Camera Obscura # 2

Jiddou trying out a pose with attitude.

A lackluster photo of St Louis's crumbling elegance.

Rachel doing a nerdy pose near the beach in St Louis, and my dearly departed Lee and Christine. We miss you!!

Bobbo covers his eyes.

Take me out

I love Dakar. Did you expect any less?

If you don't know what WAIST is, you're probably not in Peace Corps. And if you don't win it, you're from somewhere besides Mauritania (Yay! We won! It must be all the sand and ruthless heat that make of our intrepid softballers unstoppable machines).

Anyway, WAIST stands for West African Invitational Softball Tournament, and the rest is whatever you make of it. Even after months in the vacuum of desert, many drunk Americans, hot-dogs and baseball aren't quite what I would refer to as the highlights of Dakar. Not to mention the queasily compoundish and 'Passage to India' -like nature of the 'American Club' where we played. Still there was beer, there was dancing and there was English, so there was fun to be had.

Anyway, Senegal is like Mauritania cubed. So you have to bring it.

Dakar is notoriously crime-ridden and teeming with pick-pocketers, muggers and -who knows.. vampires?- a fact which I can't seriously doubt, but which I found nothing to support. I feel like the people who allow themselves to be closed off because of this reputation are weak and flawed (excepting women - women probably have a legitimate right to feel scared all the time in Africa). Am I naive? Insufferably. Am I preachy? Sickeningly. Are there untold volumes of things I don't understand about Africa? Unquestionably. But listen to this....

In most interactions with African's, it is necessary to immediately establish that you are not a western imperialist, a tourist, or someone who has no interest in understanding them. And ironically, the best way to do this is to also immediately establish a sort of dominance. Because of course, as in any culture in which you are an Alien, your ignorance and consequent fear make you subject and suspicious, though your manners may be those of disinterested aloofness, or disdain, or of practiced (though maybe unconcious) superiority. So you need to make them see you as a person, and then you need to see them as one too.

You need to be impeccably earnest, kind and honest. Your lack of fear, your guilelessness (sp?) will disarm them. If you are guarded, there are plenty of people who will give you something to be guarded about. If you are confrontational, you will lose all confrontations. You have other weapons: smiles help, a lot, your tone of voice is important. You need to be funny, you need to be quick. If you are neither, then god help you, they will eat you alive.

You need to find a way to exist in their physical space. I get right up close and stare into their eyes like a puppy dog and smile big (not like a nutter). My hand always finds its way to their shoulder and squeezes or rests there while my grinning mouth talks about the heat or asks for directions. I scold those whose prices are too high with a wag of my finger, I pout my lips and scrunch up my brows and ask them why they are so mean to me. And then when they get too serious or start shouting, I poke them in the chin, and ask why they aren't smiling, or put my arm around their waist and my hand on their stomach. In America this would be highly unusual, inappropriate and antagonizing, but here it just works. I do not know why.

Again, speaking through the language of gestures I say, 'My brother, I love you. Now, these oranges are shit, please lower your price'. But no matter how harmless, or careless, or playful you seem to be, the little intelligent flame in the back of your brain must never go out. You can not be stupid, or you will deserve what comes to you. This is Africa, after all, the color of your skin is unfortunately always talking, and you do not get to choose who listens in. So while my mouth is chatting, the hand on their tummy always whispers 'If you repay my kindness with deception, I will destroy you'.

I met a nice young man working at a pizza shop who I think will be the next something-or- other important of Senegal. He was brilliant, and wistful, and talked with me about Michael Owens, and how American's don't care about soccer.

I met a security guard and explained to him the rules of baseball, halfway through realizing both that I did not know said rules and that he actually did, though had proclaimed not to out of politeness. Then I gave him some candy and he tried on my sunglasses.

I met so many cab drivers I can't count them. It sometimes feels too easy - I'll greet them in Wolof a little (all I know), then ask them how they are, ask them if they've had lunch, if they're tired, if they like dogs, if they're married, why they drive so fast, or whatever comes to mind. It's not quite a science, but it's definitely an art.

Unfortunately, a thorn (a nail? a hypodermic needle? a chicken bone?) on the ground (and later in my foot) put me out of commission for a few days, so instead of wandering Dakar I mostly just limped around like a scary, homeless ghost between my bed and the club.

I did get to see a few things though...

Traffic, traffic. The big commuter busses, the color-splashed cartier transports, crammed full with people, weaving through lanes.

A cool scrap metal horse sculpture, rearing its head.

