Off the top

The barber is 19 years old.

His name is Mohamed Lamine ould Ahmed and he lives in the house directly behind (south) of mine, so close I could touch it across the 2 meter wide path which separates us. He is the son of an outrageously obnoxious sack of belly-laughing fat named Ahmed ould Asswaylou who I cannot stand.

Mohamed Lamine is not the 'barber' (hallaq) in the sense of having a shop, or a sign, or tools. Or skills, to be perfectly honest. Rather he just is the barber and almost all the young men I know at some point or another make their way over to his unassuming little plastic chair to take care of business.

He's a nice guy, though not uncommonly bright, and has always been one of my better friends here, being able to find that correct balance between familiarity and respectfulness that has proven so elusive for so many others.

He giggles a lot and has a giant, unashamed smile and a comical voice which tends to skip all over the place like a deer, jumping registers. He is very handsome, in a youthful sort of big-eared way - he has clear, milk-chocolatey skin and inherited his mother's full, dramatic eyebrows and dark lashes like the rest of his siblings (fyi, they're all gorgeous).

He tells me that, though my time here is up soon, I can't leave El Qidiya, that they are going to tie me down and make me stay. I smile, but inside I'm like, "girl, good luck..." He cherishes vague hopes of learning English, but who doesn't?

A few afternoons a week I'll see him out there on the gravel, set up in the long, cool shadow of his house, busily snipping away at someone's fuzzy head. Yesterday I stopped by on my way back from the well, loaded down with thirty pounds of water and watched him for a few minutes, as he passed a comb topped with a razorblade through Lemrobbit's coarse, black hair, which then ended up all over my arm when I went to shake his hand.

These are the poorman's (literally) electric hairclippers, and though the comb/razorblade combos seem to work well enough I won't let him try them on me. Even though all I ever do with my hair anymore is buzz it to within an 1/8 inch of its life, I still like to be the one in control.

Except of course, I have been known to duck into those little hole-in-the-wall (again, literally) establishments that are sprinkled around just about everywhere in Nouakchott, the ones with a billowing sheet hanging over the doorway, and the hand-painted pictures of sharply-coiffeured ethnic gentlemen out front, and get a 300 ougiya 'do', including a surly attitude, a razor-defined hairline, and a dusting of babypowder, because sometimes it's nice to be pampered.

Quo-tedium

Today I was mildly productive and brought two Neem trees from my nursery in the garden back to my house to plant. One of the trees, in my nearly two month absence from the village had grown more than a half meter, indicating once again that things tend to happen better if I’m not around.

I had dug the holes to put them in, out of the hard gravelly earth, a few months ago, so that’s a relief. Today I just busied myself carrying over large rocks from other places in my compound to fashion into "impenetrable-(hopefully)-to-ruminants" walls around each little sapling, meanwhile trying to get the rocks to balance correctly and not tumble down and crush the poor things to death.

When that was satisfactorily, if rather shoddily done, I came inside and sat on the floor and made a half liter of Crystal Lite On-the-Go Rasberry-flavored green tea (only Americans could slam together that many flavors), which I guzzled. Then I stood up and paced around my one room shack for 10 minutes, poking into various pockets of my make-shift shelving looking for something interesting. Then I ate about 8 dum-dum sized loolipops, one after another, trying to suck on them slowly and not, after a few seconds, crunch them into bits, something I find almost impossible to refrain from doing with hard candies. This time was no different. Then I sat down and perused a miscellaneous pile of papers about colleges, degree programs and scholarships and felt bad about myself, my lack of all skills, and my future in general. Then I looked inside of my pack of ‘Congress’ cigarettes, which are the cigarettes that are made from whatever is left over when all other cigarettes have been made, and found it empty of everything except tobacco crumbs. Then I laid down, fluffing my pillows, and slept fitfully for 40 sweltering minutes in front of the doorway in the hot breeze and dreamt something about a banker. Then I made tea and tried to take an interesting picture of my charcoal stove hanging on the wall, but failed. Lately, since taking pictures of people comes with too much baggage. I’ve been concentrating on close-up pictures of the inanimate objects in my life, like pieces of burlap, my shoes and dirt. Then I crunched on a bag of dry biscuits for a while. Then I got up and stared at myself in a hand-mirror, until I felt really bad about my nose. Then I looked in my package of cigarettes again and found it was still empty. Then I listened to a bootlegged ‘Akon’ CD, but today, even his adorable, and highly obscene attempts to come off as Senegalese and/or gangsta, (of which he is neither) couldn’t cheer me up. Only 6 more hours until bedtime…..

Eat it

I'm going to miss the bread. One thing you can reasonably expect to find in most average sized boutiques in the morning is bread - little 9 inch-ish loaves of bread the thickness of a banana which make up the better part of many Mauritanian breakfasts.

Usually no two places make their bread the same way. One major variety, which we call, colorfully, electric bread, is, not surprisingly, made only in places that are on the grid. El Qidiya is very, very, not, which is great because I hate electric bread anyway, excepting certain instances which do not include traveling, because electric bread is like a light, crusty baseball bat and makes a tremendous mess of crumbs every time. In El Qidiya we have mburu li htab (wood bread) which is made in a small stove, or a big, car sized shack with a mud-brick dome and a wood-burning oven. When the loaves come out they are small, chewy and golden brown packets of empty carb calories, perfect for those on the go.

