GEE Conference, IS Option, and Camels Camels Everywhere!

Firstly let me dispel the myth that I am allergic to camels. There is no evidence for any animal allergies on my part. Let any who would contradict me please offer satisfactory evidential proof to the contrary rather than allegations of "defensiveness" or any other such bunk.
Okay, now on to the show. Hello world, how are you? Here in dusty Mauritania things are progressing on a rather unexpected track but before we come to that let's start at the beginning. With the rain. Greenery has come to M'Bout ladies and gentlemen, it's a regular donkey paradise if your ass has a chance to escape his/her bindings and obligatory beatings for a chance at a real smörgåsbord. Also, on a minor side note, with the rain has come a seasonal river which all but encircles the town of M'Bout cutting us off from the Kaedi- Selibaby road. "Not so!" say you "There's a bridge over that troubled water!" oh but loyal reader, let me inform you of the genius that is modern day construction engineering. The former bridge was so well located that the Portuguese road crews saw fit to replace it in the very same spot with a bigger, better bridge. Of course to build a bigger, better bridge in the very same spot necessitates the demolition of the old small-but-functional bridge. "Well how far along is the new bridge now that the seasonal river has returned?" you ask, and I'll tell you. There are two completed pylons plunging forth from the raging waters. Two of four. Upon which a road must be built. So long story short, it rained the day we were going to leave for the girls' conference and while the Selibaby girls and escorts were able to pass (through lengthy trials) unharmed from Selibaby to Kaedi (only 17 hours for a 240k trip!) they were unable to take those of us in Mbout with us as planned. The next morning we had the pleasure of wading the receding river for a whole day trip to Nouakchott.
We arrived a bit delayed for the girls' conference, missing the opening ceremony, but I was informed it was no great loss. The conference passed smoothly for me, less so for my unfortunate colleague who had the less than desirable job of staying with the girls. Cortney, I'm sorry you had to be on duty 24 hours a day with the girls whereas I got every night off for beer and pizza. Last year the organizers of the girls' conference made the unfortunate mistake of putting male PCVs into home stays along with their girls. There's nothing like an awkward sleeping arrangement to accomplish change. This year we were housed in the nearly-vacant apartment of a third year PCV who lives in Nouakchott.
Around the end of the girls conference, things really started to get interesting. Apparently enough parents have perceived a heightened level of danger to their babies serving in the Peace Corps and called our country director to gripe about the program not being closed that PC Washington and Obie decided to offer Interrupted Service to our class of first years. This was basically an ET without penalties offer. If you're miserable or feeling unsafe or whatever then you can go home now with all the benefits you'd get as a COSer at two years. Minus half the money. We lost 20 out of our 71 volunteers for numerous reasons. To all of you who are going, you will be missed. Now let's get this perfectly straight, this was a matter of perceived danger, not actual danger. I personally feel safer walking the streets of M'Bout late at night than I would feel acting the same way in any major US city.
With regard to the missionary who was killed in Nouakchott a few weeks ago, there's very little known about it. Al Quaida did claim responsibility for his death but I think it's noteworthy that they did so four days after the actual attack when they're usually so punctual about claiming credit for their own activities. Personally I find it regrettable that he died, but I don't see how it has much to do with me. I'm not in the same business.
Next. While I was off searching for replacement luggage for one of my GMC girls with a broken bag, Siham held a GEE meeting. When I came back from my errand with some grocery sacks that the girl was definitely not pleased to see, I was informed that sites with two GEE PCVs were asked to surrender one to the needs of the country, meaning that there's so many empty GMCs right now that it's selfish to leave two of us in one site while other GMCs fold up. After a week of agonizing over the decision while I was on a camel trek and realizing I'm one of two remaining GEE pairs, I decided to move to Selibaby.
Naturally many logistics of this remain and I don't intend to actually move until I return from the states in August, but there it is. If I can find a decent house where I can live with the puppy Maggie, I'll be completing my remaining year in a regional capital 120k south of M'Bout. In many ways I think I'll feel more useful there, but M'Bout really has become my home now and it's a hard thing to just pick up and go when I've been so set in a completely different mindset.
Now to the camel trek. It was excellent. None of the four of us fell off of our respective camels, though by the time our legs had felt the camel saddle for a few hours I'm sure a few of us were willing to. Chinguetti was a gorgeous little town in the middle of the desert and it's sad that tourists don't frequent it so much now as they once did. Our friend Carl is a SED PCV there and he set us up with the guides and camels to take us on our little overnight. We had two destination options: the Oasis, or the Singing Dunes. The Singing Dunes sound like a tuba when you slide down them on your butt, but the Oasis has... drumroll please... SHADE!! So naturally we chose the Oasis. Maybe the Singing Dunes can happen in the cold season, but it just wasn't happening now. At the Oasis we lounged, we drank tea, we ate day-old pasta, and we sandboarded. The first attempt at sandboarding was at 4 in the afternoon. Wearing sandles, I was pretty sure my feet were well done and ready to eat after the cooking they received in the dune the two times I climbed it. We returned at 7 and the landscape was considerably more forgiving, and I even managed not to fall too much! That night our guides cooked us bread under a fire on the sand in much the same way that I would guess it has been cooked for thousands of years. They served it in a bowl of water and oil, it was very tough, but good. We returned to Chinguetti on the 4th just in time to jump in a car and go down the treacherous mountain path to Atar for a little Independence Day party. Happy Belated Birthday America!
And now, as I sit here in Kaedi writing all of this to you, my thoughts are drawn to seeing you when I come home. I'll be visiting our lovely land of fast food and fun August 3-16th. I'm excited :)

It was only two months, I don't know what you're all complaining about...

