10/25/94
Today we went to a village en brousse to see a windmill being constructed by PCV's. it is being made by three volunteers to be used in a co-op garden for irrigation water. They are making the bolts from filed rebar (metal/iron bars used to reinforce concrete.) The rest, they are improvising also, such as washers cut out of tire rubber, blades from 55 gallon barrels, and so on. It will be amazing if it works. It also interests me, so it could be something I do while here. As far as our assignments go, they are organized like this: qualified people are assigned to one of three groups here: Agro-forestry, Small Business Development, and Water Sanitation. In Water Sanitation, our motorcycles are donated to us by Global 2000 for use by us to aid in the eradication of Guinea Worm. We don't have to work in GW prevention if we don' want to, but we should because that why we got motorcycles. More than likely, we'll build a latrine for ourselves if our site doesn't have one, go from village to village to teach people how to prevent GW, and come up with a project or two to do on the side. The rest of our time will be spent learning the local language and talking to other people in the village, reading, and going on vacation. Every four months we will make a trip up to Nouakchott to get shots, get our paycheck, and drink hard liquor, and swim in the pool/beach.
It has been hot here-in the hundreds everyday. Your body sweats to keep you cool, so you have to keep drinking water. I don't have a girlfriend, and I don't see any prospects either. The girls are nice for the most part, but none are really my type (yet.) I haven't shaven in a week, and I am not sure if I will shave before we go to Nouakchott. We will all be out of deodorant soon, so I doubt if my friends or family would want to hang out with any of us soon.
We are all questioning what exactly it is we are doing here. We just don't know if anything we do will make a permanent difference here. UNICEF and the Italians have spent a lot of money on wells and hospitals and pumps and other things, but when they leave and their projects break, no one fixes them and they are not useful anymore. Is that what is going to happen to our projects?
I don't know what was sent in the other package, but I would like an Aerobie, speakers, Q-tips, pens, my razor and blades…Breyers Ice Cream.
10/29/94
Today was a bad day here. One of my friends, a water-san volunteer like me, and also a Charlie Ward fan, was saddened deeply to learn that a friend of hers had died of cancer at the age of 16. The girl was her best friend's sister, whom she had known for ten years. When it comes to things like that, this place sucks. It takes 10 to 30 days to get mail, and it is impossible to call to speak with anyone. Technology definitely has its place.
Tomorrow I find out where I'll be stationed for the next two years. It is really weird to think of it. I hope to be on the river, and near trees. Other than that, I really have no preferences. On Friday the 4th of November we will all leave to visit our sites for a week. I look forward to it, because brousse is a lot prettier than here.
Today marks my 4-week anniversary of my arrival in Nouakchott. It doesn't seem like it has been over a month since I last saw my family and friends there. I miss you
all. I am very thankful for the American and Mauritanian friends I have made here, because life without them and you would be unbearable. Time here has started to
fly by, just as it did in the states. The first three days here lasted longer than the last three weeks. Each night after school is out at six I go and help my friend Ben
water his garden. In my village I will have a garden, so I am learning now what to do with it. I usually come home around seven, and
now it is getting dark so I have to take a flashlight with me. Tonight I forgot mine and had to walk home in the dark. It wouldn't be bad but there are ruts in the streets up to a foot and a half deep from erosion, and there is
always garbage and animal shit in the streets.
The smell in the streets is always disgusting, reeking mostly of urine and often of carcasses. At night I am lucky because most of the kids aren't out on the streets to harass me. They always scream "Tubob" or "Tubok," depending on the language. It really does get old, so now I either ignore or chase the kids who scream at me. I do not enjoy being the freak show.
I've said some things before about my morning life here, but I figure if I write now in the morning it will 
give you a more accurate picture. I woke up this morning around
three when it started to get kind of cool. I sleep without a shirt on and sometimes in the middle of the night I usually pull my sheet over me. The lady that washes my clothes didn't feel good yesterday, so she didn't wash my clothes, and I
didn't have a sheet. I got out of bed and got my blanket out of my room and went back to bed. At three the crescent moon had just started to appear over the horizon. At 5:45 this morning, the two mosques started blaring out their
morning call to prayer. Though better than the 4:45 calls to prayer, its still too early for me (as you all well know.) At the call to prayer the man of the compound, somewhere in his 50's or 60's, leaves and the steel door slams.
The mosques have woken up all the roosters, who do their cock-a-doodle-do even though it is pitch black outside. I now become aware of the constant barking of dogs somewhere in town. Lucky for me, they weren't barking near my house last night,
or they would have kept me up all night long. The old man returns and cranks up his short-wave at 6:45. Usually, one of the 15 kids here starts screaming for some
reason or another. Without earplugs, I can't stand it and usually get up. Several times in the morning, a boy (or boys) come just to the inside of the compound and
start chanting something. They wait there and make noise until someone inside here beckons them in for a few camel biscuits or bread or rice or something. People are
always begging for something here, and no one ever says thank you. These people here remind me a lot of Mandy, (my paternal cousin.) After taking down my mosquito net, I bring my metal frame bed inside my room along with my mattress
(about 5" thick) and my other stuff. My French is always really rusty in the morning so I don't really say much other than goodbye (au-revoir.)
I probably shouldn't be writing now but I will anyway because I have to get this out tomorrow. My site has been determined: it is Breune-Gouyarde. I will be learning Wolof. The village is close to the large town of Rosso. I have heard that Rosso has real telephones, so I really look forward to talking to you this coming weekend. (I hope.) I am excited about my village, mainly because I will be close to the coast. As you look at a map of Mauritania, my village is on the Senegal River, approximately at where there is a dip to the right of Saint Louis in Senegal, and west of Rosso.
