Women's Day

March 8th was International Women’s Day. I happened to be in Awinatt Zbil to help Mike and Jackie celebrate. Mike and Jackie opened up a Girl’s Mentoring Center in Awinatt, so this was the first year the mentors got to celebrate with Peace Corps.

In true Mauritanian fashion, we had lots of zrig (milk and sugar), tea, and dates. It was one of the ways we can show our appriciation for the girlies in town and have fun!



Jackie and I with some of the women.



No party is complete without a bucket of zrig!



Some of the women helping Mike and Jackie set up.



Tea for everyone!



Snack time! Dates and cream. Yummy!



Musical interlude.



Some of the mentors. And one all henna-ed out.



The aftermath... Mike's pooped. Who needs more tea?

Videos!

My friend Whitney came to town to visit for a day and took videos and more pictures. The first video is a tour of our market, the big hub of our village. It was quite lively that day...



The second one is how we travel in Mauritania. Basically stuff as many people as you can into one car. And children under 6 don't count as people because you can just throw them on top of your lap. They've gotten this down pretty well. Eight people in a 5 person car is not unheard of. The car we took into town had a total of 7. Roomy! And one of my students says "Hello!"



More Glimpses of my town...



This is Toutou and I. She works at the school with me. She went with us into town and is sitting next to me in the car. You might catch a glimpse of her viel.



We're loading up the car. Complete with donkey cart on top. The wheel was broken so they had to take it into Aioun, my regional capital.



This is one of the main "roads" in Agjert.



Obviously, we are very keen on renovating property...



Butchers slaughtering meat. You can only buy meat in our town Mondays and Fridays. And with no sort of refrigeration, the entire goat needs to be sold that day. Unless you make goat jerky and dry strips of meat. This guy here just lost his head...



The mosque closest to me in town. I've gotten used to this guy's prayer call, he's my favorite.

Friends!

Welcome to Egjert!



Our market to buy whatever your heart desires... not!



The primary school.



My house



A fellow Peace Corps volunteer, our horse, and my host brother.



Camels in the dunes right outside of my house.

WAIST!!!

Party bus on the way to Dakar.



The Pirates scaring the competition.



Me and Josh doing our best to show Mauritania spirit.



Spectators watching the team.



Colleen and I cheering the Pirates on.



Practicing before the big game...



WE WON!!!



Hair party to take all of our braids out.

After our big fiasco in Nouakchott, going back to my tiny site was a welcome change. The vacation really motivated me to come back and integrate more with my family and community. I actually missed them, so I spent a lot of time at home and hanging out around town. I started going with my neighbors to the gardens picking beans and berries to munch on. One of my favorite days was going out to what villager's consider the country side to find a certain kind of tree because the seeds help with respiratory problems. In the cold season, everyone comes down with something, so a big chunk of my family got sick. We basically walked out past the town for about 30 minutes through small animal trails and sand dunes until we found them.

Everything was fine and dandy like sour candy until about two weeks in, I got pretty ill. We are all issued water filters, and especially in rural sites where we get our water from a well, they are life savers. After a couple days of multiple bathroom visits and throwing up, I realized my filter was not cleaning my water properly. I had been drinking untreated well water. Issues that are all too common in Peace Corps service. I had to cancel a week of class and go into the regional capital just to get access to drinkable water. But after a week of antibiotics, everything was back to normal.

However, in the middle of February in Dakar, Senegal, there is a soft ball tournament, WAIST. West African Invitational Softball Tournament. We go every year and dress up as pirates. So everyone at asks for pirate gear such as swords, eye patches, hats, etc in our packages from home. Since Pirates of the Caribbean, we're lucky that pirates have been a pretty popular costume. My sister even sent me a parrot. Mauritania usually has a pretty large turnout and this year was no exception. With three teams and about 50 spectators, we had over 120 people attend.

We chartered 2 buses from Rosso, our community based training site, to Dakar. I thought Nouakchott was amazing... Dakar is a real city. Huge markets, metropolitan, a history. Buildings stretch all the way to the shore line. You can see the ocean all around you, with people running in the sand and walking along cliffs, it is beautiful.

All of the softball games were held at Club Atlantique, right off of the coast. We had three days of softball ahead of us and lots of us to intimidate the competition. Apparently Peace Corp Mauritania has a reputation. You can always tell which Peace Corps kids live in a dry country because they go a little overboard with the alcohol. Then they tend to cheer a little too much for the team, even if we're not playing.