Oh alright fine. Due to excessive grumbling to the complaint department from many sectors of my apparently loyal readership I have decided to write an entry to fill you all in on the recent updates of my life, Thrills-Ville that it is. I suppose after the lovely baseball debate last time I was just so enthralled it took me a while to recuperate. Though I have to say… my dad’s comment makes sense. I think I could really get behind a team named the “Brewers”. Particularly if they bring that mascot back…
Firstly, and most heavily weighing on our collective first year mind these days, is the cancellation of Stage due to difficulties regarding the visas for the trainees. Stage, for those of you who don’t know, is that magical time when lots of pale Americans show up speaking English and learn what it’s like to have diarrhea for 3-6 months straight while understanding little or nothing of what happens around them. The cancellation of this joyous time has caused us quite a bit of turmoil as I’m sure it has caused distress among those very same pale Americans (though they do seem to be handling it well what with all the camping trip planning and whatnot). The official terminology right now is that Stage (stage with a long A because it’s French, not a short A as in “The stage-coach ran over the cliff.”) is postponed, not cancelled. But some of us are of the mindset that this thing just isn’t going to happen because if you try to have a Stage in August, you’ll overlap with Ramadan which means you’ll have lots of cranky fasting people teaching languages and running the trainings as well as having our future ED, GEE, and EE volunteers all arrive at their sites the day that school officially starts. Now if you’ve been following my blog you know that the day school officially starts is usually quite different from it’s actual commencement of classes, but this is a stressful possibility nevertheless. No, it seems likely that there will be no new class of volunteers this year – which leaves my class here alone without our second years and no newbies to make us feel competent and knowledgeable. It also means we will have to revise our situations with the regional capitals and where brousse volunteers can stay when they travel in. It means many sites will go a year between volunteers both this year and next year as PCRIM tries to get back on a normal stage schedule. We even speculate that it could mean some volunteers getting moved around this year for the sake of sustainability of some projects such as GMCs. Some people even go to the extreme of our unmentionable subjects and discuss the possibility of being pulled from the country. Let’s hope not. To any of you newbies who might be reading this – we’ve been thinking about you since January and we’re enormously disappointed that you’re not here… really. Bummer. So that’s where we are with that… now moving on.
So since Emily and I were on our way to Rosso to greet the new Stage class when we heard the news that Stage was postponed, we ended up just crashing in Kaedi for about a week. It was nice to have some time to catch up with the puppy dog Maggie who is taking a short vacation to visit her buddy Kelbi before Kelbi goes on a trip to Texas in July. Now I’m back in M’Bout, living the life. The rains have started, which wouldn’t be such a big deal (it lowered the temperature maybe 20-30 degrees on average but raised the humidity level by 50%... I’m ambivalent) if it didn’t have such a drastically negative effect on the possibility of road travel in the Gorgol and Guidimaka. I’m specifically referring to the fact that when it rains a dozen small to medium size raging rivers spring up across the yet unfinished road from Kaedi- M’Bout -Selibaby and traveling has the potential to turn into something resembling one of those “Raging River Rapids” rides at a theme park. At the least, the condition of the dirt and gravel road/path degrades noticeably and in some places severely. On the other hand, a good chunk of our desolate desert sprouts to a lovely lush looking green in the course of about two days. Bonus.
At the end of this month is the Girls’ Conference in Nouakchott. Each GMC picks three girls to go to Nouakchott courtesy of Peace Corps for four or five days. They talk, they do yoga, they go see the ocean (it’s pretty impressive if you think about the enormity of the ocean compared with the water scarcity that’s a fact of life for many towns here) they see impressive women from Mauritania speak and it’s generally a good time had by all. Last year, the male GEE PCVs were placed in home stays alongside their charges and mentors. Not the best idea if you think about it. This year they’ve wizened up a bit and put us in a currently vacant apartment normally occupied by third year PCVs doing their third year in Nouakchott. The apartment is conveniently located close to the best milkshakes in the country. The conference is the 26-30 of this month and with uncertain travel conditions Cortney and I will be leaving M’Bout (hopefully with the girls and mentor from Selibaby) on the 25th to spend the night in Kaedi before making the final leap on paved road from there to Nouakchott the 26th. Hopefully it goes smoothly, cross your fingers for us.
After the Girl’s Conference we’ll be doing a short science experiment “camp” for the M’Bout GMC girls for 2 or 3 days. We’ll try to bring science to life a little bit the way it was brought to life for us. Science classes here lack funding, time, and motivation for demonstrations of the sort we hope to do. Suggestions are welcome. After the science camp we hope to go on a camel trek way up north around Chinguetti and then just after that I’ll be headed home! Alright, I think this is about enough of a blog entry to satisfy for a few weeks or months, good luck to all of you with whatever you’re up to. I like emails, letters, phone calls, and packages (I even like comments on my blog…)

I'm actually busy these days...

It’s HOT! I don’t know exactly how hot because I haven’t seen a thermometer lately but I’m guessing around 120-140 range in the past couple days. I know I’ve been a terrible blogger lately (and by lately I mean for the past four months or more) and I know that this is pretty much the same opening line I’ve been using in all those terrible blog posts I’m now referring to as terrible. Since I’m writing this on Microsoft word I haven’t really got a clue what I’ve already written about so I’m just gonna dive right in. Maggie’s stitches from getting fixed last month in Nouakchott have healed up fine and she’s back to keeping me up all night by barking at the feral cats who live in the cinderblocks in my yard. The GMC opening was a dud but that’s okay because we never have to do one again and we’ve also finally got the damn thing running (with a brief intermission so that the presidential guard could stay in the GMC for his visit and make us remove everything and then filthy the place up so that the mayor made us lose another week of classes while he got the place cleaned, but I’m not bitter…) In any case, we’re now in session five days per week thankfully doing computer classes for both adults and girls, as well as English club for adults and one other random session a week for the girls (health, English, math, etc) We’re also thinking of opening it up for study hours during exam week. Undecided.

Now on to the why. As in “Why am I finally writing a blog post even though I’ve been slacking off on that front for months?” The answer is simple oh faithful readers, I’m bored. I’m in Mbout alone for a week without my dear sitemate or anyone else who speaks English and the limiting factor this has on my conversations means that I’ve found another outlet. You.

Yesterday I taught computer classes for four hours with a couple potential mentors from town. One is the Hakim’s (regional governor) secretary and the other is the local Condition Feminine representative. The Hakim’s secretary sat at one computer with a girl and helped her individually whereas the other, Haye, took a cue from me and walked around trying to offer help where needed but not being too hands on. Interesting. If there’s a mentor’s conferende this summer I think I’d advocate taking the CF lady and maybe as a chaperone to the Girls’ conference in Nouakchott too. I also had adult English club yesterday for a few of the more dedicated people who asked for English classes. Today is computer classes for adults, which might start to get out of hand seeing as how there’s only four computers, one of me, and a lot of potential students. Oh well.

