Two guys walking around my market
The stalls in the market.
Me in front of my school.
My site is an oasis village so we produce lots of dates. It's quite scenic at sunset.
My job as a teacher has been lots of fun and very rewarding. My class are comparable to US class sizes, sometimes even smaller- which is amazing since the opposite is usually true. Large cities can have upwards of 70-80 children in a class. Try that for crowd control. I actually feel like I can teach these kids English and it makes it all the better when you can see how excited the students to learn.
Lately, however, I have been having many conversations about cultural exchange. Which incidentally is one of the three goals of a Peace Corps service. There are many aspects of a Mauritanian culture that is very different from the Amerian life. For example, marriage is a very important expectation for women. Depending on their culture, girls can be married as young as 14 years old to men well into their ate 20's and 30's. So when people meet me and realize I'm 23 and single, but not looking for a husband to take care of me, they are flabbergasted. I then go on to explain that in America, girls just like boys like to get an education and wait until they have some money saved up to get married. Or there is always the choice to stay single. They may think I'm weird, but right now, as long as they know there is more than one option, I am happy.
Since girls here are not expected to get any higher education beyond high school, many of them are not treated equally in society. For example, in class, while teaching, if you choose a girl to answer a question, boys will ask why and insist they are stupid and would never know anything. Often times, girls are not able to do their homework because once they go home, they are told to cook for the family, clean, watch the smaller children, etc. To combat this attitude, Peace Corps is involved with Girls Education and Empowerment. There are classes meant to give girls a better education then what they might have and offer more resources and options. Activities include learning about finance and co-ops, perfecting English, art class, or in Aioun, they girls have sports hour once a week. You can tell the girls really enjoy doing something they never get to do, such as jump rope and play soccer. A lot of the time, these girls don't realize there are others out there that feel the same, and bringing them all together in an open and non-judgmental environment really helps them turn into more confident women.
There is also a lot of social tension here. The country is made up of Moors, who are of Arab descent, Black Moors, who are Black Africans that have adopted the Moor culture and have lived this way for centuries, along many Black African groups, such as Pulaar, Sonike, and Wolof. White Moors, especially, tend to stir up racial tensions. The things I have heard them say... sometimes I feel like I could be in Alabama in 1950. Granted, not everyone has this mindset, and I do not want to generalize, but it is definitely enough to notice. There have even been reports that the coup t'etate was staged because the population of black Africans is growing and by seizing power without elections, the White Moors could keep their hold on the country. It is most obviously a power issue, but hopefully by treating everyone equally and explaining that no one is better because of the color of their skin, I can change a few minds at a time.
Nutrition is a major issue here. Since the people here are culturally nomadic, it is expected to eat all you can at each sitting because they are under the impression that you never know when your next meal will be. If you are full, they will tell you to push through the pain and eat until there is nothing left. Large women are also see as beautiful, so the more you eat the better looking you are. There are fat camps here, but unlike in the States where you send little chubby kids to loose weight, here, you force feed women until they are 200-300 lbs. Of course there are health issues that come with this. I have see women that cannot walk more then 100 feet because they are so out of breath and their body aches.
On top of that, the food they eat is not entirely nutritious. Where I live, lunch everyday is rice and goat meat while dinner is plain cous cous. Vegetables and fruits are almost never seen. Mostly because they are just so difficult to get. You would have to get them from the city. We have a market only once a week. And I use the word market sparingly, you could get twice as many things at the CVS then in my town. (Check out the market pics.) I have seen squash twice and potatoes about every other week, but you have to hunt for them. Since I get tired of cous cous for dinner every night, market days I buy macaroni which means we have that plus onions for dinner. And believe me, its like a feast. But with no electricity and no refrigeration, you can have perishables, and you have to make do with what you have and make sure no food goes to waste.
Milk is also an important aspect in the Moor culture. Every night I get a nice fresh bowl of milk from our cows. We even have a milk man named Sidi. I have learned to love fresh milk. After a big bowl of nasty, unflavored cous cous, milk is like a big dessert. However, they also make sour milk. What is left over from the night before, they pour into a container. By container I really mean goat skin that has been sewn up with its neck as the spout and legs tied up so no liquid gets out. Called a gerbe, its a big goat carcass. So at night, you pour the milk into this, it sours and curdles and in the morning you add water and sugar and have a nice big glass of sour milk. I personally don't like it, but they adore it here. The goat skin actually gives it a little flavor too. You can also do this in a plastic bottle if you do not have a goat skin, but they flavor is not the same, or so I have been told. I could live without trying either sour goat skin milk or sour plastic bottle milk. It's not exactly my thing.
Thankfully, while talking to people, I have meet Mauritanians who are very open and even share some of my views. I had a conversation once with a taxi driver who said he knows obese women are very unhealthy and it is not good for them. He also told me this as I had to sit next to a 300 lbs woman in a car, so maybe he was trying to make me feel better, as she is three times my size. I met another person who thinks women covering their hair is sexist and doesn't see a point in it. I saw a 14 year old girl wearing jeans and playing basketball. That was exciting because I had just had a conversation with a woman in my town that said girls that play sports need to be hit because they should be cooking. Not that the West should force its culture down other people's throats, but the longer I am here, the more I realize that cultural exchange is a huge part of a Peace Corps service.
