This is what I'm talking about.
On the back of tin cans of Nescafe Instant Classic, the potent little black powder sold all over West Africa (except my old village), next to the hyper-animated young woman in short dreadlocks, who is nearly spilling her red mug of java in fist-raising-ly exuberant enthusiasm for Nestles Inc., is a list of customer service numbers printed with white lettering inside of a brown, faux-cyber style rectangle. There's a little "play" button symbol beside it, as if it were going to burst out speaking. It lists numbers for 19 countries covering all of francophone W A. and beyond, all the way down the coast, to the reject-countries of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. The writing is in French, though it has an accompanying English translation paired with every blurb, so The Gambia doesn't throw a fit, the kind which, Scandinavian-style are almost correct, yet still, somehow, not.
The translation for "le bon contact" is "Good to talk" (why, yes.. it is good to talk), the kind of platitudinal non-phrase which doesn't really mean anything, but which you nevertheless would nod your head at if some smiling Dutch blondie said to you, "Aaah, Kowltin - I'm going to let you with the good-to-taalk numbahs. Yes?". The translation for the "le bon conseil " blurb is: experts confirm that 4 cups a coffee a day is moderate amount and quite safe for most people from a general health point of view! Oh, I'm so glad. I've simply got to up my Nescafe consumption by 400 percent, in order to drink "moderate amount" and have my "general health" viewed as "quite safe".
Mauritania's name is nowhere present on this can, despite being a francophone country, or a least a demi-Francophone country, given that French has managed to hack-out half of a precarious place from Arabic at the Official Languages court, though the quiet fight between the two still rages. Very hot button. Very now.
Why are we not mentioned? Don't tell me they just forgot. This is only one example of a phenomenon which, if you live here long enough, will come to seem routine.
I remember one occasion, I was staring glaze-eyed, and maybe drunk, at some babbling French news cast giving the weather reports for the all the capital cities in the region. These are basically all on the ocean, unsurprisingly, and so the splashy, 3 dimensional map, which was someone's ill-advised idea of a splurge, hopped from spot to spot up the coast-line, from Accra to Monrovia, to Freetown and slummy Conakry and earthy Bissau, with all their quaint and quotidian reports of rain, or not-rain, up through Banjul and the sexy mystery of Dakar.
At this point, the computer generated camera angle balked, lifted up into the "air", flew neatly in a one-second pause-hop over the whole length of Mauritania's sprawling desert disaster, including her ragamuffin poster-child, Nouakchott, like they were nothing more than a bad smell, and landed lightly on Morrocan soil to continue on its merry, virtual, way.
This is what I mean: can this snub send any clearer a message? You are not worth our time. In fact, it says we will go out of our way to snub you, since surely it was more trouble to skip over Nouakchott, than it would have been to throw us a bone in the form of a two second weather bulletin. It wouldn't even have had to be accurate. They could have just printed the words, it's going to be hot. what the hell did you think? and that would have been enough.
Oh M.....get yourself together.
The sad part is, most Mauritanians of the Moor persuasion (who are the only ones who count here) look on the Arab world as their cultural brethren, but I've never met anyone from said Arab world who reciprocates this feeling. Mauritania is almost never considered a member of the larger Arab/North Africa/ Levant/Middle East community, by anyone who knows. I've even heard of Sudan being grouped-in, and not Mauritania, which it sort of below the belt, if you ask me.
A friend who just recently went to Morocco mentioned the disdain with which Moroccans talked about Mauritania. One person did not even know what Hassaniya was (this is the neighboring country), another said, "but the women are all so fat, and the men so tiny....how does that work?" and another: "why are they always chewing on sticks?" Another friend reported that the Tunisians she met characterized Hassaniya as being what would happen if you tried to speak Arabic "with rocks in your mouth".
Oh, really?.... Only I'm allowed to say things like that. Hassaniya sweetie, you can put rocks in my mouth any day.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
and you, a young mistress
Here in Nouakchott we have a stadium (actually we have two, supposedly, though I have serious doubts about the second's existence). It's not far at all from my house, and was named the "Olympic Stadium" Stade Olympique, by some cruel, if prescient, official in the past, or by some digruntled architect, because of course, to quote a friend, "it will never play host to the olympics" .
Mostly it just sits there, hulking and derelict, its tall poles of clumped flood-lights, dark, and visible from afar, and in that way it serves a sort of passively-helpful purpose as a landmark, like a shipwreck, given the fact that addresses in the city consist of phrases like 'two streets past the boutique with the Marlboro sign turn left and go until you hit the giant pile of tires'.
I suppose once in a while they must surely hold a soccer game or two, though I've never heard of one happening, and somehow the image of stands full of fist-shaking men in crumpled bou-bous, though amusing, seems to jar with my experience of reality.
Then again, again, the other day I found a couple of jujube seeds on the ground which I am 100% certain is the snack that Mauritanians would be eating, instead of pocorn and hotdogs, if the aforementioned situation were true. Anything's possible.
Lately, (okay, three times, and counting) I've taken to running on the track in the early morning when the air is cool and when the entire place is hauntingly empty, save for a fit, speedy Chinese lady in black shorts and her balding companion. Like any two or more parties of westerners in Africa, we religiously participate in the fiction that the other does not exist, ignoring them completely, which is no skin off my nose because I just pop in my ill-fitting earphones and listen to Pharoahe Monch.
This, along with stuffing myself with as many fruits and vegetables as my body (and wallet) can handle, represents my sad little attempt at reparing some of the surely irreversable shit that Mauritania has done to my body (um, what vitamin is good for UV damage?) because, while having the endurance and muscle-tone of a dead twelve-year old was fun while it lasted, you know...all good things......
Something about the Stade is very beautiful to me in the way that all my favorite parts of Maurtania are beautiful, but it resists explaining. It's a giant symbol (sorry, you knew that was coming) of the country's, I don't know... cluelessness? naivete? predictability? None of those things sound very flattering when listed like that, and I guess they aren't, actually, but nevertheless I think of them warmly. Okay, luke-warmly. They are the only things that still (sometimes) make me smile, after all this time, when someone does the exact, tactless, hillbilly-like thing I knew they were going to do a moment before. Life here is scripted. In fact, the script was written so long ago its authors have been forgotten and though additions have been inserted here and there by clumsy colonists and malcontents, the plot chugs on. I can't believe I just wrote that extended metaphor, but listen...
This is a perfectly adequate stadum with an absolutely average oval of track surrounding a shock of green astroturf. The stands are little cement shelves with neatly painted numbers on the front. There are offices for the Olympic Committee, there are dormitories for visiting teams under a giant clock face which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. There are locker-rooms. There are box seats. I mean, are you kidding? There are box seats? Oh M..... wake up! And somehow the whole place feels like a slightly used, out-dated and transplanted high-school gymnasium from Ohio.
It's all perpetually locked too, btw, to even further stymie its use by would-be, athletic upstarts, so to get to the track you have to make a little hop-slide over a guard-rail (not hard) whose white paint is worn to black in patches by the actions of previous delinquents who had the same idea.
As of yet, no one's tried to kick me out, but there is a white Moor man who appears in his slept-in bou-bou every morning, and makes no attempt at any form of exercise but rather sits on the edge of the rust-colored track, quite plainly watching me, Chinese woman and baldy go around and around in circles.
Since I don't know, I am forced to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it is possible that he is an important stadium personage, supervising the arena. Though much, much more likely he is just an average, naughty, Joe, lured there by nothing more, and nothing less, than the promise of seeing, as Ginger puts it "ladies' legs".
Oh dear. Oh poor, stunted, creepy, dear. I supposed we all have a need to see ladies' legs, but just do us all a favor and keep it in your pants. Em....I mean, sirwaal....
