truck bed (I couldn’t do that to a girl or a

chaperone so that lucky member was me). Cars usually leave for

Selibaby in the evening and often stay a night on route and because we

didn’t want to do that we were forced to buy out the car for an

exorbitant amount, as always when we travel, but I was okay with that

because I would have the back to myself and not have to fight for a

good position on a truck bed taking rough dirt roads at 70 km/hr,

course I was not all that surprised when I found out I wouldn’t have

the back to myself after all, but that the garage guys brother would

be hitching a free ride part of the way with me…I made some angry

noises, he assured me it was only for an hour or so and so I let it

go, not worth fighting about. Now, I’m not sure whether I should have

been surprised or not when we reached the city limits and picked up

two more, clearly told ahead of time to be expecting the car, clearly

expecting a free ride. I was tired and angry and we had fought with

the garage guy a lot about the price of the car, him insisting that no

one would want to leave on this particular trip in the morning and he

wouldn’t be able to sell ANY OTHER PLACES in the car so we would have

to pay for them all…so I had a few choice words with this gentleman

who promised to pay me and acted all indignant that I was so upset…I

asked him to see things from my side and couldn’t he see that it was

stealing? Then I put on my headphones and calmed down, remembering

that it was world visions money that had paid for the car and any

money he gave me should be for them or I would be stealing too and

then I worried if I was too mean to the guy and maybe I shouldn’t have

said stealing because that’s very offensive here, maybe he hates me

now, I need to be more careful. I was polite but not overly friendly

the rest of the trip and when he got off the car at his stop I thought

I was out here giving Americans a bad name when, as we’re pulling away

he wished me a good trip and safe travels and then starting forward a

few paces while we left him he the dust he yelled “oh I forgot to give

you my phone number…” No man or woman with old enough sons can stay

mad at me in this country; their perceived possibility of marriage is

far too tempting to burn any bridges.

I can see that this message is getting long and you’re probably bored

so I’ll finish up, I got back to Selibaby safe and sound and all the

girls and chaperones got back to their respective houses without

problems. I never did see a penny from that chauffer, even though we

picked up two more people on route but I was still given my space in

the truck bed and it even felt a little better with company, even

though we didn’t talk at all, so I saw no need to fight over a few

thousand ouguiya. Got home to find puppy looking very pregnant indeed

(anyone want an African puppy?) making her all the more feisty and

also needy for attention (I was woken up many times in the night to

her sleeping on or trying to tunnel into my mosquito netting, and when

I finally let her in a goat jumped up on the wall and she almost tore

it all down trying to chase him away). I’m happy, slightly less than

healthy with the dregs of a cold still hanging on making my nose run

and my head ache in the heat of the day, and I’m glad to be back in

familiar territory with my host family and all my friends here. I’ll

write more as soon as I have a good story to tell,

Love,

Shelby

June 17, 2009

Hola!

I've been gone for a month...haven't been here at all, and it took precisely 2 nights back with my host family before my giant spider friend realized i was home and came to say hello. Yesterday i found him waiting for me in my room when i woke up in the morning, just chilling there, like an old friend making himself completely at home, and this morning he was making his angry face at me through my mosquito netting at 6 am...waving his hairy legs all around and everything. My famiy has caught on to my "frozen with fear" look and when i stop moving and point they usually come and remove the source of my distress for me. Thats wonderful, don't get me wrong, but they never kill it, they just flick it away, and i'm convinced its always the same guy. His intimidation tactics are working, i'm moving out very soon and into an empty house that a COSing volunteer is vacating, but i have 6 more nights with this creepy crawly popping up all over the place. My dilemma is this, one well placed shoe or book and hes history but my host family keeps saying he won't do anything and they never kill him, so should i? can i justify killing something that apparently means me no harm? I mean he's big enough to qualify as more animal then insect and i wouldn't just kill a mouse or a dog if it intimidated me but did me no harm...but if he follows me to the new house hes dead.

Recent encounters have bolstered my courage enough to get a good photo so that i can share with you this handsome fellow...that shoe is a size 9. He's about the size of a mouse.

cheers,

shelby

ps. becky/merry...why are you reading this? i put that warning in the subject line just for you two!

june 15, 2009

Hello Everyone !

Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you all know that after 35 hours in planes and airports, 27 hours in taxis and garages, and a few minutes on a boat, I am finally back at site, safe and sound! I loved seeing everyone that I got to see, and those of you that I missed I’m quite sad to have missed you but when I come home for good I’ll have time to make the rounds and actually see everyone! Grandma, I’m so sorry I didn’t make it out to see you again, I really wanted to but towards then end I got quite stretched for time. Eleanor, I’m so sorry I missed you as well, again, time got away from me. Birdi, I really wanted to make it out there on my last weekend but with my brother coming home and other visitors coming and going I knew I didn’t have the time to make this trip, I’m sorry I missed you this time but I’m sure I’ll see you first thing when I’m back for good!

Dad, Mom, Cory: You guys mean the world to me! You made this trip so amazing for me it was incredibly difficult for me just to come back. I love you guys so much; I don’t know what I would do without you!

Save Sidi Staff: I returned to site to find my project team well into the study phase of the project with lots of new information for me. We have a new location and within that neighborhood have assessed the need for our center, determining that over 50% of the children are moderately malnourished and another 10% are severe (probably beyond the scope of the project, these children should be hospitalized). I have begun the proposal and funding application for Peace Corps partnerships funding, which I will send a copy of to you when it is complete along with other updates and pertinent information.

See you all again in a year! Love and hugs,

Shelby

May 4th, 2009

Hey-lo!

Hows everybody doing today? lovely i hope? Well i figured its been long enough since I've sent you all an update and though I have been busy with actual work (shocking i know) I have managed to have some rather more interesting experiences of late, one of which i would like to share...in case the creepy thing gets its way and eats me in my sleep. (sorry mom, dad, and cory, I know you've already heard this story)

Whats worse than a dead rat? Why a giant (alive) spider of course! About a week ago I was seated in my room on my mattela (foamy mattress thingy) minding my own business, writing in my journal, when from the ceiling beam above drops the biggest gosh darn freaking spider i have ever seen in my whole existence (not counting on tv). I knew they were here, i've heard tales of them, but this is the first i have seen and it drops from the ceiling and runs FAST around in circles next to me and then off the edge of the mattela and into my heap of junk that i call my room (due to a recent losing battle with clothes munching termites everything i own was at the time piled sloppily in the center of the room to keep those hungry little monsters out of it). That was my first mistake, in keeping my room so messy i had inadvertently created an ideal giant spider playground for him to dance and frolic in all the live long day and i would never be able to find him.

WELL i wasn't about to just leave him in there! I would be afraid forever if i did so (go me!) i decided this was one of those times in your life when you can face your fear and become a stronger person and yadda yadda yadda...so after i overcame my paralysis from fear i slunked back into my room and prepared to tackle my mild arachniphobia head on, and there he was, clinging to the side of my bath bucket, waving his big long legs at me as if to see come and get me if you dare! Paralyzed once again with fear, i stood in the doorway and tried to plan my next move. Eventually he got bored taunting me and retreated farther back into the room, taking up a hiding place under my mosquito net. Finally able to move again, i shook out each of my possessions one at a time and piled them on the other side of the room until all that was left was the mosquito net. Then it was show down time....i poked the net, nothing. i shook it a little, nothing. i shook it alot, nothing. i lifted it up and dropped it (its a tent style thing, like a little mesh one man tent), still nothing. I lifted it, turned it, dragged it, finangled it sideways, and dropped it and there he was, waving his little front legs in the air, staring at me with that weird little face of his...

so i ran away, figured that was enough fear facing for one day, i went and got my host sister (who might i add is terrified of little toads...) and she calmly scraped him onto a piece of paper with a flip flop and tossed him outside.

i knew he'd be back though...knew it all along. so i shouldn't have been surprised when i woke up the next morning outside in my mosquito net to find him standing on top of it, right over my face, staring down at me. OH IT'S ON NOW!

I flicked him off, hyperventilated for 15 to 20 minutes, and then went on with my normal day. 2 days later i had almost forgotten the whole thing (mistake number two...underestimated the sneaky little creep) and at 10ish one night i went in my room to start dragging my bed and net outside, i flicked on the light, and there he was. he scurried under my net again and stayed there...this time i got my host brother, who said he was harmless, laughed at me for my silly fear (he is afraid of hedgehogs), and using a piece of paper, picked the little guy up like one might use a paper towel to wipe up dog poo, carried him outside, and promised to put him far far away.

Nightmare over right?.....RIGHT?

WRONG. Last night i was sitting outside on my mattela, chatting pleasantly with my neighbor Amadou when the relentless monster runs right down the post next to Amadou and heads straight for me, much to my embarrassment i jumped up faster than i've ever moved in my life and squeeled like a little girl while the creature ran over my foot, saw all my reinforcements, and changed course off towards a tree to regroup and make plans for a later attack. To Amadou's credit, he jumped a little too, right before he and everyone else laughed at my macho display of bravado in the face of extreme danger.

yes...so now i live in fear of his next move. wish me luck!

On a lighter note, i'm going to be taking a little trip in a few days, leaving the beginning of next week for senegal to take a little break. I'll be out of mauritel service but if you want to reach me (mom, dad, cory...) you can try my orange number. which i forgot, but i'll give it to you later!

Love you all,

Shelby

March 29th 2009

Hey-lo Everyone!

I hope this note finds you all well and happy and keeping warm, thought hopefully not as warm as me. Maurtiania is coming into the hot season and I have a solid 3 months of blistering heat to endure…so far its not terrible, working its way up a little farther every day thought. At 3 in the afternoon its usually between 105 and 110 in the shade. Its not my favorite time of year to say the least…all metal everywhere is hot to the touch, shampoo and lotions and sunscreen come out of the container extra liquidy and warm, water comes out of the tap hot, bathing is only refreshing when theres wind for evaporation, otherwise you’re pouring hot water over yourself in the hot sun. Candles melt inside in the shade, chocolates not solid ever, and the ice we buy at the boutique next door (a liter of water in a plastic baggie frozen) melts in a shockingly short amount of time. I was drinking ice water from a metal cup the other day and the top of the cup was hot to the touch and the bottom filled with ice. Oh the joys of the Sahel!

So before I left on this grand adventure I remember reading a letter the peace corps sent to my parents about how to stay in touch with me while I’m here. It outlined all the methods and then had a little note about how volunteers tend to like to share their “war stories” and it makes their service sound extremely miserable (for an example see above) and it said that you should keep in mind that they are probably sharing the wort parts and not the happy parts and not to worry about them too much. I realized that I have not made my service seem nearly miserable enough to you folks…heck half of you have told me that my stories make you want to move to Africa so ready…here comes a war story to show the other side of things…its not all fun in the sun! (Not to worry folks, I’m sharing this story because in hindsight I find it hilarious and I’m still quite happy here…despite the heat)

So I spent three nights away from my host family recently with some other volunteers and when I returned home I detected a fowl odor in my room. I figured a toad had hopped in and passed away and I was smelling his or her remains, so I rifled through all my baggage, refolded all my clothes, restacked all my books, and peered under my mosquito net but I found nothing. My room is rather small and very hot so it was impossible to track down the most stinky spot and therefore the source of the odor, it all smelled terrible! I gave up and hung out with my family for the afternoon and evening and as darkness fell a few friends of my host sister stopped in.

Now, here in Mauritania when you have guests it is customary to roll out a plastic or reed mat, set out a few mattelas for sitting, and lounge around on the ground with them, take tea, and chat. Amineta requested the use of my mat and mattela and I obliged, entering mmy room and tossing them out the door behind me, and renewing my search for the stench. It got worse when I moved the mat and sure enough, on closer inspection under where it had been I found a gooey spot on the floor with baby maggots squirming angrily at my rude disruption of their home. Uh-oh…I ran outside to warn my sister…something on that mats not really appropriate for guests! But by the time I got to her it was all set up and the gentleman was lounging carelessly on my mattela. I searched frantically with my eyes and saw no visible signs of the grossness that must be there somewhere and it was a windy night so I sat down and hoped the wind would carry the stench away and there would be no problems, and fortunately it seemed to have done just that!

Unfortunately the moment they left Amineta laid down on my mattela and immediately told me there appeared to be a “mauvaise odour” emanating from it. Not the mattela! I though…its my only one! We searched and searched and found only a smudgy gooey spot that was particularly pungent but no obvious source. I crossed my fingers that whatever it was had been in between the mattela and mat and was now somewhere on the ground and therefore no longer my problem. I got some spray, some soap, and a scrap of fabric and went to work on the smudge but there seemed to be an awful lot of smell for just that one little spot…and low and behold when I lifted up the mattela to have another look I found nothing underneath it but just my luck that the very spot where I grabbed it to lift it up was where the unfortunate rat who had made his way inside the cover and died and then spent at least 3 days fermenting was trapped. Of course I didn’t notice at first, sitting there holding my mattela I thougt “my mattela seems squishy and fleshy today and is missing the dry pillowy texture it normally has…I wonder why…”

And then realization dawned. It’s a sad moment when at 11 pm you discover a rotten rat carcass inside your only bed and realize that you have no choice but to peel off the cover, dispose of the rodent, and sleep on it. Don’t worry…I covered it with a blanket and put the smelly side down by my feet but still….I hope to god I’ll never have to do that again. Yuckkkk.

The next day Amineta helped me wash all my clothes, my mattela cover, the mattela itself, all my blankets, pillow, sheet, mat, and the floor of my room. Then I set it all out in the sun to be disinfected by the uv rays and then I washed myself and then, just for good measure, I brushed my teeth and scrubbed my feet. I feel better now, but there you have it folks…my war story. The best part is that when I discovered it I made a eeeeeeewwwwwyughhhhhhhhckkkkk noise that would have been a fairly normal reaction in the states but here they don’t use that sound to indicate gross and consequently found it hilarious when I did. Now they do it all the time, and its hilarious for me.

At any rate I’m spent on staring at the computer screen so I’ll write more later…

Hugs and kisses!

Shelby

Hi Everyone,

I haven't been keeping up with my emailing lately but I'm catching up now! As many of you know my birthday was 2 days ago and I had a wonderful one! So thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes and happy thoughts for thinking of me at all when i'm so very far away. I had a wonderful day with lots of yummy american food and my wonderful sitemate Emily (my We! I don't know if you read this but I betcha at least one of your parents will so Dear Emily's Mom(s): You're daughter is wonderful, you should be very proud, as i'm quite sure you already are. She is a thoughtful and kind friend and I'm so happy to have her here with me in Selibaby!) spent most of the day baking for us authentic Dog Team Tavern sticky buns and the rest of it in the insufferably hot kitchen frying french fries because shes wonderful! So extra special thanks to her (and her family for mailing her the sticky buns makings!) having a heap of wonderful friends here makes it easier to celebrate my birthday on the opposite side of the planet from all of you!

But amongst all of the birthday happiness and celebration I have received some extremely sad news, fellow PCV Catherine "Kate" Puzey serving in Benin was found dead on March 13th, 2009.

You can read the Peace Corps press release here:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1435

I can't imagine what her friends and family both in the US and in Benin are going through right now so keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

Love and Miss everyone!

Shelby

Feb 22, 2009

Hey Folks!

