School is over. I have proctored for the last exams and turned in my final grades. Teachers are deliberating grades to prepare for second chance exam sittings and students are planning and preparing their end of the year parties. These student parties are very impressive. I’ve been waking up to large amounts of my girls in my yard – the morning rooster paired with the sound of an axe cutting up cooking firewood outside my door. They are cooking at my house because I live with the manager (Jacques) and the dean of discipline (Jacky) and we have the space and the utensils to make large meals. So recently I’ve been opening my wooden shutter to curious smiling students who otherwise haven’t had the gall to visit me in my foreign lair. With sleep in my eyes scratching my head I bid them good morning and accept that I’ll be ‘on display’ for the day. When there isn’t electricity and your room is a cement box (though, beautiful one) an open shutter is your only source of light – and the perfect height for a teenager to spot pictures from America posted on the wall. Though it can be taxing, having some hang out time with my students is a really is a good way to end the year. I’ve enjoyed sitting with them by the fire and testing their English (lord help them…) and using Kinyarwanda (which I mostly avoided with my students during the school-year) amidst screams of delight.

I’m amazed at what these students can do with a roll of toilet paper (more often used for streamers than its common American use...), some old paper folded or cut into chains and tree branches in regards to decorations for their parties. The most recent one I went to students greeted the teachers at the door and lead them to a seat at a table decorated with a bouquet of fake flowers (which I recognized as Jacky’s). The blackboard was covered in drawings and well wishes in Kinyarwanda, English and non-English (one sentence proclaimed ‘Jesus is Camming!’). Some girls wore umushanana – a thin colorful skirt and cloth draped over one shoulder with a tank top underneath. The activities included traditional dancing, some choir songs and many many many speeches. There is also the food and Fanta.

The Fanta… I would like to find out when and how it began, but the type of Fanta you choose can speak volumes about your personal life. As Rwandans will mischievously tell you – Orange Fanta is for virgins, and your thirst quenching decision can lead to snickers from all around. This particular time I didn’t get to choose – one of my students, a boy from my younger classes, got to my seat, nervously handed me orange and quickly moved on. I felt slightly bad for him having to hand his female teacher an assumptive Fanta. I chuckled to myself and sipped away until a male guest – a guy from the district office visiting for the day leaned over:

“You know the significance of that Orange Fanta… don’t you…?” He asked smiling at me, sipping his Fanta Citron.

“Yes… yes… I know.” I sighed.

“Well, also… it’s not good to drink those if you know in your heart that….” He trailed off and looked at the orange filled bottle on the table.

“Umm... What?” I said, looking at him with raised eyebrows, daring him to continue his sentence. The guest leaned back into his seat and looked into his hands and I just shook my head. Oh Rwanda.

It’s bittersweet to know that I have only a handful of these ‘special moments’ as end of the year parties dwindle; a few more mornings waking to the smell of fire smoke, a few possible Orange Fantas, and a couple more times admiring my students beautiful singing voices as they fill every crevice of a toilet paper decorate classroom.

An article I wrote for the Peace Corps Rwanda Magazine...



“It will be a huge map!” I told my students as I stood in front of the blank cafeteria wall splattered with bean juice. “I mean, really big – and YOU are going to draw it!” They couldn’t have been less enthused. I explained to blank stares and raised eyebrows as they shuffled through the instruction manual. The geography teacher, who is assisting me in this initiative, explained in greater detail, but still few lights went on. It wasn’t until we put the pencil to the wall that they really got it, and from there it took off.

I am currently in the end stages of the World Map Project with my students at ES Rugabano secondary school in the Karongi District. This project was started by RPCV Barbara Jo White in 1989 and now her maps can be found all over the world. It is basically a student centered project that uses the grid method to create a large scale map of the world. The grid method – think hundreds of tiny squares with a guide that tells you what shapes go into each one – makes any non-artist the creator of professional looking works.

Though it started slow, this has been one of my favorite projects of my Peace Corps service. I have loved watching and assisting my students’ problem solving abilities to create their own world map. After getting the approval from the director and money for supplies from the manager the rest was pretty easy. The slowest part was getting the grid on the wall; drawing 60 straight horizontal and vertical lines can be tedious. The drawing of the map with pencils went the fastest, but the best part has been the painting. I can’t explain the amazement in my students’ eyes as they followed my instructions and watched blue and yellow mix to green. They begged me and the geography teacher helping me for more days to work. Now we are averaging a color a day, 3 days a week and we can see the finish line.

One thing I cherish most about this project is watching their minds open. One student excitedly came up to me with his ready-made stencils (hand cut from paper) suggesting we use them for more detailed areas like the sun in the Rwandan flag , the words above the map and even the compass at the bottom. Another showed me his notebook with a tiny version of the map, explaining the grid process can be shrunk down too. I marvel at the groups that gather in front of the half-finished map, pointing out countries and arguing about the size of Russia. I would recommend this project to all PCVs and suggest that you let the students be in charge of their own learning and discoveries by acting as a facilitator rather than a teacher. With a few bumps, they will get it – and it’s a great thing to watch. Twagirayesu Verier, aka DJ Lencho Ficho, said, “Our map helps us to know everywhere we didn’t see before – only to know a place and capital of ALL countries.” And that’s good enough for me.

SuppliesPaint (black, white, red, yellow, blue)Brushes (I found that hair dye brushes for men are small enough for detailed painting – we also used sticks with frayed ends. Be creative.)Plastic bottles (cut in half for mixing and carrying around)Large rulerStringAtlasNewspaper (to cover floor and working spaces)Petrol (to mix with paint to make it smoother and for cleaning up)Radio (music to make the environment more relaxed)

“Ibihumbi bitandatu…” He said, a light smile playing on the corner of his mouth.

“Iki?!?” I yelled back, “Uri umusazi!!”

I stood in the dying light of Kibuye trying to find a moto to take me back to my site and was running into too many people trying to rip me off. People stood around watching the “umuzungu” who knew Kinyarwanda bargain with a stubborn moto driver. He was asking for 6,000 Rwandan Francs (about 12 American Dollars) for a trip I knew to be 3,000. I was getting impatient and had called him crazy, getting some laughs out of the small group of onlookers. Using them in my bargaining scheme I turned and asked if I was right about the price. Some of them nodded and laughed and the moto driver looked down at his hands. I tried one last time, using the limits of my language skills, telling him he wanted the “umuzungu” price, not the Rwandan price. I told him that if he had a good heart he would help me out, and with that I began to walk away. Sure enough, 15 steps later while an eruption of discussion burst from the small group behind me, I heard the moto start up and come toward me.

“Umva,” he told me, “I can take you for 4,000, only because the night is coming.”

I sighed and agreed, knowing that by the time he would return from my village it would be close to dark.

On the back of the moto with my bag on my back and bread stuffed into my jacket (we don’t get bread in my village so I’m always smuggling some back for my housemates) we began the journey through the hills. The sun was beginning to set and a light rain had just fallen, causing everything to shine in the dying light. The street was misty with steam and people lined the side of the road, returning home from fields and offices. As we powered up a hill I admired the beauty of this quiet country. Hills of green tuck into each other and banana trees with large leaves are surrounded by endless rows of corn.

We reach the top of the hill and I feel the breath catch in my chest. The road that stretches before me – with Lake Kivu in the background – is eerily empty. The light misting of rain had created steam, rising in twisting pillars, from the cooling road. Though the hill wasn’t very high, my stomached jumped like I was approaching the drop in a rollercoaster. The playful tricks of light and steam before me resembled a procession of ethereal people making their trek home. As we drove through the unearthly parade the pillars separated and disappeared behind us. With all sounds muffled by my heavy duty Peace Corps issued racing helmet the journey through the crowd of mist was quiet and peaceful. We turned onto the bumpy dirt road leading to my village and left the strange spectacle behind.

Life in Rugabano has become very comfortable. The second semester of three has just begun and my students are starting to realize they can never know what to expect in my lessons. The teachers are becoming very involved in their club, adorably bringing notebooks and questions to each session and the primary students I walk by everyday to go to class are calling me by my local name – Uwineza, instead of “Muzungu”. I’m visiting people in my community and watching my students play in sporting events. I’m throwing Frisbees with some new fanatics after school and starting projects to improve the school grounds in collaboration with some teachers. My biggest problems these days seem to be things like doing my laundry. This is mostly because I share a compound with 3 others and water is in tight supply (also I’m a lazy American who can’t properly do laundry by hand..). Viatelle, our garden planter and water retriever, has stopped working for us with our encouragement after reviewing his poor grades this past semester. With his teenager’s interest in studies and the extra duties around our house, we thought it was best for him to fully focus on school. Viatelle leaving means more difficulties getting water; something that can be resolved, but makes little daily tasks that much harder.

Being recognized as a teacher in the community instead of an outsider is a welcome sentiment. I feel the ease I felt in Mauritania seeping back. My life now seems normal and relaxed. I find myself appreciating the daily happenings more often. One day I was walking home from the market with Jacky and a little pint sized girl about 4 years old came and gave me a hug. I asked her where she was going and she burst into a 4-year-olds recount of how she lost her front tooth (apparently a stubborn hill in the market). Jacky laughed and joked with her, asking if she was going to sell them as we walked along the pathway home. She ran back to her mother and grabbed her skirts, glancing back and smiling occasionally. After buying some things in town we found the little one again at the top of our hill. In her hand she carried two white flowers she had picked. Jacky asked if she would give one to us and she turned toward us, smiling bright and holding out her offering in her small hand. The image of that little girl, in a torn and dirty dress offering up a flower as beautiful as her missing-tooth smile, will stick with me forever.

So it goes. Taking note along the way of little hands offering flowers and wandering ghosts on a misty road. My journey through the hills continues.

My desk continues to fill with papers pulled from notebooks. The teachers continue to brush chalk off their hands. My lesson planning book continues to fill. My students continue to entertain me with their learning. I now have four English clubs, three for students and one for teachers. Starting the club for students I was amazed when 300 students signed up. I was further surprised when the teachers asked for not just one but two days of English. The demand here is overwhelming – in the good sense. The result is that I find myself in a stuffy room as the evening approaches conducting groups of 100 teens. Though it sounds like it would be crazy, it is actually very organized. These students are so interested in learning they hang onto every word. They take my silly games so seriously I have to laugh. For one club I had a puzzle game. The students had to fill in the blanks of the sentences I wrote on the board, then take the first letter of each word in the blank, unscramble them and make a word from the category I gave (Food, Country, Number, Animal….). I made the prize for the winners a pack of 6 shortbread cookies, not even enough for a whole team to have one cookie each. By the end of the game most students were no longer sitting in chairs, rather jumping up and down with excitement. The cookies were all but forgotten and the pride of winning took over. The final showdown between two teams brought passersby to the dirty school windows, wondering what the commotion was about.

In my teacher’s club I told a story about Mauritania and showed some pictures from my computer. I told them about Sayid, and the time he became so sick with parasites and malnutrition. They loved learning about another country – and to see that some places have different, but still difficult problems. Sayid suffered because he didn’t get enough meat and vegetables (and that mouthful of dirty sand he ate… oh Sayid…). Here that really isn’t a problem. Rather than a rolling desert, there is rolling green. Most of the farmers here are subsistence farmers, meaning they grow just enough to feed their families. We also talked about traditional healing, and they were interested to hear about what rituals happened in Mauritania. They told me that in Rwanda traditional healers give you herbs and creams more than prayers and string (like Sayid’s traditional healer gave him).

In one of my clubs I plan to start a correspondence with a school in America. Students are working on writing a letter, it’s not a simple process for them. After the first draft, and lots of giggling at the questions and English mistakes, I had to talk to them about the taboo of asking for money. I can’t even count how many students said “Dear American students. I am poor and I have no means. Can you send me money for my family and for my education? Thank you.” I had to stress that the letters were going to 13 year olds. They asked me “But teacher… isn’t everyone rich in America??” Sighhh… Oh American image. Oh American ideology. Your expanse so vast people can see your golden arches from Rwanda….

Some letters made me stop and think. Like this one from Viateur:

**Note, I’ve corrected some English to make it more readable, but left many mistakes, as I think I would change the meaning by changing the English.

Dear American,

The first word – Hello.

I am Seventeen years old. I have one parent.

I am happy because I have a teacher from America.

I am happy to meet with you. I wish I was able to meet you because I love America’s people.

I wish you to be my best friend because I here in Rwanda. I live alone and haven’t friend.

My parent died in genocide. I’m studying in 3rd form Rugabano Secondary School. I wish you to be my advice-man and you will be my parent. I pray my God to help me to see correspondence from man from America.

I like music because it helps me forget the long ago, which lives in my life.

Let me tell you:

I like American language English and my language, Kinyarwanda.

I love my American teacher because she advises me well.

Ok. May God is protect you.

See you,

It’s your friend from Rwanda,

Viateur.

He joined the club after the first had already passed – the club in which we worked on our letters. He approached me in the teacher’s lounge and asked permission to be in the club. When I told him “of course” he handed me this letter. I was surprised he had taken the initiative to write it on his own. Though there are small grammar mistakes, it’s clear he put a lot of time into his work. I can also guess that he wasn’t really aware these letters would go to young students – so perhaps my dad wants to have a 17 year old penpal – be an advice-man and parent from overseas?? Haha.

In a breath, I continue to love this work. Everyday is filled with moments of laughter, frustration and excitement. And every once in a while, you come across things that touch your soul.

The students looked down at their feet looking guilty, fidgeting and shuffling. Jacqueline looks at them angrily and rattles off in Kinyarwanda as the rain falls onto the tin roof of the tiny office. School has started and just as I suspected, teenagers are the exact same across the world. Minutes earlier as Jacqueline and I sat in the office organizing student reports and registering last minute slackers we heard a commotion outside. The cheering and angry yells shifted our gazes out the window where a large group of students in their blue and green uniforms stood packed together. Jacquie shook her head and muttered, “Abanyeshuri…Nzabakubita.” She already knew they were up to no good. These abanyeshuri were about to get an abanye-whoopin’. I watched with interest as she grabbed the office ‘student stick’ from the corner and marched outside. The student stick is what I like to refer to as a teacher’s disciplinary and threatening tool. Teachers usually carry some sort of student stick with them as they roam school grounds. They don’t beat the teens with the sticks; the most I’ve seen is a little tap, so primarily student sticks are used for intimidation. As I watched Jacquie tromp up the hill waving the stick around, I could see why. The scene was quite comical actually – students rushed into classrooms and formed tighter groups as she yelled, swirling the stick in the air. Jacquie, who is sweet, quick to laugh, quicker to sing and enjoys small thrills in life like sneaking up on a baby cow and grabbing the tail, can bring a student to tears with her lectures. Outside she stood in front of a group of 80 students firmly addressing them until, reluctantly, a few students stepped forward. She turned and talked to a small boy I hadn’t noticed standing in the doorway of a classroom, rubbing his eyes.They all came around to the office and as she asked questions they answered softly. When they glanced upward I could tell from their eyes they knew they had done something wrong. Bits and pieces of the conversation poured into my brain and from what I understood there was some kind of fight, or at least one student hitting another. Jacquie furiously wrote a letter, singed it and stamped it with the school seal. I saw that a couple students were to leave school grounds for the weekend and return on Monday with their parents. This was quite the punishment for these boarding school kids as the weekend is time to relax from a hard week of classes, clubs and extra curricular activities. As the students left Jacquie explained the situation to me in detail. Apparently the older students were initiating the new students by grouping around them and embarrassing them with little bops to the head as they stood there helpless. “These poor new students,” Jacquie said. “They are so nervous being away from home and the big kids want to show who is boss.” I tell her that this sounds like exactly something that would happen in High schools in the states and we both sigh at the psyches of young teens. Later that day as we were walking up to our house a group of kids ran across the hill in front of us. They all jumped over a small dip in the ground, except for one small guy who didn’t notice the dip. My eyes went wide as his head disappeared and I saw his feet flip over his head. He sat in the grass for a second and looked around, confused as to what just happened. All around him students erupted in laughter. The boy stood up, brushed himself off and slunk away, head down and hands in pockets. Jacquie stood tall and told everyone to stop – the kid was just a new student trying to get by, embarrassed to his core about what just happened. “Be nice!” She said to the laughers, “Go see if he’s OK!!”As she continued up the hill, back turned to the students she giggled admitted it was pretty funny. I had been, on the other hand, stifling my laughter since that little guy’s feet flew over his head.In a crazy connection teens unite in their awkward and angst-y mannerisms across the continents. From the USA to Mauritania to Rwanda, adolescence and the consciousness that accompanies stands true. What am I going to do with my 500? Better follow suite and grab my student stick.