El Qidiya's bread uses too much oil. Tijikja's loaves are rather tasteless and dry. Tokomaji's are perfectly symmetrical elipses, with crunchy, artisanal crusts. Nbeika's are skinny, like weaklings, taste like mesquite and are made in a dirty little hole of a garage, blackened with greasy filth, by wife-beatered young men sweating from the heat. The sign on the door spells garage like this: GARGE.

In Nouakchott we have boulangeries and possibilities open. Every morning they radiate out their doughy offerings to the the surrounding boutiques, enabling one to get a pretty decent croissant, or a semi-sweet bun, but my favorite is still the traditional, the adorable little mburu Qur'an, five thin little loaves stuck together in a 100 ougiya lump like the fingers on a hand.

Whenever I'm in Nouakchott and have the time, I get two croissants, and have the boutique owner spread on a slab of 10 ougiya butter with his short, wide knife. (Jelly is also an option). I love this. I love, so much, food created right before your very eyes, which has multiple parts or in which your choices are an integral part of its preparation. This is why I love street food. For example, one of the best things about (car) garages (not so much in Mauritania) is that they always have food to sell, and much of it comes to you in a rotating parade of vendors. There is usually a boy or two carrying a 30 count egg carton on his head filled with brown, hardboiled goodies and you beckon to him with your finger, or you hiss, and you tell him that you want two, holding up your fingers like the peace sign, and he cracks them on their pointy heads with the butt of his knife, then he peels them with expert ease in 3 seconds flat, nestles them in a piece of torn brown paper and slices them into squishy, jiggling quarters. If you want black pepper (why wouldn't you?) he'll sprinkle some over the top from the make-shift shaker, fashioned from an old pill vial with holes poked in the lid, tied with a string to the end of his little blue knife. I'm not sure why I find this so beautiful and honest and good, in a world of ambiguous good, but I really, really do. I feel like saying, "do you know who you are little guy? Do you know how much color you're giving to the world, drifting out from your cardboard egg-tray? It's worth so much more than 50 francs. But don't you dare overcharge me..."

white thread becomes distinct from black thread

*This is a long over-due entry, but don't give me lip about it*

Two nights ago, there was a shooting star so bright, that as it burned in the sky and fell behind my back, casting its greenish glow on the wall of Mohamed Ali’s house, I thought it was the light from a car. When I turned to face it I was just in time to catch it snapping out of existence forever.

Now is Ramadan.

If you don’t know what that is, then look it up (I would have had to), because it’s a shame we all don’t know a little more about each other. I’m fasting this year as a result of accident and pridefulness more than anything else. By the third person who asked me if I was going to be fasting, I found myself saying ‘yes’ just so that I wouldn’t have to endure the embarrassment of answering ‘ no’ .

Hardly what the prophet must have had in mind, but we are who we are. Surely it goes without saying that any of the appropriate religious reverence is, in my case, absent, and that I find such beliefs - that the omniscient creator of an unimaginably gargantuan universe (in comparison to which, of course, we are smaller than a bugger in an electron’s nostril) should or could give a celestial crap about when, what or how we eat/drink - patently absurd if not insane. Nevertheless, there is something about the concepts of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘stoicism’ and ‘struggle’ that are as irrationally appealing, at times, as addictions.

The first day - I spent it frolicking, (really) in the waterfalls which flow from miles and miles away over the cliffs to collect in a modest pool, the first and only time I got to do so this year, because the rains were so short that the waterfalls have already evaporated. It rained about 3 times here, and I missed 1 and ½ of them, though this probably for the best, because you see, my house is broken.

Thirst is …. interesting. I mean surely it’s obvious but it’s the thirst which gets you; hunger is nothing. Everyone knows that humans can live an inordinately long time without food, what is it, a month? Two? Without water you’re dead, or wishing you were, before the sun can rise twice. Well, here anyway. The thought of ‘thirsting to death’ probably holds a colder sense of horror for everyone than comparable forms of death, (what are comparable forms of death?) maybe partly because in addition to being unimaginably bad, it’s also rare. I mean, who dies of thirst? Of course fasting is hardly the same thing, yet my point is that it’s like tiptoeing around the lip of the same terrible canyon. In the late, endless hours of the afternoon, I was stuck thinking a lot about how I would be feeling if I didn’t know that my thirst was temporary, if I didn’t know down to the minute when I would be able to quench it. As it was, knowing gave a sort of thrilling edge to its overall, soul-destroying awfulness, but any illusions I might have held about using it to build a capacity for dealing with thirst are fantasies. There is no capacity for dealing with it, whether you’ve done it 3 times or 30, just like there is no capacity for dealing with having your tongue cut out. You just hope that it doesn’t ever happen to you and if it does then nothing can prevent you from being utterly screwed.

The only thing better than that last minute before you drink, as the prayer call rings out, with your skin and your thoughts all buzzing with the anticipation of gulping down a big plastic cup of something liquid, is possibly the minute after that, when you do it.

I always drink too much, too soon – this is the way it goes. It’s hard to stop; smart people drink from small cups, they pace themselves. Stupid people, like yours truly, drink from giant Nalgenes and don’t stop until they’re lying prostrate on the floor with a stomach ache. And such is my offering to the glory of god.

