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.