Also to keep me busy I’ve been trying to concoct a recipe for an African opaque beer (made from millet and sorghum) from Mali that will work on a micro scale here in Mauritania for the volunteer circuit. It’s gonna be interesting though, with no hops or barley or any of the other things normally found in beer…

Well I’m off to do a bit of prep work for the classes this evening, maybe I’ll write again soon.

Consistency? Don't talk to me about consistency...

Variety is the spice of life, from the variety of flavors you could sample everyday in your tour through the incredible diversity of American food to the simply elegant melange of entertainments that present themselves to you every evening. So don't complain that it took me more than two months to write in my blog. Delay is good for you. It makes you crave what's coming, making it seem better than it ever really was.
So we've opened our GMC. Finalemement. Finally. And I think in French a little bit. Sometimes. Finalement.
The opening ceremony was many things, but what it mainly is, is over. Is that grammatically correct? It should be if it isn't, it's the kindof thing I'd say in conversation.
Work has finally begun. Finally. Not that arguing and acculturating with town officials wasn't work (it was) but this is different. Simpler, somehow.
Okay, so moving on. My sweet new puppy is named Maggie, she's a white-with-brown-spots dog with a sweet and pliable disposition who tries to play with the feral cats in my yard by barking at them. You'd love her.
WAIST was fun and decadent. We found an incredible milkshake/pizza shop blocks from the hotel with absolutely incredible food at reasonable prices. I played softball and I wasn't terrible. Not even bad. (see mom? I told you I knew how to play...) I've been shopping for graduate programs, some of the interesting ones I've been looking at that are probably out of my league are at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Don't pretend, I know you were wondering.
My niece was born. This was really the first piece of news for this blog post, but I figured most of you knew it. She's gorgeous and perfect in the Tyler tradition (the fact that she's not actually a Tyler doesn't diminish this in the least) and I'm going to do my absolute best to be as irritating an uncle as possible for my sister's sake. By this I mean lots of noisy and mildly dangerous toys, firecrackers, and good advice when she gets older :)
So I know this is disjointed and rather small but I felt I needed to get back in the habit of writing blog entries so that I could write good ones later on. Tough luck for you this time around, my faithful readers.
Hope you're all basking in the spring goodness of the states, and if you're not... just think that you could be where it hasn't really precipitated for six months and it's 105 degrees in the shade.

Late again, but trying

For the last week Cortney and I have been buying materials in Kaedi to bring to Mbout to try to start this GMC. Today we're going back. We rented a truck for the adventure considering we have a rather large pile of stuff to bring with us. This means that I could very well be riding inside the truck as opposed to on top of the pile of stuff in the back. I can't wait to get this underway but I'm still apprehensive. We met with the mayor and Siham (my apcd, keep up now...) when we were in Nouakchott and he was less than enthusiastic about moving out of his building and giving us the keys. Maybe today will be better, I don't know. I hope to get this thing rolling in time to have at least a few sessions before the end of the school year you know? Well it's been a nice week in Kaedi and a nice little vacation before that but I suppose it's time to go back, though I will miss the running water. I'll be back into town on my way through for WAIST in three weeks. Thanks to everyone who sent me messages or packages or called on my birthday, sorry if you got grumpy travel John on the phone, we had 8 hours in a car after four hours of sessions on my birthday. No worries though, the joint birthday party the next night made up for it. Okay, so I apologize if this entry is somewhat less comprehensive or comprehensible than expected... I'm not a morning person and I procrastinated doing this until the morning I have to leave. Happy early inauguration day everyone, I wish you all the best of luck in coping with the blizzards and cold and stuff. It's cold here too. Got down to about 45 the last few nights ;)

Yeah yeah I know

Firstly, Happy 2009! Secondly, I'm well aware that this is way overdue and all that nonsense, but I'm not going to apologize so you can just relax and be happy with what you get. That was me digitally sticking my tongue out at all of you, so you know. Alright, any death-defying adventures this time? Well there was the usual harrowing trip into Kaedi on the back of a truck, the lovely little party in Aleg to christen their new region house (not as cool as Kaedi's or Selibaby's by the way), Christmas in Nouakchott was a blast with cheese and food and stuff, and then there was the brief running from the police thing when our taxi driver got in a fist fight with a gendarme captain and the man inexplicably held a grudge. After that we went on down to Rosso for a night, then St. Louis for some sun and surf and some lovely relaxing beach sitting. Now I'm back in Nouakchott and I'll be here for some four or five days for ETR and then after that back to Kaedi for a few days followed by a trip to home sweet Mbout. I'd make this longer and more detailed but there's a line of people waiting to use these computers and so I'll just put off the real blog entry thing until I get back to Kaedi, maybe sometime around my birthday :) Happy new year everybody!

Turkey day without the turkey

Alright ladies and gents, no spine-tingling tales of death defiance today, just the run of the mill details of my everyday life, hope they suffice. First of all, I'm visiting my wonderful girlfriend which is groovy. We've now seen each other two more times than we expected to in this particular four month period, which is great but not enough. So it goes.
Selibaby Thanksgiving was spectacular and by seven o'clock there were fifteen people writhing on the floor in food comas. Literally. Those of you who called in that time, no I wasn't drunk, just full. Very very full. Okay a little drunk. ;)
Our funding for the M'Bout GMC has gone through, we asked for the stars and got the moon which was about what we expected. We should have four laptop computers arriving with our APCD the day after we get back in M'bout and we'll finally be able to say we did something! I was kindof looking forward to telling you that we were finally handed keys to a building for the GMC but, surprise surprise, no luck as of yet. The minister has to come and approve the move to the new building for the mayor's office which would default the old one to us, but he hasn't seen fit to visit yet.. despite saying he would come the past few weekends.
We've had a positive response from the school teachers and director which mostly makes up for the trouble we've been having with the mayoral office. Hopefully we should be able to get the GMC up for an open house in January when we get back from Early Term Reconnect (ETR) and before we leave for WAIST (West Africa International something or other.... Emily says Invitational Softball Tournament) So I hope everyone had an amazing time with Thanksgiving and lots of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and candied yams... yum... sorry I'm not putting up any pictures, I know I'm a horrible son :P Cortney and Emily are both a lot better at pictures than I am, Cortney posted pictures of my house and Emily will have tons of pictures of Thanksgiving adventures involving baobab trees and way too much pie very soon. You can get ahold of those by going to their blogs which are linked on the right hand side of the page.
So happy holiday season and I'll be back online probably sometime in the next month or so when I'll have another excuse for having no pictures (I'm just being honest..)
Bye!

