Adventures on the RIM

It is always hard to say goodbye.... The tears rolled down my cheeks as I thanked my family one last time. They were tears of appreciation, appreciation for a family that has opened their arms to me so widely. What will I have to do in the future to repay the kindness that has been shown to me? Here’s hoping I’m up to it....

I left Selibaby about two weeks ago. My last weeks were filled with goodbyes and thank-yous. The last few days brought with them our replacements. There will be three new volunteers in Selibaby next year. The adventure will continue. They are not us, and nor should they be. They will find their own Selibaby, their own friends and families. Hopefully they will find the same joy that I found.

After I left Selibaby I spent a few day in Kaedi helping out at the training sessions. The new class is so very new. To look back and think that only two years ago we were in their shoes was pretty mind blowing. Language skills, culture awareness, comfort level, you grow so much in two years.

The COS (Close of Service) process in Nouakchott is very straightforward. You need to write a capstone document to serve as the only official record of your Peace Corps work. It was a nice walk down memory lane. There have been many adventures over the last two years....

This evening I will fly home. Home will be upstate New York to start and then out to Michigan to finish my degree. Thereafter, who knows.... another adventure.

Thank you to all that have sent packages, letters, and emails; they really meant a lot. Thank you for reading my stories and putting up with my lengthy posts. If you want to get a hold of me by email is just my name, Brock Emerson, at gmail.com – all lowercase, no space. In the next few weeks I will be posting the rest of my pictures online. Also, a fellow volunteer made a Céréamine Video. Maddie and I were beside ourselves, who ever thought that Céréamine would grow as it has... neither of us for sure. Hopefully by the end of September the video will be downloadable off the Céréamine web site.

Again, thank you.

Much Love,
Moussa Ba
Brock Emerson

You’re lying there, deep in sleep. Your thoughts are in another world. Maybe this evening you are cutting with your favorite friends from Grey’s Anatomy, or maybe you are spending the day on the beach with a beautiful blonde, the options are endless. Then you feel one drop. You move a little bit, fighting waking up. The second drop comes and your brain switches on. RAIN. A few light drops don’t mean anything. You sit up. You survey the situation. Is there a storm building, or is this just a few drops. You look east. The lighting streaking across the sky illuminates a huge front coming your way. You jump up and drop your mosquito net onto your mattress. You half your mattress so you can carry your bedding and mattress in with one fell swoop. A gust a wind blows. The temperature drops. You fidget with the door and you are safely inside. You set up camp inside judging the temperature as to asses the need for the fan or not. Five minutes later you are back in the O.R. scrubbing in on an advanced procedure. From times to time you are woken up by a clap of thunder that shakes you and your mud house to the core. The rains have come. Al’humdalah.

Growing up back east I have seen some pretty fierce storms. Nor’easter that dump 2 feet of snow is a matters of hours, summer thunder storms that roll up though the mountains but none of them can compare to an African storm. They come in a blink and are just relenting. The first real storm happened three or four days ago. It came around 4 O’Clock in the afternoon. It was amazing. My host brother was playing soccer out in the rain and he kept on inviting me to play. I was held up in my house but I really had to pee. I thought, why not. I took of my shirt and walked over to the latrine (open air) to do my business. At that point I was soaked to the bone so I joined the mud soccer game. It is as if you are standing in a shower; that is how fast the rain is coming down.

The roads turn into rivers and depending on how much erosion has occurred they can be chasms. The morning after the storm I was walking around and I saw a puddle engulf a donkey cart. There was probably a depth of two and a half feet in this puddle.

I have slept inside for the last two nights. Two days ago the rains came at 5:30AM. I packed up my stuff and just sat in my door way watching the sheets of water fall. Around 6AM my eyelids finally closed and I went to lie down. I slept to 7:30 that morning, truly a rarity. Last night the rains came earlier, around 11 PM. I had just drifted off to the dream world when I felt the blessing of rain. The routine is old hat at this point; I can disassemble my bedding in a quasi-sleep state.

