mosquito cream tour

a summary in numbers:
2- PCVs on the road
4- days we toured the country side
10- bowls of milk we drank
1- goats slaughtered
40+ - glasses of tea dranken
8- hours spent fixing the broken car (broken due to excessive off-roading)
5- aprons neda made out of local fabric
72,000- ougiyas it cost to rent the car
5- friends and villagers brought along to help us
45- minutes of film recorded
3- naps i took on the road
countless- cigarettes smoked in secret by neda (women smoking is not culturally appropriate)
priceless- rocking it out to michael jackson on the tape deck, networking along the river road and remaining calm through various project adventures

chicken gore (not for the weak stomached)

I watched three very alive chickens become lunch.

First, I carried the squawking meal across the village by their scaly legs. My arms achingly perpendicular to the ground- the chickens hanging far from my body to avoid the sharp poke of a beak. Relieved to arrive at the house, a knife was quickly sharpened and sliced along three struggling feathered necks. They didn’t run in the wide circles I imagined, but their posthumous dips and dives left a bloody battlefield of struggle.

Boiled water dumped onto three soft and still chickens. Immediately, they look smaller. Am thinking that there can’t possibly be meat on this fist-sized of an animal.

We pulled the feathers out, leaving little holes and bumps in their wake. Long feathers on the wings to tiny puffs on the head, I yanked until the flesh looked at last familiar. I could picture this in a squeaky Styrofoam container covered with saran wrap and a bar code.

I gripped the slippery rib cage as Ballyl pulled out strings of organs. The heart, stomach, and intestines, Ballyl said, as she tossed them into slimy good and bad piles. I worked bits of fat off the meat, plopping the yellow chunks into the bad group. I cracked apart joints and hacked off the feet. We cooked the head and the broken neck and as we ate, I easily identified it all.

In all this gore I waited to feel disturbed. How clearly I recall the repulsion caused by the cold and sterile Styrofoam, the bloodied tissue tossed into the trash and the slimy chicken legs my mother rinsed at the kitchen sink.

my friend howwa

Howwa describes everything as exciting. At first I was flattered because she called me that. I think she’s wonderful and when she said “ada jirwi” I thought she reciprocated the feeling. My stomach flipped with the anticipation of a new best friend. Then I heard her say a television show (Spanish soap opera dubbed badly in French watched on a black and white screen) was exciting. And then the Burt’s Bees chapstick I gave her was described as exciting and I saw where I stood.

Sometimes I meet people I like so much I immediately want the privilege of being in their tightest circle of friends. Avoid small talk and jump over the gathering of personal histories. I want more of them. To know their thoughts, predict their actions and go on vacation with them to some remote island so I can have them all to myself.

Take this irrational impatience with my inhibited self of a second language and we have quite a situation on our hands. Comfortable and flowing conversation is hard enough to come by between two stranger Americans, about the same age and with similar backgrounds. Eliminate all similarities including race, religion, age, language and education and then how does one befriend another?

I guess you resort to giving Howwa your Burt’s Bees honey chapstick and hope she hears your sentiment.

white watermelons

We were gossiping in the watermelon field.

My rubber band arms- exhausted from the task of hauling heavy loads of melons- were up to my shirt sleeve in watermelon guts. Albino watermelons were cracked all around us and we mechanically dumped the innards into a 20 gallon plastic tub. The melons had sat for too long since being broken on the ground with satisfying clunks and thuds. The days of waiting lured endless squirming maggots to infect our pile of fruit. Ribbed and white, the maggots blended in with what we were after, only making themselves known as tickles between my fingers, sending repulsed shudders down to my tailbone.

And still we gossiped.

You know Ablaye’s father is Adama, right? Oh you didn’t?
Njari was reaching into the trenches of village dirt. Suicide, infidelity, impotence- tales told simply to make my jaw slacken and my eyes miss a blink. I am not a difficult person from whom to get a reaction, so this was a fun game for Njari.

I tried to ignore the maggots clinging to my arm hairs and to stay steady on my tiny stool. I watched the ground for lunch time’s shadows to arrive.

i'll never be this way again

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place…you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.” -Reading Lolita in Tehran

The way I am here is a collage of old Laura demeanor and new Mauritanian behaviors. I pondered the things I do and the way I am now that I will never do or be again…