Wow, so as of yesterday I have been in Africa for 8 months...and i have 17 more to go...thats so much and so little at the same time! So how is everyone? I hope you're all well! I've heard from a few of you, Aunt Jen and Sandi and Cory (Le garcon court...hahaha) and I love to get updates so keep them coming! Here's what i've been up to:

I just got back from my little mini vaca...a week backpacking in Senegal. We walked through the countryside village to village, swam under 300ft waterfalls in deep ravines, watched monkies play and saw baboons and warthogs out the car windows, slept in grass huts under giant mango trees, and made tons of new friends! After a week of non-stop walking i threw the towel in, admitted defeat, and went home on my own because of my blistered feet, while the others continued on foot to Guinea. I had a fantastic time though and I was starting to feel that "get back to work guilt" anyway, I'm not here to just abandon my projects and head out on vacation whenever I want and I needed to get back to do some actual work because I don't have mine quite as figured out as my traveling companions did and I felt like i had left some loose ends.

While traveling my cell phone was stolen so I have already gotten a new one but I need to buy a new SIM card for it for Mauritania before I can recieve phone calls, so mom, dad, and cory, when I get it I will call one of you to give you the number so we can talk again! I miss my weekly calls!

I'm trying to think of some fun stories from my travels to share, the whole thing was absolutely one of the greatest adventures I have ever been on in my whole life. I was seriously sad to call it quits early, not to mention terrified of traveling alone back to Selibaby but I ended up really enjoying the trip. When I opted to start back we were staying at a village campement in Dindefelo, Senegal, a little village with a gorgeous waterfall and a decent amount of tourism (for a small senegalese village) with no real regular transport into town short of renting an entire 4x4 which was way out of our price range. This was the leg of the trip that scared me to do alone, we had walked to 35k out there from the nearest city and I had absolutely no interest in walking it back alone. Fortunatly the manager of the campement found me an extremely nice french couple who were passing through on their own vacation and had rented a 4x4 that was planning on leaving the same day i was, the catch: they weren't going all the way back to the city. They gave me a free ride out to the main road, knocking 25k through barely there and confusing criss-crossing roads off my walk and deposited me on a wide well traveled roadway 10k outside of town. I started walking hoping to get picked up by a taxi brousse coming from somewhere else and heading into town but it was not to be. Only one vehicle passed me on my whole entire walk and he had no interest in picking me up, although there was steady bicycle traffic and i was offered several rides on the backs of those (i turned them down though, i had a big bag and walked seemed less likely to end in disaster). I reached town with much of the day left ahead of me so i continued on to the garage and caught a car to the next city on my route back to Selibaby. It was a hot, sticky, miserable car ride with a woman getting sik in a bucket in the seat behind me that left me feeling queasy and dirty and when I arrived at the garage in Tamba I grabbed a town taxi, climbed in and said "take me to a nice hotel, really nice, but not too expensive...preferably with a pool." The driver said he knew three and would take me to each until I found one within my price range. I splurged on the first one we stopped at, wasted no time booking my room, deposited my bags on the ground and made use of the first hot shower i've seen since new years. The hotel staff were incredibly friendly and fammilliar with peace corps. They all called me by my local name, greeted me like an old friend in Pulaar each time I saw them and were sad to see me go so early the next morning to catch my car to Bakel. I loved it there, I felt like i wasn't a tourist at all, just a friend passing through.

My car trip to Bakel was much more pleasant than the previous days voyage. Igot the first place in a car that i thought would take hours to fill (it won't leave until the 6 other places are all sold) when a family of 6 showed up headed the same diretion as me to attend a religious ceremony for a family member. Perfect! They were a friendly and fun pulaar family of the surname Diallo (the bean eating cousins of the Ba's so for the duration of the trip they changed my name to Amineta Diallo and would refer to me only as such). They shared their bread and I gave them all pieces of chewing gum i had gotten from the states. They told me that if I ever go back to Tamba I am to find their house and pay them a visit (impossible as Tamba is a huge city and probably 1/3 of the population are Diallo's, but the thoughts very sweet!) and we parted ways as I got my town taxi to the river and they got their car to their destination city. My taxi brought me right to the banks of the river where I passed through the police post more easily then it ever is when traveling in groups and bought my place in the wooden dugout canoes to Gouraye, on the otehr side of the river. Once in Gouraye I had an eaqually pleasant time with the gendarme post over there (unheard of in mauritania, they just love to give us a hard time!) and easily found my place in a car to Selibaby, without even trying, in fact my place came and found me before i had even reached the garage, the ticket man knew exactly where i was going.

When all was said and done, I was shocked to learn that I absolutely LOVED traveling alone, that said I probably won't do much more of it but it wasn't the scary experience that I had thought it would be. It was fun and easy and strangely empowering! I ate in a restaurant by myself, stayed in a hotel alone, haggled taxi prices, made new friends, crossed borders and rivers, walked 10k, and turned down 4 marriage proposals. If i can do that, i can do anything!

Now i'm back at home and completly out of internet time but I miss and love you allllll and i'll write more soon!

oxoxoxo's

Shelby

January 11, 2009

Holy Cow!

It’s a new year! I have completed over 6 months of my Peace Corps service! Man time sure flies when your having fun! I hope everyone back home had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I wish I could have been there, but alas, I was here, on the beach, eating (REAL!) cheese sandwiches and drinking homemade sangria in the sunshine…gosh my life is rough…I don’t know how I do it. All that’s over now though, and I just arrived back at site this morning, at approximately 2 am, slept until now, and here I am! Its 8:30, which might be the latest I’ve slept in 6 months! So…about my trip, it lasted a grand total of 21 days, including a stop in Boghe (for a little party and to break up the trip to Nouakchott); Nouakchott (for Christmas festivities at the Peace Corps Director’s house); Rosso (oh my old home, this is the city where I had “stage” so we crashed here for a bit to break up the trip to Senegal); San Louis, Senegal (sun, sand, and sea to ring in the new year); back to Rosso (to break up the trip back to Nouakchott and for more visiting); Nouakchott again (for Early Term Reconnect and In-Service Training); then homeward to Kaedi (to break up the trip back to Selibaby and celebrate John and Tanya’s birthday); and finally back to Selibaby (the garbage filled streets of Selibaby have never looked as inviting as they did last night at 2 am after something around 7 hours stuffed in vehicles made to hold 9 people with 20 strangers)….oh its good to be home!

So I bet you wouldn’t mind hearing some tales of my adventures would you? I didn’t think so. Here are some highlights:

We did all of our traveling in groups to be safer and happier on the road and when six of us were ready to leave Nouakchott to head for Rosso after Christmas we grabbed a pair of cabs, piled ourselves and all our luggage into them, and said “Le garage Rosso” to each driver, separately, which seemed like a perfectly fine idea considering there is only on Rosso garage…only our assumption proved to make an ass of us as some cab drivers have friends who are drivers and they will bring business straight to them instead of the actual garage. Myself, John, and Emily arrived at a Rosso garage, and the other cab with Sari, Tabatha, and Rob arrived at the Rosso garage, but by the time they did John had bargained us down to a great price for the cab where we were so we decided to have the others meet us there. While waiting for them it became clear that there had already been 3 passengers in the car we had bought out for ourselves who had been booted for us, because we were going all the way to Rosso and they were going only part way so the driver would make more money off of us. These people were not exactly thrilled and a small scuffle broke out between a small collection of cab drivers and the disgruntled man who wanted vary badly to put his things back into the cab…and in fact succeeded only to have them tossed out again by our driver. Being foreign we simply backed up, stayed out of the way, and awaited the outcome of the scuffle. Naturally we won (money always does), and the man left in a huff while our friends loaded their bags and we all stuffed ourselves into our car and headed for the gas station to fill up for our journey. There happened to be another car there with a man in it who happened to be friends with many of the Peace Corps “higher ups” and recognized us as new volunteers. He greeted us and we chatted for a minute and then gave our driver a stern talking to in Hassaniya which John used his awesome language skills to decipher and it was something like this: “I know these people, they are my friends so don’t try anything stupid because I know your name and I know your car and I’ll find you.” This made us a little nervous and reassured at the same time. Okay, we’re all gassed up, stuffed in, loaded up, and on the main road out of Nouakchott, toward Rosso, and ready to relax the short 3 hour trip away when our cab swerves down a little side road and we’re like okay, he probably knows where he’s going, and then he stops rather suddenly and hops out…to retrieve Rob’s bag, which has fallen out. Great. Off to a good start. We reload and head back towards the main road where we hit the gendarme stop we’re now quite sure he was on the back road to avoid but miscalculated a little because there, waiting for us, was the gentlemen who had been booted from the car and hey, good news, he’s a cop. Our driver is instructed to follow him and we set off once again, back in the direction we came from. Down another side road, and our driver slows, the space is growing between us and the other car, and suddenly, sharp left, he floors it, we’re flying down a back dirt road, and Sari in the back, holding all the bags says “are we making a run for it right now?” Indeed we were, we were racing off through the back streets of Nouakchott in search of a police officer that was friends with our driver and would take our side. We found him, stuffed him in the front seat with Rob, and beat the other man to the police station, presumably because he was still searching for us. All parties convened inside the station while we sat in the car and waiting, not really sure what to do. Eventually everything was worked out, and our driver returned to make the rest of trip, which was fairly uneventful, thank god.

Hmm…what else is there to share…it feels like there should be so much but so much of it is just the experience as a whole, being in Senegal, on the beach, with strange men coming to try to sell us things and hoards of children watching our every move. I went out to collect some shells off the shore and an army of children handed me more shells then I even wanted within minutes once they realized what I was doing. One day a (possibly drunk, definitely strange) gentleman came up to us on the beach wearing a pointy beginnings of fat dread locks, a stretched out old tank top, and a big goofy grin, and that’s all. He tried to make conversation but we did our best to ignore many of the locals on the beach because they were always either selling something or begging for something or hoping to steal something and so our friend, not to be deterred, began singing to us. He stayed for quite a while, just singing away to no one in particular. It was an interesting experience.

On another day Sari and Tabatha and myself took a day off from the beach and wandered across the bridge back on to the mainland to shop for some fabric and spend some time in a real market, not the tourist trap that is the island. The market in San Louis was amazing, narrow alleyways of tiny booths stacked with veggies, barrels of raw grains, heaps of fish, and skinned goats and sheep hanging from above. They seemed to go on forever, getting smaller and smaller then larger and than smaller again, twisting and turning, we were good and lost when we came out all of a sudden, facing the river and the bridge back to the island. I could spend days in the food market in San Louis, but instead we headed back to the island across the bridge and to meet some friends for dinner. What an amazing trip! By the end of it though, I was ready to go home to Selibaby. A few days in Nouakchott for training was enough to exhaust my patience with a city that feels like it has more cars than people and basically no traffic regulations, just crossing the two streets to get to the Peace Corps bureau felt like a live version of frogger. It was good to have a bed though, and a toilet with toilet paper, and air conditioning, a tv with 2 whole English channels! It’s the little things in life!

Alrighty, I’ll bet you’re all tired of reading now, or were hours ago, so I’ll wrap it up! Hopefully I’ll get to the computer soon to send this out. Much love and happy thoughts to all of you back home, hope your holidays were as fun and exciting as mine! I’m going on 7 months here now, so I’ll see you all in about 17 more!

Love, Shelby

Hello Friends! I know it’s been ages since I’ve written, I’m getting lazy. So I’ve currently been here 6 months and I still love it so I must be doing something right. Its still hot, but I’m getting used to it. It’s “reproduction season” here…which means baby goats everywhere, little lambs frolicking in the streets, and alas, kittens and puppies at kim’s. Yes, we currently have 5 cats and 6 dogs here in Selibaby so if you know anyone in the market for a rare African puppy, let me know I can totally hook that up. A few days ago we got a mail shuttle so let me do a quick round of thank-you’s: Mom and Dad: I already talked to you on the phone but I forgot a few things…first I gave the little wind up frog to Hawa and she loves it! Its totally adorable, she carries it around and call it my friend and says shes not scared of frogs anymore which is the cutest thing ever! Also, thanks a billion for all the toiletries, your timing couldn’t have been better…I’m getting low on toothpaste, the local variety being Crust (a terrible knock-off of Crest) which scares me, and I bought some local shampoo (made by Palmolive, who I thought only made dish soap, but what do I know) that leaves my hair somehow greasy and dry at the same time. And thanks for everything else, I won’t list it all here because I’m lazy but it was all wonderful! Cory: I’m going to skype you today and I’ll say my thank you’s then but FYI you’re awesome, thanks for being the awesomest big bro ever! Grandma: Thank you for everything! The book of puzzles has already provided hours of entertainment and I’ve already started reading the books! I have already eaten some of the food and some of its coming with me on my Christmas vacation to keep food costs down and I’m so excited for that! Thanks for thinking of me, I love to hear from you! I wrote you a big long letter answering all the questions you asked in the last letter I got from you but there was a problem with the last batch of outgoing mail and there is a chance it was stolen, so keep your eyes out for it but if it doesn’t show I won’t be terribly surprised. Thanks again, Love you! Aunt Ann: Surprise Christmas packages are one of my top 10 favorite things ever! Thank you so much for yours! I have a confession to make, I opened the do not open until Christmas packages because I’m going traveling for the Christmas holiday and I leave tomorrow with only a backpack, space was limited as I’ll be traveling for close to a month so I unwrapped them to see if they were something I would want to bring with me or not and then after I realized I will want to bring both the shirts and the book and then I felt bad for opening them early but not too bad because its Christmas and you can’t be mad! Thank you for all of it, its all great and thoughtful! I love it all, especially the sewing stuff…my locally made clothes tend to spring holes every now and again. Becky Fogarty: What a fantastic surprise! A box full of yummies from an awesome friend right before Christmas with a letter that made me smile and miss you bundles! Thanks so much, you’re the sweetest friend ever and I miss you like you wouldn’t believe! Hugs and kisses! And a Merry Christmas to all!!! Now that that’s out of the way, a quick note and then its off the computer for me, I need to spend some time prepping for my trip tomorrow. Here’s my tentative travel itinerary: Tomorrow we are heading to Bohge, another southern city for 2 days for a little Christmas party with some other volunteers, then to the capital for Christmas eve and day and then off to some combination of Rosso, San Louis, Senegal, back to Rosso, and then to the capital again for Early Term Reconnect and In-Service Training and finally back to Selibaby on January 8th-ish. I know, sounds exhausting right? But I’m so excited for it! Computer service will be limited or non-existent during this time so don’t expect any updates until its allllll over, but I’ll be thinking of all of you, especially on the holidays, and wishing I was there, no that’s a lie…on new years I’ll be on the beach in san louis so I’ll be wishing you were here but I’ll probably be pretty content where I am! I’m going to try to put up pictures today so check those out, they’ll be on facebook. Hmmm…what else is there to say? Everything is going great here and I’m happy and healthy again, very well fed, and very excited for my voyage. Hugs and kisses for you all! I’m going to go bake cookies and pack my bags before my skype rendez-vous (yep I speak rocking French wooo!). Much love and warm holiday thoughts from here in warm sunny Mauritania! Shelby