Mostly it just sits there, hulking and derelict, its tall poles of clumped flood-lights, dark, and visible from afar, and in that way it serves a sort of passively-helpful purpose as a landmark, like a shipwreck, given the fact that addresses in the city consist of phrases like 'two streets past the boutique with the Marlboro sign turn left and go until you hit the giant pile of tires'.
I suppose once in a while they must surely hold a soccer game or two, though I've never heard of one happening, and somehow the image of stands full of fist-shaking men in crumpled bou-bous, though amusing, seems to jar with my experience of reality.
Then again, again, the other day I found a couple of jujube seeds on the ground which I am 100% certain is the snack that Mauritanians would be eating, instead of pocorn and hotdogs, if the aforementioned situation were true. Anything's possible.
Lately, (okay, three times, and counting) I've taken to running on the track in the early morning when the air is cool and when the entire place is hauntingly empty, save for a fit, speedy Chinese lady in black shorts and her balding companion. Like any two or more parties of westerners in Africa, we religiously participate in the fiction that the other does not exist, ignoring them completely, which is no skin off my nose because I just pop in my ill-fitting earphones and listen to Pharoahe Monch.
This, along with stuffing myself with as many fruits and vegetables as my body (and wallet) can handle, represents my sad little attempt at reparing some of the surely irreversable shit that Mauritania has done to my body (um, what vitamin is good for UV damage?) because, while having the endurance and muscle-tone of a dead twelve-year old was fun while it lasted, you know...all good things......
Something about the Stade is very beautiful to me in the way that all my favorite parts of Maurtania are beautiful, but it resists explaining. It's a giant symbol (sorry, you knew that was coming) of the country's, I don't know... cluelessness? naivete? predictability? None of those things sound very flattering when listed like that, and I guess they aren't, actually, but nevertheless I think of them warmly. Okay, luke-warmly. They are the only things that still (sometimes) make me smile, after all this time, when someone does the exact, tactless, hillbilly-like thing I knew they were going to do a moment before. Life here is scripted. In fact, the script was written so long ago its authors have been forgotten and though additions have been inserted here and there by clumsy colonists and malcontents, the plot chugs on. I can't believe I just wrote that extended metaphor, but listen...
This is a perfectly adequate stadum with an absolutely average oval of track surrounding a shock of green astroturf. The stands are little cement shelves with neatly painted numbers on the front. There are offices for the Olympic Committee, there are dormitories for visiting teams under a giant clock face which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. There are locker-rooms. There are box seats. I mean, are you kidding? There are box seats? Oh M..... wake up! And somehow the whole place feels like a slightly used, out-dated and transplanted high-school gymnasium from Ohio.
It's all perpetually locked too, btw, to even further stymie its use by would-be, athletic upstarts, so to get to the track you have to make a little hop-slide over a guard-rail (not hard) whose white paint is worn to black in patches by the actions of previous delinquents who had the same idea.
As of yet, no one's tried to kick me out, but there is a white Moor man who appears in his slept-in bou-bou every morning, and makes no attempt at any form of exercise but rather sits on the edge of the rust-colored track, quite plainly watching me, Chinese woman and baldy go around and around in circles.
Since I don't know, I am forced to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it is possible that he is an important stadium personage, supervising the arena. Though much, much more likely he is just an average, naughty, Joe, lured there by nothing more, and nothing less, than the promise of seeing, as Ginger puts it "ladies' legs".
Oh dear. Oh poor, stunted, creepy, dear. I supposed we all have a need to see ladies' legs, but just do us all a favor and keep it in your pants. Em....I mean, sirwaal....
Monday, September 29, 2008
there is no aboriginal stuff
Winter is coming.
That is a statement which, clearly, is good only after being qualified, since the temperature here probably never fails to reach 100 degrees in the sun, at some point during the day, no matter the season, but what I mean is that the coolness, that little, ever present(ly hidden) seed-like locus of cold, which opens, often only for a moment, like a shy flower, around 3 or four in the morning, begins to come a little earlier in the evening with the breeze, to linger a little longer in the morning, like a reluctant lover. Clearly it knows how to artfully foreshadow itself, to those who are watching.
At a much brisker pace, I’m rediscovering food, or rather, cooking, or rather, cooking is rediscovering me. In America, I used to be permanently tuned to the Food Network, which I still maintain is not girly, but Mauritanian brousse will, and did, put a stop to that sort of foolishness in anyone. It will make you lose your appetite, not gently, for anything but white rice and oil. It will therefore render ridiculous, any attempts to cook, not to mention attempts to do other things too, like live, but that’s another story.
Here, down the street a little ways, past the Chinese restaurant (we have one), past the (one) undercover and un-marked bar-simulacrum, hiding in plain, sunlit sight, past the half-hearted attempt at a supermarket, (which nevertheless sells ice-cream bars) there is a small dark room, squeezed in next to the refrigerator "repair" men, which has a reasonably reliable supply of the standard Mauritanian vegetables for sale. They sell someone's twisted idea of meat too, but if you come later in the evening that's all been sold, and what's left is the ancient, nicked and notched log, stained with old blood, where countless animal carcasses have surely met their fate, being hacked apart, limb from limb, bodies separated from all their constituent parts, each one sent to a new home in a tiny green plastic bag. Yum
The little guy who sells me vegetables -while his mother sits in the dark shadows, is about 13, maybe, with a voice that's beginning to change, and plump, lisping lips, and big hands with rough, elephant skin- wears the same, unwashed red shirt every day and is aggressively dirty, which is only logical since he spends all day sweating in that hot, sweltering hole of a room, where the wind does not penetrate, puttering around wilted vegetables, sticky, raw meat and occasional fat chunks of a fish which may or may not, be "grouper".
He speaks Hassaniya with a subtle accent, which I can't identify, but which I think must be the lingering echoes of some Pulaar grandmother speaking ghost-like through his mouth.
To pass the time, I've cultivated a casual friendship with him, which I am wont to do, and which represents my only real skill. The skill is, not, (creepily) 'forging relationships with children' so much as infiltrating the lives and routines of others, by imitating their voices, and gestures, and habits, until I seem to blend into the background. By another name, it's called mimicry, and it's all, in the end, a result of my splendid, machine-like ears, and if I've had any success at all here, (a big if) it's due to that fact alone.
Sometimes children will surprise you with the extent to which they guilelessly buy it all, this illusion of mine, and the other day while I was picking through turnips, veggie-boy asked casually if I had finished school already, and if I therefore had any leftover 6th year school books he could use.
-I asked, “Which ones? Like, Science? Math?” I handed him a bunch of turnips to weigh. “History?”
-“It doesn’t matter. Anything.” he said.
I looked away to keep from smiling, because his adorable assumption, even if only in one irrational part of his brain, that I would have used the same Mauritanian school-books as he, was oddly heartbreaking.
Someone must have overheard the exchange and set him straight, because two days later, when I came again the first thing he said to me was, “What country are you from?” It had taken him a month and a half to ask the question which most people ask within two seconds of meeting me, (right after "are you a Muslim?") and I responded in the way I sometimes do, just to mix things up: I cocked my head, and thought for a moment, my eyes upturned. Then I gave a quick shake of my head and said, “Yaa....I dunno. I forgot.”
I couldn't tell you his name, I don't think I've ever asked. I constantly bug him to give me a good price, in the persistently rude and brusque way of Mauritanians that is now mine, and I tell him if he doesn't I'm going to "nitarsh" him, meaning, roughly, "to smack upside the head", which is a word related in that patiently Arabic, tri-consonantal way to "atrash", which means deaf.
He sells lentils, a graceful, wonderful pulse I hope to never again take for granted, as well as gooey bags of tomato paste from a giant can, and garlic, and homemade peanut butter, and lettuce and cucumbers, green-peppers, fresh carrots from a Moroccan plastic sac, and beets. If you don't like beets, I hope that you will go and re-evaluate your life, because, as if the fact that they bleed a deep scarlet-red juice were not reason enough to adore them, they happen to taste like the actual crumbling earth itself, which is a good thing. Repent, beet haters.