So we all showed up at the fields with full pirate gear on. Lots of girls braided their hair and boys grew out bears and shaved their heads into mohawks. I combined the two and braided my hair into a mohawk. A purple one. Our A team, The Pirates, had a good line up. After each game, the team gained more and more confidence. We won all the games the first day and by the middle of the second day, the championship was in sight. The third day, we did qualify to play in the final game and ahumdillilah, we ended up winning!

Needless to say, that night at the banquet we celebrated. And hopefully we managed to uphold our reputation. All in all, WAIST is definitely a nice vacation to see a great city and win softball tournament.

Christmas

Macarie, our safety and security officer takes care of us. Hotta!



Christmas Dessert, YUMMY!



Fishing in the Senegal River.



The street our hotel was on.

Happy Holidays!!!

December was a busy month. When we are posted to our site we have a three month travel ban when we are required to stay in our regions. Our first day to travel around the country was the last week of November. So a lot of first years packed their bags to start visiting friends we haven't seen since August. My first visit was to Kiffa, a town 3 hrs away to visit my buddy on his birthday.

I spent a week in city, had a fun little birthday celebration complete with too many desserts, and just hung out with a bunch of friends I missed. After my vacation, it was back to school in Agjert for the trimester tests. Ahumdillulah I had a handful of kids that actually did pretty well and studied English. It's always nice when you can actually see and hear your hard work pay off.

After tests most of the volunteers go to Nouakchott, the country capital. For our class, it was our first time in the city. Restaurants, super markets, spas... it was paradise We spent Christmas Eve at our country director's house, (I.e. our main boss) where we finally got to see all of our friends. And meet the rest of the 2nd years.

Christmas Day, we went to one of the three churches in the country to attend mass... in French. But I'm pretty sure I got the jist of the message. Baby Jesus was born. At the end, the choir sang and danced until a big chunk of the congregation joined in clapping and stomping. Christmas African style. We had a blast.

After that I had a nice Christmas lunch at a creperie. Yum, cheese. By late afternoon, all of us returned to the country director's for the big Christmas dinner. Total, there are about 150 Peace Corps volunteers in the country. My estimate is volunteers, plus friends, and help there were close to 200 people at dinner. Needless to say, I don't know if I have ever seen that much food. And even though it was a Christmas pretty far from home, being surrounded by so many close friends, we made it a good one.

For New Years, it is PC Mauritania tradition to head down to Saint Louis, Senegal. It's a lively beach town and one of the bigger cities in West Africa. The hotels were amazing... luxurious compared to what I am used to. Hot water, a shower, a toilet, air conditioning (yeah, we did kind of need that in January), an actual bed. It was heaven. And the beaches had white sand and clear waters. I did a lot of relaxing in St. Louis.

The second week of January was ETR (Early Term Reconnect) in the capital to go over some of the basic points of Peace Corps Mauritania- in case we forgot. I was just happy to be in the city again. Unfortunately our meetings happened to be scheduled at the exact time the whole conflict between Hamas and Israel started escalating... so what do Mauritanianians do best? Riot! It started off as a protest towards the Israel embassay. A couple thousand people marched through the city, but then younger people started getting involved. High school kids left school to throw rocks at no one in particular, all clinging to their copy books. (Which I found a bit hilarious as a teacher.) People screaming “Allah Akbar” and cursing Israel and it's supporters. (America is the biggest one, if case you weren't aware.)

Then the fires started. The police had to use armed vehicles to attempt to control the crowd, so what's the best way to piss off authority? Light tires on every street corner downtown. Even when tear gas is thrown at you and rubber bullets were being shot. We were put on lock down, a state of emergency in where we are not allowed to leave our premises and be as vigilant as possible With the scenes going on outside, no one had to tell us twice. I happened to be in a hotel a couple blocks away from the Peace Corps main office. We saw lots of action from the windows. Even the cleaning ladies watched with us. It went on for a good 3 hours and then died down. Then for the next couple of days we went on with our meetings. But for those few days, the police presence in the city was huge.

Our first introduction to Nouakchott was certainly an experience we will keep with us for a while.



Riots in Nouakchott!!!



Watching the city burn...