On a new addition and another month gone by

So it's the end of October, unbelievably. Time flies when you're sitting around staring at a wall. Seriously, my main activity for an afternoon about two weeks ago was killing flies with my flip flop, and I don't like killing things. Now I know I've been keeping some people in suspense here, what with the whole not writing for a month thing even though I may or may not have accessed the internet in the interim period, and for my delay and general truancy I apologize somewhat less than sincerely. The past couple two weeks have been a little rougher than normal for lots of reasons I don't care to get into here and I'm hanging on for the swing back in the good direction. We've lost three volunteers now (that I know of, maybe four if the rumors are true today) in the last two or three weeks and it seems October is a mad month for PC RIM.
Work is going as work has gone and our mayor continues to dally and sidestep questions about actually giving us a building. Right now we're technically sharing the building that is now the mayor's office and Cortney and I plan to apply for materials and center funds first thing next week after the Halloween party. We figure if we just show up one day with a ton of mattelas, computers, and stuff in general, we can give them a big hint that we really do need the space. I'm hoping to have an open house by january and maybe open the center sometime into next semester.
On the upside, we may have found a counterpart. Selma is a badass boutique owner with a very successful business. She's unmarried, chain smokes, and owns her own business. That makes her a very strong woman in a culture where it's usually only men that smoke, people are expected to marry young and start making babies, and most of the time men run boutiques. She's a badass and she seems to understand what we're doing as well as get excited about it which seems almost too good to be true right now after two months of slow going.
Oh, and I've now added a fun little feature at the bottom of my blog, courtesy of Matt's advice, where you can look at a map of M'Bout. I couldn't figure out how to leave bookmarks or I'd have noted where I live, where Cortney lives, and all our major landmarks. In any case if you can find the water tower in the middle of the town on the main north-south road, I'm about three blocks due west of it. Ah, modern technology.
I have the amazing good fortune of not being in the country for this upcoming election day. Sadly, voting passed me and M'Bout by, which I regret given that I come from a swing state, but I am feeling quite glad that I don't have to put up with the last minute desperation calls and pollster mania that is indubitably rocking the good ol' US of A. I look forward to the results though, so even if you weren't planning on it, you should still go vote (that goes for you too Dad)
I got seven packages today. Included in them, as a sampling, was a foam football, a pumpkin light, candy corn, twelve pounds of velveeta, lots of spices, a whole lot of fishing supplies (note the river running next to my town), a huge bag of halloween candy, a solar shower, three jars of peanut butter, and a frisbee. I'm overhelmed, in a good way. We had to take a taxi back from the post office. Who knows how I'll get all that hoard back to M'Bout but that's a problem for when the sugar high wears off.
Okay you lot, I'm off to the region house to lay low on the night before the party. I'm going to be a farmer, I think being from Iowa might be enough of a qualification for a costume for some of my more new england-ish fellow PCVs but I got ahold of a too small pair of overalls (really that's all they had unless you're short like Brian and buy the only overalls that would fit someone taller than you anyway) and a nice flannel print shirt with cut off sleeves. I'm going for the hayseed look. I will post pictures and maybe videos too soon, I have them on my camera at the region house right now, I just don't have the time to do it right now. Maybe in a couple days :) Alright all, good luck with election madness and leave me comments!

P.s. I learned to use italics and bold today, did you notice?

"All we've got is our street cred..."

I know, this is unprecedented. Two posts in under a week, what am I thinking, right? I'm going to raise the bar for my communications and all the sudden people will be expecting this kind of frequency. In all fairness I probably won't post again till Halloween just to make up for this unseemly verbosity.
Okay, so to correct a misstatement in my previous entry... I didn't actually lose my camera. I thought I did! I really did think so, but I discovered it nestled behind my trunk at the region house like a land mine of parental expectations. It stared at me, I stared at it. I blinked first. I will take pictures and post them next time I post a blog entry... probably. Maybe.
Peace Corps Mauritania prides ourselves on being... how do I put this... more badass than Chuck Norris in a knife fight with a ninja. Most of this comes from being that one country where most other Peace Corps countries say "Well this sucks, but at least it's not Mauritania." Or "Mauritania... man I heard it's pretty rough there..." Other PC countries can drink, they don't have to siphon water out of used oil drums, they have veggies and fruits at their sites, they have more than wasteland around them, and they might have more friendly host cultures. In the words of an older, wiser PCV talking about the madness at WAIST "All we've got is our street cred"
Tomorrow early morning Cortney and I are going back to Mbout to empower some girls and maybe sit in on some classes at the Lycee when that gets underway. We're hoping to have a GEE committee formed by the end of the month and we should actually have a GMC space then too, probably in the mayor's old building (assuming the finish the new one and he moves out of the old one)
Oh, and thank you all for the comments, they made my day even though I had to goad them out of you. I was wondering how long it would take for one of Emily's moms to break and write a comment on my blog since my own mother posted on her blog over a month ago. I admire your restraint! Pleasure to meet you Judy. And I don't judge the other stalking PCV parents... much. I'd probably do the same in your shoes.
Alright, I'm off. No, not like that, I mean I'm leaving.

Isn't this a terrible idea? I mean really it's just downright miserable. A blog. What am I supposed to write about here? I could write about my ride into Kaedi yesterday but because there are several different types of audiences reading this thing, how do I know the best way to treat my subject matter? For example:

Dear Mom: Yesterday Cortney and I made it into Kaedi, overall the trip went fine, no major snags. We're going to stay in Kaedi over the fete for the end of Ramadan because that is Cortney's birthday too and she just got a cake mix in a package so we can make that in the makeshift oven at the region house. We hope to be much more productive in the next month, now that Ramadan is finishing up.

Dear Dad: Yesterday Cortney and I hitched a free ride on the back of a pickup truck into Kaedi, the ride was pretty rough but not too bad. We're hanging out in Kaedi for the next couple days because it's Cortney's birthday and we're gonna party with some other Americans to mark the occasion. Chances are pretty good that next month is gonna be equally frustrating to this last one because there's such a changeup of residents when Ramadan ends. Everyone goes back to their own town and we're gonna have to introduce ourselves to a whole lot of people all over again.