None of these things are necessarily unique to Nouakchott, and can be found in most regional "capitals" in the rest of the country, but to me, coming from the brousse of all brousses, I find myself continually amazed by the city's humble, and ubiquitous, wonders.
The one thing I've come to depend on, in order to keep my life worth living, is "tigi digi", the (Pulaar?) word for a peanut-butter-like substance (Moors don't make it) which appears throughout the country in various guises, ranging in taste from "unpalatable" to "better than nothing", but which has surely reached its ultimate zenith here in the bloated, greasy bags of the stuff sold in this little man's shop.
They keep it in an old, yellow Jumbo-cube bucket, buried amongst the hot peppers, so now I just go and help myself to a couple of bulging bags while my little guy is occupied, chopping up some fat, veiled, vampire-of-a-white-Mooress's fish steak.
This peanut butter is oily enough to be creamy, but not whipped into the synthetic pansy-ness of, say, Jiffy, and it is bitter and ballsy and unapologetic, and I love it. Every morning I slather it on fresh bread loaves, bought from the toothless old shop-keeper across the street, drizzled with honey (thick, impure stuff with actual dead bees in it, which Ginger brought us from Senegal in a vingear bottle), and sip real coffee, reading a children's book in French, about 'N'zi, the Great. Warrior of Africa', or sit basking in my electric fan's benediction.
I have a good life. I don't say it enough, but I do. Now if only having a good life had even the slightest connection with having a happy one, we would be in business.
But at the moment, I'll make do with lentils and say ilhumdulllah.
That is a statement which, clearly, is good only after being qualified, since the temperature here probably never fails to reach 100 degrees in the sun, at some point during the day, no matter the season, but what I mean is that the coolness, that little, ever present(ly hidden) seed-like locus of cold, which opens, often only for a moment, like a shy flower, around 3 or four in the morning, begins to come a little earlier in the evening with the breeze, to linger a little longer in the morning, like a reluctant lover. Clearly it knows how to artfully foreshadow itself, to those who are watching.
At a much brisker pace, I’m rediscovering food, or rather, cooking, or rather, cooking is rediscovering me. In America, I used to be permanently tuned to the Food Network, which I still maintain is not girly, but Mauritanian brousse will, and did, put a stop to that sort of foolishness in anyone. It will make you lose your appetite, not gently, for anything but white rice and oil. It will therefore render ridiculous, any attempts to cook, not to mention attempts to do other things too, like live, but that’s another story.
Here, down the street a little ways, past the Chinese restaurant (we have one), past the (one) undercover and un-marked bar-simulacrum, hiding in plain, sunlit sight, past the half-hearted attempt at a supermarket, (which nevertheless sells ice-cream bars) there is a small dark room, squeezed in next to the refrigerator "repair" men, which has a reasonably reliable supply of the standard Mauritanian vegetables for sale. They sell someone's twisted idea of meat too, but if you come later in the evening that's all been sold, and what's left is the ancient, nicked and notched log, stained with old blood, where countless animal carcasses have surely met their fate, being hacked apart, limb from limb, bodies separated from all their constituent parts, each one sent to a new home in a tiny green plastic bag. Yum
The little guy who sells me vegetables -while his mother sits in the dark shadows, is about 13, maybe, with a voice that's beginning to change, and plump, lisping lips, and big hands with rough, elephant skin- wears the same, unwashed red shirt every day and is aggressively dirty, which is only logical since he spends all day sweating in that hot, sweltering hole of a room, where the wind does not penetrate, puttering around wilted vegetables, sticky, raw meat and occasional fat chunks of a fish which may or may not, be "grouper".
He speaks Hassaniya with a subtle accent, which I can't identify, but which I think must be the lingering echoes of some Pulaar grandmother speaking ghost-like through his mouth.
To pass the time, I've cultivated a casual friendship with him, which I am wont to do, and which represents my only real skill. The skill is, not, (creepily) 'forging relationships with children' so much as infiltrating the lives and routines of others, by imitating their voices, and gestures, and habits, until I seem to blend into the background. By another name, it's called mimicry, and it's all, in the end, a result of my splendid, machine-like ears, and if I've had any success at all here, (a big if) it's due to that fact alone.
Sometimes children will surprise you with the extent to which they guilelessly buy it all, this illusion of mine, and the other day while I was picking through turnips, veggie-boy asked casually if I had finished school already, and if I therefore had any leftover 6th year school books he could use.
-I asked, “Which ones? Like, Science? Math?” I handed him a bunch of turnips to weigh. “History?”
-“It doesn’t matter. Anything.” he said.
I looked away to keep from smiling, because his adorable assumption, even if only in one irrational part of his brain, that I would have used the same Mauritanian school-books as he, was oddly heartbreaking.
Someone must have overheard the exchange and set him straight, because two days later, when I came again the first thing he said to me was, “What country are you from?” It had taken him a month and a half to ask the question which most people ask within two seconds of meeting me, (right after "are you a Muslim?") and I responded in the way I sometimes do, just to mix things up: I cocked my head, and thought for a moment, my eyes upturned. Then I gave a quick shake of my head and said, “Yaa....I dunno. I forgot.”
I couldn't tell you his name, I don't think I've ever asked. I constantly bug him to give me a good price, in the persistently rude and brusque way of Mauritanians that is now mine, and I tell him if he doesn't I'm going to "nitarsh" him, meaning, roughly, "to smack upside the head", which is a word related in that patiently Arabic, tri-consonantal way to "atrash", which means deaf.
He sells lentils, a graceful, wonderful pulse I hope to never again take for granted, as well as gooey bags of tomato paste from a giant can, and garlic, and homemade peanut butter, and lettuce and cucumbers, green-peppers, fresh carrots from a Moroccan plastic sac, and beets. If you don't like beets, I hope that you will go and re-evaluate your life, because, as if the fact that they bleed a deep scarlet-red juice were not reason enough to adore them, they happen to taste like the actual crumbling earth itself, which is a good thing. Repent, beet haters.
None of these things are necessarily unique to Nouakchott, and can be found in most regional "capitals" in the rest of the country, but to me, coming from the brousse of all brousses, I find myself continually amazed by the city's humble, and ubiquitous, wonders.
The one thing I've come to depend on, in order to keep my life worth living, is "tigi digi", the (Pulaar?) word for a peanut-butter-like substance (Moors don't make it) which appears throughout the country in various guises, ranging in taste from "unpalatable" to "better than nothing", but which has surely reached its ultimate zenith here in the bloated, greasy bags of the stuff sold in this little man's shop.
They keep it in an old, yellow Jumbo-cube bucket, buried amongst the hot peppers, so now I just go and help myself to a couple of bulging bags while my little guy is occupied, chopping up some fat, veiled, vampire-of-a-white-Mooress's fish steak.
This peanut butter is oily enough to be creamy, but not whipped into the synthetic pansy-ness of, say, Jiffy, and it is bitter and ballsy and unapologetic, and I love it. Every morning I slather it on fresh bread loaves, bought from the toothless old shop-keeper across the street, drizzled with honey (thick, impure stuff with actual dead bees in it, which Ginger brought us from Senegal in a vingear bottle), and sip real coffee, reading a children's book in French, about 'N'zi, the Great. Warrior of Africa', or sit basking in my electric fan's benediction.
I have a good life. I don't say it enough, but I do. Now if only having a good life had even the slightest connection with having a happy one, we would be in business.
But at the moment, I'll make do with lentils and say ilhumdulllah.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
by tacit agreement they ignored the remarks
Today I met a young man from Syria, (the shadowed, mysterious country of so many staid CNN broadcasts) whose name is Hazaa, like that weird old word for ‘hooray’, which is a name I’ve never heard of before, and which sounds like it’s spelled with a ‘hamza’ (glottal stop) at the end, but isn’t (he told me) so now I’m stumped.
