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.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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.
Friday, December 29, 2006
The Holy Ghost
Ali says that people who don't pray 5 times a day will eat fire. That's the expression they use for going to hell after death- apparently just burning in it isn't graphic enough.
Ali is a driver of the car which goes back and forth between El Qidiya and Nouakchott, he lives there sometimes, and sometimes here. His ethnicity is mixed, his skin is like the color of caramel sauce. He's tall, probably six-two or so. He's funny and persistant and shrill (his voice can get shrieky). His hairline's receding, though he's only twenty-six. He's says I'm going to be charcoal, but he's my friend.
Everyone wants me to become a Muslim. They're convinced its the best religious option on the market, not that they've done much shopping around, and that the rewards are manifold -'Oh, when you become a Muslim, ' they exclaim, 'what a party we'll have! We'll eat meat and drink milk - everyone will come.' The downsides of not converting (the fire thing) speak for themselves.
Almost everyday, religion comes up in some fashion or another, although we are strongly discouraged from discussing it (no arguments here) The worst part is that debate about the existance of god, or any of the juicy and trivial particulars therein are null and void. God's existance is not in question. Everyone knows it, (of course) - to deny it is to be ungrateful, wicked, blind and sinful. The concept of non-belief in god has zero support. That means we're all obliged to profess our undying love for the Christian religion, something which makes me and many of my fellow Americans a little sick in the tummy. Every time I'm forced to say I'm a Christian (Nasrani) a little part of me shrivels and dies inside. Still, Christianity is one of the three 'religions of the book' mentioned in the Qu'ran and so is afforded a god-sanctioned modicum of respect. Supposedly. Although that argument rarely goes very far in my village.
'We're all people of the book' I say, 'you have your religion and I have mine.'
'Oh, yes, yes' they answer, 'But Islam is better. Islam is so gooood! Why aren't you a Muslim?'
Maybe all of this bothers me more than it would a person of actual faith. I have little patience and no respect for this unqualified, unsubtle and uneducated dogmatism in America, much less here.
'Do you know, ' I ask them, when they tell me I'm going to hell, 'that there are millions of people who are right now saying the same thing about you? But those people are awful,' I add, 'those people are stupid.'
'Of course they are!' they say, 'because we're not the one's going to hell.'
No, I think, but there's no way to explain it, that's not why....
Anyway, the other day Ali's evangelism was especially out of control. We were eating Hruub, grilled cowpeas in the pod, and he was starting to shriek. It had been going on all morning, all through tea, and none of my standard arguments were working 'But my family is Christian, how can I change?' and 'I pray, just not like a Muslim. I Jesus-pray.' and 'Why don't you respect me?' (this one's from the heart) 'I respect you!' Nothing going. Finally I had to step outside. I wanted to wash the garden mud from my arms and feet anyway.
I sat down against one stony side of the house, in the sun, and Lemrobbit brought the maqarresh over to me and waited while I rinsed off. Then he said 'Now watch' as he began to wash his arms and wrists and hands with a little splash of water scrubbed hard against his skin. 'Do you know this? How we wash to pray?' I said, 'No, please show me.'
He cleaned the patch of skin between each elbow and fingertips 3 times, his skin squeaking. He washed his face twice, his nose and cheeks contorting like a rubber mask under his finger's pressure. His skin gleamed, black and shining and he smiled as I watched him intently. He washed his long brown feet and ankles, the insides of his ears, the fuzzy top of his head. It was so beautiful, after Ali's screeching it felt like a sigh, so quiet and respectful and polite and innocent. Lemrobbit is just like that - a tall 19 year old with a wide smile and no malice. This is where Mauritania's goodness lies, this is why it is so hard to find.
When he had finished, I said, 'thankyou Lemrobbit' and I'm not sure if he knew why, but I hope he did.
Ali is a driver of the car which goes back and forth between El Qidiya and Nouakchott, he lives there sometimes, and sometimes here. His ethnicity is mixed, his skin is like the color of caramel sauce. He's tall, probably six-two or so. He's funny and persistant and shrill (his voice can get shrieky). His hairline's receding, though he's only twenty-six. He's says I'm going to be charcoal, but he's my friend.
Everyone wants me to become a Muslim. They're convinced its the best religious option on the market, not that they've done much shopping around, and that the rewards are manifold -'Oh, when you become a Muslim, ' they exclaim, 'what a party we'll have! We'll eat meat and drink milk - everyone will come.' The downsides of not converting (the fire thing) speak for themselves.
Almost everyday, religion comes up in some fashion or another, although we are strongly discouraged from discussing it (no arguments here) The worst part is that debate about the existance of god, or any of the juicy and trivial particulars therein are null and void. God's existance is not in question. Everyone knows it, (of course) - to deny it is to be ungrateful, wicked, blind and sinful. The concept of non-belief in god has zero support. That means we're all obliged to profess our undying love for the Christian religion, something which makes me and many of my fellow Americans a little sick in the tummy. Every time I'm forced to say I'm a Christian (Nasrani) a little part of me shrivels and dies inside. Still, Christianity is one of the three 'religions of the book' mentioned in the Qu'ran and so is afforded a god-sanctioned modicum of respect. Supposedly. Although that argument rarely goes very far in my village.
'We're all people of the book' I say, 'you have your religion and I have mine.'
'Oh, yes, yes' they answer, 'But Islam is better. Islam is so gooood! Why aren't you a Muslim?'
Maybe all of this bothers me more than it would a person of actual faith. I have little patience and no respect for this unqualified, unsubtle and uneducated dogmatism in America, much less here.
'Do you know, ' I ask them, when they tell me I'm going to hell, 'that there are millions of people who are right now saying the same thing about you? But those people are awful,' I add, 'those people are stupid.'
'Of course they are!' they say, 'because we're not the one's going to hell.'
No, I think, but there's no way to explain it, that's not why....
Anyway, the other day Ali's evangelism was especially out of control. We were eating Hruub, grilled cowpeas in the pod, and he was starting to shriek. It had been going on all morning, all through tea, and none of my standard arguments were working 'But my family is Christian, how can I change?' and 'I pray, just not like a Muslim. I Jesus-pray.' and 'Why don't you respect me?' (this one's from the heart) 'I respect you!' Nothing going. Finally I had to step outside. I wanted to wash the garden mud from my arms and feet anyway.
I sat down against one stony side of the house, in the sun, and Lemrobbit brought the maqarresh over to me and waited while I rinsed off. Then he said 'Now watch' as he began to wash his arms and wrists and hands with a little splash of water scrubbed hard against his skin. 'Do you know this? How we wash to pray?' I said, 'No, please show me.'
He cleaned the patch of skin between each elbow and fingertips 3 times, his skin squeaking. He washed his face twice, his nose and cheeks contorting like a rubber mask under his finger's pressure. His skin gleamed, black and shining and he smiled as I watched him intently. He washed his long brown feet and ankles, the insides of his ears, the fuzzy top of his head. It was so beautiful, after Ali's screeching it felt like a sigh, so quiet and respectful and polite and innocent. Lemrobbit is just like that - a tall 19 year old with a wide smile and no malice. This is where Mauritania's goodness lies, this is why it is so hard to find.
