Request:
Can someone send me a battery (or four) for my retro rangefinder camera Yashica Electro 35 GSN. You can get them at Radio Shack or maybe Wallgreens for about 4 bucks. Look for the 4LR44 1.5 V or the 6V (PX)28A. They weigh about nothing, and they're cheap. Don't you want me to be happy?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Camera Obscura
This is my friend Abdelai, who I'm teaching the basics in English and who follows me around like a lost puppy. I didn't even take this picture, my friend Moustapha was fooling with my electronic gadgets. It's cool though, yes?
This is my family in M'Beidia. I don't have time to tell you all of their names. Still, I'll say that Moussa, the baby in Tutu's arms (girl on end) once pooped on me. Aren't they cute?
These are some miniature M'Beidian's playing soccer with the miniature basket ball I gave them.
Me and Hamid-Daa eating lunch the other day at my house. Notice the fork (that's mine). I feel it is my right when eating with children. In the cup is yummy crystal lite raspberry something or other.
Yaqob and Cheikh. Yaqob has a freakily good American accent when I get him to say my real name, and things like 'hello' . Cheikh has a really dirty face.Tuesday, January 30, 2007
You could be in pictures
Hi gang!
I think I was just finally able to post some pictures. I'm an awful photographer, and there aren't many, but its something. More when I can get it.
The photo site is this: http://flickr.com/photos/desertletters
Still, I'm going to try to transfer them to the blog. We'll see how that goes.
I think I was just finally able to post some pictures. I'm an awful photographer, and there aren't many, but its something. More when I can get it.
The photo site is this: http://flickr.com/photos/desertletters
Still, I'm going to try to transfer them to the blog. We'll see how that goes.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
X's and O's
The day after Christmas I came to Nouakchott, and it was good. At 10:30 in the evening everything was lit-up and loud, all the cars zooming and racing. They honk with such perfect art, it's as though it were orchestrated. This (the honking) and the flashing of headlights occur at seemingly random and irregular times, the pattern is inscrutable, at least to me.
No one remembers this -the relative 'citi-ness', the aliveness of Nouakchott- from our first hurried pass through six long months ago. We remember a long patch of road, and dirt, and chaos. It's as though we all had been sharing some waking dream.
Since then I've been exploring a bit, eating a lot and generally having a grand old time. Me and my American pals have been catching up in the brief snitches of time in which we are in each other's presence, in which we pass by hurriedly, trying to relate 4 months of divergent experiences and knowing that it doesn't really matter it we do. I think Nouakchott makes things fit, I think it's like a piece of the puzzle. But even as it answers some questions, it asks many others. Let me explain.
In my village I eat cous-cous and rice, and we do not have chairs. We do not have streets. In Nouakchott there are restaurants, there are a million taxi-cabs, there are women with their heads uncovered, there are women wearing pants. There are real hotels and there are omelets with ham. There is everything.
I'm trying to figure out the divide between the two worlds (it is, in fact, a quantum leap). I'm thinking about the middle ground, and where it exists. Why can I get breakfast in Nouakchott, in a chrome-trimmed, olive-green cafe, served on elegant white plates with tiny cups of cafe au lait, and fresh orange juice? In my village we don't eat on plates, and everything is the same color - brown, like the sand.
What I'm trying to get across is not how awful village life is (it's not) or what I have to do without. I'm not even talking about the difference between upper class and lower, or rural and urban, because that much is obvious and it's results are predictable. No, it's about the fact that what exists in Nouakchott seems to come from nowhere, it has no other precedent, that I've seen, in the rest of the country. As such, it's like an alien outgrowth, it's like an island.
I ate in a little cafe for lunch today, with shiny tables, flat screen televisions and a waiter. I had an incredible hamburger and stylish frites and a glass-bottled coke poured over lemon and ice. Where did they learn to place the forks just so? How can I be drinking a strawberry milkshake from a straw, when last week I was chasing goats from my house? I feel dizzy, like a skipped a few steps in coming here, I feel like the whole country did.
