How lovely to be a woman

In honor of International Women's Day on March 8th, I write on the glory of being female in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. (As a side note: all girls here are exempt from going to school on this day. Does this seem counterproductive to anyone else?)


Constantly I am asked the question: "Ada yidi gorko?" In Pulaar this means "Do you want a man?" -- that is, a husband. My go-to response is wagging my finger while sucking my teeth and declaring, "NO! Men are so much trouble! They are all the same!" This gets everyone laughing and, if I'm fortunate, defuses the whole situation. But several gentlemen in my life here are relentless. I get regular phone calls and text messages from would-be suitors. I have a neighbor who proposes to me on a daily basis. When he drops by my family's house, everyone thinks it's very funny to say, "Raky, your fiancé is here!" I tell him that he is crazy. He just replies, in complete seriousness, "But I really want to go to America..."

The fact that I am 24 years old and unmarried makes me all but an old maid. People can scarcely understand it. From the age of about 15, girls in this country are expected to be looking for a husband. To wed at 12 is not strange. From what I've seen, marriage is rarely based on love. (Tellingly, in Pulaar the word for "to marry" is an active verb for men and a passive verb for women -- it is something that happens to the female.) Polygamy is also practiced by some. Men are permitted to have up to four wives, although I haven't seen more than two at once (since the man is expected to provide for each woman equally). As foreign as this idea may seem to us in America, many Mauritanians have tried to convince me that polygamy is a great thing, because it puts far less stress on the first wife in terms of household duties.


It is not strange to see men and women eating around separate bowls at large family meals. When getting into a taxi with strangers, the passengers may do quite a bit of rearranging so that a man does not have to sit next to a woman (if they are married, it's possibly acceptable). At the bank in the capital city, there are four lines of male tellers to assist men, and one female teller for women. At prayer call, men are expected to go to the mosque and pray there with his "brothers." Women pray at home, as the children cry and crawl all over them.

I am grateful to be in the southwest of Mauritania, with the Pulaar people who are fairly liberal regarding women. The major ethnic group in the rest of the country is the Moors, of Arab descent. Moor women almost always wear a mulefa, the full-length veil. The director of my school is a Moor. Before he enters his office in the morning, he shakes the hand of each teacher and greets them. (Greetings are extremely important in this culture.) When he gets to me, though, he just passes me by without a word and certainly without touching me. Did I mention all the other teachers are male?

A taste of WAIST

Alhamdulillah! I have returned to Boghé after a fabulous few days in Dakar, the capital of Senegal and most cosmopolitan city in West Africa. We thought Nouakchott was a "promised land" at Christmas time, but Dakar made it pale in comparison! Highways! High-rises! High-rollers! And high prices! =P

The cause for travel was the 36th Annual WAIST, the West African Invitational Softball Tournament. It's quite the affair, with 32 teams this year from Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, The Gambia, and Guinea. Many players are Peace Corps Volunteers, but there are also a few ex-pat teams (UN and embassy staff) and some Senegalese nationals. Peace Corps Mauritania classically has a strong representation at the event, and 2009 was no exception. We packed 100 of us onto two coach buses (what luxury!) to make the voyage from our training center in Rosso. It took roughly 10 hours door-to-door, including the laborious border crossing. We entered three teams in the competition: the Pirates, the Buccaneers, and the Scallywags. I was one of our host of spectator-cheerleaders.



Also participating in WAIST were two of my friends from Boston University, Andy and Annicka, who are both PCVs in Senegal. Totally random that we all ended up so close together in West Africa.


The games took place over Saturday and Sunday, with simultaneous play on four ball fields. Two were provided by Boston's own Suffolk University, which has a satellite campus in Dakar. Concession stands sold fabulous treats like hot dogs, pulled pork, ice cream, and beer (none of which exist for us in Mauritania!). Our "A" team Pirates went undefeated to make it to the play-offs on Monday. The championship field overlooked beautiful cliffs right on the ocean. Our opponents were formidable, but we persevered -- and captured first place in the social division! The pride! The glory!



We took some time to soak in some of the Dakar sights. We relaxed on tranquil, deserted beaches. We ate delicious Indian curry and Italian gelato. We bought cheese and lunch meat and chips and salsa in an overwhelming grocery store (with overwhelming European-import prices).