When he had finished, I said, 'thankyou Lemrobbit' and I'm not sure if he knew why, but I hope he did.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Rubber ducky
The other day I took a bath out in the open, near the well, under the date palm trees and the sun. Since then, I've done it three more times, though the weather has been progressively cooler so the bath becomes more than anything a battle between my wish to be not-filthy and my wish to be not-freezing. You never know how quickly you can get clean until the wind is blowing on your wet and naked hiny. Brrrr...
The bath itself is nothing to write home about (ironically) but if you want to be just like me, and take one Mauritanian style, first go out and find your nearest water-well. Then fill up a bucket (the cut-off bottom half of a plastic ten liter jug) Don't fall in! Find a secluded spot, away from the sheep, and soap up with your handkerchief and the brownest soap you can find. Then rinse, and jump back into your clothes as fast as you can. Yikes!
Unfortunately, the last time, as I was performing that final step, hopping around one-footed trying to put my pants on, I came down hard on a woody plant stem, still stuck in the ground, and it went straight through my sandal and 1/2 inch into my foot. I couldn't believe it!
Anyway, there I was, like a scene out of an old western, trying to pull the stick from my foot, like when they pull the arrow out of some cowboy-hatted ruffian. And because I couldn't grab it well enough with my fingers, I even had to yank it out with my teeth ( I know, right?!) By the way, it does hurt more coming out, in case you were wondering. I realized afterward when the wound began spewing blood, that it hadn't been such a grand idea to do that in the middle of the fields at 2 o clock, with no one around, but I didn't pass out or anything that dramatic, so crisis averted. Still, I've got to start looking where I put my toesies - every other day I run into the huge rocks on the ground everywhere and slice gaping holes in my feet. What a tool.
Later that day, Sidi Mohamed stopped by with his crappy boombox which played horrible dubs of Arabic dance music, and hung out for a while. He's been doing this a lot lately - I think he got the notion from somewhere that I don't have any music to listen to, or at least nothing with the entertainment value of his squealing jams in Arabic. 'Should I leave the boom-box?' he asks, when rising to go, 'No, you take it' I say generously, 'what will you listen to'
He has a repertoire of about five tapes, dusty cassettes with opaque plastic covers, which he keeps in the jiggling kangaroo pouch of his bou-bou. A few of them are recordings of authentic Mauritanian music, which I actually love. It's austere and acoustic, rhythmic and complex and mournful.
He has another one, filled with American hip-hop and club songs from about 3 years ago. He has M&M, and 50-cent and other soulful crooners, all playing at about twice their speed, and the other night he, a head-bobbing Lemrobbit and I listened to the thumping beats as the sunlight faded. It's strange to hear this blue-worded, sexualized music with such strict and pious people, but of course they can't understand a word of it. So whatevs.
Dancing is a limited sport here. Lemrobbit's adorable head-bobbing aside, most people dance, when they do, (in short, giggling bursts) like awkward eighth-graders. That is to say, when they try to imitate the way they think Westerners dance (how would they know? There are no televisions here. It's all heresay) When they dance the way they're supposed to, the way that comes naturally, the way that's evolved in the desert, it's lovely and sensuous and subtle and sexy (though they would never think it). All that extra cloth from their bou-bous and muleffas suddenly makes sense, it's like two more arms. But that's just me anthropologistizing. Mostly, they couldn't find the beat in a bucket.
What I like much better than the transplanted boombox tunes, is Sidi Mohameds one-string guitar, called a gimbra. It's not so much a guitar as it is an old metal bowl, covered with a calf-skin, stretched and hardened like a drum, with a stick jutting out. It's hideous; it's makeshift and marvelous. I can't believe that is produces any sound worth listening to but it does - Sidi Mohamed plays a whining and hypnotic ostinato, his fingers sliding the octave (finding harmonics - for real) tapping the brittle cowskin drum in rhythmic counterpoint. The tuning is maybe just an interesting accident - it's some sort of odd octagonic scale (for you theory geeks) The music is repetative, he plays five minutes of the same two bars, but the voice would twist and wind over top of it, if it were there. He doesn't sing, because he's too shy, but I can hear it anyway.
This inevitably brings up all of those questions, even if I don't know it, about what place music has in my life still, and what place it's going to have when I come back. Oh goodness. Luckily, all of that can wait a few years. Along with sodapop, plumbing and the rest of civilization.
The bath itself is nothing to write home about (ironically) but if you want to be just like me, and take one Mauritanian style, first go out and find your nearest water-well. Then fill up a bucket (the cut-off bottom half of a plastic ten liter jug) Don't fall in! Find a secluded spot, away from the sheep, and soap up with your handkerchief and the brownest soap you can find. Then rinse, and jump back into your clothes as fast as you can. Yikes!
Unfortunately, the last time, as I was performing that final step, hopping around one-footed trying to put my pants on, I came down hard on a woody plant stem, still stuck in the ground, and it went straight through my sandal and 1/2 inch into my foot. I couldn't believe it!
Anyway, there I was, like a scene out of an old western, trying to pull the stick from my foot, like when they pull the arrow out of some cowboy-hatted ruffian. And because I couldn't grab it well enough with my fingers, I even had to yank it out with my teeth ( I know, right?!) By the way, it does hurt more coming out, in case you were wondering. I realized afterward when the wound began spewing blood, that it hadn't been such a grand idea to do that in the middle of the fields at 2 o clock, with no one around, but I didn't pass out or anything that dramatic, so crisis averted. Still, I've got to start looking where I put my toesies - every other day I run into the huge rocks on the ground everywhere and slice gaping holes in my feet. What a tool.
Later that day, Sidi Mohamed stopped by with his crappy boombox which played horrible dubs of Arabic dance music, and hung out for a while. He's been doing this a lot lately - I think he got the notion from somewhere that I don't have any music to listen to, or at least nothing with the entertainment value of his squealing jams in Arabic. 'Should I leave the boom-box?' he asks, when rising to go, 'No, you take it' I say generously, 'what will you listen to'
He has a repertoire of about five tapes, dusty cassettes with opaque plastic covers, which he keeps in the jiggling kangaroo pouch of his bou-bou. A few of them are recordings of authentic Mauritanian music, which I actually love. It's austere and acoustic, rhythmic and complex and mournful.
He has another one, filled with American hip-hop and club songs from about 3 years ago. He has M&M, and 50-cent and other soulful crooners, all playing at about twice their speed, and the other night he, a head-bobbing Lemrobbit and I listened to the thumping beats as the sunlight faded. It's strange to hear this blue-worded, sexualized music with such strict and pious people, but of course they can't understand a word of it. So whatevs.
Dancing is a limited sport here. Lemrobbit's adorable head-bobbing aside, most people dance, when they do, (in short, giggling bursts) like awkward eighth-graders. That is to say, when they try to imitate the way they think Westerners dance (how would they know? There are no televisions here. It's all heresay) When they dance the way they're supposed to, the way that comes naturally, the way that's evolved in the desert, it's lovely and sensuous and subtle and sexy (though they would never think it). All that extra cloth from their bou-bous and muleffas suddenly makes sense, it's like two more arms. But that's just me anthropologistizing. Mostly, they couldn't find the beat in a bucket.
