Anniversary observations

Happy (slightly late) Independence Day! I hope you all had yummy food and good fireworks. I had none of the latter, but the food was great – Julian and Nina and I had a wonderful barbeque lunch of teriyaki beef, honey-mustard glazed chicken, grilled veggies, and potato salad (very tasty indeed, if I do say so myself, with complements to Grandma’s recipe :)

On Sunday (July 2), we celebrated the one year anniversary of our arrival in Mauritania. One year ago in the afternoon, we disembarked after a trip that started about 24 hours before... A bus ride from Philly to JFK, hours of card games in the airport, boarding our flight only to sit through another couple hours of delay before takeoff... then my first transatlantic flight (mostly cloudy – highlights included the coast of southern England and the outskirts of Paris from the air), a frantic run through the airport because we were late, and finally a relatively short Air France hop down the coast of Africa (including an in-flight lunch of salmon ravioli that we all still remember as the best airplane food ever). Landing in Nouakchott was a shock. For one thing, it was HOT. And barren. I remember being rather worried – if this falling-down wasteland of sand, trash, and scattered crappy buildings was the best Mauritania had to offer...yikes. The Peace Corps bureau was better, but it still seemed a bit dirty. And the pizza they gave us for dinner sucked! When we went to Kaedi the next day, it was even worse. It was crowded with scary people we couldn’t talk to, roaming animals, and trash heaps several feet high, all of which made venturing outside the grounds of the Lycée that served as our training center a frightening prospect.

Fast forward one year... I was in Kaedi on Sunday for an anniversary shindig, and I was really surprised at how different it seemed to me. I’ve not been back there since the end of Stage, and now it seems like an awfully friendly, colorful, and even relatively clean place. What a nice city! There are trees, a large market with tons of fruit, veggies, hand-dyed mulafas, and all sorts of other goodies...a restaurant where you can eat rice and fish (my favorite Mauritanian meal, and a rarity in Maal), tailors on every corner, people wearing colorful clothes of all sorts (instead of the mulafa-or-boubou uniform I’m used to farther north) and speaking five different languages...Fun!

Nouakchott’s changed, too. Amazingly, the pizza has since become delicious, and the city’s gotten so much more modern. Ok, not actually, but it sure seems that way. Perspective really is everything. And it’s amazing how comfortable you can become with such a radically different environment in just a year. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to a break! I’m so very glad to be getting out of here soon, if just for a few weeks.

I’ve been staying out of Maal an awful lot since school got out. It’s not that I don’t like it there – I’m just a bit burnt out on interaction with Mauritanians. And the farther I am from my site, the less I feel obligated to interact. I hope a few weeks away puts me in a better frame of mind. It sounds rather harsh to say I just don’t want to talk to Mauritanians. I really do love some of them dearly. It’s just constant work to be around them. You always have to listen carefully in order to understand, always be on your guard so as not to do or say something culturally unacceptable. For me it’s especially hard since, as some of you no doubt know, I tend to be a bit antisocial in situations I’m not completely comfortable with. I’m not good at small talk on topics that don’t interest me – and it’s even worse when I’ve got the language to contend with too. I sometimes feel like I’m reverting to Middle-School Beth, who sits quietly in a corner at social gatherings and pulls out a book at every opportunity (remember her? I could have sworn I’d repressed her in the past few years). I try to not resort to the book in company, but sometimes it just gets so boring when everybody’s laying around for hours and having conversations that I only half-understand, am not interested in, and don’t really have anything to say about. Sigh. People expect extended visits here – they want you to spend the whole day with them, even though ALL you do is lay around. I can’t fathom why a couple more hours of me laying on their floor is valuable to them. ‘Tis a puzzlement. To sum it up, trying to live up to my social duties is as much work for me as teaching – and actually I sometimes find it more difficult, because it isn’t a structured thing that I can just do and be done with at a certain time. I like having class because then I have a good excuse (i.e. “sorry, I can’t have tea and sit on your floor while you quiz me in Hassaniya for three hours...I’ve got class”). Nobody can argue with official responsibilities, right?

On the bright side, without official responsibilities, I can pop out for a break as often as my site-abandonment-guilt issues (entirely in my mind, of course, since no one else cares) will let me. That’s fun. Well, I’ve rambled long enough, and I’m sure you’re all bored of this.... ethen aywah, marahebe, maasalem, u wedanak il mulana (or, for you non-hassaniya speakers, see ya :)