The rains are great. Everyone is happy, minus those that need to be somewhere NOT in Selibaby. Everyone is out in their fields turning the soil and planting. Kalidou planted his entire garden this weekend: okra, peanuts, and corn. It’s a shame that I won’t be here to see it in full bloom but hopefully everything will sprout before I leave. I joked with him that he would need to get more kids to harvest the field. He laughed and said that he would get a second wife.

The rains aren’t all fun and games. Houses leak, houses fall down, roads close, things erode, the afternoons are obscenely humid, and BUGS BUGS BUGS all suck but nothing is perfect. The clouds patterns are breathtaking and any change is welcomed here in the land of hot and clear skies every DAY. I’ll take the bad with the good, it will make the last weeks at site more interesting!

Stay Wet.

Yesterday Sambala, my neighbor and good friend, yelled over the fence, “Did you forget? Aren’t you coming over? It is 7:30. Come over with Yaya.” I didn’t forget, but I didn’t really understand either. The day before Sambala told me that everyone was coming over after the 7 oclock prayer call and I should come too. I said sure, why not. I don’t need to know why I am going somewhere to go there.

Sambala literally live, ‘a stones throw’ way. There were mats put out for everyone to sit on and there was a group of women sitting on mat in front of Sambala’s parents house. When I saw that I knew what was going on. It had been forty days.

Forty days had passed since Sambala’s father had passed away. I knew that Muslims gather forty days after the death but I didn’t know more than that. Within five minuets droves of people streamed in, there had to be fifty people when we started to eat. We all had couscous and meat and then in an instant all the chit chat stopped. It was time to pray. Everyone opened their hands and prayed. When the prayer was finished everyone got up and went home. After the exodus there was a core group of eight guys sitting around. That was my neighborhood. These were the guys that hung out in front of the boutique. These were my first friends here in Selibaby.

Hourouna, one of my best friends here, and I left about ten minutes later. On our way out I asked why we gather forty days after the death. He told me that after forty day we gather and offer one last sacrifice for the deceased. We pray for forgiveness of his sins and the period of mourning is over. I walked with Hourouna to his house (three doors down from my house) and on my way back to my house I ran into Sambala. I thanked him for inviting me and letting me share in the experience. He thanked me for coming and said that now he could leave the house, start working again, and get on with life.

What do you give the kid that has nothing? On a certain level, anything would be good. But on a deeper level, you feel like you need to rise to this challenge and really give a great gift. Case in point, my host brother, Mahie. Mahie has lived with me for two years now. Last year, he and my host cousin both took the BAC (end of the year test that determines if you pass High School or not). Moctar, my host cousin, passed last year and spent this year at the University of Nouakchott. Mahie didn’t pass last year so he spent this year in Selibaby working on his specific course work; the BAC is topic sensitive, there are four tracks, French-Sciences, Arabic-Science, French-Letters, Arabic-Letters.

This year Mahie passed his BAC. We are all really proud of him. He passed the French-Science track. This year there was a country wide 12% passing rate. So how to you congratulate him? Money? Maybe, but nobody likes giving money- it sends the wrong message. I have some things that I was going to give him as a going away present but if I used them now I would haven’t them in a month and a half. Hmmmm
Then I remembered that I had an extra disc-man around. I knew right away that this was the gift for him. I dug out the extra CD player, found some working batteries and headphones, and gave them to the new graduate. Sure enough within minutes people were coming from all over with their CDs to play. It is common for people to have CDs with MP3s on them (NO idea where they come from or what they do with them) and I am not sure that any of the CDs that they tried worked.

I then gave Mahie a truly personal gift, Tommy. He won’t understand the words, but most Americans don’t know what they’re singing about either. I told him that it was Rock N’ Roll and that if he listened to it every day his soul would grow. Maybe a little over dramatic, but it is still a killer album.

So what do you give to the kid that has nothing? The best Rock Opera in the world.

Some days it just happens. Yesterday it happened. You never really know when or where it is going to happen; I guess that is one of the reasons that you have got to just be here.