Immediately you begin to sweat, of course, something which you haven’t really done since 1 pm. Other things you have ceased to do with ease hours ago include blinking, and/or focusing your eyes, swallowing, peeing freely and licking your lips. Interestingly, one night I was having Yusef explain to me the meaning of a word he had used, and all that I was getting was that it was something like, ‘to snarl’ or ‘to bare one’s teeth’ which I thought was pretty dumb until I later realized it referred to the condition (which in English we feel no need to name) where one’s teeth are so dry that one’s lips keep getting stuck on them.

Do I get any respect for fasting? Well, results are mixed, but generally no, not that I want it. I’d actually prefer that no one really talk about it either way, because people that are all over it and encouraging make me feel queasy about my ulterior motives, and the people who deny me with ‘you’re not fasting’ just make me angry. ‘Okay then,’ I say, ‘then neither are you.’

To be fair, it can’t be easy for them to decide whether this ‘Christian’ who fasts but doesn’t pray or go to mosque is making a mockery of their faith, or whether he is only trying to understand them better. It doesn’t help that I don’t even know which one is closer to the truth.

When I go next door to Mohamed Ali’s, we break fast (officially) with shniinmwasi m’a it-tsuum?” (how are you with the fasting?) which like questions about the rain the heat and the cold, all have their little season in the sun, Christmas tree-like, before being packaged away until the next, identical year.

Fatimatou looks grave as she pours tea and answers me with, ‘Ramadan mtiin’ (Ramadan is strong/hard), “Huwe vaater-ne” (it tires us). She shakes her head, not unhappily, and gives me my little caisse of tea. Then a giant stainless steel bowl of shniin. Yusef gives me a pillow to recline on, and asks me if I ‘thirsted’ today, which is a question that I still find amusing, because, really? Are you kidding me? No, I’m a mountain spring over here. But that’s just the way things go, and you reply ‘mashallah, mashallah’ Unless of course you were on the brink of death today, and then we can talk about that.

The oddest thing of all, is that for something which, in the end, consists of a month of slow, parched days of torture, Ramadan has a pretty good rap. In the same breath, Yusef will tell me that today he got so thirsty that the hours seemed endless and then flash me a look with his lambent eyes and grin ‘Ramadan Zeyn!’ (Ramadan is great). It would be inadvisable to say anything to the contrary.

Young men, for whom fasting at 17 or 18 is a sign of manhood as one might well imagine, love to be flamboyantly exhausted in the afternoon, and come plop themselves and their dry red eyes, in a heap on my patterned plastic floor mats. I love to needle them and say ‘I don’t understand why you’re fasting – you’re just a child’ or, ‘here, let me make you some tea’. Actual children, like my often bratty, but useful friend Cheikh, will sometimes lie and say that they are fasting and I just roll my eyes.

One thing that sets me apart, out of thousands, from everyone else is the fact that I don’t go to the ritual reading/recitation of the entire Qur’an, which is called it-terewah. Each night everyone gathers at the mosque to listen to a recitation (or to recite themselves) of a portion of the Qur’an, and throughout the month the entire thing is strung out in its meandering, mellifluous beauty.

As for me, I would love to go to the recitations (people are constantly asking me) if I were able to go strictly as an impartial observer, but I know much better than to think that is possible. In fact, one of my larger regrets about my time here, is that I have not learned nearly as much as I would like about Islam and its many practices, because I’ve been burned so many times that I know not to touch it with a 10 foot pole.

So while everyone else goes to it-terawah even Mohamed Ali’s three daughters who never venture out after dark, I stay behind with the simmering pots and the soft moonlight, lying curled on my side dreaming of fruit salad. When Mulbarka, the husky and fabulous, not-young-but-prematurely-elderly matriarch stays with me (which is often) she lies moored in the middle of her wooden bed of sticks, (a tabourit) chanting and humming and singing the name of god, the safe, the merciful, the beneficent, ‘Yaa, mulaane il aaviya, Yaa mulaane il aaviya!’ She will groan out painfully when making a difficult maneuver such as fluffing her own pillow. The rest of the time she casually sings bits and fragments of various songs in her Julia Child-like falsetto, whose lyrics generally contain little more than the word ‘al-Lah’, and passes the time in her rather world-weary yet dreamy, opiate-esque fashion.

Her hair is like an iron-grey puff of dirty cotton under her ubiquitous, thread-bare veil.

One frequently used method of coping with thirst is to bathe, although this is somewhat ironic because doing this involves one putting water everywhere except where one actually wants it. It’s a little like being really tired and then occupying yourself making a beautiful bed in which you cannot possibly sleep. And yet, it does strangely help, if only by making the thirst so acute that it is somehow easier to bear.

Aside from bathing proper people will often dump whole buckets of water over their heads, clothes and all (a sure sign that they are fasting) which in fact is just about the most lovely, rejuvenating feeling one can get outside of a swimming pool. Or a Corona with lime. Neither of which are things Mauritania offers.

As the month goes on, the moon balloons out to become like a pearly floodlight in the sky. It’s really so lovely, moonlight. I’m sorry, I can’t get over how I never knew it, living all those years under all those roofs that we work so hard to build. Then suddenly one day they are taken away, and there is nothing between you and the austere sky, and the moon grows and opens up to illuminate everything that was always happening below it, like the life under a rock.

