Entries from November 2004 ↓

Today was the beginning of the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. At least it was here in Mauritania. The Islamic calendar is lunar and days begin at sundown. A new month begins with the appearance of the new moon and though theoretically science can tell us when the new moon will appear, it has to actually be seen to count.

One person isn’t entrusted with the hefty task of seeing the moon. It would be unfortunate to have a cloudy week in his town and the country would just have to keep fasting. Instead there is a national agency which declares holidays. Across the country there are trustworthy religious men who all call in and somehow a consensus is reached.

The celebration is pretty much like most other Mauritanian holidays: visiting and eating meat. The one difference is that you are supposed to wear new clothes as well as buying a bunch of meat. One upshot of this is that the days right before the fete sport the highest crime rates of the year. About three days ago we had were having a dinner. The apartment is on the second floor inside a wall with a door. From the road you can see the door. Apparently it was left ajar and someone had the cajones to come in the outside door, up the stairs and loot the first room while a dozen of us were sitting in the second. You take off your sandals before entering an apartment, so the guy had to know how many people were there based on the huge pile of shoes he had to step over.

I have been making some headway on my New Years resolution to make at least a couple of Mauritanian friends. I got an invite from my French teacher, Diagina, and headed out to his house today about noon. It turns out that I was late. Diagina had been trying to call me, but you call everyone that you can?t go see and so the phone network was completely saturated all day.

A lot of the time when you have meat it is with rice or occasionally pasta. The normal dish for today is mishoui, which is meat with more meat. It isn?t bad really. The meat is cooked until it is relatively tender. We are dealing with a goat though which, unlike a cow, doesn?t have especially big muscles. So, there are lots of ligaments and whatnot in the plate.

All the men eat together around a communal bowl. Since I was late they had already eaten most everything. They had set some aside for Diagina and I and when we sat down, they added it into the bowl. It is a exercise in creativity eating something like a hunk of meat using only your right hand. You can?t just stick it in your mouth and tear parts off, so instead you rely on those around you to grab pieces with you and help you tear them apart.

To be a good guest I brought along a present. A traditional present is tea and sugar since that is consumed in such large quantities. I, unfortunately, decided to get creative. Part of our American culture is exploration. We live going to see new and interesting places. We like trying new experiences. When I was in the store and saw a display of candies from Lebanon, I decided that looked interesting and would make a good gift. The problem is that I?m not in Kansas anymore. Mauritanians value home and community and stability much more than new experiences. We had some volunteers who recently made a big batch of chocolate ice cream for their students. Mauritanians eat chocolate. It is hot as blue blazes here. You?d think this would produce a people ripe for chocolate ice cream. Not so, they wouldn?t eat it. The volunteers, reluctantly, had to consume the whole thing themselves. So the family I was with pulled a couple pieces out and sort of sniffed at them, took a little bite, declared them too sweet and put them back in the bag. Not wanting to let good candy go to waste, I worked my through a good quarter kilo as we were lying around.

The household I was in was Sonike speaking. Some of the older women don?t speak French at all, so pretty much all of the conversation was in Sonike. I was cool with it though. They had a tape of Celine Dion singing Christmas songs in French on in the background and I just stretched out on one of the mats (the only furniture in the room is mattresses on the floor) and went to sleep.

After a few hours I walked back home. I was sort of irritated because the children were particularly beggarly. There were lots of little kids in new boubous and caftans asking me for money. I was later complaining about it to Carl and he informed me that it is traditional to give kids money on this day so they can buy candy and soda. They then run about spreading sugar-fueled merriment and glee. Oh well, I?ll know not to glare at them next time.

I gave a batch of the same candies to my landlord. A while back I talked to his son and he retracted my landlord’s offer of letting me live with him. He said the layout of his new apartment wasn?t really conducive, which sounds perfectly reasonable to me. When I told my landlord that he was moving in with a friend because I didn?t want to disturb him, he acted injured. He said I had to come and look at my friend?s house and at his house and then choose. I?m not sure if his son just didn?t tell him or if this is some sort of cultural nicety. I?ve got a good lead on someone who might rent me a room and I?m going to check up on that today.

He seemed to like the candies and gave me a half a cake like he has for most of the other holidays. I?m pretty sure though that he hadn?t done much of anything for the guardian though. The guy lives in the house and sits outside every night watching the door. I really like him and wish I could do more for him. I told him that I wanted to give him some cake and he didn?t want to accept. He acquiesced though when I told him it would make me fat if I ate it all and then women wouldn?t like me.

I went into my room and ate half of it and then came out with that and half a chocolate bar someone gave me earlier in the day. He was all hushed when I was talking to him. I wonder if he thought my landlord would try and take the cake if he saw him. He seemed happy though and especially pleased with the chocolate, so I was happy.

All in all, a very nice day.