December 4, 2008 Hiiiii! So folks, get ready, this is going to be a long email! I haven’t written a real honest to god email in ages so grab a cup of tea, curl up in a blanket, and get cozy because this ones going to take awhile! I say that because rumor has it its getting cold there now, I mean, that’s what the word on the street is, it’s getting cold here too. Yeah, very cold, we were all shivering all night and most of the morning…goose bumps and all. Yeah, freezing, just like where you all are, this morning, in fact, it was all the way down to 70 degrees. Yup, jusssssssssssst like home folks, a real Vermonter here, freezing her heiny off in 70 degree weather, but there you have it. Hey when did it get to be December anyway? What is this? One minute its Halloween and we’re eating donuts off of strings in the backyard at our harvest party and I blink my eyes and everyone’s back for thanksgiving dinner eating ourselves into coma’s and now its December? At this rate folks I’ll be home in no time! So I’ve been here 5 months and it feels like so much and so little at the same time! My French is improving but I still have a longggg long way to go, but now I at least have the language skills to tell people that I have only been here for 5 months and barely spoke French at all before I came so they should be thankful that I can say the things I can. My Pulaar vocab is improving too, I have a whole library of insults, and the standard “I’m leaving”, “I’m home”, “When night comes, come home” because that’s what my host dad says to me every time I go anywhere in the evening. My Pulaar teacher has accidentally (we hope its an accident!) forgotten our Pulaar lessons 2 weeks in a row now, so I’m just going on what I learn from my other “Pulaar Teacher” our neighbor and my brother’s friend Musa, who comes over and talks at me in Pulaar and I talk right back at him in English and then he yells at me in what he thinks sounds like English but really sounds like gibberish and then I yell back at him in actual English lovely little phrases like “you’ve lost your mind! I don’t even know what you’re doing right now you raving lunatic! You’re totally crazy!” and everybody laughs. Ahhhhh good times and fine memories from Mauritania! Somehow through all of this I have actually managed to pick up some pulaar though, so, all is well I suppose. At any rate, that’s been my life lately, weighing babies, learning languages, and getting made fun of by my ridiculous family here. In the last package I received my parents sent me a Vermont life magazine with photos of Vermont foliage and changing leaves and other photos of the season. I brought it home with me to show to my family who flipped through it with the speed and efficiency of someone reading a magazine in a language they don’t speak, pausing only once or twice to remark on a picture or sound out a headline just to make me laugh. “C’est toi!” my little sister Hawa says, pointing to a picture of a woman in a wedding dress in front of a barn. “Oooo…un Rastafarian!” my host brother says pointing at a white man with dreadlocks in the UVM ad. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” (what’s this?) they ask at a photo of some American dessert product or another; and then they’re finished, not especially interested in “chez moi! Vermont!” all that much at all. Oh well, I think and grab the magazine back only a little disappointed in their reaction (I was expected lots of oooooo’s and ahhhhhh’s and a few c’est jolie’s through in for good measure) when Musa grabs the magazine from my hands and points to a picture in the seasonal spread on fall and foliage. “Here’s the reaction I was hoping for” I think. And Musa says to me in broken French “what’s this?” I don’t know what a scarecrow is called in French so I call it a fake person that we leave in the fields to scare off birds. “We have those here!” he says, “we leave them in the garden to keep the birds and monkeys out.” Yeah…same exact thing. “In Pulaar that’s called a demba nedDo.” (the D being a pulaar letter that doesn’t exist in English but involves breathing in to make the sound, kind of like the sound Homer Simpson would make if he were drowning) “Kaa demba nedDo!” he says. “Whats that mean?” I ask. Souley fills me in, “he called you a scarecrow.” So there it is, no interest whatsoever in Vermont life, but instead a handy new insult for my vocab. This was about a month ago, since then it has spiraled out of control, last night I was walking home not even close to my house yet, and a man who was basically a complete stranger (he lives a house or two over from me but I don’t think I have ever talked to him in my life) walked past me and instead of greeting me with the standard nalleejam (good evening in pulaar) he busted out “Kaa demba nedDo!” with a big smile. Yes folks, if for some reason you decide to pay me a surprise visit here in Selibaby and you get all the way here and can’t remember my Mauritanian name just ask around for the scarecrow and surely everyone will know just who you’re talking about. What else can I tell you about? I have lots of time on my hands, Monday is a fete so naturally no ones going to work or doing much of anything at all until at least Wednesday, in fact we even left work early yesterday because “the fete’s coming.” Of course I only ever work from 9am to noon, but it seemed completely normal to leave at 11:15 yesterday because there is a fete in 4 days. “See you Wednesday….or maybe Thursday…” said my coworker as we parted ways, leaving a touch of doubt in my mind as to whether or not I’ll work at all next week given that Thursday is the Mauritanian equivalent of Friday and if you are a Mauritanian and you don’t go to work on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, the chances of you coming on Thursday are not exactly very good. So I have at least the next 6, if not the next 10 days off, which would be exciting if when I worked I was actually busy or tired and in need of a break, but when I work I work no more than 3 hours a day and no matter how hard I try I actually have very little to do but read or write letters home when I’m at work. Last night I was so desperate for a cause as a health volunteer that I stole my host brothers cigarettes and promised to dole them out one at a time until he quit. The standard African’s answer to an American trying to get them to quit smoking: “But American’s are the ones who make cigarettes!” They say that as if its my fault that they smoke…grrr, I’m not a fan of that line of thinking! Its interesting to me that the best selling brand of cigarettes here are called American legends and they are manufactured in the European Union…so at least those aren’t my fault even if they do pretend to be American! So here are my health volunteery plans for the next few months: Anti-Smoking campaign, because its not my fault you smoke damnit! Nutrition seminars in Tabatha’s village for the skinny little kiddies, sex-ed and family planning at the health center for young mommies-they just learned about the female condom here when an NGO gave them a bunch to distribute, only they can’t seem to distribute them because no one knows what they are so Emily and I are going to have the awkward job of telling them, yes I enlisted back-up for this one because I’ll be red as a tomato explaining contraceptives to a bunch of women younger than me with 3 or 4 kids each. I have also been making pretty health posters for the hospital and 2 of them went up on Sunday, one more to go, photos as soon as possible I promise! And finally I’m hoping to organize a series of health talks at the girls mentoring center starting with one about skin-lightening cream because I absolutely hate the stuff. Look up skin lightening cream if you have a minute, its pretty disturbing stuff. So there you have it, all 5 months of my time here have lead up to this plan, wish me luck! Soon though I head to the capital for more health training and when I come back I’ll be on my way to some more projects that will hopefully look a little more impressive on my resume! Anywho that’s all for now, I’ll put pictures up on facebook soon and hopefully be full of amazingly exciting stories by my next email because I hit the road for Nouakchott for Christmas in about 2 weeks, followed by new years in St. Louis, Senegal on the beach baby! Then back to Nouakchott for Early Term Reconnect and In-Service Training and finally back to Selibaby, refreshed and ready to get back to my busy life of whatever it is I do here, except I’ll have spent so much time with other Americans I won’t remember how to speak any French or Pulaar anymore. Oh well, c’est la vie! Learning languages gives me something to do so I should be thankful. Love ya’ll, I’m sure I’m be online once or twice before Christmas but just in case I wish a Very Happy Holiday Season to you all! Hugs and kisses! Shelby

11/20/2008

Hi Folks,

Its been too long since i've written and this is going to be short so sorry bout that. I seem to have attrapp-ed la rhume (that pure franglais baby...it means i have a cold) and possibly an eye infection, so here i am, the un-healthy health volunteer spouting health advice to people and sniffling. I'm told its the "saison du vent" (windy season) and everyone gets sick now, which certainly seems to be the truth given that its been insanely ridiculously windy all day every day for the past week, and everyone at my house has the sniffles (these things travel fast in the land of the communal cup, bowl, tea casse, everything). Its also evidently the season of eye infections, i was warned, i reluctantly gave up my contacts and picked up my sunglasses so that now i stumble around in blurry darkness, and still i seem to have a slight unhappiness in my left eye. It's not hard to see how this could have come about in a land where waste management doesn't really exist and its not uncommon to find both the feces and the bones of various animals in any given square foot of ground, when the winds pick up its not just sand they're blowing in your eyes if you know what i mean.

Still, its hard not to remain positive in the land of so many friends! I have millions of friends, i made three more on the way here. I made three friends, received one dinner invitation, and was told twice by random people that they will be returning to the US with me. A friend came over last night, he was a friend of my host brothers first but now i think he might come over half to see my brother and half to pester me, and he told me that i read too much and need to talk all the time so that i will speak pulaar in two months. Why you ask? So we can get married of course! A friend found me on my way to work yesterday and invited me to his house, me and any other white female friends i might like to bring along. I have gotten 4 business cards, 3 phone numbers, 2 dinner invitations, and a partridge in a pair tree since the last time i wrote an email. Everyone is just so friendly! Its weird though, they all seem to be men. Okay, so i'm not really this naive, i get phone numbers because i refuse to give out mine, i get dinner invitations for my friends because i refuse to go and they think if i can bring a friend i'll be more likely to come, and i never actually got a partridge in a pear tree through it would have been a nice gesture. Its not easy to make female friends here, mostly because the women work constantly, and the mens sole household chore seems to be making tea, the nature of which is purely social anyway. I drink 15 or so tiny cups of tea a day and talk in some interesting combination of languages with men during all my free time. This has been very informative and from our talks i have learned how to effectively stave off marriage proposals, at least for the time being. I HATE KIDS. that all you have to say. Men here want wives for the sole purpose of keeping their house and raising their children and as i am an american who can barely wash clothes let alone cook who doesn't want children, i am virtually unwanted...unless i can bring them to the states with me, then they might be willing to compromise. I love getting all womens rightsy on them, evoking the children debate and reminding them that as men than can have no possible comprehension of what childbirth is like and therefore have no right to tell me i have to have children, men here aren't used to women who stand up for themselves. "No babies for me, no thank you" works better than "I have a finace" or "i'm married" here. Interesting.

Thats all for now,

I have to go do some work or something now, Love and miss you all!

Shelby

11.05.2008 Hi Folks! FIRST I need to say HAPPY (slightly belated) BIRTHDAY TO BECCA! 22! Hope it was fantastic! This winter we’ve been friends for 20 years, TWENTY YEARS! I love you and I miss you! Have a fantastic 22nd year; I’ll see you sometime during our 23rd! So here I am, back in Selibaby, after my first real taxi brousse experience out to Gouraye to watch Levin and Sam make a very successful school garden at the elementary school there. Tabitha, Sari, and I, all came along so that we could pretend to be real volunteers with actual projects for a day. The trip out was my first time riding taxi brusse, and it went well, I’m told. Of course I had no idea as I had nothing to compare it to and I found it rather uncomfortable and a touch crowded (14 people in the back of a small pick up truck, 4 in the cab, 1 on top of the cab). I was tucked snugly in the back of the truck bed with the other 13 people back there and all their luggage, sitting on my backpack and listening to my old i-pod, who unfortunately broke again about half way though the trip. As far as I was concerned it was a touch too snug back there for my liking, considering we left at a steamy 11:30 in the morning and drove through all the hottest hours of the day and successfully sweated off all of my sunscreen and got a nice rosy glow on the top of my nose, which is now peeling off, but the others assured me that I was very happy with the situation, evidently there are frequently many more people stuffed into the truck bed, though I don’t see how that would be possible with out sardine stile stacking. At any rate, it was a beautiful scenic drive, we made good time, and we only had to get out and walk once where the road got rocky and the driver thought we might pop the tires with all that weight. Once in Gouraye we commenced with the school garden, and it was really inspiring. About 20 students came with 2 teachers and took turns doing everything that needed to be done to prepare the beds and seed them. I took about 12 billion pictures, so keep your eyes out for those because I’m going to do my darndest to post them ASAP. The whole thing too only about 2 hours and left us the afternoon to wander on foot out to Sounatu, a little Pulaar village where the boys needed to check on some trees they had planted. This was what Levin described as a 40 minute walk, which turned out to be just over an hour, but to be fair we took our time, taking pictures and visiting with some random French tourists we met along the way who are driving their way across Africa for no apparent reason. It was a beautiful walk and we saw shepherds with flocks of sheep and goats, a giant lizard, some snake trails in the sand, huge seasonal lakes filled with lily pads, and the always beautiful Senegal River, on the other side of which loomed the always illusive Senegal where they have things like paved roads and beer…jerks. The village was adorable, with all sorts of baby animals and cute kids trailing behind us wherever we went and picking the burs out of my skirt for me when I tried to do it for myself. The walk back sucked a bit, considering it was 1:00 pm when we left and it was hotter than hell outside. Just to put this in perspective, when we got back the t-shirt I was wearing was not only fairly thoroughly soaked in sweat, but it was also crusted with salt from all the sweat that the hot wind dried while I was en route. Gross right? Sorry, it was necessary to share that. So that brings us to the trip back, taxi brusse ride numero deux pour moi (I’m so good at French!) and this one started out a little worse and ended a little better if you can believe it. (OK here’s where everyone who’s easily excitable when it comes to my personal safety should just skip ahead to the next paragraph…that’s you Dad). This time the taxi picked us up at the house we were staying at and was already packed and ready to go, the truck was a bit smaller than the first one and the entire truck bed was packed with luggage secured in place with a rope net with 8 people sitting on it already, 3 on one side with their legs hanging off the edge, a woman and her two small children in the middle, and 2 on the top of the cab. We had about 5 minutes to clamber on, and secure ourselves with all of our luggage before the truck started moving. I was sitting facing the back with my legs curled under the bumper, clinging to the net for dear life with my purse on my lap and some nice gentleman on the top of the cab was wearing my backpack backwards. I’m not going to lie, I was a bit scared. The roads are uneven deep sandy ruts through fields of dry grass sprinkled with scrubby trees covered with sharp thorns and our driver didn’t really seem to be taking his time (we were probably going about 30 mph, but it feels like a lot more when your on the bed of a truck with your legs flapping in the breeze). Anyway when we got going and I adjusted a little I started to feel much better and by the end of the trip it felt more like an amusement park ride than a taxi and we were all laughing at poor Tabitha who got the seat facing backwards on the middle of the tailgate and was literally caked with dust on every exposed surface, it really was hilarious. They dropped us right at Kim’s door and it was no hassle at all to get our luggage because ours had never been secured under the net anyway so no one even had to get off the truck. Fantabulous! As fun as it all was, I think I’ll avoid taxi brusse whenever possible during the rest of my time here (aka be a giant homebody and just sit around here in good old Selibaby, which is just fine with me). That brings us to election day, and the election day party. We had big plans (a bag of brownie mix and several Michael Moore movies to make us good and angry at the current administration and dreams of cold drinks and pita sandwiches from a local restaurant) which turned out to be a bit of a bust as the electricity had apparently been out since we left for gouraye the day before and no one had any cold anything, pita man didn’t have any pitas, and our little oven doesn’t work without electricity. As stubborn as I am, I refused to give up on the brownies though, so I tried and succeeded at making a brusse oven (a pot of sand with a lid over a gas burner that kind of unevenly cooks everything you put in it) and made a decent batch of alright brownies, with only one minor setback, the “oven” got so hot it heated up the whole little gas stove, melted off the knobs, and burned the hell out of our already disgusting pot holders, but everyone agreed that it was a worthwhile trade for brownies. Shortly thereafter the power came back on and we went out and got salads instead of pitas and I made another batch of much more successful brownies with caramel swirls, cookies and cream and chocolate instant pudding, and Luis came over with his internet and laptop and we kept up with election polls until I passed out at around 11:30. All in all a good night, oh, and kitty had kittens, 3, we named one Obama. Perfect. Now I must go because I am writing this on my laptop at Kim’s and its after 6, which is my self imposed curfew because I like to spend the evenings learning Pulaar with the fam, plus I think they get a little sad when I spend all day at Kim’s with other Americans. Every time I go back at the end of the day they say I’ve been gone for 4 months and have probably forgotten all my Pulaar and French because of all the English I spoke while I was gone. I don’t want that to happen! So here I go! Much love and happy thoughts! Dad, try not to think too much about the taxi brusse, its just part of life here, and besides I’m fine! Love you all! Shelby

