Anna's Kuuti

Jaime, I thought you would like to see your new sibling.
Does he look familiar?

The girl on the floor is the one who did my hennae.... she was quite an artist. My feet are done too! I kind of like the foot one... maybe it is a future tattoo?!

I got attacked.... with hennae

So I have made it through training! Today, in fact, marks day number 63 here in Mauritania. On day 50 we celebrated and wore American baseball caps (I supported my Cubs of course). Day 100 I might wear pants! Now I am back in Rosso for a final week of admin meetings and then I move to Jider! I think the biggest change that I have undergone so far is learning how to do one thing at a time and living each day as it comes. I have always lived my life so chocked full of errands, work, school, friends, go go go. The other day I was going to sew my skirt while I read my book, and I had a novel idea... why not sew my skirt and then read my book. It was a wonderfully relaxing hour. Then I got bored. But I have definately become more patient and learned how to not think of what I have to do tomorrow, and instead lived in the moment.

Language class is over. We took an entire school year worth of hours in 8 weeks. I can't believe it's over because I don't feel that proficient yet, but in due time. Hassaniya is crazy. There is a verb for "to travel by car in the afternoon" and a separate one for morning and night. And the beauty of it is that each one is conjugated differently. We also asked our teacher to teach us some swear words so we can ward off the annoying kids asking for "un cadeaux." It was funny because most of the swears were not mean at all. The first few meant "you are bad," "get out," and then the last one was "God will kill your father with fire!"

We were talking about how there is not much wildlife in Mauritania and we think it is because nothing survives in the desert. This only means that those that do survive in the desert are persistent little pests. Chelsea, poor girl, had fleas in her room which lasted for about 3 weeks. The fleas would eat her alive at night, and then burrow in her clothes and jump onto the livestock so every goat, donkey, dog, cat, chicken, and cow running freely around boumbry became infected and it became a little epidemic on Chelsea's side of town. So she has been sleeping in my room for the past few weeks. We were too hot to sleep two in a mosquito net, and since mosquitos do not exist in Boumbry, we decided to sleep on the floor to get a breeze. Then we heard a story about another volunteer who slept out of her tent and had a cockroach crawl into her ear. She had to go to Nouakchott and get it flooded out. I have lots of them in my room, especially on nights where there is no moon. And they went crazy the night we had a lunar eclipse. So we had to chose between sweating all night or chancing with cockroaches. We chose the roaches, and developed a pretty solid system. She slept with the flashlight, and me with the weapon of choice, my flip flop (the one not eaten by the sand dune.)

Roach duty wasn't too bad since we didn't sleep much anyways because we also were both lucky enough to get Giardia, which is quite possibly the most unattractive and unpleasant little bacterial disease you can get. We got it because people do not wash their hands before eating because they don't want to wash off their hennae. You can look it up if you want but I will just leave it at we were running to the bathroom all night and  all day for about a week; along with putting up with abdominal pains so bad I can only equate them to what I would think labor pains would feel like. The worst of it happened the day that there was no water in Boumbry. My pot of water that was in the bathroom that we use to wash our hands was empty, our water filters were empty and we both had to go really bad. I asked my family where the water was and they shrugged it off and said "it doesn't exist today, maybe tomorrow, inshallah" We had to use neutragena facial scrubs and I ate a packet of gatorade powder hoping that it would at least keep in some of the water I already had in my body. Peace Corps finally brought us water at like 5pm and we were getting a little delerious. Its amazing how important water is.... so besides the starving kids in Africa, everyone finish every last drop of that glass of water because there are thirsty volunteers!

The next day I went to wash my face and noticed that the acne soap I had bought in town was actually face whitening soap! It is a huge trend here for Moor woman to use face whitening cream, and cover their hands and feet with mittens and socks on 100+ days to try to stay fair. The guy in the store kind of laughed at me but I thought it was my Hassaniya, maybe my Hassaniya was actually perfect and he just thought I was a Mauritanian whose face whitening was working well! The cream is actually a problem that the government wants us to teach women about because it destroys the melanin of skin pigment and lets the free radicals get to deeper layers of tissue; and thus the prevelance of skin cancer is on the rise here. It is hard to talk to women about it because, just like in America, they will likely shrug off health issues in favor of beauty. Just like if you tell a women who works in a tanning bed in America, they will likely respond "that's nice can we talk in 20 minutes." Never the less I will try to work on it, if not for anything else but that the white faces and dark eye and lip makeup freaks me out.

I ate lunch with a man who introduced me to his wife, then a few weeks later I had lunch with that family again and he introduced me to another wife. Polygamy is still common for some Moors. He also joked about the 10 year old girl serving us tea being his next wife. I laughed uncomfortably realizing he could be serious. 

I can appreciate most cultural differences, but I draw the line with the animal cruelty that goes on here. Kids are relentless. They have nothing better to do with their days but run around and jump off dunes, drop kicking dogs. I also watched a baby cow get killed the other day and I all thought about was poor cute little Noooormaaaan (right Anna). We really went off when we saw a group of girls swinging a string with a dead kitten attached to the bottom. They were just playing with it like a yoyo or something. We did not know how to express our anger in Hassaniya so we screamed at them in English and when they were really confused they held it out like they would give it to us so we could have a turn. We just said in broken Hassaniya "descend the cat child" because that is all we could muster, and didn't know how to say put down the cat. They think it is so weird when we call the dog over and pet it. Speaking of pets, Anna the Hassaniya word for the giant 3 foot lizard that we have here is "kuuti" but is pronounced kutchie. So you should name your new pet that.