Dear Sis: I hate riding on the back of pickup trucks. Cortney had a cushy spot propped on a rice sack or something while I was sitting on the cooking utensils, my ass feels like ground beef after three hours of bouncing up and down on an unidentifiable bag of semi-sharp objects with way too many corners. All in all, for a free ride it wasn't bad and I shouldn't complain, I only came close to flying off once or twice. The mayor snagged us this ride with less than ten minutes warning so I'm pretty sure I left everything resembling clean clothes in Mbout. I guess beggars can't be choosers right? We were going a little nutso in Mbout alone and by yesterday morning we had both been yelling at nothing that we needed a ride to Kaedi or we were gonna lose it. Anyway, we were both in need of a drink and a shower and a little bit of American socializing. We'll get back to Mbout within a week or so probably, and who knows? Maybe we'll even do something this month. Though i guess I did move into my house, so that counts as an accomplishment for last month.

Do you understand my dilemma? I mean it's all the same story, it just changes a little depending on who I'm telling it to. I know the three people I mentioned above are all reading this nonsense every time I post (and I assume you three all kept to your respective little letters, right?) but who else is out there? I have my suspicions about a few of you. There's probably quite a few more family members, the occasional wandering friend who found this on facebook, and maybe some stalking parents of other PCVs, not to mention a Peace Corps nominee who e-mailed me last week. How can I know you're reading this if you don't ever leave comments?!

Alright. So I moved into my new house, I mentioned that, and it felt damn good to wave goodbye to the auberge, my hotel. I bought a bamboo bed and a big sera with some new thin mattelas for lounging about during the day. I wonder what you picture when I say that. (I found out conclusively that I now have the best argument yet for not posting pictures, I seem to have... misplaced... my camera sometime in the final days at the center around swear in. Oops.) Our mayor tried to switch us into a different sector, semi-unintentionally. He just casually mentioned that when the school director came back we could go meet him and set up which english classes we would be teaching at the lycee. No no no, that would be an education volunteer, and frankly we're woefully unqualified to try to teach english to 70 kids in a class room. No no, our sector really is just that GMC thing you keep half-dismissing.
I was sick for about a week, which was basically just Mauritania's way of stuffing my oft spoken hopes for good health and weight gain down my throat. Back to square one.
Yeah I'm afraid the only interesting news I really have is the stuff that happens to other people. Congrats to Emu and Dan on getting engaged! Wish I could be there for the wedding. Wish I could have raise a glass in your honor when the day rolls around. Neither is terribly likely, but I'll still be sending you both good vibes.
So that's about all I have today, nothing but a rather disjointed mess of a post really. To you, anonymous readers, who won't even bother to post a comment, at least do me this small favor. Go out and have a really amazing slice of cheese. Or a glass of good wine or beer. Or some lasagna. Or nachos. Or anything except rice. I'll enjoy it vicariously. :) Eid Mubarak!

Too much!

You will absolutely not believe it. No, you really wouldn’t. You’d think I was lying or crazy or maybe even both. So I won’t tell you. Tough luck chums, that’s what you get for being skeptics. So we’ll just move on then and I won’t tell you that one glorious thing that is foremost in my mind. No I really won’t, so if you’re reading for that you might as well just give up, go grab a beer and plop yourself down in front of the television. I know I would, in your shoes.

So swear in was a couple weeks ago, as all you creepy stalker parents already know. And there was our little sewage backup, the ambassador visit, the ceremony… the party. All of it is kind of old news at this point, right? Well in general, the party was excellent… and in spite of the fact that we were drinking plastic bottle Senegalese gin and whiskey (which specializes in giving you a hangover before it even gets you drunk) we powered through and managed to get down right ridiculous by the end of the night. A few days later, mostly recovered and saddened by leaving, Cortney, Nick, and I piled into Fall’s taxi with him before most of the group had finished their breakfast and sped off towards Kaedi. Fall, a significant character in the next few days proceedings, is the housing coordinator for stage. He’s one of the magicians responsible for tracking down 77 host families for the PCTS not to mention all the housing for facilitators and staff. He’s a retired teacher. He drives his car as a taxi sometimes. And he’s a little crazy… in a good way.

Eight or nine-ish hours later we pulled into Kaedi with all its pomp and splendor. Less than twenty four hours later… with barely any of our move-in shopping done… Cortney, Fall and I were off to M’Bout with a little stop along the way to drop off Sara Cate in Genki and Tanya in Lexaba. When we got to M’Bout we stayed with the Macire family, which is the family of the brother of our badass safety and security coordinator. Fall searched desperately for housing for Cortney and I and we ended up in rather temporary arrangements… which is to say that for this month I live in a closed up auberge… hotel… which turns into the town party spot after Ramadan. Cortney is still debating whether or not to stay with the family she’s with now.

Now it was a near thing, up until two days ago I would have had to say “No, I don’t have a place to stay after this month yet.” And I probably would have grumbled about it a lot, which those of you who called me had to put up with. Now though, thankfully, I find myself with lodging. I’m going to live in a very nice new looking house with two rooms and a hanger and a big courtyard and electricity which by all rights should be outside my price range but the mayor bullied the landlord on my behalf. Speaking of the mayor, the amazing mayor, who’s not actually the mayor, but who’s counting really. The real mayor is a minister in Nouakchott, which naturally impedes him actually being a mayor, so the guy who is actually the mayor is his first assistant. He’s amazing, and we’re having a footrace in a month, so I’m in training… sort of.

Now travel to and from M’Bout is ridiculously expensive, particularly in the rainy season, to the point that if Cortney and I can’t get rides for free from nice people… we probably won’t go anywhere and we’ll just go completely stir crazy. Luckily, for now, there are a couple of incredibly nice guys who speak English working for the Portuguese company that’s building the road between Kaedi and Selibaby with M’Bout in the middle. They go back and forth from M’Bout to Kaedi at least a few times a week. Pedro and Eduardo. Eduardo is the factory manager for the base in M’Bout and Pedro is actually dating a PCV in Kaedi and he gave us all a ride the other day into Kaedi. Hopefully he won’t mind too much giving us a ride back too.

Alright what am I missing now… oh water. Yes water. There is a water tower in M’Bout, but nobody has running water… everyone gets well water delivered and stored in old oil drums which one then siphons into a bucket for a shower or laundry or cooking or whatever. The presence of the water tower makes me feel a little like someone is playing an extremely elaborate practical joke on us… which they’re not. Probably.

