The Hassles of Moving in Mauritania

When I first came to Kiffa, I found a house some two miles away from the center market and the health dispensaire. The house was large, sandy brown in color, with a bedroom, a salon, a kitchen and bathroom, and a concrete structure – a one-room “house” with two walls and no ceiling – capable of supporting a tent during the hot season. The compound was large, with high walls, a gate, and several trees – a rarity in these parts. The house had electricity and while no running water, it had a large water basin for storage. In truth, aside from the distance, everything about the house was almost perfect. Living here alone, within the confines of the compound walls, I found oftentimes than not, as awkwardly trite it may sound, serenity.

A better offer came, though, a few weeks before I left for Christmas in Nouakchott. The French equivalent of the Peace Corps had three volunteers stationed in Kiffa when I first moved here. The frenchies, as we like to call them, live in a white cement house located practically in the main Kiffa market. The house – with four bedrooms, a large salon, a kitchen, an indoor bathroom and a rooftop – is not only massive and fantastically situated but is also entirely paid for by the French government. This is very much unlike the Peace Corps where we volunteers have to pay for housing ourselves, from our very meager salaries.

Then, sometime in November one of the frenchies, tired of a humdrum and oftentimes less-than-enjoyable existence in this dry, dusty place, decided to terminate her two-year contract early. She left the country teary eyed, sad yet glad and with memories both fond and not so fond…but more importantly, she left behind an unoccupied room…Can you see where this is going?

Josef, a frenchie who started his two year service in July 2006, offered me the room – at a price almost half of what I paid for my house – during a weekend soiree chez Maggie in December. I immediately said yes, obviously. The following week I explained to my landlord, in my very limited and poor Hassaniya, I would be moving come January. He seemed to understand, and I was glad.

In truth, though, I don’t think he understood me that first time. After returning from vacation, it took me three weeks, as well as the help of several Assabe volunteers, my Peace Corps director, the Kiffa police, and the Kiffa Justice department to convince him that I was moving, that I could do so according to the lease that we both signed, that I would not pay him extra to move out, and that he would have to reimburse me for two month’s worth of rent that I had paid in advance.

While the experience was an ordeal, I believe no major party was entirely at fault. In the end, I feel that my landlord – an elderly white Moor man who cannot read or write and is capable of conversing only in Hassaniya – signed the contract, which is written in French, without fully understanding its contents. He held out with me as long as he did because he did not want to be cheated out of his money. This said, I must point out that the individuals who he involved during the process to speak on his behalf were very slick and cleaver men, who tried their best to weasel from me as much money as possible. One particular white Moor went as far as to say that I, being a Peace Corps volunteer here to serve the poor and old, should fulfill my duty and give my landlord, who is both poor and old, 50 000 UM. That comment, in particular, made me uncharacteristically livid.

As they say, however, All’s well that ends well. My landlord reimbursed me. I live in a good house with good people. And I now have a rooftop where I can finally start my very own nightclub. Good times lie ahead mes amis, good times indeed.

Next time on Adventures in Puddles: “Sidi Mohamed Has Two Mommy’s” – a riveting interview with famed children’s book author R.N. on the latest addition to his “It’s Getting Hot In Here” series.

A Timeline

In these beginnings of the year two thousand and seven, I am forced to admit that I have been obscenely careless in updating my journal on any regular basis. In an effort to keep true to my resolution to write something every week, I start with a timeline, to outline the major events that have shaped my Peace Corps experience thus far.

Those final days of June 2006 – [Orientation] I arrive in Philadelphia for my Peace Corps orientation. The short days are filled with various icebreaker and “how-to-be-culturally-sensitive” games and activities. I ask myself, seriously, for the first time – What in the world am I getting myself into? – when the clean-cut man dressed in a dark suit shakes my hand and thanks me for my service, as if I have just signed up to serve in the Army. The final day we are given vaccinations and shipped off from the JFK airport to Casablanca, and from there, to Mauritania. The orientation began with 58 of us but ended with 57, as one poor Jonathan was sent back home due to medical and administrative reasons.

The beginnings of July 2006 – [Stage] After being greeted in Nouakchott by a handful of current volunteers and staff, we spend the first day in Mauritania at the Peace Corps headquarters. The following day we crowed into various vehicles and drive four hours to Kaédi. It is here that we begin Stage, three months of language and technical instructions. After the first week, everyone is placed to live with a family for the duration of the training. I am sent to Bababe, a small town about an hour north of Kaédi. I live here for three months, butchering French by day – butchering as one butchers meat with a dull knife, messily – and acclimating to the Mauritanian way of life by night. I return to Kaédi every two weeks for technical sessions and much need recuperation.

September 4^th, 2006 – [It’s Official] After three tumultuous months, I’m officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Boohyeah!

September 6^th, 2006 – [Kiffa] I leave Kaédi for Kiffa, my new home away from home for two years. My first few days at site are spent looking for housing and becoming accustomed to the layout of the city. I find a house located some two miles from the center of town and the health dispensaire, to which I am effectuated. With few other options available, I take it. The landlord is nice, but as I would only later realize, very much illiterate and too much a white Moor.