Fruit. Oh my god, there is nothing more beautiful than an overflowing fruit stand, glowing like lit-up jewels at night on the side of the road.

I saw the stifling grip of religion (in this case, Islam) fall away a little like a dark veil, and for some of the rhythmic variety of natural human lives begin to return.

I saw a really big ram.

I ate absolutely perfect pastries for breakfast, each as elegantly fashioned and unique as snowflakes.

Horse carts, moving through traffic along side sleek mopeds and shiny new nissans.

I saw what appears to be the disturbingly insular nature of the American ex-pat community.

I saw an uncountable number of unfathomably beautiful people, in clothes the colors of everything, with intelligent eyes, laughing, or sad, or busy, or heedless, or loving, walking through their lives -those made from the constant, palpable richness of an only partially tamed wilderness.

Road Notes # 2

A few thoughts while traveling to Tijikja...

1 This time out of my village I caught a ride with one of the big, Italian-donated green supply trucks that come here occasionally bearing all sorts of necessary, and unnecessary junk.

2 The truck had a crew of 4 (very dirty) men who sat off to the side as the villagers unloaded the truck and flared their egos.

3 When I approached them to ask for a ride they were on a small mat, eating a lunch/dinner of white rice, which had been cooked on a little gas burner in the cab of the truck.

4 I bet it was the first time they were ever asked by some random whitey, living in the middle of nowhere and speaking their language, if he could catch a ride on top of their motored leviathan.

5 Cheikh, the driver, wouldn't let me ride on top because he said I would fall. So I rode in the cab. (By the way, I totally would not have fallen).

6 Hours later (around ten pm) after eating cous cous with a strange family, served by a Buddha-like woman who hid her face, we left.

7 Ironically big trucks get stuck in the sand much more frequently than little ones (sand is basically like snow) and so on about twenty separate occasions we stopped and put down giant metal plates on the ground for traction.

8. They expressed surprise when I proved willing and able to give unsolicited help getting unstuck, much the same way everyone else expresses surprise whenever I do almost anything at all.

9. The crew of men (none over 30) were each like something perfectly sketched by a short storyist's pen. Cheikh, slightly pudgy yet solid with a highish, nasal voice, a little imperious, a chain smoker. Ali, side-kick-esque, thin, and with one lame leg causing him to limp heavily, sober-voiced and quiet, the rice-cooker, the tea-maker. And the two Mohameds, both young, both sporting spectacularly oil-stained clothes, one short with thick, aggressive features, a happy persona and loud, bad (yet fluid) French, the other tall and thin and broad-shouldered, with an elegant, finely drawn face, austere eyebrows; the countenance of a wise child.

10 From sucking on a rubber hose earlier to induce gasoline to travel from a spare barrel to the fuel tank, tall Mohamed had become ill, and afterward merely lay in the truck bed while we dug out the tires. More importantly I knew what was happening because I know the verb 'to vomit' (which is Yigdhev).

11 We finally reached the gudrone about six hours later (4 am) and collapsed on dirty mats under a hangar on the side of the road, me sharing the blankets of this strange collection of men I didn't know a few hours ago. Sometimes Mauritania is wild.

12 Also, not for nothing, but could you imagine for a second that I would ever be allowed to find myself in a similar situation with the approximate counterparts of these people (whoever those might be) in America? No sir. Being foreign in the third world is like having a backstage pass to all sorts of crazy perks. Although I guess perks is relative.

13 The next morning I woke up to the sound of names being called. One of the inscrutable, and, I happen to think, endearing things that Mauritanians do is to call the name of the person they want over and over and over again, with out ceasing, and without the change of inflection or exasperated shouting that would certainly seem reasonable after a while. They just evenly call over and over, as if they're certain you will answer and haven't a thing to do in the meantime.

14 Spread on the pavement we breakfasted on peanuts and camel biscuits. Ali made tea on the gas burner and served it from a dirty, blue-plastic oil jug, turned on its side, with holes cut out for two kesses (shot glasses) and a baraad (the dainty little tea pot).

15 One of the new companions I had acquired overnight (we had slept in a place with several more of their truck-driving companions, waiting for a wheel to their hobbled vehicle) was named Yahya and had such exaggerated African features (prodigious lips; wide, flat nose; almond shaped eyes ) that it was hard to believe he was real. He chatted with me about his wish to learn karate while Cheikh scrubbed his feet on the pavement with a sliver of soap and a stone.

