Eid Mabaruk

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody!

I've just come back from St. Louis, Senegal. After visiting it three times, I still love it dearly, and I had an especially good visit this time. I was in the French colonial downtown most of the time; it's full of good food and little coffee shops and old buildings and flowers and other such delights. The beach is also wonderful there - we went swimming, hung out on the sand, and had a bonfire complete with singalong the last night. And enjoyed wearing relatively little clothing. You never know how wonderful it is to put on pants and a tank top until you've been wearing long skirts and covering your head for several months.

Coming back today was a good trip, as trips go. We got a bush taxi (the standard method of travel in West Africa) to Rosso, on the Senegal River, then went through "customs", which means they record our passport numbers in a big book and send us on our way. We took a pirougue (which I'm sure I spelled wrong, and is a long wooden fishing boat) across the river. It's very wide and deep and green, with tall rushes on the banks. The sky was green and misty today as well, and riding so close to the water, surrounded by green, was a lovely experience. After hopping out onto the muddy bank on the other side, we got to sit around while the gendarmes complained a bit about having to work during the lunch hour, but they did their thing without too many hints that we should bribe them. We then wrangled with several loud guys in boubous for a couple cars and headed for Nouakchott. Our driver was a jolly fellow. One of the other volunteers had a keyboard with him (who knows why), and the driver requested some entertainment, so we had a jolly time playing Heart and Soul, the charlie brown song, and various christmas carols (with keyboard-provided backbeats). We even got him to try to sing in English, which was really funny.

I'm enjoying speaking Hassaniya again after feeling lame and touristy in Senegal, since I know exactly three words of Wolof. My french is fine for getting around, but I can't yell at obnoxious kids, make jokes, or argue very well, so I miss my Moors. Or at least my ability to communicate with them. Crazily enough, coming back to Mauritania is rather like coming home...

(p.s. - eid mabaruk means happy holiday)