October 13^th-15^th – [Ashram] Maggie and I visit Whitney, our friend and the sole volunteer assigned to Ashram, a small desert town on the Route de l’Espoir, found somewhere between Aleg and Kiffa – on the cusp of prettiness.

We travel down in the back of a van, cramped in with 13 other people, a few sacks of baggage and a handful of gas cylinders. Arranged overhead on the roof is the remainder of the baggage, along with five or six live goats stuffed into rice bags. The back door of the van does not shut, and I fear more than once that we will lose the young passenger sleeping on the edge of the bench directly in front of the door. As the van struggles to climb the few hills along the way, the door is pulled open, and I imagine the young boy sliding off of the bench, through the open door and tumbling down the road back to the bottom of the hill. Worry not: he survives the trip. The moon casts a ghostly shadow onto the desert, and each individual we pass on the road, their clothes trembling in the night wind, seem like phantoms from some past ancient place.

Maggie and I arrive in the night and find our way to Whitney’s compound.

White Moors populate Ashram, almost exclusively, and I find it difficult to avoid them. Luckily, we spend the following day with a Senegalese family, the only black Africans in all of Ashram. We talk for hours with the mother and daughter – who, I later discovered through Whitney, has a fondness for paint chips –, mostly about how much better life is in America and Senegal than in Mauritania. Maggie and I applaud Whitney, for surviving Ashram and continuing to do so. We both concur; she is much stronger than either of us.

Maggie and I depart the following day, in a cramped car, with two passengers in the front – I sit between the driver, trying to mind his hand as he haphazardly reaches from time to time for the stick shift, and another male passenger. Maggie sits in the back seat, surrounded by three other Mauritanian women passengers. The ride is uncomfortable but lasts for only a few hours, mash-Allah.

November 25^th – [Thanksgiving] We celebrate Thanksgiving at Maggie’s house. All the new volunteers in the Assabe region are there: Clarice, Maggie and I from Kiffa; Donna and Ginger from Kankossa; and Whitney from Ashram. The day is oddly cool and overcast: almost perfect Thanksgiving weather. Each person is assigned to prepare a dish or two. I make chicken and chocolate ice cream for dessert. We cook everything on two gas tops and a toaster oven, amazingly. We invite seven or so Mauritanians to our feast, for a grand total of 14 people. For entertainment, Maggie, Whitney and I belt out les chansons such as Jolene, My Heart Will Go On and the like.

At nighttime, after the Mauritanians leave, we eat ice cream for dinner and afterwards hold a dance party, in the dark, with music barely blasting through half-broken computer speakers. All in all, good times…

December 7^th-9^th – [Kankossa] Maggie and I hitch a ride with a Peace Corps SUV down to Kankossa, a two to three hour roller-coaster drive on an unpaved sandy road filled with dips and swerves of all degrees. It is a thrilling, even enjoyable, drive for the first hour or so. The following two hours, however, consist of partial screams, mumbling to my neighbor “Mommy, I want to get off now…” and motion sickness.

Kankossa is a small town located somewhere just south of Kiffa. The landscape is defined by a dune and even more drastically by a slender lake, stretched and pulled through the middle of town, which becomes a river during the rainy season. The commercial half of the town, situated in between the lake and the dune, is where one can make the acquaintances of Donna, a first-year environmental education volunteer, and Jeremy, a second-year education volunteer. Across the waterway on the agricultural side of Kankossa, is where one can find Ginger, a fellow Master’s International volunteer specializing in agro-forestry.

In comparison to Kiffa, Kankossa is comme la paradis. It truly does amaze me how water can change even the dreariest of landscapes into something of beauty. Rays of sunlight falling through trees, the chirping of birds in the distance, the sound of life on the water . . . I feel as if one can simply lose themselves here, when things become too hard, off in some little corner secluded from foreign sounds and peoples and customs – for a while at least.

Kankossa is not all perfect, however. Jumbled in with the sand are thousands upon thousands of prickly seeds. This in effect makes walking a rather tedious affair. One has to stop every few minutes to scrape the oftentimes-painful pricklies off of the bottom of one’s feet.

Maggie and I spend two days in Kankossa, one night with Donna and the second with Ginger. We take tours, explore, lounge and eat good Mauritanian food, a rarity; overall, we have a pleasurable retreat on the lake.

Pickup trucks leave Kankossa for Kiffa everyday at five o’clock. A traveler has the option of being cramped inside the cab or being herded into the back of the truck with the luggage. Maggie and I choose the truck bed: it’s cheaper and sounds somewhat adventurous. The back is filled, brimming in fact, with luggage. Everything is tied down with rope netting. Maggie and I climb, along with ten or so other people, onto the luggage, which is piled on higher than the actual bed of the truck. Maggie hangs off the left edge of the bed while I take a seat on the very back edge. In fact, I’m not even on the truck. One of the pieces of luggage is a metal railing, too big for the bed, partially hanging off the back, and it’s on this that I sit. If I look down, I can see the ground between my legs. The trip is more adventurous than either Maggie or I could have guessed. I grip the netting, knuckles brownish-white, as the truck swerves and dips with the road. Everyone jumps from their seats several times. Thorny branches from trees on the side of the road scrape our arms, faces and legs as the truck whizzes past them. At one point, the truck gets stuck in the sand. I help, along with every other male on board, to push the truck out. We finally reach Kiffa after nightfall, the sky overhead starry, the city calm and quiet. Maggie and I grab our bags and walk to our houses, bodies scratched, aching and tired.