-I feel triumphant when following radio theatre story lines. (And I listen to radio theatre in the first place!)
-I am outside about 100% of the time. I am indoors only to change clothes. Eating, sleeping, bathing, working, socializing all takes place in the shade of trees, under the moon or in the scorching sun.
-My ears perk at new verbs and useful adjectives, and my Pulaar dictionary is crumbling from infinite references.
-I often have a vague sense that I have done or said something culturally incorrect or inappropriate. The underlying doubt that I am fully understanding life is omnipresent.
-I have an intense awareness of the physical world. The moon’s phases, hours of the sun rise/set, wind direction, temperatures and the likelihood of rain. Never again will I have to notice, let alone care about such things.
-I deal with a restricting inability to pre schedule meetings or work days more than a day in advance. I am constantly engaged in a toggling of programs- shifting pre-planned events around weddings, funerals and “personal” business that is public in a village that does not differentiate the two.
-“Site guilt” pangs that unexpectedly hit after one too many days in Kaedi. This is a common PCV occurrence after idle days away from host families and integration opportunities. Our consciences tug us back to our true purpose of being in Mauritania- live with Mauritanians.
-Silent slow hours for writing, reading and self-reflection
-I buy impossibly small amounts of products. Ten cents of sugar, three bananas for a buck, a gulp of juice for a penny.
-I treat the internet like a rare tryst into paradise. I stay up all night scorching my eyes dry, overwhelmed by all the information, entertainment and endless e-mails.

the third thing

I often say that the Peace Corps has given me three things. (This is usually said in a bitter tone because I expected more support and contact and information and training....the list goes on.) But these three things have been amazing:

1. Language. For ten weeks when we arrived here we were given 172 hours of language training. This is about 20 hours a week of pure learning. A part time job of priceless language acquisition, without which, my experience would have lacked an immense richness.

2. Money. It is the Peace Corps' monthly allowance on which I eat, travel and survive. While I may not be making money, at least I am not going into debt living abroad.

3. A social network.

It is this third gift that I have never really written about, but has been absolutely enormous in my Peace Corps experience.

The Mauritania PCVs meet up at each other's sites, ride for endless painful hours together in squished cars and in the backs of trucks. We smuggle alcohol from Senegal across the river and drink Oral Rehydration Salts as a hangover remedy. We insult each other in local languages, read out loud to each other from magazines sent from home, and text each other on our cell phones. At regional houses we talk in the middle of the night when its too hot to sleep, play Scrabble and make fun of each others laundry methods.

We don't have to explain anything because we already understand. We don't have to defend our anti-social or "unintegrated" behavior because we all know we're just trying to stay sane.

In other social scenarios there are destinations like restaurants, parks, bars, parties... walks one can go on, museums one can tour, etc. Here, the destination is nowhere. To leave the high walls of a regional house is to be subjected to taunts of "Toubab!" and the other million unwanted attention actions and words that are thrown at us.

It is with each other that we can forget where we are. And if we happen to remember, we know that we are all here together, and that seems to change everything.

creme bowdi

The rainy season is on its way. The river is flowing faster because of heavy rains in Mali. Wind storms drive everyone indoors at night and leave us hoping for water to fall from the sky to break the unbearable heat.

My friend Neda and I do not just greet the returned season, but also one last round of "creme bowdi." ("Creme" being French for lotion and "bowdi" meaning mosquitos in Pulaar.) Neda and I are local experts on the production of a mosquito repellent created out of local materials.

Living only 15km apart, Neda and I have served as a priceless support system for each other for the past 20+ months and now we are collaborating on a project. Pictured above, she and I are doing a theater sketch on the radio about malaria and the concoction of "creme bowdi." In a few weeks time we will be traveling along the river, stopping in small, often overlooked villages, presenting our special lotion. We have matching aprons and are bringing village friends with us. We will conduct 100% of the "River Road Tour" in Pulaar and will rely on the various villages to feed us and house us for the week.

We say that this we are going out with a bang. That we have earned the opportunity to travel around like a mini theater troupe, sharing important information that we could recite in our sleep. After spending two years trying to avoid the spotlight and stares and draw crowds, Neda and I are now pursuing such attention. We are a circus act, comedians in strange skin, who actually understand the lives and language we embrace in order to teach.

We have arrived, we say. Just in time to go home, I think.

moussa the malian fisherman

A half an hour before dawn, my friend Moussa dragged me out of bed. We walked side by side toward the slowly pinking sky, headed for a fishing hole about 3 kilometers from Garly.

Moussa and his traveling buddies from Mali spent two months living in my neighbor's house and by the end of their brief stay we were spending hours chatting in my second language and his fourth. (As two non-native Pulaar speakers, we were able to easily understand each other. Colorful slang doesn't get in the way and we don't care about perfect grammar.)

When we arrived at the seasonal lake, the light splashing from countless other fishermen could be heard, as they moved through the water checking their lines and nets. Buckets and sacks were slowly being filled with squirming silver fish as camels nudged through prickly branches of nearby trees.

Moussa stripped to a tank top and shorts and waded into the murky pond. He walked the mile of fishing line methodically and casually, as an expert moves through his motions. He sang under his breath and looked up and grinned every once in awhile. His perfect teeth a flash of bright against his midnight skin.

He says he can't go back to Mali until he has earned enough money- to return empty handed is embarassing. But he has been gone for two years already hasn't saved anything. Tramping from village to village along the Senegal River, dappling in countless languages and fishing methods. Applying for papers to work in different parts of West Africa and telling his family he will come home soon.

But he admits it will probably not be soon. Even though he misses his motor bike, the plentiful fruit in his home town, and being with his father.