I met him by chance (like I do almost all my assorted acquaintances) on the street as I was walking along, trying to figure out how to send phone credit to someone who had asked for it (this happens all the time - people whom you may not have heard from in months, will call you and say, “Hi. How’s your health? How’s the heat? Send me credit? Click) and as he passed me I looked up, and after he had passed he said, "Bonjour" and then I looked over my shoulder and said "ish-haal-ak?" (how are you?) and then he looked back and smiled at my Hassaniya, and I looked back at him smiling, and then I smiled and then we backtracked, walking towards one another and shook hands and did greetings.
This would be weird in America, but strangely enough I do this all the time, and with people I couldn't tell from Adam, so when I said that we met by chance, it was a lie, and what I meant was that we met because I gave chance a chance. Even though that sounds like a lyric from a Karen Carpenter song, the question remains: why did I look over my shoulder? Why did I go back? More on that later....
Anyway, on his head, Hazaa had a ball cap, well worn to frayed-ness and with a bent brim, from under which his great crop of dark curls was visible, curving delicately around his ears and shading his black eyes. He looked Greek, maybe, or maybe he just looked like I think Greeks look, but Syria (in my mind) is off over there, in that part of the world where the difference between "Arab" and "Mediterranean" becomes more a question of the proper lighting.
In fact, it's usually very easy to spot people who are actually Arab, (as opposed to Moor which isn't the same thing), from North Africa or otherwise, and not just because they are usually lighter-skinned, (which they are) but also because of more subtle and complicated factors, like 'base tones' and 'color warmth' and all those science-things which are hard to describe though easier to recognize.
He was good-looking, clearly, though I don't remember specifically why, other than his square, clean-shaven chin, and interesting lips, which were not unicolor, but which instead contained patches of varying shades of pink.
He had a good voice though, clear and mellow and pleasant, which is something I am always quick to jealously notice in others, given the diffuse, fickle, chameleon of an irritating purr that I've been cursed with. Now I'm just hoping someday he'll speak to me in Syrian Arabic, while I sit there attacking a plate of humus, or twiddling my thumbs.
His clothes were all dirty, like he'd just come from work, which I later verified, sleuth-like, when he said "I've just come from work". He said he's a "builder" - one of those vague job descriptions people are so fond of using here, that could mean anything. I'm sorry, a builder of......? Toy helicopters? Sports stadiums? Grammatically incorrect sentences?
After he asked if I was French (always everyone's first question) he said that I looked like the brother of some university professor he knew, and then we talked for all of 5 minutes about nothing in particular, which I am oddly good at only in foreign languages, all the while holding hands - a culturally appropriate habit I'm going to miss, but that I'd better learn to break before I return to America, lest I become some kind of touchy-feely freakazoid whom people avoid at social gatherings.
Part of what's involved in having conversations about nothing is posing questions you already know the answer to, and so I asked if Hassaniya was quite different from the language in "Sooriiya". He said yes, because it totally is, even though this is a fact many Mauritanians whom you meet will steadfastly deny, insisting that they can be understood all the way to the Saudi peninsula and back, but nevertheless, he seemed to speak it just fine, only more lightly and gracefully than natives, for obvious reasons.
One thing he did was pepper his phrases, Mauritanian-like, with "yaa, khu-ya" meaning "my brother", as in "where did you learn Hassaniya, yaa, khu-ya?" which is another thing I am going to miss dearly, as it has the instant effect of making one feel better, but sadly it's something that I don't think is very common in the US outside of maybe, parts of the black community, and like, monasteries, neither of whom, I think, would let me in the door.
I should listen to Mom, and not speak to strangers, especially the ones who are eager to speak to me, as he could have been a theif, a seller of something I didn't want to buy, or much more likely, and almost worse, annoying, but I'm a big boy now, and as it turns out he wasn't any of those things.
Still.... why the second look?
One reason, in particular, I acknowledge to be more or less ignoble, (which is to say, would I have turned and looked had the person in question been a Plain-Jane? I think we all know the answer to that question) but A) I ain't no saint, and B) that is not within the scope of this entry.
But aside from that, I have a possibly not un-dangerous tendency, it seems, to follow the course of events wherever they may lead, or more specifically, to selectively encourage those events which seem to have the best chance of coming to an intriguing end. Now that I've set that down, I realize I said it in what is possibly the most boring way possible, and also that there is nothing noteworthy about wanting interesting things to happen in one's life (not that I am at all averse to writing about 'nothing noteworthy.')
I guess the only reason I'm thinking about it is that if I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that I don't separate dangerous from interesting. Having said that, the sunbaked streets of Nouakchott at 3pm are surely less threatening that a rural road in New Jersey, but I've found (read: put) myself in plenty of situations here which either did, or could easily have gone sour, and I was led there not by my better judgement, or even necessity, but by the simple truth that I would rather be anything, anything, but bored.
Well, I'm nothing if not a fool, though we knew that already.
I met him by chance (like I do almost all my assorted acquaintances) on the street as I was walking along, trying to figure out how to send phone credit to someone who had asked for it (this happens all the time - people whom you may not have heard from in months, will call you and say, “Hi. How’s your health? How’s the heat? Send me credit? Click) and as he passed me I looked up, and after he had passed he said, "Bonjour" and then I looked over my shoulder and said "ish-haal-ak?" (how are you?) and then he looked back and smiled at my Hassaniya, and I looked back at him smiling, and then I smiled and then we backtracked, walking towards one another and shook hands and did greetings.
This would be weird in America, but strangely enough I do this all the time, and with people I couldn't tell from Adam, so when I said that we met by chance, it was a lie, and what I meant was that we met because I gave chance a chance. Even though that sounds like a lyric from a Karen Carpenter song, the question remains: why did I look over my shoulder? Why did I go back? More on that later....
Anyway, on his head, Hazaa had a ball cap, well worn to frayed-ness and with a bent brim, from under which his great crop of dark curls was visible, curving delicately around his ears and shading his black eyes. He looked Greek, maybe, or maybe he just looked like I think Greeks look, but Syria (in my mind) is off over there, in that part of the world where the difference between "Arab" and "Mediterranean" becomes more a question of the proper lighting.
In fact, it's usually very easy to spot people who are actually Arab, (as opposed to Moor which isn't the same thing), from North Africa or otherwise, and not just because they are usually lighter-skinned, (which they are) but also because of more subtle and complicated factors, like 'base tones' and 'color warmth' and all those science-things which are hard to describe though easier to recognize.
He was good-looking, clearly, though I don't remember specifically why, other than his square, clean-shaven chin, and interesting lips, which were not unicolor, but which instead contained patches of varying shades of pink.
He had a good voice though, clear and mellow and pleasant, which is something I am always quick to jealously notice in others, given the diffuse, fickle, chameleon of an irritating purr that I've been cursed with. Now I'm just hoping someday he'll speak to me in Syrian Arabic, while I sit there attacking a plate of humus, or twiddling my thumbs.
His clothes were all dirty, like he'd just come from work, which I later verified, sleuth-like, when he said "I've just come from work". He said he's a "builder" - one of those vague job descriptions people are so fond of using here, that could mean anything. I'm sorry, a builder of......? Toy helicopters? Sports stadiums? Grammatically incorrect sentences?
After he asked if I was French (always everyone's first question) he said that I looked like the brother of some university professor he knew, and then we talked for all of 5 minutes about nothing in particular, which I am oddly good at only in foreign languages, all the while holding hands - a culturally appropriate habit I'm going to miss, but that I'd better learn to break before I return to America, lest I become some kind of touchy-feely freakazoid whom people avoid at social gatherings.
