Conge part III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued...

Another thousand words

Idoumou, up close

Some reclining palms
Myself and others in St Louis

Mahmoudy with (my) radio

Snappy Holidays

Hi everyone,

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

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

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

With love,

Colton

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

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

This is Daa making a puppy dog face

An uncomfortably close picture of me which Yusef snapped somehow.

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

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

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

Congé part II

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued......

Congé part I

I went away for a while.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't speak Portuguese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued.

what's the word....

Hi weirdos,

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

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

OK Kiddos, stay tuned.

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

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

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

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

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

Meditations

I've become a stone mason. Or rather, not really, unless a certain gross incompetance can be overlooked.

Everyone and their goat, it seems, is engaged in a project of building something now, a wall a house, it is the season for it. And since the building material is so abundant they literally just dig it up out of the street.

Finding opportunities to work with people is hard, for a lot of reasons, and so whenever I see one of my pals hacking up chunks of rock from a pit in the ground, I scurry on over there and ingratiate myself like the well meaning, grandmotherly-like busy-body that I apparently am.

Everyone always gets an enourmous kick out of seeing me carry rocks a few feet (usually all I'm allowed to do. 'Just one' Yusef says, and looks at me seriously, 'Kool-ton, just take one at a time') It's impossible to convince them without sounding haughty that the work is not actually that hard, and that I've been doing similar things since the age of like, eight. (on the other hand, now that I've lost basically all the flesh from my body, I do get winded disgustingly fast, but there's no way I'm letting them know it).

Once in a while, like yesterday, I get to help a little more- hitting a few things with hammers, holding an old rusty clamp, that sort of thing. Mostly I just sit around for a while and try to watch the work intently, and hope that that at least says something to them.

Why do I do this? One answer is that I absolutely can't tolerate letting people feel like they know me from the first glance, from all the usual sign-posts - age, race, sex, sexuality, education, etc. - even when (maybe especially when they happen to be right). I go out of my way to prove people wrong, who may or may not be in fact, wrong. I don't truly want to descend into a dark well to fetch someone's lost well-bucket, so why do I do it (over and over again)? I actually do get a little squeamish watching a screaming goat get its throat sawed off with Mohamed-Elamine's dull pocket knife as we talk about the heat, so why I am I determined not to show it?

Granted, I'm hardly the first person in history to act tougher than he is, for no apparently good reason other than to save ego, but it's also something more than that, something about the larger truth (the truth about Westerners, or about the central equality of all people, the truth about the power of good intentions). How the larger truth can't be enunciated merely through it's smaller constituent truths, but only through the artful addition of illusion. It's about something being more than the sum of its parts. My parts.

*******

Let's see, what else? The days just go and go and go, and I find myself in the middle of a long process of changing from one thing to another, where neither extreme is visible any longer.

Every night I eat pearl-millet cous-cous (this is not the stuff you buy at the store) with the family of Mohamed-Ali, my neighbors, who also happen to be some of the sweetest and most truly kind people I know here. The only son, Yusef, just about my age, is my best friend in El Qidiya, and being with him puts me at peace. He lives at home with his sisters, he is a stone mason (every third person will tell you this is their job), and he has taken the Bac (exam to go to University) three times, but failed. He showed me his notebooks from when he was a student, crammed full of Arabic and science illustrations. He wants to become President, but I tell him I think he should become a scientist, because there are always people who don't like the president. He has a gentle manner and wears a sullen scowl constantly, except when it is suddenly broken by his goofy smile, his small and even white teeth. His eyes glow - I've never met anyone who I could say that about before, but his skin is deep black, and against it they light up at night and reflect even the slightest illumination, from flashlights, or candles, or even the green moon.

When the weather was cold, I would come over and lie down on the dirty, threadbare rug inside the darkened house next to Yusef, and we would listen to the buzzing static of Mauritanian stations, the little blue glow from the radio's dial our only light.

Other times we would all be in the wind whipped khayme (tent) by candlelight. I remember once watching him pray - everyone does it differently, and since its not neccessarily rude to watch, I always do - I feel it says something interesting about their personality which is not otherwise revealed. Yusef prays precisely, like he wants to get everything right. He is lithe like a dancer, he bounces on the balls of his feet, his face is expressionless, his bows are swift. I am more to him than just and American, or a good-investment, or a novelty, and for that I am grateful.