We fought our way through the artisanal marketplace, amidst all the vendors hawking their goods and imploring us in English, "My sister! My friend!" I tried to use my impoverished volunteer status for leverage in bargaining, but the sellers laughed and absolutely refused to believe that I lack electricity. "God will pay you for your work," one offered, in French. "Yes," I replied, "but God doesn't buy me earrings!" Another helpful strategy was using my Pulaar (Senegal is about 25% Pulaar). In such a big tourist area, I would imagine they don't see too many white girls speaking their native language! That was usually good for knocking a few thousand francs off the inflated asking price -- even better when coupled with sucking of the teeth and a disapproving finger-wag, traditional signs of distaste here. My friends and I ended up with a happy menagerie of ebony and teak hand-carved creatures:


Another highlight was passing through the colonial town of Richard Toll, on the river that borders Senegal to the north. You can see Mauritania just on the other side, and somehow it is a completely different world. I enjoyed a tender steak and a glass of wine poolside in this lush garden. Compare with my dusty, beloved little village of Dar El Barka, immediately over the river. So close, and yet...




P.S. I hope you enjoy all the photos. I painstakingly sat at this computer for hours (literally) in order to post this many for you!

Come to prosperity

I went to my family's house at 1pm, like usual. There was hardly anyone around on this particular day, but I figured they were at the market -- Saturday is our market day when vendors come from all the surrounding villages to sell produce, and a few vans come from Boghé (the "big city") with fancy things like dangly earrings and perfume and jugs of cooking oil. It's an important day for my family to make money (or not) with what they've grown that week.

Just before 2:00, my sister brought me a single bowl and spoon (Mauritanians all eat with their hands, and I do this on occasion to "integrate," but my family knows I prefer a spoon and they are great about providing me one). No one seemed to be joining me. Had they already eaten? I didn't question it too much because there are frequently things that I don't understand here, so I just started eating. It was a decent hunk of fresh fish, a slice of squash, cabbage -- and neverending rice. Whenever they give me a personal portion, it's absurdly huge. I ate a bit dutifully, and then they dutifully asked me if I was really only going to eat so little, and to please have some more. Finally they gave up and my sister Kadia started picking at it, and she called the smallest children over. I immediately felt bad that I'd eaten as much as I had, as they scrounged at my leftovers.

I sat there awhile reading the magazine I'd brought with me, even though still no one was around. The old man came and sat in silence with me. Finally he said my name. "Today is not good," he announced in Pulaar. Why, I asked? He looked tired. "It's not good," he repeated. Then he said something else in Pulaar, but I didn't understand. He gave a tight-lipped, wry smile.

I looked up the word in my dictionary when I got back to my room. It means "poor person." As in we're so poor today we couldn't eat lunch? But they still fed me...

Talk about giving poverty a face. It's not "somewhere in Africa people are starving." It's Kadiata Ann. It's Abdoul Thille. It's my favorites whom I love and who love me and love life. I want to give them all the money they need, I thought, so these children never have to miss another meal.

But they're only one family.

But still they are one.

But money doesn't solve the problem. That's such a typical Western response. Will education help you? I pray to God it does.

As I struggled with these thoughts in my journal, the sunset call to prayer came over the mosque loudspeaker. Haya ala salah -- come to prayer. Haya ala falah -- come...

To prosperity.

"Yes, we can" vs. "No, you can't"

Today Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States of America. I was so fortunate to be able to come to Boghé and watch the ceremony live on a friend's satellite TV (dubbed over in French). As our new president spoke of reaching out to the world, I sat between two black African Muslims. A child of three years old fussed in the corner and was reprimanded by his parents as he kept loudly calling out the names he's heard so often now: "Wah-sheen-ton! Leen-con! BARACK OBAMA!"

It is a happy day.

Now that we have begun our second trimester of school, the size of my English classes has leveled off a bit from what I was originally assigned. Here are my current numbers:

1st year (ages 10-17) : 15F + 18M = 33 students
2nd year (ages 12-19) : 24F + 48M = 72 students
3rd year (ages 13-20) : 19F + 35M = 54 students
4th year (ages 13-22) : 7F + 25M = 32 students

You can see that in each year there are more males than females, and this only becomes more pronounced in the higher levels. I'm sure you can guess the reasons: young pregnancies/marriages (as young as 12 is not uncommon), responsibilities at home, lack of importance given to girls' education.

So I have 191 students altogether. I want very much to know all their names -- this was crucially important to me as a teacher in the States. But it's quite difficult here when I see my kids each only once a week. Also, here all students are assigned numbers, so when I take roll, I am not calling out their names. It's just "Number 1? Number 2?" I don't like it. It feels a little too Auschwitz to me. But besides that, many kids have similar names. I have two girls in 1st year with the exact same first, middle, and last name. I have 10 boys named Oumar and 13 named Mamadou. It's a constant effort.