Currently Brandon and I are holding down the Selibaby fort. Cailin (our Ed volunteer) has left for NKT where she will do a third year. Molly and Suzanne are in Kaedi doing the whole ‘meet and greet’ with the new class of volunteers. I am still very close with Suzanne’s family and just because she isn’t in town doesn’t mean that I don’t have visiting responsibilities. With no World Cup to watch yesterday I figured it was as good as any time to visit. I packed my little man purse with a few things I needed to read and around 10 I hiked the two kilometers out to Khalidou’s without of clue of what the day would hold.

Abdou, Khalidou’s eldest son and probably my best friend here, has been building a house. To build a mud house is pretty simple. You make the bricks (the brick holes became our fish ponds), build the walls, and then slap a roof on the thing and you’re done. Well Abdou’s house has been waiting for the roof part for over a month now. Lots of houses are in a stage of half construction here, but it being the third of July and the rains on the way, it isn’t a very good idea to have a mud house without a roof. Yesterday Abdou got his roof and I got to witness something that warmed my heart and almost moved me to tears.

When I got out to Khalidou’s he was busy mixing a 6’ by 20’ by 2’ batch of dirt, straw, and donkey shit. Wet it down, turn it, and repeat- tough work. Abdou was out in the bush cutting down halatropis trees. Halatropis is broad leave weed tree that all over the Guidimakha. I sat down and started to get though my articles, chatting with Khalidou and jumping up to stop any leaks on my side of the mud pie. After all the mud was moist Khalidou said we were good till the afternoon when we would throw it up on the roof.

Late morning turned into lunch time. Abdou had returned from the bush. He had cut tree loads of halatropis and the pile was about 10’ wide by 6’ high. Lunch was rice and fish. Though I love Suz’s family, they really can’t cook very well. One thing that you learn really early here is that you eat to fill your stomach, not to find culinary delight. After lunch Abdou made tea and I asked what the afternoon held. He said that after tea we would throw all the halatropis up on the roof (the rafters had been up for a few weeks). There after all the women of the neighborhood would come and throw the mud up on the roof. Ok, now women do a lot of stuff but I just couldn’t see this happening.

After the second cup of tea we started working. Abdou and his cousin were up on the roof and Khalidou, Achita (Suz’s host mom), all the kids, and I started throwing branches up to Abdou. The roof is probably 10’ to 12’ high, in no means impossible but after 30 minuets of chucking branches up you’re pretty tired. From time to time Khalidou would go inside and look for bare spots. He would yell up to the boys and they would plug the spots. After about 45 minutes we were done with the halatropis.

As if there was some grand schedule to all of this, right when we finished the halatropis the men of the neighborhood started showing up. They would go to the mud pie and take a melon size chuck of mud, roll it on the ground two or three times to give it some shape and then toss it up. I tried to make a ball or two but that wasn’t happening. I soon found my place as an intermediary. There is a 5’ cement wall on the back side of Khalidou’s property. That was my launching post. The ball makers would bring the balls to the three of us and we would toss them up to the guys on the roof. Because I was on the back side of the house I couldn’t see what was going in the main compound. After 30 or 40 minutes we worked though most of Khalidou’s mud pie. More than half of the roof was covered now and we had to start throwing from the front of the house. From the wall on the back side of the house I had only seen men working but when I walked around to the front side of the house I saw the female work force and I was blown away. There were 20 women racing to the mud pie and back to the house. They would give a plate of mud to the throwers who would hurl it up to the team on the roof and race back to do it again. It was amazing, men and women together there were 50 people there. You couldn’t put fifty people in Abdou’s new house! The women were laughing and smiling. The young boys were bickering over the Brazil-France game. The men were making balls and loading the women up. The little kids were play like frogger trying to from on side of the yard to the other without being run over. And then there was the Peace Corps Volunteer, taking it all in.

Back home I have helped a few people put their roofs on. It may be a rural thing, but when you know someone is putting a roof on you grab your hammer and head over. It was funny to see that even though the materials are a lot different here, the sentiment is the same. Communities build roofs. When all the work was done (maybe it took an hour or so to toss all the mud up) everyone left as quickly as they came. Instead of beer for the workers Achitou made a 20L batch of Zrig (sweetened, water downed milk). A cup a zrig, a friendly wave, and they compound was empty.