What I like much better than the transplanted boombox tunes, is Sidi Mohameds one-string guitar, called a gimbra. It's not so much a guitar as it is an old metal bowl, covered with a calf-skin, stretched and hardened like a drum, with a stick jutting out. It's hideous; it's makeshift and marvelous. I can't believe that is produces any sound worth listening to but it does - Sidi Mohamed plays a whining and hypnotic ostinato, his fingers sliding the octave (finding harmonics - for real) tapping the brittle cowskin drum in rhythmic counterpoint. The tuning is maybe just an interesting accident - it's some sort of odd octagonic scale (for you theory geeks) The music is repetative, he plays five minutes of the same two bars, but the voice would twist and wind over top of it, if it were there. He doesn't sing, because he's too shy, but I can hear it anyway.
This inevitably brings up all of those questions, even if I don't know it, about what place music has in my life still, and what place it's going to have when I come back. Oh goodness. Luckily, all of that can wait a few years. Along with sodapop, plumbing and the rest of civilization.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
The spirit of democracy
Now they play loud music all the time.
In Tijikja, it came from right outside our compound, the same 10 second song fragment on a loop, blaring from ratty speakers under a white tent.
In the market there was another song playing, and as I wandered toward it like a rat through the rubbly maze of dirt paths, one gradually faded into another, after a clash of initial cacophony.
It followed me to El Qidiya (it was like a bad dream) and set up shop in big tents, store fronts and an abandoned house, newly splashed with the white-painted logo of the PRDR.
This is the 'campaign' . Supposedly campaigning is confined to the two week period between November 4th and 19th, in which the various parties (about 1 million) spew out their state apportioned cash on things like this, the tee shirts, the posters, the tents and the music.
These are the regional campaigns, but Kahn, one of my supervisors who came to visit tells me its the same everywhere. "In Nouakchott," he says, his hands to his head, "you can't sleep! It never used to be like this- why this music, all the time? This does not make me want to vote." Later, he returned from the market and reported on his inspection of the campaign 'headquarters' - "It was just some small kids and their tapes" he said. It's like the Wizard of Oz. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to look behind the curtain?
Meanwhile, my return from Tijikja also found me moving out of my old house and into a new one. The day before the move, I dropped by my house, actually just one (10x20ft) room, to clean up. Its previous occupants had been animals, their dung, rusty metal bits and (a lot of) dirt. So me, and soon a few new little friends (they turn up like clockwork) started sweeping away, me with a grass hand broom, they with old palm fronds, making clouds of dust which swirled and gathered in the streaky sunlight.
The next day, I wrangled a donkey cart, and me and the 9 year old 'driver' loaded my junk onto the flat back, fastened it in with one tattered string, and we were off! (at a slow meander)
I hadn't been relishing the thought of parading through town with all of my crap -3 huge American bags, and the assorted other supplies I've picked up since coming here seems like an obscene amount of detritus for one person to have, when most families have less. Still, I needn't have worried, hardly anyone was out to gawk at me. It was after one o clock and the market was closed. BTW, donkey travel is pretty reasonable, a trip across town was only 200 ougiyas (about 80 cents) Still, I tipped the little rascal an extra 100, and gave him a miniature orange. Someone's lucky day...
My new house is almost identical to the old, except for a big hole in the corner of the roof and a missing door. And though it doesn't look like much, you'd be surprised what a few colorful plastic mats layed over dirt and bumpy concrete can do in the way of ambiance. Suddenly a barren hovel becomes livable. And if it doesn't... well, you still live there.
After two weeks of campaigning and loud music, the elections took place on November 19th. It's an all-day thing, everything stops. It's true by the way- they dip your finger in purple ink. Because we're explicity forbidden by Peace Corps to be involved in any and all forms of politicking, I never got much of an insider's scoop, but this is the first free election held in Mauritania after last year's military coup. The peacefulness and good faith with which this took place (the military actually did hand over power, like they said they would) got us a mention two, count 'em two days in a row on the BBC (no one ever talks about us), but if you'd lived here for a while, you'd understand why it couldn't have been any other way.
Still, it's also obvious that the details of the democratic process are, at times, unclear here. Again and again people would ask me if I was voting.
'No.' I'd reply
'Why not?' I'd stare at them for a moment.
'Because I'm not Mauritanian.'
Without flinching, they'd always ask the same question. 'Well what's wrong with you?'
Oh boy, I'd think, how much time do you have....?
In Tijikja, it came from right outside our compound, the same 10 second song fragment on a loop, blaring from ratty speakers under a white tent.
In the market there was another song playing, and as I wandered toward it like a rat through the rubbly maze of dirt paths, one gradually faded into another, after a clash of initial cacophony.
It followed me to El Qidiya (it was like a bad dream) and set up shop in big tents, store fronts and an abandoned house, newly splashed with the white-painted logo of the PRDR.
This is the 'campaign' . Supposedly campaigning is confined to the two week period between November 4th and 19th, in which the various parties (about 1 million) spew out their state apportioned cash on things like this, the tee shirts, the posters, the tents and the music.
These are the regional campaigns, but Kahn, one of my supervisors who came to visit tells me its the same everywhere. "In Nouakchott," he says, his hands to his head, "you can't sleep! It never used to be like this- why this music, all the time? This does not make me want to vote." Later, he returned from the market and reported on his inspection of the campaign 'headquarters' - "It was just some small kids and their tapes" he said. It's like the Wizard of Oz. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to look behind the curtain?
Meanwhile, my return from Tijikja also found me moving out of my old house and into a new one. The day before the move, I dropped by my house, actually just one (10x20ft) room, to clean up. Its previous occupants had been animals, their dung, rusty metal bits and (a lot of) dirt. So me, and soon a few new little friends (they turn up like clockwork) started sweeping away, me with a grass hand broom, they with old palm fronds, making clouds of dust which swirled and gathered in the streaky sunlight.
The next day, I wrangled a donkey cart, and me and the 9 year old 'driver' loaded my junk onto the flat back, fastened it in with one tattered string, and we were off! (at a slow meander)
I hadn't been relishing the thought of parading through town with all of my crap -3 huge American bags, and the assorted other supplies I've picked up since coming here seems like an obscene amount of detritus for one person to have, when most families have less. Still, I needn't have worried, hardly anyone was out to gawk at me. It was after one o clock and the market was closed. BTW, donkey travel is pretty reasonable, a trip across town was only 200 ougiyas (about 80 cents) Still, I tipped the little rascal an extra 100, and gave him a miniature orange. Someone's lucky day...
My new house is almost identical to the old, except for a big hole in the corner of the roof and a missing door. And though it doesn't look like much, you'd be surprised what a few colorful plastic mats layed over dirt and bumpy concrete can do in the way of ambiance. Suddenly a barren hovel becomes livable. And if it doesn't... well, you still live there.