The children play noisy soccer on these kinds of nights in a vacant plot between me and the market, and every sound carries. I can tell who each one is by their laughter, by their harsh, barking shouts and admonishments in that prematurely adult tone, which everybody learns to learn from the first day of life, the one in which affection has been masked and replaced by a smirk, so that no one will ever find it.

Ramadan is expensive, and no mistake. Meat (in some form or another) and potatoes every night in tajiin, and endless kilos of sugar and tea, do not come cheaply, but I suppose the terrifying idea of a god who cares would make the splurge seem worth it. I don’t know where the money comes from – we have no savings worthy of the name, animals are the only banks and instead of account numbers they are branded with the sinewy letters of Arabic.

Awkwardly, I ran out of money during the month, and so even though I ate with them every night the only money I had to contribute to my neighbors was stored inaccessibly in my bank account, 4 hours away. I made up for it by eating very little, and trying to hide the fact from their inevitable protests that I should eat more, something which is easier to do before the moon waxes, when the location of one’s hand in the communal bowl is anyone’s guess.

Money is such a dirty subject anyway, anyhow, no matter where you go in the world. About a month after I first moved in next-door to them, my neighbors just started sending their daughters, one by one in a veiled parade, bringing me unasked-for bowls of food every day. Because I could not bring myself to talk to them about money, fearing as always, embarrassment and tactlessness, I just started to give them little gifts of sugar, onions, peanuts and dates. Then I started giving them food and tea. Then just a lot of tea. And then one day, because I could no longer stand the feeling that I was being a burden, I took the chance and included a little white envelope filled with ougiyas along with the tea, labeled in unable-to-be-read-by-them-French, ‘pour la famille de Mohamed Ali ould Assweylou, and that was that. Now I give them white envelopes of cash in a bag of tea every month and we’ve never said a word about it, which is just how I like it.

On night 27 of the holy month of Ramadan, the reciting of the Qur’an comes to a close and absolutely everyone goes, except me. I was snoozing on the tabourit when they returned and was woken up by Mohamed Ali sprinkling droplets of cold, Qur’an-blessed water on everything in the compound that seemed to need it - the tent, the sand, the goats, the house, the pots and pans, and, apparently, me.

So now, after all this time, I have been blessed. Thank God.

Conge part III

We parted on the opposite shore with a thoroughly unanticipated and awkward little hug, and promised to meet up later.

After several hours we emerged from the dark and rainy woods into a small town, and they led me, half asleep, into a low, tin-roofed little shack with long plywood tables plastered with old contact paper, and little benches, and no room anywhere, and Guinean music from a boombox. It was after midnight and everyone was eating rice with red or green sauces, so naturally I did too. This is simultaneously one of my least and most favorite things to do, to be as intolerably conspicuous as a siren, to pop up like a weed in places no one could have been expecting to see me, and to appear blankly unaware that anything is out of the ordinary. What the hell is a farm boy from Upstate doing in the midnight of a Guinean forest? It is important to betray no unease, though still better to have none, so as I commandeered a space on a rough bench, I returned any curious looks with one that said, "What?", and rested my head world-wearily on one hand as I spooned rice into my mouth with the other.

I had my first experience with the mythical 'cafe noire' of Guinea, but found that it got cold too fast because the cups were so small, and something about the sweetness tasted rotten.

In Boke, I spent the whole next day sleeping in a damp hotel filled with clumsy and musty wooden furniture. Because, unlike Mauritania, Guinea has trees from which to make such things, I found myself over and over in hotel rooms crowded with needless and tacky headboards and end-tables, thinking, 'what in the hell could I put in this giant cabinet?' I'd take the lazy austerity of a Mauritanian mat, or a simple bed and chair with clean lines over these boastful, awkward imitations of god knows what, anyday. That evening I watched their stangely shorter and fatter goats grazing endlessly on greenness, as I walked the long and hilly road toward the central town, where I ate fried plantains with piment sauce, which are peerless.

I found a little restaurant and when I walked in the young waiter greeted me like he had been expecting me. I thought I had made a mistake. "Ohhh," he said smiling, " le grand, le grand!"

The treatment is relatively common from people who are either exceedingly ebullient, or who want something, and though normally I find it irritating, or am at best indifferent to it, something in his eyes was honest and well intentioned. His name was Jibreel, like the angel. He wore corduroy pants. There was no one else there all night, except a couple on motorcycles who left early. I was the only customer. I drank Skols, a Guinean beer, and treated Jibreel to one orange Fanta after another as he sat in the chair beside me with his feet up and talked endlessly. They they fried me up a big fish which I picked out from its icy bed in the freezer.

On the way out Jibreel caught me a moto-taxi, just a quick whistle to a figure gliding by in the darkness and almost before I knew what was happening, the shadowy driver mumbled 'montes' and I did, and we sped away. It was raining just a little, the clotted clouds were streaming through the sky, the moon glowed green. Had I ever been on a motorcycle before? Maybe not. In truth, the motos they have here are closer to a dirt-bike than a Harley, but so much the better; what could be more thrilling than popping around on a zippy, svelte little craft, clutching the driver's tight-muscled tummy, the wet wind in your face, and feeling more alone that you ever thought possible? If there are better ways to traverse distances, I don't know of them. The taxi brought me right to my door, and I think I tipped him in gratitude. At second glance, the moto-man appeared to be about 14, but it didn't matter. I stumbled back to my over-furnished room and slept.