Part of what's involved in having conversations about nothing is posing questions you already know the answer to, and so I asked if Hassaniya was quite different from the language in "Sooriiya". He said yes, because it totally is, even though this is a fact many Mauritanians whom you meet will steadfastly deny, insisting that they can be understood all the way to the Saudi peninsula and back, but nevertheless, he seemed to speak it just fine, only more lightly and gracefully than natives, for obvious reasons.
One thing he did was pepper his phrases, Mauritanian-like, with "yaa, khu-ya" meaning "my brother", as in "where did you learn Hassaniya, yaa, khu-ya?" which is another thing I am going to miss dearly, as it has the instant effect of making one feel better, but sadly it's something that I don't think is very common in the US outside of maybe, parts of the black community, and like, monasteries, neither of whom, I think, would let me in the door.
I should listen to Mom, and not speak to strangers, especially the ones who are eager to speak to me, as he could have been a theif, a seller of something I didn't want to buy, or much more likely, and almost worse, annoying, but I'm a big boy now, and as it turns out he wasn't any of those things.
Still.... why the second look?
One reason, in particular, I acknowledge to be more or less ignoble, (which is to say, would I have turned and looked had the person in question been a Plain-Jane? I think we all know the answer to that question) but A) I ain't no saint, and B) that is not within the scope of this entry.
But aside from that, I have a possibly not un-dangerous tendency, it seems, to follow the course of events wherever they may lead, or more specifically, to selectively encourage those events which seem to have the best chance of coming to an intriguing end. Now that I've set that down, I realize I said it in what is possibly the most boring way possible, and also that there is nothing noteworthy about wanting interesting things to happen in one's life (not that I am at all averse to writing about 'nothing noteworthy.')
I guess the only reason I'm thinking about it is that if I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that I don't separate dangerous from interesting. Having said that, the sunbaked streets of Nouakchott at 3pm are surely less threatening that a rural road in New Jersey, but I've found (read: put) myself in plenty of situations here which either did, or could easily have gone sour, and I was led there not by my better judgement, or even necessity, but by the simple truth that I would rather be anything, anything, but bored.
Well, I'm nothing if not a fool, though we knew that already.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
like the street loves slang
There are two kinds of taxis. Well, clearly that's a lie because there are many more than that, but the only two I'm concerned with are the kind that are cheap, and the kind that are cheaper.
Every day now (except weekends, which, because we are so Muslim, means Friday and Saturday) I go to our bureau (I'm sorry, is that even a word in English? it means office) to work, which is in the tallest building in the country, all of nine storeys, and which, with its glass, automatic! doors and shiny, snazzy steel, and three, count them, three elevators, one of which lights up at night, is quite unmistakably Mauritania's version of a (pretty, but needless) chunk of glittering, national diamond in the sky, known otherwise as bling.
The building is called 'el khayme' which can translate literally as 'the tent', and is located just far enough away so that I can take a cab without feeling very guilty, but not far enough away so that I must. I live one street over from Chinguitel (as in Chinguit(ti) tel(ephone)) the company who, with their bright blue signs depicting a starburst, and their air of both new-mystery, and an urbane Arab-ness which no one can resist, started moving in on Mauritel's virtual monopoly over phone service sometime last year-ish, and has, ever since, been scaring their pants off. They also happen to be a subsidiary of Sudatel, which is owned by the Sudanese government, so it's like " watch out....".
On the other side, in a diagonal shot from my doorstep, is the restaurant slash English-school-with-creepily-subversive-Christian-undertones, "Equinox". It's housed in a gorgeously restored home with Arabesque filligree work, and plaster moldings on the ceiling, and tiles, more suitably located in some country with actual culture, like Morocco, (ooops!). The sign out front, in green and black, the "o" made into a half moon, looks more like that for an insurance agency than an eatery, but the food's good, so all is forgiven.
It's the only restaurant that I know of in the city (read: country) which is owned and run by an American- a middle-aged, white ex development worker- and there are three things which would tell you this even if you didn't already know: their french-fries are crunchy, like something out of someone's ideal of a mid-western diner, smoking is prohibited, and when you sit down, they bring you ice-water (as in, "water with ice in it") which is, if you didn't know, notoriously American to everyone except Americans themselves. They also have white pepper (wtf?) on the table, and meatball sandwiches, so I just ignore the Christian reading material, and stuff my face.
The thing about walking to work is not the distance, but the heat - I'm sorry, it's hot here. Did you know?- but more than that, it's the humidity. This might seem like a joke, because Nouakchott's humidity, as a desert city, is doubtless extremely low compared to the rest of the world, but it's on the coast, and I just came from living two years on top of a sand dune, so anything wetter than, say, 'deathly parched' makes me feel like I'm swimming. Shneeks.
I feel as though modern living, and houses, and mores are not compatible with this place on the earth. There is a reason people live in in tents in the rest of the country. In the village I had one little room with two doors, six feet apart, who exchanged the breeze with one another, and everything I owned was practically within arm's reach, and I had my white howlie to protect me from the sun. Here, walking down the almost tree-less streets, I feel self-conscious, and like a grotesque, "mitbaadi" (hick-like) Frenchman if I wear my howlie, and I feel like the sun hates people, literally hates them, pouring down distaste, instead of light. Why else is it so HOT? Why else would the heat get trapped in my labrinthine, over room-ed house each night instead of escaping up into the stars.
But this is all a lie, because in Nouakchott I have (sporadically) running water, and bananas, and the other day I made a green salad with cucumbers and golden raisins. Fuck the village.
If I walk to work I am a soaked, overheated disaster by the time I walk in the lobby, with its snooty (S)watch kiosk, and international time clocks, and even my newly bought, painfully distressed, Chinese-made jeans, and faux Armani black T-shirt with rivets can not disguise it. Meanwhile, there is Cheikh G. -the tall Wolof angel of graceful goodness, who smells, always, distinctly of heaven (I'm not kidding) and whose skin is perpetually cool to the touch, as though internally air-conditioned underneath his flowing robes- who works regular miracles in the transparent office next to my little "fly-by-night" dictionary-making station, so what's one to do?
Anway, the taxis- it's one of those things where after you notice something, it's hard to believe you never noticed it before, but virtually all the cabs in the city are the same kind of late-model mercedes (that name doesn't mean the same thing here) painted in either green and yellow, or not, and occasionally pimped-out, complete with hub-caps, and driven by what invariably turns out to be a young Senagalese cutie in a tanktop listening to Mbalax. These taxis will, without fail, charge me 200 ougiyas to get from here to there; the extra 100 is added because, and only because, there is a 90 degree turn involved.
That much I knew- the part I didn't notice was about the taxi "tout-droites" (meaning "straight (ahead)", ironically) which are all decrepit Renaults -skelatally bare-metal, and looking like the French contemporary of the Model-T- and since someone pointed them out to me, they are now as easy to spot as shining, rusting, belching beacons in the proverbial dark. These are shared, fixed-route cabs, which cost 80 ougiyas, look something like a hatch-back, and exist to ferry low-budget commuters, everyday, between capitale market and somewhere else I could care less about. The important thing is that I catch them, with almost reverent devotion, on the main route, 30 seconds from my house, and I can disdainfully ignore all the futile honking of the Mercedes, thinking, "200 ougs, my eye", until one of these perilous relics rolls slowly by. I hiss them down, and point for good measure, and try to act nonchalant as I hop chic-ly into what is, to all appearances, a vehicle made for not-me, smelling (for the moment) faintly like imitation Hugo and clean-ness, dressed in black pinstripe and scrubbed converse all stars, and pondering, just briefly, the fact that I may be cheap, and even poorer, I may be a fault-riddled, neurotic, catastrophe, but damn, sometimes, I've got style.