I am really tired right now. I lost my earplugs two nights ago and I haven't had much sleep. There are some visitors staying with us right now, and one is a baby who cried all night last night. Her, along with the four people who snore here, the rooster that crows at the moon which rose at 4, and the barking dogs made it impossible for me to sleep. Needless to say, lack of sleep doesn't make me happy. I really do look forward to actually talking to my family this weekend.
Hi guys, I wanted to finish this letter and get it off to you. I really enjoyed speaking
with everyone last week. We are all back here in Kaedi, except for two people. One volunteer, Bill Kennedy, quit and went home, though I may have already told you about it. The biggest news we have here is that one person, Kaylen, hasn't
come back from her site visit. She has been missing now for five days. She has either decided to stay in N'Diago on the Southwest tip of the country with the volunteer there and elope, she is sick, or something else has happened. The Peace
Corps is sending a truck to N'Diago to look for her today. If they don't find her today, well, I just don't know what will happen.
Well, Kaylen made it back today. She is fine, but tired. She left her site three days late because there was no ride and then two cars broke down and she spent the night on the beach. She ran out of water and had to drink some real nasty stuff and got sick the next day, but otherwise she was fine. We all plan to write Peace Corps and voice our concerns. (We ended up writing the Peace Corps as a group, but no one really did anything. It was a shocking introduction of things to come.)
>It turns out that Kaylen was blamed for the incident, and was treated as if she had stayed late on purpose. I don't think she did, but I would have certainly considered it had I been at a village on the cool beach far away from the smoldering ruins of Kaedi!
11/23/94
(from letter to sister:)
I got a shell(flamingo shells with their tops cut off) reading from a Maribou (a kind of person who has special powers or something.) He said I was going to get a letter from my sister, and it was going to have pictures in it. He also said you were going to get married, and we would all be very happy. I doubt if anyone would be really happy if you got married right now. (I did get a letter from her, and it did have pictures in it, and one of the pictures was indeed of her and a guy dressed up for the homecoming dance or something. Interesting, and mostly predictable.)
I am glad to know that school is going better for you right now. Unfortunately, like me, you find it more fun to socialize and play the guitar and have fun than memorize a bunch of stuff that's not much fun and seems meaningless. Much of it is, but we have to do it to get into college, graduate, join the Peace Corps and meet exciting, educated people. A lot of the time, school just plain sucks. But, because I finished, and studied something hard, I was able to come live in a place 5000 miles away from my family and friends and dogs and the Seminoles and decent food and television and A/C and I'm tired of writing about what we don't have here. Sometimes, I ask myself, "What in the hell am I doing here." I think all PCV's in Mauritania have to be crazy to stay here. Fortunately, I am crazy. To be honest, I am having some of the best times of my life right now. Its a lot of work and a lot of things are very hard here, but as we get used to it and we enjoy being with each other, its not so hard after all.
I am learning a lot here. Not only can I communicate fairly well in French now, I am learning Wolof now, a native African language, we are building/making
bricks and well pumps and cisterns to hold water in.
Today I gave an animation in Wolof about washing the tea glasses after people drink out of them. I didn't write the Wolof, I wrote the French and my Wolof teacher translated it for me. In this culture, when one person drinks the tea out of a glass, more tea is poured and another person drinks it. Sure you would like to drink after the Africans here, wouldn't you. I said in my animation that drinking from the same tea glass without washing it was like kissing the person you were drinking tea with. I then asked if everyone would like to kiss everyone that they drank tea with. They answered with an emphatic "dedeet!" ('no' in Wolof.) Here, the people are much too simple for complex things like, oh, pictures for instance. Two other people did an animation in which they drew and colored pictures of fruits and a fish. One person they asked didn't know what the fish was, thought the grapefruit was a glass of milk, and the banana was an eggplant. Why didn't I see how similar those things were?
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12/6/94
Well, life has been eventful here-where do I start? I moved in with Ben last week. I was tired of my other family, so the Stage Director, Sangone Mboup, told me to pack up my stuff and I moved the next day. I like it a lot better here. Ben's family
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We are all thrilled that stage is almost over, only 15 days left now. I can't wait to talk to all of you at Christmas time. I can't wait to get the hell out of here. I hate the kids here in the city, and I am tired of going to class. Plus, Ben and I have been unsuccessful in picking up chicks, which may be the root of all our problems. I haven't written much lately at all, mainly because we've been so busy. And, when we do have some free time, we just want to relax. I am either one-on-one with my teacher learning Wolof, working construction in Water/San, or socializing with the natives. It is impossible to get much done here without hiding from everybody.
P.S. I have received about 40 pens. However, I haven't gotten much candy, hint, hint!
Stage conclusion:
I got sick with strep throat and went back to Nouakchott to see Barbara about three days before stage was over. It was good to get the hell out of Kaedi.
My favorite Africans from training were my Wolof teacher
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The volunteers were an eclectic group. I had been warned by some of my southern conservative relatives that the only people who joined the Peace Corps were gays and drug-users, yet I was surprised how normal most of the bunch actually was. Now, it is true that they were different: there were drug-users and people in the bunch who were attracted to those of the same sex, but probably no more so than the American population is composed of. I was however shocked on my first full day in country, when we took the eleven hour bus ride to Kaedi from Nouakchott. More than half of the female volunteers didn't shave their armpits nor their legs. Before then, I don't know if I had ever seen a girl who didn't shave. Are these people French or something?
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