There are no less than 150 mud houses in Elamine (Khalidou’s neighborhood). Walking through the neighbor later that night with Abdou I relished in the idea that each roof was a community undertaking. Some times you just have to be there at the right time, some times it just happens- through all the cynicism and bullshit some times you hit it at the right moment and you remember why you came to Africa, why you did Peace Corps, and how happy this place really makes you.

July 29th marked two years in country for my group. Peace Corps is almost over. Talk about a learning experience. You come in clueless and optimistic. More than not, you leave cynical and realistic.

PC is a machine. The volunteers are the cogs. We have a two year life. After that we are replaced with new parts. Case in point, the new class arrived yesterday. But I don’t know if that ‘machine’ is so bad. I can’t save Mauritania. Hell, I don’t even know if Mauritania needs saving. I can come and hang out for two years, teach some people how to make a nutritious flour, teach some others how to dig a fish pond. My host family now uses soap to wash their hands at lunch time (for some reason no soap at dinner time). But maybe that is the need for the machine. My family needs a new volunteer to tell them to use soap at dinner too.

Development takes time. When I think about US history that most amazing thing is how fast it happened. We developed really fast. I have ranted on about how PC is a cross cultural organization before but maybe that was too harsh. Mauritania isn’t a walk on the beach (don’t be fooled by the sand), but it will develop. The US interest may be in shaping how it develops- Senegal or Algeria? So they send me and my friends to live among the people. One thing is for sure, I know what living in West Africa for two years is like. One hurdle to development here in Mauritania is Allah. Yes, God. Everything is based on his will. Islam drips with blind faith (and I am not talking about the Rock and Roll band). Faith- agrh. If you ask a Mauritania if their country will develop they will answer, Insh’allah. If God Wills. God will controls all. There isn’t a single thing that I have come across in my two years here that man has control over. It makes me want to scream some times. We don’t get sick because we wash our hands before we eat or drink bad water NOT because we are in or out of the favor of some higher being. It is possible that Mauritania at the level that it is because since independence the people have been just waiting around to see how ‘God’s will’ will play out.

I think I have learned patience. I hope it is patience and not apathy. This past month Khalidou and I invited 20-30 people to the fish ponds for an open-house of sorts. I put together the schedule and the invitation, talked with the authorities in town, and did all the logistical planning that I could for the day but I left one thing up in the air- lunch. I talked with Khalidou and we agreed that we didn’t want to ask PC for money (less than 30 bucks) for the event seeing that we had done everything else without an outside source of money. Our idea was to get someone in the community to donate the food. It didn’t seem that strange and Khalidou was behind the idea. I left that up to Khalidou who in turn left that up to Allah. Well Allah didn’t end up coming though for us. One the day of the event Suzanne and I split the cost of the food. Maybe Allah did come though, I mean we did eat. Still, I don’t buy it. Or, in this case, I did buy it.

Back at the Emerson’s home we say (just like old timers), “different strokes for different folks.” I don’t think Islam is for me, too much faith. I like science. I like proof. I like cause and effect. I am sick because I took a shit and then I didn’t wash my hands with soap. PC gives you a lot of time to think about stuff and I have to say after two year of deep thought on faith, religion, and the lot has left me further away from any kind of conclusion. I’ve got two more months here. Hopefully I will be enlightened during that time, Inch’allah.

The US has many wonderful attributes. One of the things about Peace Corps is you start to defend things about America that you never thought you would. PC service really makes you think about is how wonderful America is. It is like that old adage, “you don’t know what you have till it’s gone.” But as you take a step back and America’s attributes come up in bas-relief, they all seem to be dwarfed by its shortcomings that seem to tower like the Rockies.

As I write this is there is dancing in the streets of Accra. All over Ghana people and hugging and dancing for joy. I am sure only a few of you have any clue of what I am talking about, but Ghana just beat the US in the World Cup…

Let me take a big step back. The World Cup has been up and running since June 9th. The first round of the tournament is a round robin between four team groups. Italy, Czech Republic, and Ghana were in the US’ group, Group E.