16 The late morning found me waiting in the searing heat for a car, in one of the many places in Mauritania where no one should ever have settled down. (But they did).

17 At the gendarme stop, where Yahye and his newly be-wheeled comanions bade me their farewell, I finally snagged a car for the second leg of my journey. The driver was nice, conversational but just enough for politeness, his speech intelligible, the window was down (it was just the two of us) the fare was free, and he gave me an orange from the pile on the floor. That's what's known as a holiday.

Je les ne veux pas

Hello Valentines

This post is to void all the previous posts I have put up asking for lovely American mass produced gifts to be sent in the mail. I have received an embarrassment of riches from many friendly people and no longer need anything. Except perhaps inner clarity and infinite wisdom, but those don't ship well.

If you still want to send things, please send the following:

Ziploc bags.

Pens I will continue to receive with joy, but I'm changing my preference from the uncapped pilot G2, which are my favorites, to the capped, and therefore sand-resistant uniball something or others. Just something with liquid ink.


Everything else I can either find on occasion in the capital, or is no longer important to me. As one might imagine, my living requirements are ridiculously reduced.

Plus, it's not like any of you are Rockefellers, to be perfectly honest....

So that's all. Plus good wishes to you all, so far away.

-Colton


PS Happy Birthday Mom. I love you.

How to avoid the subjunctive

Now is the time of Jujubees and millet. Now is the time of cold, of windy skies and hazes.

The greenery is being picked clean, the remaining shoots of desert peanuts, the brush-like weeds, the green skin of the poisonous turga. So it follows that the milk has begun to dry up as well; we don't drink it anymore, in big, plentiful gulps from metal bowls. Sometimes we have it with our nightly cous-cous, (poured and mixed with the hand, into a soupy glob that you slurp from your palm - it is incredibly good) And sometimes not.

As the green goes further and further away, the Tagant comes to resemble ever more the surface of a distant planet. No kidding - it's just plains and plains of rocks and reddish sand and mountainous, impassive cliffs. The inhabitants are, at times, just as alien to me as the scenery.

And then, many times, and without warning, they simply aren't.

In fact, it's surprisingly easy to forget that all my interactions with people, and therefore all the relationships and events that make up my days, are in another language, as if they happen in a place a few inches in front of my nose, instead of behind it. That fact is simultaneously unremarkable and continously astonishing. I remember how, months ago, landing in Casablanca, -a stopover on the way here- I felt mildly terrified at the loss of my language. It was my first time out of the country (Oh! dear, sweet bumpkin) and suddenly, something that I had always taken for granted, something that I had always been blessed to have in easy abundance (English) was no longer available. Just like that.

Now, I have to try hard to hear the constant jibbering around me as exotic, to hear it like I used to, as an unintelligable collection of foreign syllables.

Which is not to say that I'm no longer confused. I'm always at least somewhat out of the loop, and more often than not, I'm left staring off into space, with a wrinkled brow, thinking about hamburgers...

Nevertheless, the clueless westerner does have at his disposal a few tools. One that has served me especially well is the classic, non-commital utterance 'Mmmm', which straddles the boundary between 'yes' and 'no', and accordingly takes on whatever meaning the questioner secretly wants to hear. It's outrageously successful, and works like this:

Q- Cheikh-Akhmedou (that's me), do you want me to bring you some cous-cous?

Me: Mmmmm....

Q- Okay, I'll be right back.

(Actually, this example is misleading, because no one ever offers to bring me anything)


Another option is of course ignoring the question altogether, or changing the subject with some left-field non-sequitor like:

'Your shirt is dirty'

or

'My head hurts'

or

'Get that chicken out of my house!'


One which sometimes works better than others is the stock answer I'm not a muslim. Surprisingly, it applies to more situations than one might hope, though not always.

'But I'm not a muslim!' I'll answer a bit frantically to some perceived question.

'Ok-aay,' they'll say, 'but I was just telling you that you have rice on your nose'


The point is, one gets by. One rediscovers day after day what lives at the place where words end, and how to push forward through it like a new neighborhood. It helps to be clever, honestly. It helps to be fearless, or at least to tell yourself that you are. It helps to recognize value in the language of gestures - an icy stare, or a well-timed poke in the ribs, or an impromptu bout of arm wrestling can speak volumes. I like to think that good will can be exchanged through the skin of the fingertips. What mine says is something like 'I can't understand you because we are worlds of words apart. But lets hold hands'.

