How Laura Has Changed (a post from her big sister)

I am spending the Christmas holiday with my petite soeur (read: little sister) in Paris. She has been in the Peace Corps for over 18 months and I think it's about time we get an outsider's opinion about how this experience has changed her, if at all.

My initial assessment is that Laura is, in essence, the same as always. She has seen things I would have never thought her able to stomach - she has witnessed the slaughtering of many animals and she's has always been one of the biggest lover of animals I've known. How could we forget the passing of our favorite cat, Henry? But she has also now been to several countries I've never been to (and I'm jealous like normal), and seen sights most people will never see. And, now she appreciates her family even more :) But she has also shrunk quite a bit thanks to her sparse diet, and today she is wearing Alice's jeans and needs a belt - for those of you who don't know our littlest sister, she is a tiny string bean of a person and fitting into her jeans would be a miracle for anyone!

I now know that it takes a certain kind of person to be successful in the Peace Corps and Laura is perfect for it. She doesn't seem to mind when things are out of her control and she has no idea what's happening around her, who those strange people are living in her house, what people are saying and thinking about her in Pulaar before she could understand. She's not a control freak - a personality that would probably struggle even more in the harsh climate and radically different society.

We can't wait to have her back home soon - away from those organ eating parasites in the Senegal River, malaria scares, etc. Next Christmas we won't get great gifts from Africa, but we will be together without hauling ourselves halfway around the globe to see her. Merry Christmas Eve!

white watermelons...

...are not as tasty as the red ones. But, if you splash a little salt on there, these albino juicy fruits are pretty good.

Lately, I have participated in the task of saving the crops from the mighty melon vines that aim to choke the corn and suck the nutrients away from the beans.

The way we save the fields begins with hauling in the watermelons. The melons are the size of small bowling balls (like duck pin bowling balls) and are just as heavy. We rip the melon from the vine and clunk it into a bucket. Once the bucket is full, we climb out of the plants and lug the bucket onto our heads and walk the 50 feet to the dumping tree. Taking each melon individually, we throw it to the earth and listen to the satisfying crack of the rind splitting open. Each melon gets tossed and broken. What begins as fun destructive feeling behavior ends with hundreds of cracked melons piled beneath a tree, arms that feel like rubber and heads that feel like they've carried boulders for two hours.

Fast forward three days. We plop down amongst the melons that are in various stages of rotting. We pull the fruit open and dump the innards into a wide rimmed bucket. Ideally, one hand scoop should retrieve all the dripping watermelon guts easily. The seeds and the flesh are all together and still resembling a watermelon, however white. But, if your field buddy is a bit of a procastinator and you postpone the melon gut dumping until a week after the breaking, you have on your hands a bit of a maggot infestation problem. The smell of rotting fruit can become unbearable, and the previously inoffensive juice is now yellow and full of squirming white worms a couple millimeters long.

Handling the tickling of the maggots takes a mighty strong stomach, and a hard headed person to pursue the job to the end. Especially when one keeps in mind that once the bucket of guts is dumped, and dried in the sun, and the seeds are pounded into a fine powder, it is simply put into meals as a little bit of vitamin enrichment. After hours of head-aching lugging and tiring melon breaking, followed by maggot sorting and all we get is a little bit of vitamin C powder? Once again, all I can do is shake my head in amazement at all the work work work that makes Garly's world go round.

a throw back entry

(From my journal a year ago)

I wasn’t aware of how accustomed I was to Garly until Neda and I pulled into Nouakchott and it was a buzzing metropolis. An electrified alive city with traffic and large glass windows displaying products I’d seen only in daydreams for half a year. Rows of toothbrushes, cereal, cleaning supplies, microwaves, jeans, peanut butter…had I really learned to do without so much? Upon seeing the hotel room (cable TV, shower, actual bed off the floor) Neda and I jumped and laughed and smoked a victory cigarette.

One average boutique offered more products and food than all the boutiques in Garly combined. I slurped soft serve at a pastry shop, inhaled a cheeseburger for a staggering 1000UM (don’t think about what this could buy in the village, Laura). Mexican food with tasty cheese and the unfamiliar tang of spicy salsa. I danced to jazz and drank beer at a bar, strolled under glowing streetlights at night, curving among the carnivalesque street vendors.

I gained 4kgs. The entire village reacted with a “Mashallah” (God is good) upon my pudgy return.