Every day now (except weekends, which, because we are so Muslim, means Friday and Saturday) I go to our bureau (I'm sorry, is that even a word in English? it means office) to work, which is in the tallest building in the country, all of nine storeys, and which, with its glass, automatic! doors and shiny, snazzy steel, and three, count them, three elevators, one of which lights up at night, is quite unmistakably Mauritania's version of a (pretty, but needless) chunk of glittering, national diamond in the sky, known otherwise as bling.
The building is called 'el khayme' which can translate literally as 'the tent', and is located just far enough away so that I can take a cab without feeling very guilty, but not far enough away so that I must. I live one street over from Chinguitel (as in Chinguit(ti) tel(ephone)) the company who, with their bright blue signs depicting a starburst, and their air of both new-mystery, and an urbane Arab-ness which no one can resist, started moving in on Mauritel's virtual monopoly over phone service sometime last year-ish, and has, ever since, been scaring their pants off. They also happen to be a subsidiary of Sudatel, which is owned by the Sudanese government, so it's like " watch out....".
On the other side, in a diagonal shot from my doorstep, is the restaurant slash English-school-with-creepily-subversive-Christian-undertones, "Equinox". It's housed in a gorgeously restored home with Arabesque filligree work, and plaster moldings on the ceiling, and tiles, more suitably located in some country with actual culture, like Morocco, (ooops!). The sign out front, in green and black, the "o" made into a half moon, looks more like that for an insurance agency than an eatery, but the food's good, so all is forgiven.
It's the only restaurant that I know of in the city (read: country) which is owned and run by an American- a middle-aged, white ex development worker- and there are three things which would tell you this even if you didn't already know: their french-fries are crunchy, like something out of someone's ideal of a mid-western diner, smoking is prohibited, and when you sit down, they bring you ice-water (as in, "water with ice in it") which is, if you didn't know, notoriously American to everyone except Americans themselves. They also have white pepper (wtf?) on the table, and meatball sandwiches, so I just ignore the Christian reading material, and stuff my face.
The thing about walking to work is not the distance, but the heat - I'm sorry, it's hot here. Did you know?- but more than that, it's the humidity. This might seem like a joke, because Nouakchott's humidity, as a desert city, is doubtless extremely low compared to the rest of the world, but it's on the coast, and I just came from living two years on top of a sand dune, so anything wetter than, say, 'deathly parched' makes me feel like I'm swimming. Shneeks.
I feel as though modern living, and houses, and mores are not compatible with this place on the earth. There is a reason people live in in tents in the rest of the country. In the village I had one little room with two doors, six feet apart, who exchanged the breeze with one another, and everything I owned was practically within arm's reach, and I had my white howlie to protect me from the sun. Here, walking down the almost tree-less streets, I feel self-conscious, and like a grotesque, "mitbaadi" (hick-like) Frenchman if I wear my howlie, and I feel like the sun hates people, literally hates them, pouring down distaste, instead of light. Why else is it so HOT? Why else would the heat get trapped in my labrinthine, over room-ed house each night instead of escaping up into the stars.
But this is all a lie, because in Nouakchott I have (sporadically) running water, and bananas, and the other day I made a green salad with cucumbers and golden raisins. Fuck the village.
If I walk to work I am a soaked, overheated disaster by the time I walk in the lobby, with its snooty (S)watch kiosk, and international time clocks, and even my newly bought, painfully distressed, Chinese-made jeans, and faux Armani black T-shirt with rivets can not disguise it. Meanwhile, there is Cheikh G. -the tall Wolof angel of graceful goodness, who smells, always, distinctly of heaven (I'm not kidding) and whose skin is perpetually cool to the touch, as though internally air-conditioned underneath his flowing robes- who works regular miracles in the transparent office next to my little "fly-by-night" dictionary-making station, so what's one to do?
Anway, the taxis- it's one of those things where after you notice something, it's hard to believe you never noticed it before, but virtually all the cabs in the city are the same kind of late-model mercedes (that name doesn't mean the same thing here) painted in either green and yellow, or not, and occasionally pimped-out, complete with hub-caps, and driven by what invariably turns out to be a young Senagalese cutie in a tanktop listening to Mbalax. These taxis will, without fail, charge me 200 ougiyas to get from here to there; the extra 100 is added because, and only because, there is a 90 degree turn involved.
That much I knew- the part I didn't notice was about the taxi "tout-droites" (meaning "straight (ahead)", ironically) which are all decrepit Renaults -skelatally bare-metal, and looking like the French contemporary of the Model-T- and since someone pointed them out to me, they are now as easy to spot as shining, rusting, belching beacons in the proverbial dark. These are shared, fixed-route cabs, which cost 80 ougiyas, look something like a hatch-back, and exist to ferry low-budget commuters, everyday, between capitale market and somewhere else I could care less about. The important thing is that I catch them, with almost reverent devotion, on the main route, 30 seconds from my house, and I can disdainfully ignore all the futile honking of the Mercedes, thinking, "200 ougs, my eye", until one of these perilous relics rolls slowly by. I hiss them down, and point for good measure, and try to act nonchalant as I hop chic-ly into what is, to all appearances, a vehicle made for not-me, smelling (for the moment) faintly like imitation Hugo and clean-ness, dressed in black pinstripe and scrubbed converse all stars, and pondering, just briefly, the fact that I may be cheap, and even poorer, I may be a fault-riddled, neurotic, catastrophe, but damn, sometimes, I've got style.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
people joined them as if by magic
The other day on my way to work, I passed a little shop called “Poulet Minute”, pronounced minuuute, with the emphasis on that umlauty French “u”, which sold whole chickens. Each letter on the sign was a different, headache-inducing color, and as I went by I spied a veiled Moor woman waiting at a counter, a cart full of chicken crates -which were, in their turn, full of chickens- and a young man behind the counter in shorts and a muscle-tee, plucking feathers, Frere Jaques-style, from another bird, presumably (and hopefully) dead. It was not difficult to gather what is supposed to happen in that “Chicken Minute” advertised so colorfully and optimistically above the door. And now, all I want is to have one of my very own.
I'm scared though, of what happens after I walk out the door with my freshly killed, pink-as-a-baby, and clean-plucked bag of poultry -will they take out the guts for me? Because all I have is a 2½ inch pocket knife which I bought a year ago at a street booth, for the equivalent of 75 cents, made out of whichever metal was cheapest at the time, and which I periodically sharpen on the jagged edge of a rock. With a little coaxing, it makes short (enough) work of carrots and onions, but disemboweling a small, flightless bird does not seem to be what it was “cut” (sorry) out for. Although, on second thought, maybe, it completely, is.
In any case, I would have no place to put all the guts, but I suppose I could re-purpose them as bribes, in the tradition of steaks and cartoon cats, for the packs of mangy street dogs which snarl and bark each night under my little balcony. They don't seem the type to turn their noses up at anything.
Mohamed is a refrigerator salesman, but you would swear he was the deposed king of some un-named Arabic country, instead. That is, if the prerequisite for being a king was looking the part, which is to say regal, which any glance through a history book, filled with the potato-faced monarchs of Europe, will tell you that it, sadly, is not.
In any case, there is a certain striking quality to his face, having mostly to do with the impossibly wide set of his smoky, round eyes, and the yellow golden tone of his skin, but he also has that youthful, open expression, which is nice on the young, but which is really stunning on someone who, like him, is no longer an actual youth. He's thirty. He has full, rose-colored lips too, which sort of blossom out, you know, just perfectly, though behind them are like a whole barrel-load of teeth, all crammed together, not crooked, so much as appearing to continually jostle for space. But still, it's a testament to his overall pleasing appearance that this overabundance of chompers seems almost charming. Anyway.
Now that I live in Nouakchott, I had to do what all good members of the twentieth century have to do, and that is buy a refrigerator. Opting to buy one brand new is both stupid and breathtakingly expensive, although buying one used comes with its own, obvious, perils. This is where the men are separated from the, I guess, people who aren't men, or whatever.