The disappointment started with our first match. The Czech Republic rolled over us 3-0 in spite of the fact that we had possession of the ball more then 65% of the time (Funny thing, it doesn’t matter if you have the ball if you don’t shoot the damn thing!). The team looked slow, old, and bad. Czech scored with such ease in the first five minutes of the game that you were made to wonder if the US players were playing ‘American’ football instead of ‘World’ football.

Our second match was against Italy. If the US wanted to have a chance at going on to the round of 16 we needed a win or a tie, neither of those things were that probable but it was a day for upsets. Ghana, a team whose odds of winning the World Cup were the same as ours (1:100), beat Czech 2-0.

If miracles were in the air maybe the US could grab one as well. The match started out well. We were pushing the ball up the field and fighting for balls all over the field, not bad at all. Our first break came when an Italian play got evicted for throwing a mean elbow to the face of one of our forwards. Now the US had an 11 on 10 player advantage. Italy scored first despite our man advantage. Soon after a US player got evicted for a risky slide tackle- with him went our man-up advantage.

Near the end of the first half, our real break came. On a corner kick we kicked the ball over the mob in front of the goal and the ball happened to come down on the foot of an Italian defender trying to get out of its way. Just like in bad sports movies, the ricochet went right into the net. The US had scored it first goal in the 2006 World Cup. Hell, a point is a point. Half time. The announcers were going while. The second half would be 10 on 10. The US was tied with Italy. Could the excitement and the upset from the early match in Group E carry over?

Shortly into the second period (less then five minutes) we suffered a devastating blow. Another one of our players got evicted. This time it was for a flagrant foul but because he had received two yellow cards (think fifth foul in basketball). Now America had to hold a faster, stronger, and all in all better team from scoring for the next 40 minutes, and we only had 9 guys. The 40 minutes that followed filled me with patriotic pride. There was one moment when the US player actually knocked the ball past the Italian goalie but was called off-sides and the point was taken back. At the end of the second period everyone was shocked- America had held Italy to a 1 to 1 tie.

Beyond the American pride our tie with Italy brought, it also created a situation where America could go on to the next round of the World Cup. If Italy beat Czech (they did), the winner of the US-Ghana game would go on to the round of 16.

So two o’clock rolls around and it is game time. Here in Africa life stops at game time. It doesn’t really matter who’s playing, many people will watch any match, but when an African team plays you won’t see anyone on the streets. It is social. Everyone is a coach and there is laughing, shouting, and cheering with every match. Personally I was torn. I would love to see the US advance but the other 4 African teams had already been eliminated; if there was going to an African team in the round of 16 it would be Ghana.

The game started out bad. This wasn’t the US team that held Italy, this was the team that lost to Czech. From what my untrained eyes can see there are two camps. You either have a really amazing shooting team, like Germany, and slowly bring the ball up and then rip amazing shots from the outside, or you have a team like Brazil that is lighting fast and you punt the ball down the field and your attackers just blow by the defenders and score. The American team is slow. Ghana is fast. In spite this obvious fact, the US tried to the ‘out-run’ thing for the entire match.

Well Ghana scored first (there was never a point in this World Cup when the US had a lead). At the 44th minute (the first half is 45 minutes plus additional time- usually 2 or 3 minutes) our boys did it. They scored. They put all the aspects together and actually put the ball in the net, no help from the other team this time. WOW! Could it happen?!? I started to say to Ben that this was a good thing, you know, going into half time tied- but I held my breath. There was still 4 minutes left before the half. Sure enough, with seconds left Ghana got a penalty kick. Seeing that our goalie plays as well as a one eyed, one-legged, drunken pirate (I think he is a friend of the Bush family- Presidential Appointment) the Ghanaian scored with ease.

The second half was horrible. Half way though it I started to wonder if the US even wanted to continue playing, no passion what so ever. With 10 minutes left they started playing like they did against Italy but the needed two goals- which was more then they had scored in the entire tournament (if the US tied Ghana, