Attention New (and Prospective) Volunteers!

Basically, I spent the time to put this website together for people like you, who have something to gain from my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I share it with pleasure.

I have talked to a few of you since I put up this website, and in response to some questions I have had from you, I have put together this special section just for you.  To get a better understanding about the real situation in Mauritania, check out my story, Rice and Sugar Cane.  I did the best I could to summarize my thoughts in my Final Site Report. It is probably something that would be useful to you if you printed it out and took it with you, whether you go to Mauritania or another country with Peace Corps.  If you have the time, read my Peace Corps Story.  The more educated you are before you go, the better chance you will have of making a positive difference when you get there. Thoughts is a section I wrote especially for you new volunteers.

Before you go, you should take some things to make your service there a lot more fun.  I am providing you with a list of some of the things I either took with me or wish I had.  RPCVs, feel free to email me your suggestions.

Utility Items:

Fun Stuff: (these items will help get you in with the kids and therefore their parents!!!)

  • Musical Instruments
  • Jump rope
  • Playing cards
  • Jacks, any other games easy to take (I had Monopoly)
  • Crayons
  • Glitter
  • Elmer's Glue
  • Legos
  • Children's Books
  • Nature Books

For you:

  • Pictures of family, friends, places you like
  • Map(s)

Luxury Items:

Utility Items:

  • Chlorine test sticks:  Bottles of these test sticks can be purchased at Wal-Mart and other fine stores, especially pool supply stores.  One of the biggest problems you will face is the proper dosing of liquid bleach to kill the bad things in your water.
    1. Use them to ensure your own safety
    2. Train villagers the proper amount of bleach to put in their drinking supplies. (There is no substitute for chlorine measurement-unfortunately, development workers often don't know how much bleach to add because of variances in the quality of the water and strength of available bleach (or Eau de Javel)
       
  • Soil test kits: Like the chlorine test sticks, a simple and cheap means of measuring soil quality is available at Home and Garden stores.  I bought several kits for my last trip to Africa for about $2 per kit. These were great, and Khady, my village mom, was very excited that she could use it to test the soil herself to determine whether it needed potash, nitrogen, phosphorus, or a pH adjustment.
    1. Use them to grow a better garden for yourself
    2. Gain respect from villagers
       
  • Drip Irrigation kit from Chapin Watermatics.  I can not stress enough how wonderful this is.  I returned to Mauritania in 1998 to introduce this cheap system to my village and Peace Corps.  See my article, Introduction to Drip Irrigation.
    1. Easy to pack (small bag)
    2. Cheap (was $5)
    3. Extremely efficient: two five-gallon buckets each day can water and fertilize up to 100 plants
    4. Efficient use of water, time and fertilizer
    5. Eat better (grow a great garden!)
    6. Impress villagers (this technology gives great bang-for-the-buck!)

"Where There Is No Doctor" in French, or whatever language is spoken nationally (PC gives you your own copy in English).  I say this because I gave my village mother a copy of this book in French before I left, and she read through it constantly researching her own health needs and problems.  It may have been one of my greatest contributions as a volunteer. I don't know where to order it, but you can find out by contacting the
Hesperian Foundation.
1919 Addison Street, Suite 304
Berkeley, CA 94704 USA
tel:(510) 845-1447, Fax: (510)845-0539
e-mail: hesperian@igc.org

Fun Stuff:

  • Anything fun you can take with you will make your life immensely more enjoyable.  African kids are no different than kids anywhere else, and they enjoy playing games.  Balls, Frisbees, Lacrosse Sticks (check this out!), whatever you can think of will be great.  My girlfriend, Dana, suggested taking crayons and art materials, and work with the kids to create their own books about their lives, and even to take oral histories from their parents to write about.  Also, with some musical instruments (purchased or hand-made) and a book of English children's songs, you could teach the village children some English and also encourage them to make their own music.  I think these are wonderful ideas, and wish I had thought them up myself.  Anyway, the more creative you are, and the more fun things you can do with kids, the better the experience you will have. I promise!

Luxury Items:

  • Speaking of fun, a digital camera, laptop computer, and good color printer will be pretty high on my list the next time I join Peace Corps.  The possibilities here are endless for work and play.  A laptop by itself is quite useful for those who want to write down your thoughts.  They will be invaluable to you once you return home, and maybe you'll even want to outdo me with your own website.
  • Before you go to Mauritania, be sure and open up a Yahoo email account.  For some reason, it opens much quicker than Hotmail, which sometimes never worked for me at all when I returned to find CyberCafes in Africa in the summer of 1998.  Much of Africa still leaves something to be desired, so be sure and print up a hard copy of what you might like to read off of the web for when you get there.  In 1998, all of Mauritania was served by a 64kb line, which is just incrementally faster than a 56k modem.  This line was shared by ~1000 subscribers.  Basically, if everyone in the country was online at the same time as you, a page that took one second for you to load here at home could take 17 minutes to load over there.  Hopefully it has gotten better now!!! (Inshallah!)
  • The solar panel I owned was great.  Please read my article about it.
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