The students looked down at their feet looking guilty, fidgeting and shuffling. Jacqueline looks at them angrily and rattles off in Kinyarwanda as the rain falls onto the tin roof of the tiny office. School has started and just as I suspected, teenagers are the exact same across the world. Minutes earlier as Jacqueline and I sat in the office organizing student reports and registering last minute slackers we heard a commotion outside. The cheering and angry yells shifted our gazes out the window where a large group of students in their blue and green uniforms stood packed together. Jacquie shook her head and muttered, “Abanyeshuri…Nzabakubita.” She already knew they were up to no good. These abanyeshuri were about to get an abanye-whoopin’. I watched with interest as she grabbed the office ‘student stick’ from the corner and marched outside. The student stick is what I like to refer to as a teacher’s disciplinary and threatening tool. Teachers usually carry some sort of student stick with them as they roam school grounds. They don’t beat the teens with the sticks; the most I’ve seen is a little tap, so primarily student sticks are used for intimidation. As I watched Jacquie tromp up the hill waving the stick around, I could see why. The scene was quite comical actually – students rushed into classrooms and formed tighter groups as she yelled, swirling the stick in the air. Jacquie, who is sweet, quick to laugh, quicker to sing and enjoys small thrills in life like sneaking up on a baby cow and grabbing the tail, can bring a student to tears with her lectures. Outside she stood in front of a group of 80 students firmly addressing them until, reluctantly, a few students stepped forward. She turned and talked to a small boy I hadn’t noticed standing in the doorway of a classroom, rubbing his eyes.They all came around to the office and as she asked questions they answered softly. When they glanced upward I could tell from their eyes they knew they had done something wrong. Bits and pieces of the conversation poured into my brain and from what I understood there was some kind of fight, or at least one student hitting another. Jacquie furiously wrote a letter, singed it and stamped it with the school seal. I saw that a couple students were to leave school grounds for the weekend and return on Monday with their parents. This was quite the punishment for these boarding school kids as the weekend is time to relax from a hard week of classes, clubs and extra curricular activities. As the students left Jacquie explained the situation to me in detail. Apparently the older students were initiating the new students by grouping around them and embarrassing them with little bops to the head as they stood there helpless. “These poor new students,” Jacquie said. “They are so nervous being away from home and the big kids want to show who is boss.” I tell her that this sounds like exactly something that would happen in High schools in the states and we both sigh at the psyches of young teens. Later that day as we were walking up to our house a group of kids ran across the hill in front of us. They all jumped over a small dip in the ground, except for one small guy who didn’t notice the dip. My eyes went wide as his head disappeared and I saw his feet flip over his head. He sat in the grass for a second and looked around, confused as to what just happened. All around him students erupted in laughter. The boy stood up, brushed himself off and slunk away, head down and hands in pockets. Jacquie stood tall and told everyone to stop – the kid was just a new student trying to get by, embarrassed to his core about what just happened. “Be nice!” She said to the laughers, “Go see if he’s OK!!”As she continued up the hill, back turned to the students she giggled admitted it was pretty funny. I had been, on the other hand, stifling my laughter since that little guy’s feet flew over his head.In a crazy connection teens unite in their awkward and angst-y mannerisms across the continents. From the USA to Mauritania to Rwanda, adolescence and the consciousness that accompanies stands true. What am I going to do with my 500? Better follow suite and grab my student stick.

The students looked down at their feet looking guilty, fidgeting and shuffling. Jacqueline looks at them angrily and rattles off in Kinyarwanda as the rain falls onto the tin roof of the tiny office. School has started and just as I suspected, teenagers are the exact same across the world. Minutes earlier as Jacqueline and I sat in the office organizing student reports and registering last minute slackers we heard a commotion outside. The cheering and angry yells shifted our gazes out the window where a large group of students in their blue and green uniforms stood packed together. Jacquie shook her head and muttered, “Abanyeshuri…Nzabakubita.” She already knew they were up to no good. These abanyeshuri were about to get an abanye-whoopin’. I watched with interest as she grabbed the office ‘student stick’ from the corner and marched outside. The student stick is what I like to refer to as a teacher’s disciplinary and threatening tool. Teachers usually carry some sort of student stick with them as they roam school grounds. They don’t beat the teens with the sticks; the most I’ve seen is a little tap, so primarily student sticks are used for intimidation. As I watched Jacquie tromp up the hill waving the stick around, I could see why. The scene was quite comical actually – students rushed into classrooms and formed tighter groups as she yelled, swirling the stick in the air. Jacquie, who is sweet, quick to laugh, quicker to sing and enjoys small thrills in life like sneaking up on a baby cow and grabbing the tail, can bring a student to tears with her lectures. Outside she stood in front of a group of 80 students firmly addressing them until, reluctantly, a few students stepped forward. She turned and talked to a small boy I hadn’t noticed standing in the doorway of a classroom, rubbing his eyes.They all came around to the office and as she asked questions they answered softly. When they glanced upward I could tell from their eyes they knew they had done something wrong. Bits and pieces of the conversation poured into my brain and from what I understood there was some kind of fight, or at least one student hitting another. Jacquie furiously wrote a letter, singed it and stamped it with the school seal. I saw that a couple students were to leave school grounds for the weekend and return on Monday with their parents. This was quite the punishment for these boarding school kids as the weekend is time to relax from a hard week of classes, clubs and extra curricular activities. As the students left Jacquie explained the situation to me in detail. Apparently the older students were initiating the new students by grouping around them and embarrassing them with little bops to the head as they stood there helpless. “These poor new students,” Jacquie said. “They are so nervous being away from home and the big kids want to show who is boss.” I tell her that this sounds like exactly something that would happen in High schools in the states and we both sigh at the psyches of young teens. Later that day as we were walking up to our house a group of kids ran across the hill in front of us. They all jumped over a small dip in the ground, except for one small guy who didn’t notice the dip. My eyes went wide as his head disappeared and I saw his feet flip over his head. He sat in the grass for a second and looked around, confused as to what just happened. All around him students erupted in laughter. The boy stood up, brushed himself off and slunk away, head down and hands in pockets. Jacquie stood tall and told everyone to stop – the kid was just a new student trying to get by, embarrassed to his core about what just happened. “Be nice!” She said to the laughers, “Go see if he’s OK!!”As she continued up the hill, back turned to the students she giggled admitted it was pretty funny. I had been, on the other hand, stifling my laughter since that little guy’s feet flew over his head.In a crazy connection teens unite in their awkward and angst-y mannerisms across the continents. From the USA to Mauritania to Rwanda, adolescence and the consciousness that accompanies stands true. What am I going to do with my 500? Better follow suite and grab my student stick.

Jacqueline looked at me skeptically as I shook the pan over the charcoal fire. It was nearing dark and the sun was slowly setting behind the hills. The air was cool and the soft chat of Viate (the guy who gets our water and charcoal) and his friend was the only sound other than the sizzling oil in the pan. “I can do this…” I told her, trying my best to sound confident. We were making chipati, which is a type of bread that has the consistency of both pancake and pita. The trick is that once you harden up one side you must flip the chipati with a flick of the wrist, turning it onto the opposite side to finish cooking. This was something I’ve done before with luck on my side and I was determined, much to Jacquie’s dismay, to become a chipati flipping champion. She shook her head at my stubbornness (a dismantled chipati already sat sadly on a plate) and watched as I prepared to flip. One… Two… Three… I flipped and caught the chipati in the pan and was greeted with small cheers of support. For the past few weeks Jacqueline (the animatrice who is in charge of the male and female dorms), Jacques (the secretary) and I have been getting habituated in Rugabano. We have cleaned up the school and the house, making our little mark before 500 teens show up on our hills. Earlier in the week, Viate, Jacqueline and I planted a garden in our front yard. We had flowers and various plants that were cleverly removed from the schools abundant supply and re-transplanted into our little yard. We also checked out our village’s local “movie theater”. This is a small room that has a T.V. that is powered by a generator and crammed with wooden benches. You pay 100 Rwandan Francs to get in (about 15 cents) and can watch a film or a soccer match, depending on what’s advertised on the chalkboard in from of the shop. Jacquie continued to test me on new words in Kinyarwanda, building up my vocabulary. “Uzufunguzo..” She would announce, holding up a key. We visited our local market, open on Mondays and Fridays, and visited some friends around town. We have made lunches and dinners of potatoes and beans, plantains and beans, rice and beans, and the occasional ubugali (a cassava paste that is the consistency of playdough) and meat sauce. Ubugali is one of my favorites mainly because you eat it with your hands – Mauritania memories! – and though feels like playdough, tastes pretty delicious. Sometimes we like to treat ourselves and have Fantas or Cokes in the small local bar with a few plastic tables and chairs. One day Jacquie and I made plans to go into town for some well deserved Fantas. I locked my room with a padlock and stuck the key in my pocket, waiting for Jacquie to finish. She came out locked her padlock, sighed, and sat down in front of the door with her hand on her cheek. “Ufite ikibazo?” I asked, wondering what the problem was. “Yego..” she said shaking her head, “Uzufunguzo mu chumba chanjye…” She had locked her key in her room. We sat for a second in stunned silence at the situation and suddenly both burst out laughing – mostly because just that morning she had taught me about the word Uzufunguzo and now it was locked in her room. After a few calls and a couple Fantas we get someone to pry off the lock and open the door.

Now our students are beginning to show up to the school to collect their grades from last school year. Their curious faces peer out of the director’s office at me confirming the rumors that a foreigner would be teaching at their school this year. Looking at the results from last school year and talking with some of the teachers I realize what a job is cut out for us. Kagame’s education reform making English the language of instruction is going to hit some rough waters. My village is based on agriculture so the majority of students don’t aspire to get out into the world or even to the busy cities of Rwanda. Grown in soil and raised in the sun they have always been taught in Kinyarwanda – the previous francophone identity of their country not having much weight on the language teachers chose to teach at Rugabano (mainly Kinyarwanda). You can confirm this by looking at the subjects passed and failed from the previous year. French was at the low end, followed by chemistry and at the high end… yeah you guessed it… Agriculture. So it will be interesting to see how the new law wraps itself around my school. English only when some teachers can’t hold a basic conversation? Not likely. But as they say here Buhoro buhoro; Slow by slow we will make the changes. Here’s to a great start to 2010 school year in Rwanda and the beginning of another decade of adventures.

"Tok, tok, tok." I look up from my book toward the window and see a fluttering behind the curtain. "Inyoni!" Shouts Valence, a boy who works in my directors house. For the weekend I was invited by my school director Froudouard to stay with him and his wife Louise in their house close to Kibuye. My village, Rugabano, is very quiet right now - especially because I live in a house on a hilltop right above school grounds and school doesn't start until February 1st. The boarding school will have about 600 students and teachers, so very soon I can expect constant action in my little village. "Reba! Inyoni m'inzu!" He shouts again. I walk to the window and see he has used a curtain to trap a tiny bird against the glass. I tell him that I will take it out and move him to the side before he hurts the frightened creature. I gently cup it into my hands and walk the little guy to the open door. I can feel its tiny heartbeat humming against my palm. When I reach the door I peek into the space between my thumbs. Its as small as a finch, maybe a touch bigger, and has small wide black eyes and a bright orange beak. The feathers are soft and change in color from deep red on its head to dark purple toward its tail. "Beautiful.." I say into my hands. "Beautiful." Valance repeats, watching me hold the little bird. "O.K. You're free." I say as I open my hands and point it toward the sky. It blinks once in the bright sun and takes off into the open air. I watch the little jet of color soar over a field, sweep up a hill and land in a tree across the road. Below, three children follow each other in a line carrying bundles of wood on their heads. The oldest has a large bundle, the middle slightly smaller and the youngest grips the smallest amount with one hand and swings the other playfully at his side. Behind them a moto is approaching and gives a warning honk as it passes. On the moto a man and a woman hunch down against the wind. The woman is older and wearing a traditional colorful wax print skirt and shirt. She has a bag of vegetables in one hand and holds a bright piece of cloth around her shoulders that flaps behind her like a cape. They zip past a woman with a bucket of water on her head and baby tied to her back. She is talking animatedly to a barefoot man with a hoe slung across his shoulder. A group of giggling children dart across the road. The One That Leads carries what seems to be a dirty and frayed ball of string, but what I know by now is a homemade soccer ball. The group scatters and disappears behind a hill. The woman in the road adjusts her baby on her back, shakes the man's hand goodbye and continues on, balancing her bucket expertly. The drone of the moto fades in the distance and the three children in a row continue their journey-one behind the other behind the other. I close my eyes and let the warm sun sink into my skin and hear a cacophony of whistles from the trees. I wonder if one of those chirps comes from the bright tiny bird whose heart once hummed in my hands.

I remember sighing an awful lot when starting to learn a new language again. My brain was questioning my actions – TWO dialects in the same year? I ignored these inquiries, opened my Kinyarwanda book, started making note-cards and prepared myself to make embarrassing conjugation and pronunciation mistakes. And that I did, but as they say in Rwanda, Komera – Be Strong. What I have happily discovered is that this language is enjoyable and filled with excellent sayings and some great sounding, though tongue twister, words. We have 12 Kinyarwanda teachers and are split up into small groups of two or three for classes. Each day we gather in small rooms, outside or in the cafeteria area. Our teachers armed with chalk and a wobbly chalkboard would hammer out lessons, slowly building our knowledge. My host family helped me in the learning process simply by being patient and also making me remember certain words and phrases then quizzing me. We also lived with our language teachers which was also very helpful. The 35 volunteers are split up into 4 houses around the small town of Nyanza and each house has about 4 teachers. In my house Abel, Esperence and Assinath were great and always willing to answer questions. I often sat with Assinath and we would exchange folk stories – me in English and her in Kinyarwanda – and write out the new words we learned. Rwandan folk tales are fond of Hyena characters. One in particular had the name “nkundakurjyabana” which translates to “I like to eat children”.

Training is over now and I will be moving to my site the 29th to start settling in before the school year starts February 1st. Just for fun – in the past couple months, these have been some of my favorite Kinyarwanda words.

Umudugudu – Village

Ikibazo – Question

Umukorerabushake – Volunteer

Ubuzima – Life

Ubumwe – Unity

Ikivumvuri – Beetle

Ceceka! – Shut-up

Sometimes two words are spelled the same, but pronounced differently. Don’t confuse them!!

Gusura – To fart or Gusu(uu)ra – To visit

Umusambi – plastic mat or Umusa(aa)mbi – bird

Kurira – To cry or Kuri(ii)ra – To cry

And then there are the great sentences you can use.

Umuzungu kuruhu, umunyarwandakazi mu mutima – Foreigner by skin, Rwandan by heart.

Yaba weeee!!! – oh crap

Igisunzu kibi kiruta uruhara – having at least a tuft of hair is better than being completely bald.

Nzabakaranga – I will fry them (In the context of my kids at school – fry them with a difficult exam and assignment…)

Gutera indabo mu modoka – To throw flowers in a car… aka to vomit.

Occasionally, it’s just the context in which you use a word.

Umuhinzi is a farmer, but if you call a man an umuhinzi you could be calling him a womanizer.

Mfite amazi literally means to have water, but careful, instead of a bottle of it, you might be saying you have water in a sexual way…

Gakweto means small shoe and is used as another name for teacher because he/she doesn’t have enough money to but a good shoe.

Onward and forward I move in my gakwetos as an umukorerabushake. Training is finally over and I am ready to start carving out a place in my town called Rugabano in the Karongi district. My small rustic house is waiting and the freshman and sophomores are soon preparing to come to the boarding school. A new year, a new adventure, I welcome 2010. Stay tuned.

With my head uncovered and my arms exposed I take an afternoon run through the hills of Rwanda. Part of me is panicking, thinking that what I’m doing is COMPLETELY inappropriate (blatantly exercising in the middle of the day!?). My Mauritania social norms still stick to me like peanut butter in the throat. I swallow, take a deep breath and let the new rush over me. The landscape is absolutely gorgeous. Green pierces and rich browns spread over the continuous hills. Trees stretch to praise the sky and the dirt road is packed and smooth beneath my feet. As I run people greet me in the Rwandan dialect Kinyarwanda and cheer me along.

“Miriwe! Amakuru!?” They yell from their houses and the street as I pass them.

“Ni Meza.” I say in between breaths, “I’m fine.”

To my right a few little barefoot guys who appear to be about 4 years old make me feel really great about my current exercise shape. They pop along at my side with that endless child energy and smile up at me from 3 feet down. People laugh and shake heads at the sight of a tall American running with Rwandan children in tow. They stick with me up and down, up and down the hills, occasionally imitating my long jaunt - lifting their legs up high and giggling. “Let’s go!” I tell them, “Genda!” But soon their little lungs can’t take much more and one by one they drop off. The last tiny guy bursts forward, glancing back and proving to his tired friends he is clearly the best.

As I run along the road, the vast differences between Mauritania and Rwanda spread before me like the endless hills. Vegetation instead of sand, cool breeze instead of dessert heat, spotless streets instead of garbage filled… The list is endless. This is a place where I can enjoy a beer in the evening. A place where I can wear pants without getting stares. It is a new world I am just beginning to explore.