Conakry is a bit of a hole, to be honest, even though surely it can't compete with the holest of holes, our very own Nouakchott. Still, it seemed at times like just one long autoway, branching off into other dirty autoways, which branched off into confusing, slummy backstreets. But I know nothing.

I arrived in the rain, or rather just before it. This was to be a recurring plotline - it seemed to rain about every 3 hours. Clothes I washed took 2 days to dry, in Mauritania its about 30 minutes. I ducked under an overpass for shelter, along with several other random characters, including one young, sparsely mustachioed teenage guy on crutches, (or was it a wheelchair?) who managed to get me to give him some cash. Normally, I don't give to beggars, (if you do you will never stop, you will be bombarded by problems you can not fix) but he was extra spunky. I don't think he said two words, in fact, neither of us did. Our negociations were done all in the eyes.

After a while, a cab came like a chariot of dubious worth, and soon me, the distinguished Peul woman in the back, and the driver were all energetically trying to figure out where in the hell I was going. This happens all the time here, no one (including, and especially, cab drivers) knows where anything is in their own city, though they will nevertheless try very hard to help you get there. This is in varying degrees infuriating and endearing. When you ask the driver if he knows the "Mission Catholique" he will either lie and say yes, or with refreshing honesty say, 'no, just get in'. The taxi's window handles had all been broken or removed. This happens all the time here, too. The car was stifling and humid, the rain outside making it feel like I was on the inside of someone's science experiment. Worst of all, like always, I was the only one who seemed to mind. I kept tugging on my collar and staring at the broken window handles lie a crazy person. All of my nightmares since coming here involved riding in cars with every window rolled up. That is a joke, but just barely.

The Mission Catholique is exactly what it sounds like (good luck finding one of those in Mauritania) and it's inhabited by real live nuns, (not withered old white ladies, but young and beautiful African women) with habits and everything. Though, unlike their 'Sound of Music' counterparts, they wore, instead of dour navy drapes, light, sky-blue habits with crisp white short-sleeved blouses, pleated periwinkle skirts and silver cross necklaces. How lovely to come down, each morning, to a long wooden dining table, peopled with these pious figures in blue, and assorted travelers (of which, I, improbably, was one) and exchange polite, non-commital 'bonjours' and help oneself to some simple breakfast - coffee and milk (all from various powders) some bread and synthetic butter in a yellow tub. Why did it remind me, strangely, of my child hood, and the farm and worn countertops? There must have been some non-nun maid scrubbing floors with bleach. There must have been a framed picture of our absurdly white, anemically wraith-like savior on the wall, him looking up through the two wooden floors, the roof, and the mango canopy, to the sky.

The nuns, despite their cheery get-ups, made me feel bad for something I wasn't sure I did. What are you supposed to say to a nun? Once, when I was checking-in, the woman who sat down across the desk from me put her hands together and I spent a terrified moment thinking we were going to begin by praying. Do I have to pass a test to be able to stay, I wondered? I guess this is something that's more of my problem than theirs.

I went out to find a bit to eat and snagged some beef brochettes which are little kebobs of grilled meat and onions, and the harrassed-looking young woman I bought them from slid them off the stick for me onto a little bit of brown paper, gave me some piment when I asked for it, and then I sat down right there on a little blackened bench in the middle of the sidewalk and ate them. It wasn't very much so I had her hit me again, but brochettes do not disappoint.

This is something else, incidentally, that you will never find in Mauritania, in fact we have no street food whatsoever. The most you will find sold on the street (aside from produce) are peanuts (sugared or non) some hard candy or little packages of biscuit cookies. Then there are things like greasy beignets for travelers or children, because those are two groups of people who are routinely allowed to break rules.

And so the rule itself seems to be that it is rude to eat in front of others who are not eating, which is totally accepted and abided by, though I can't remember ever specifically learning it or being told so by anyone. I remember when I first came to Nouakchott I was so excited to find a corner epicerie who sold a reasonable approximation of a 'Nutty-Buddy' with out the nuts, (which, though good, are less important than the ingeniously delicious 'waffle cone') and then accordingly frustrated when I had to wait to get back to my room each night to eat it, my first ice-cream dessert in six months, for fear that someone might see me under the glow of a random streetlight and then feel disadvantaged because they wanted some too.... I laugh now when I think about how much I cared, because now I'm all, "screw those ice-cream-less freaks! I'm so (culturally) integrated I'm un-integrated!" But I supposed I'm honestly not that much of a bad-ass because I would still never eat the 'Nutty-Buddy' in broad day light. Some things stay the same.

To be continued...

Another thousand words

Idoumou, up close

Some reclining palms
Myself and others in St Louis

Mahmoudy with (my) radio

Snappy Holidays

Hi everyone,

I hope you and yours are doing well. I'm in Nouakchott for the Christmas season, on the prowl for good food, and at least one hot shower.

Here are a few more forgettable pictures of my life in Mauritania (the life's not forgettable, the pictures are, just to be clear). Anyway, hope it serves to break up the monotony of my sprawling, drawling posts (of which I hope to have a few more up soon).

Until then, don't eat too much fatsos. And use any and all free time you may have this season to write me letters.

With love,

Colton

My favorite picture of my neighbor Yusef and Khatiri (the latter's not a soldier, but dresses like one)

Catching Baay smoking (I promised not to show this to anyone in El Qidiya)

This is Daa making a puppy dog face

An uncomfortably close picture of me which Yusef snapped somehow.