Okay I think that about covers enough. If you have questions, feel free to ask me but I won’t tell you that first thing because now it’s been built up too much and it’s really a personal excitement not meant for grand groups of too-interested people. Send me e-mails! Write me comments! Call me! Best of all send me packages...

Oh and every couple weeks I might make it on skype occasionally so my new skype name is: john.robert.tyler

I know, it's clever. Forgot my old password for skype so here with we go with a new identity.

Stage is all but over...

Or is it?
First of all I'd like to give a warm welcome to those of you reading my blog a little more closely this time around, you know who you are. And as always, a lovely hello to my family and friends who have not yet realized the futility of trying to get me to post pictures up here and have not yet gone elsewhere for their "living vicariously" and other such things. It's not that I haven't taken pictures, or that I don't want to post them, it's just that the liklihood of ever actually doing it with the combination of bad internet connections and slow cyber computers (and a peculiar streak of orneriness which is direct from my dear parents anyway so I don't know why you're so suprised) is something around the likelihood of ever getting a decent bit of cheese or glass of wine in this country... you know it happens, you've heard people talk about it, but it just never seems to happen to you.
So, those of you who are still with me, even though your stumbling hopes of pictures of the Mauritanian vastness are now crushed like a fire ant that just bit me on the ankle, welcome. Today is the last day with our host families, which seems to bring out the best and the worst of the whole host family exprience. On some level, everyone is a little more interested, a little more attentive, the kids more playful, etc, but there always has to be that one killjoy who asks you to give her pretty much everything you own at one point or another, "for remembrance". I'm sorry, but you just don't need my shoes, tent, fan, bag, clothes, flashlight, water filter, or bucket to remember me (I think my grandparents would agree that I'm unforgettable as is) and maybe you should just take the damn chocolate I gave the whole family and be happy about it? Hmmm? Okay, sorry to rant, I'm done.... now I'm on to language testing... which is mildly terrifying, swearing in... which is exciting... and the lovely possibility that it will take me weeks at my site to find a decent place to live... all while staying at a random person's house who i met four weeks ago for twenty minutes. Awesome. In all seriousness though, things are excellent. I had a fantastic family, relatively speaking, a very comfortable situation, I feel very comfortable in Hassaniya sometimes and I generally am looking forward to being back at the center for a week or so and I am very excited to finally get to my site and start doing my job (which probably consists of drinking tea at people's houses for the next six months... c'est la vie)
And now I've been ranting long enough and I'm not really sure even what I said but I know I've been typing for about twenty minutes and that is certainly enough of my cyber time. Best of luck to those of you doing things and such... and in the I-wish-these-were-immortal-words of my friend Meghan D from home "try not to get dead or smuggled"

Budget Cuts, Coups, and General Wrapping Up

So the coup was a non-event. That's true. But now there's kind of some international condemnation as people come to realize that there was just no justification for it and holding the president in jail isn't such a hot idea. A lot of countries have pulled all non-humanitarian aid from the country, luckily Peace Corps counts as humanitarian aid so we're not going anywhere yet. Budget cuts are evidently a huge issue right now across the board for Peace Corps, and they're just generally going to tighten the belt on us for next year significantly. What exactly that means is kindof hard to place, in concrete terms it means there's 5 Nouakchott days per quarter rather than 7, and site visit is kindof wiped off the roster for next year's stage (but they're requesting special dispensation). In general, they were expecting more of us to ET and we haven't and that combined with inflation, the falling value of the dollar, and Peace Corps as a whole freezing the budget creates a kindof ugly money situation here.
On another note, Model GMC started earlier this week, Cortney and I were the first to present a lesson and after talking to our audience we decided on American slang and got rave reviews. Never mind that we kind of mixed up a bunch of slang from California to New York from the 80s to now, it was still fun and at least one girl said Peace Out to me as she left, so I consider that a win. Everyone teaches one lesson and a computer lesson at a cyber next week monday or tuesday, so Cortney and I taught first and we're basically sitting around watching other people's lessons until next week.
I've also had the epiphany that the best thing ever to get in the mail is probably spice packets and spices and things like taco seasoning or chili seasoning and pretty much anything that can be made with eggs, oil, water, or pasta and looks like it has a ton of flavor.
Alright chumps, I'm off into the wild blue yonder. We're just 9 days from leaving our host familes and 13 days from swearing in. Inshallah. Just need to pass a language test before swear-in, which is the driving force behind everything at the moment. Hope all is well!

There was a coup

But so what?
At least that seems to be most people's reactions to it. I'm safe, don't worry about it. The president tried to fire some top army type guys who evidently were involved in the last coup and they, in turn, fired him. Poor guy is under house arrest with a private chef in the palace in Nouakchott. So it goes, this is Africa. Anyway, it was bloodless and generally shrugged at by most of the populace as far as I can tell, though it is a little sad to my American eyes because he was the first and only democratically elected leader in Mauritanian history... I think.
Anyway, that's about all that's news worthy and bloggable... I got a little sick once, but what else is new. It was hot, but that's not very interesting. I'm starting to be able to understand my family when they talk, which is good, but still can't really respond well so they think I haven't learned anything which isn't so good. They keep telling me words I already know and I'm kind of over living with a family at this point, ready for some privacy!
Let's see... what else.... can't wait to swear in, get this show on the road!

Okay, I know it's been a little while

But here I am writing a new entry to catch you all up. I'm posted to a town of about 21000 in the Gorgol region, it's called Mbout and it's the halfway point between two regional capitals, Kaedi and Selibaby. It's actually the same size or bigger than some of the other regional capitals, for example Kaedi is only supposed to be about 30,000. Kaedi is the regional capital of Gorgol and that's where my region mates will get together, one of the PCVs there has a house big enough to accomodate us when we come in every couple of weeks for a break from our sites. And the house has a puppy named Kelbi (which means "my dog" in Hassaniya) who's very well behaved and very good at hunting lizards. I'm posted to Mbout with Cortney Donnelly, another GEE volunteer and we're the first PCVs in the town for maybe three years. Three years ago there was a PCV there who ETed early, the year before that there was the same thing, and the year before that again. So basically Mbout has a reputation of chewing up and spitting out PCVs, but I'm not concerned. There's running water, electricity, and we're gonna be the first PCVs posted there with site mates. We're supposed to start a GMC (girl's mentoring center) which means we have to get the community to donate a space and pay for the electricity for it. After that maybe we can get a grant and bring in some computers, start applications for picking which girls can attend, and convince members of the community to take ownership and mentor girls there. Everyone I tell about it calls it a tough posting, and my APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director, the director of the GEE program inMauritania who picked Mbout for us, her name is Seeham) keeps refering to Mbout when she talks about difficult sites. It's gonna be a challenge, that much is obvious, but I can't imagine a better placement or a better country. At the end of my service I'll (hopefully) be able to point to a GMC with classes and mentors and sustainability and say "I did that" which is going to be gratifying and fantastic.
Further notes on Mbout. The road between Kaedi and Selibaby is really rough. It's terrible. Every car that goes between these two cities passes the night in Mbout and having Cortney and I placed there changes the dynamics of PCV travel in both regions Gorgol and Guidimaka. Basically they can crash overnight with us rather than having to worry about being stranded somewhere. The road is also improving by the day. There is a Portuguese company working from the edges in, they're working from Kaedi to Mbout and Selibaby to Mbout to build a new road. Furthermore there are permanant bases for the Portuguese in all three towns and the PCVs in these regions have made friends with some of the Portuguese who speak excellent English. All of this amounts to the fact that when I met Pedro, a geological surveyor or something, in Kaedi he told me he goes out to Mbout three times a week at least and he'll give me a ride whenever. Riding shotgun in a land rover beats being perched on top of a rice sack in the bed of a pickup any day, plus he makes the trip in half the time. There's also a rumor that the Portuguese base in Mbout has a pool.
On language, the Gorgol is a largely Pulaar speaking region but Mbout is about 60/40 Hassaniya and Pulaar. This means I'll be doing a lot of my work in French, and I'll probably have Hassaniya and Pulaar tutors once I get to site. I'm back in Rosso now with my CBT host family, and I promise I'll try to post some pictures soon (though I warn you I only broke out my camera today for the first time). In three and a half weeks we go back to the center for a couple nights and then swear-in is the 28th after which I'm off and away. I couldn't imagine a better country to be in, Mauritania is beautiful, harsh, hot, and friendly. Mbout is one of the hardest cities in this, one of the hardest countries. I couldn't ask for anything more.
A note on insects, a new second place for most irritating. Blister beetles. They're bugs ranging from a couple centimeters to over an inch long and they pee on your skin and cause a big painful blister to sprout, and if you're not careful when you pop the blister the run off causes a whole string of more blisters. But you also can't squish these little jerks, because that basically just makes them pee all over you, instead there is a cup and throw method to get rid of them. They beat out fire ants, but still can't hold a candle to flies.
Oh, and Alicia, yes the bike ride from Cape Town to Cairo is still on the to-do list. :)
Okay, so now let's see, what else? Anyone have questions? I got really sick during my site visit, fever around 102-104 for a couple days and nasty stomach problems, but now I'm mostly recovered. The sad part about losing weight here is that it's gonna take so much effort to put it back on. I'm down 21 pounds from the 172 I started out at, which is far from atypical among the male PCTs. The good side is that weight loss is kindof plateauing and I can start to work on reaquisition now and especially once I settle into a house at site. I personally think I'll live alone, and Cortney will probably live with a family based on our personal preferences. The town is big enough to accomodate both preferences. Oh, and I have a new address. Mail will get to the Kaedi post office faster than if you send it to Nouakchott and then the Peace Corps trucks it down to us. So for now:
John Tyler, PCV
B.P. 66 Kaedi
Mauritania, West Africa

And if you're going to send something make sure you write "Par Avion" and "Air Mail" on it a few times so it doesn't get stuck on a boat and end up taking a year to get here. Alright everyone, happy August. Talk to you soon.

Things I like

Paper letters, send me some because they're fun to get. I got three the other day, two from mom and one from Grandma and thank you both, it was fun to get mail.
A frisbee. I really want a nice ultimate frisbee of the kind that you get for like $20 at walmart, please.
Cliff bars. Peanut butter flavored. Sometimes protein is hit or miss when I don't like eating things like intestines or brains or other mystery organ meats with weird textures... so on those days cliff bars are great.
Visitors... but not until January. I don't actually have vacation time until January when I plan to enjoy some lovely days and nights in Senegal.
Today is the last day of class for phase 1, which ends officially on maybe monday or something. We find out our site placements Monday and take off for a week to visit them and our future region mates and to get a feel for what we need to do to hone our language skills which are ragged at best. So far, of the 77 pcts we started out with, we still have all 77 despite all expectations to the contrary. There is some speculation that we'll lose some people at site visit when people get to their sites and decide they can't live like that for two years or some other reason. I personally think we're just a badass group. Saturday those of us GEE PCTS who live in Rosso are taking a little field trip out to visit our rural counterparts in Mbalal, then we spend the next couple nights in the center camping out in tent city just like the first week. Today marks the one month from leaving home. One down, twenty-six or thirty-eight to go. :)
I love this continent, today has been a good day. I'm sorry if I don't describe things vividly, if I describe them at all, I just generally feel like I don't want to divorce myself from my surroundings by viewing them as new or different or fundamentally unusual. One little note though on a little critter that has moved high up on my irritating insects list: fire ants. The little bastards bite and scurry away and I'm left with a sharp and throbbing pain like a red hot needle in my skin for hours. Still not as irritating as flies though.
Okay you lot, best of luck with everything and leave me notes

On my life, the honeymoon

A free day! Yesterday! At last! And how it was needed. Spent most of the day relaxing and speaking in English, few suprises all pleasant here and there... but here's the cultural note you've all been waiting for.

Last night was a wedding, and to quell your fears or crush your hopes I'll let you know right now that it almost assuredly wasn't mine. It was a cousin of my family, someone I'm not sure if I've met yet. I arrived a little late and was rushed to a group of men, among many groups, all in their best boubous for the occasion and feasting on fresh meat tajines followed by couscous; it was a blessing after this past week of intestines and fish, make no mistake. After the meals, and there were multiple, with multiple bouts of greetings exchanged in the interim, there was some moor music and dancing. This particular music session was mostly centered around a very old woman with a drum and many more women around her who would start up a song and clap along while one or two people would get up and do some traditional dances. After many people had danced and a great number of songs had been sung, it was decided by general consensus that the toubab, me, must dance. I fended off these demands with the plaintive plea that I had left my daraa, my boubou, at home and was dressed in only my toubab clothes, not fit for traditional dances. No these mischeivous old women wouldn't get me up there in front of everybody, no not me. Moments later several other old women gathered a daraa from a teenager and a howli (scarf/head covering) from a man to my left and threw them over me and dragged me to the center. I was a hit, let me tell you. And the rest of the night was filled with not only greetings but people telling one another that the toubab had danced and them looking at me incredulously but gleefully, "You danced?" or with congratulations "You danced well! Zehn hatta!"
Today has been much the same, filled with leftover wedding food (yes!) and congratulations on my dancing.
By the way, my head healed up fine, I'm dressed in traditional clothing, and my local name is Bilal. Gotta run!