I have another “friend” -meaning, in this case, someone whom I've allowed to penetrate into the outer circles of my life, owing solely to the fact that he found me my apartment. This friend is coincidentally, but not at all surprisingly, named Mohamed as well. One day last week Mohamed 2 and I went to the carrefour Madrid which is where refrigerators come to die, and be reborn.
Stretched along the road are large-ish warehouses, complete with bored proprietors, spilling refrigerators out of their doors, in various stages of decay and reconstruction, in all imaginable shapes and sizes, and most of which bear the proud logos of brands that you have never heard of.
The one I ended up getting is emblazoned with some unpronounceable word which looks like Dutch, although there were many more names that just screamed 'lemon' including one brand, called simply, 'Candy'. There were a few decrepit 'Whirlpools' and 'Phillips' scattered in among them, like good vintages, though I seemed to be the only one aware of their position as a trusted household name. Oh well, the better for me.
I wandered through a couple places, poking inside a musty ice box here and there, arguing rudely with the owners and telling them why their stock was no good, until I found something that I could possibly live with at Mohamed's shop. We went through the whole process of negotiating and talking about returns and payment in Hassaniya, and it wasn't until he was writing up the receipt that he asked me “Do you speak English?”
It turns out that he had lived in the US for seven years (seven years!) in various places including Chicago, and Florida? until he had been deported after an incident involving something about a change of address. He threw it out there really casually, as in, "yeah, and then I was deported", with no touch of anger or embarrassment, which I didn't quite know how to take, because like all obnoxiously self-righteous people, I'm an underdog-guy, and so I always assume the worst that could happen in situations like this. (As in- "what did they do to you?!")
Like I mean, what does happen when a Middle-Eastern looking person gets deported for visa violations in today's US? Maybe nothing out of the ordinary, 8 out of 10 times, or maybe more, or maybe less? I have no idea. Its only that, at the same time I was comparing him to something out of Arabian Nights, I also realized that to some people, he probably looks like a terrorist. I hesitate to even say that because 1) it is already such a complete and overplayed cliché that Americans see terrorists hiding around every grocery aisle, and 2) it is strange for me to remember that there is a whole country, my country, where there are people who think like that. It's strange because, there are people who look, shall we say, as though they take their religion straight-up, no ice. I've learned that you might do yourself a favor and give them a wide berth. I know what they look like. But they don't look anything like Mohamed.
After I handed over an absurd amount of cash, we “strapped” the refrigerator to the top of Mohamed 2's tiny sedan, and took it away. The strap consisted of two thin pieces of rope, and so I reached my hand out the window to steady it, as if I would be able to save a 250 pound appliance with one skinny arm if it decided to slide off the roof. Sheesh.
A week later, sitting here listening to it hum, I can definitely report that the freezer freezes like a fracking ice- berg, but the refrigerator barely approaches the coolness you might get from a root-cellar. Maybe I should have gone with the 'Candy' after all.
I'm scared though, of what happens after I walk out the door with my freshly killed, pink-as-a-baby, and clean-plucked bag of poultry -will they take out the guts for me? Because all I have is a 2½ inch pocket knife which I bought a year ago at a street booth, for the equivalent of 75 cents, made out of whichever metal was cheapest at the time, and which I periodically sharpen on the jagged edge of a rock. With a little coaxing, it makes short (enough) work of carrots and onions, but disemboweling a small, flightless bird does not seem to be what it was “cut” (sorry) out for. Although, on second thought, maybe, it completely, is.
In any case, I would have no place to put all the guts, but I suppose I could re-purpose them as bribes, in the tradition of steaks and cartoon cats, for the packs of mangy street dogs which snarl and bark each night under my little balcony. They don't seem the type to turn their noses up at anything.
*********
Mohamed is a refrigerator salesman, but you would swear he was the deposed king of some un-named Arabic country, instead. That is, if the prerequisite for being a king was looking the part, which is to say regal, which any glance through a history book, filled with the potato-faced monarchs of Europe, will tell you that it, sadly, is not.
In any case, there is a certain striking quality to his face, having mostly to do with the impossibly wide set of his smoky, round eyes, and the yellow golden tone of his skin, but he also has that youthful, open expression, which is nice on the young, but which is really stunning on someone who, like him, is no longer an actual youth. He's thirty. He has full, rose-colored lips too, which sort of blossom out, you know, just perfectly, though behind them are like a whole barrel-load of teeth, all crammed together, not crooked, so much as appearing to continually jostle for space. But still, it's a testament to his overall pleasing appearance that this overabundance of chompers seems almost charming. Anyway.
Now that I live in Nouakchott, I had to do what all good members of the twentieth century have to do, and that is buy a refrigerator. Opting to buy one brand new is both stupid and breathtakingly expensive, although buying one used comes with its own, obvious, perils. This is where the men are separated from the, I guess, people who aren't men, or whatever.
I have another “friend” -meaning, in this case, someone whom I've allowed to penetrate into the outer circles of my life, owing solely to the fact that he found me my apartment. This friend is coincidentally, but not at all surprisingly, named Mohamed as well. One day last week Mohamed 2 and I went to the carrefour Madrid which is where refrigerators come to die, and be reborn.
Stretched along the road are large-ish warehouses, complete with bored proprietors, spilling refrigerators out of their doors, in various stages of decay and reconstruction, in all imaginable shapes and sizes, and most of which bear the proud logos of brands that you have never heard of.
The one I ended up getting is emblazoned with some unpronounceable word which looks like Dutch, although there were many more names that just screamed 'lemon' including one brand, called simply, 'Candy'. There were a few decrepit 'Whirlpools' and 'Phillips' scattered in among them, like good vintages, though I seemed to be the only one aware of their position as a trusted household name. Oh well, the better for me.
I wandered through a couple places, poking inside a musty ice box here and there, arguing rudely with the owners and telling them why their stock was no good, until I found something that I could possibly live with at Mohamed's shop. We went through the whole process of negotiating and talking about returns and payment in Hassaniya, and it wasn't until he was writing up the receipt that he asked me “Do you speak English?”
It turns out that he had lived in the US for seven years (seven years!) in various places including Chicago, and Florida? until he had been deported after an incident involving something about a change of address. He threw it out there really casually, as in, "yeah, and then I was deported", with no touch of anger or embarrassment, which I didn't quite know how to take, because like all obnoxiously self-righteous people, I'm an underdog-guy, and so I always assume the worst that could happen in situations like this. (As in- "what did they do to you?!")
Like I mean, what does happen when a Middle-Eastern looking person gets deported for visa violations in today's US? Maybe nothing out of the ordinary, 8 out of 10 times, or maybe more, or maybe less? I have no idea. Its only that, at the same time I was comparing him to something out of Arabian Nights, I also realized that to some people, he probably looks like a terrorist. I hesitate to even say that because 1) it is already such a complete and overplayed cliché that Americans see terrorists hiding around every grocery aisle, and 2) it is strange for me to remember that there is a whole country, my country, where there are people who think like that. It's strange because, there are people who look, shall we say, as though they take their religion straight-up, no ice. I've learned that you might do yourself a favor and give them a wide berth. I know what they look like. But they don't look anything like Mohamed.
After I handed over an absurd amount of cash, we “strapped” the refrigerator to the top of Mohamed 2's tiny sedan, and took it away. The strap consisted of two thin pieces of rope, and so I reached my hand out the window to steady it, as if I would be able to save a 250 pound appliance with one skinny arm if it decided to slide off the roof. Sheesh.
A week later, sitting here listening to it hum, I can definitely report that the freezer freezes like a fracking ice- berg, but the refrigerator barely approaches the coolness you might get from a root-cellar. Maybe I should have gone with the 'Candy' after all.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Trio
Dear nice boys,
Apparently this is turning into a photo blog. But you know what they say about pictures.......that even one of them is preferable to hearing me intone about something which, by its very nature, is incommunicable. Anyway.