Love,
Will

I may well be the least healthy person ever (barring all you dumbasses who smoke). I have been progressively working my way through a 32oz jar of Blue Plate mayonnaise I bought in Mali. This is some tasty stuff. Steph and I used to buy it in Huntsville. It is, of course, mayonnaise though; aka. congealed vegetable oil and eggs. Probably the only thing less healthy that I could make a major part of my diet would be lead paint chips or strychnine.

Damnation it tastes good though. In an effort to make the most of my limited condiments, I attempted to spice up a kebab sandwich last night. A kebab is a piece of “pain arabe” (pretty much pita bread) with french fries, ketchup, mayo and some grilled ground meat (probably goat) on it. They are pretty good and especially so at 200um apiece. I can’t make soup from a mix at that price. The inclusion of some bonus mayo was a given and I also had a jar of raspberry jam I lifted from Obie’s. I mixed the two together and came out with this nice creamy fruit concoction. This went surprisingly well with the sandwich.

So at the end I had a ton of mayo combined with some red meat, french fries, jam and bread. I am so not going to be speaking English during WAIST.

I’ve not been having many new experiences as of late. I’ve certainly not drained Mauritania, but having been here for almost 500 days now I’ve decidedly carved a niche. So, my first taxi ride by myself was something of a treat…

• 7:30 – Dara kicks me getting out of the mosquito net. (Halloween was a time for a couple of new horizons.) I mumble a bit, roll over and go back to sleep.
• 9:30 – I wake up again to find myself nearly floating in a pool of sweat. The sun came up about 8:00 and since I’m on the roof I’ve been baking for a while.
• 9:45 – I toss the matelas off the roof wander downstairs with the mosquito net tucked under my arm. The enticing scent of eggs and potatoes frying is on the air.
• 9:50 – I’m sitting eating some purloined eggs and thinking about how nice life is.
• 10:15 – I continue my campaign of moral degradation by convincing Dara to take a nap rather than being responsible and going shopping.
• 12:00 – Dara finally heads out to run her errands and we say goodbye. I am headed to the garage as soon as I take a shower.
• 12:15 – I get out of the shower.
• 13:00 – I look up from my book and jar of olives (the only edible thing left in the house) and think about leaving.
• 13:30 – I actually pack up my stuff and head out the door.
• 13:45 – After an extracted wander through residential Kaédi, I arrive at the garage.
• 13:50 – After a bit of wandering and several not especially helpful guides, I arrive at the spot where one catches a car for Nouakchott. There are only one woman and the ticket seller there. This is troubling since there have to be ten people in the car, including the driver, before we will leave.
• 15:00 – I get a text message from Dara and tell her I’m still sitting at the garage and she comes by and gives me a Rice Krispies Treat from a care package. I am quite pleased even though I have to wait til sundown to eat it. (It being Ramadan and people would likely lynch me.)
• 15:45 – The afternoon crowd starts to wander in and we have a carfull in fairly short order.
• 16:15 – The car packs up and we are off.
• 16:30 – We make it to the main crossroads headed out of town and the driver stops and tells us to get out. He then drives off with all of our stuff. I sincerely hope he is coming back.
• 16:45 – The driver comes back, packs us back in the car and takes us back to the garage.
• 17:00 – Classic Mauritanian clusterfuck ensues. Ten guys or so standing around in a circle yelling at each other. Random people will wander by and stop and take part in the yelling. The driver is pissed about something. It is all in Hassaniya, so I really don’t know what. Just for flair one guy has a police whistle and keeps blowing it at random intervals even though no one is paying him any heed.
• 17:15 – Eventually they get fed up with the driver and pack us into a new car.
• 17:25 – We are off once again. Apparently for real this time.
• 18:00 – We pass corn fields which are nothing other than some stalks covered in locusts. The road is covered with bands of them which take off and smack the windshield with dull thuds as we pass.
• 18:15 – We pass a fellow herding a bunch of cows. The interesting aspect was he was doing it on camelback. How he managed to do anything from the back of one of those ungainly beasts is beyond me.
• 18:30 – The sun goes down and we break fast in the car with some water and dates. They don’t offer me anything which is disappointing since I’ve not eaten anything but some olives and eggs all day.
• 19:00 – We stop in a town for dinner and tea. I don’t know how this process works, so I am sort of sitting off to the side when someone yells “Toubab, mangez” (“White guy, eat”) and I oblige. We have the usual communal plate with some meat and gravy with bread.
• 21:00 – We get a flat and all trundle out of the car to wait for it to be fixed. As long as we are stopped everyone other than me takes the opportunity to pray.
• 23:00 – As we pass near towns I start getting SMS messages saying election returns are coming in.
• 1:00 – We pull into the garage in Nouakchott and I head straight to Obie’s election party.

