Saturday, August 11, 2007

My assignment

August 9. So I got my site assignment and I love it. I will be in Mbagne, about an hour and a half from Kaedi. Still on the river, about 3000 people, much less trash and random animals in the street. It's really pretty and has lots of trees. I use the words pretty and a lot rather loosely though.... still third world. I have my own house, it was saved by the previous volunteer for me. It has two bedrooms, living room etc. I can sleep on the roof, and it has a really high fence. It's the cheapest rent yet at 24 dollars a month. I am really excited now, and actually looking forward to going back to language class.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Life in Mauritania

July 26, 2007

Ok, so here goes my description of Mauritania. and yes rather busy, still love you. Houses are adobe like with tin roofs, windows are made of metal. We have one paved road here, it’s about a mile long. The trash is definitely a problem as it’s everywhere. Lots of donkeys, goats, horses, and cows around. I think it’s really funny, goats just crack me up. Not really funny though because I eat them. It’s bizarre to see how my definition of good food has changed. We eat a lot of rice, starch in general actually. For breakfast I have bread and tea. For lunch it’s rice, veggies, and fish, but mostly rice. Dinner varies a lot like last night it was just saucy rice, but last week we had half a chicken. It was so good I almost cried.... we eat off one big plate with our hands. It’s fun and I feel like a kid again. It’s really quite easy to see malnourishment here. Although a lot of women are obese, they are also malnourished. I take prenatal vitamins...... Pulaar is really, really hard. I keep trying to explain why it’s so hard for me but there are so many reasons. It’s not a written language so the alphabet is just made up. It’s not like any other language, so you can’t say oh yeah I’ve done something similar to this before.... and my all time favorite part is that they are big on doubling up letters so you can say cooce or coce, one meaning cheap and one meaning vagina. This happens a lot. No, that wasn’t actually Pulaar but you get the point. The only way I think will learn Pulaar is because I really like haalpulaars, pulaar speakers. They are the south of Mauritania which has suffered a lot from slavery and racial hatred the rest of Mauritania. They are also much more liberal than the rest of the country. And our clothes are much cooler..... The rainy season is struggling to arrive; it’s about three weeks late. I get my site placement this weekend, keep your fingers crossed for Rosso....
love,Lauri