In America we have a general notion that with enough positive reinforcement, children will gain confidence in their abilities and thus achieve great things. (Look at Obama with "Yes, we can!") It is the opposite here. Lately I have been helping my sister Goggo with her French homework. She is in the 4th year of primary school. Traditionally teachers here use a lot of rote memorization, so I sit with Goggo as she painstakingly repeats the same short paragraph out of her book, over and over and over. The other night she sighed at last and asked me, "Am I getting it or not?" "Yes, of course you are! You're doing great," I told her. "No, she's not," her older brother interjected, "she's terrible. She can't do anything." The thought is that this will make the girl want to work harder and she will eventually succeed.

I disagree. I wanted to slap him.

And now for something completely different... I leave you with a fun picture of me and Amanda a few weeks ago in Nouakchott. We found a Mexican restaurant called Fiesta, which was very exciting to us. On the tables they had little napkin holders with various names of Mexican towns. This one is "Matamoros," somewhere I've been, a border town with Brownsville, TX:


Why was this humorous to me? Because the name Matamoros in Spanish means "Kill Moors." (This here in Mauritania, literally "Land of the Moors.")

Holiday travels

Happy New Year to everyone! I have been having a wonderful vacation -- and it's not over yet. ;) December 23rd I bade so long to my Dar El Barka family, sang Christmas carols to myself as I sat on the side of the road at 6:30am to wait for the Boghé car, and made my way into town to see all the PCVs from my region of Mauritania. Our halls were decked with paper snowflakes and care-package tinsel, and we even made everyone little stockings -- stuffed, too, of course!


Then on Christmas Eve it was off to Nouakchott, our promised land. Strange that I'd been in this country over six months and still hadn't seen the capital. Lonely Planet describes Nouakchott as "hastily constructed," "lacking charisma," "discombobulating," "shambolic," "unbelievably filthy" -- but for us it is truly, to borrow phrase, a land flowing with milk and honey. Peace Corps put us all up in hotels that blew my mind... Real beds! Hot showers! Western toilets! Bathtubs! TV! Remote-control air conditioning! Fridge! Wireless internet! And don't even get me started on all the amazing things you can eat here that aren't available most anywhere else in the country -- cheese, ice cream, pizza, Italian & Chinese food. We didn't know where to begin! Plus our country director generously hosted all 120-some of us PCVs at his home for an exquisite homemade dinner.


Although Mauritania is an Islamic republic and all its people are Muslim, ex-pats are free to practice their own religion. So a group of us found the one Catholic church in Nouakchott and attended mass on Christmas morning -- what a cool experience, about 400 people from all over Africa and Europe. And I also squeezed in some time to watch my favorite "It's a Wonderful Life" on my laptop. It was about as good as Christmas could get without being home!


After all that, my training sitemates and I headed back down to PK7 to visit our old host families for a few days. When we asked the taxi driver to let us off on the side of the road, he was sure we were mistaken, because it's definitely the middle of nowhere. But as we walked through the sand, past the power plant that does not power PK7, our families spotted the white kids lugging hiking packs and came running to hug us all. They were sooo overjoyed! We were served endless tea (of course), and my family made a special trip into Rosso the next day to buy the finest fish they could afford. I am continually humbled by the amazingly selfless Pulaar people.


The next stop on our agenda was historic Saint-Louis, Senegal, the former capital of all French West Africa and now a quaint little beach town that many call a "run-down New Orleans" (no surprise, as the French influence is still quite evident, and the town hosts an international jazz festival every May). My mom asked me if Senegal is much different than Mauritania. When you take the ferry across the Senegal River, the people still speak the same language and have the same religion and come from the same families -- the border town even has the same name -- but it's an entirely different world. Immediately. Over 90% of the people are Muslim, but they are almost all black (unlike in Mauritania, where there is racial tension between the roughly equal numbers of Arabs and blacks). Dress is much less conservative in Senegal. Alcohol is not prohibited. Infrastructure, i.e. roads and available transportation, is infinitely better. And even in the smallest corner stores, there is such a variety of *things* that you just can't buy in Mauritania. Potato chips, roasted peanuts, and yes, beer -- we were impressed again and again.


It was hard to leave, but all the first-year PCVs made our way back to Nouakchott for our Early Term Reconnect conference, where I am now. We were surprised to find out about this mess in Gaza (hard to keep up with the news when you're on the road), and even more surprised to see the reaction in Nouakchott. Mauritania is one of three Arab countries to have diplomatic relations with Israel, and many people here are not too happy about that. There were some marches this week, some tires burned and rocks thrown, but nothing you all should worry about. We watched some of the demonstrations from afar, high up inside the Peace Corps Bureau (it's in the tallest building in the country). We are safe and sound, as we were assured yesterday in person by the U.S. Chargé d'Affaires to Mauritania. Just makes life a little more interesting...