October 22, 2008 Hello Lovelies! I don't know what to write to you all because I've written so much lately in journals and letters and emails and messages that I can't remember who I have told what but I'm going to tell you about the "bandits" at my house and if I have already told any of you this…too bad. During my long and arduous search for a family and/or place to live I visited many a household (like 4), eventually settling on the one I love with now. When I went to drop off the lease we had Emily and her host sister Hawa with me and as we walked away Hawa told Kim and Emily all about how I should not live there and the neighborhood was full of bandits. We found this disconcerting and didn't return to sign the lease until we had taken the time to ask around to see if there was any merit to this claim. We found that my host family has been housing volunteers forever and ever (15 years-ish) and no one seemed to have any qualms with the neighborhood so I went for it and signed the lease. Ok, before you all freak out and think I'm totally crazy for moving into the bandit filled neighborhood you should also know that after proclaiming that my new neighborhood was full of bandits (my new neighborhood being college, the very same quartier Hawa lives in herself, and about a 5 minute walk from her house) she announced that I should rent a little house from them and move in there, so though I trust her, I had some doubts as to her motives. So, lease signed, I moved in and got settled. The family consisted of my host mother, Leldo Ba, whom I adore, even though we don't really speak the same language at all, my host father, whom I refer to as father figure because I don't know his name and who also doesn't speak any language that I do but is very nice, 2 older guys, Ibrahim and Souleymane, whose places in the family I couldn't quite figure out until much later, (Souley being my oldest brother at 27 and Ibrahim's place in the family being the basis of this entire story), an older sister Amineta, another big brother, Adama, a younger brother Alieu, and a little sister, Hawa. I spent plenty of time trying to divine Ibro's place in the family, as I had plenty of time to spare, until one day he up and disappeared. Souley asked if I had seen him and I admitted that I had not, but he had only been missing since breakfast and he would turn up. So the following evening hw still has not turned up and a gentleman pulls up in a truck looking for him. Souley informs him that we have not seen Ibro in a few days and they talk in angry hushed tones for a few minutes and then the man leaves. Oh man, what was that all about, I think, but before I can ask Souley tells me. Ibro (who is 42) is my brother Adama's (who is 24) friend from Senegal and he was staying with us against the wishes of my big brother, Souley, because my father refuses to turn a friend of the family away, even though Souley didn't trust him. Souley maintained his distrust and never left Ibro at the house by himself, slept in the same general area, and watched him like a hawk. Evidently just a few days ago Ibro left and never came back, with some money that belonged to the man who showed up in the truck and now the whole of Selibaby is looking for him. Mystery solved, bandit found, and suddenly I feel a whole bunch more appreciative of my big brother who made sure I locked my bedroom door every time I wasn't in there, or if I was in there but I was sleeping (at first I just found this annoying, but now I get it). Before you all freak out and think I'm living with dangerous people know this, my family watches out for me more than I know, they take turns walking me to work if they hear the kids yelling toubob at me, they make sure my room is locked and my windows closed and they help me keep even the termites out of my room, they make me sleep right smack dab in the middle of the compound so that I'm surrounded while I'm asleep, and when a sand storm or anything else picks up they make sure I'm safely relocated into my locked bedroom. People here don't steal from friends or family or people who are good to them and for the most part they only steal out of desperation, Ibro stole because he had nothing else. I believe that he would never have done it if he had any other options but he had only days before asked me to ask my Portuguese road worker friend to get him a job, so I believe he was desperate. Don't worry about me, the bandits are gone. I'm safe now, but I still keep everything locked up like fort knox just in case. I gotta go now, but I'm happy and healthy and doin just fine, and I saw a monkey yesterday so my life is complete, love and miss you all, shelby ps. i almost forgot to mention, i got so many wonderful responses to my last message i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who wrote to me....i'm so lucky to have the friends and family i do! love you guys!

October 13, 2008 Merry Christmas! Okay I know its not Christmas but that’s what today felt like here: shuttle day. When the shuttle driver saw me collecting my packages he said “oh tu es tres content maintenant n’est pas?!” Which means you are really happy right now aren’t you? I got Packages and/or letters from: Mom and Dad, Cory, Meaghan and Jilly, Elly, and Grandma and I want to give a great big heartfelt thank you to all of you, it was amazing! Boxes and letters and cards and magazines and so much more, so much more than I could even have hoped for so here are some individual personalized thank you’s: Mom and Dad: Thank you so much for everything! You remembered everything, even the pictures for me to draw and the first thing I saw when I opened the first box was a jar of peanut butter and that was all it took, I was smiling ear to ear. I read every one of your letters mom, dad where were you on that? Too good to write to your little girl? Get on that! The letters are my favorite part, I love to hear what is going on there and I would love also to see photos if have any you could send! Thank you also for the water bottle, that’s amazing, its got the life straw water filter built right in! So cool! And how could I forget, the puppy treats! Puppy loves them, I gave her three and made her sit for them and she did, usually she won’t but I told her since they were special American dog treats she had to sit to get them and she did! I took a picture of me feeding them to her so you can see, but she looks creepy in it because her eyes are glowing yellow. At any rate shes perfectly content and sleeping on my feet right now and its adorable. You’ll never know how happy it made me to pick through my boxes of silly goodies, so thank you thank you thank you! Cory: You have outdone yourself again, I was incredibly excited to get the letter in the first package with the rock from the grand canyon and the Sedona rock and the memory card full of amazing music which I’m listening to right now and the letter about your time at home, tell Eddy and Ali that I said hello and that I hope all is awesome in NH and happy belated graduation, I’m so sad I missed an old fashioned Peru woods party! Tell anyone else you talk to that I say hello too! The second package, the one you sent from school, there are no words to describe my happiness with that package. Obviously the i-pod (Awesome name choice by the way, Dayanand is the perfect next name in the saga of my ipod owning history, for being such a worldly ipod right from the get go!) is amazing and I’m am so lucky to have you and I know that but you went above and beyond by filling it with amazing music and movies and tv shows and everything, my regionmates have figured out how to watch them on the computer and are watching the Bourne Identity right now, I was too but I couldn’t concentrate on a movie with so many thank you’s running around in my head so I figured I would write this and then watch when I’m done. As if the ipod wasn’t enough, you also stuffed that box to the very top with so many amazing things! I’m very excited to have tea tomorrow morning that’s not served in a shot class and composed of 50% sugar! The spices are great and were immediately added to the collection we have going here that I have been going through so quickly with all my cooking that it felt awesome to be able to contribute back. Oh what else, the camelpak, I’m told will be great for carrying extra water on long taxi trips and I also have now made it a personal goal here to go on a camel trek in the sahara while wearing my camelpak and the moment I do you will be sent photos. The baby toys are going to a baby that lives with the family Emily, my site mate, lives with. The baby’s mother died during or shortly after childbirth and the baby is now being watched by Emily’s family during the day and spending the nights at the neighbor’s house, which I gather was her mother’s compound when she was still alive. She is so tiny, she just learned to roll over a few days ago and has been getting into all sorts of trouble ever since so I can’t wait to give her some toys to keep her busy. Thanks so much for all of it again, I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to have a brother as awesome as you, all the other volunteers are jealous! Elly-belly!: I am better now that I have gotten your card and I found your letter adorable and hilarious! I love you tons and I’m so thankful for your thoughtful card and package fully of yummy granola bars and the like, I had no idea it was coming and the surprise made it that much better! Your card is going up on my wall for sure and the next time I get all artsy (almost once a day here…I have a lot of time on my hands) I’m making you a card and sending it out your way! Love you tons! I hope RPI is treating you well! Hugs and Kisses! Meaghan and Jilly: Your package brought much mystery and much more happiness into my life. I can only assume that the card you sent separately went with this package because there wasn’t one in this package but the envelope didn’t fair very well and theres a chance it could have gotten away…I can also only assume that the M&Ms got away because I’m guessing you didn’t send an empty bag, but that’s what I got, an empty M&M bag with a little hole in the end…I think it spent a lot of time in the mail room and was visited by little mice friends, or a sketchy local character who was hungry, either way whoever got it probably deserved it a lot more than I do anyway because I have been so blessed to day any more would have been ridiculous! All the other goodies were intact and amazing, right down to the frosted animal crackers that reminded me so strongly of Meaghan Gallagher I almost broke my face in half I was smiling so wide. LOVE YOU SO MUCH! Write again and tell me how your doing, I so love to hear from either one and both of you! I will send you each a card as soon as I can that you will have to staple into the Lamb-gina journal for future smiles! LOVE YOU! XOXOX Grandma: You’re letter made me so happy! I love that you are trying to be greener and using the canvas grocery bags, and the fact that they are the ones Cory and I made so long ago makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! I’m so happy Jen sends my emails to you, I was hoping you would be kept updated. Its funny to me how my being on the other side of the world has shown me how easy it is to keep in touch with everyone that I used to be so close to that I took them for granted, now I have such an appreciation for family and friends, because they mean everything here, that I’m desperate to hear from you guys way back over there! I hear from Ann and Jen and Kathy more now than I ever did before and I had no excuse not to be in touch, I just never made the time because in the states communication is so easy its completely taken for granted…why would I call or email now when I can do it just as easily any other time? That attitude let me feel okay about barely talking to you guys anymore and I’m sorry but that’s just dumb! You are my family and I hope if I take nothing else from this trip across the ocean, that I will at least learn to stop taking my family for granted and do a better job of keeping in touch! So there you have it, and to anyone else (like you mom, because I know you read every word of all my emails J ) reading this I think you should do the same! Family is family, whether through marriage or blood or adoption or whatever, so don’t let them forget how much they matter to you! I love you Gramma, and I’ll send you another card soon! Okay, now I’m done with those, so the rest of you can stop pretending like you didn’t read that last part and keep reading here. One more quick thank you, to all those of you who have written me emails, if you have written and I have not responded it is not because I haven’t read them or don’t want them, I just sometimes have limited computer time but I love each and every email I get and I read all of them religiously because it’s the closest thing I have to being there with you guys and it makes me so happy to hear from you, you have no idea! Every time I go into the Peace Corps office and use the computer its like being in Americaland for a little while and it’s a nice break from Mauritania. It always feels weird to walk out after an hour or two on the internet and still be in the dusty, goat-filled streets of Mauritania. Not that I don’t love it here, I do, I just love it at home too, so I love to live the culture clash that switching gears from your emails to greeting random strangers wearing giant white or blue or green boubous in Pulaar causes in my head. You should try it sometime, its great, just make sure you’re okay at laughing at yourself because you’re going to have to do a lot of it here. When you talk to people, about 50% of the time you are both speaking a language you are not 100% comfortable with and most of time they know about as many words in English as I know in Pulaar/Soninke/Hassiniya/Wolof. It seems almost everyone here knows how to say “How are you? Fine!” in one big long string, because they learned the question and the response all at the same time, which I thought was funny until I realized that most of the time when they greet you in any of the languages here they do it in a similar manner, for example, if you learn French in Africa you are liable to greet someone in french by saying: Bonjour! Ca va? Ca va bien? Comment allez-vous? Et votre travail? Et vos famile ? Ca va vos famile ? Tu va bien ? Bien alhumdulilah ! Which can be roughly translated as : Hello! Hows it going? Its going good? How are you? And your work? And your family? How is your family? You are well? Well thanks be to god! And they’ll say all of that, even if all you say in response is ca va once or twice. So now when I get text messages from my English-speaking host brother from Rosso that say: “Hello. How are you? You are fine I hope and your family is nice and that you are fine. I hope you are fine. Good bye.” Its totally normal, and only a little bit funny. Mauritania is awesome. I’m done writing now, love you all, I’ll write more later! Shelby

October 11, 2008

I risked life and limb to get here this morning, just to write to you people, and to translate my resume into French for an NGO. It rained again last night, and I’m not talking a few shimmering sprinkles. The sky opened up and dumped water on this dried up little town like a freaking bucket. The streets are a mess, and my toes are coated in the deliciously squishy clay mud that this town is made out of. I was woken up by the complete absence of sound at around 4am. That’s the first time that has ever happened here, total silence except for the quiet little plopping sound of toads jumping around on my mat, there was nothing else. It was creepy not to hear a single donkey bray and goat cry or dog bark or anything, and I just laid there in my mosquito net watching the moonlit yard. The lightening had already started in the distance at that point but I couldn’t hear any thunder, that’s how fast storms move around here. By 4:30 I was up, with the rest of my family, dragging all of our bedding into our rooms because the wind had picked up and it was laden with sand making sleeping outside uncomfortable to say the least. Once I was inside and settled back into bed the wind slowed down again and I considered moving back out, but thought better of it. By 5:15 not only was the wind back, but big fat rain drops were starting to fall. A few big fat drops of rain have fallen before during sandstorms, so I thought little of it and got up to shut my door to keep the toads from taking refuge in my room. Well by 5:30 it had picked up full scale and started downright pouring. The wind drove the rain in through the termite holes in my walls where it proceeded to melt the mud bricks and form little mud rivers down my walls, so I got up one more time and dragged my net into the very middle of the room and put buckets under the termite filled sandy mud puddles and thought about how crazy my life has become that this was not odd at all, simply tedious and annoying when I’m trying to sleep. In an effort to better appreciate the moment I snuck outside by myself into to morning darkness and pounding rain and just watched the power of the storm for a little while. I was cold and wet (though not soaked, I stayed under the eaves and refrained from dancing in the rain like I have been known to do in the past) and alone and gloriously ridiculously happy to be where I am right now living this every day. A few nights ago, after a fantastic dinner of (here comes a combination that would be considered amazing only here…get ready) fresh live oysters with lime juice, amazingly strong and flavorful soft brie, and cold beer (all courtesy of Luis), Pot pie by Levin, and (my pride and joy) home made cream-filled, cinnamon sugar doughnuts freshly fried up by yours truly, myself, Luis, and the other volunteers who were in town become engaged in a big long conversation about peace corps service and how we all feel about what we’re doing and whether or not we’re doing any good and how fundamentally selfish it feels to me to be here (though no one else seemed to feel that way) and all of that jazz. Following the conversation, during which I learned a lot about myself, I wrote a big long journal entry that was accidentally even more revealing about my true character, sometimes when I get writing I write things about myself that I didn’t know were true until I see them committed to paper and its always a little bit scary to re-read them later. Without getting to self-help book on you, I’ll share this: I think I feel bad about my presence here because I was on some level hoping that when I got here I would find people in dire need of my help, however unrealistic and border-line sadistic that hope is, I wanted them to need me so much that I would come out of this service feeling like I had done something so wonderful, that I had helped so many people who couldn’t help themselves (it sounds worse and worse every time I put it into words). The reason I feel so bad about it now is that I have come here and found that they don’t need me, not really, not in the way I had sort of decided they would. I don’t feel needed, and therefore I have tipped the scales in the opposite direction of the way I was hoping. I wanted to come here and do great stuff for everyone else and then as a lucky side effect, I would have this amazing experience and opportunity to grow as a person; but instead it’s the other way around. I am here growing and learning so much and taking so much out of this experience for myself, and as a lucky side effect I might do a few good things along the way. This is something that I’m having a hard time coming to terms with because I thought I was being selfless by coming here but clearly that’s not the case at all. So there it is, my daily dilemma, and for now, until I can think of a better way to deal with it, I’m just going to work on being okay with whatever comes out of this whole thing, and rely on the wisdom of Levin to make myself feel better, his wise words being something along the lines of: “How could you be doing harm here? I mean I guess if you try really hard you could mess things up pretty bad, but I don’t think it could happen on accident.” So there you have it folks, I’m going to do my best not to accidentally make a big mess here, all the while appreciating all the wonderful things my service means to me. Much love and as always, more to come, Shelby PS. A few new photos up on facebook if anyone is interested