On the depressing discovery of a thermometer

Yes, I am online two days in a row more out of a desire to spend a half hour in the semi-air conditioned little room than an actual desire to use the computer again in such a short period of time. Mostly this was prompted by discovering the little thermometer my family has hanging on the house in the shade. It registered a lovely 43 degrees centigrade in the shade which, with the help of my handy dandy phone converter, I discovered is about 109.4 degrees fahrenheit. Damn! And this isn't the hot season or the hot part of the country! Damn!
On a lighter note I'm going to share with you all my little mishap from my first day at my host family about a week ago. I'd been sitting incomprehensibly among my new friends for about an hour and a half when I found myself with a pressing need for the bathroom. They call them Turkish toilets but really they're everywhere in the developing world, squat exercises. Whoo! Anyway, my family, ever helpful, gave me a rather large box of water to take with my to the toilet for the purpose of washing once I'd finished my business, it's all very technical and I don't want to bore you with the details. I neglected, in my care to avoid spilling the water down the front of my clothes, to note the diminutive size of the doorway to the toilet and attempted rather accidentally a karate head-to-concrete move. As it turns out, disappointingly, I do not have inherent martial arts skills and am not a secret ninja in disguise because the concrete won this little headbutting contest and I bled all over the place to the immense concern of everyone within a hundred yards. The PCMOs were called, my language facilitator (Sy Samba, he's amazing) showed up fortuitously moments later with my bags and I was rushed off to the PC center for some more poking and prodding by some folks on the phone with the PCMO in Nouakchott. It was determined that I would probably live and I got quite a lot of bandages and disinfectant and was returned to my family compound wherein the bleeding slowed and eventually stopped several hours later. Long story short, I am my father's son. I briefly contemplated a rematch with the concrete in which I would have the advantage of a running start but some friends remarked that this might not be the brightest idea and maybe I had brain damage after all. I reassured them by telling them it was the kind of idea I would have contemplated before too. Hey, at least i didn't get accidentally converted to Islam... oh yeah, it happened. Emily Nelson showed me up in first day blunders with that little gem.
Alright everyone, I'm off to language class, have a lovely weekend and don't forget to write!

Big suprise, I suck at blogging.

Why hello there friends and family, let me tell you a little bit about my Mauritanian experience. The most common question people ask me when I blow on tea that just came off a fire, or I sweat in the middle of the day, or I pull burned fingers away from steaming food is: "hami?" "It's hot?"
My family consists of lots of people whos relationships to one another is unclear and they seem to come and go for days at a time... with the exception of some of the children who are there all the time making trouble for the goats who tend to chew on my notebooks which are filled with notes from four days of Hassaniya training. Today is the fourth of july, happy independence America! The bulk of the PCTs (that's Peace Corps Trainees to you lay people, otherwise known as future PCVs, Peace Corps Villains) are gathering at the center for some good old fashioned American burgers... which may or may not turn out to be camel.
On a scale of most irritating insects I've ever encountered I'm moving Flies up to the top of the list, closely followed by Mosquitoes (which are much less annoying thanks to my lovely mosquito net tent) and scorpions and biting ants at distant third and fourth respectively.
People are constantly coming to greet me in my home, which is often hopping with visitors until one or two in the morning, and upon discovering that I have learned the greetings they then attempt to hold a conversation with me in Hassaniya until my blank stares and pleas in French convince them that I really am relatively ignorant. After that they sometimes attempt to hold conversations with me in French to varying degrees of success or they look at the others present who shrug and say "Bilal, mange!" (my Mauritanian name is Bilal, he was a slave that the prophet freed who became the first muzzein, the guy who calls people to pray. It's a big name around here. Mange is my poorly spelled rendition of the French command "eat") after which I try to explain that I normally don't eat two lunches and three dinners per day and that I really am full (ana shabaat is the first phrase I learned in Hassaniya, I'm stuffed). I think I might be the only American guy in this country actually gaining weight. Ridiculous!
Last night was my first duststorm, kicked up by a rainstorm that was rolling in hard and fast. It was beautiful, if only you could have seen it. This fantastic ominous cloud of swirling sand and dust rolling over the city like a steamroller, followed closely by a whopper thunderstorm.
Anyway, we're in Rosso for a few months of wicked six-seven hours language training days 6-days per week with the exception of a week around July 21-28 which are our visits to permanant sites.
Okay, last things last. A few explanations:
PCT- Peace Corps Trainee
PCV- Peace Corps Volunteer
CBT- Community-Based Training
CD- Country director, Obie Shaw
PCMO- Doctor
GEE- Girls Education and Empowerment
GMC- Girls Mentoring Center
AGFO- Agroforestry volunteers
EE- Environmental Education Volunteers
Ed- English Education Volunteers


I hope everyone is having a great fourth, I'm gonna go have some amazing camel burgers.

It's like Arabic but not..

So, tomorrow is off to host families with for CBT. I'm staying in Rosso in a little neighborhood not too far a walk from here. I'll be studying Hassaniya which is sortof a dialect of Arabic mixed with berber dialects and some of the southern languages. I tested high enough on my French to not study it any more (suprised?) and I'll just kindof pick it up as I go along... which should make anyone who knows Parisian French give me really weird looks. Anyway, been really busy and I'm sorry I can't e-mail so much. There are cyber-cafe's in Rosso though so I'll probably stop into one every week or so. We're gonna be back at the center for tech training in a few weeks too. Alright friends and family, be good and be safe now out there. It's a dangerous world after all ;)

P.S. Mom, the bomb? Maybe if you didn't give my car nasty nicknames it would be nicer to you :P. Ready to be a grandma?

P.P.S. Tracy, how's it feel to have an ankle-biter on the way? Has it sunk in yet?

P.P.P.S. Dad, you're gonna be a grandpa! I know you're playing it cool but really, you must be freaking out.