I like to be here when I can

Well, I'm finally here. Back in the States, that is... at the moment I'm crashing on Ben's couch in Portland, but I'm trying to figure out a plan to go visit people really soon. It doesn't help much that I'm phoneless and carless... I think I'll try to head south to Salem, Corvallis, Eugene, etc. possibly next week. Let me know if you would like to be visited, or perhaps could pick me up somewhere! Otherwise I'll be bussing it. I'll try to give people a call with Ben's phone one of these days pretty soon. Can't wait to see you all!

Hello from Civilized Parts!

Sorry it´s been so long. I´ve finished up my work in Mauritania since I last wrote, and have been traveling ever since. I have actually been writing, though... just on a different blog, which Lou set up for our travels. So if you´d like to read that for an update on what I´ve been doing, here´s the address: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/locabe/adventuroustrio/tpod.html

I should be home in a couple of weeks - see you all soon!

Why Can't I Put A Title On This Post?


This will be my last blog from Mauritania... I'm leaving in two days!! Casey and Lou are here and we'll be taking off for Morocco in the wee hours of the morning on the 13th. From there it's off to Europe for a bit of fun, and hopefully I'll be home in early August, though my plans are still flexible.

Leaving site was pretty hard and involved a lot of crying, but I'm feeling pretty resigned to leaving at the moment (well, ok, even a bit excited, I'll admit it :). I'm going to miss people here and even the lifestyle I've gotten used to. But it will be so nice to see everybody at home.

And now I must go do stuff... I left Casey and Lou all alone at the hotel, so I really ought to get back to them. I'll write more the next time I come across a computer.

See you all soon!

No, I'm not dead

Hi! Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything.

My last term of school was pretty busy. Because it's the hot season, our school schedule was changed to just mornings, six days a week. I continued to work in the afternoons anyway - it was a great chance to get a lot of kids familiarized with the computers. This was possible because we finally got a few working computers in the school library. I'd been struggling for two years with a couple of awful machines, so it was a huge relief to have something that worked for a change! I also continued with GMC, which wasn't nearly so painful this year. So the term's been quite full, and that combined with a broken computer in Aleg has made it pretty hard for me to find time on the internet!

I'm leaving Mauritania in under a month now! It's very exciting, though I will miss people I've gotten to know here. Everybody at my site wants me to stay for a third year - it's nice to feel loved. :) I'm looking forward to seeing everybody at home, probably sometime in August. Until then I'll be traveling around, hopefully. Casey's coming to visit me in Mauritania on the 5th of July, and Lou will arrive on the 9th. I can't wait to see them! We'll be going to Morocco, Spain, and France together.

Well, I should go eat some lunch, so I'll post again soon.... Don't even know if anybody will read this, since you probably all think I've stopped posting for good!

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)

The brief version

It occurs to me that it's been long and long since I wrote anything on this blog; yet, I am sick of sitting in front of this oh-so-slow computer, so I shall summarize:

- Ramadan was long, boring, hungry, and boring. Did I mention boring? School did not start.
- Eid il Fitr was good fun and full of sheep meat.
- School finally started two weeks ago and classes are good.
- There is a shower in Aleg, when the water's not gone.
- 8 months and 3 days to go.
- Company: excellent
- Mood: happy
- Weather: cooling
- Bugs: diminishing
- Elections: fun

I will elaborate on this last in a couple weeks, perhaps, for Mauritanian elections are quite interesting. But for now, bye!

Joy of Cooking

Who knew that quality of life could be so vastly improved by such a simple purchase? I got an electric toaster oven when I was in Nouakchott for the Girls’ Conference, and it has opened up whole new worlds of fun and happiness. The inaugural dinner was calzone followed by brownies; subsequent days saw quiche, coffee cake, and other delicacies. The possibilities are endless. I used to look through cookbooks with a certain sense of discouragement, knowing I could never hope to make anything that couldn’t be cooked in a saucepan. Now I read through my beloved Joy of Cooking (incidentally, a fabulous book – I can read it for hours) with a certain glee. I’ll probably spend most of my time at site from now on scheming about what I’ll bake when I come into Aleg for the weekend.

This opens up a whole new world of care package opportunities (wink wink, nudge nudge). Baking cocoa or unsweetened chocolate squares, brown sugar, brownie or muffin mix, chocolate or other chips, pecans, anything that can go in a casserole, pre-cooked bacon, parmesan or cheese powder.... yes, it all sounds very tasty, doesn’t it? I think so.