My days go by so quickly, even though the heat has returned. It's hard to imagine where the time goes. I need to concentrate to remember the day (or the date). I've long since ceased to dream in English. I can go weeks without speaking a word of it.

In the mornings it is bright and cool, and I walk the half kilometer to the market to buy bread (soft, chewy loaves about a foot long and 2 inches thick) and mint for my tea, just picked and wrapped in cylinders of wet, brown paper, and dry little biscuits to serve to guests (there are always guests) and sometimes sugar and sometimes rice. I almost never buy anything else anymore. I no longer cook, which is just as well. All the pleasure I used to get from making food has been stunted by the lack of almost all ingredients.

On the bread I put stawberry jelly (awful, synthetic, unnaturally red and cheaply unnutritious jelly) which I've brought from the capital for this express purpose along with the equally chemical-tasting (and iconically West African ) Nescafe instant coffee which I drink with powdered milk and sugar and some cinammon, or maybe a little Nesquik chocolate powder. I used to listen to the BBC world service over breakfast, but Abdelai borrowed my radio a month ago and hasn't returned it yet, so now I just read or study or stare at the walls.

Lately, I've been going to the garden twice - once in the morning to putter around the nursery and worry my trees, and once in the evening to water and help Taleb carry buckets to the cows when they come back to drink.

Cows are fascinating creatures by the way - simultaneously so graceful and awkward with their slow lumbering on dainty feet, their giant, mysterious eyes, glassy and fringed, their vulgar mooing.

*******

Now the sky is blinding white. For 3 days straight the wind has blown nonstop, kicking the dust up into the atmostphere. Its nothing but a breathless haze that glows all day and turns eerie at twilight.

The thermometer climbs. At 2 'o' clock it reads 104 degrees in the shade of my house, and outside at least 20 degrees hotter, but I don't know for sure - the meter stops in sullen protest at 120. With a little breeze, a garwah, it is completely bearable, without it, life is considerably less pleasant, but what can you do?

My yard is a sterile wasteland of sand and rock shards and bits of garbage. I tried digging a few holes to prepare the ground for trees, but was admonished. I had dug them too close to the house. Everyone said, 'Dig them out there, near the wall'. We build giant stone walls to enclose vast tracts of nothingness. The wall is about 20 meters away. 'You can't put them here. This is where we live'. I forgot that we want the tree and its shade as far away as possible, while still being ours.

I tell them that in America we often like to keep trees close, and live under their shade and grace, but that gets about as much respect as when I tell them we build our houses from wood.

*******

What else? 2 more things.....

This is what I don't like about Mauritania:

The relentless, entirely accepted prevalence of uninformed, incurious and intolerant religious proselytism - a grave offense, a grave offense. Woe to all those, of all faiths who practice it.


This is what I love about Mauritania:

Seeing people, surrounded by the tangibly thick, chaotic, dirt-noise of Cinquieme market - cars and carts and animals, and filthy sandstreets, and random trash - harken to the evening prayer call as the sun sets and wash their feet and limbs, right there in the indifferent street, and, bowing, disappear for a moment, into a pocket of solitude, into the untouchable solemnity of prayer.

I don't know how to balance this equation. But for now, I just let it be, and sleep under the stars.

love letters

Hello dear readers.

Just letting know that even though I have just arrived in the city two days ago I am leaving again now for fear that I will be trapped here for several more days if I dont. Ive been so busy. Sorry to those whos emails I was not able to answer. Ill be out again in a few weeks. Until then.... keep writing and stay strong. It wont be long now......

The pendulum

Sometimes I am filled with the desire to be here, and sometimes it leaves, like a guest.

Sometimes it feels like I'm living a double-speed, doubly thick version of my previous life, becoming, by the moment, something both greater and better, and sometimes it feels as if I've merely transplanted myself like a dead vegetable into new soil.

I feel lonely and melancholy.

I feel odd and silly, like a naive wanderer.

The thing is though, this changes everyday in a revolving, exhausting fashion which is impossible to predict. Everytime I come to the point where my life here seems useless or pretentious and unwanted, something will happen (who knows what) and I'll fall back into the patterned fog of Mauritanian life and stay.