“Hiya Friends! I have some extra time on my hands what with it being a holiday weekend here, and though I spent the first three days of this weekend, which just so happened to be the 3 day fete marking the end of Ramadan, gorging myself on mass quantities of food, I am content to spend the Saturday on the computer, away from endless greetings and various drinks and meals with random people. I have these moments all the time where I think ‘I should write about this in my next email’ and then I get here with my computer and all those moments have completely left me and I end up writing to you about whatever random event pops into my head. Well, I wish I could say this time is different but alas, I have nothing for you, so here’s another heap of random observations for your reading pleasure, or annoyance, whichever the case may be. For the record, if you are reading these hoping for some life changing insight or amazing and inspiring story of hope and wonder from the wilds of Africa, you’re reading the wrong e-mails. I don’t even know what I’m going to do here, I mean I’m hear with all this training on things that are important but how to do them is not what people need to know. Yesterday I was having this discussion with Luis, a friend of ours from Portugal here working on the roads. I say I don’t know what I’m going to do here not because I’m feeling exasperated and overwhelmed already, on the contrary I have been loving it here so far and even though I feel I have done very little, I know I’m not supposed to have done anything but observe and learn right now and so that’s what I’m doing, but here is what I have observed (and also the source of my confusion on what I will do with my time here): In training I learned how to make a cream from a local tree that repels mosquitoes, how to make fly traps, proper methods of hand-washing, what foods a child needs to eat to combat dehydration and malnutrition. I learned how to run an animation or give a presentation showing how easy these things are to do and why they are important, but here’s what training didn’t tell me: People here have a hard time sparing water to properly wash their hands when they have to haul every drop from a well a few kilometers away from their house, or when they pay what are for them vast sums just for the privilege of a running water tap on their property. People know that mosquitoes are bad and should be repelled, but to ask these women, who prepare 3 meals a day from scratch, do all the laundry by hand in buckets, haul all the water, wash all the dishes, sweep the whole compound, care for their numerous children, goats, sheep, cows, donkeys, gardens, and all other household chores every day, to spare the hour or so it takes to mix up a batch of neem cream is essentially asking them to give up an hour of sleep in many cases, they work so hard. What I am beginning to see is that I have been given a tool box full of band-aid solutions to solve problems with roots so much deeper than can possibly be addressed by one volunteer, even with 2 years to live and learn these problems inside and out. I have always been the type to try to shoulder burdens that I can’t possibly handle but this may very well be my biggest one yet, and the hardest part: On the surface everything looks fine. On the surface these people are poor, but that doesn’t matter to them, after all they have never known any other way. What I see when I’m here is that despite the precious little they have in material goods, they are rich beyond my wildest dreams in kindness and community and generosity; and here I am, a little American girl, with my backpack full of useless gadgets that I thought would be so handy to have here, that I paid more than the average Mauritanian makes in a year for, trying to tell them that everything will be better if they just wear neem cream every night and wash their hands with soap. As far as I’m concerned right now I’m doing more damage here than good, providing these people with a living, breathing, metric of the American dream, against which their life couldn’t possibly measure up in any visible way. Of course when it comes to the invisible means I have a hunch that the “American dream” leaves much to be desired. I hope that I’m doing at least a little bit of good for myself and maybe even the people I’m sharing this experience with (ie. You kind folks) just by seeing and showing how having so little can give you so much. Of course Luis says people here are so nice and so happy because of all the green tea they drink, but for whatever reason, on the surface everyone here is one hundred times happier than anyone I’ve encountered in the states. Anyway the point is, I come here toting my American ideals and they have no place here, and if by some chance I plant some seeds here, when they grow into whatever they’ll be, I doubt they’ll be beneficial in any way to anyone here. Now before you all go getting worried that I’m feeling depressed about my choices or my service, know this, nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m so happy here Luis teases that I’m going to stay when my service is done. I know I just got here and I can’t let it get overwhelming yet, I’m just taking every step of every day as a learning experience, and hopefully, if nothing else, I will come out of this with a new understanding of finding the root of problems for any future aid or NGO work I might be able to do. So if nothing else, I’ll gain something from this, and hopefully I won’t mess anything up too bad while I’m here! So, on that note, I’ll try to talk about something a little more hopeful! I have a little project, I’m making posters for the hospital pediatrics office about neem cream, moringa (an amazing tree that has every imaginable nutrient a malnourished child could possibly want in it, not to mention a million other uses), and oral re-hydration salts. I’m blundering my way through the French translations and will hopefully have the body of the posters written up and the basic layout done by the end of the week. I spoke to some Mauritanians about the wonderful moringa tree when I was trying to compose part of my poster, and I found that they have a lot of misinformation when it comes to moringa, at least I think its misinformation because if its not then it’s Mauritania’s best kept secret. I had my dictionary on my lap and I said to my friend Souleymane, “If someone asked you why Moringa was so good, what would you say?” Well he reached right over and took my dictionary and said “Moringa cures over 160 diseases” (Which could be true, it’s roots and seed pods have been found to have remarkable antibiotic properties) but then he continued, flipping through my dictionary on the French to English side, he found what he was looking for and pointed, “it cures this” he said, and pointed to the English translation: Cancer. “It can’t possibly cure all cancers, maybe some but there are many types that have no cure at all,” I said. “Perhaps not all, I don’t know, but some.” Okay, I’ll give him that, maybe. He continued flipping and selected another word, which he showed me, “this too” he said, pointing to diabetes. “Hmmm…really? I don’t think so…at least they never said that in our training” I said. “I think so” Souley replied and searched some more, coming up with his third and final example of the wonder cures of moringa: paralysis. That was enough for me to realize that he was doing the traditional Mauritanian thing and trying to answer the question just to be nice, even if they don’t know the answer, because they don’t want to let you don’t by saying they don’t know. They’ll do that also with directions, if you ask someone how to get somewhere the peace corps recommends that you ask 2 or 3 people and take the general consensus as people here would prefer to give the wrong directions that have to tell you they can’t help you. Teachers will do that too. As a teacher you are in a place of authority and respect, you don’t want to tarnish the reputation by not being able to answer the questions of your students, so whether they know or not, they’ll always give an answer. Its been going on for so long sometimes ts hard to tell if someone is making up the answer because they don’t know, or if they think they know but the person who was teaching them made it up because they didn’t know, and so on and so forth. Its really not as bad as it sounds, people don’t ask many difficult questions around here. There is no ponderings of the intricacies of life or science, most of those questions are answered by religion and here that’s basically law and as a rule, not questioned. That leaves silly questions (like how old are you) for people to lie about. Everyone lies about their age, at least all women; and some of them don’t actually know. My 13 year old host sister says she’s 9, Emily’s sister has a twin brother who is 20 but insists she is no older than 16. My sisters in Rosso told me at least 4 different ages each, and even after 3 months of living with them the only one I know the real age of is Saratou because my host parents told me she is the same age as me, she would never admit that though. When people here ask my age and I say I’m 22 they assume that by that I mean 26, and if I’m 26 why aren’t I married? And if I’m not married, would I like to be? And if yes then would I be willing to marry an African? Will I live here after I’m finished with my service? And just like that I understand the lying, it’s just easier, I can’t answer these questions, and even if I could I don’t know that I want everyone here to know the answers. Now I lie, because I’m integrated (Je suis une vrai Africainne!), and it’s easier. Am I married? No, but I have a fiancé, he’s waiting for me in the United States. He calls me every week and we don’t know when we’re going to get married but probably right after I’m done with my service here. He’s not going to visit because that’s expensive and we’re saving money for our wedding, you can’t talk to him when he calls because he doesn’t speak any French, or Pulaar, or Soninke, or Hassiniya. He has a job in the States but I can’t tell you what it is because I don’t know the word for it in French, but it’s something with cars. I won’t live here after I’m done, at least not right away, because his job is there and when I’m done I will miss him so much I won’t want to live with an ocean between us anymore. I’m a pretty convincing liar now, so that’s something else I can take away from this experience, easy guilt-free lying about my marital status. Okay I think that’s enough for today, this has been another long one! I hope you guys haven’t run out of patience with my rambling e-mails yet! Someday I’ll get together all the emails that I have written and all the journals that I’m filling each day, and all the letters I’ve written and all the sketches and paintings of plants and cows and tea services and goats and I’ll put them all together in the worlds coolest scrap book that I’ll want to read over and over again to relive these days of my life but no one else will have any desire to see haha….it’s going to be great! You just wait and see! I love you all, keep emailing me you’re love! I have so much to look forward too: 2 weeks until shuttle day when I get all my mail and packages! So to anyone who as sent something that I’m going to get on this shuttle load, THANK YOU! I’m fully confident that this shuttle will make my month! Now I must go and compose an email to the PCMO to request more malaria pills on that very same shuttle. Peace, Love, and Ice Cream (Jess, I still wear my Ben and Jerry’s bracelet everyday, my host family can’t believe I worked at a store that sold nothing but ice cream, I’m confident their disbelief is simply cleverly disguised jealousy) Shelby

September 26, 2008 Well hello there friends! Update time: I moved in with a family into a nice small termite infested (its actually kind of cool, they are surely natures architects!) corner room with a really great and friendly French speaking Pulaar family. Many of them speak bits of English and they are all very friendly and they all make a fantastic effort to talk with me and keep me entertained, which is why I feel really guilty right now for not having been there all day. I am back at Kim’s and I spent last night here because Sam and Sari are in from their villages so we all hung out last night, had dinner, and got caught up. We also went to the tailors and I got a blue and black embroidered sparkly type thing (although I don’t actually know what yet, my French is no good so I just tell the tailor to make what he would normally make with the fabric and let him use his creative genius to make whatever…I’ll find out what it is when I pick it up tomorrow) and Sari got one that’s blue green and yellow; whatever they come out to be, they will be our outfits for the fetes at the end of Ramadan. I am excited; I’ll surely have to take pictures. In other news, I don’t have much other news. I’m still working one week at the health center, one week at the hospital. I have been teaching people to make neem cream mosquito repellant and that has been my only recent contribution. I’m going to read up on nutrition and malnutrition for a presentation me, Morgan, and Sari (Health People) are hopefully going to do with Levin and Sam (Agro-Forestry Folks) in the middle of October at a school in Gourat, a little village south of here right on the Senegal river. I don’t really have any other updates so I’ll share a silly story. I was sitting the Peace Corps Bureau (Room with a computer in it where I can get online) the other day and in walked a gentlemen off the streets, this happens quite frequently as the person inside the bureau is almost guaranteed to be American, curious folks often wander in to make small talk. He tried to give me some perfume oil, first on the hand which I accepted and then he went for the cheek which I refused. He told me his name was Samba and he likes toubobs (for those of you that don’t know, toubob = white person) and wanted to know if I was American, which I obviously am. He told me that he knew a guy that met an American here and they got married and he lives in the United States now, which is pretty standard small talk for anyone around here, everyone knows someone who married and American and why am I here if not to interview interested parties? I said that was lovely and tried to continue my work. He then asked if I was talking to my family to which I replied I was composing an e-mail to them and he requested that I compose one for him in French to his friends (because he would much prefer me do it then have to do it himself and have to pay for the time at a cyber café) to which I replied that this was in fact an English computer and had the incorrect keyboard for composing French emails (which is a lie but he was trying to take advantage so I just told him to go to the cyber). The fellow hung around some more and then got to the point; here is our conversation in a nut shell: Samba: So are you married? Me: No, I have a fiancé, he’s waiting for me in the United States (also a lie, don’t worry) Samba: Do you know any other white people? Me: Some…I’m working now though. I have to do my work. Samba: Yes, work is good. We’re friends now right? We can be friends? Me: um…sure.. Samba: Good, I’ll give you my number, and when you get back to the states you call me. Help find me a toubob wife and then call me. I want a pretty one, who’s rich. I’d also like her to speak Pulaar. Very rich, if possible. Me: Yeah…ok…good luck…there are tons of women like that in the states. Samba: And your man, in the states, you tell him we’re friends too now. All three of us are friends. Next time he calls, you tell him that. Me: ok…. Samba: And then ask him to help look for my wife, because he’s there and you’re going to be here for 2 years and I don’t want to wait that long. So ladiessss….if anyone is interested in a Mauritanian husband I’ve got this friend here… September 27, 2008 It seems like whenever I write these early in the morning they come out all weird and deep, but that just might be because it’s early in the morning and everything seems deep right now. At any rate, here are my “deep thoughts” for the day. Every once in awhile here I slip up and without paying attention, an American thought pops into my head that doesn’t really apply here. Little shadows of the life I left over there just pass by and then they’re gone. This morning as I was closing the latrine door I thought “did I flush?” FYI, I haven’t seen a flushing toilet since I got here 3 months ago. Sometimes I see a piece of garbage on the ground and think, oh that’s just a plastic lid to a disposable coffee cup, or a bit of toilet paper, or a take out container, or some other remnant of the things I left behind when I came here. These little moments don’t make me sad, it’s not as if just the site of the piece of plastic piping that looked like a coffee lid made me start to examine all of the things I don’t have here, its just for that fraction of a second I forget where I am, and in a little place in my head I have the “land of plenty” mindset still intact. I still expect to find MacDonald’s wrappers in the garbage heaps, I still think “oh, if I make too much I’ll just stick it in the fridge and finish it tomorrow,” occasionally I even consider swinging by a café for a cup of coffee. Here though, there are no MacDonald’s, there is no refrigerator, and the only cafes we have are called cyber cafes and they are just buildings with a few computers in them where you can go and pay by the hour to surf the net. In fact there isn’t really even real coffee here, its all Nescafe, not my favorite. So through all of this I wonder, these few things that still pop into my head, they may fade with time, or stick around, who knows, but for every one of those little slip ups there are a thousand things here that don’t phase me anymore even though I would never have seen them in the states. These things, like going to a restaurant and being given one cup for all 4 people and a big bucket that says bob’s mayonnaise on the outside full of cool water to dip the cup in and share, or having to haggle and fight and bargain and sometimes walk out of stores just to get a good price on anything in the market, or bathing, doing laundry, washing dishes, and carrying drinking water all in the same bucket. These things are normal for me now, and will be normal for me when I leave here, so in 2 years am I going to be compelled to bargain for the price of a bunch of bananas or a kilo of sugar? Am I going to assure the waiter at a restaurant that I don’t need a water glass or my own, surely I can just share with my friend? I probably won’t try to do my laundry or my dishes or take my showers in a bucket, I do miss running water and the various machines we have there that do all of that stuff for us. It’s a funny feeling to be torn between “the land of plenty,” as I like to call it, and life here, the land of very little but so much at the same time. I feel incredibly wasteful when I think about things I used to do there, but at the same time wasteful things happen here too. Garbage is everywhere, just tossed all over the ground. Every time you go to the store you are given a tiny plastic shopping bag to carry your purchases, these bags end up every where; clear, blue, green, pink, and white, all tangled in the thorny trees like so many Christmas ornaments. You can buy a tiny packet of 4 cookies, a tiny bag of raw peanuts, a bag of soda, a bag of cold water, a bag of 4 garlic cloves, or a bag of rock salt, and if you do buy one or more of these things they’ll put that bag in a shopping bag for you. I’d say probably 50% of my trash is various sized plastic bags. Volunteers try to find ways to reuse them, discourage the distribution of them, encourage the use of reusable shopping bags, anything, but we often fail. I’ll tell the merchant I can just put my purchases in my purse and they will put it in a bag for me to put in my bag. Little things like this are every where. These things frighten me because they represent the influence of the developed world, I remember having the same conversations about dealing with the huge quantities of price chopper bags we used to have around the house over there, but over there things are slowly starting to change, stores give you discounts for reusing bags, canvas shopping bags are showing up all over the place and the waste is becoming less; here though, it will take years for something like that to happen, because the current method is so easy and the negatives are not really a concern for people here. When you cook your dinners according to how well you can afford to feed you family today, the fact that the plastic baggy you got your potatoes in is going to be around longer than they are is not a major concern. Those are just my thoughts for the day, I best be off now. Hopefully I’ll send this today or tomorrow. Love and miss you allllll! Shelby