It’s been about 3 weeks since I touched down on the fertile soil of Rwanda and slowly, I’m getting a feel of what makes this country flow. I began my Kinyarwanda classes 2 weeks ago and can now say things like, “I have a pen. I write with my pen. I like to write. I am in the classroom.” Pretty impressive… I think Paul Rusesbagina said it beautifully in his book An Ordinary Man. He wrote “…the beautiful language of Kinyarwanda, in which I first learned the names of the world’s many things in rich deep vowels made at the back of the throat. Bird, inyoni. Mud, urwoondo. Stones, amabuye. Milk, amata.” He speaks the truth. It is an elegant language and I look forward to being able to converse with Rwandans. Unlike Mauritania, with 3.5 million people, 4 dialects and 3 languages, Rwanda’s population of 10 million speak only Kinyarwanda, French and soon, English. President Paul Kagame initiated a new Education Reform, which will begin during the next school year in 2010 (The school year here is January-October). The reform makes schooling compulsory and free through the American equivalent of 9th grade and also requires English to be the language of instruction for all subjects starting in 1st grade. This reform won’t be easy, and won’t be fast, but it will change Rwanda in many ways. For example, it will give the opportunity for Rwanda to become the trade and business hub of surrounding countries (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania…) and open international opportunities.

This education reform isn’t the only change Rwanda will implement; the country is embarking upon a new and exciting journey. With such a tragic history, it is like a phoenix pulling itself out of ashes and starting anew. 15 years ago Rwanda was a different place. Brothers and sisters fought over ethnic divisions and wrestled in power struggles. Children were slaughtered, women were demoralized and men were cut down. Genocide reared its ugly head and ripped once again into the beautiful earth.

The seeds of this genocide were planted long ago and grew like weeds until they choked off reason. Early on when the Belgians arrived and passed out identity cards, claiming Tutsis were superior in intelligence and attractiveness, hatred simmered. In 1959, when Hutus rose up against the Tutsis to defend their rights in a debated “revolution”, hatred bubbled. In 1973, with independence gained and monarchy on its way out, the struggle for power erupted in the slaughtering of Tutsi intellectuals, hatred boiled. Then, in 1994, Rwanda could not contain the rolling roaring boil and the deep historical hate resulted in the death of 1 million.

In Rwandan eyes I see a sadness tucked into the corners. There are broken homes amid the newly built. Strength and struggle, side by side. For now I am absorbing as much as I can in training, which will end December 17th. I am living with language teachers and volunteers in a simple house. It’s back to bucket baths, laundry by hand and hole-in-the-ground toilets (but with toilet paper this time!!). I have a host family that I visit during the week – Mamma Louise, Papa Willie, Wilson (7) and John (5), and I couldn’t have been placed with a better family. Louise sits with me in her little shop when I drop by in the afternoons, telling me new words in Kinyarwanda and chatting in French. At her house, John and Wilson put on dance shows, showing off their impressive moves. I am starting from square one, forming new relationships and culturally adapting once again.

I stayed late at my host family’s house one night, eating a dinner of rice, delicious greens and chunks of meat while sipping banana wine (which in my opinion tastes like a chocolate banana). When the time came to walk home, the whole family put on light jackets and lead me down the twisty pathway. John held my hand as we walked and babbled away in Kinyarwanda.

“Do you know what he just said?” Louise asked me in French, laughing softly at her young son. “He asked what happened to the birds in the night – if they fly into the sky and get swallowed by dark.”

I look at John, his little hand grabbing mine and his eyes glowing as he gazed into the starry night. I think about his childlike wonder and I’m happy Rwanda is trying to build a better future for him rather than continuing to be consumed by violence. I feel hope that he will grow into a wise man – not just about birds in the night, but about the history and the future of his beautiful country.

The look on their faces will be in my memories forever. Mouth open, eyes wide, eyebrows raised… shocked is understood in every language. The beginnings of my interactions were fairly normal, catching up with people and telling them about my July vacation to America. I held my information in like a dirty secret, not wanting to ruin the few normal moments I had with my friends and family. How could I tell people I was only in town again for a day before I left Aleg – maybe for good? How could I tell them that Peace Corps deemed their country, their home, to dangerous for me to live in?

I sat with Rubia in her small steamy house discussing how she looked so good now. She was finally getting her baby glow, thankfully released out of the sickly state she was struggling in when she first found out she was pregnant. At my host family’s house, I held Siyad in my arms and let his tiny weight sink into my chest. I showed him the pictures I brought back from the states and he focused on a photo of me, him and his sister Meriem. “Where’s Jamila?” Dedehi, my host mom asked, referring to me by my Mauritanian name. Siyad smiled at me from my arms and pointed at my face on the picture before us. I greeted my friends in the street and they asked how my vacation was, wanting to know all the new news. My friends Binta and Aicha sat me down and let me hold Binta’s new absolutely adorable baby as they started the three rounds of tea. Kellybelly’s family welcomed me into their house my final evening and she was so excited to see me, she hugged and kissed me, pulling me away to look into my face, and then back into her big soft body.

When I actually let go of the happy reunions and revealed my news, my head hurt and the lump in my throat grew. When I saw Zeinabou, one of my best friends in country, my heart just broke. We had been in communication and she knew the news before I saw her. She hugged my body close to hers and told me never to forget her. When we pulled away, there were tears in both our eyes. Rubia looked at me speechless, and asked again and again if I was joking. Dedehi’s bright light dimmed and her usual smile was lost for a while. Binta and Aicha shook their heads and told me it was such a bad time for Mauritania – and to not remember them in relation to the poor government and terrorist activities. Kellybelly just stared at me in the dark night, she barely even said goodbye, just whispered incoherent things as I walked out her compound door. When I called Fatou, my beloved roommate, my voice cracked as I told her I wouldn’t even get to see her before I left – as she was currently taking her vacation. “Non…non… C’est pas vrai…” She muttered.

I stood on the roof of my house and stared out at Aleg as the sun set, closing my final day in that wonderful town. As the sky turned deep pink and people below me shuffled by with bags of dinner supplies, I said my silent goodbyes to those I couldn’t get in contact with, and to all the places I had learned to love. On one side, my school was silent in its summer break glory, and it hurt to think of my students wondering where I was come October. On the other side, the town stretched through the sand and it was odd to think I would never walk through the streets again.

I took one last picture with Rubia and Dedehi, and Dedehi grabbed our hands and put them in the middle. “All together…” She told me, squeezing my hand and giving me her brilliant smile. Leaving Mauritania, I lost a lot… But, in only a year, I gained more. Saying goodbye to Mauritanians, to my volunteer friends, to staff and to organizations I had worked with was difficult. It will stand as one of the hardest most frustrating times I’ve experienced. But, I learned so much – and still, I have so much to teach. After looking through options, I accepted a teaching position in Rwanda, continuing my Peace Corps service in a new country. I am exited to see how a different piece of Africa can open my eyes. I was humbled and speechless when I opened my email account sitting in a cyber café in rainy Rwanda and I saw 3 emails from Mauritania friends. They all had similar themes, saying they missed me, saying it was so sad to see me go, that my students and co-workers were asking where I was… but then something new.

“Tell me Ashley… What is Rwanda like? Are the people nice? Is it different from Mauritania?”

What an opportunity. I look forward to answering their questions.

I wake up and look at my phone to check the time. It’s 3:50. Just minutes before the first prayer call will echo through the town. I pull up my sheet and roll over to fall asleep, but notice that the wind is a little strong. Standing up, I gaze at the quiet town below from my rooftop. Squinting into the distance I see what I dreaded. Sandstorm. A dark blanket of dirt is descending upon us. Sighing I fold up my foam mattress and blanket and make my way down the stairs. Fatou and Dedehi’s family are gathering up their things as well, and we all make the exodus inside. Our mats are laid out in the verandah in a row, we close the doors and sleepily rub our eyes. The sandstorm makes way for the rain and one of the kids stands up and opens the door, letting the humid wind cool the house that is a sauna. “It’s so hot!” Dedehi grumbles. “Tomorrow is going to be bad.” Fatou adds. At this time we are a house of women and children (the father, Ahmedou is in Nouakchott) so we all strip down to minimal clothing and wish for a cool breeze. There we lay, a row of cultural diversity, our completely different pasts leading us to this sweaty moment of solidarity. I close my eyes and fall asleep to the sounds of rhythmic breathing surrounding me.

I walk down the street and greet a woman selling vegetables outside a boutique. A customer squats next to her checking out her supply. A child sitting next to her sees me walk by and calls “Nassaraniya!”, trying her hardest to get my attention. I mentally roll my eyes and ignore it. It’s a way to get foreigners attention, calling out “Hey Christian!” or something along those lines. I hear her mom hush her and say “Hey… her name is Jamila.” I secretly smile, happy that she knows my local name. “What is her name?” Asks the child. “Jamila.” She responds. “Hey Jamila!” She calls out. I turn and wave to them, and they smile at me and wave back. I feel the warmth of familiarity settling into my chest. I take pride in the fact that the people of Aleg are accepting me as a person with a name, rather than just a foreigner.

My classroom is buzzing with activity. I have borrowed books from the Girls Mentoring Center and I’m having my students work on an assignment where they have to find the answers to various questions in the books. I am walking around the classroom answering the endless questions. “Teacher, Teacher! What is “location?”, “Teacher! I don’t understand question 4.”, “Teacher, Teacher! Is this good?”. I make my way to one of my students, Aziza, and when she asks me her question I look at her and say “Are you serious?”. It’s a questions I just spent 5 minutes explaining to them and don’t want to go over it again. “Yes teacher, I don’t understand…” She says with a sly smile. The student next to her giggles and I look at them both, realizing mischief is at hand. The student slowly points to Aziza’s head and I look down, noticing immediately that my sunglasses are on her head. “Hey!” I say, grabbing them and putting them on my own head. “Teacher you dropped them.” Aziza tells me. I laugh and tell her I didn’t even notice they were gone. I continue class with a lighter step, enjoying Aziza’s silly joke.

“I’m going to buy meat.” Dedehi announces. “Can you stay with Siyad?” I look up from my stool, where I sit scrubbing my clothes in buckets – today is laundry day. “Sure.” I say looking at Siyad who is sitting on the ground with a piece of bread. Dedehi leaves and we hear the door to our compound shut. Siyad stands and wobbles over to the door, gazing after his mother. “She went to the market.” I tell him. Siyad wanders toward me and offers me the carcass of his bread, which I gladly accept. You see, Siyad and I are a bread eating team. He only likes the inside of bread, and I love the crispy outside, so life is better when we can eat it together. I stuff the crispy baked shell into my mouth and continue washing my clothes. Siyad squats next to me and looks with big bright eyes. “Washing clothes – can you say it? Yiqsil Labass.” I prompt him in Hassaniya. “Caaaa.” He responds. He is just starting to make attempts at talking, and his words usually involve one consonant and a few syllables. He picks up some of my clothes and mimics my movements. I laugh at his actions and silently thank God that he is o.k. Just weeks before Siyad was pounds lighter and could only stare at me with dim lit eyes. He had some sort of stomach issue, maybe a worm or virus, and to make it worse he was already malnourished. I remember holding him in my lap and feeling his lightness, seeing the pained look in his mothers eyes as she lifted his boney calf. After many visits to various local doctors and advice from too many people to count, Siyad slowly started to regain his health. He now gets powdered vitamins snuck into his system by a clever mother and a can of milk. He is back at a more decent weight (still tiny though) and jabbering more than before. It was interesting to see how sickness is dealt with in Mauritania – and I witnessed some intense ceremonies by traditional healers, struggles with money and new discoveries about local remedies. Siyad now has a green string tied around his waist from a man who used the length to count how many Koran verses to recite. He also has a small burn mark on his chest, from a match lit inside a small tea glass sucked onto his skin. Siyad looks at me and gives me his killer smile – “Good job Siyad.” I tell him squishing the water out of a skirt. “Anne Niqsil labass ma’ Siyad.” He looks over and says “Taa.” With a small confident shake of his head.

Tock, tock, tock. A sound like the quick steady beat of a drum. If you hear this noise walking at night in Mauritania you better run for cover, for that is the noise that precedes a deadly animal. I sat with Fatou and M’Bourel after dinner one night chatting about scary stories and they definitely delivered. Fatou, who loves to talk, had a serious face as she told the tale of the “tocking” noise.

“If you see it, it will kill you. And it moves very fast, so you have to run from the sound and hide.” She said.

“Well, what is it!?” I asked, waiting for a monstrous description.

“A one-legged white horse.” She responded.

“………what?” I asked, feeling a flutter of laughter and confusion fill my chest.

“NO!” She said, seeing the smile on my face. “It’s so scary!”

I have to admit that it is slightly creepy; a one-legged horse hopping through the streets, killing those who witness its miraculous movements. I now wonder, observing the dead silence of a Mauritanian night in my village, if these kinds of stories scare people into their houses. Fatou said that she has known this story since she was a child, and has other stories as well. Most of the stories have a lesson at the end – which seems to be “Do not, for God’s sake, walk around alone at night”. Another story she added to this fabulous collection was one of a chicken. If you are walking alone at night and no one else is around (see…) and come across a chicken sitting in dust, that chicken will kill you. Do I see a theme?

But, not all Mauritanian horror stories involve chickens and one-legged horses. I went to Nouakchott with Fatou and got to meet her amazing family. One sister in particular stuck out to me – Salla. She is my age, 24, and is one of the few Mauritanians that has passed the BAC and continued onto University. She studies in the English Department and has a dream to be a journalist, reporting news on TV. I sat with her one night as she cooked, holding a flashlight because the power in their house was cut. Her bright smile alone was enough to light the room. She worked the mortar and pestle in rhythmic tocks and told me about her life. Salla has a beautiful soul. She genuinely cares for people and gives her personal best for others. She has been married for two years, yet, hasn’t seen her husband for at least a year and a half. He is currently in France, working at a hotel. She talks to him rarely, so rarely in fact she’s too embarrassed to say. She told me of a conversation with him a year ago, where he instructed her to quit her job and focus on her studies. There was a tint of jealousy for her husband mixed into this request. Salla was working at a hotel at that time in Nouakchott and he didn’t like the idea of having her “displayed” at the desk for all to see. “He was right,” she told me. “I did need to focus on studies, but I loved my job – and it was money for the family. He promised me he would send money from France, but... I have yet to see it.” She motioned toward the light-bulb above, cold and dark.

She told me that in Mauritania, marriage is a very difficult thing. Marriage very young is not uncommon, mostly because people want to respect their religion and marry before sex, but as a result the rates of separation and divorce are tremendous. The rules of relationships are not as strict for men, and courting others shortly after a first marriage is rather normal. Salla told me that polygamy (Muslims are able to take 4 wives) just doesn’t work in this time. It is difficult nowadays to support just one family – to feed, clothe and nurture children from several families is close to impossible. Men still take their opportunity, and too often one family is left with bare bones. Salla is afraid of this happening. She is afraid that her husband will find another wife and refuse to divorce her. Now she must deal with the emptiness and loneliness independently. Marriage problems are subjects that aren’t talked about. “My mom doesn’t even know how I feel...” She told me, stirring a pot of stewing tomatoes. “And if my friends ask if I have talked to him recently, I have to say yes. I have to convince people everything is ok. It’s just the culture.” She told me that she is already judged all the time for not having a child yet. “It’s really frustrating, you know.” She growled shaking her spoon in the air. “I’m sorry… I’m saying too much – you don’t want to know all this. I just haven’t talked to anyone about it.”

I helped her finish up in the kitchen nook and ate her delicious food. When I left the next day I made a mental note to call her to check in once in a while. She promised to take me by the University next time I’m in Nouakchott to see what it’s like. “It’s not,” She said with a laugh. “Like your American schools, but it’s the best… and only one we have.” As I hugged her goodbye and gave her an extra squeeze and looked her in the eye and told her I thought she was doing a great job. It’s sad see such a beautiful soul so stretched by cultural norms. That’s horror enough for me.

Back in Aleg, I walked back to my house one night after visiting friends to find the family beginning to set up their sleeping mats on the ground outside. I walked in to greet Fatou and peeked into her room.

“You walked back by yourself? Alone? At night?” She asked, eyes slightly widened.

“Yes, but don’t worry Fatou, no chickens in the road tonight.” I said.

She smiled as she welcomed me into her room.

I stood underneath the night sky speckled with stars. A bright almost full moon glowed above me, shaded by slowly moving clouds. And I laughed. Amanda and I had just returned from having dinner with a favorite Pulaar family and as we reached our parting path we laughed into the quiet night. We weren’t laughing at a joke, nor at each-other (which we so often do), but rather, at ourselves. On our walk home that particular night we discussed how much we’ve changed, and what has stayed the same – and in retrospect, how ridiculous we feel at times. That night we took a step out of our bodies and looked down. There we were. Standing in draping mulafes lightly flapping in the wind, our feet dirty from walking through the rocky, dusty streets and our tongues automatically clicking in agreement with truthful statements. Donkeys, goats and cows meandered past, a broken stone house crumbled to our right, and soft-spoken Hassaniya floated from dark houses. We couldn’t help but think about what kind of lives our friends and families were having right now; studying, writing papers, working, getting married, having babies, interviewing and auditioning. We imagined them going to coffee shops and movie theaters, bars and restaurants, supermarkets and bookstores. In Mauritania, we backed away from scary-looking cows, ate grilled meat in tents from carcasses splayed before us, and took pride in choosing what “sheet” (a mulafe is a glorified sheet) to wear that day.

