Ch.11

9-25-95

Rosso

Well, boy it has been an interesting week. After visits from Sam and Betsy, and a surprise visit from Carla Held, a Senegalese PCV Wes and I met in the Gambia, I just found out that tomorrow, my director is coming to visit. I really don't like the dude all that much, and I was even less anxious to see him after reading his letter this morning (enclosed.) His was a response to a letter I wrote a couple of weeks ago, where I expressed my severe disappointment at my soon-to-be status as the only village volunteer in Mauritania that wants a moto and has not gotten one. In my letter, I detailed the lack of safe transportation from my village to Rosso to buy food, the lack of a safe moto for Betsy and Sam nearby, and the fact that many motos are sent to volunteers without adequate safety devices such as tail-lights and mirrors, and that only recently have a few volunteers received new helmets with visors to block out the dust. Peace Corps requires that we wear adequate protection while riding or we will be sent home, yet PC Mauritania has failed to provide us with such and we are forced to break the rules, and endanger ourselves in the process. What gets me even more upset is the lovely attitude the director has taken towards me. Things are going alright in the village, my house is great, and I've got hopeful prospects for good work. But, these Peace Corps people are just pushing all of my buttons. I was originally planning to cook some fancy meal for him, but now I think he'll be eating oil and rice with a little dried, bony, rank-smelling fish. It really isn't fair what these guys are doing with me. If they'd just give me a decent moto like all of the other volunteers, I'd leave them alone. They're tired of arguing with me about it, and I don't think they've gotten the picture that I'm not going to give up on it, and I've got lots of time to write letters to them and PC/Washington and my senators and whomever it takes.

10-15-95

I got a letter from my paternal aunt that asked, "Trey, can those people even learn?"

Nope, those poor black Africans are too stupid to even learn, unlike all the brilliant Americans.

10-16-95

Things are really coming along here. I'm excited about my treadle pump project coming up in two weeks or so, and I am currently exploring improved cookstoves and oilseeds. I am also studying a heck of a lot about gardens, for I will be starting mine up soon and don't want to make a fool out of myself. I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyway, I'm really starting to enjoy my work. It is like I'm in the states looking for the best buys on the best computer system, with all of the research I am doing on stoves, pumps, gardens, and the like; but this stuff really matters a lot more than a fancy computer does. Instead of spending two thousand bucks for a computer that loads Windows in 45 seconds, these people may be able to buy a stove that cooks food thirty percent faster and uses fifty percent less wood. I feel like I can help make an improvement in these people's lives, and help the environment while I'm at it. I'm finally doing what I came here to do. And I'm having fun. I could enjoy this stuff as a career.

But, I miss you guys a lot. I'll have to find some way to do what I enjoy (career-wise) and get to spend time with the people I love as well. We'll just have to figure something out.

10-21-95

I went hunting yesterday with the French military living in Rosso. I missed on the first shot, but the next two claimed the lives of two birds, pigeons, actually. We eat them here. I gave them to my family. Those are the first birds I've ever shot. Its good to know that I'm still a pretty good shot. Betsy was impressed. We are getting along famously. She's having the usual troubles of settling in and learning the language, but she's having a lot better time that I did. She's been letting me drive her sweet new moto. I had it up to 120 km/hr in Rosso. Cool...almost 75 mph. I've got this old piece of shit Suzuki, vintage 1980, that won't crank. Maybe I'll get another bike in a couple of weeks.

I'm really excited about the work I'm getting into. I've been tilling up the dirt next to my house, for I'm going to start a garden there soon. The neighbors finally pulled up their peanut plants. I just read an article last week that methanol, when dilute, can help desert gardens really grow and lessen the amount of water they need by half. Supposedly, it is kind of controversial whether it really works or not, so I'm gonna find out. I'll let you know, and send pictures. (I never ended up trying it for various reasons, and I eventually found out that it didn't really work.)

I'm looking into cookstoves that save time and half the wood normally needed for cooking here. Anything to help save the forests here. I'm also getting ready to start building cement cisterns (100 gallon/400 liter) for my treadle pump project. 20 pumps, with piping and hose. It ought to help out a lot here-no more hauling water. And, they aren't expensive to run-you just have to replace the leather valves when they wear out.

(To Wes:) It was good to hear you say that you actually missed the slowness of life here in Breun-Darou. I really feel like I'm going to be doing stuff that matters, and I can do it without having to run around in the rat-race we are used to in the states. Life doesn't have to be that way.

I bought a new battery, and the solar system is working great right now. The mosquitoes are mean as hell, the days are getting shorter, and it is actually cooling off here. I slept last night with a sheet and blanket. Last night, about 8000 little bugs climbed in through the screens and swarmed around my lights. Not fun.

10-23-95

It's hot, I'm tired, I worked hard all day, all I want to do is relax and read, but all these damned bugs are climbing through the screens and converging on my fluorescent light. It is only 8:12pm, so I can't go to bed yet. I'm afraid to go outside because of the mosquitoes. Hopefully, they'll be going away soon. It has been cooling off-I've been sleeping with sheet and blanket, and even been closing two of my four windows.

Today I planted natural fencing around my garden-to-be. The tree is Euphorbia and I just cut long pieces and plant them in ground I've been watering heavily. I was perturbed when the school director, also my friend, told me that my fence wouldn't prevent anything from getting in.

Me: "But I've seen it a lot in Senegal." (an exaggeration)

Mr. Ba: "They don't have camels in Senegal." "But neither do we!?"

"Not now, but they'll come in winter to eat after their other food in the north is gone."

Now I'm going to have to buy barbed wire, as well, and find or buy something for posts. However, the Euphorbia I planted supposedly harbors insects that prey on garden pests, ejects toxins in the ground to prevent termites, and will make a good windbreak. Still, I was disappointed to find that I'll still have to purchase fencing. Oh well, far be it for my plans to work out exactly as I had expected them.

I've been reading a heck of a lot about gardens, in anticipation of my first one in my entire life. I'm currently researching mostly in African Gardens and Orchards, and it has a lot of great ideas on having good gardens using just the basics that are available to us. Yesterday, on a hunch, I tempted the fates of schistosomiasis and God-knows what else in collecting these water cabbage plants that grew prolifically where the high water came and are now getting left to die as the water recedes. I'm hauling them all up to my gardening area, where I'm mixing them in with the dirt for organic matter. I read after the fact that indeed water plants are a good organic fertilizer. Cool!

I like my family, but I'm still feeling weird about them. I gave them two pigeons the other day that I had shot, and when I saw Khady next, she asked, "Where are the bananas I asked you to bring me from town?" Maddened, I asked, "Weren't the pigeons enough? Are you mad that I didn't bring bananas too?" She replied that she wasn't mad, but that she didn't eat pigeons.

I thought it was nice of me before when I would give the family a kilo of bananas. They feed me, and I want to do something in return, but I'm sick of being asked for stuff.

Sometimes I hear it several times a day, "I'm your friend. Now give me _______!"

I hate it, but there seems to be no end to it.

Betsy hardly ever has anyone ask her for stuff. I feel like a jerk, and other volunteers see me acting like this and think I am a real jerk, but I'm just so sick of it. I don't know what to do. I used to be nice, and gently explain why I can't just give my stuff away (or take someone to America,) but I get tired of explaining and I'm back to "Screw off! Leave me alone!" I hear this is a common lament among PCV's but it doesn't make it any easier for me to deal with. I think maybe I'll put fencing and barbed wire all around my house, to cut off the passers-by who just randomly ask for stuff. That should help, some. One of these geckos has lost his fear of me. As I write, he is wandering around the light eating bugs. A nice symbiotic relationship, even if I can supposedly get sick if he pees in my food.

10-25-95

I'm sick with some virus and I've still got an earache that has been bothering me for two weeks now. I'm heading up to NKC tomorrow, in hopes of 1. Getting my $5000 check for the pump project, 2. Getting both packages of seeds, 3. Getting a moto, 4. Buying barbed-wire, 5. Finding methanol, 6. Eating and resting well. It'll be a miracle if all that happens, but it could.

11/1/95 Fayetteville, NC, USA

What a day! And talk about culture shock-I'm experiencing it right now. I'm in the Greyhound bus-station waiting for the 11:30 bus to Tallahassee. I can't believe it.

This place is kind of scary to me, and I'm worried about the bus ride: there is a white (punkers!) teenage couple, and a bunch of other black people. I guess waiting for the bus.

One guy has just left where he was sitting with me. He has been talking to me a bit, telling me about how the younger kids in this lobby are hustlers, that they're not going anywhere. He explained that he was just sitting the lobby wen he saw me, and thought I might be a nice guy to talk to. He said: "I said to myself, if that guy (me) wants to, he can tell me just to go away, or he can call the cop, or whatever." But he came over and sat next to me and rambled on about stuff, asked if I had sex with the natives in Africa, but didn't seem all that interested in what I had to say. He reminds me of many people in Mauritania, and I'll be highly surprised if he doesn't ask me for something.

For posterity, I'm here because my good friend Dawn, a fellow southerner and volunteer asked me to be. Her dad died a few days ago, she wanted to come home, but didn't think she could do it alone. Our PC Medical Officer, Barbara James, decided that she wanted someone to go with Dawn. My trip with her was very successful. She didn't drink anything (though she did snag about ten of those little bottles of booze-as any good PCV would!) Oh yeah-we flew first class twice: on "The Freak" (Air Afrique) to Paris, and from Philadelphia to Charlotte. The food was great, the seats were comfortable, and the booze was plenty. It was fun. Expensive imported beers are definitely becoming my drink of choice.

We had a great time in Paris-nearly a seven hour layover there. She knew it fairly well, so she took me to see (the outside of) the Louvre, Notre Dame, and lots of downtown. It was cold and foggy-I didn't get to see the Eiffel Tower. There weren't many people out, (it was some holiday) and we really had a peaceful visit. It was perfected by our encounter at a Patisserie, (Pastry Shop and Coffee House) where we ate croissants, the French people were really nice, and a guy in his 70's or so brought in his 100 pound yellow lab, and it barked, the owner wrestled with it, it sniffed people's food, and nobody minded at all. It gave me a new respect for the French when I found out that dogs are welcome in most restaurants and some department stores even. It turns out the man who brought in the lab is a Californian who has lived in Paris for thirty years. He was quite friendly, and is a painter.