September 18th, 2008 Hello Hello Everyone! First let me say that I am okay, the state of Mauritania is no different, and if I hadn’t gotten an e-mail from Obie, the country director, telling me that there 12 members of the military are “missing” way up north in a place called Zouerate, I would have had no idea. BUT on the off chance that you have seen the word Mauritania in the news and panicked about my well-being, think of it this way: This incident happened in the EXTREME NORTH of the country, that’s the tippy tippy top for those of you who are directionally challenged, I live in the Guidimaka, that’s the EXTREME SOUTH (very very bottom, practically Senegal) and the only reason Obie even sent an email was because apparently some form of media mixed up the location and incorrectly reported Nouakchott so he just wanted us to set the record straight. The actual extreme north of the country is extremely inhospitable (go figure…its not fun to live in the middle of the Sahara…huh) and very little like where I live, in the green jungle of Selibaby (for now, but the rainy season is officially over-so no more rain at all until June-ish….yuck!). In other news, I found a home! Hurray! I’m getting a room with an amazingly nice family with nooooo little kids! Double Hurray! They had us for dinner and they were fun and talkative and jokey and teaching me Pulaar and helping me with French and when I got shy and became quiet because I could depend on Kim to hold up the conversation they would ask me why I wasn’t talking, which is good, I need to practice my language skills. We went back to discuss rent and things, its 6000 ouguiya per month (roughly $17) and that includes water and electricity (a tap on the property and one light and one outlet in my room!) and when we asked about meals (did that include food or did they want to add more onto my rent for that I was told that I am now a member of the family and as such I can eat there whenever I want and its just fine. I can’t wait, I move in on Saturday, inshallah. Here’s another story about life here, just because I have the time. I work 3 or 4 days a week, every other week at the Health Center CREN alternating with the pediatric ward at the hospital. This week was hospital, but there were pas beaucoup de maladies cette semain (not many sick people this week) so I spent a lot of time making small talk with the pediatricians and nurses. When I work at the hospital I am supposed to be there at around 9 so I head out at 8:30 and make the 45 minute walk just in time to arrive at the same time as everyone else. My job as a pedestrian here is to walk wherever I damn well please and ignore the taxi’s, whose job is to drive wherever they damn well please and beep their horn at every pedestrian, goat, sheep, camel, or donkey in the road, other vehicle, and as turn signals. They drive on both sides of the road, going both directions, sometimes two or three abreast, through ditches, around potholes, through herds of goats, between people, around other cars, and well, everywhere. Sometimes people hit things, one time we hit a fence in the Peace Corps car, but it wasn’t very hard and no one cared, we just back up and keep going. One time we hit a wall when we were driving down a road so narrow I would have had trouble navigating it with my little Toyota Paseo (my babyyyyy…my heart is broken without my lil car) but this was in a peace corps land rover, so there was roughly a quarter of an inch of leeway on either side, and we just scraped off a little…well actually mud…from both the side of the car and the mud brick wall we were scraping. The streets are narrow and bumpy. They are filled with garbage and goats and donkeys and naked babies. If I watched my world through a black and white filter then I would be living in one of those Christian children’s fund commercials, strategically posed and filmed to show the sad little faces of children covered with flies traversing garbage filled streets in bare feet, that’s roughly my daily life save one thing. These kids are not just sitting around looking pathetic, they are smiling, laughing, playing, they all want to shake your hand and greet you, they build toys out of empty bottles and bottle caps and string. They laugh and smile and yell, they eat and sleep and work and play, and they are rarely too tired or depressed to swat the flies off their faces. There is one exception to this rule, well several but one prominent one, and that is a group of boys known as can kids. These kids come from the bush around cities to study the Koran. Not all Koranic schools work this way, but some require the kids to beg for food and for fees to pay for their schooling, they justify it by saying that it teaches the children humility. These children have been basically abandoned by their families to move to the city and depend on the generosity of others to survive. They carry with them old tin cans which they store any food they are given in. This can is often their only possession. The system works for a number of reasons, the greatest being the lack of refrigeration here, thus when a family finishes a meal for which they have inevitably cooked way too much just in case someone happens to stop by within a few hours of meal time and can be persuaded to stay and eat with the family, the leftovers are generally given to the closest available can kid(s) and/or the goats. These kids are accomplished beggars and are quite capable of putting on the saddest little faces and holding out their hands with their big sad eyes, they know how to get you; but when they realize you have nothing to give, or you have already given them something, the act is dropped and they are usually just like any other kids. My host family in Rosso frequently gave to the can kids, who would walk into the salon during lunch and my father would take their cans and fill them with rice and vegetables from our cheb. Giving money to the can kids is discouraged but if I have food I usually share. This is one of the saddest things about living here, but as with all other hard things, it has simply become part of life here. The sad, happy, exciting, boring, busy, empty, friendly, well fed, ridiculous, amazing life of Mauritania. In other news, I broke fast with a different family two nights ago and the woman who ate with us was very pregnant, but here they will never mention it lest it bring bad luck on the baby. So this pregnant woman cooked and served us dinner, never mentioning the pregnancy at all, and then after we left at about 11 pm she gave birth, finishing at about 1:30 am to a beautiful healthy baby boy. We got a phone call yesterday informing us, and we went to visit today, he’s adorable. That’s all I got for now, much love and happy thoughts! Shelby

(Originally sent September 14th, 2008)

Hello Everyone, I want to tell you the story of this morning, because it felt like a story that needed to be told. I woke at 4:30 in my mosquito net under the stars watching the horizon flicker with cloud to cloud lightning. Just as the sky was starting to lighten the clouds began to creep from the horizon and darken it again. I watched for nearly an hour as the dark clouds and lightning slowly stretched across the sky, eventually darkening (and briefly but frequently brightening) the entire sky. There had been almost no thunder, just a gentle distant rumble, for the majority of the morning; but at about 5:30 a bright flash in the distance was followed by the cracking thunder that I knew meant we were in for some real rain. Sure enough the drops started to fall shortly thereafter and though I tried to wait it out, by 6:15 the wind had picked up; time to move inside. Once the wind picks up here you know you're in for a good one, and I barely had time to pull the tent poles out of my net before the fat rain drops started to fall faster and faster. It's been pretty consistently pouring and blustering ever since. The power blinked a few times but seems to be holding steady now, so at 9:35 am I am still listening to the pouring rain on the tin roof while I compose this very message. Perhaps that does not sound so remarkable to you, but let me share the most exciting piece of information about today: I'm wearing a sweatshirt. When the wind picked up it was so nice and cool I think everyone awake to feel it breathed a sigh of relief because over the course of the last several days it has become increasingly humid and muggy here. I had been sleeping in shorts and a t-shirt, outside with no blanket, waving my little hand fan, and sweating profusely as I have become accustomed to doing here, so today feels like vacation, like winter, like heaven. It won't last I know, but I thought I would share while I'm thinking of it because it's lovely. I however, will not be able to get online and send this until the river goes down, the road un-floods, and some of the inevitable glue-like mud dries up in the streets so that I can make the trip to the bureau without slipping, falling, or losing my shoes. September 14, 2008 Things are a little drier around here today so I have made my way to the internet! Hurray! But before sending this email I wanted to add a few things, some recent emails and phone conversations have made me aware of how very little about my day to day life here you all know. I share with you the funny stories or antidotes but leave out all of the (to me) mundane details. I wrote these all up once in an actual letter to my brother for his birthday, but it seems it was lost in the mail so here goes again for all to see. A day in the life of….an American-Mauritanian. A standard night here is spent sleeping outside, under the stars, always in a mosquito net (although I've heard the insect population decreases considerably during the cold season, can't wait!) on a little foam pad similar to a camping mattress called a mattela. In the states I could never sleep without at least a sheet, here I have slept without a sheet, without a pillow, and without a mattela; here I can sleep under almost any circumstances. As most people sleep outside (when there is no rain), most everyone is up with the sun as well. Here, 9 times out of 10 I'm in bed by 11pm and up by 6:30am. Call to prayer goes off sometime around 5 (and during Ramadan also sometime around 3) in the morning; just a voice singing the call into a megaphone. Most days I sleep through it but some days I still here it. It also goes off 4 other times throughout the day and can be heard from several directions, one from each Mosque. Sometimes, on a good day if you're lucky, you will get to hear the prayer call-er's cell phone go off while he's doing the call to prayer. Everyone here has a cell phone, and everyone here wants you're number. First guy I met at the hospital asked for my number, the cab driver, the baker, the tailor, a guy on the street who knows my neighbor. You get good at saying no, I still lie though, because I hate to come across as impolite. I say my phone is only for work, I say I don't give my number to men, I say I don't have a phone. I say these things because if you give them your number they will call, they will send you text messages in languages they know you don't understand, and they will give your number away so that other people who saw you one time or want to work with you or are just curious because your white, and those people will call you. Its not as creepy as it sounds, this is a culture where people interact that way. If you give someone your number its not just to be polite, its so they can call to ask how you are? How are you with the heat? How are you with the tiredness? How are you with the rain? The mosquitoes? Have you eaten? Found a room? Met their brother the dentist who works at the health center? They just want to know about you, because you are different and that's exciting. If you are an American woman the men want to marry you and the women will offer you their sons, not because you're an especially nice person that they would love to add to their family, but because you have VISA written on your forehead. White women are a way out and America is the Promised Land. They watch our television shows and movies and look at us, even the peace corps volunteers come here with laptops and i-pods and digital camera's and try to tell them that America is not that great. I feel that I could have come to Mauritania with nothing but the clothes on my back and I would be just fine. When you're lost you can walk right into someone's house, greet them, and tell them your situation. They will feed you, serve you three glasses of tea (a bitter one for death, a sweet one for love, and a perfect mix for life, each with a thick layer of foam on the top representing the how important of a guest you are, the more foam, the more time they put into making your tea), show you how to get where you need to go, and probably help you find a place to stay when you get there. That is in their culture, and they don't understand that just getting to the United States won't get you the life they see on MTV, they don't understand that if you just walk into a stranger's house in the states you will most likely be kicked out, and perhaps even arrested, maybe even hurt. As an example I'll share a story about today. Sari (my regionmate) lives in a village outside of Selibaby where the phone service we all got, Mauritel, doesn't work. Today we went into town to get her a new sim card for her phone for Mattel, a different phone company with service in her village. We tried to also buy her Mattel credit but the man with the card didn't understand what I was asking and we left in search of another boutique. A gentleman across the street saw our exchange and asked what we were looking for, he sold plastic buckets and could be no help to us, but I wanted to practice my French so I went over and told him the situation. Before I knew it the man had left his shop, gone across the way into the other shop and found us what we were looking for, just because he knew he could help us. He expected nothing in return, just wanted to be helpful. Try to imagine what life would be like for the reverse, someone accustomed to life here going to the states and trying to make a life there? I have been adopted by families on sight, there is a woman who calls me her child because she saw me on the street and just knew I was peace corps, she's having me for dinner tonight, she's hoping I will rent a room at her house and really be part of their family. That's how it works; when you rent a room here you pay for the room and the family. The family is then yours, you eat with them, live with them, learn from them, they'll take you to the market and bargain down prices for you, walk you to the taxi place when you don't know how to get where you're going, send someone to come get you when you are out late at night and don't want to walk home alone. I have family everywhere here, in Rosso, in Nouakchott, Selibaby, and everywhere that my families have family, which is everywhere, because everyone here is family. So, just to recap, here, life is difficult. Sometimes I see starving babies, sometimes I just really want a glass of wine, sometimes I'd give anything for a real shower instead of a bucket and a cup, or an actual toilet instead of a hole over a cockroach infested cesspit, or a bed instead of just a mattela. Sometimes I miss my family and friends in the states (okay, a lot of the time, pretty much all the time), I miss my car, I miss my apartment, my favorite coffee shop (Flavour Café, what I wouldn't give for a cup of real coffee and a plain bagel toasted with cream cheese to split with Anj), my favorite music venue (oh rev hall…), or just the simple act of overhearing a conversation somewhere and understanding what is being said. Sometimes I miss these things a great deal, and though it hasn't been bad yet, I know it will be at some point, I know sometimes it will seem impossible, but it won't be. I wanted to write this to show you that I have people here that love me like you all do, I have times here that are amazing and exciting and everyday is an adventure and a challenge. I have a job here that's rewarding and coworkers that rise to this challenge every day. I have a life here. Life has ups and downs no matter where you are, so if I get all weepy and whiny at any point during my service, if I seem to think I can't rise to the occasion and finish up what I've started, if I try and complain about how hard my life is here, just remind me that that is life. Its never easy all the time, its messy and hard and exhausting and you can't always have what you want, even when you come from the great United States. And then think about how lucky you are every time you have one of those down days over there on the other side of the puddle between us; how lucky you are to have your life and your friends and your family and your neighbors and how lucky you are to know that you don't need any more than that. That accidentally got wayyyy deeper that I had been planning on going with this note so I'm going to go before I go any further down that rabbit hole. I hope this email still makes sense, contrary to the mood that this email has taken I am very happy at the moment, happy and excited to go meet another family tonight and find another place here to call home. Happy to go to work at the hospital tomorrow morning and see if the babies have improved, and extra happy because my APCD called today and told me I don't have to go to the hospital every other week, I can work only at the health center if I want to and that makes everything easier! Happy happy happy! But as always, missing all of you so picture my smiling face and send me pictures of yours! Lots of love, Shelby

(originally sent september 9, 2008)

Hi all,

Just figured I'd send a quick update because i'm online and thinking of all of you. I started "work" on sunday (the mauritanian monday) but i'm really just observing right now. I'm watching at the feeding center where they weigh malnourished babies and track their progress for recovery. The first day I watched at the hospital one and it completely broke my heart, I saw babies so skinny they had nothing but wrinkled skin for a butt who couldn't hold their heads up or even stay awake during the short consultation with the nurse. This was really hard for me to watch and the image is seared in my mind now, about 2 out of the 6 babies I saw were extremely malnourished to the point that I was sure they would not still be alive for the weigh in the next week. I found this extremely difficult to watch and disheartening, surely the program isn't working if the babies still look like this? But what else can be done? The baby can't stay awake to eat, how can it ever recover? The next day I started at the health center and learned why sunday had been so discouraging: The hospital feeding center is where all of the extreme cases are referred for full time feeding and care and at the smaller feeding center I saw a great deal more hope, babies with steadily increasing weights and little round bellies to match their big round eyes (that get even bigger when they see a white person!). I observed again this morning and will go again on Thursday and the overwhelming-ness of it all is slowly falling into perspective. I am discussing a few trainings I can do with the staff at the health center already, making bug repellent from a local tree to slow the spread of malaria, and they have (I think, my french isn't perfect you know) agreed to purchase the supplies for me to do a demonstration in the coming week or so.

Even with all that going on, i still have a remarkably large amount of time on my hands. I think I'll be online every few days for the next few weeks so look for updates.

For my Family: Hi everyone! I haven't gotten many updates from you folks lately (aside from mom, dad, and cory, obviously) but I assume no news is good news and its certainly the busy time of year over there (though arguably the slowest time of year over here so its hard for me to relate...) but I just wanted to say hi and that I hope everyone is doing well. Dad/Mom-Cory says the photos printed from facebook will have no resolution so i'm going to work something else out for that, thanks though! I'll let you know when i figure it out, i think it'll involve mailing a memory card. I would love to receive photos from anyone over there though! Puppy photos, family photos, just little reminders of life in the states. Miss you all!