We laughed at how at home we felt in this strange land. We laughed at how our days are spent and the mistakes we make. Our rules and precautions were through the looking glass, and our habits continue to become more and more outlandish. Our tastes (including a new obsession with liver) have changed and our minds have opened to this culture we walk in every day. There are moments, when watching a movie on a computer or checking the internet that one can forget about the world outside the cracked wooden door. When the credits begin to roll or you click the sign out button reality comes rushing back. There are people to visit, there is tea to drink, projects to complete and languages to study. Sometimes it hits you at odd moments - the silliness of it all is countered by absolute realness. That reflection erupts in bubbling laughter. Especially when you think about situations you get in that would never happen in the states.

The other night I walked into my room and was greeted by the leftover African heat trapped in my room like a stove. Hell naw, I said to myself. I could not sleep in that oven. I had to switch my sleeping plans or I would wake up in the middle of the night sweat soaked and cranky. I walked outside where Fatou, Dedehi and their kids were sitting on a mat.

“My room is too hot.” I told them, “I’m sleeping up there.”

Their gazes followed my finger and landed on the roof.

“You want to sleep on the roof!” Fatou said.

“Yes! My room is sooo hot!” I responded.

“She is right, it is very hot inside now. The roof is a good place to sleep.” Dedehi commented.

“Well, let’s go look.” Fatou suggested.

We all (even the kids) climbed the horribly built uneven stairs to the roof to find it littered with rusty old tools, bent nails and homeless keys. We cleared a spot and discussed my mosquito net.

“Well, she doesn’t need a mosquito net up here – there are no mosquitoes up high.” Dedehi said.

“No, no… That’s ridiculous. She needs a net – Go get your net.” Fatou said.

I went and got my net and we began to search for things to help us set it up. I told Muneia, one of the girls, to help me look for nails. We found two and I connected one side of my net to the small wall around the roof. We then stood and looked around, how would we get the other side to stand up? I found a stick and stuck it in a metal contraption and tied the other side of my net to that. Examining the work, which was now in a triangle shape, there were clicks of disapproval.

“Here, do this.” Dedehi said as she took another stick, feed it through the loops of the net and then tied the two sticks together. Genius. Though a little wobbly, it was a nice rectangular net. Now we all stood and looked at the odd set up put together with scraps. Meriem, about 5-years-old, began a little jumping clapping dance, excited about the prospect of me sleeping in the roof.

“You won’t be scared?” Dedehi asked.

“Yeah – It will be scary. I would sleep up here, but Amadou is congested, maybe in a month I’ll come up here with you.” Fatou said.

“Nope. I won’t be scared. It will be peaceful AND cool.” I said.

We all stood around a little while longer, proudly observing out work. I went to sleep that night feeling grateful for the family I was living with - how concerned they were about me, and how willing to help. The wind blew and rustled the net, threatening the “very sturdy” set up, but it never fell.

It is situations like these that make me laugh into the night like the one with Amanda. I’ll take my unique experiences here and hold on to them forever. Sleeping on the roof in a wobbly net, the clothes I wear, the things I eat, learning and being taught – these are things I know I’ll look back upon with a smile.

The other day I witnessed a funny scene that went as follows:

The morning is nice and cool and I'm sitting by a small charcoal grill-like thing with the mom (Dedehi) of my family. We are sitting on a woven mat in the dirt yard while she grills a fish on the charcoal. There is a chicken and about 7 chicks running around the yard, as well as a goat wandering around. Some of the kids are at school, and the ones at home are popping in and out of the concrete house.

"Where did the chicken come from?" I ask.

"Oh - Mohamed brought it home." She says.

We watch for a second as the chicken runs around pecking incessantly at the ground.

"What's wrong with that chick?" I ask, referring to a small one limping around, supporting itself by puffy wing.

"It has a bad leg... poor chick." She says.

"Poor chick." I agree.

We talk a little more about grilling fish verses grilling goat meat, and how both are pretty delicious. She finishes the fish and we begin to pick it apart with our hands and eat it with bread. We look at the door and the 2-year-old Siyad walks out.

"Come here and eat some fish." She says as she beckons him over.

Siyad adorably waddles over in a little shirt with no pants, eyes wide and observing. As he passes the chicken he stops for a second, looking at it skeptically. Being skeptical was good, because in the next second the chicken jumped at him and pecked his unprotected pecker. Siyad screamed in well-deserved horror and danced in place, covering his injured crotch. Dedehi jumped up and ran shouting "Yasser Amer-ack!!" (May god shorten your life - a very common insult in Hassaniya) at the chicken and scooping bewildered Siyad into her arms. I on the other hand am laughing so hard tears are forming in my eyes. Dedehi throws a rock at the chicken, which sqwaks and ruffles it's feathers. She returns to the mat next to me and now she is laughing too.

"That's why you need to wear pants!" She says, giggling and rocking Siyad back and forth.

The other kids come outside to see what the commotion was and also fall into stints of laughter, smiles wide and bright, as their mom recounts the story. She makes one of the kids bring little Siyad some cotton pants and puts them on his small body. He stands in the yard with a tear-stained face looking at the chicken angrily. When the chicken takes a turn and comes toward him he screams in fear and runs back to his mothers side.

"Scared of a chicken!" She bellows, laughing deep from the belly.

****** fast forward to later that evening

We are sitting in a room and one of the kids is making tea. The weather's slightly steamy and a cool breeze blows through the window. Dedehi and her friend sit chatting while I lean on a pillow grading some papers.

"Am I saying this right?" I ask her, reciting a line in Hassaniya.

"It;s better to say it like this..." She says, giving me an example.

As we sip our glasses of tea, Siyad wanders into the room, pant-less once again.

"Look at him!" She tells me, shaking her head. "Where are your pants!" She asks Siyad.

He looks at her and waves his little hand nonchalantly in the direction of the other room.

"Tsk tsk... I'm gonna get that chicken. Heeeere chicken, come here chicken!" She jokes.

Siyad looks at us and immediately covers himself, eyes slightly widened. We all burst out laughing at the site of a poor 2-year-old holding himself in fear of a chicken. He then gets his pants and brings them to his mom, who helps him put them on. We agree that this is a good way to get Siyad to start wearing pants more often - Chicken Threat.

*****The Next Day

I walk in the yard to see the chicken tied with some cloth to a broken wooden box in the corner of the yard. Pant-less Siyad is playing with his brother by the house. Looks like little Siyad won this battle. That is until those little chicks grow up...

I can't help but wonder how many pant-less kids are victim to this kind of attack in Aleg - because there are a LOT of pant-less kids in these streets. Though, now when I see them, I'm gonna chuckle to myself as I recall Siyad's scene in the yard that day.

In my village of Aleg people let their animals, mostly goats and sheep, roam free. To keep these animals from roaming too far they have adopted the method of tying various extremities to each other, leaving the animal with short awkward steps – a kind of animal insurance. Sometimes the two front legs are tied close together with a rope, or for more creative Mauritanians, the right front leg and left back leg. It is interesting to watch these animals adapt. Maybe for a day or so, they will stand in one spot and belt out their sorrows, but eventually they learn to walk with their legs tied. They develop a hop, strut, or quick two-step, refusing to be contained by twine. I have been amazing at the speed of a passing goat hopping down the street joyfully to the rhythm of its binds. Observing these animals, I couldn’t help but draw a connection to myself here in this village. I have been tied. I have been culturally bound. And I’m finding my rhythm, walking differently than before, maybe more awkwardly or perhaps slower, but I am walking forward.

The other day I went to my classroom with supplies. My bare-wall classroom with broken desks and chipped chalkboard isn’t a stimulating learning environment for these kids at the public high-school. I have become “that teacher”; the crazy eccentric one that tries new ideas and is maybe viewed as a bit nutso. English is so difficult to learn here anyway, I figure I might as well make it as interesting as possible so they walk away with some sort of knowledge. This particular day I had a large map and several pieces of paper cut out with Arabic words written in green. As I taped up the map on the wall my students looked curiously on, wondering what I had this time. I was doing a lesson on geography and location using prepositions. I wanted them to be able to describe the location of a country, region or capital. I wrote English words on the board and they matched them to the Arabic words. Then I had various activities, such as giving each student a country to find on the map and writing its location (Belize is next to Guatemala… ect.). The activity flowed as the students chattered softly and worked with squinted brows and ticking minds. All was going well until one student snapped his fingers and raised his hand.

“Teacher! Palestine not here – look! This map not correct.” He said.

I looked at my students, now turned toward me with questions in their eyes. I felt the cultural rope tighten and knew my pace was slowed.

“Palestine is country. Where is Palestine?” He said, searching the area with scornful eyes.

I took a couple awkward steps forward.

“Well Muhammad… This map is old, but also, Palestine’s borders are still being decided. There is a lot of fighting happening right now, but maybe one day it will be on the map.” I said.

My mouth felt dry, as I knew how sensitive of a subject this was to these students. Mauritania is very much in solidarity with Palestine, and many protests and arguments have broken out. One of the reasons many Mauritanians do not like Americans is because our country supports Israel.

“Here,” I said. “Take this pen, write Palestine where it should be, then lets continue.”

Muhammad proudly wrote Palestine in small letters within the borders of a broken country. The class continued without any strife, taking in the world and new vocabulary.

As I walked to my next class, perhaps it was because I realized again the restraints of my cultural ropes, or perhaps it was because of the wind blowing my Mulafe and map in the sandy air, I made a rather grave mistake. I did not pay attention to where I was going and walked through a small corner of the prayer area. This area is blocked off by bricks on the ground, creating a small outdoor mosque space. The boundaries are open on all sides and about one inch off the ground, so to see it you have to pay attention. I felt my heart stop as I realized I was standing in the corner of a holy space. Here I am, a foreigner, a WOMAN, and I just walked through my student’s prayer area.

I looked up horrified, knowing that this was a major sign of disrespect and saw only a few students standing by me. They clicked their tongues and told me “that is not good…” in Hassaniya. I apologized and told them I was very sorry, that I hadn’t seen where I was going. They only shook their heads at me.

The rest of my next class passed smoothly, only disturbed by the beating of my anxiety wretched heart. I had a break before my final class and went into the teachers lounge. I didn’t know if those students who had seen me went to the director tell him of my wrongdoings, but I was prepared to deal with any consequences. The bell rang for my final class and as I approached the room I saw a large group of girls sitting on the desks. They usually didn’t gather up like this, so I sucked in a breath and got ready to explain myself to them. But, instead of hateful stares, I was greeted with warm smiles.

“Teacher! They want to see the map. Show them.” My students said.

Several girls asked me questions about what I was doing that day, and looked at my Arabic scrawl, telling me how to improve my writing.

“Ok. My class is starting.” I told them. I began my class after the onlookers trickled out, and felt some of the unease leak out of my system.

“Here is Palestine!” Said a girl, pointing to the words Muhammad had written earlier that day.

Class ended and as I collected my papers, my students took down the map and words taped to the chalkboard. They helped me fold up and pack away my things and said they would see me next class.

I walked away that day feeling like the goat I had seen earlier. It was just tied and kept falling on a knee as it marched along. I had surely taken some stumbles that day, but I think my determination and genuineness showed my students that I was only trying to walk with tied feet. Some times has passed since that day and I have picked up my pace a little more, but it’s good to know that every once in a while, a falter is forgivable.

After a temporary hiatus from village life, I’m back in my dusty familiar home. Christmas and New Years was spent with other Peace Corps volunteers in Saint Louis, Senegal and in Mauritania, Nouakchott. I was very happy to find warm showers, toilets (with toilet paper!), beer and cheese waiting for me, but found myself itching to get back to my work here. Upon arriving I found the landowner’s family finally moved into my house. A mother and her five children have become part of my everyday life, which for me is awesome. They own a boutique attached to the house and I find it very useful to pop my head in and buy soap or phone credit from them when I need. They are a wonderful family and I’m excited to get to know them over the years.

The youngest girl, Mariem, is about 5 years old and slowly warming to me. She is still unsure of me and with good reason… I often joke with her and try and play little games – which for her, an adult willing to play with kids is unreal. I am reminded of my dad back home in Kansas City, who often has water fights, roller-blade races and secret snacks before dinner with our next door neighborhood kid Conrad. I take his cues and know that eventually I’ll be accepted as a worthy playmate.

My homecoming has been a little hectic, and a bit hilarious. Since the new family has moved in the house I live in has been under some reconstruction. They cleaned the yard, put more bricks on the wall and built stairs up to the roof. The house, which is all concrete, has 3 rooms and a salon. Fatou and I have two of the smaller rooms and the family has the salon and the big room. In Fatou’s room there is an indoor bathroom, which isn’t really much nicer than the one outside, but has the perk of not walking across the yard to the wooden outhouse. In her tiny bathroom there is a creaky faucet with a bucket underneath (the bathtub) and a hole in the ground (the toilet). I returned from Nouakchott with visions of showers in my head and sighed as I squatted down next to the faucet to fill my bucket with cold water to shower.

Now, before I continue, I must add that one of the renovations that the new family had was fixing the outdoor faucet, where they get all their water. Because of this the water switch which controls both faucets, which is a latch about 7 inches down in a dirt hole, was switched to On and buried and packed under the dirt. This resulted in a constant drip in the indoor faucet, which wasn’t a lot, but was enough to get my attention. As I finished filling my bucket I turned off the faucet and watched the water continue to drip drip drip. I decided that the best way to remedy this was to try to turn the faucet off as hard as I could… Guess what happened… Yes. It broke. And not only did it break, but water shot out with so much force I sat for a second with my mouth hanging open watching it blast against the opposite wall in the bathroom before I could process what had happened. On top of this disaster, Fatou was in Nouakchott visiting her family and it was about 11:30 at night. So the family in the other room was asleep and quiet as I sat alone in the bathroom with the water blasting, spraying and soaking everything in the small room. I ran outside to look for the water switch and found smooth dirt where the hole used to be and felt the panic creep up my spine. I went inside, soaking wet and wild eyed, knocked on the family’s door and was greeted by the sleepy eyed mother. In my broken Hassaniya I think I must have said something along the lines of “Much much water in room, I don’t know no turn off… - Help!”

The message must have been somewhat clear, because she looked at me with a slight shake of her head and called her 8 year old son over. She told him to go outside and dig for the switch. So that’s how I found myself dripping wet and digging frantically in the dirt at midnight with an 8 year old. Fatou returned home to find a piece of wood hammered into the faucet pipe, wrapped with rubber and she knew exactly who to call. Now our indoor faucet has a new, non-rusty, head and holds tight. I would say I’ve been more careful with Mauritanian products, but when I left with Fatou one night to eat at our friend’s house, I turned my key to lock my door and the whole lock fell out onto the floor. I stood shaking my head staring at the door while Fatou crumpled in laughter next to me. I told her that I guess I was just to strong for my own good, and she nodded and told me, through a half smile with crinkled tears in her eyes, that she would call someone tomorrow.

And so my story continues – fixed and better than ever.

She held my hand and wouldn't let go.

I think she's seen me around and has been wanting to talk to me. She asks me the questions I can answer in Hassaniya and thinks I'm Bilani (White Moor - a way of saying I integrate well). I don't stop her. She shows me her house and lets me know i'm welcome anytime. Her mulafe is pink like her cheeks.

She held my hand and wouldn't let go.

He said he saw me and didn't know how to talk to me.

He has been in Aleg as long as I have and he struggles with Hassaniya. He does not know French, only English and his dialect from Ghana. His English is broken but he speaks in a genuine way. When I ask him about his past he says he doesn't know how to tell me. He falls silent with saddness in his eyes. His robe is white as a cloud.

He said he saw me and didn't know how to talk to me.

She wondered when I'd finally find her.

She is large and lays lazily in her botique. She gives me peanuts to eat and tells me I look Mauritanian. She asks me about my father. The mat on the floor is plastic and she gives me a pillow to lounge. She calls me an old friend. Her smile is as big as I remember. She tells me not to lose her again. Her hair is freshly braided.

She wondered when I'd finally find her.

A fellow volunteer and I went to the local Jardin D'Enfants to check out a Mauritanian Preschool one sunny day. We wandered through the streets and followed directions and pointed fingers along the roads until we came upon a small, rather governmental looking compound. Upon entering our eyes fell upon what looked to be abandoned playground equipment. There was a swing-set with no swings, a unidentifiable metal frame, a rusty slide and a short metal jungle gym set up on the dirt and gravel ground. There were obvious attempts at making the swing-set an actual play thing. A black cord was strung to the top and swung down in a loop as a makeshift swing (tied and tied again from what looked to be many breakdowns). Our snooping was interrupted by the groundskeeper who welcomed us with a shy smile and offered us a seat on the steps as he prepared for the day. He mechanically laid out a mat on the dirt and began sweeping out the interior of the school.