Some of my guys working on a house (they are throwing dirt/cement to make the roof)

Some more of my best pals pose in the palmery, in their fancy new bou-bous for the recent fete.

From left (top row) Ali, Ahmed, Heydallah (bottom) Yusef, Mohamed

Congé part II

Since I don't have an actual VISA for Guinea (thanks entirely to Mauritanian boldfaced ineptness) the border police the next day gave me a little trouble. The barely literate policeman tried to make me go back to Bissau, while fondling a stack of 5,000 CFA bills, fanning them through his gold-ringed fingers (hint, hint) Still, I can't really blame them. Then suddenly, after the quota of harrassment had been reached, its entertainment value diminished, he called in a colleage and they both made a great show of discussing the merits of my case, as if there were absolutely anything at stake, as if the whole disorganized, corrupt mass of Guinea was in danger from one emaciated little toubab in a backpack. 'But he's Peace Corps!' says the second in French to the other, with what I'm sure was sarcasm intended for my benefit, 'Man, he's a blanc, you're just asking for trouble.' Give me a break. Peace Corps is about as dangerous as a goat snout.

The driver of my taxi tried to ditch me at the first sign of trouble, handing me back my grimy backpack, and the suddenly-on-my-side policemen bitched him out for it. Here's to fairweather friends. :)


In the leafy Guinean border town of Sareboido, I changed my remaing CFA for a giant bundle of inflated Guinean Francs (704,000 of them to be exact) and tried to stuff them all into the hidden, fanny-pack-like money pouch that I had made from an old pants pocket and a piece of a sheet. Then I settled in to wait at the head of the shady street for a car to fill.

I instantly liked Guinea, feeling that there was something different about it, for no better reason perhaps, than that I had finally acheived it, and continued to do so through the yummy bowl of hot-peppered riz-gras, casually eaten in a chair with a spoon, served from a bucket by a woman with tiny dreadlocks like pins, right up until the point when they overcharged me horrendously. Well, of course they did. I didn't argue, because I feel that bartering with people with whom you have been nicely chatting is degrading for everyone involved. Plus, negociating for prepared food (which I never have to do) feels especially tacky. My only defense at this point, because I'm arrogant and bitter, is to ask them patronizingly, 'Is this the correct price?', and shoot them an accusing stare so that I've forced them to lie explicitly when they answer 'yes', and so that my position on my little moral encampment is fortified.

That night we traveled miles and miles through the forested roads of red mud. 'Roads' is generous. Traveling conditions for the average person are so appaling thats its almost surreal in a nightmarish way. Before and afterwards you think it impossible that you could consent to , or survive being smushed for hours into an airless, stifling car in the rain, fighting to maintain your pathetic 1/2 seat from the hot, fabric swathed bodies next to you, radiating heat like small stars, being endlessly jostled and jumbled over treacherous vehicle-destroying potholes, as your head nods from exhaustion.

Still, there you are, time and time again, like a mouse who doesn't learn, and it just is. It's not that its not as bad as you think it will be. It is. Its just that the body forgets discomfort 5 minutes after it ends, and the mind turns it into a virtue.

Boy, Guinean standards sure are different! Get this: in Mauritania it's (Islamically) forbidden for me to sit in the seat next to a woman who is not my sister, despite the fact that we are both sheathed in fabric like Pharoahs, - a reality which results in endless amounts of reshuffling during transports full of strangers. Sometimes, when it is unavoidable, we simply jam a divider of whatever is available, a notebook, a waterbottle, between men and women, or obey wordless rules about the hierarchy of badness, or who is least related to whom. I, being what I am, - the epitome of the 'alien', usually top the list, but occasionally, and revealingly, I am considered as incomprehensible, and as neutrally non-human as the notebook.

In Guinea, however, at one point during the voyage I was sitting between a miniature little man in a hat, and the young mini-skirted woman beside the driver (Did you do the math? That's four people in the front of a car the size of a Civic) me, smushed up against the bare thighs and arms of the woman as she straddled the gear shift, our bulldog-faced driver reaching between her legs to shift from 2nd to 3rd. And no one batted an eye, as the rain continued and Salif Keita played on the stereo. Well, maybe one eye. My time in the RIM has made me a bit of a prude, for the moment.

A few hours after the sun had gone down on our journey over the forested paths, we came to a small lake at the bottom of a hill, where we got out to wait for the return of the small, hand-cranked barge which was to take us to the other side. Passengers from one the other cars sat off to the side of the path, and listened to Shakira as she belted out from the tiny speakers of one of their cellphones. "Hello, hello Monsieur?" said the man with the phone as I squatted nearby on the wet ground. My god, I thought, I am conspicuous even in complete darkness. There was no moon and I hadn't said a word. Jesus.

This was Magu, who will figure more in to my story later, but for the moment we just sait on a little conveniently placed wooden stool, and passed the time. He was returning from Germany (he's a mechanic there) and wore a black suede-esque jacket and jeans, had a shaved head with a long nose and biggish teeth that were a little crooked in the front, and we spoke in English because he could, well enough to be not too irritating. When he smiles it looks strained as though insincere, though in fact he's almost childishly guileless.