Kevin- I showed some girls my pics from home and they all think you are zeyn hatta (very cute) and want to know when you are coming. So for anyone keeping track I think I may have pimped out both of my siblings now; I plead the fifth and blame the language  barrier. But in seriousness I want to know when you are coming too.

Our last night in Boumbry we had a dance party in the moonlight to music one of the girls had on her cell phone. Some of it was Hassaniya rap music, which wasn't too bad, and I have never seen such large women get down. We showed them some of our silly little American classics, like the cabbage patch, running man, shopping cart, macarena, etc. The women were making fun of us for doing "faire du sport" every day, and they asked us to race them. So we did. We raced Mauritanian women in the dark on the sand. They even took their mulaafas off and ran in tank tops!!! They were falling all over the place and so out of breath but they were having a blast. Then my sister stole all their mulaafas and through them behind a dune. It was really funny. I think I want to try to do a fitness club for women in my town and do small walks or dance parties to get them moving. 

The last day we were invited to Chelsea's tent for tea, where the women cornered us and attacked us with Hennae, like the picture of my sister. No Ian, you don't go to a tatoo parlor.. haha.. Hennae is die made from crushed up leaves of a plant and mixed with water. They took a few hours to apply the finely detailed mixture to our hands and feet. Then when it dries a little they put tea on it, wrap it in tissue, and then wrap it in plastic bags to sweat in the die. then they scrub it off and it leaves an orange design on your skin. Tanya has some good pics I will post later. I actually like it, but you have to sit still with bags on your hands and feet for 4 hours! I had drank an entire liter of water before going over and this was  a difficult feat to sit for that long in the heat of the day. It is extra hot now because it is "rainy season." Which means it has rained 2 times at night and the rest of the time there is just heavy humidity in the air. They also put it on your nails, but I already had pink on my toenails so now my feet look like disco barbie meets Mauritania. We also got bedazzled in gaudy rings and bracelets, one women even gave me the shoes off her feet. I got mulaafaed one more time and then we jumped in the peace corps car and left Boumbry for good with a loud cheer! It was really just hard to be trapped there, not able to leave when you have issues like flees, sickness, lack of water, spider bites, etc. Kudos to Tanya and Chelsea, and thanks for keeping me strong too!

We returned to Rosso and got strange looks for being dressed in Mulaafa and having hennae and I said it would be the equivalent of seeing Buddhist Monks walking down the streets of the ghetto in Chicago wearing Fubu jeans; it just doesn't match. I took a shower and used my new loofa from my first package (thanks mom) to scub at least 5 layers of Boumbry off of me. The loofa looks like I've been using it for a year. Hot right? I am so ready to move to Jider. One of the past volunteers built my town a school! So I have some big shoes to fill. There are not many latrines in town and people use the river to defecate; which is a problem because the snails pick it up and then when people go in the water they get schistomeiosis from the snails. Schizto basically calcifies your bodies organs, and it is painful and deadly. I am thinking of making latrines one of my projects too, but that would be far in the future. Until then, if anyone is thinking of being charitable this year, look into Peace Corps Partnership. It is based off of donations and when a volunteer wants to do any project that requires funding, that is where they get the funding. We can make this a group effort! haha. 

Tanya is going to Cancosa, which is pretty far to the East in a more conservative Mulaafa land. She has a bigger site, and apparantly a great market and a big house. Chelsea is going to Wudon, in the North. She has huge mountains of sand dunes to go sand boarding on. So I already have a few weekend trips to go visit them. I was talking to one of the guys in my region and we were sad to not have a ski season this year, so we are going to try to go up to Atar and go sand boarding instead. I have a feeling climbing up the giant hot sand dune with a board may be a lot of work, they should look into chair lifts.

I have to give a shout out to Mike and Carina who are going to South Korea tomorrow to teach English for a year. I am so proud of you and am so excited you get to do this journey together. Mike has a blog and Carina may make one too. I am so glad I got to talk to you guys (and Julisan) the other day! I miss you so much it hurts! Julie too is going to Germany for 2 years to work on her masters in German... I have such interesting friends! 

For those who keep asking what to send me:

I do have a ton of time on my hands, and who would have thought but I kind of like down time to read! I have already finished 3 books and am starting my third so books are always appreciated if you want to send me anything. I would like to read "White Maasai," "Walk Across America,"and Obama's book, and anything else that you love and think I should read. I also would like some body wash (maybe mint hemp... it is really good), games of any sort that I can play outside, a football, plain solid color tees (I have too many long sleeve ones), treats.

News links.

Here is another link I pulled off of the RIM parent's shared email. Just a little more information about the US's response to the coup, and the Americans living in Mauritania. It is brief.

US Calls for Reversal of Mauritania Coup http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-08-06-voa62.cfm

Coup d'tate today in Mauritania.

In case anyone heard on the news about the President of Mauritania being seized this morning and might be worried, I am posting a link to a news story. Apparently there is some political unrest there. I did talk to Jaime this morning. She said everyone is fine. The Peace Coprs is "business as usual" right now. The volunteers are all together in Rosso. The main trouble is in Nouakchott.
I asked her to blog today, but since so many people are in Rosso now she said she cannot promise because the computer lines get so very slow.

So here is the link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7544834.stm