Trying to understand the Mauritanian mentality

What follows is an attempt on my part to understand the mentality of the Mauritanian people.


[Per Diem]

Mauritania is flooded with foreign NGOs and international aid organizations. These groups often hold educational seminars. In some strange twist of history and behavioral conditioning, however, it has become necessary here to pay the individuals who attend these seminars simply for attending. This often sizeable payment is referred to as per diem. If those attending the seminar are required to travel, there is usually a traveling reimbursement that is separate from the per diem. If there is no per diem, it is unlikely that anyone will come to the seminar. Contrast this to the developed world where those who attend seminars have to pay in order to attend, the idea being that they will learn something and that they must pay for this information.

Some people hold the opinion that Mauritanians don’t value knowledge; that intelligence in this country gets an individual nowhere; that all the people in power have attained their positions through nepotism and corruption and that knowledge, if not burdensome, is unnecessary.

I agree with this partially. I think that Mauritanians have been conditioned to undervalue education because it does give any immediate wealth. Like the United States, people here are driven by instant gratification. But here, in a country that is ruled and ruined, in my opinion, by corruption, it is better to have cash jingling in your pockets and some abstract knowledge stuffed in your head.


[Ca n’est pas ma travaille]

My latest idea has been to start an educational program at the local health center. I want to use the health technicians who have small workloads to start leading educational sessions with the patients who come to the center. Preventive health education is something that is lacking in this country. Most of this education in the United States happens in the schools. The school system here, however, is so defunct that the little health education that is supposed to happen in the classrooms often does not.

I briefly mentioned my idea to the health technicians sometime last week. One of the technicians responded to my idea by saying that the activity is not part of her job description. [Just quickly, her job is to attend to severely malnourished children and then educate their mothers on how to prepare well-balanced meals.] I replied that education is very important and that while it may not be part of her job description, it is important for the community as a whole. She responded quickly by turning her head to the side and starting a conversation with someone else in another language. She managed to ignore me until I began to pack my things to leave.

I don’t understand it. I mean, here I am, giving two years of my life to help people in a different country who I probably will never see again, and yet she refuses to help the people in her own community just because it requires her to do just a little more work on her part. And on that last note, she currently does next to nothing – the malnutrition center, staffed by three technicians, receives only about ten children per month.

This is a specific example, but the same mentality exists throughout Mauritania. Nobody ever goes out of their way to do something if they do not get rewarded for it.


[Donnez moi cadeau]

Children in the streets, when they see a white person, scream Donnez moi cadeau! This holds true everywhere that I have been, including Senegal and Mali. I sometimes wonder if the kids think is a greeting, but then they put out their hands expecting a gift. And then I wonder if anyone ever really gives them anything as I smile and say Non! and walk away.

I feel white people get harassed more than I do. I tend to blend in with the locals here. Other volunteers, however, constantly complain about the children. From what little I have experienced, I pity the other volunteers: the children can easily become overwhelming. They’re like things constantly scratching and picking at your person, stretching and wearing you thin until you just can’t take it anymore, and then you break.


[The art of encouragement]

White Moors do not seem to understand the concept of encouragement. They are always quick to judge and to criticize.

While in Bababe during stage, I tried to teach the young boys my family how to draw. I gave them simple drawings to copy. They drew poorly, but I smiled and encouraged them on. One day, one of the mothers passed us where we sat on the floor. One of the boys got up to show her his drawing. He was excited and smiled so that his teeth showed. She looked at the piece of paper and said that it was not good. The boy’s looked down and sat next to me. I looked at the mother and said that the drawing was very good. She shrugged her shoulders and walked away.

The mother, in no way, was trying to be mean to her boy. I think encouragement in general does not exist in the Moor culture as it does in the Western world. Of course this is an overgeneralization, I know, but I notice more often than not Moors criticizing each other, putting each other down, laughing at each other and so forth. People generally don’t become upset, but they do get embarrassed.

During stage I also came to realize a lack of creativity in the Moor culture, and I wonder if this is due to the lack of a fostering society where individuals keep from trying new things for fear of being humiliated.

Mauritania is an interesting place, that’s for sure.



All right all, there’s much more to write, but I’m tired and the stars are shinning brightly tonight. My rooftop calls me to sleep.


Up next time…Hung up, time goes by so slowly – the Kiffa Music Mix 2007.