We watched the metal door to the compound as children trickled in. The first were two young wide eyes boys brought by their teenage brother. They wandered in and stopped as they saw us, wondering what kind of people would interrupt their habitual morning. the groundskeeper herded them onto the mat where they sat quietly staring at nothing in particular. It continued as such, small children with curious faces taking seats on the mat outside. The teachers began to arrive, dressed in fantastic Pulaar clothes with grand head-wraps and bright smiles. They sat next to us on the steps and chatted as the kids continued to come in and take a place on the mat. There was one small girl who began to cry as her mom set her down, a typical response for a 2 year old. She ran to the door and her mother, one step ahead of the game, slipped sneakily out and closed it behind her. The teachers giggled at the ways of children and one woman went to sit with the traumatized toddler on the mat. One small girl, perhaps 4 years old, wandered in by herself, carrying a back-pack and a small bottle of water.

The director arrived with a flow of energy, her mulafe flowing behind her and business in her eyes. She greeted us and began to show us around. We stepped into the lobby and were greeted by the wonderful scent of stale urine. There were three rooms off the lobby, divided by 2-3, 3-4 and 4-5 year olds. The rooms were typical preschool, yet a bit more depressing. The only floor with a "carpet" was the youngest room, all others were small white rooms filled with small plastic kid-stained picnic tables. The walls were decorated with scribbles drawings and torn artwork from postcards and books. There were no toy shelves or counters filled with paper and crayons, only a chalkboard in the corner a drawing of a toothbrush and toothpaste. After a whirlwind tour she brought us to her office, just as a repetition song began, voices blending sweetly the way only children can achieve.

Once in her office she showed us cardboard boxes filled with a mess of wooden and plastic toys. With blocks, beads, and plastic pieces the torn box looked like the miscellaneous drawer everyone seems to have in a forgotten corner. She sat us at her desk and pulled out a large piece of cardboard with the edges cut out.

"An intelligence test," she said, motioning toward the wrinkled pieces "try it."

So we put the paper puzzle together (which, i might add, had us worried for a second). When she came back in she was delighted to see we were smarter than the average preschooler and quickly mumbled something about "velos". We were rushed into another room and slowly took in the mess of tricycle pieces on the floor.

"Can you put these together?" She asked.

Glancing at each other and checking the time, we agreed to take a look. We ended up back on the mat outside where the children sat in the morning with the tricycle parts to about 5 bikes lay scattered before us. The paper directions were torn and wrong, and we began to notice certain important parts were not present in the mess before us. The director came back out and handed us the tool she thought we would need.... a green and red plastic child's play hammer. I began to giggle at our situation. Sitting there with a tricycle puzzle in front of us, a bit harder than the cardboard pieces, and equip with a plastic preschool hammer. A little boy wandered out of the building and gazed at us for a while, wondering why were were having such problems when we had the best tool in the school.

After getting some of the bikes partially assembled we notified the director that while the hammer had helped a lot (we actually used it) that we had tools that would work better at our house and would return tomorrow to finish our work. We left the preschool as the children continued their rote learning repetition games. I could only wonder if we had really passed the intelligence test she had laid out before us, or if we would be forever failed in her mind - only achieving the initial cardboard stage of her tests.

I hear the metal door to my compound pull open and I lift my head to the sound of rusty metal scrapping. I am sitting on the floor with papers and grammar books spread around me lesson planning for the following week. This group of lessons I’m trying to figure out the best way to tell my students about irregular present participles, a topic I know will be greeted with blank stares and squinted brows. Pausing, I gaze out the door of my house waiting to see who appears in the frame. I hear her before I see her. “Ash-e-lee?” She calls, with excitement laced through her tone. “Fatou! Je suis la – I’m right here.” I tell my friend. She steps into my view with a huge smile plastered on her face. Opening her arms wide she shouts, “FELICITACIONS! Barack Obama – President United States!” I laugh and stand up, immediately folded into her waiting arms while each cheek is excitedly kissed. She tells me she has been watching the news all night and that she was so happy for me – and so relieved that Americans “have chosen the right one”. I tell her about my lucky friends who were in Chicago for his acceptance speech and she agrees that they have witnessed a piece of history. We sit for a while chatting about change and hope, how the American presidential elections can touch the hearts of those in an obscure country called Mauritania. The day after elections electricity pulsed through my veins. I stayed up the night before listening to the radio as the polls rolled in, gazing at the brilliant stars above me and willing the American people to show the world that they can change. I received calls throughout the night, from the U.S.A., from Belize and from Mauritania, all family and friends’ assuring me that the charged pulse I felt was not only pumping in my body. That morning as the cool night turned itself over to the African sun I sat with another volunteer listening to that Chicago speech, my eyes stinging with pride and relief washing over my body. I was humbled to realize that Americans weren’t the only ones who felt these emotions. I continuously greet people in the street who say in happy Hassaniya “Bush mshat! Obama President!” Their eyes are genuine and their handshakes hearty, I tell them “yes, Bush is gone, we are very happy. It is very good.” They are satisfied to know I’m pleased with the change as well and their smiles linger a little longer than usual. At times people only need to see me or my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers walking through the streets to shout “Obama!” and simply leave it at that. I have heard this from small children jumping up and down on rooftops and from small old men resting on the floors of boutiques. Though, as in the USA, not everyone is pleased with the change. The stories of our past intertwine with so many. Our waters run together and one ripple or splash travels further than we can imagine. Considering the fact that America has its hands dug into the earth of so many nations it’s not surprising to find groups of people that have different views of American politics. Talking with a Pulaar, a black African Mauritanian, one will find a person that loves Bush and are sad to see him go. The reason is that for many years now Bush has supplied weapons to bring down those that called for the Arabization of the Middle East and other Muslim countries. Mauritania has had its own problems with identity and events in 1989 reveal a rather bloody boarder fight with Senegal as the country tried to define itself. Many of the black African’s, especially Pulaars who are a large culture in Senegal, were beaten and humiliated, expelled from their homes and sent across the border. During this time Bush was a friend who helped them – if not through the actual backhand passing of weapons for protection, then through support of their resistance. Mauritania is still trying to create an identity. With so many groups of people (Pulaars, Sonike’s, Wolofs, Black and White Moors) and being a rather newly independent country (November 28, 1960) things like official language, government, politics and education are constantly debated. I see the backlash of such problems in my school, where Education Reforms call for Sciences to be taught in French and Humanities to be taught in Arabic. Teachers who have always taught in Arabic find their very professions at risk. Some of the best teachers resolve to lie about knowing a language to trick their way into teaching the subjects they know best. Mauritania is still a very fragile country. Still taking baby steps and learning from mistakes as an independent country. Mauritania’s Independence Day is this Friday. It is a day to be celebrated and, maybe, a day to face many of the questions floating in the air. What does it mean to be Mauritanian? What does it mean to be free? What should be done about the inter-cultural tensions? Perhaps these questions will be considered. Or perhaps they will just dance… Living in a country that is still trying to figure out Democracy, it is a good feeling to see the message Americans are sending out to the world. An example that Democracy can work, that people should have a voice, and that there are places where those voices are heard. At times it’s unreal to see that new respect and that lingering smile in the eyes of those who watch their own country struggle.

The culture in front of me is bold. It is bright. It is sacred. A father teaches his children how to pray, quietly whispering time-old secrets into their ears. A mother sifts couscous, tossing the grains into air and letting it fall into the waiting bowl. A sister shifts her baby brother on her back, old enough to stand tall, young enough to not feel the burden. A brother laughs without reserve, head tossed to the sky, as his friend chases a goat through the dusty streets. Here, a person must wait to uncover the mysteries of this sandy world, it will not happen immediately. I would never have known the secrets of fabric if I had not sat and watched, wide-eyed, as they danced in front of me. The light shone golden into the room through barred windows and outdoor children pressed their faces against the rusty metal to get a glimpse – smiles and eyes illuminated. Women step surely, carried by the Arabic strings and drums, swirling multicolored mulafes. They fix their faces into a rather proud poses, arms waving with attention to the fingers. Occasionally they cover their face with cloth, more often, they expertly shake their butts, ticking and swishing in time with the scratchy cassette tape. The men are like birds, and with their grand bou-bou’s spread like wings they fly around the room with ease. They flutter around the women, showing off the solid steps and hopping lightly with the beat. They swirl and mix, tangle and part. Laughter bubbles as they show off their moves and minutes fold into themselves.

Sometimes it seems like the sun shines too bright, or too much sand blown into your eyes to actually see. But, I suppose that is why we have five senses. I will always hear prayer call echoing through the labyrinth streets and smell lunchtime as rice and fish simmer over fire. I will feel the touch of a greeting hand and taste the bitter sugary tea from a sticky glass. I’m learning to quit making over-assumptions, and to let things go quickly. I’m learning to take it slow and to enjoy the quiet. I’m learning to laugh in a different language.

School began this week, but once again, culture morphs something so familiar to me into the unidentifiable. On the first day of classes I wondered, as I gaze at the empty school yard before me, occupied by wandering donkeys, if I’ll ever understand completely. I find the school director, Ahmed, in his quiet office. Wise and quite official looking he is dressed in a bou-bou surrounded by papers on his desk. He smiles and tells me that maybe tomorrow he’ll have the schedule ready. And – he adds – you don’t have to come by tomorrow if you’re tired. The back to school vibe is still there, I can see it when I visit the market. Children pour over carts of notebooks, choosing their colors importantly. They walk down the streets with blue UNICEF issued backpacks, the glow of newness alive in their struts. I suppose a week from now I’ll be in the swing of things. Classes will begin and students will trickle in, switching from lazy summer days to pencils, pens and notebook paper.

I have decided to move in with a Mauritanian to try and catch some things I might be missing. She is a bright spunky woman who has a three year contact with an international organization in Aleg. One year into her contract, she will finish her time in Aleg right when I will. Her name is Fatou and her family lives in Nouakchott, with her adorable son. She lives alone in a house, very similar to the one I live in currently, except that it is two minutes away from the school. She has created family here and they have welcomed me into their lives with ease. We speak in French mostly, though she knows Hassaniya (and Wolof… and Pulaar!) and helps me figure things out. I sat in a boutique late one night with her as she visited her friends. They behaved like sassy schoolgirls and we joked and sipped tea and let the night seep into our bones.

My dreams have a new shade to them. They have taken on a new tone. I see broken toothed smiles and wrinkled expressive hands. I see swirling fabrics and piles of onions on sheets. In my sleepy minds eye there are blue backpacks, wise men and unfinished schedules.

Stepping back, I look at the faces of my family and friends staring back at me from my walls. Now that I am in my own house in the town I will be in for the next two years, I can finally unpack all my bags and carve my place into this country. As I look a picture of my nephew Gavin stuck in a happy pose at a baseball game, cheering and holding a two-year-old fist full of hotdog toward the sky, I can feel the odd sensation spread over me once again. The realness of my situation continues to catch me off guard. The distance from the people I love and the proximity to the people in my neighborhood with whom I’ll form relationships. Not to mention the tragedy of that hotdog, something I won’t taste for a very long time... But unidentifiable ground meat becomes somewhat miniscule in comparison to the things I’m gaining here. Aleg, my town, seems to have a lot to offer me, and hopefully I’ll figure out what I can give in return. My house is across the street from a Mosque and two doors down from my landlord’s boutique. I live in a small walled compound with a couple rooms, a small kitchen and a salon. The doors and windows, covered in bright blue cracked wood, obey the weather expanding and shrinking with Mother Nature’s commands. My bathroom and “shower” (place to stand in while I bucket-bath) are outside and laundry lines are strung about the yard. For now, there are small green patches on the ground, where sporadic grass and the infamous Death Star plants grow. Death Star is not, in fact, the real name of this macabre plant, only a name we have so lovingly assigned. Starting out rather beautiful, the Death Star dries up in the desert sun, creating tiny and very prickly balls of death, which stick into skin like an orb of splinters. Though the Death Stars are a negative, I am lucky to have electricity in part of the house, which works a good percentage of the time, and running water, accessed by a pump outside. My roof is tin and my walls are concrete and my kitchen counter was built with bricks and wood planks. My stove is a portable gas camp-style with one burner and is mostly used outdoors. It has already been used to create some rather delicious creations (Pad-Thai is very do-able here). Every day the Mosque is my alarm clock, the sunrise call to prayer my morning wake up call. It is Ramadan this month, so the days are slow. Fasting (no food or drink – water included) is required between sunrise and sunset and the hottest and most unproductive time is between 1-3pm. Walking around at this time brings you face to face with a ghost-town. Store owners and produce vendors sleep in the shade, slowly rising if you ask for something. Eating and drinking in view of other Mauritanians seems rude and awkward, though it is sometimes forced upon you when you sit to talk with a fatigued family, as they understand many foreigners do not participate in their religious holidays. The children and oldest of old do not usually partake in the fasting, and those that do will not utter a word of complaint more than “it’s hot out today” or “I’m a little bit tired”. The dedication is empowering to see, especially given the climate. What must get them through is the wonderful event of breaking the fast at sundown. Women start preparing in the early afternoon, cutting and chopping slowly, getting things ready to drop in a pot and quickly prepare. When the Mosque announces the breaking of fast, the chanted song is only on the second syllable when cups are brought to parched mouths. What follows is amazing. I broke fast with a family one night and was in disbelief at the never ending bowls and plates set before me. There were dishes of beignets, dates, juice, water, milk, and a sweet cous-cous/water/milk/sugar mix brought out to start. A dish of meat and potatoes with bread to dip followed by a round of tea, and then even more drinks set before you. Finally there was a large dish of pasta and meat set out on a plate, followed by more rounds of tea. This celebration takes time, and I even made the mistake of trying to leave before it was over – thinking there couldn’t possibly be another course…. That night I would lay under my mosquito net in a food coma, staring up at the stars, happily stuffed and planning out another visit to break fast. Walking through my town can take forever. I greet everyone in the Mauritanian way, which is to spit out as many inquiries as fast as possible. Included are things such as “How are you with the heat?” and “How are you with your health?” I am discovering my favorite people to sit and take tea with, and faces and names are easier with each passing day. I once walked back from the market with an empty trunk for my room, balancing it on my head with a hand, when I heard an excited greeting. I recognized that it was the mother of the family I broke fast with the night before. She beckoned me over and we went through the greetings – followed by the common “whatareyoudoing –whereareyougoing-wherewereyou.” I slapped hands and touched my heart doing my best to keep up with her Hassaniya/French. I told her I had to bring the trunk home, and she smiled and pressed a bag of beignets into my hand. When I asked her how much she waved my money away like an annoying fly, telling me it was a gift. I know that not everyone I meet here will be as nice as her. Not everyone is willing to put up with my broken Hassaniya and cultural slip-ups. I have embarrassed myself many times already, and I know it’s only the beginning. Laughing is a good way to deal, because really, some of the situations I find myself in are simply ridiculous. Another is to always remember those pictures on the wall are always there, reminding me not of what I left behind, but of the people who continuously offer me support.

The National Syllabus booklet dropped on the desk in front of me, sending up puffs of dust from my desk into the air. I thumb through the photocopied paper bound with a plastic spiral. Inside those pages are the building blocks to my future success as an English Teacher in Mauritania. I stretch my neck around and take in the classroom. Basic. There is a chalkboard, broken and chipped on the wall with lesson plans of the past scrawled in French and Arabic. There are rows of desks in bench style crammed against each other, time and weather worn. The walls, ceiling and floor are all cement, the windows are sparse and the paint is thin. In these schools the learning environment must come directly from the person standing in front of the room. Most things, actually, must come from directly from the teacher. In the majority of the schools there are no books, rather, you create the book as you teach. Each word written on that blackboard will be published on the spot, written as law inside the notebooks of students. The education system in Mauritania is anything but desirable. A rough history of reforms and disagreements split minds on what and how things should be taught. These discussions push classroom supplies, management and upkeep into the background. Surprising? Not at all. Frustrating? Infinitely.

To start, it’s important to note is that Mauritania is divided in many ways, like so many of its African sisters. Colonized by France, Mauritania became independent in 1961. This was long enough for traditions of French school systems, government and politics to saturate the culture. Before the 1999 reform schools were taught patchwork quilt style. Each region and school adapted to a different style of education and language depended on geographical location. After 1999 schools developed a language-specific education style. Science type classes (math, biology and chemistry) are taught in French while Humanities type (theology, history, religion) classes are taught in Arabic. English education is a requirement and begins halfway through College (equivalent to American middle school) and continues through Lycee (equivalent to American high-school). I spent a good amount of time and wasted a good amount of paper figuring out and internalizing the system.

In comparison to the American school system there is one thing that stands out in my mind. Teaching to tests is very prevalent. And it’s getting worse. The requirements to graduate Lycee (taking the Brevet) are getting more rigorous and graduating College (taking the Bach) is next to impossible. There are many brick walls for Mauritanian youth as they make their way through an already perplexing system. A student is extremely lucky to make it to University (American College) and if they do get there, they better have the resources to travel out of country to get to a good facility. One can only begin to imagine the mental damage such a frustrating system can cause on the psyche.