Plus, not to get overly sentimental about nothing, but how sweet and heartbreaking and melancholy and hopeful to eat a personal pizza with olives and an orange fanta, served by a uniformed young man, in a country where almost everywhere else, life is like the 12th century. I feel as though Nouakchott is growing, like an awkward teenager, with its often (ironically) pretentious mannerisms and hidden graces. I think it has something to prove. And that makes me have a kind of un-earned pride, and smile to myself.
What's more, for all its incongruity, this city also makes Mauritania make sense. When you've been living your life in the aforementioned ancient past, you begin to wonder how a country like this, so unconnected and lethargic and aloof, doesn't collapse under the weight of its own apathy and sink back into the desert. But Nouakchott is like Mauritania's respectable brother, who you never knew about before, and who presents a suit and tie and an attentive face to the rest of the world. Granted, the face is a little dirty, and the thrift store-ish suit is mothbitten and smudged... But still, what cheeky optimism! What precious earnestness! I want to bottle it up. I want to make it a cake. I want to give it a big kiss.
Mwah.
No one remembers this -the relative 'citi-ness', the aliveness of Nouakchott- from our first hurried pass through six long months ago. We remember a long patch of road, and dirt, and chaos. It's as though we all had been sharing some waking dream.
Since then I've been exploring a bit, eating a lot and generally having a grand old time. Me and my American pals have been catching up in the brief snitches of time in which we are in each other's presence, in which we pass by hurriedly, trying to relate 4 months of divergent experiences and knowing that it doesn't really matter it we do. I think Nouakchott makes things fit, I think it's like a piece of the puzzle. But even as it answers some questions, it asks many others. Let me explain.
In my village I eat cous-cous and rice, and we do not have chairs. We do not have streets. In Nouakchott there are restaurants, there are a million taxi-cabs, there are women with their heads uncovered, there are women wearing pants. There are real hotels and there are omelets with ham. There is everything.
I'm trying to figure out the divide between the two worlds (it is, in fact, a quantum leap). I'm thinking about the middle ground, and where it exists. Why can I get breakfast in Nouakchott, in a chrome-trimmed, olive-green cafe, served on elegant white plates with tiny cups of cafe au lait, and fresh orange juice? In my village we don't eat on plates, and everything is the same color - brown, like the sand.
What I'm trying to get across is not how awful village life is (it's not) or what I have to do without. I'm not even talking about the difference between upper class and lower, or rural and urban, because that much is obvious and it's results are predictable. No, it's about the fact that what exists in Nouakchott seems to come from nowhere, it has no other precedent, that I've seen, in the rest of the country. As such, it's like an alien outgrowth, it's like an island.
I ate in a little cafe for lunch today, with shiny tables, flat screen televisions and a waiter. I had an incredible hamburger and stylish frites and a glass-bottled coke poured over lemon and ice. Where did they learn to place the forks just so? How can I be drinking a strawberry milkshake from a straw, when last week I was chasing goats from my house? I feel dizzy, like a skipped a few steps in coming here, I feel like the whole country did.
Plus, not to get overly sentimental about nothing, but how sweet and heartbreaking and melancholy and hopeful to eat a personal pizza with olives and an orange fanta, served by a uniformed young man, in a country where almost everywhere else, life is like the 12th century. I feel as though Nouakchott is growing, like an awkward teenager, with its often (ironically) pretentious mannerisms and hidden graces. I think it has something to prove. And that makes me have a kind of un-earned pride, and smile to myself.
What's more, for all its incongruity, this city also makes Mauritania make sense. When you've been living your life in the aforementioned ancient past, you begin to wonder how a country like this, so unconnected and lethargic and aloof, doesn't collapse under the weight of its own apathy and sink back into the desert. But Nouakchott is like Mauritania's respectable brother, who you never knew about before, and who presents a suit and tie and an attentive face to the rest of the world. Granted, the face is a little dirty, and the thrift store-ish suit is mothbitten and smudged... But still, what cheeky optimism! What precious earnestness! I want to bottle it up. I want to make it a cake. I want to give it a big kiss.
Mwah.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