It's almost never because I come to some sort of epiphany about my 'importance' or a rush of feeling about 'making a difference' or some other such (sorry) nonsense. Most recently my mind changed because I started my tree nursery, and I understood every word Brahim said, and because the bread ladies smiled at me.

The difficulties themselves are ungovernable - always shifting, growing stonger here, letting up there, so that I never know when or where to look for them. By the way, I hope no one reading is (still) under any illusions that the 'hard part' of (Peace Corps) existence in the 3rd world is the lack of electricity, or running water, or plumbing (or toilet paper), or consumer goods, or easy transportation, or good food, or for that matter, the constancy of wind/heat/dirt/sand/flies. Good god. Most of those things I almost never think about, not since the first few 'trial by fire' weeks in Mauritania. Infinitely more difficult than not having electric light is the experience of living in a place where you can never fully understand anyone (nor be fully expressed) trying to do work which almost no one wants or cares about (and the value of which you are hardly sure of) in a place where everyone thinks you're both incredibly wealthy and that you're going to hell just for not praying (not to mention the treasure trove of other sins they could condemn you for, if only they knew) and where you exist merely in the thin space between everyone's graciousness and disaster.

It's hard to believe I've been here for eight months. It's hard to believe how brown my arms have become ......

But honestly though, how bad could it be? It's such an unnamed, though pervasive arrogance which causes us to be called 'volunteers' and to advertise 'the experience' with words like 'hardship' and 'sacrifice', as if we, as westerners were by our very nature entitled to be free of those things, and that by giving up that right we are allowed to be self-congratulating and the occasional objects of some sort of misguided admiration. What's a couple of years compared to a life-time lived in 5 square kilometers?

Isn't part of what makes this bearable for us (though we are all loathe to admit it) the knowledge that we will be leaving? That we will never, ever be stuck here, in the way that so many of them are stuck here? (Not to mention the thoughts of future resume lines, the influential connections, the book jacket bio filler) Plus, even if we lived their lives exactly for 2 years, every moment of lusterless boredom shared, every denied want, every disappointment, every symptom of poverty identical, it still wouldn't make us one of them. And even I don't do that, and (no offense) my situation is about as no-frills Peace Corps as it gets, so if I don't do it, probably no one does.

Having said that, I'll say this: if part of what makes this time bearable is the knowledge that it will end, then part of what makes if difficult is knowing what you're missing.

That's not to say, of course, that my 'stress' is significantly added to by thinking that I could, right now be watching the Food Network in my underwear (though I'd be the world's biggest liar if I said that telephone calls, the internet and bacon with toast aren't appealing). But there's no question I'd still trade all that dead and glossy American stuffing for any number of things here which I feel have quantitatively more life-mass - my friend, Cheikh for one, with his too-big smile, his heart-breaking politeness and serious eyes.

It's not anything very specific that I might miss, I guess if I had to put it briefly I would say that, as trite as it sounds, in America one feels like things are generally possible, and in the RIM one generally feels like they aren't.

I miss feeling like I'm part of the world, though if I'm being honest I'm probably much more so now, whatever that means, than I ever was in the US, being depressed, watching the West Wing.....

But one doesn't miss what one never had. For the most part, the people in my village have little idea of( and less curiousity about) what goes on outside of EQ, and therefore no good reason to temper their general contentment (because they are, in fact, content. And why not? Even with the insidious memory of previous conveniences and liberties, I'm still much happier here, and have been so for longer, than I ever was at almost any point during my life before now). I don't pity them, because there's nothing to pity. Pity is a reverse arrogance, anyway. Pity is a smug frown. No matter what your intentions, if you feel sorry for someone who laughs more than you, and who has never thought about 'ending it', because you live in college educated air conditioning, and they're without plumbing, then you're a fool. And fools never did anyone any good. Of course ignorance is bliss, but so be it - bliss is bliss.

(Is there hunger and death and stilted longing that I don't see, even living as close as I do? Surely....but what do you want from me?)

In the end, (here's the thesis coming), maybe everything comes out just about even. I don't think our lives, (meaning 'us', meaning humans in general) are lived on some sort of sliding scale between 1 and 10 where ten wins, but maybe instead on something closer to a series of parallel paths in which everyone lives at basically the same standard deviations of fulfillment, regardless of, I don't know, everything. It's crossing over from one to the other that's a pickle.

So god help those who transition.

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.