In other news, school supposedly starts tomorrow, so I'm headed back to Maal this afternoon. The first month will be pretty laid back because of Ramadan, when no one wants to do anything (including me). I'm fasting again this year (being hungry gives me something to do!) and therefore not inclined to work a whole lot. The sooner school starts, though, the sooner it's over... and when it's over, I'm done!

Forgetting those things which are behind

Those of you who are concerned about my mental health will be glad to know that my return to Maal was a great success on that front. Despite my fretting I found I was actually quite glad to be back. I spent a pleasant two weeks doing nothing much... hanging out with my family and a few friends, reading some books, taking long walks in the desert which has temporarily turned green. I was happy to be there and felt at peace - two things that haven't been the case very often in the past. Riding to Kaedi today I found myself feeling conspicuously serene; I only hope it will last when I'm thrown back into the pressures of doing my job and dealing with lots of people. I kind of think it will...inshallah.

I'm in Kaedi to see our new volunteers swear in, then next week I'm taking three girls from Aleg to Nouakchott for a week-long GMC conference. It's going to be pretty crazy, I think, so if anybody's in a praying mood they can pray that my serenity will be preserved - and that I can interact with these girls patiently all week. Female high-school-age Mauritanians are perhaps my least favorite segment of the population, and I think much patience will be needed.

"One thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press forward toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ."

Bitter and cynical

Yep, that would be yours truly... at least according to one of the trainees that's going to be posted in Aleg. To think just a year ago I was obnoxiously optimistic! It has a lot to do with the mean and nasty Peace Corps not giving me a sitemate. Arg. I think that's the path we've all taken, though. Today all of my training group met in Kaedi for MTR (one of Peace Corps' - PC's - astounding collection of acronyms... this one stands for Mid-term Reconnect). We've passed the one year mark and have mostly become disillusioned with our mission here. Are we really doing any good? Some signs point to no. But it's kinda fun anyway - except when it's not.

And with that extremely ambivilent first paragraph, I'd like to add that things aren't actually too bad here right now. My new regionmates are really cool, so I'll be spending a lot of time in Aleg. We got three new girls - Erin does agroforestry, Victoria will be teaching, and Heather is a business volunteer. They'll be working with the GMC in Aleg as well, and hopefully will come out to Maal occasionally to visit and give me a hand! I'll be working hard this next year, but hopefully that'll just make it pass more quickly. Next thing I know I'll be home! It's really only 11 months to go, since I'll be coming home in July. Our earliest COS date is July 12, and I'm planning to be gone soon thereafter. Hopefully in the next year I'll find something that really makes me glad I'm here. I'm know the experience itself is worth it, but I'd like to feel like I'm doing some good as well. After all, you join PC hoping to save the world - it's a letdown to find out you'll be doing nothing of the sort. More to follow one of these days on the social issues in Mauritania that are a hinderance to development, if anybody's interested....if anybody even reads this thing! See ya :)

The Rough Guide to Beth's Life

Announcement: Vacation pictures posted! Link to your left.

It's come to my attention that many of you probably don't know the details of where I live, what I do, etc. So here's a brief rundown (with pictures) of the basics:

Important people:

My host dad Abdat................... My host mom Khadijetou.......... My sister Baha




My brother Mohamed.....My friends Meshry and Yahya (w/ turkey) .....My sitemate Liz



My stage buddies Alayna and Jeremy........My regionmates Julian and Nina




The Job:

I have two main functions: Firstly I teach English to a little over 100 boys and girls at our local middle/high school. I'm the only English teacher in town and I teach 5 grades. Here are some of my favorite students, my 2nd year boys. They're pretty smart, unlike most of the kids.



My second job (and the one I like least) is to run the Girls' Mentoring Center. I have 14 girls and we meet three times weekly to work on computers, study, and do activities. Here are the girls:




The Town:

Maal has a population of about 3000 people, and it's 75 k without a road from the nearest city. There's no electricity or cell phone reception (so far), and we get our waters from wells or public spigots. (below, a public pump)



The town is surrounded by small sand dunes, and in the rainy season, we have a large lake.



I can't find a picture of my house, for some reason, but this other house is close, except that mine has 2 rooms, not one (posing with the house are Meshry and some random kids). All my stuff's at my house, so that's where I go to relax, but I eat and sleep with my host family.



Ok, that's all for now. If there's anything specific anybody wants to see/hear about, let me know!