Much Love!

Shelby

wish list item of the day:

(outside of the ever-present wine, cheese, and chocolate but i know you can't send those things)

Minty chewing gum

(originally sent September 5, 2008)

Hello Folks! **NOTE: This email was written on my laptop at the house where I'm staying before reaching a computer so if you emailed me asking questions or filling me in on stuff that I ask about again in here its probably because I got your email after I wrote this one, so don't worry I did get them I just didn't write back to them at the moment)** I've been putting off writing this email because I have almost nothing to report…aside from the fact that I have been sworn in as a Volunteer (hurray! No more stage!). So what that means is that I'm at my permanent site now in Selibaby (and missing my family and friends from home AND my new family and friends from Rosso!) doing well but mostly doing nothing at all. I have not found a house yet and I have not started work yet (Sunday, maybe...I get a tour of the health facilities at least and probably start going a few days a week…) but I have met my counterpart who is an amazing woman who works with malnourished children in the hospital and is incredibly motivated and excited to work with me and immediately gave me a new name (Hi, nice to meet you! My names Shelby Perry, except that's not right anymore, I'm Marieme Fall, oh wait, just kidding, now I'm Amineta Ba…) with her nom de famille, Ba. Now before I continue let me share a little bit about Mauritanians and their names. Nearly every (or possibly every) Mauritanian name has another name (or several others) that they are somehow related to that they refer to as their "bean eating cousin." Being called a bean eater here is like a silly little insult that people tease each other with, and so every family has another family that they tease back and forth with the term "bean eating cousin." I came to site with my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director, basically the guy in charge of all the health volunteers) Daouda Diallo, and was introduced to my counterpart by him. My counterpart wasted no time giving me my new name and Daouda turned to me and said "You're new name is Amineta Ba, and now I can call you my bean eating cousin!" So there you have it people, I am my APCD's bean eating cousin. There is little else to report because I have done almost nothing since I got to Selibaby so instead of sharing stories about me I'll tell you about the little scorpion that could, Pinchy. A few days ago when I rolled up my mosquito net tent I found a pretty good sized (about the size of…hmm…I dunno…my thumb) scorpion squashed under it (I know what your thinking…eeeeek! But they aren't poisonous and if they get you it only hurts really really bad for a while, like a bee sting on crack so no worries…well…no major worries…). After mentioning him to the others and seeing that the other volunteers were unconcerned, I figured there was nothing to worry about and finished rolling up my tent until Sam said "oh man, he's still alive!" I turned around and sure enough the little bugger was racing around, tail and pinchers held high. I hightailed it out of there and Sam caught him in a bucket and little Pinchy became the mornings entertainment. Emily caught some bugs and tried to get Pinchy to fight them but when he wouldn't and watching him roam around the bottom of a bucket got old we sort of set him off to the side and forgot about him….until the brilliant thought occurred to someone, Lets drown him! That's the humane thing to do…right? (I should share that we didn't want to squish him because if he dies in one piece Morgan's friend would like to dry him and shellac him and make him into a necklace, apparently…) So we fill the bucket with water, watch him wander around at the bottom looking for all the world like a shrimp, and then got bored and wandered off to do other things. A few hours later, when we all came fleeing back to the house to hide from/watch and awesome and impressive storm we found little Pinchy, at the bottom of a bucket of water, may god rest his soul. Sam put him in a Tupperware to admire then we set him aside to have dinner and watch a movie. Everyone went to bed and little Pinchy rested peacefully in his Tupperware coffin. (Now don't go getting soft on me and feeling all bad for little Pinchy because we gave him a cute name…he's a scary scorpion remember?) So the next day after breakfast and a morning of house hunting with my bean eating cousin and a few more hours of nothing another little rainstorm hit and we all headed inside to take refuge and out of the kitchen comes Sam with Pinchy in his little Tupperware coffin, or I guess in this case the more appropriate name for it would be cage not coffin because there was Pinchy, back from the dead, kicking and screaming. Well, ok, not screaming, but you get the idea. Anyway, that's the story of Pinchy. When the rain dried up a little and the roads became passable Sam headed back to his village (2 days late…yay for the Guidimaka!) with Sari for posting and with little Pinchy in tow and I have heard nothing of him since, or any of them for that matter, they don't have cell phone service in Wolumboni. So that's my life at the moment…nothing exciting, at least nothing outside of Pinchy! But surely more to come! Right now its Ramadan so all the Mauritanians are fasting and tired all the time, but not me! No shuttle until October (and I'm told they're not terribly reliable here anyway…) which means no mail or packages until then UNLESS the Guidi volunteers pitch in and get a post office box here, which is something we're considering so keep yours eyes out for a new address, I'll email it as soon as I know. For now though the address is the same, except for one important detail, from now on when sending me mail please address it to: Shelby Perry, PCV Corps de la Paix BP 222 Nouakchott, Mauritania, West Africa Air Mail/Par Avion Thanks to all of you who have already sent mail, it's really the most exciting thing ever to get mail here, even just a card or a few photos. I love it! I'm going to start writing letters and post cards soon, but you can only buy post cards in Nouakchott and I don't get to go there until Christmas so what I meant to say was letters, just letters. Love and hugs for all of you, Shelby/Marieme/Amineta PERSONALIZED PS's: Dad and Mom: Love you tons and miss you bunches! I'm going to try to put up more photos soon and I wanted to ask a favor of you guys…if its not too much trouble, which I know it might be so no worries if it doesn't work out, but if you could save some of my photos off of facebook and print them on my photo printer (you can even just put them on a pen drive and stick it right in the printer and do everything on the touchscreen) I should have left enough ink for at least a few and plenty of photo paper, and mail them to me (ok as I type it I realize that this is kind of asking a lot because you'll have to go to the library to get them and my printer might not even be out anymore but if it is, you guys can use it as much as you want, and if you can do this I would be very thankful but if you can't no worries at all!) I would just love to have some photos of Africa here with me to give to my family back in Rosso and such. How's everything else? Keep sending me pictures of my lil Josey! I was looking at my photos from summer on my computer the other day and she's so tiny in all of them, I can't imagine what she must look like now! Is the apartment almost done? Mom, how're things going with the whole work thing? Good so far? I'm doing amazingly well all things considered, I'm not nearly as home sick as I thought I would be having nothing to do all the time and therefore lots of time to sit and think, but I'm sure that will come later…for now I'm feeling good, overwhelmed but excited and starting to put things in perspective. I did have giardia, have had it this whole time (though it goes dormant and then comes back for awhile then goes away, etc and I didn't have all the symptoms just bad days and good days) but at any rate I'm on an antibiotic now that made it way worse for a day and now I'm feeling good! Not really much else to share…love you!

Cory: I sent you another e-mail, but i just wanted to say thanks again no matter what you decide to do and i'm so sorry i jumped the gun on that, i really thought it was toast! i hope school and everythings going swimmingly! I'm at the peace corps bureau right now and i found that theres a webcam here so if i can figure out how to make this work maybe we can skype someday or something...i'll keep you posted!

Becca: we g-chatted...you know whats up..but i miss you anywho! have a rocking time in thailand!Becky: Wow! sounds like you had an amazing journey! i'm doing okay with the weather, but its the rainy season right now which means humid humid humid! when thats over i head its gorgeously cool (dropping down to something like 70 in december!) and thats when there are lots of veggies in the market and i'll have a salad again....omgosh i can't wait! as far as the conservative scale goes mauritania is right below all those countires that make women wear burkas except here they don't have to cover their face with it and its called a mulafa, but lucky me! i'm in the south, which is basically senegal (don't tell them i said that, thats the standard insult for anyone even remotely annoying around here..oh they must be senegalese!) so its on the less conservative side of things, in fact its a down right party compared to the north. I can sometimes even go out without covering my hair! and i can wear pants is i have a shirt that reaches my knees! its crazyness! thats all for now..miss you! love you! tell eric i said hello and have some good times down there in the dirty south for me!

Merry Mer: Oh how i miss my old stomping grounds! i can relate to the wishing you were still in school thing, all those worries seem so small now that we have to decide what we're doing with the rest of our lives! lucky for me i put mine on hold to go find myself here in africa, crazyness i know! keep your chin up, the whole job thing will work out i'm sure. if you ever need a reference you just send 'em right to me, i'll say glowing things about you if they want to call me in africa! love you! miss you! tell all the plattsburgians i said hi!

Rose: its been too long my friend, i hope vegas is treating you well and don't let me forget to send the rest of my emails to you, approximately the longest email update from africa you could possibly imagine when you put them all together! hope alls well with you, miss you and love you!

Hobbit: MY LOVE! no i did not get the package because i won't get any until october but now i'm WAY WAYYYY excited for october because i know i have a bunch of cool stuff headed my way! i'm so soooooo sorry to hear about you and Takis...whats his deal? doesn't he know you're the best thing that ever happened to him? its okay though, you'll get through it cuz your tough and you still have me and phat rabbit! love you! miss you! i'll write a real letter as soon as i can!

i'm really out of time now, so i'll respond to everyone else next time!

(Originally sent August 24, 2008-Happy Birthday MOM!)

Helllllooooo! I know it's been ages since I've written but ya'll are gonna have to get used to that because Saturday I cruise out to Selibaby and internet will not be very reliable there. First I have to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! I wish I could be there, love and miss you TONS! So so soooo much has happened that I don't even know where to start but I'll do my best to give you the interesting parts. First, today I left my host family to move back into the center for 6 days for swearing in and various other business. Before I left my family sat me down and told me that when I move to Selibaby I am to introduce myself as Marieme and not let my new family change my name. I'm super sad to leave them, they were more than I could ever have hoped for but c'est la vie, its time to move on! My sister says when she comes to the states she'll faire la cuisine Mauritanian for all my friends and family and I would really love to see that day. I have phone numbers for all of them and an e-mail for my big brother who goes to school in Nouakchatt and I promised to keep in touch. I also have lots photos that I'll put up as soon as I'm able. Last night I hung out with a bunch of my N'Diourbel friends here at Tessa's house, a bunch of guys that are absolutely hilarious because the only English they speak is what they have seen on tv and in music ("I'm sorry mama", "Sit down and Shut up!", "My Darling") and what I have taught them ("Peace out homeslice") and when people come in the compound the guys will yell sit down and shut up! But no one knows what they are saying and its pretty hilarious for Tessa and me. I fear Tessa and myself are getting to used to spending time with people who don't speak English and being able to just talk about people right in front of them, we are worried for when we return to the states and lose the ability to have the inner dialogue to all of our conversations. There is this one guy that comes over all the time and just talks over everyone, everyone knows we don't like him and they all say "he's just Senegalese" which is the Mauritanian word for anyone annoying or shocking or abrasive etc. and when he gets right in my face I love to tell him how annoying he is in English because he has no idea, and its very funny for Tessa and myself. Which brings me to my next point, come Saturday I will be going to site and I won't see Tessa and Adam for at least three months and that pretty much breaks my heart, those two are my bestest friends here and I'm going to be heart broken without them! We just had our final language test, last time I got intermediate-mid so hopefully I do better than that this time but that's all I need to pass out of the language requirement for service so I'll take it. I feel like I speak a lot of French right up until I start speaking to a native French speaker, then I'm totally lost. I got in an all out franglais discussion with my big brother (he speaks a little English) the other day about men's work and women's work here in Mauritania that was pretty frustrating and made my petite vocab very apparent. I don't mind so much though when I'm arguing with him because then I just try to tell him in English and he gets as frustrated as me trying to speak in French so I don't feel so bad anymore. Yesterday Tessa and I tried to cook American food for some Mauritanians (Aminetou, our French speaker, Souleymane, a guys who teaches in Selibaby but lives here in Rosso during the summer so lucky me, I already have a local friend to show me the ropes!, and Yacoub, another friend from Rosso). We attempted omelettes and French fries and ended us with scrambled eggs and home fries cause the pans here are stickyyyy but Adam, Tessa, and I thought it was delish and the Mauritanians ate some but I have a hunch it was just to be polite. Anyway afterwards Adam and Tes and I had Mafe, a fantastic rice and peanut sauce dish that's apparently Malian that Aminetou made for us and then we all went and spent the evening with our families and then off to watch Tessa's 19 year old uncle, Brahim, play a final soccer match at the stade. The stade was the standard affair, lots of getting stared at by little kids, a little name-calling (toubob = white person and Nasarani = stranger) and a healthy amount of staring, but not nearly as much as last time! At the end of the game we stayed in our seats for a minute to wait out the excited crowds (Brahim's team won!) and the guy in front of us turned around and informed us that the match was in fact fini and it was time for us silly toubobs to get up. We said we knew and he asked for a cigarette and then when we said we didn't have one he asked Adam for me (cette madam la) to which Adam replied basically the equivalent of sure why not? And all the Mauritanians found that totally hilarious. Not much else exciting to report for now, but I'll write more later! Peace Out Homeslices, ShelbyPS: More packages? Please? Got my first and it was amazing! I shared the M&M's (which made it in amazingly good shape, and by that I mean the candy shell was intact but all the chocolate was totally melted so they were extra delish) and the cookies with my friends and family and my little brother says "biscuits ZANE!" (Arabic for good, and pretty, and yummy, and all sorts of other terms of endearment) which was pretty adorable. Tessa got three jars of peanut butter though and I'm totally jealous! LOVE YOU ALL! Keep the emails coming, I love to hear about your lives! Keeps your eyes out for photos, hopefully soon!

