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!
Monday, July 24, 2006
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
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.
"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.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
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 :)
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 :)
Friday, June 30, 2006
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!
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!
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
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!
Thanks!
Oh, and .... I've finally gotten my passport back with two exotic visas inside! My plane leaves July 12th. Hooray!
Monday, June 19, 2006
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.
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.
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