Hey it's good (?) to be back home (?) again....

Hm. Well, in any case, I'm back in Mauritania, like it or not. It is nice to see some of my friends, though, and I'm planning to keep nice and busy over the rest of the summer, so I won't have too much time to think about my lonely fate. :)

My trip was just fabulous. Highlights include:

- Climbing a mountain
- Being attacked by monkeys
- Cheese, salsa, and chocolate chip cookies (not all at the same time)
- Flying
- Couches
- Hours of trail riding
- Trees, trees, and more trees - and all of them green!
- Seeing Notre Dame
- Hundreds of beautiful scarves
- Church
- Guiness in a London pub
- Rain and cold weather

I had such a lovely time with Mom and Dad. Kabul was a step up for me, so I really felt like I was vacationing. I met lots of great people, and I think I might even go back there when I'm done and teach English for a while. Our little trip to the mountains of Pakistan was lovely, too. It was so nice up there - like Oregon at 9000 feet! It was good to spend at least a few days somewhere that wasn't hot all the time. I was definitely sad when my three weeks were over, but I felt like we had a good amount of time together. Just one more year to go!

Hello from Sunny Afghanistan!

People think I'm crazy because I'm enjoying Afghanistan quite a bit. It's probably due mostly to the fact that I'm staying with my parents in a real house, eating real food, and having no responsibilities. But it's also because the scenery is quite thrilling when compared with my dear desert home. There are mountains all around, lots of trees (relatively) in the city, and there's actual grass in the yards!!

Today we went on a tour of the city - we saw a fort that was built in the 5th century, a hilltop monument with tombs and catacombs beneath, and a bookstore that sold cheap English textbooks (guess who suggested that last stop)! On Friday I'm going with Dad and some other people to walk on an old wall that splits one of the mountains in half. I love that many of the houses in Kabul are on the mountains themselves - the slopes are all rock, and the houses perch rather precariously on the steep sides.

Other recent occasions for happiness include swimming in a real pool (at the UN), attending church, and eating really, really good home-made pizza. The people here are so nice (the people at Mom and Dad's organization, that is), and the natives seem to be much less obnoxious than I'm used to! The chief joy, I think, is the privacy. There just isn't any, at all, in Mauritania - unless I go to Nouakchott and lock myself in a hotel room and watch Arabic satellite TV for a couple of days. And that's not much fun. Here nobody expects me to make an effort to communicate! That's not a good thing in the long run, I'm sure, but it's nice to relax and not have to deal with too many people for a little while. Oh, and I finally got my luggage, which was lost for a week. Hooray for small blessings!

I'm on my way

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm off! Three cheers! By Friday I shall (inshallah) be with my dearest Mummy and Daddy in Packistan. If there's anyone who actually reads this silly blog, keep your eyes peeled for exciting updates from lands to the east! Well, I suppose I can't promise exciting, exactly. But stay tuned. :)

Random thought: Why don't Christians say something like inshallah? (It means "if God wills") After all, in James it says: "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" (James 4:13-15) Anyway, I am now addicted to saying it often, and I like it.

Produit

Mauritanians like to dress up fancy. Women put on make up in two stages: produit and maquillage. The latter is your traditional foundation (several shades too light), eyeshadow (in scary colors), lipstick (dark red or even black), etc. The former is a scary phenomenon that I had hoped was confined to Mauritania - till today. But more of that later...

"Produit" (said "prahdu-ee", for you non-french-pronouncers) refers to a variety of skin creams that are supposed to lighten skin. They usually come in bottles featuring photos of very blond, very white, very happy ladies. Women here use them copiously. This is frightening on two levels: first because all of these products actually contain bleach - or even acid, I've heard - and are really bad for skin (you see some scary looking skin damage from overuse); secondly just in principle. Why do all these beautiful dark-skinned women want to be white?

The reason is fairly obvious to anybody living here - black skin is "bad" (as people will tell you without a second thought), and most of the darker people here are descended from former slaves. The whiter Arabic sorts, on the other hand, have always been the people in charge. Even now all the rich and influential people are most likely to be white moors. So I suppose the desire to have lighter skin is explicable, if really sad.