(Originally sent July 29, 2008)

Hey Folks, So this week was site visit, and I wish I could describe it all to you in this email but so much of it was indescribable you'll have to be satisfied with only the highlights. My permanent placement site (ie where I'll be living for the next 2 years) is a regional capital known as Selibaby in the deeeeeep south of Mauritania. My region is called the Guidimaka and it is the southern-most region in the whole country, 45 km from the Senegal River. So here is some background on the site, for those of you that don't know there is a saying in the rest of the Peace Corps along the lines of "at least we're not in Mauritania." This would be because it is hot here (duh!), very conservative (long skirts and sleeves and covered head in 110 degrees, not my idea of a good time), and (horror of horrors!) alcohol is illegal. That said I'll add to it this, I am in one of the most difficult countries in the whole Peace Corps and I have been placed in the most secluded region. To get to my regional capital, where I am placed, there is no road. There are a few ways to go about this, 6 hours of off-roading from Kiffa (what we did on the way in, 9 of us in a land rover going 80 km/hr over puddles and pot holes and rivers and valleys and fields = actually a lot of fun) or a "road" from Kaedi known as the Garfa (not sure how that's spelled) on which there is a bridge that is generally impassable during most of the rainy season. The Garfa is a bridge with no sides over a river that frequently floods over the bridge, when the bridge is submerged I'm told its as good as invisible and cars and people have to guess where it is and wade over at their own risk, I am told that at least once during my service I will likely be washed off of it and have to swim (or be carried by the current) to the bank and let the locals pull me out…woo! But wait! Don't panic yet, theres one more way to get there…across the Senegal River and up the 45 km via bush taxi. This is the method my region mate, Morgan opted for most recently and shared with me this story, she got a taxi that was first caught in a sand storm and had to stop, then caught in a downpour and had to stop, then broke down, got fixed, started again and then got stuck, got out, and then broke down for real in some random Pulaar village. From the village they caught a truck that promised to take them to Selibaby but just outside of this village they hit a rainy season seasonal lake that the truck refused to take them across. The truck headed out and drove through it, forcing all the passengers to wade through the lake on their own. Morgan said she got going and felt like she had been walking for a while when she asked the guy next to her how much longer they had to go, to which he replied "oh about a kilometer." A kilometer later with her bag on her head Morgan emerged to find the truck waiting for them on the other side. The truck drivers informed the soggy crowd that they had wanted to make sure everyone made it but they don't want to take any passengers anymore so with that they left. Now Morgan's car-full and all the passengers from the truck were without a ride but it seems the eventually scored a truck back to town. Sounds like fun doesn't it?! Yes, it does! Can't wait to make some stories of my own to scare the crap out of you folks back home! Oh wait, I sorta already have one! On our way to my site visit we wanted to get as much of the off-roading part out of the way on the first night so our driver wouldn't have to do it all at once on the second morning, so much to the unhappiness of all the trainees, we cruised right through Kiffa (where we would have had dinner and stayed the night with other volunteers) and bounced our way down the lack of road until dark at which point we opted to stay the night at some random family's compound in the middle of nowhere. We roll up to this compound, bust in and climb up on their bamboo sitting platform (that's the technical name, its like a bamboo dock in the sand, I think its supposed to keep the bugs off or something…) and us 5 (I have 4 region-mates in my training group and 4 already there starting up their second year) toubobs (Wolof word for white person and all of our permanent nicknames here) sit around and start talking in English with each other while our Peace Corps escorts make small talk and the families children huddle behind us and gawk and whisper in French and Hassiniya (standard response). Its pitch black (no electricity this far out) and we're staring at the amazing night sky that has more starts in it than I have ever seen before not to mention the brightest rendition of the milky way I have ever laid eyes on and all is quiet; so you can imagine my surprise when the kid behind me whispers "oh shit." I told the other trainees what I had heard and they all convinced me I was crazy and hearing things and there was no way these kids would say that, I must have misheard and, believing myself to be crazy, I dropped it. A few minutes later I swear I heard one of the kids whisper "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7!" But AGAIN no one else hears it, so just to mollify me Emily asks the kids in French if they speak any English and they say no, that they speak French and Hassiniya only. Pretty convinced I'm losing my mind I drop it and continue my conversation with the other trainees; moments later one of the kids whispers "San Franciso!" and FINALLY someone else hears it and confirms that I am not actually crazy. A few more gems from the children ("Washington DC" and "I love you baby") confirms that the children have at some point in their life come into contact with a television and are simply regurgitating phrases they have heard with no idea of their meanings for a hilarious evening of teaching the children fun phrases like "bumble bee tuna", "what up!?!", and "Scranton, PA." In the meantime our Peace Corps escort informs us that the family has offered to make us dinner and would we prefer macaroni or rice. We choose macaroni and moments later they inform us that they actually don't have macaroni, so we graciously accept rice, or rather their offer of rice which they then retract saying they don't know how we like our rise and they will bring us what we need to cook it for ourselves. At this point it is close to 11 and we decide to politely decline (while they serve us the traditional 3 cups of tea) and set up our bug nets outside for bed. By 12 we are all set-up and sleeping sweetly under the stars, by 3 we are all awake again and get our nets down and under the family's Hyma (sort of like a permanent circus style tent many families have in lieu of houses) with only minutes to spare before we are hit by a monster sand storm following by pounding rain. Sweet! Long long longggg story short we all made it, hit the road bright and early, and were in Selibaby by 11 am. We had a delicious dinner of chicken fajitas, prepared by the current volunteers at our site and a few smuggled Senegalese beers (tisk tisk I know!) with some French volunteers and Portuguese road workers. My site is amazing, aside from the mass quantities of bugs, it is gorgeous and green and there are hills and clay (exciting because it's not sand) and rock piles to climb. It is also pretty much as south as you can get and still be in Mauritania which is exactly what I wanted because it is far less conservative which means a totally different style of dress that doesn't even require me to cover my hair at all times! It is also more black African and less white moor (more Arab population) which I like because I am a woman and white moors tend to be very very conservative so if I were in the north they wouldn't greet me or look me in the eyes and I would have to be totally wrapped in fabric all the time. Pictures will be up on facebook as soon as I can so check the last link again because that's where I'll be putting them. Love and miss you all more than you know (I'm struggling through my first bits of homesickness right now because site visit made this commitment all too real but don't worry I'm not too sad, I just miss your smiling faces and encouraging voices so please please please feel free to call me whenever you want!) Shelby Mom and Dad: I got my glasses yesterday, I learned a little more about the mail system here, that address is where my mail will be going for the next 2 years and at least once a month a car will bring my mail to me here in Rosso, while I'm here, and then to Selibaby when I'm there. Please send mail whenever you want, I get so totally jealous when other people get mail! Here is my package wish list for when you folks are feeling generous (I do not by any means need all of this, just a list of things that are un-gettable here): CHEESE! Powdered cheese products or spreads or crackers or anything that will make the trip, I've also heard that real cheeses in wax will make the trip, though they will be a little worse for the wear when they get here Solid color T-shirts, any fit or size to wear with crazy local skirts Peanut butter (the sugar packed kind, like Jif, the PB here is bitter from the Senegalese peanuts) Single serving powdered drink mixes like the kool-aid ones I got at the dollar store (I'm supposed to drink a minimum of 3 liters of water a day and its tough to choke down that much warm water every day) Lemonade would be great too! M&M's – any flavor or variety, they are the only kind of chocolate that will make the tripDried fruit/nut mixes, protein bars, granola bars, any packaged food would be good to have since Ramadan starts right as I get to site and all the locals will be fasting so food will be hard to come by during daylight hours (not impossible, I'm told people will still make it for me/sell it to me I just would rather not ask them too…) Letters/pictures/updates/post cards/love notes from all of you!!!!!! My Address again is:

Shelby Perry, PCT

Corps de la Paix

BP 222

Nouakchott, Mauritanie Africa Par Avion

and my phone # is: 011-222-420-3986 (i'm pretty sure thats right...) service is spotty and calls don't always go through so feel free to call and call and call until you get me!

(Original sent July 16, 2008)

Hello every one! Sorry i have not written in so long but as you know I have limited access. Right now I am sitting at the center, in between tech sessions typing this email on my computer to copy and paste into an email later because I have limited internet time. I miss you all BEAUCOUP and boy do I have some stories to share! I will start with this one, not for those with weak stomachs, but instead for all those people who used to poke fun at me for my vegetarian ways, so that I can now say that I am way more hardcore than you. I ate feet. I kid you not, 4 feet, 1 potato, spicy sauce, and some bread for dipping. I think it was cow feet meat but I remain unconvinced that they were in fact edible at all. They looked like feet, and they tasted like the really spicy sauce, probably intentionally designed to cover the taste of the feet themselves. Here in Mauritania NOTHING goes to waste, not even cow feet. YUCK. I was eating only the sauce and the potato and my family noticed and started ripping off chunks of the feet and tossing them to my side of the bowl, a gesture of hospitality the came across all wrong considering it was not food that they were throwing, but bits of cooked feet. I decided that I came here with the express intention of embracing a new culture so I dug in, and the result was not pleasant. I will spare you the gory details and leave it at this, I would not recommend them under just about any circumstances. Another story…language barriers are funny things, sometimes I am truly impressed at my French skills and my ability to convey my messages and at other times I fail miserably, always with humorous results. One of my more humorous failings happened recently when my sister told me she liked my sunglasses and I tried to let her borrow them and accidentally gave them to her. Ce n'est pas grave, since they were a $5 pair from the Christmas tree shoppe, so I cut my losses and moved on. My sister wore them for 5 minutes then put them somewhere and they were gone. That night at dinner my dad was wearing them (for those of you that don't know them they are the gold/brown pair of very girly aviator style shades that I have had forever) and he said he thought he looked like a police man, much to my enjoyment her wore them for all of dinner even though we eat at 10 pm and it was very dark (we eat outside on a mat). Since that fateful day those shades have been showing up at all the weirdest moments. The other day I came home from French class to find Yousef, a neighbor boy that I would guess is in his twenties. Sometimes my petit frere, Mohammed will wear them and dance to rap videos on the TV. Occasionally a sister will where them when she's sweeping or cooking or whenever. I love it, well worth the 800 ouguiya I paid for a new pair of "Gucci" sunglasses at the market. I put all of these stories in my journal which I write in every night and when it is full I'm going to mail it to the states for anyone who wants to read it (that's you mom and dad, and anyone else, I dunno how interesting my life will be but feel free). That's my contribution since I'm not going to be able to update you via email very often. I will be online a lot this weekend because I will be at the center for three days and hopefully have an opportunity to upload some photos soon. This Sunday I find out my site assignment, as in my permanent site, for the next two years, and then Monday I head out there for a week long visit with the volunteers currently there, to meet local health professionals, school administrators, etc, and hopefully lots of fun! Theres much more to tell but I am out of time so fini for now, I love and miss you all but not so much that I'm not able to enjoy my time here. I'm happy and healthy and sweaty and smiling and I have a gecko that lives in my room named Skeeter! Bye bye for now! Shelby (Marieme!) AND ONE BIG PS:I am getting all of your emails but i get them after i have already written my next email so if i forget to respond i'm sorry! Jen, I did get the picture of the girls! They are so pretty and doing well i see! I also got the letter grom gramma ev but am in a bit of a hurry and have not been able to read it yet, but it is saved to my hardrive so i can get to it later. Kate (and anyone else interested) for the rast of stage (through august) my mailing address is as follows: Shelby Perry, PCT

Corps de la Paix

BP 222

Nouakchott, Mauritanie Africa

I would love anything anyone would want to send me, but save yourself some money and try to keep it in envelopes (even the big padded ones) rather than boxes (way cheaper!)

Glad to hear everyones well, i have about 30 other emails to wade through and then i might try to put up some photos but we'll see, i'll try to let everyone know if i do.

Dear Everyone! (Part one, written yesterday)

Oh my god, I'm in Africa! Yes, I made it safe and sound and I am on the floor of the girls dormitory at the training facility typing this letter in Microsoft word to send to you next time I have internet. It's hot here, and (yippeeeee) humid like you wouldn't believe. Evidently we have just missed the hot season and got here just in time for the rainy season, which means seriously high humidity and seriously large quantities of rain with no where to go causing extensive flooding. I'm not even going to venture a guess as to what the temperature is right now but lets just say I'm not in Vermont anymore.

On the bright side, the more I learn about what training and service is going to be like, the surer I am that this is what I want to do. I was getting a little nervous at staging, where I learned that all the other volunteers say "at least we're not in Mauritania" when they are feeling low and also that they only send the young and healthy volunteers here (with the exception of one, Philip, in our group who has children my age) because of the conditions and the heat and the health requirements. All that said, the current volunteers here are incredibly nice, at least the ones that were here forming our "welcoming committee" and they are incredibly excited for us to be here. They are pretty much going to hold our hands through this entire process and on Friday they will be moving us in small groups into our host families/villages where we will become best friends with our "region mates" and do alllll kinds of hard work like learning the language(s) and getting lots of shots. No pictures could have prepared me for what Senegal and Mauritania actually look like, even though they look just like the pictures, right down to the goats eating garbage and the little children waving at the big buses full of white people. I'm in way over my head, surrounded by unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar culture (where this left handed girl has to learn that left hands are for potty business ONLY) but my group is amazing and I feel like I've known them all forever already. Hayley (if this makes it to you, i don't have an email address for you so if anyone knows it forward this please?), I met Diego almost first thing which was awesome, he is such a nice kid! We all partied pretty hard during our last few days in the states; Atlanta will never be the same! I have lots of pictures which I will share at some point or another. My staging room mate was Cat from Hawaii and she is incredibly sweet. The other wat/san engineer, Nick, is also very nice and everyone else in the health sector is going to be so much fun to work with. I learned how to eat my first Mauritanian meal moments ago, by squishing balls of oily rice with your fingers and popping them in your mouth whole. The process was both messy and delicious and difficult again, being a lefty and all. For those of you who know about Donny Strong I'm pleased to say the myth continues. He is almost certainly the work of some current or returned volunteer with far too much time on his hands but it is clear that no one is ever going to tell us which one. Donny goes on in our hearts though, and recently just sent us an email explaining that he missed staging because of a medical emergency that needed attending to back in Boise, Idaho and will be joining us in Mauritania later for training. This is almost certainly completely false but it is the almost in that sentence that makes Donny Strong amazing. He was in every one of our capstone skits (which were hilarious) and was waiting for us here in the form of a poster with wise words from Donny and a stick figure with big muscles walking into the sunset. "Live strong, Donny Strong" has become the tagline of our group and will probably be made into t-shirts before we leave.

(Part two, written now, all fast like)So I slept outside under the stars last night, with about 60 other people, all in our little mosquito nets. It was interesting to say the least, Mariah Carey and Justin Timberlake sang us to sleep from the neighbors blasting radio. At one point most of us were woken up by what sounded like a whole bunch of marching feet, but we aren't really sure what it was. Some animal was making sounds on the other side of the wall that inspired some creative debate, Diego and Brandon were pretty sure it was a scorpahawk, i thought maybe it was a donkey and brandon said that there was a slight chance it was not actually a scorpahawk, but he was 100% sure it was not a donkey, so perhaps we will never know. At 5ish we all awoke to the call to pray and listened to some gentleman screaming "Allah! Allah! Allah!" rapid fire into a mega phone, twas lovely.

More Mauritanian food, making balls of cous cous and rice, and you'll all be proud (or sad, if you're Becca) I ate meat both last night and today for lunch, in fact probably the same meat as they have a tendency to re-use anything and everything. I almost committed a major faux pas by trying to fish a bone out of my mouth with my left hand but my friends stopped me...whew! crisis averted.

Right now I am in Rosso, at the training center, which is in the extreme south of the country, the part that looks a little green on the satellite maps , which appears to be an optical illusion as while they do have a lot of wonderfully soft sand here, they have precious little in the for of vegetation....as in pretty much none. The food is amazing though and the people are nice and today i learned to greet people in Hassinya, Wolof, Pulaar, and Soninke! All of them different and thoroughly confusing, but a lot of fun to say. Heres a sample:

(Phonetically, because I haven't leaned to spell yet)

Guy: Assalam Allaykum

Me: Allaykum Salam!

Guy: A moxo?

Me: Ma jem!

thats Soninke, all of them start the same and have different questions...but you have to greet everyone you see, whether you know them or not. I'm also not allowed to touch members of the opposite sex, often not even to shake hands. Ladies are not allowed to lie on their backs, show any leg above the ankle, show shoulders, or, in some places in the north, show hair. A tailor is coming today to make slips for the girls and then on Thursday we are having a cultural fair where a bunch of tailors will come and start making us a bunch of outfits for around here, I am so excited for this! African fabrics are SO FUN! all bright colors, mixing and matching encouraged, tie-dye and everything! PERFECT for MOI!

Much more to tell, but i'm too hot to sit with this computer on my lap any longer! I'll write more later, please forward this to anyone i missed, I will probably be doing this by email instead of blog because there are tons of content rules for blogs and i'm lazy...but perhaps i'll change my mind later.

Having lots of fun, even though it's gross and sticky here, and of course missing all of you! Shelby

PS: Cory, i got an email back from Toni, my HP boss in response to months ago when i asked about that camera and apparently it mine, I won it at the huddle meeting and they never even told me so this whole time i could have been using it but instead i was bringing it to work as a demo cam! Anywho, its yours now, worry free, so take good care of it! I'm glad you like that CD and hahaha your shoes! too bad for your carpet, your apartment is gonna smellllll!