He was pleasant, though a little boring honestly, and when he suggested meeting up in Conakry, as we glided on the ferry over dark, muddy water, catching on branches, I couldn't help wishing, though I accepted, that I had landed an invitation from someone more intriguing. That's true, though not admirable. I've become blasé about fortuitous meetings and spontaneous offers of hospitality here, and have come to receive them with a critical eye.

To be continued......

Congé part I

I went away for a while.


I left my adopted desert home, with its bland dust, and caramel colored flat plains, its sense of reluctance, and went to Guinea, which is the wet, green wonderland of Mauritania's opposite.

The overland journey (there and there and back) was constant and cruel. It was not my intention, I had dreams of a plane, and a boat, of relative comfort and speed, none of which took place, because suffering is the medium of travel in Africa (when you are young, foreign and poor, when you are in love with your idea of the 'authentic') and that you will fall into its stuffy grip is inevitable.

My first night began with luck - I spent it with a St. Louisian who invited me to his house after we had shared the same taxi from Nouakchott. With impeccable taste, because I am impeccably tasteful, I refused his offer of lodging several times before accepting. He was transporting a giant karaoke radio system for reasons known only to himself. His family was kind and their house was relatively lovely (they had pink couches and art, hand-painted on the wall) and when I randomly burst into their compound at 10 o clock at night, they didn't openly stare, suspicious and rude, and mumble a reply to my greeting as Mauritanians would have done, but actually seemed charmed and alive, and asked me immediately 'what is your name?'

In Dakar, I realized how important it is for one to have a place to ditch one's cumbersome travel bag (I didn't) upon arrival, because I was attempted-mugged (my first!) by two rather inept villains, something that I feel certain wouldn't have happened had I not been weighed down by that awkward signal of foreignism. I know better than that. As luck would have it though, I was slightly less not-on-the-ball than the pick-pockets, and was able to wrest them away emptyhanded, and shout that intimidating zinger 'leave me alone!', which in my excited anger, I mispronounced. (wtf?)

On the way to Ziguinchor, the steamy capital of the Cassamance, we pass through The Gambia (which, if you don't know, is the most absurd little colonial relic of all, carved out of Sénégal's belly) where suddenly everything magically changes, and the gendarmes speak English - 'Okay, you have to come down (get out) now. Okay, you pay 5,000, eh?' - and where the signs say things like 'Faranah Town' and 'Moussa's Grocery'. Of course, nothing else actually changes between this 50 Kilometer long strip and the surrounding country, - the sickeningly thick foliage, the people, the horrible roads, the children, - nothing but the thinnest glaze of life which is the officialness of borders.

But speaking of such, more than once during my trip I had the surreal sense of being in a sort of play, in which everything changes on the deliberate schedule of the playbill, except the actors and their mysterious thoughts, which remain constant behind their costumes and shifting dialects. Once, sitting behind a group of chatty wolof women in a cab, with their uncovered heads of styled, fried and highlighted hair, their plunging necklines, I kept thinking simultaneously how scandalous they would seem to their arrogant and repressed Mauritanian counterparts in their stilted veils, and also how the line that separates them is no thicker than a sheet of fabric and a good stylist. And...scene!

In Zig(uinchor) I was accosted at the station by an overgrown urchin in a giant pageboy hat and white wife-beater, who convinced me in a moment's weakness to come stay with his family (or rather to 'just come and see') who rented out rooms in their home. Me, who prides himself in thinking he's strong-stomached and unique, who's terrified of missing a possible 'experience' and disdainful of his position as tourist, follows this strange little ragamuffin, knowing full well he was probably lying, or worse, but being unable to resist making everything difficult.

Fast forward to me spending an unbearable awkward 20 mintues on the urchin's floor, being stared at or ignored by his completely indifferent family, glued to the TV, barechested young mothers making rice, as he 'prepared' the room. It was immediately obvious that these people were not ready for prime-time, and that the mistake was mine. When I finally insisted on seeing the room, my heart fell from embarrassment. It was a horrid little hole (though I've stayed in worse) which he was attempting to make decent with a reed broom, lit by sinister candlelight, none but a dirty piece of plain foam on the floor and no mosquito net. What did I expect?

He frantically tried to persuade me with photos of his 'white' (as if that alone was enough) friends, whom he claimed had stayed there before, and in the photos they looked happy, and he, calm and tranquil in white, his eyes downcast, in stark contrast to his red-eyed anxious and sweaty appearance now. The photos were very obviously taken somewhere else, and in what must have surely been better times. I felt awful of course, and sad, and I'm ashamed to admit that I actually thought about staying for half a minute, as I contemplate my standards. I would oddly rather embarrass myself than someone else, but honestly that emotion is less about concern for others than it is about my own weak will, and when I realized that, I flatly refused before I could change my mind.

Not to make too much of this, but I was furious with myself then, because it became obvious to me that I was not some free-swinging traveler, moving on the authentic African path of classical suffering, but more like a careless dope who had allowed a misguided sense of adventure and a warped addiction to 'things happening' to lead him to a useless and awkward place where he had no business being, and which benefited no one.

-Ziguinchor was wet and saucy with impenetrable Sénégalese indifference, the kind that lives in the eyes and blank faces, which says 'we don't need you' when it is humiliatingly clear that you need them.

-The speechless ghost of the colonialists is everywhere in the stonework and the window grating.