I've come to accept that these sorts of attitudes are normal in Mauritania. After all, we're kind of the trailer park of the world, here. We're weird, we're a bit "bedui" ("sauvage" in French, "hicks" in English), and no one here is politically correct. But I was shocked today to see an advertisement for the same sort of thing on Arabic satellite TV. It wasn't quite as blatent (there was lots of stuff about "clarifying" and "purifying" skin) but it's the same thing. The commercial began with a really pretty, dark girl announcing, "I realized that the only thing between me and my dream job was my skin." She then applies Fair and Lovely, and magically becomes several shades lighter, after which she becomes a TV reporter and gets asked out by a cute guy. I'm really amazed that they can get away with that sort of thing in first world countries. It's scary.

In other Arabic commercial news, the prize for the worst product name and promotional campaign goes to: POCARI SWEAT ION REPLACEMENT DRINK, which comes in an ugly blue can and should be used when water just isn't enough.

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 :)

OCF Mauritania

I’ve just spent a very fun week hanging out with ladies and learning how to tie-dye. The volunteer who lived in Maal before I came, a girl named Jen, came back to do a training for the local women’s cooperatives. There were classes on sewing, tie-dying, and boutique management, and she brought in three great Mauritanian ladies from Nouakchott to teach them. I spent most of my time hanging out in the tie-dye class, though I didn’t actually get to do any of it myself. It’s much easier than I imagined, and I’m now inspired to do lots when I get home. They learned everything from wax stamping to tying and sewing patterns with string – lots of fun! The prettiest patterns are from a technique they call salad, where you scrunch the fabric up on a smooth surface and then toss spoonfuls of different colors over it. I did my part to support the cooperatives by purchasing a few items...

Life’s been pretty busy since school got out, surprisingly. I’ve been running all over the place (Nouakchott, Aleg, and I’m headed for Kaedi tomorrow), and with all the kids back in Maal for the summer I have a few more people to hang out with. Lots of them, including my friend Meshry, who speaks English very well, go to school in the cities. It’s fun to have them around.

I’m also busy packing and cleaning and squaring everything away before I take off for Afghanistan on the 12th! I’m terribly excited! I’m getting some new clothes (since everything I have is pretty much worn through and stained beyond recognition) and getting fancy henna done, since that’s the Mauritanian thing to do on special occasions. It’s a long, long, long, boring process that involves someone putting tape on your hands and feet for hours, then henna paste, then they wrap you up in plastic bags and leave you to marinate for a couple hours more. But when it’s done it looks really cool! I hope lots of people come to hang out and keep me company, ‘cause I won’t be able to read. I’m going to have some tagine made (that’s a meat and sauce affair that you eat with bread) to attract some entertainment. And then the next day I take off for Aleg, then Nouakchott, then Paris, London, and Islamabad! Perfectly thrilling. :)

Well, that’s all the new news at the moment. Happy Summer to everybody!

Quick note

Mauritanian mail is slow and unreliable + I've run out of American stamps = Could someone send me a few (if you'd like to be sure of getting any more letters)?

Thanks!

Oh, and .... I've finally gotten my passport back with two exotic visas inside! My plane leaves July 12th. Hooray!

Perhaps I spoke too soon...

Most of you have heard me say (probably on several occasions) that I never wanted to be a teacher. Accordingly, I didn't go into this whole English teaching thing expecting to enjoy it much. So here I am at the end of my first year. The finals are graded, the reportcards are filled out, and I'm at least semi-free for the summer. The verdict? Actually, I think I like teaching quite a bit. I feel fairly at home in front of a classroom of kids whose language I can't even speak very well. Most of them are lazy and slow to pick up everything, but those who actually want to learn are great, and I have a good time working with them.

The two things that frustrate me are the language barrier (I can tell them what to do and explain basic concepts, but lecturing them on their lack of work ethic is a bit beyond my powers) and the lack of logic or critical thinking skills that's endemic in the Mauritanian school system. The focus here is entirely on memorization, and kids - with a few exceptions - seem entirely unable to infer anything, understand complex concepts, or produce original work. A related problem is that there's no diversity of experience here. Even if I ask open-ended questions, their responses are likely to be identical. After all, most of them were born and raised in Maal, and all of them eat bread for breakfast, rice for lunch, and couscous for dinner, pray five times a day, live in a rectangular house made of sand bricks, drink tea at every opportunity, know at least 20 people named Mohamed, and wear either a mulafa (female) or a boubou (male). With their limited vocabulary it's difficult to get beyond the basics, and accordingly I know every answer before it's given. Exercises are pretty boring, too, since they reuse approximately 15 words:

school
go
rice
sleep
tea
fish
study
pen
drink
copybook
house
eat
play
meat
water
wake up
name

The advanced kids know a few more, like:

pray
goat
mosque
shirt
vegetables
walk
car
football
father
mother
etc.