December 21^st-27^th – [Christmas] Christmas takes place in Nouakchott, at chez Obie, the mansion-like home of the Peace Corps country director. All the volunteers are here with, however, some exceptions. Two first-year volunteers are not able to escape from their village, due to the lack of transportation from their site to Nouakchott, for three days and consequently, and sadly, miss the Christmas party.

The party is a delightful reminder of home. It’s also nice to see old friends again, everyone a little bit older and somewhat wiser. There’s much to eat and drink. Regrettably though, I eat and drink only moderately. Shockingly – no, not really – but more importantly miserably true, I’m sick yet again with a case of diarrhea and nauseas. I ignore my stomach aches for long enough, though, to get my “groove on” for at least a few songs before retiring for the night.

I spend most of Christmas day in Obie’s home theater, gorging myself on leftovers, Arrested Development and classic Christmas movies. I also partake in a white elephant gift exchange and receive a chess set. All in all, it is an excellent Christmas.

The rest of the time is spent exploring Nouakchott, eating at restaurants and watching satellite television – a good life, indeed. I am sick for all but two of the days I am in the capital. I get better just as I leave for Senegal for New Year’s, but good health for me, like an unbeaten Mauritanian donkey, is a rarity.

December 28^th-Janurary 2^nd, 2007 – [New Year’s in St. Louis] After spending a night in Rousseau – a port city located on the Senegal River – we cross the border into Senegal and make our way to St. Louis. The drive is long and tedious, but patience is a virtue.

St. Louis reminds me of New Orleans. The streets are small and lined with bars, restaurants and various arts and crafts boutiques. I arrive in town with fellow volunteers Maggie, Whitney, and Chris and Jen, a married couple from Atar, a dry and dusty place found far north of Kiffa. We check into a hotel in the middle of town and quickly find our way to the fire station – where we spend the afternoon enjoying French-dubbed samurai movies and American music videos on the télé while consuming cheap, cold beer. I admit, it is somewhat strange having firemen on duty serve you alcohol but c’est la vie je suppose – just have to go with the flow.

Shockingly – but no, not really – I become sick, again. This time a large hard bump develops on the side of my neck. At first I only have massive headaches, but eventually the pain becomes so severe that I can’t turn my head. I try to hide my discomfort as much as possible, not wanting others to worry about me or to ruin their vacation, and spend the better part of my time in St. Louis lying down and sleeping.

After the first night, I resettle into Hotel Dior, an outdoors camping-like lodging located on the beach. I spend my days lounging in the sun and my nights sharing a large tent with the other Peace Corps volunteers.

Even though not well, I do enjoy my time in St. Louis, and I hope to come back several times, if possible.

Janurary 5^th, 2007 – [An Early Birthday Party] After St. Louis, all the first-year volunteers return to Nouakchott for in-service training. We sit through various lectures and presentations for two days. They are generally somewhat educational and informative.

I also get the opportunity to show my bump to the Peace Corps medical officer. She asks if she can feel it. I say yes. She says, it’s a bump. I say, I know. She says she doesn’t know what it is. I say, figures, Africa – the Dark Continent. She chuckles, yeah, the Dark Continent. I reply, it’s not funny. She gives me some anti-inflammatory to make the swelling go down, and amazingly, over the course of a few days the pills have a desired effect. I end up leaving Nouakchott just as I came, happy and healthy, mostly.

On my last night in Nouakchott, some friends decide to celebrate my birthday early. After dinner and dessert, we go to Casablanca, a sit-down bar with live music. Almost all the volunteers are there. The atmosphere is jazzy and pleasant, mellow yet still inspiring with energy. And the live band is beyond amazing. It is most possibly one of my most enjoyable birthdays. Towards the end of the night, the band improvises for me Happy Birthday that goes on for a good five minutes – slightly awkward after the first minute but all in all, amazingly good times.

I leave Nouakchott for Kiffa the next day, sad to depart and already eagerly planning my return.

The beginning days of 2007 – [Back in Kiffa…and so begins the new year] I am back at site where life goes on one day at a time, but as always, it is bearable and even enjoyable more often than not.

There’s much to write about Mauritania, and myself.

While it is more obvious than not that I cannot change this place, I feel that it is changing me. And if not for anything else, that is why I came here, to grow and to change, to find something in myself I have not yet discovered. And all of these changes, I hope to capture here, as they come forth to light. So, on that note…

This concludes our program entitled Timeline. Please tune in again next week, same time, same place. Till then, can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street.