After two weeks of campaigning and loud music, the elections took place on November 19th. It's an all-day thing, everything stops. It's true by the way- they dip your finger in purple ink. Because we're explicity forbidden by Peace Corps to be involved in any and all forms of politicking, I never got much of an insider's scoop, but this is the first free election held in Mauritania after last year's military coup. The peacefulness and good faith with which this took place (the military actually did hand over power, like they said they would) got us a mention two, count 'em two days in a row on the BBC (no one ever talks about us), but if you'd lived here for a while, you'd understand why it couldn't have been any other way.
Still, it's also obvious that the details of the democratic process are, at times, unclear here. Again and again people would ask me if I was voting.
'No.' I'd reply
'Why not?' I'd stare at them for a moment.
'Because I'm not Mauritanian.'
Without flinching, they'd always ask the same question. 'Well what's wrong with you?'
Oh boy, I'd think, how much time do you have....?
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Road notes
le 4 Novembre 2006
A few thoughts while traveling to Tijikja:
1 Travel in this country is a nightmare, it's like drinking bleach and being punched in the gut.
2 El Qidiya is 60k (2 hours) away from the paved road- that means the path is dirt, rock, sometimes lacking, sometimes impassable and in the middle of nowhere.
3 Cars go back and forth infrequently and irregularly. Plus time is plastic here.
4 Sometimes you have been waiting for a car to spontaneously arrive (for a long time) and when it does, the driver decides to grossly overcharge you (can you guess why?). In fact, this almost always happens, though the degrees to which they are money grubbing assholes, to which they are willing to negotiate, and to which I am prepared to refuse, vary.
5 Riding on top or in the back (with, on, or in the baggage) is dangerous and can be cold but there is a lot of fresh air and I feel less car-sick. Riding inside is usually hot, stuffy, cramped and awful, but safer, in that you are actually inside the car.
6 Is this girl in front of me puking because she's riding in this rollercoaster of a car, or is she traveling in it because she needs a doctor?
7 The drivers drive really fast.
8 I'm surprised these cars don't fall apart (this road is bumpier than Diane Rehm's voice. Just kidding, I love you Diane!)
9 Taxi brousse (renting a 'place' in a car) is glorified hitchhiking. Lets face it.
10 Sometimes gendarme guys can be cool. The one who snagged us a car tonite towards El Qidiya was friendly and polite, and I felt bad for him – its just him, his neat little beret and his cigarettes, pacing in the lonely dark by the road, boots clicking, waiting to stop every car that passes, for no particular reason.
11 Yes, yes. The stars are lovely, but the moon ….. Why don't I ever remember the moon being so eternally present before? The moon lights the world as though a pregnant stage, with a green, luminous half-glow which anticipates the spotlights.
12 Riding on the back of a wind-whipped truck can be fun for a while, even thrilling, as you clutch the metal bars for dear life, passing in flashes through the hot and cold air patches in the moonlit landscape, but I have to pee!
A few thoughts while traveling to Tijikja:
1 Travel in this country is a nightmare, it's like drinking bleach and being punched in the gut.
2 El Qidiya is 60k (2 hours) away from the paved road- that means the path is dirt, rock, sometimes lacking, sometimes impassable and in the middle of nowhere.
3 Cars go back and forth infrequently and irregularly. Plus time is plastic here.
4 Sometimes you have been waiting for a car to spontaneously arrive (for a long time) and when it does, the driver decides to grossly overcharge you (can you guess why?). In fact, this almost always happens, though the degrees to which they are money grubbing assholes, to which they are willing to negotiate, and to which I am prepared to refuse, vary.
5 Riding on top or in the back (with, on, or in the baggage) is dangerous and can be cold but there is a lot of fresh air and I feel less car-sick. Riding inside is usually hot, stuffy, cramped and awful, but safer, in that you are actually inside the car.
6 Is this girl in front of me puking because she's riding in this rollercoaster of a car, or is she traveling in it because she needs a doctor?
7 The drivers drive really fast.
8 I'm surprised these cars don't fall apart (this road is bumpier than Diane Rehm's voice. Just kidding, I love you Diane!)
9 Taxi brousse (renting a 'place' in a car) is glorified hitchhiking. Lets face it.
10 Sometimes gendarme guys can be cool. The one who snagged us a car tonite towards El Qidiya was friendly and polite, and I felt bad for him – its just him, his neat little beret and his cigarettes, pacing in the lonely dark by the road, boots clicking, waiting to stop every car that passes, for no particular reason.
11 Yes, yes. The stars are lovely, but the moon ….. Why don't I ever remember the moon being so eternally present before? The moon lights the world as though a pregnant stage, with a green, luminous half-glow which anticipates the spotlights.
12 Riding on the back of a wind-whipped truck can be fun for a while, even thrilling, as you clutch the metal bars for dear life, passing in flashes through the hot and cold air patches in the moonlit landscape, but I have to pee!
A Poem
le 1 Novembre 2006
It's the day of All Saints, for whatever its worth. (These saints, all of them, what is it they supposedly do?)
Anyway, the other night I returned to the bediya. The sons, the grown ones of this family, primarily the two called Cheikh and Jiddou, whom I talk to the most, are my friends. At least, I think they are, though every time I see them and have a little visit, I am progressively more unsure. These invitations, are they sincere? If so, how sincere are they?
These are the sorts of agonizing questions which creep up on one (foreigner) here – I thought for a while that I had left them behind in America, but now I realize they follow me everywhere - I'm never sure what translates and what doesn't, what is said and not understood, what is left entirely unspoken, and of that what is determined by culture, which by choice and circumstance. What does the body language mean? What do big white smiles, or the utter lack of them indicate? In a culture where men hold hands, what does it mean when they do, or when they don't hold mine? Are they held back by their own knowledge of my culture and the wish to be sensitive, or by a simple lack of intimate feeling?
My role as a foreigner, unfamiliar with culture and language, requires me to be almost constantly, obscenely vulnerable, for me to throw myself out there with a kind of naïve earnestness which asks pardon for all the blunders I am no doubt committing, and the inadequacies I can not surpass. Consequently, I'm never quite sure if this display touches their own reserves of honest emotion, or if they just smile, when they smile, because I'm an odd American who speaks with an accent. Maybe I'm asking too much. Does he like me? Does he really like me? This is the way in which I become a twelve year old girl. Sheesh .
Anyway, the other night I returned to the bediya, from the garden after watering. I rode with them on the donkey cart (shareet) in the gathering dark. Our gardens are under the palm trees and in the setting sun, their tall, lolling silhouettes are just spell-binding. And the moon was out –it's waxing now- so all the world had an unearthly glow, the kind which makes one's skin look lime green. By the time we reached the bediya I was half asleep from the rocking warmth of the donkey cart, and so they plopped me down on the softly blanketed mat, and we rested under the vast canopy of stars until the milk came.
I drank a whole giant cup of sheep's milk and one of cow's, and then we ate cous-cous and meat from the platter. Since I cook for myself since coming to El Qidiya, I've forsaken my hands and have been eating with utensils (I managed to find both a fork and a spoon in this country) and so that night eating cous-cous was not exactly a welcome change but at least it felt like coming home to a spouse whom you know intimately, though dislike.