Some things though, need no translation. The other day I was helping my friends Bobo and Taleb make bricks from sand and cement in a square near the market. We had stopped for tea and biscuits when across the way we saw a little wandering donkey poking his oversized head and mangy ears through the entrance of their family's boutique. Donkeys almost always behave so much like nervously maladjusted people that its impossible not to personify them. This one seemed to be running low on sugar for tea, and had popped out to re-up. None of us mentioned it and only smiled, though it was nice to be sure that for once we were all on the same page.

The body electric

Request:

Can someone send me a battery (or four) for my retro rangefinder camera Yashica Electro 35 GSN. You can get them at Radio Shack or maybe Wallgreens for about 4 bucks. Look for the 4LR44 1.5 V or the 6V (PX)28A. They weigh about nothing, and they're cheap. Don't you want me to be happy?

Camera Obscura

This is my friend Abdelai, who I'm teaching the basics in English and who follows me around like a lost puppy. I didn't even take this picture, my friend Moustapha was fooling with my electronic gadgets. It's cool though, yes?

This is my family in M'Beidia. I don't have time to tell you all of their names. Still, I'll say that Moussa, the baby in Tutu's arms (girl on end) once pooped on me. Aren't they cute?

These are some miniature M'Beidian's playing soccer with the miniature basket ball I gave them.

Me and Hamid-Daa eating lunch the other day at my house. Notice the fork (that's mine). I feel it is my right when eating with children. In the cup is yummy crystal lite raspberry something or other.

Yaqob and Cheikh. Yaqob has a freakily good American accent when I get him to say my real name, and things like 'hello' . Cheikh has a really dirty face.

You could be in pictures

Hi gang!

I think I was just finally able to post some pictures. I'm an awful photographer, and there aren't many, but its something. More when I can get it.

The photo site is this: http://flickr.com/photos/desertletters

Still, I'm going to try to transfer them to the blog. We'll see how that goes.

X's and O's

The day after Christmas I came to Nouakchott, and it was good. At 10:30 in the evening everything was lit-up and loud, all the cars zooming and racing. They honk with such perfect art, it's as though it were orchestrated. This (the honking) and the flashing of headlights occur at seemingly random and irregular times, the pattern is inscrutable, at least to me.

No one remembers this -the relative 'citi-ness', the aliveness of Nouakchott- from our first hurried pass through six long months ago. We remember a long patch of road, and dirt, and chaos. It's as though we all had been sharing some waking dream.

Since then I've been exploring a bit, eating a lot and generally having a grand old time. Me and my American pals have been catching up in the brief snitches of time in which we are in each other's presence, in which we pass by hurriedly, trying to relate 4 months of divergent experiences and knowing that it doesn't really matter it we do. I think Nouakchott makes things fit, I think it's like a piece of the puzzle. But even as it answers some questions, it asks many others. Let me explain.

In my village I eat cous-cous and rice, and we do not have chairs. We do not have streets. In Nouakchott there are restaurants, there are a million taxi-cabs, there are women with their heads uncovered, there are women wearing pants. There are real hotels and there are omelets with ham. There is everything.

I'm trying to figure out the divide between the two worlds (it is, in fact, a quantum leap). I'm thinking about the middle ground, and where it exists. Why can I get breakfast in Nouakchott, in a chrome-trimmed, olive-green cafe, served on elegant white plates with tiny cups of cafe au lait, and fresh orange juice? In my village we don't eat on plates, and everything is the same color - brown, like the sand.

What I'm trying to get across is not how awful village life is (it's not) or what I have to do without. I'm not even talking about the difference between upper class and lower, or rural and urban, because that much is obvious and it's results are predictable. No, it's about the fact that what exists in Nouakchott seems to come from nowhere, it has no other precedent, that I've seen, in the rest of the country. As such, it's like an alien outgrowth, it's like an island.

I ate in a little cafe for lunch today, with shiny tables, flat screen televisions and a waiter. I had an incredible hamburger and stylish frites and a glass-bottled coke poured over lemon and ice. Where did they learn to place the forks just so? How can I be drinking a strawberry milkshake from a straw, when last week I was chasing goats from my house? I feel dizzy, like a skipped a few steps in coming here, I feel like the whole country did.

Plus, not to get overly sentimental about nothing, but how sweet and heartbreaking and melancholy and hopeful to eat a personal pizza with olives and an orange fanta, served by a uniformed young man, in a country where almost everywhere else, life is like the 12th century. I feel as though Nouakchott is growing, like an awkward teenager, with its often (ironically) pretentious mannerisms and hidden graces. I think it has something to prove. And that makes me have a kind of un-earned pride, and smile to myself.