On top of all this, the shinning façade of the Millennium Development Goals comes into play. MDGs, in short, are 8 sector specific guidelines to achieve preconceived goals determined by the United Nations meant to directly improve a developing country’s status and economy by 2015. Though, something along the way of achieving these goals is beginning to sour – a case of good intentions gone wrong. Take Mauritania’s approach to the education MDG into consideration. The goal is to achieve universal primary education – an objective that is great, solid and measurable. The Ministry of Education in Mauritania is starting to achieved this goal but at a grave cost. The push to get more kids in school has worked, but now, there aren’t enough crumbly schools for all those kids and many are being taught by poorly educated/trained teachers. Too many kids and not enough teachers is the name of the game. This is why when I finally land my spot in the classroom, 90+ sets of eyes will be staring back at me. I’ll have the usual mix of jaded burnt out pre-teens, over-achievers and some that just don’t care. Yet these students will be jammed into a hot classroom, fighting for desk space and wondering why the hell I’m teaching in their village. Sounds fun right? But alas, I’m up for the challenge.

For many students, the burning question bubbles from the sulfurous surface “what can an education do for me anyway”. I respond – if nothing else, an education gives you self worth. No matter what you’re learning or who you are, when you learn you discover; you discover more about yourself and others. When it comes down to it, I’m teaching English to these kids so they can pass the test and head toward higher learning, not so they can have conversations with other people in the street. Most will not continue, many will fail and the few lucky ones will struggle. I’m going to try my hardest to teach them to my greatest ability, and try to develop side projects to get the creative juices flowing. I’m going to run into walls with my kids, and I’m going to get lost in the maze – but it’s good to know education is a universal struggle, that I have solidarity over seas. Plus, as a bonus, I just picked up a box of colored chalk at the market and it comes with the color green.

****There has been a Coup d’Etat. Hadij, my host mom sits over our fish and rice lunch and shakes her head. The government is bad, she tells me, this (she waves her hand over the rice) it’s too expensive. She is unsatisfied with the current state of the economy welcomes change, even though democracy is threatened. I find out information from bits of French news on T.V. and word of mouth. The president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi has been kidnapped and 11 military officials, lead by Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, have ousted the government and taken over the capital. There are many protests over weekend supporting and protesting the coup. Hundreds of Mauritanians march the streets with signs and honk car horns, democracy may be in straits, but it is alive. Most are not surprised as Mauritania only recently had its first smooth election transition with democracy. From the Mauritanians I’ve talked to, this seems normal and will be remedied soon. There is a little tension overseas, but for the most parts all seems peaceful. The directors of Peace Corps keep close tabs on the news and update us frequently.

****A little girl peeks over the wall at me, I smile immediately. She is my buddy – petite Hadij. She had the same name as my host mom, and the same silly attitude too. I beckon her over and she climbs the wall into my courtyard. Her bright yellow dress looks perfect next her dark chocolate skin. Petite Hadij speaks only Hassaniya, and I only know bits and pieces. Though who needs language when you have a secret handshake? We created one shortly after meeting each other and we use it often. Petite Hadij loves to sit next to me under our tent in the courtyard and watch me make my English lesson plans for the following day. I let her use my colored pencils and she draws little pictures at my feet. Sometimes she dances. Tongue clicks and feet flying she shows me how to get down Mauritanian style. I found out the other day that her mom died the past year, and grande Hadij (my host mom) is one of petite Hadij’s caretakers – one of the reasons she is at our house so often. You would never be able to tell, her personality as bright as the yellow dress she wears so often. I’ll miss her sunny face peaking over the wall when I leave my host family. In my mind she’ll be dancing forever.

****”Do you understand?” Murbana asks me with imploring eyes. “Who is that? Is that the wife of the main character?” I ask. Murbana and I sit outside my house on a mat with a T.V. in front of us. The T.V. cord stretched from a plug in the saloon, and after some fiddling we got the reception working. We are watching a Wolof (Senegalese and Mauritanian culture) Drama that is very soap-opera-like. Murbana is Senegalese and speaks French, Hassaniya, Wolof and a little tiny bit of English. She is sitting next to me braiding my hair, translating the show from Wolof into French. “You see, that is the husband and that girl there is trying to be with the husband. She is pregnant and does not know who the father is. She needs to get married, so she will try to trick him… Watch!” She explains. With Murbana’s translations, I am heavily invested in the show. I lean forward and flick an ant off the screen. We hear the pot of rice and fish shift on the coals and the boiling water softly hisses. Murbana gets up and expertly adjusts the pot, most of her attention on the show. She is eighteen-years-old and is currently working for Hadij. She does some of the cooking and cleaning around the house – she may or may not get paid, that I haven’t exactly figured out, but she does get treated well and eats with us. She is beautiful. Her oval eyes are wide and shine with kindness, her thin face and African skin framed with a white and pink mulafe (veil, wrapped around body and head). I enjoy spending my afternoons sitting and chatting with her about Senegal and telling her stories from America. We laugh about my few words in Hassiniya and her few words in English, and we teach each other as much as we can. Murbana sits next to me again and continues with my braids. She informed me earlier that braids were necessary and made me go buy some rubber bands so she could do my hair. “See,” She says pointing at the T.V. “This is the real wife, she is going to be angry when she finds him with that girl.” I nod in agreement and the Wolof drama mixes with the Mauritanian sounds of goats braying and lunch over coals.

****”You will help me tonight.” My host mom Hadij announces. I laugh and agree, unsurprised by now at her forwardness. Dinner is cooking and the night surrounds us, a cool breeze whisking the heat off the day baked earth. My mom has just fixed the refrigerator that had been sitting in the corner of the saloon and changed the whole thing into a freezer. She now sells Bisap (a cold red drink) and bags of ice from her house. Tonight she is making more bottles and I am helping her. We sit on the bidons (yellow jugs of water) and begin the process. Boil the Bisap leaves, strain the juice, mix with water, mix with sugar and red drink mix and finally add the special essence (which is some unknown herb). I chat with her about my day as I clean out the bottles. Bisap bottles are reused water bottles – and when a customer drinks one, they return the bottle so it can be reused again. I clean the bottles with bleach and water, shaking them and wiping the tops, then passing them to Hadij to be filled. Salem, my host cousin, sits next to us playing cards with his friend. We taste our creation and smile at each other. “Me,” Hadij announces “I am a fabulous cook. One day I will go to America and make lots of money.” I laugh and agree on her cooking skills but try unsuccessfully to explain the inner-workings of American business. After we finish, I take a cold Bisap from the fridge and enjoy the icy delicious treat. “Make sure you tell your friends.” She tells me “There is enough for all of them now – only 50 ouguiya.” Sure, I tell her, they love the Bisap, I will have them come over tomorrow.

****It is early morning and I have just returned from an excellent run with one of my Peace Corps friends. My capri’s are dripping with sweat and the morning air is cool, just starting to warm. We ran along the main road and our minds wandered over the vast and dusty landscape dotted with green. The cars that rushed past us were driven by turban-wrapped men with sunglasses and we prided ourselves at being faster than the donkey carts. In the dunes and ditches, we caught glances of the slaughtering of goats and camels to be sold in the market. Back at my house, there was no water. I need my bucket bath and we do not have a water pump in our compound. I grab a bidon and a 20 ouguiya coin and walk down the street to the local boutique. They know me by now, and we exchange morning greetings and they fill my jug at the pump. I also grab a piece of bread and butter, the bread still fresh and warm, just brought in by the local baker. I lug the water back to my house, still quiet, and sit on the jug. As I eat my bread I watch the morning stretch across the sky.

****There is a goat head in the hand of my host cousin, Salem’s. He stands next to me and I stare at the lunch laid out before me. I just got back from teaching a morning English class and my appetite is wavering as the bloody blank eyed goat stares at me. Today Hadij is having a party, and to celebrate a goat was brought into out compound and slaughtered. It arrived the day before and stood braying for hours, perhaps knowing of the impending doom. I did my laundry that day and as my clothes hung on the line the mischievous goat hooked one of my t-shirts on its horn and ran around our yard. Hadij and her friend laughed deep belly shaking laughs as they watched me chase the white goat with a bright blue t-shirt attached to its head. I finally caught it and adjusted my clothes line a little higher, out of goat-horn range and laughed at the silly situation. Recalling the situation as I sat there eating my lunch, the white head, stained red, dangling next to me, I contemplated justice and retribution. Surely the poor goat didn’t deserve to be my dinner that night, but it was nice to know my future laundry was no longer in danger.

****I stand in front of my classroom. The front of my shirt dusted with chalk and my fingers smeared with erased words. I am teaching summer school and my students are in high-school (sixth year Lycee in Mauritania). Because it is summer school, there are not a lot of students; only about 20 show up each day. Today I’m teaching about Present Perfect and Present Perfect Progressive, a lesson I had to review and teach to myself again. English is not an easy language, and you soon discover that though you may know how to create a sentence, it’s very difficult to explain how it’s done. “Teacher, teacher!” They shout, snapping their fingers in the air when they know the answer. I feel comfortable teaching and though the summer school is a lot of work, it is also great practice for when I will have regular English classes during the school-year. Five days a week I create a lesson plan and teach for one or two hours a day. This will go on for three weeks, and then I will test my students and give the top students prizes. “What is the Past Participle of ‘to go’?” I ask them. I am met with dozens of snapping fingers and I choose a student, “Gone!” she answers. In Mauritania, the summer school kids are smart.

****I stifle a laugh as I sit on a rock in our yard. I am watching my host cousin Salam and our dog. Salem is standing by the dog with a bottle of black watery liquid in his hand. “Le chien est malade” He tells me. The dog is, as a matter of fact, sick. It has black bugs that resemble ticks on its back, face and ears. I’m sure it picked up some sort of disease in the thousands of garbage dumps that surround us. It’s a funny sight though, watching Salem apprehensively brushing black liquid onto the dog, quickly backing up and staring as the dog nonchalantly stares back at him. The dog, brown and white, slowly changes to black and brown as Salem brushed on the ‘medicine’. “Look at him…” Hadij scoffs “Salem, the ‘le médecin de chien’.” This makes me laugh out loud. Salem looks at me and I see a smile at the corner of him lips – the dog doctor. My mom is now laughing too, commenting on how soon, the dog will be as black as ‘le médecin de chien’. This has us all roaring as we watch the once white, now black dog, trot away and escape through a hole in the wall.

****Computers buzz around us and a wall fan hums, pushing around hot air. I am at the local Cyber with me new friend Cheihk. He works there and through talking with me and the other volunteers that frequent the internet café, has come to understand I teach English. He expressed his desire to learn English and asked if I could help him, so now I come a couple times a week to teach him one hour lessons – in exchange of course, for one hour free internet. This works out very well for both of us. I get to save my Peace Corps money for other things and still get to use the internet every week and Cheihk gets to learn English 101. I get the extra bonus of working on my French with him, as he is fluent.

****My Peace Corps friends and I lie on the roof and stare at the night sky. We are taking a break from ‘cultural integration’ and having a small American gathering. Our heads in a circle and our minds ticking, we discuss our life in Mauritania. The conversation shifts from hilarious conversations about pooping (a common subject here…) and deep thoughts about religion and government. They have quickly become my family. We support each other when our minds can’t wrap around a cultural norm, and ease the tension with jokes when we are sick and frustrated. Sometimes we lay quietly, silenced by the beauty of the endless sky. Shooting stars start up discussions once again and we chat into the Mauritanian air.

As the daylight faded and the heat began to sizzle out of the Mauritanian air, I sat on the ground with my new friend Abdughai. He tends to come around our courtyard at dinner time to eat with us – and to make us laugh. At 13-years-old he has an explosive personality. He always has something to say, and though our conversations are stunted by our broken French, we have no problem finding something to giggle about. This particular night I was showing Abdughai a hand clap called “Boom, Snap, Clap” (shout out to OTR summer day-camp pre-teen girls for instilling those skillz). I would show him a section and have him repeat it; smack the chest, snap the fingers, clap the hands in a rhythmic beat. He sat facing me with determination in his eyes, stretching out a dirty yellow polo three sizes to big over his knees. “Un, deux, trois…” Again and again we beat out the rhythm, laughing at his mistakes and cheering at success. My host mom was stretched out beside us, lazily lying on her side observing my crazy antics once again. She laughed at our game and would occasionally call my name, trying to imitate the hand clap, but failing miserably. Eventually Abdughai succeeded and we celebrated with a victory dance (above all Abdughai loves to dance) and washed our hands to eat.

I still can’t figure out the complex structures of support here, but I have discovered a whole village does indeed raise a child. There always seem to be children here and there, brothers and sisters in and out, and visitors that end up staying for days. My host mom Hadij takes it all in stride, accepting visitors with ease – Bismillah means welcome, and in Mauritania it is the unquestionable way of life. This type of acceptance and sharing splits off into a rather odd direction, a behavior which I encounter every day. That is, the complexities surrounding “donne-moi”. Give me. Give me this and that and – oh – that too. It is something I know I will have to get used to here, as it slightly grinds my pride and extends just beyond my realm of cultural normalcy. It happens as I walk down the street and a woman shouts “give me your skirt!”, or in my home when Hadij sees my crazy American things “I loooooooove this! Give it to me!”. It’s everywhere. Even my language facilitator Jiddou, who teaches me French 6 hours a day isn’t withheld from asking me and my classmates for medicine for his awful toothache. The persistent “donne-moi” makes one feel slightly objectified. Yet – this begging doesn’t come without reason. My mirror, shoes and Peace Corps issued medical kit are mesmerizing to someone who lives in a society where everyone has the same things. Variety isn’t really a common word around here. The local market sells one laundry soap, one bucket (for bathing, laundry and kitchen use), one type of tea class… etc. The colors may vary, but the items are lackluster. This combined with a lifestyle that seems to draw from socialism creates a pardon when it comes to asking for others property. Looking closely, I see that this doesn’t solely apply to me, but to everyone in their culture. I heard Hadij ask a visitor of ours once for money. She later debriefed me that he had “beaucoup de l’argent” and could probably spare some.

This asking doesn’t go without giving. I sat with my host mom one afternoon as we ate her delicious fried fish, rice and veggie plate called Chebugen and talked about families. After a long, slightly hilarious conversation where I explained where Missouri was and why I had family in Belize, she told me about her family that live in the capital, Nouakchott. She explained to me that she had an older sister and brother and a mother. Her dad passed away in 2005 and because she has no children as her siblings do, her income goes straight to her mother, who is unemployed. Her Peace Corps issued money falls into many hands. This combined with the many visitors and children that make their way into our courtyard doesn’t make living easy. After many conversations about money and the complexities of the American dream, Hadij still believes she can become an exquisite chef in the USA, but has slightly eased up on asking me for my things. She shook her stirring spoon at Abdughai the other night when he asked me for 200 UM (equivalent to 90 cents) telling him to stop because I have no money. Hearing her yell at Abdughai was a great moment, not only because it sent Abdughai into a ‘you-can’t-catch-me-with-that-spoon’ dance, but also because I think we are beginning to understand eachother.

Last night I lay underneath the stars as Saalem made his rounds of tea and the whirring background of Hassaniya filled my head. I wrote in my journal and shooed the family goat away from my paper. Hadij asked what I was doing and I explained to her the best I could that it was for writing stories and letters. She took my journal from my and gazed at my scribbled English. With a click of her tongue she disapproved of my language preference and asked to write in my journal the “right way”. I laughed and passed over my book, opening to a fresh page. Hadij proceeded to write me a letter in Arabic showing me each word and explaining what it meant. Basically, it was a blessing on my name. The journal page then turned into an Arabic lesson as she drew different animals found in Mauritania and had me write the French name next to the Hassaniya name. We laughed, our heads crowded over the journal, when she tried to sketch a lizard, which turned into more of a snake.

My host mom and I are coming to a balance. Like every situation we have our good and bad days, but most bad days indicate a lack of cultural understanding between us. Each day, a small step, I begin to delve into the complexities – and when things do get rough, you should know that Mauritania has some really delicious mangos.

In Africa, people still laugh when you trip over yourself. I found this to be true during a Mauritanian dust/rainstorm the other night as my host family frantically ran around the rooms of my house. They quickly put buckets under the leaks, closed up the broken, splinter-wooden windows and pulled the blankets off the laundry line in the courtyard. While my host mom – Hadij – and her friend folded up the dirty carpet in one of the rooms I tried to jump over some buckets into the wet room and slid across the muddy floor, lanky arms flailing, and caught my balance before I tumbled onto the ground. I looked over at Hadij with wide eyes fixing my long skirt and adjusting my head wrap. The thunder of the storm couldn’t compete with the thunderous laughter that came from those two ladies. For a while the rain that clanged and poured through the tin roof onto the muddy concrete floor was forgotten as repeated impressions of my stumble ensued. I came to the conclusion long ago that when I trip in a new country, it’s a good sign. And good sign indeed. Mauritania is growing on me.

Mauritania isn’t a place that awes and amazes an onlooker – rather it’s a place that can very easily shock and disgust. But you have to look past the dusty, garbage covered ground and beyond the dilapidated concrete houses. You must understand that burping and spitting are expected and eating with your hands is necessary. You have to expect that the kid in the torn t-shirt dragging the goat by the leg across the street is probably on a dinner mission. (probably). When glanced at, it’s hard at first to see that tires and cassette tape guts are great toys, and difficult to tell the difference from a designated garbage dump site and someone’s courtyard. I’m slowly figuring things out.