After dinner Jiddou and I walked back to the village. I protested that he needn't walk all that way but he said 'I am afraid.' I said, 'What are you afraid of?' He said, 'I am afraid you will be lost.' So we strolled together in the moonlight, walking by all the things we had passed on the way: the rocky plains; the poisonous 'baby-boabobs';
the weedy, wild-peanuts; the white horse. I wanted to ask him so badly about his family, about how he likes Mauritania (really), how he feels about how blacks are treated here, what he wants to do with his life, if he feels he can do anything or only some things. But my language still falters, and so we just murmured about sillyness, or were silent in the windy dark.
It's the day of All Saints, for whatever its worth. (These saints, all of them, what is it they supposedly do?)
Anyway, the other night I returned to the bediya. The sons, the grown ones of this family, primarily the two called Cheikh and Jiddou, whom I talk to the most, are my friends. At least, I think they are, though every time I see them and have a little visit, I am progressively more unsure. These invitations, are they sincere? If so, how sincere are they?
These are the sorts of agonizing questions which creep up on one (foreigner) here – I thought for a while that I had left them behind in America, but now I realize they follow me everywhere - I'm never sure what translates and what doesn't, what is said and not understood, what is left entirely unspoken, and of that what is determined by culture, which by choice and circumstance. What does the body language mean? What do big white smiles, or the utter lack of them indicate? In a culture where men hold hands, what does it mean when they do, or when they don't hold mine? Are they held back by their own knowledge of my culture and the wish to be sensitive, or by a simple lack of intimate feeling?
My role as a foreigner, unfamiliar with culture and language, requires me to be almost constantly, obscenely vulnerable, for me to throw myself out there with a kind of naïve earnestness which asks pardon for all the blunders I am no doubt committing, and the inadequacies I can not surpass. Consequently, I'm never quite sure if this display touches their own reserves of honest emotion, or if they just smile, when they smile, because I'm an odd American who speaks with an accent. Maybe I'm asking too much. Does he like me? Does he really like me? This is the way in which I become a twelve year old girl. Sheesh .
Anyway, the other night I returned to the bediya, from the garden after watering. I rode with them on the donkey cart (shareet) in the gathering dark. Our gardens are under the palm trees and in the setting sun, their tall, lolling silhouettes are just spell-binding. And the moon was out –it's waxing now- so all the world had an unearthly glow, the kind which makes one's skin look lime green. By the time we reached the bediya I was half asleep from the rocking warmth of the donkey cart, and so they plopped me down on the softly blanketed mat, and we rested under the vast canopy of stars until the milk came.
I drank a whole giant cup of sheep's milk and one of cow's, and then we ate cous-cous and meat from the platter. Since I cook for myself since coming to El Qidiya, I've forsaken my hands and have been eating with utensils (I managed to find both a fork and a spoon in this country) and so that night eating cous-cous was not exactly a welcome change but at least it felt like coming home to a spouse whom you know intimately, though dislike.
After dinner Jiddou and I walked back to the village. I protested that he needn't walk all that way but he said 'I am afraid.' I said, 'What are you afraid of?' He said, 'I am afraid you will be lost.' So we strolled together in the moonlight, walking by all the things we had passed on the way: the rocky plains; the poisonous 'baby-boabobs';
the weedy, wild-peanuts; the white horse. I wanted to ask him so badly about his family, about how he likes Mauritania (really), how he feels about how blacks are treated here, what he wants to do with his life, if he feels he can do anything or only some things. But my language still falters, and so we just murmured about sillyness, or were silent in the windy dark.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Le fête
le 24 Octobre 2006
Yesterday was the fête of 'iid al-fidr' and nobody went to the garden. I showed up at 8:30 to water, and I was the only one there, the garden surrounded by shoulder height weeds and date palms, retains coolness longer than the burning plain. I was just glad Ramadan was over (I have many reasons).
Afterward, I took the opportunity of the people-less landscape to explore the gardens around ours - the whole garden area, a big stretch of land to the south and west of the village, has been surrendered to palmeries and weeds, basically. This is the place from which we carve our gardens, elongated, elliptical, or spherically asymmetrical 'bleyds' (places), fenced in with grillage and cultivated by an extended family or two.
I walked and walked in the sun, over the cracked earth and bushy grasses, and peeked into the abandoned gardens. I walked all the way through the strip of weeds and green, and burst into the rocky plain leading to the north city. Then I turned around.
That day, I saw these things:
A big, dead lizard, about 3 feet long and gilla-monster-esque, frozen (and fried in the sun) in the motion of death, being eaten by bugs and all other such ghastly things.
A big, gnarled tree, standing in the middle of a giant clearing, underneath which stood a donkey, quietly trying to be invisible and blinking in the cool shade. After I came closer, I saw that it was a sdrr (jujube tree) its branches all tangled and thorny. Though all the berries were unripe, so I did not pick them.
When I turned around, I saw a white horse, across the way, swishing its tail, though it had not been there before. It was like a storybook.
Then, suddenly, there was a boy coming out of the thorny bushes, and he was shaking a rattle; running. He was herding a raggedy flock of sheep with the noisemaker. He was, in fact, a shepherd boy. He continued to wield the noisemaker (it was an old metal can, like a Folgers, smashed closed, and filled with, I don't know, stones maybe). He disappeared. Almost immediately, he returned and I walked over to him, curious. His name was Mustava and he had bushy, mixed-race eyebrows. He was, I think, 11 years old. Mustava walked with me for a little while, and this is what I saw next:
We came to a little depression in the land, from which sprouted, like the mythical beanstalk, a gigantic Baobob tree. Baobob trees have silvery brownish-gray and smooth-ish bark. Also pointed, ovular leaves of shiny green. They sprout branches irregularly in a whimsical way, sometimes from every direction. This one looked like it was three trees in one. It was enormously, regally large and fat, and its tall canopy reached high, high way up. You probably don't understand what the big deal is, but I can only say that it was lovely and I had been searching for it…
After my garden excursion, I was resting on the path heading toward town, when a group of young men invited me to walk with them to the 'bediya' (it means the 'countryside' or 'the bush', and refers to anything outside the village). Not knowing exactly where that indicated, I finally relented following. (NB Whenever offered something, or invited somewhere – almost never here - I always refuse a few times and ask the question back at them ) – "you want me to come with you? Haag? (true?) Okay, why?" – to make sure I'm clear on the point.
Eventually we came to a little bleyd about 2 kilometers away, in the middle of the savannah-esque Turga scrub-forests, with a few tents and sleeping platforms and makeshift fences (the presence of roaming animals is implied).
Under the tent it was coolish and shady, darkly hung fabric on the top, worn plastic mats and fleece blankets spread over the sand underneath in between the wooden poles, random things and metal chests piled to one side and a light-less corner. I drank the rotten milk shniin (unavoidable) and was told to rest. Okay. I got two pillows shoved under me, though I protested that one was plenty. They said, 'Non, non, non!'. They made me lie down, 'tki, tki!', they said.