So 11 hours to make it about 450km. It could certainly have been worse. We did only have one flat. Our driver didn’t replace the spare, so that is particularly fortuitous.

It has been argued that laughter serves a largely social purpose.

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Provine_96.html

The idea is that the main point of laughter is to convey social signals. Bob tells a bad joke and we laugh at him. We are significantly more likely to do so if Bob is much higher than us in the social milieu. We also laugh release tension in a situation or if someone near us is laughing.

An important unexplored aspect of this research are the writings of David Sedaris. I’ve been reading Me Talk Pretty for the last couple days and I’ve laughed out loud more reading that book than in the last month with my friends. This arguably speaks poorly of my friends, but I prefer to think of it as reflecting well on Sedaris.

The book has some really good essays on his experience dealing with being an American in Paris and taking French classes. It really resonates with me in a very funny way. I like him more that Spalding Gray in the genre of interior monologue outed which is saying a lot.

So that is the book recommendation du jour. Other title for the week is Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Est?s (her middle name really is Pinkola, who does that to their kid?) It is alright. If I liked reading analysis more I would have gotten more into it. I like the Jungian ideas in general, but there was too much of her talking and not enough stories in my opinion.

Love,
Will

I am back in town once again. I just got back from a week and a half of whirlwind adventures through the interior. I’ve significantly developed my criminal resume, but all that must remain secret at least until I can’t get kicked out of the Peace Corps.

I rolled into town from Ka?di at about 1am on the 3rd. I didn’t even go home, but instead headed straight to Obie’s house for his election party. Since we are five hours off the east coast the returns were just starting to come in. I sat around playing Risk and watching States come in until about 5am when I crashed out on the couch. I awoke to find Ohio under debate only to those willing to live in a fantasy land.

I’ve been spending the last three months being jaded and trying to not have any faith in the intelligence of the American people. Despite my best efforts I allowed a spark of hope grow only so that it could get crushed by the election. Fortunately, Obie had large quantities of cheese and ice cream on hand that I used to drown my sorrows.

I won’t even ask of you all what exactly the hell is wrong with all of you. I’ll just assume that they’re putting something in the water back in the States and you are all high as kites. I’ve got plenty of Mauritanians to commiserate with here.

This morning I got up pretty early, but I didn’t really get moving til nearly noon. For the party in Ka?di I took my laptop down with all fourteen of the Simpsons’ Halloween episodes on it. I still had my laptop with me, so I lay around watching Simpsons and reading a David Sedaris book I lifted from the Ka?di maison.

About noon someone stuffed a letter under my door addressed to “Tenant.” Generally these are not a good sign. I’d not paid my rent yet (since I’d been out of town) and was hoping that they weren’t going to chastise me for my tardiness. I found some clothes and wandered out to find my landlord’s English speaking son chatting on the phone. He told me that the house is being sold and ought to be office space within a couple weeks.

So, I may soon be a homeless person. This is not wretched since I’m sure I could tell Marc or Carl that I need a place to stay and they’d put me up.

I’ve actually been thinking that it would be good for me to move for a while. I’ve done a reasonably good job of making some Mauritanian friends, but I’ve definitely not done as well as I would like to have. It seems sort of silly to live in this place and not really get immersed in the culture.

As it is, I’ve definitely gotten a better taste of life here than the average expiate, but I’ve not really gotten down and rolled around in Mauritanian society. I never would have moved on my own though because I love my place so much. It is a great location and a great price. My landlord is really nice and everyone is friendly.

I’ve got one offer right now from my landlord. He is moving into a place that should be about as far from the University as where we are now. I like the idea, but it is farther into the nice (and Western) part of town and will go counter to my goal of getting to know Mauritania better. It also does not have an external door like my place does now. I sort of like the idea of running into the old guy more often, but I also often hang out with people until three in the morning and the layout will have to be such that I can come in at all hours without disturbing him.

I’m planning on going and checking it out. I’m also going to talk to some of my friends in the poorer parts of town and see what they think. It will mean giving up hot water almost certainly and I dislike that, but I think I can manage. We get sort of cold here in the mornings in the winter (since we are right on the ocean), but I can always just bathe at night.

Giving up running water would be harder and I’m hoping to avoid that. The problem with the poorer parts of town isn’t that there aren’t water pipes, it is that there is no water pressure. You get one faucet for the whole house and it they dig out below the ground level to install it to try and increase pressure. This doesn’t really work though and all you get is a trickle. So, what you do is put a bucket under the trickle and every few hours you have a full bucket of water to use for whatever purpose. I feel like a bit of a diva not being willing to let running water go, but unless the place was really cool or cheap I don’t want to.

So, things will be changing one way or another soon. I’m glad about it. I’ve been dealing with a funk for a long while and maybe mixing things up will help.

Love,
Will