My name in Mauritania is Noura. Noura Fall. My host mom Hadij promptly assigned it to me within the first two minutes of meeting me. When I first arrived the moment was almost overwhelming. I pulled up in a car to what seemed to be a house on a dusty road and my car was immediately surrounded by a large group of children. “Bonjour Madame! Ca va, ca va ca va?” The screamed as they fought to shake my hand. After a sternly barked order from a woman who was obviously the authority, the children scattered like ants and I was escorted out of the car. I was then pushed into a room where I encountered smiling faces of some plump looking women wearing thin cloths that covered their hair and extended to wrap around their body like a dress (called a Mulaffa). They chattered to each other and laughed at the sight of the new Toubabs (American’s or foreigners). I was handed over to my mother who, short, stout and smiling with melted chocolate skin and mischievous eyes, named me Noura.

Hadij grabbed my bag and we walked along the dirt-sand road through a maze of a neighborhood, stopping periodically to chat with neighbors; when I say ‘chat with neighbors’ I mostly mean to show me off - her Toubab and the latest fashion accessory. We arrived at my new house and stepped over a large pile of sand and pushed open a rusty door – held closed by a stretched string of rubber attached to the ground. I was greeted by my new friends – a fat goat, a scruffy dog and a mangy cat. I soon met my nephew Jacob, who is 15 and a soccer playing feign, and my cousin Salem, a tea-making expert. They showed me to my room, which is a extreme sun-faded yellow, has four walls, two windows, lots of ants and a foam mat on the floor. I stood in my room and smiled as the afternoon sun shone a dusty strip in the air. Having my own place in this large foreign place was comforting.

I’ve been stripped off most of my American ‘comforts’ and I have already gone through extreme change. The lack of: toilet paper, English language, showers and air conditioning are just the beginning. I live among stark poverty. I see people stricken with Malaria and children with tomato cans beg for money and food. I see goats lay down to sleep with people and small girls with babies tied to their backs. There are so many things different from what I was used to. But, there are also card games and tea, family meals and morning coffee (instant Nescafe still counts!). There are jokes and laughter, there’s complaining and praising and dancing to music and drums. There are friendships and family ties. I look forward to figuring out more as I become a part of my community and share culture with culture. So many things different, and so many things the same. I think I tripped into the right place.

MAURITANIA POST COMING SOON.

I'm doing very well and made it safely. I have so much to say, I can't get it out in one internet session.

Peace.

There is a major question many countries all over the world have tried to answer – that is “How do we preserve our culture?” Our world is continuously changing and we continue to gain closer access to other nations through our ever-improving technology. While modern ideas and developments can improve a country’s wellbeing, at times they can threaten the very things that make that country unique. This destruction of culture has fallen under many labels - one of the more familiar descriptions is McDonaldization. That is a society becoming more uniform, ration and predictable – based on American values of efficiency. The symbolism of yellow arches shine with modernization and promise of a better life, as well as the guarantee of greasy hamburgers and french fries 24 hours a day. Yet, while McDonaldization is based on improvement of society, it disrupts the very things that make a society distinctive. Yet, some people aren’t willing to hand over their cultural identity to Roland McDonald, and protests and demonstrations have surrounded attempts at integrating restaurants and ideas into a society. In Belize KFC suffered at the hands of Belizeans who preferred their chicken fried in coconut oil, and failed to thrive as a business.

Culture is a representative word that covers a great number of areas and subjects. In the book Taking Stock of Belize at 25 Years of Independence Michael Stone, in my opinion, effectively describes culture. Stone said that culture refers to an entire way of life, a people’s shared perception of what is essential to the human condition, a dynamic set of ideas expressing a common sense of place, history, and social belonging, framed in terms of language, values, norms, customs, traditions, spiritual orientation, and the like. Taking this into consideration Belize faces many things that threaten culture. Belize must not only be careful of modern, specifically American, ideas and technology, but also the lack of the means to preserve and promote culture. In a recent documentary about Belize musicians titled Three Kings of Belize, there were undertones of the difficulties of preserving culture. In the documentary producer Katia Paradis filmed the lives of Garifuna guitarist Paul Nabor, Mayan harp player Florencio Mess, and Creole accordionist Wilfred Peters. Though they still continue to express their culture passionately through music, they are not living the lives of national celebrities. This documentary may be the most solid way their lives and careers will be commemorated. You can find Florencio Mess in a dirt floor house, living off the land and carving instruments out of the wood from his backyard. Paul Nabor, who has become re-popular because of his collaborations with Andy Palacio, still makes appearances on stage at 79 – his small fragile frame clad in a sharp suit and hat. But, take a bus to Punta Gorda in Belize and you can easily find him sitting on a bench, smoking and strumming in the sun, his paranda music the background of daily routines. After living here and being immersed in the music, it’s hard to imagine such powerful expression of culture lost – but, because of the lack of documentation, outside of these borders not many know about these three kings.

Andy Palacio was one of the first Belizean musicians to gain international acclaim. He was an advocate for the preservation of Garifuna culture and produced the album Watina, which immediately became a hit in the Caribbean and is still spreading to the rest of the world. But Palacio, such a great expression of culture for Belize, recently died after suffering a massive stroke and heart attack. His death is a tragedy – passing at such a breakthrough in his career. I realized what Palacio truly meant to Belizeans one night when standing in line at a grocery store. The T.V. at the front of the store was showing local news on mute and the store bustled with people gathering things for the night’s dinner. When a story about Palacio’s condition came on the whole store stopped what they were doing and looked at the T.V. - everyone became quiet as the volume was turned up. As I glanced around at the people standing still in the store, absorbing every word of the report I could feel the collective holding of breath. Time was stopped for a second. The report, at that time, said Palacio’s condition was still critical, and when it was over the T.V. was muted and the bustle continued in slow motion as people processed the news.

The sad news of Palacio’s death brought thoughts about culture into the front of Belizean minds. I recently attended a discussion about culture held at the Image Factory, a business that produces and sells art. The focus was how to promote cultural awareness and preservation in the next 5 years. Many ideas and proposals were put forward, including an Art Fund to support new artistic talent by supplying loans and grants, as well as a project called “One child, One laptop” which will provide computers to children. The event was held next to the sea and attended by some of the most popular Belizean artists. In such a sad time, there was audible and tangible hope and perhaps a new passion to enhance and document culture.

It is promising that Belizeans realize the importance culture plays in a country. Artistic expression has historical implications and at times, reflects the true feelings and interpretation of events. For example, in Mexico, the art surrounding the Revolution played a major role in not only remembering the Revolution, but in forming ideas and opinions during the Revolution. So cultural expression not only acts as a history book, but can even be used as a tool for social mobilization.

So whether sung by Paul Nabor, written in poetry by Kalilah Enriquez, illustrated in cartoons by Charles Chavannes, painted by Michael Gordon, photographed by Noris Hall, or sculpted by Luke Palacio – Belizean culture will thrive. It stays alive through Carnival, through kite season, through bramming, through rice n’ beans and Maria Sharps hot sauce. Culture lives in the brightly colored homes, in the mahogany wood cut games, in the meat shops and in steel drums. Culture is preserved by Creole Project, which puts the Creole language in print, documenting a language that is prominently oral and given a promising future through the support of Yassar Musa and the Image Factory’s “Culture is Cool” program.

I’ve met Belize’s culture face-to-face and proud to claim roots in this small Central American country. Though there are things that threaten Belizean traditions, the pulse is strong and the vein runs deep from Belize City and through San Ignacio, Corozal, Dangriga, Orange Walk, and Punta Gorda. I look forward to keeping an eye and an ear on the developments. Watina will remain a powerful song to me – meaning “I called out”. Palacio’s passionate singing has found a place in the hearts of all Belizeans, and won’t be forgotten; therefore, because of him, the Garifuna culture has a found place in history.

The quiet shuffle of papers is interrupted by the deep bluesy voice of Roy Bowen as his song trails through the office halls with a round of Lola. My office-mates who sit with me in the conference room late one Friday evening smile and chuckle at our current situation. UNICEF set up a meeting entitled “Boys and Education: The Unspoken Gender Dimension” and it was currently in full swing. But, as events go, preparation crunch time had brought us to this curious moment. We had just returned from the opening reception and dinner ceremony, which kick-started the weekend conference and we still had last minute work to prepare for the next days’ discussions.

Eyes glazed and minds slowly ticking, we prepared folders for the participants of the conference glancing out at the darkened Belizean sky. The assembly line was in steady swing. Papers were rhythmically punched, three ring binders clicked, stacks lined and put into place. As we moved, serenaded by round two of Roy’s disembodied voice, quiet Creole conversation ensued. Here were dedicated workers.

But, sometimes I think that they forget what they do – my UNICEF friends. I remember Rana Flowers, the director, once asking me as she bustled by my desk one day “Why am I doing this, Ashley, remind me?” I smiled and quickly responded, half-jokingly, “It’s for the children…” She laughed, sighed and then headed back to her office.

It’s easy to forget though. The connection of ends and means gets lost in the stress and the rush. Working with UNICEF has shown me more than I expected. Not only how a UN agency works in a developing country, but how much a struggle it can be to prove your country needs help. UNICEF Belize is teetering on the edge of existence. When a country reaches a certain status, UNICEF isn’t needed anymore.

Belize statistically has decent national indicators, but socially – on a ground level – it’s obvious Belize needs as much help as they can get. So for UNICEF it comes down to proving the situation is dire in order to survive as an organization. That is where the disconnection settles in. At a UN government level the proof must not come in sad gripping stories and pictures of barefoot round bellied children, but in graphs and numbers.

Liquefying funds. Something I’ve become familiar with sitting in the conference room with the programme staff as they discuss the various state of UNICEF’s money; Where it’s going, where it came from, but most of all, how to get rid of it. Yes, Rid of It. That surprised me when I heard it tossed into a conversation about getting potable water and improved sanitation to the villages of Belize. There is a need to use up all available funds in order to PROVE you need them – or else the next year you will see less, and maybe be out of a job.

Compared to other counties that have UNICEF, the Belize situation seems peachy – small and peaceful, without war or extreme famine. So the staff at UNICEF must struggle daily to prove the children in Belize need assistance. They must speak louder than the statistics. It is difficult to do so with information like infant mortality rates, which per 1,000 births in Belize is 24, and in a country like Guyana is 48. Taking this into consideration it isn’t surprising that a country like Belize gets pushed into the background.

This is one of the reasons the staff gets caught up in money and management. But seeing is believing, and field visits seem to knock the sense back into their heads. Visiting a village in the Cayo District and observing children getting drinking and washing water out of rusty broken sinks is an image that can stick with you for a while – hopefully all the way back to the office. It is easy to sit and tick off “yes” or “no” on a chart asking what UNICEF Belize accomplished that year. But look deeper into the questions and the humanity creeps back into the room.

During the “Boys and Education: The Unspoken Gender Dimension” conference I saw people coming together on behalf of humanity. The bottom line of this successful conference was that there is an infringement upon the rights of children to education. The denying of rights is revealed in insufficient access, poor treatment in schools, high rates of violence, dilapidated condition of schools, and lack of trained teachers. The holes are wide, gaping and often obvious. Below the surface, the boys struggle. It has been proven that boys struggle in the system a little more than girls. There are many reasons for this, written in countless books and articles and is a trend that has been discussed for years. Yet, the problems for both genders to obtain an education that is complete and useful are intertwined, so the main point is that the school systems are lacking. Both boys and girls need better education, and that means multiple things. It means improved after school programs, more parent involvement, more opportunities to continue education, and less encounters with drugs and violence on the walk to and from school, to name a few.

Hearing people speak passionately about this issue was refreshing. I got to meet the people I had only researched. I also got to see the development of new innovative ideas to address the problem from all angles. Meeting such as these are the types of things that bring purpose back into the job. There is an undeniable power to watching a video of a young boy in Belize talking about how he dropped out because it was impossible for him to afford education at age 14 or listening to an 11 year old speak about how he was expelled for bad behaviour and now thinks it’s too late to continue his education. These are the things that put fuel back into the minds of UNICEF and other attendees of the conference. It is a great scene to witness. Those moments are to be treasured – because it won’t be long till we are back in the conference room liquefying funds and ticking off questions with simple answers.

With realization, complications grow – there is suddenly yet another identified problem, waiting to be fixed. UNICEF continues to teeter on the edge of existence and more issues continue to pile on, adding to the imbalance. But that is what is beautiful about an organization like UNICEF. There is a constant discovery. A new catalyst hit each week. A constant refreshing remembrance of why you choose the path. As deep as a person can get buried in papers and deadlines, any accomplishment changes a child’s life for the better. And that is something to be proud of.

You can feel the seasons change in Belize. An energy surges in the wind that sweeps through, smelling of sweet rain and awakening senses within that were previously hidden from the heat. For a moment, as I stand on the balcony of my home, I hear only the breeze rushing past my face and lifting my hair. Then Devil Dog begins her incessant bark.

Devil Dog is one of the many dogs on my block. She is the oddest looking dog I’ve ever seen, and the mother of what is most likely hundreds of strange looking offspring. Short and stubby, her legs move furiously underneath her podgy body as she explores her territory. For a while, whenever I road my bike past her house she would trail behind me, barking and snapping at my heels, wheezing from her longish snout. I would curse and lift my legs from the bike peddles and glide into my driveway, safely entering my own territory. Devil Dog would stand in the road looking quizzically, and rather evilly, in my direction, give one final bark and trot away. For Devil Dog and I, this became somewhat of an annoying game.

One determined day I went to the fridge and retrieved a piece of salami, walked outside and threw it in Devil Dogs direction. She leaped upon the meat, devoured it and looked back wanting more. I raised my hands and walked away. After that, Devil Dog never barked at me again. My salami peace offering must have ironed out the kinks in our relationship. This won’t change the fact that Devil Dog likes to stir shit up in the neighborhood, but at least we have our reckoning. Now, I can only shake my head as I watch Devil Dog race several times past other dogs locked behind fences, parading her freedom and sending them mad with frustration.

I have almost become used to the barking in Belize. Dylan and Anna barely recognize it anymore. It reminds me of how normal ambulance and police sirens became when I lived in Chicago. They are those things that become home, become oddly comforting. But, just as the normality of a siren wail in Chicago speaks for a larger problem, so does the bark of a Belizean dog.

There are just too many dogs here. They wander through the streets, stick thin and sickly. They become warped souls desperately looking for their next meal, so engrossed in salvaging that they seem unaware of the speeding cars that come devastatingly close. I once saw a brick of a dog bounce of the side of a car with a TUNK yelp and run away.

Most have recognized these dogs as a problem. They have visions in their heads of dogcatchers, taking all the strays away straight to a pound.

But, when they have voiced their concerns, their complaints fall upon frustrated ears.

“Dogs?!?” They say. “Dogs? You want us do to something about the dogs when we are still working on getting potable water to each citizen? Dogs! When we get more complaints ABOUT our Ombudsman than TO him? When our roads are broken and our government is corrupt. When our girls are pregnant at 15 and our boys in gangs. Dogs… when our constitution needs reworking, our people need more jobs, and we cringe at the thought of natural disaster – knowing it will rip at our economy is several ways? and you want to talk about dogs…”

That’s when a stiff finger points you toward the door.

The truth is raw. There are just too many other things to be done. Too much else to worry about, too much else to fix. So, the barking becomes ordinary and life ekes on.

When I flip open a Belizean newspaper, there is no question to the depth and girth of the country’s problems. The papers, written rather like American editorial pieces, are blunt. In the media there are two sides to each issue, which goes by the support of either the People’s United Party (PUP) or United Democratic Party (UDP). Depending on which party the paper supports, the content stories will full out bastardize their opposition. Currently the news stories are especially seething, as Said Musa, leader of PUP and current Prime Minister, gears up for elections and Dean Barrow, leader of the opposition UDP, struggles under the weight of the ugly history of his party and tries to gain steam.

While debates rage some are soothed by a Christmas ham or housing, others stand behind the hope of new fresh minds in power pulling the economy out of a rut and others wonder what difference it will make because both are corrupt.

It’s hard to organize priorities. Where do we start? I think about the puppy, dead on the road that I’ve passed several times this week. Swelling and rotting in the rain, guts halfway out and deteriorating into the road with each passing car. The overwhelming complexity of problems can swell up inside of you until you are ready to burst. You can feel them pushing up like a scream. And perhaps most frustrating is that at the point of bursting, they disperse - filling you up and then suddenly leaving you empty.

But then you can choose. You can choose to walk hollowed out and vacant or you can begin to fill the holes with determination. A favorite music artist of mine, Brother Ali, talks about facing hardships and sings about the advice someone once gave to him.

“She didn’t tell me to take it, she told me to use it”.

So, if frustrations fuel determination, I know there are many tenacious Belizeans out there.