There was a succession of people coming and going in between dozings, my original escorts left save one, others came and stayed the rest of the day - There was a pile of bou-bous sprawled out on the blankets which some of the family's grown sons took turns ironing (with an old fashioned device, filled with coals). Another one repaired and blackened sandals (the end of Ramadan is the time when people break out their new – or apparently revamped - threads to represent in style). In between all this, we chatted and made funnies. Africans, when they like you, are adorable in the shy and amused smiles of their affection. The other times…. well, we'll let that be for now.
We ate a little mishwi (grilled meat) but I mostly got the grilled liver because I'm a guest and it's choice (who's choice?). Later we ate more boiled sheep, with sheep sauce and bread (mmm, good). And they laughed at my every move (they were surprised that I knew how to eat) but unlike many of the people in El Qidiya, whose laughter is either outrightly snide, or tinged with a self preserving derision, theirs was honest, and I simply love them.
After a while, I said my goodbyes, promising to return, and wandered back to the village chewing my msewek (a stick 'tooth-brush'), and feeling temporarily better about life in El Qidiya. At least I had a tummy full of sheep, which I suppose is all that anyone can ask for.
Yesterday was the fête of 'iid al-fidr' and nobody went to the garden. I showed up at 8:30 to water, and I was the only one there, the garden surrounded by shoulder height weeds and date palms, retains coolness longer than the burning plain. I was just glad Ramadan was over (I have many reasons).
Afterward, I took the opportunity of the people-less landscape to explore the gardens around ours - the whole garden area, a big stretch of land to the south and west of the village, has been surrendered to palmeries and weeds, basically. This is the place from which we carve our gardens, elongated, elliptical, or spherically asymmetrical 'bleyds' (places), fenced in with grillage and cultivated by an extended family or two.
I walked and walked in the sun, over the cracked earth and bushy grasses, and peeked into the abandoned gardens. I walked all the way through the strip of weeds and green, and burst into the rocky plain leading to the north city. Then I turned around.
That day, I saw these things:
A big, dead lizard, about 3 feet long and gilla-monster-esque, frozen (and fried in the sun) in the motion of death, being eaten by bugs and all other such ghastly things.
A big, gnarled tree, standing in the middle of a giant clearing, underneath which stood a donkey, quietly trying to be invisible and blinking in the cool shade. After I came closer, I saw that it was a sdrr (jujube tree) its branches all tangled and thorny. Though all the berries were unripe, so I did not pick them.
When I turned around, I saw a white horse, across the way, swishing its tail, though it had not been there before. It was like a storybook.
Then, suddenly, there was a boy coming out of the thorny bushes, and he was shaking a rattle; running. He was herding a raggedy flock of sheep with the noisemaker. He was, in fact, a shepherd boy. He continued to wield the noisemaker (it was an old metal can, like a Folgers, smashed closed, and filled with, I don't know, stones maybe). He disappeared. Almost immediately, he returned and I walked over to him, curious. His name was Mustava and he had bushy, mixed-race eyebrows. He was, I think, 11 years old. Mustava walked with me for a little while, and this is what I saw next:
We came to a little depression in the land, from which sprouted, like the mythical beanstalk, a gigantic Baobob tree. Baobob trees have silvery brownish-gray and smooth-ish bark. Also pointed, ovular leaves of shiny green. They sprout branches irregularly in a whimsical way, sometimes from every direction. This one looked like it was three trees in one. It was enormously, regally large and fat, and its tall canopy reached high, high way up. You probably don't understand what the big deal is, but I can only say that it was lovely and I had been searching for it…
After my garden excursion, I was resting on the path heading toward town, when a group of young men invited me to walk with them to the 'bediya' (it means the 'countryside' or 'the bush', and refers to anything outside the village). Not knowing exactly where that indicated, I finally relented following. (NB Whenever offered something, or invited somewhere – almost never here - I always refuse a few times and ask the question back at them ) – "you want me to come with you? Haag? (true?) Okay, why?" – to make sure I'm clear on the point.
Eventually we came to a little bleyd about 2 kilometers away, in the middle of the savannah-esque Turga scrub-forests, with a few tents and sleeping platforms and makeshift fences (the presence of roaming animals is implied).
Under the tent it was coolish and shady, darkly hung fabric on the top, worn plastic mats and fleece blankets spread over the sand underneath in between the wooden poles, random things and metal chests piled to one side and a light-less corner. I drank the rotten milk shniin (unavoidable) and was told to rest. Okay. I got two pillows shoved under me, though I protested that one was plenty. They said, 'Non, non, non!'. They made me lie down, 'tki, tki!', they said.
There was a succession of people coming and going in between dozings, my original escorts left save one, others came and stayed the rest of the day - There was a pile of bou-bous sprawled out on the blankets which some of the family's grown sons took turns ironing (with an old fashioned device, filled with coals). Another one repaired and blackened sandals (the end of Ramadan is the time when people break out their new – or apparently revamped - threads to represent in style). In between all this, we chatted and made funnies. Africans, when they like you, are adorable in the shy and amused smiles of their affection. The other times…. well, we'll let that be for now.
We ate a little mishwi (grilled meat) but I mostly got the grilled liver because I'm a guest and it's choice (who's choice?). Later we ate more boiled sheep, with sheep sauce and bread (mmm, good). And they laughed at my every move (they were surprised that I knew how to eat) but unlike many of the people in El Qidiya, whose laughter is either outrightly snide, or tinged with a self preserving derision, theirs was honest, and I simply love them.
After a while, I said my goodbyes, promising to return, and wandered back to the village chewing my msewek (a stick 'tooth-brush'), and feeling temporarily better about life in El Qidiya. At least I had a tummy full of sheep, which I suppose is all that anyone can ask for.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Modest joy
le 15 Octobre 2006
Though almost nothing in this country is worth buying for any but the most (specifically Mauritanian) utilitarian reasons, a few things which I've acquired since my arrival have endeared themselves to me.
Thing # 1
My Wajiil. A wajiil is like a cross between a hoe and a pick-axe, and its made by finding the intersection of two tree branches, at about 45 degrees, and attach to one a flat, iron blade, about 6 inches across at its broadest, which cuts the dirt as you bend over, dragging it toward you. It's traditionally made, one of the few handcrafts that you can find in the country which hasn't been supplanted by factory produced, plastic shit, the others being wooden mats, a kind of carved bowl, and a smoking pipe which looks like a 1920's era cigarette holder's stem.
The wajiil, ostensibly, has no artistic value, but I happen to think they're graceful and fine. I've been covetous of one for weeks.
After arriving at site, I had no tools – after we moved out of M'Beidia, we stuck all the shovels and well buckets in storage. Supposedly they are coming from Nouakchott 'within the next few months', a classically ambiguous example of Peace Corps in (in)action, but in the meantime, I, desirous of starting a garden and tangible work, I began to seek out a wajiil.