What's more, for all its incongruity, this city also makes Mauritania make sense. When you've been living your life in the aforementioned ancient past, you begin to wonder how a country like this, so unconnected and lethargic and aloof, doesn't collapse under the weight of its own apathy and sink back into the desert. But Nouakchott is like Mauritania's respectable brother, who you never knew about before, and who presents a suit and tie and an attentive face to the rest of the world. Granted, the face is a little dirty, and the thrift store-ish suit is mothbitten and smudged... But still, what cheeky optimism! What precious earnestness! I want to bottle it up. I want to make it a cake. I want to give it a big kiss.

Mwah.

The Holy Ghost

Ali says that people who don't pray 5 times a day will eat fire. That's the expression they use for going to hell after death- apparently just burning in it isn't graphic enough.

Ali is a driver of the car which goes back and forth between El Qidiya and Nouakchott, he lives there sometimes, and sometimes here. His ethnicity is mixed, his skin is like the color of caramel sauce. He's tall, probably six-two or so. He's funny and persistant and shrill (his voice can get shrieky). His hairline's receding, though he's only twenty-six. He's says I'm going to be charcoal, but he's my friend.

Everyone wants me to become a Muslim. They're convinced its the best religious option on the market, not that they've done much shopping around, and that the rewards are manifold -'Oh, when you become a Muslim, ' they exclaim, 'what a party we'll have! We'll eat meat and drink milk - everyone will come.' The downsides of not converting (the fire thing) speak for themselves.

Almost everyday, religion comes up in some fashion or another, although we are strongly discouraged from discussing it (no arguments here) The worst part is that debate about the existance of god, or any of the juicy and trivial particulars therein are null and void. God's existance is not in question. Everyone knows it, (of course) - to deny it is to be ungrateful, wicked, blind and sinful. The concept of non-belief in god has zero support. That means we're all obliged to profess our undying love for the Christian religion, something which makes me and many of my fellow Americans a little sick in the tummy. Every time I'm forced to say I'm a Christian (Nasrani) a little part of me shrivels and dies inside. Still, Christianity is one of the three 'religions of the book' mentioned in the Qu'ran and so is afforded a god-sanctioned modicum of respect. Supposedly. Although that argument rarely goes very far in my village.

'We're all people of the book' I say, 'you have your religion and I have mine.'

'Oh, yes, yes' they answer, 'But Islam is better. Islam is so gooood! Why aren't you a Muslim?'

Maybe all of this bothers me more than it would a person of actual faith. I have little patience and no respect for this unqualified, unsubtle and uneducated dogmatism in America, much less here.

'Do you know, ' I ask them, when they tell me I'm going to hell, 'that there are millions of people who are right now saying the same thing about you? But those people are awful,' I add, 'those people are stupid.'

'Of course they are!' they say, 'because we're not the one's going to hell.'

No, I think, but there's no way to explain it, that's not why....

Anyway, the other day Ali's evangelism was especially out of control. We were eating Hruub, grilled cowpeas in the pod, and he was starting to shriek. It had been going on all morning, all through tea, and none of my standard arguments were working 'But my family is Christian, how can I change?' and 'I pray, just not like a Muslim. I Jesus-pray.' and 'Why don't you respect me?' (this one's from the heart) 'I respect you!' Nothing going. Finally I had to step outside. I wanted to wash the garden mud from my arms and feet anyway.

I sat down against one stony side of the house, in the sun, and Lemrobbit brought the maqarresh over to me and waited while I rinsed off. Then he said 'Now watch' as he began to wash his arms and wrists and hands with a little splash of water scrubbed hard against his skin. 'Do you know this? How we wash to pray?' I said, 'No, please show me.'

He cleaned the patch of skin between each elbow and fingertips 3 times, his skin squeaking. He washed his face twice, his nose and cheeks contorting like a rubber mask under his finger's pressure. His skin gleamed, black and shining and he smiled as I watched him intently. He washed his long brown feet and ankles, the insides of his ears, the fuzzy top of his head. It was so beautiful, after Ali's screeching it felt like a sigh, so quiet and respectful and polite and innocent. Lemrobbit is just like that - a tall 19 year old with a wide smile and no malice. This is where Mauritania's goodness lies, this is why it is so hard to find.

When he had finished, I said, 'thankyou Lemrobbit' and I'm not sure if he knew why, but I hope he did.