Site Visit

So… this blog post will be a longer one. This last week I traveled to my new site. It took a while to get there, but some of the time was spent stopping for tea and food and such. Fortunately, there are not many bugs there, and there’s not even a need to sleep in a mosquito net!

So… day 1 we drove… pretty much the whole day because we had to stop a lot. We drove through the capital (Nouakchott) and it is a whole new world! There’s paved roads all over, roundabouts, tons of cars, and fewer donkey carts. Unfortunately we were not able to really stop on the way up. So we got up to our sister-region later that night and had dinner and just hung out with the current volunteers there. Upon arrival… they had… get this… candy!!!!! Real candy!!!! I was so excited!!!! There were sweedish fish and sour patch kids! One of the ladies had just returned from France and loaded up on candy and even m&ms. Although I’m not usually a fan… I definitely had to make the exception! Another great thing about staying at the PC house is that as soon as you walk through the doors we can wear shorts and a tank top! EXCELLENT!!!!!J No more long skirt for me!!!!!

Next day my site mate and I were able to sleep in because we didn’t have to do protocol in the sister region. That we had in our own region the day after (more to come on that later). So after that we had a meeting with our community contacts, but our community contacts couldn’t make it because we didn’t have their phone numbers. Oops. Oh well. It was a good meeting, I had hoped they would have been there, but not too much you can do about that. It just kinda covered expectations of volunteers and counterparts of each other. It was good to see that for the most part we were all on the same page – especially to keep religion out of the discussions.

The next day we were in our town to open up our bank accounts and do protocol. Basically you go and say hello to the Wali (regional representative), Hakem (security man), and Mayor of the town. We also met our counterparts and went to visit the health center because the other girl was in health. Apparently we set a new record for fastest protocol ever because we accomplished all that in a record 4 hours!!!! Whew. Fast. And yes… I even braved the mulafa for those 4 hours (only), and by the end I was just very very angry. I’ve been told that if you wear the mulafa for the protocol stuff they tend to think you wear it all the time as opposed to only for protocol. So it’s worth the 4 hours of heat attack, tripping, confiningness. So later on we were walking around looking for houses and some kid threw a rock at me. We’re not talking a small pebble… but a huge rock! Hit me square in the back. I turned around and looked back… but there was no one there. So I walked back and turned the corner and I saw 4 16yr ish old boys walking away snickering and checking around their shoulders. So I go after them and I’m scolding/yelling at them get back here right now etc. and they took off running! So the other girl I was with hiked up her skirt and took off after them. Well… as it turns out running in tennis shoes and pants is easier than flip flops and skirt. We never did find the kids, but there were a ton of adult Mauritanians who helped us try to track them across town. It was a serious man hunt for about a half hour. So if nothing else… pretty much the whole town knows about the incident and they were pretty upset too… so if they do find the kids they will get a beat down.

So then we went back north to where all the other PC peeps were because our town is a little empty with the summer months. And… there was talk of going to an oasis too!!! Unfortunately… something I ate or drank in the few days previous did not agree well with my stomach and I got pretty sick. Bummer. But it only lasted a few days and it certainly did not stop me from hiking to the oaisis!!!!! Let me share with you a little bit about traveling in Mauritania. We traveled in what is called a taxi brusse. It was an old Mercedes car. You might be thinking… oh that’s not that odd. Well… when you travel in this compact car… you compact yourselves. You buy out “seats” for the journey, and I’ll bet you’ll never guess how many “seats” there are!!!! Well… there’s 6. That’s not including the driver. You put two people in the front seat (always have the window open so that the one on the side can lean our as much as possible). Then there’s 4 people across the back seat. And yeah, that’s not so bad for the first 15-20 minutes… even hour. But here’s the deal… that’s how you travel for days here. Fortunately my ride was only 2.5 hours.

We did go swimmingto the oaisis the next day and it was fantastic!!!! We walked back into a canyon where there was a nice lakeish water body. I went climbing up on the canyon walls and such to get a better view… and it was beautiful in a word. So then we spent the night out at an auberge in the area, but I didn’t sleep real well.

We went back to the oaisis the next day again to spend more time. Just hanging out by the water… so very relaxing and much cooler. We did hike back out in the heat of the day, but I had gotten all my clothes wet beforehand in anticipation of the heat. At the end of the 20-30 min hike out my clothes were dry. Yep, that’s how it works. So we got back to the PC house and someone had a thermometer, and had us all guess the temperature. By that time it had cooled down significantly and there was a nice cool breeze running through. It was just very pleasant outside. So what was the temperature you ask???? It was 105. Who’d of guessed??!?!?!? Well.. I think the US winters are going to be pretty brutal when I return.

So then we headed back to training via Nouakchott. And this time we stopped. As I said earlier… it’s like a whole new world there! We went to a restaurant and had… PIZZA!!!! So excited… and ICE CREAM!!!!!!! WOW!!!!! I went across the street to buy some more water for the road, and the boutique there was about 10x the size of others. There was so much there!!!!! It was amazing. I kinda just spun around in circles marveling at the selection available!!!!

So that’s about it…. Phew that was a long one. Later taters.