Everyone laughs whenever I ask them if they can sell me, make me, or kindly tell me who can provide me with a wajiil, and I'm not sure why. In fact, I am sure why, but I hate the reason. It’s more of a black-Moor thing, I think; most white Moors, and the upper classes of many Arab peoples in general view manual labor as the strict purview of the lower classes - which in this case means black. I suppose in that context, I see how (racist) people could see the humor in it. Still, all the laughter and deflections have resulted in me not finding a damn wajiil until recently.
Anyway, I finally uncovered one last week, and I was so happy, I didn't even mind that he charged me 2000 ougiyas for it (about 5 dollars). Plus, the price was written neatly in blue-bic letters, on a little scrubbed off patch on the carved, tree-branch handle. I almost wept. Prices are never displayed here (of course they're not). Neither are they constant, especially if you're white.
My wajiil is strong and noble. I've named him Suliman. I've just now done this.
Thing # 2
My plastic, low-quality sandals.
Okay, let's give them a bit more credit than that. They have white foam bottoms with a diamond pattern on their surface. They have thong straps of shiny, blue plastic. They are the so-called "Region" brand, Made in China. They are size ten.
From America, I, nervously preparing for the desert climate, brought 3 pairs of sandals, and they no longer seem applicable. In fact, one of them has been broken for a long time, and the others, while sturdy enough still, seem like relics from a Byzantine time, overly complicated and obsolete.
I've walked miles and miles (or kilos, rather) in my little blue thongs, and they've only just begun to crack. They've walked bravely over stones and burning sands, they've been pricked by thorns and bent ever which way by my fidgeting toes. They're 250 ougiyas (about 1 dollar) and they're sold ubiquitously over every square inch of this country.
My Chacos weigh a thousand pounds, and trap the thorns which get stuck in your toes and give you strange, geometric tan lines.
Nothing, listen, nothing will protect your feet from getting cracked and rough and tired and brown and callused and eaten away by all of the things which eat away every form of life here.
One would do better to save the packing space for vacuum sealed tuna, and trail-mix, and invest in a pair of ‘Regions’.
More 'things' to come!
Though almost nothing in this country is worth buying for any but the most (specifically Mauritanian) utilitarian reasons, a few things which I've acquired since my arrival have endeared themselves to me.
Thing # 1
My Wajiil. A wajiil is like a cross between a hoe and a pick-axe, and its made by finding the intersection of two tree branches, at about 45 degrees, and attach to one a flat, iron blade, about 6 inches across at its broadest, which cuts the dirt as you bend over, dragging it toward you. It's traditionally made, one of the few handcrafts that you can find in the country which hasn't been supplanted by factory produced, plastic shit, the others being wooden mats, a kind of carved bowl, and a smoking pipe which looks like a 1920's era cigarette holder's stem.
The wajiil, ostensibly, has no artistic value, but I happen to think they're graceful and fine. I've been covetous of one for weeks.
After arriving at site, I had no tools – after we moved out of M'Beidia, we stuck all the shovels and well buckets in storage. Supposedly they are coming from Nouakchott 'within the next few months', a classically ambiguous example of Peace Corps in (in)action, but in the meantime, I, desirous of starting a garden and tangible work, I began to seek out a wajiil.
Everyone laughs whenever I ask them if they can sell me, make me, or kindly tell me who can provide me with a wajiil, and I'm not sure why. In fact, I am sure why, but I hate the reason. It’s more of a black-Moor thing, I think; most white Moors, and the upper classes of many Arab peoples in general view manual labor as the strict purview of the lower classes - which in this case means black. I suppose in that context, I see how (racist) people could see the humor in it. Still, all the laughter and deflections have resulted in me not finding a damn wajiil until recently.
Anyway, I finally uncovered one last week, and I was so happy, I didn't even mind that he charged me 2000 ougiyas for it (about 5 dollars). Plus, the price was written neatly in blue-bic letters, on a little scrubbed off patch on the carved, tree-branch handle. I almost wept. Prices are never displayed here (of course they're not). Neither are they constant, especially if you're white.
My wajiil is strong and noble. I've named him Suliman. I've just now done this.
Thing # 2
My plastic, low-quality sandals.
Okay, let's give them a bit more credit than that. They have white foam bottoms with a diamond pattern on their surface. They have thong straps of shiny, blue plastic. They are the so-called "Region" brand, Made in China. They are size ten.
From America, I, nervously preparing for the desert climate, brought 3 pairs of sandals, and they no longer seem applicable. In fact, one of them has been broken for a long time, and the others, while sturdy enough still, seem like relics from a Byzantine time, overly complicated and obsolete.
I've walked miles and miles (or kilos, rather) in my little blue thongs, and they've only just begun to crack. They've walked bravely over stones and burning sands, they've been pricked by thorns and bent ever which way by my fidgeting toes. They're 250 ougiyas (about 1 dollar) and they're sold ubiquitously over every square inch of this country.
My Chacos weigh a thousand pounds, and trap the thorns which get stuck in your toes and give you strange, geometric tan lines.
Nothing, listen, nothing will protect your feet from getting cracked and rough and tired and brown and callused and eaten away by all of the things which eat away every form of life here.
One would do better to save the packing space for vacuum sealed tuna, and trail-mix, and invest in a pair of ‘Regions’.
More 'things' to come!
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Safari
le 3 Octobre 2006
I've been repairing the fence. The animals come at night and shit everywhere, because the barbed wire fence is severely lacking. I would say impotent. In many places it is broken and lies, fallen on the ground, tied to its post, limp and twisted.
Ours is one of the few houses in the village which doesn't have a stone wall, and I'm beginning to understand why that is so.
So in the absence of more barbed wire (much like everything else, you can not buy this in El Qidiya) I've been patrolling the perimeter, Leatherman in hand, and twisting up any loose and lazy wires that I can. I don't have a shovel, so I re-dig and deepen the post holes with a garden trowel from Home Depot. Still, the stones made short work of that, and chipped the point of the spade into a jagged, toothy edge.
Still, the cows seem to be noticing: now they can no longer cross through at nights, as they lumber by in herds from the pasture, and so they just come up, adjacent to the fence, and peer over the top with weary disdain. They 'moo' discontentedly and stand still for many minutes, just blinking slowly and chewing with a steady motion. (BTW, cows are so weird: I was coming back from the town the other day and there were six of them on the hot dirt, all in a perfect, straight line, end-to-end, perpendicular to me, just standing there doing nothing, with no one around. It was like a traffic stop. Can you stand it?)
In general, the experience that is Animals in Mauritania, is a big, and all-pervasive one. Animals have almost complete free reign, aside from the times when they are being herded or poked or prodded, and so there are large stretches of time each day when the cows and donkeys and sheep and goats wander around everywhere, following their bliss through the shit-strewn streets, and, ultimately, into my (dirt) yard. Actual pastures are non existent here (how could they be?). It is not uncommon at all for someone to be going about their business, making tea under the tent, and for a sheep to come nose through whatever they're doing, until such a person absentmindedly punches them in the gut and they scatter.