When I was out one day I was about four blocks from the street I live on. To my left I heard the uproar of barking and howling. As I glanced at the crazed dogs jumping against a fence I caught the cause of commotion out of the corner of my eye. Devil Dog. Ears flopping and crossing the street in a zig-zag celebration dance. There she was, determined to claim her domain as far as her stub legs could manage. In a way I admire Devil Dog. Though she at the root of my barking annoyances, she is always out there with a cause of her own.

Every Friday Rosita comes to clean the house. She begins with the dishes, and takes pride in putting things in the “correct” spot. When we return, our beds are changed and made and everything is gently put into place – at times, if you are observant, down to the finest details. Last time she was here, I returned to my room to find a missing sock placed nicely on my dresser drawer. How she knew it was mine eludes me. But, there is more to this weekly cleaning, a deeper story. Dylan and Anna are precisely the people who would NOT have a maid to look after them, so of course, there has to be an explanation. That explanation is Kail Alamilla.

Kail is a child who spent just a short amount of time in this world. He spent 4 years changing lives of those who knew him, and even those who knew of him. Kail was the energetic, smiling son of Lisel. He was said to have a light about him, even in his weakest moments. Sadly, Kail was fated. A tumor was discovered in his brain when he was only 2, and after multiple surgeries and expensive flights to the States, the positive results were only temporary. As life mysteriously chooses, Kail wasn’t given much of a chance. To everyone’s dismay, Kail’s tumor returned. Burying itself deep in a place no doctor could cure.

Even with this evil gripping onto his tiny brain, Kail lived each day with what seemed to be extreme gratefulness. He threw his small brown body into every activity he could manage. Like children with severe illnesses often do, he accepted his sickness as normality. Kail was known to bounce off beds onto hard tiled floors laughing the whole way down, and scaring the living daylights out of his mom. With tubes attached and glasses on, Kail was still the cutest kid around. It was that light, that bright light that he exuded.

Everyone that knew him recognized this difference. He wasn’t a normal kid from the beginning. He leaked happiness into those around him, more so than any wide eyed child could.

Dylan said there was a game he used to play called Monster. He had a phase where he greeted friends with a rumbling growl. Hands up in claw position, face scrunched for maximum scariness. When Kail was approaching his final days in Chicago, Dylan walked into the room filled with the heavy scent of despair. Dylan saw the small boy, looking frail, asleep in the bed hooked up to a complicated system of wires and tubes. Kail slowly woke in the room where he would take his last breaths. Though the tumor had taken and damaged some precious tissues of his little brain, his eyes lit at the sight of his friend. Mustering all the strength he possibly could, he raised his hands in claw position and gave a pitiful, but satisfactory growl. Kail died soon after.

The light had left, and Lisel lived for a while in darkness, trying to see in a now dim world. Slowly she came back, with the support of family and friends and endless love - the strength of her family bonds unbreakable and sturdy. I think that she slowly discovered that Kail’s light wasn’t completely gone, just hidden. Of course his old clothes, stickers and drawings are still around (divided up and given to close friends and family), but he also continues on through stories and memories. His presence is strong and persistent. Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard innumerable stories and been taken on numerous memory trips. I felt that light, the warmness that Kail gave to so many. His story touched me. I can only look at pictures of a mocha child, with a toothy smile and bright eyes. He is caught forever in a laughing pose and you can almost hear the child-like giggle rise up from the colourful paper. It’s no wonder that his favorite color was red, a warm passionate color. It was the color that splashed his funeral, which was not a funeral at all, but instead a Celebration of Life.

Rosita, she was there, by Kail’s side through it all. She helped Lisel when he was at his sickest moments. When Kail passed, she not only lost that little light, but a job too. Now, you see, Belize has this web, this system. It is a system of people who know people who know people. It is an intricate pattern that most don’t even understand. This elaborate web also does something else amazing. It catches you if you fall, embracing you in its surprising stickiness. When Rosita, who has four children of her own, began to slip, this web caught her quickly. Soon, everyone around who was affected by Kail and beyond offered her jobs. Jobs like cleaning the house, which isn’t necessary, but helpful. This Belizean web, if you’re lucky to sew in your own strings, will not fail you.

So Rosita comes each Friday and methodically begins her work. Life continues on and the web increases in its complexity. I can only hope to find and build my own design in this web during my stay. I’ve already tugged on the red colored strings that brought Kail’s story to me, and I can’t help but feel connections at the tips of my fingers.

I went to lunch with Lisel the other day. She just announced that she would be married to her new found soul mate, Rob. He is kind, understanding, able to take her crazy headstrong ways, and can cook! As she gushed in her pre-wed glow (her happiness is so strong its contagious!) the date of her wedding sunk in deep. She chose the second anniversary of Kail’s death, January 1st. She explained that nothing can stop this day from being a celebration – a celebration of the life of the beautiful boy as well as the celebration of the light that brought Rob and her together. The wedding will be at sunrise. As the attendants watch the sun rise over the sea minds will be in several places. The drum music will play and the warm red of the sun will soak and saturate the guests. And Kail will continue to live in memories.

In memory of Kail Alamilla (2002-2006)

There is a man in Belize who wears a gravel sack for pants everyday. If there’s a chill in the air he may put on a shirt, a gravel sack shirt of course. He sits with his wheelbarrow by the side of the road and waits. He waits for his customers, who buy his gravel. He collects his gravel from the ground, puts it in his bags and sells it to people who will use it for gardens and other random purposes. This is how he lives.

Gravel man, whom I’ve so gracefully nicknamed, is silent. I pass by him and say hello, or give him a nod, and he just looks straight ahead into his own little world. His eyes set and focused with a curly beard framing his face, he survives in this quiet, but legendary existence. He is probably oblivious to the fact that Belizeans claim him as their own quirky character. I can only guess people are intrigued and astonished at his meager existence. Not many people would live a life as raw as this man.

Though gravel man seems to ignore me (for now), other Belizeans are beginning to recognize me. I’m finding it difficult to take a ride or go to work without someone noticing me along the way. The problem is that the amount of people I’ve met does not keep up with my brain’s capacity at remembering names. I also have the unfair factor of being the new one among a humongous group of acquaintances. And the ‘I’ve-seen-you-twice-so-now-we’re-friends’ deal doesn’t help much either.

Among the factors against me, Belizeans’ car windows are tinted to what has to be illegal shades and doesn’t make recognition easier. When a car passes and honks I glance to the side to see a black screen where windows should be, I can only hope the driver realizes I can’t make out their face in the shadowy darkness.

It is nice to be accepted into the daily flow. I feel like I belong as I ride by a person who calls out my name. It’s also nice that most people around here assume I’m Belizean until I open my mouth. I kept up the charade with Anita, the lady who sells bananas at the road by my house, for some time. She started by speaking to me in Spanish, which in the beginning was Spanish I could keep up with. “Cuantos bananas?” and “Hola, cómo estas? Ningunos bananas hoy?” and “Dónde está su bicicleta hoy?” were all things to which I could respond. But, one day when I stopped to buy bananas and she began to rapidly talk to me about my job, I struggled to find some words and she caught me. It was “fun” explaining to her why I was in Belize in Spanish. I’m 50 percent sure she is very confused about my stay. She kept saying something about my skin color – which once again threw someone for a loop.

I’m hoping the Spanish class I’m taking at the Mexican Embassy will help me eventually clear things up for Anita. Three nights a week for an hour I sit with my Spanish-challenged friends to try and improve our non-eloquent childlike babble. Our teacher is a spunky woman with what seems like too big a personality for her small crumpled body. She is older, wrinkled and mostly immobile, but is quick as a whip and more flirtatious with the men than Paris Hilton. The students in the class range from 20 – 60 and are all in the same place. We come together to laugh at each others mistakes and have debates intermingled with long pauses and multiple “ummmm’s”.

This class is where I met some of my Peace Corps friends. We gather before and after chatting about our week’s adventures. They are slowly preparing me to be accepted into the Peace Corps family, telling me the secrets of the club. My impending Peace Corps position comes closer every day. April 2008 I’ll be off again to a new place in Africa. Most of the volunteers found out only 4 months before they left, so my country placement remains question marked. I do know I’ll be teaching ESL and doing youth development.

I’m lucky, because in Belize connections are inevitable. I found a woman, Dylan and Anna’s friend Deb, who teaches ESL in Belize. She is letting me in on the ways of successful ESL courses. I am welcomed into her classes so I can see her in action, and she has all the resources I could ever dream of. Everything I come across seems to make Peace Corps more real to me. But for now, I’m La Vie Bohème Belize.

It’s a wonderful feeling to become familiar with a new place. I have got my daily grind down and my weekly schedule set. I’ve learned to roll my pants when I bike to interning to keep the grease off the right pant-leg and to carry a plastic bag to put over my seat when I lock it up in case of rain. I’ve also found that it isn’t that hard to ride a bike in heels (I love pant/heel intern clothes combo and a bike isn’t gonna stop me). If I walk, then I have to pack flip flops in my bag for a more comfortable stroll – walking home in heels on a gravely road isn’t desirable.

As I was walking home the other day I heard a honk. I turned expecting a dark window or another face I couldn’t place a name to. But, it wasn’t. It was the beautiful shining face of my cousin Kaya. Her hair set in braids, bright smile and athletic build; she called my name out from a car blaring with bumping beats.

“Need a ride?” she asked.

I ran across the street and hopped into the car with her friends.

October 7, 2007

Belize City was built on a swamp. It gurgles and spits under the heat while frogs flourish and band together to create the night’s raucous symphony. Yet, it doesn’t sink into the muck. Sophisticated systems of boards and moats and standing pools of water surround the streets and curbs. Tadpoles and small fish dart about the murky water and children play with sticks in the side-street ponds. The city somehow remains wet and dry simultaneously. Streets are quick to deteriorate under such circumstances, and these gravel roads welcome erosion.

“You betah watch out for dem craters!” a Belizean woman once said laughing as she shook her head, “deh no potholes honey, deh craters!”

The roads are not the only things deteriorating in this swampy city. I recently went out on the streets with some of the UNICEF staff to talk to children about how safe they felt living in Belize. Their feelings of safety were just like the roads, broken and unstable. I felt the lump in my throat swell with each interview.

Their bright smiles and embarrassed beginnings faded into serious and persistent answers as we questioned them. These kids, from 6 to 18, are overly-mature and startlingly aware of the state of their country. They don’t feel safe in Belize. They don’t feel safe because of the rising crime rate, the large number of teenage pregnancies, the reality of HIV/AIDS, the potholed streets and the lack of job opportunities, to name a few.

“What about living in Belize makes you feel unsafe?” My colleague asked a young girl no older than 10.

“The Crime. My poppa just got shot last week.” She said.

Now, these streets are not constantly zinging with bullets. But there are areas that are not safe at night. Gangs are increasing in size and power. The newspapers bring stories of drive by’s on bikes and bullet ridden bodies rushed to hospitals. When we asked these kids why they thought the crime was so bad, they would sigh and shrug and say that there was ‘Not Enough’. They said there were not enough activities after school, not enough parent involvement, not enough decent police men and women. And there was also ‘Too Much’. Too much peer pressure leading to unsafe sex, too much drug use, too much fighting at schools when teachers stepped out into the hallway.

They know. Their minds are ticking and churning. They reek of potential. They just have to be pointed in the right direction so they can use it. And that’s just the problem. How DO we do that?

That’s when you start to feel small and overwhelmed. It seems impossible to directly help these kids. The work we did that day will be packaged into a tight presentation and delivered to a room of people that have all the problems of the Caribbean grinding on minds. No matter how desperate and desolate the situation, it’s a matter of proving one problem more deplorable than the other.

Sometimes these problems are given attention and they have a moment where the spotlight is shone on them. For the potholed roads, this moment comes before elections. With the elections around the corner the roads will be smoother. People United Party and United Democrat Party will go on a spree of improving the city to improve the number of votes they get. While everyone is grateful, they know that the paved holes in the roads are only temporary. They are fixed quickly and unprofessionally, soon to fall victim to another rainstorm and open up even more gaping then before.

A program can be launched in the name of the children, looking new and hopeful, gleaming with possibilities. But, with lack of funding and human resources, these programs fall through and kids see another failed attempt at making their lives more livable.

“Too Much” and “Not Enough” are frustrating. They usually go hand in hand and continually add to each other’s lists. It’s a slap in the face to see the realness of things, but instead of giving into problems and disappointments, you have to try again. I am humbled by the amount of organizations in Belize trying to make a difference, and I hope that they are successful. One step after another, slow and steady. The video of kid’s speaking their minds will flow into an audience during the presentation and hopefully, flick a switch in someone’s head. Everything matters in the end.

September 23, 2007

I begin in the house, lifted off the swampy ground with concrete stilts. It is mid day as the sun shines through the shuttered windows and I welcome the slight breeze the blows between the slats. I finish my meal of mashed black beans and salsa on a crispy tortilla and am ready to go. The checklist is in my head; Bike, map, water, keys. Blissful simplicity. As I leave I close the shutters in case of a squall – short, hard rain – and lock up.

The roads, paved graveled potholed, make for a bumpy and sharp maneuvered ride. I know I’ll feel it later. As I peddle through the salty air I pass the things I’m beginning to become familiar with. The woman selling bananas day and night by the side of the road, the half built houses with innards exposed next to the brightly colored homes with rows of clothes drying on lines, and Annie’s street side café. A dog races out of a gate and I feel my heat quicken as the dog viciously barks. Those dogs can really scare the hell out of you – but it’s advised to keep riding on, so I do. A block later, after successfully riding straight through a puddle, I manage to lose the dog, and get a new design of mud splatter on my shirt.

As I round the path I see the UNICEF building where I will be interning. It looks oddly new in such a sun and time worn place. Built just this year it will be the setting of what I hope to be a great learning experience. The meeting I had with the director, was earlier this week. I managed to make a complete fool out of myself when the buzz-in door decided to malfunction and the staff watched from behind the glass as they kept buzzing and I still could not get in. He finally opened the door manually (here I curse technology) and we all had a good laugh. I learned I will be working with everyone on various projects, mostly projects dealing with improving health and education for children. The people in the office speak Creole, Spanish or a combination of both. This means for the first month I’m guaranteed to make myself even more foolish by following up conversations with “What? Can you say that again?” But, everyone is encouraging, and they probably find entertainment in my confusion.

As I ride past men on the road, some greet me with a common snakelike hiss. This hiss replaces what is most likely a vulgar comment or whistle and is something best ignored. On these roads attention is necessary anyway, as cars can come breathtakingly close. My bike riding skills seem inferior to those I pass. Belizeans can juggle bags, pull other bikes beside them, weave through the smallest places, and have multiple friends and children attached to the handlebars. Dual bike-riding is one skill I hope to master.

I speed past the Princess Hotel, which contains a movie theater and dance club. The club, Club Next, is where my Aunt Karen works on weekends. She works 12-5 a.m. three days a week managing promotional duties. When she isn’t busy, she dances. I danced at her side one night till 4 a.m. and was amazed at her nonchalant energy. Her short dreads swing and her body bumps to the rhythm she knows so well. She doesn’t think too hard about her second job, which switches her schedule from 5 a.m. bedtime to 5 a.m. wake up.

I ride through the streets, which are always bustling with people going about their days. Just a few days before these streets were rumbling with music and swelling with food and drink. It was Belize’s 26th year of independence, and celebration was mandatory. Speaker boxes were stacked 10 feet tall and the music was so loud it vibrated deep in my chest. I saw young and old move the beats; feet flying, hips swaying, and heads nodding everywhere I looked. It amazed me to see a child bounced to sleep on his dancing mother’s breast, steps away from the blaring reggae.

After practically slamming into a parked car avoiding a screaming group of kids, I regain balance and continue onto the main road. I pass the road which is the street where my grandparents, Larry and Crystal, live. I will always have an open opportunity to lunch there. Crystal, who is small, strong and sharp, always seems to have an endless amount of food. It is common for people to pop by and sit down for a quick lunch – which Belizeans go home to eat mid day. Sandwich and microwave are not in the vocabulary. These lunches always have rice and beans, sometimes have eggplant, occasionally have pig’s feet.

Crys has a way of bringing everything into perspective. I sat with her on the couch of her alley-entrance house and listen to her speak of the children’s Independence parade. As she watched the endless lines of jumping, squealing children, she said, “where… where are these kids going to get jobs when they grow?”

I continue to ride and find myself on a road stretching the length of the glassy sea. Now things become wonderfully unfamiliar. Sweat is now dripping as the hot sun bores into my skin. I pass coconut stands, darkened shops, bustling schools and people walking by in business suits making their way back to work. I realize I now have no clue where I am, and decide to pull into a seaside park. I rest on the edge of the sea watching a slow funeral procession pass in the street, a hundred people dressed in white solemnly following a Hurst.

Laying out my map I gaze at the place which will be my home for the next 6 months. If this first week speaks for what’s to come, I am satisfied. Though so unfamiliar, this place holds warmth in people and places. It holds answers to my questions and information I never dreamed of learning. I’m sure I will find my niche. I let the cool water lap at my feet and begin to find my location on the map spread out before me.