Anyway... I can only conclude that if I'm enjoying teaching under those conditions, I'd like it a whole lot if I were teaching kids who spoke English and had at least a smidgeon of creativity.

Despite the annoyances, I'm fairly satisfied with this year. At least some of the kids learned a little English - and now that I know their levels and a few good tricks, I'm sure next year will be better. I'm really looking forward to starting fresh and concentrating on developing their vocabulary and speech. Most of them will never really know any English, but a few have the potential to actually learn something, which would improve their chances of getting a good job in Nouakchott or even in Europe or America. That would be pretty cool.

Musings

Catching up last week on my dear friend Anna’s blog, I ran across this quote: “It never made sense to me why sunsets are considered the acme of romantic scenery.” For some reason this caught my attention, and on the way home from Aleg that evening, teeth jangling in my head and hot wind whipping though my head scarf, I watched a fairly standard sunset and ruminated on this question.

So what is “romantic”, anyway? My first inclination is to dismiss sunsets as just another run-of-mill trapping of harliquinesque mushiness. Why? Because, like roses, chocolates, and manly yet tender guys with extremely white teeth, they’re pretty in a very obvious sort of way, and entirely lacking in subtlety. Like other ingredients of modern romance, I’m afraid sunsets strike me as rather bourgeoisie.

To put it a bit more kindly, sunsets have a kind of universal appeal. I think one sort of romance comes from a moment of shared beauty. These moments aren’t always easy to find: the bit of Mozart that thrills my soul may very well put my potential partner in romance to sleep, and the philosophic work of genius that inspires him may look to me like so much jibber-jabber. Even the landscape isn’t universal- perhaps one of us longs for the sight of water while the other feels more keenly the beauty of an empty desert. But everybody likes a sunset, right? Nobody’s going to deny that the shining orange-gold clouds and the pink sky are pretty nifty. Sunsets go nicely with the ocean, the desert, and everything in between, are easily set to any sort of music you like, and are spectacular whether you’re a materialist or a mystic. Maybe that’s why they’ve come into use as a standard romantic set piece.

Of course, the word romantic has another, very different meaning – the Romantic period in literature and art. Are sunsets Romantic? The Romantics were certainly big on beauty in nature and the sublime, and sunsets are definitely both. However, the romantics were a bit on the darker side. They praised beauty “like the night,” were “half in love with easeful death,” and tended more towards deep chasms, ruins, forest shadows, and “faerie-lands forlorn.” The spirit they saw in nature was a rather melancholy one. To be a Romantic is halfway Gothic. Sunsets don’t really fit the picture. There’s nothing subtle and gloomy about that blaze of light in some of nature’s most vivid colors. Though sunsets inspire thoughts of the spiritual, it’s not the haunted, achingly mystic spirit the Romantics saw – it’s a glory and a transcendence. Romantics might find it a bit gaudy.

I think a third definition of “romantic” is in order – not conventional sappiness nor melancholy nature-worship, but a deeper appreciation of the beauty of God’s handiwork combined with a love of the great truths it hints at. Though I’ve called them gaudy, bourgeoisie, and obvious, don’t get the idea I’m anti-sunset. I love watching the sunset every evening; the golden clouds always put me in mind of heaven, which is a good way to end the day. After all, “the heavens are telling the glory of God.”

So, in final summary: Are sunrises...

a. romantic? Yes, but it’s not their fault.
b. Romantic? No, maybe more Baroque
c. Romantic by Beth’s personal definition? Indeed, the very essence.

News from Remote Areas

Aleg is in an uproar! The president of Mauritania is visiting tomorrow, and this place is crawling. There are flags the entire length of the city on the gidron, pennants hanging from buildings, and snazzy cars (at least by Mauritanian standards) arriving by the dozens. It's kind of fun.

I'm in town for a joint birthday party for Julien, one of the Aleg volunteers, and our refugees from Tchad, Greger and Kate. All three have birthdays this month and we're celebrating with fish and mashed potatoes. The new volunteers are really great (for example, Kate's music pick for the evening is Revolver) and they're going to be fun region mates next year after Julien and Nina finish up.

The title of this post comes from my friend Cheikh Ahmed, who says that Maal is no fun because it is a "remote area." He has such an amusing English vocabulary.