This variety of sheep, god knows what kind, is pitifully and painfully grotesque. I'm serious, they are aggressively ugly, with their raggedy, slumped over bodies, and clumpy hair. It's not even wool. The goats, by virtue of their neat little horns and spry figures, paint a somewhat more attractive picture. Both of their voices, though, sound as if the demoniac ghosts of murdered children inhabit them. It is most unpleasant.
And lest I forget them, I'll tell you now that we have camels here, not too many, but more than in the South, where I only ever once saw one in my village. They're more of a nomadic thing. Usually I see them with a dark, howlied Bedouin, riding barefoot, tugging at the animal's reigns, hooked through a ring in one nostril, sheesh. I've seen them also, parked like a growling, collapsible car outside someone's house.
Still, the other day, walking the path from the North to the South village, I saw, in the place where it opens to a wide, dusty plain, 3 camels ambling about, munching on bushes. I walked towards them slowly, my head bowed, and when I was only a few feet away, I sat down on a stone and watched them eat.
It took several minutes for them to become sufficiently spooked by me to leave, but eventually (inevitably) the one with the longest and most curious neck, decided he (or she) had had enough of me, and they blew that joint, taking off on those long awkward legs, in search of better munching grounds. I think they are beautiful, these camels. I think, more than any other animal I've seen, they look like they're from another planet entirely. They're so totally Star Wars.
After camels, (they're the one-humps, by the way), the next most 'Africa' thing we have here is lizards. In the South, we had a funny little variety, the length of a coke-bottle, with bright yellow heads and slender tails, tapering to nothing. We call them push-up lizards, because of the exercise-like movements they constantly perform to pass the time. In the North, we don't have anything nearly so distinct, just a couple little brownish-green varieties that live in my out-house, and are constantly startling me by flitting around everywhere. I've also seen the spiny tail of a much larger kind (whether a different species, or only the grown-up) periodically darting underneath rocks, at several feet away. Yeeks! Whatever, they're not harmful, but I'm no Naturalist, and I bear no fondness for reptiles. Still, I'll take lizards over snakes.
And according to some sources, there are crocodiles in the country, and people in El Qidiya even say that we have 2 (how sweet) that live in the waters of the Marigot over abutting the cliff. I don't know… N'Beika, the oasis city 3 hours away where volunteers Fred and Greg live, has a respectable bog in which I could see crocs living, and in which they've been repeatedly sighted. But the existence of El Qidiyas carnivorous pair has yet to be confirmed by me (it's thrown into further doubt by the fact that people supposedly swim in the croc-water "Oh, they don't do nothing…." and because one of my sources called a picture of a seahorse, a crocodile). Oh boy.
So one of these must be true: there are more than two, there are none, or the crocodiles are a hundred million years old.
…..Still, no swimming for me just yet.
I've been repairing the fence. The animals come at night and shit everywhere, because the barbed wire fence is severely lacking. I would say impotent. In many places it is broken and lies, fallen on the ground, tied to its post, limp and twisted.
Ours is one of the few houses in the village which doesn't have a stone wall, and I'm beginning to understand why that is so.
So in the absence of more barbed wire (much like everything else, you can not buy this in El Qidiya) I've been patrolling the perimeter, Leatherman in hand, and twisting up any loose and lazy wires that I can. I don't have a shovel, so I re-dig and deepen the post holes with a garden trowel from Home Depot. Still, the stones made short work of that, and chipped the point of the spade into a jagged, toothy edge.
Still, the cows seem to be noticing: now they can no longer cross through at nights, as they lumber by in herds from the pasture, and so they just come up, adjacent to the fence, and peer over the top with weary disdain. They 'moo' discontentedly and stand still for many minutes, just blinking slowly and chewing with a steady motion. (BTW, cows are so weird: I was coming back from the town the other day and there were six of them on the hot dirt, all in a perfect, straight line, end-to-end, perpendicular to me, just standing there doing nothing, with no one around. It was like a traffic stop. Can you stand it?)
In general, the experience that is Animals in Mauritania, is a big, and all-pervasive one. Animals have almost complete free reign, aside from the times when they are being herded or poked or prodded, and so there are large stretches of time each day when the cows and donkeys and sheep and goats wander around everywhere, following their bliss through the shit-strewn streets, and, ultimately, into my (dirt) yard. Actual pastures are non existent here (how could they be?). It is not uncommon at all for someone to be going about their business, making tea under the tent, and for a sheep to come nose through whatever they're doing, until such a person absentmindedly punches them in the gut and they scatter.
This variety of sheep, god knows what kind, is pitifully and painfully grotesque. I'm serious, they are aggressively ugly, with their raggedy, slumped over bodies, and clumpy hair. It's not even wool. The goats, by virtue of their neat little horns and spry figures, paint a somewhat more attractive picture. Both of their voices, though, sound as if the demoniac ghosts of murdered children inhabit them. It is most unpleasant.
And lest I forget them, I'll tell you now that we have camels here, not too many, but more than in the South, where I only ever once saw one in my village. They're more of a nomadic thing. Usually I see them with a dark, howlied Bedouin, riding barefoot, tugging at the animal's reigns, hooked through a ring in one nostril, sheesh. I've seen them also, parked like a growling, collapsible car outside someone's house.
Still, the other day, walking the path from the North to the South village, I saw, in the place where it opens to a wide, dusty plain, 3 camels ambling about, munching on bushes. I walked towards them slowly, my head bowed, and when I was only a few feet away, I sat down on a stone and watched them eat.
It took several minutes for them to become sufficiently spooked by me to leave, but eventually (inevitably) the one with the longest and most curious neck, decided he (or she) had had enough of me, and they blew that joint, taking off on those long awkward legs, in search of better munching grounds. I think they are beautiful, these camels. I think, more than any other animal I've seen, they look like they're from another planet entirely. They're so totally Star Wars.
After camels, (they're the one-humps, by the way), the next most 'Africa' thing we have here is lizards. In the South, we had a funny little variety, the length of a coke-bottle, with bright yellow heads and slender tails, tapering to nothing. We call them push-up lizards, because of the exercise-like movements they constantly perform to pass the time. In the North, we don't have anything nearly so distinct, just a couple little brownish-green varieties that live in my out-house, and are constantly startling me by flitting around everywhere. I've also seen the spiny tail of a much larger kind (whether a different species, or only the grown-up) periodically darting underneath rocks, at several feet away. Yeeks! Whatever, they're not harmful, but I'm no Naturalist, and I bear no fondness for reptiles. Still, I'll take lizards over snakes.
And according to some sources, there are crocodiles in the country, and people in El Qidiya even say that we have 2 (how sweet) that live in the waters of the Marigot over abutting the cliff. I don't know… N'Beika, the oasis city 3 hours away where volunteers Fred and Greg live, has a respectable bog in which I could see crocs living, and in which they've been repeatedly sighted. But the existence of El Qidiyas carnivorous pair has yet to be confirmed by me (it's thrown into further doubt by the fact that people supposedly swim in the croc-water "Oh, they don't do nothing…." and because one of my sources called a picture of a seahorse, a crocodile). Oh boy.
So one of these must be true: there are more than two, there are none, or the crocodiles are a hundred million years old.
…..Still, no swimming for me just yet.
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