This is Mohamed Lamine, in triplicate.
-Colt
Apparently this is turning into a photo blog. But you know what they say about pictures.......that even one of them is preferable to hearing me intone about something which, by its very nature, is incommunicable. Anyway.
This is Mohamed Lamine, in triplicate.
-Colt
Sunday, August 10, 2008
an unctuous individual babbling
Hello fragile readers,
There has been a coup. As in d'état.
Okay, so this was like four days ago, so obviously I'm still entirely and wholly alive.
Much like the coup three years ago (freakishly to the, almost, day), it is utterly Mauritanian in style and this means that it is, among other less good things, non-violent. So I'm completely fine, and everyone I know is completely fine, and it's about as boring as a drive through Nebraska.
Having said that, I just thought I would give you a bit of news, just so that we, you know, can feel dramatic and international all together. Let's go....
the guardian says this:
There is of course much more recent news in addition to this, but you'll have to find that out for yourselves.
Love,
-C
There has been a coup. As in d'état.
Okay, so this was like four days ago, so obviously I'm still entirely and wholly alive.
Much like the coup three years ago (freakishly to the, almost, day), it is utterly Mauritanian in style and this means that it is, among other less good things, non-violent. So I'm completely fine, and everyone I know is completely fine, and it's about as boring as a drive through Nebraska.
Having said that, I just thought I would give you a bit of news, just so that we, you know, can feel dramatic and international all together. Let's go....
the guardian says this:
Mauritania's president deposed in coup
President of impoverished west African nation detained in revolt led by former chief of official guard
- guardian.co.uk,
- Wednesday August 06 2008 16:30 BST
- Article history
The president of Mauritania was today deposed in a coup led by the former chief of his official guard, who appointed himself the head of a junta ruling the west African nation.
Troops seized Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, who became Mauritania's first democratically elected leader last year, after he announced the dismissal of four generals, one of them the coup leader, General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.
A brief announcement, read out on state television several hours after the president was detained, said Abdel Aziz would head a new "state council" to govern the former French colony, that recently became Africa's newest oil-producing nation.
A copy of the announcement on the state-run L'Agence Mauritienne d'Information website also said that this morning's decree by the "former president" sacking Abdel Aziz and the other generals had been annulled.
Mauritania has suffered several coups since gaining independence at the end of 1960.
The last one, in 2005 – also led by Abdel Aziz - toppled the long-serving president, Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, who himself taken power in a coup in 1984. Abdallahi took power after the military regime allowed elections.
Today's coup was swiftly condemned by both the African Union and EU, the latter group saying that it put a question mark over more than £120m of planned European aid for the country.
The US state department also expressed its concern. "This was a democratically elected, constitutional government and we condemn the act," Gonzalo Gallegos, a spokesman, told reporters.
Today the new junta did not specify why they had ousted the president. According to some reports Abdallahi had angered elements in the military by opening talks with Islamist hardliners accused of having links with al-Qaida-affiliated groups.
Last year, separate attacks blamed on Islamist militants targeted the Israeli embassy in Nouakchott and killed four French tourists.
Today's coup appeared largely bloodless. Soldiers were sent out onto the streets of the capital and staff were ordered out of the state TV and radio stations but there were no reports of fighting.
The president's daughter, Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi, told French radio that troops arrived at the presidential palace shortly before 9.30am local time (1030 BST).
"The president has just been arrested by a commando, who came to fetch him, arrested him here and took him away," she told RFI radio. "This is a real coup d'etat."
Mauritania has been in the throes of a political crisis in recent weeks. On Monday, almost 50 MPs quit the ruling party following a vote of no confidence in the government.
The immediate catalyst for the coup appears to have been Abdallahi's decree today sacking Abdel Aziz and the three other generals. It was not clear, however, if the dismissals were themselves prompted by reports that the men were plotting to remove the president.
Mauritania became Africa's newest oil-producing country after offshore fields began operating in 2006.
The largely desert nation borders Algeria to the north and Mali and Senegal to the south and east.
Despite hopes of prosperity from the country's still mainly unexploited reserves of oil and gas, it remains desperately poor and imports more than 70% of its food.
It also faces pressure from international human rights groups to eliminate slavery, which they say remains widespread despite being outlawed in 1981.
It was only last year that Mauritania's parliament voted through a law penalising slavery with jail terms of up to 10 years. Some groups estimate that up to 20% of the country's 3 million-strong population are slaves.
There is of course much more recent news in addition to this, but you'll have to find that out for yourselves.
Love,
-C
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
The Holy See, too
Greetings from an airconditioned office,
Yes it's true, I've become reacquainted with that lovable modern entity.
I'm stalling for time, so here are some more photos.
forever yours,
-C
This is adorable Dahan, who is not polynesian, though he looks it, and is one the most strange amalgams of an incredibly decent human being with a close minded zealot.
This is Mahmoudy's hand/back of head while sleeping, but you knew that already.
This is my neighbor Hassan, who almost never bathes, with my radio. 
Cheikh and Aziz
The writing on the wall, (ha ha), which actually says, in 3rd grader style arabic, Cheikh Ahmed, which is my name. People are always writing on my walls....gotta put a stop to that.
This is the door to a barber shop in Tijikja (closed, this is mid-day) with weird, Egyptian-esque drawings of people.
This is a portrait of a man. Simple as that.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Holy See
Dear Misfits,
Hi there, just wanted to post a few photos of my trip to Mali, while you all breathlessly await new editions of my tiresome, churchly prose.....
These photos are very lackluster, but Mali is not. Make no mistake.
I'm here in Nouakchott, having finally installed myself in what I hope are temporarily permanent digs after carting around all of my earthly belongings in a backpack, a plastic sack and a bucket for the month and change since I've left El Qidiya.
Okay, think of me fondly.
yours, Coltie
This is the man who was selling cigarettes, and/or other things, beside the coffee men.
This is my perennially ugly mug standing in front of that photographer's darling, the mud mosque at Djenne.
These are little bottles of gas, called essence in french, which I think is funny-ish, and which people buy only in tiny bits like this, as they have the money to do so.
This is the frenetically busy port at Mopti on the Niger.
This is a Dogon granary, an example of their brand of mud architecture, which everyone pressures you to feel impressed by, but which is actually quite lovely anyhow.
This is a little pastoral scene, at Bandiagara, at the head of the road towards Sangha and Dogon.
This is a little boy's picture at Banani, Dogon, which I quite literally stole (I didn't pay him for it)by snapping the photo inconspicuously as I passed. Whatever.
Hi there, just wanted to post a few photos of my trip to Mali, while you all breathlessly await new editions of my tiresome, churchly prose.....
These photos are very lackluster, but Mali is not. Make no mistake.
I'm here in Nouakchott, having finally installed myself in what I hope are temporarily permanent digs after carting around all of my earthly belongings in a backpack, a plastic sack and a bucket for the month and change since I've left El Qidiya.
Okay, think of me fondly.
yours, Coltie
This is the man who was selling cigarettes, and/or other things, beside the coffee men.
This is my perennially ugly mug standing in front of that photographer's darling, the mud mosque at Djenne.
These are little bottles of gas, called essence in french, which I think is funny-ish, and which people buy only in tiny bits like this, as they have the money to do so.
This is the frenetically busy port at Mopti on the Niger.
This is a Dogon granary, an example of their brand of mud architecture, which everyone pressures you to feel impressed by, but which is actually quite lovely anyhow.
This is a little pastoral scene, at Bandiagara, at the head of the road towards Sangha and Dogon. 
This is a little boy's picture at Banani, Dogon, which I quite literally stole (I didn't pay him for it)by snapping the photo inconspicuously as I passed. Whatever.
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