-I ate a good but overpriced fish from the river, with rice molded into cakes, and lemon with piment. I was starving. I ate everything but the plate. I ate every piece like the savage I've become. I fed the tail to a loitering white cat.

Zig was just one junction in what was to become (though I didn't know at the the time) an endless series of junctions on the way to nowhere in particular.

As such, the next stop was Guinea-Bissau, whose Ziguinchor consulate was in one of those omnipresent colonial era relics, steady and heavy with the damp, dark wood of decay. The consul -a giant, quiet, efficient man, who finished my VISA in 5 minutes, his massive shoulders squeezed into a tiny shirt and tie, and behind a tiny desk, with beads of sweat on his wide nose at 9:00 in the morning.

I don't speak Portuguese.

That's what I have to say about Guinea-Bissau. The change happens just as suddenly as before, on the bank of a river waiting for a ferry, the red mud everywhere, men peeing into the shallow waters, hot humidity, grilled crawdads and little river-fish, gingerbread gateaus and beignets.

I don't know the religious statistics of the area, but there's got to be at least enough Christians to throw in a lion's den, because on top of an idling minibus, as we waited on the shore, was strapped a writhing, shrieking mass of pink pigs in a net. It was pretty awful, I mean aside from the sickening way animals are treated here (which is pretty bad, but I'm over it) I think I might have felt for a moment some of the revulsion my villagers (as Muslims) might feel for such an obscene little animal, which a Margaret Atwood poem once called something like a 'bloated pink tuber of flesh', smushed end over end together, squealing in their own awful stink. But then I remembered bacon and ham omelets, and the moment passed.

The women on the ferry sold, out of the coolers perched on their heads, unbelievably delicious, sherbert-thick Tejmakht (Baobob) ice, making Mauritania's weak stuff seem like another species, and said 'cinquinta franc' when I looked at them expectently for the price.

Bissau I left immediately and so saw nothing of - a coffee stall, a greasy fried egg, a carrefour - I traveled inland towards Gabu) because its impossible to drive south along the saw-toothed shoreline) in a taxi with a big fat Gambian woman from Serekundo, trussed up in brilliant hot-pink like a frosted cookie. It was raining and we listened to something groovy yet mournful in Portuguese as we rolled by the fertile, wet fields, and houses with roofs like four-sided pyramids.

In Gabu, after a minimal amount of drama, considering, I found a hotel run by a shirtless, 40-something Portuguese man, wearing a plastic retainer and running shorts, rubbing his protruding belly, who spoke a tiny amount of both French and English, and referred to his Bissauian groundskeeper as 'my boy'.

The place virtually reeked of kitchy tastelessness- architecturally lovely, but decorated with what one felt was this man's 'personal touch' -the room draped with heavy, mustard-yellow curtains smelling like grandmothers, garish posters of puppies and kittens, doilies, a Maggi calendar from 3 years ago showing a smiling Wolof woman.

The man, in an attempt to communicate, says 'night', points to the ceiling and says 'light', which I take to mean there will be a generator to run the lights later. He pantomimes spraying while making sound-effects - 'kshhh, kshhh', as if they will spray for mosquitoes in the netless room? I'm guessing, because neither of these actually took place.

In the bathroom were giant trash cans filled with clean water to bathe and do everything else with. The fixtures were all gone, either from theft, or the fear of it.

I wandered the streets and found people pleasant; smiling, curious but not staring with malice. When I walked by two girls selling grilled, blackened sweet-corn, one tells her friend to look up and see the whitey - at first she looks everyway but at me, until I wave because its almost too late, and she laughs, covering her mouth.

Presently, after getting rather lost, I round a bar-ish restaurant cafe, and throught pantomime and pointing got a tall red can of beer and half of a grilled chicken with cucumbers and sliced onions on the side. It was the best thing I ever ate. It was everything I had ever wanted.

I spend a lot of time on my trip (too much, really) thinking about whether or not I was okay with being alone, and what I was getting out of this endless traveling, and what exactly I was supposed to be doing to make it into something which transcended that. Still, I don't think at that moment I could have done any better, -there I was, one lonely little pony, plopped down like a puppet into this Bissauian hole in the wall, getting sauced on domestic brew, reading Hunter S. Thomson's 'Rum Diaries' and tearing apart this overcooked chicken like a hyena.

I tried to follow a distant, loud, parading wedding party through the darkening streets, but got lost again. Then it rained.

To be continued.

what's the word....

Hi weirdos,

I realize that my once steady stream of posts has more recently become a lifeless trickle, but deal with it. I no longer have internet whatsoever outside of the capital, Nouakchott, so that makes blogging a challenge. Nevertheless, here I am! I'm going to try to post a few things, which may be incomplete, but maybe worthwhile for all that. Also, I have a few pictures (which are conspicuously absent at the present) to post, but maybe not until December.

--Also, I'm glad no one writes me ever, or sends me letters, so thanks for that.

OK Kiddos, stay tuned.

PS Alice and Tony, I'm calling you soon to check on the progress you've make towards coming here, and I'm using check minuses and gold stars. Which will you be?

PSS Oh, wait, I found some pictures of various things such as myself and food. I didn't take any of them, Fred did, but that doesn't matter. More to come....

A plate of tajiin (a snack we eat before meals on special occasions)

Cous-cous, which we eat every night, though normally the meat is in microscopic bits

Me and my friend Rachel in (perhaps) St. Louis? last Christmas.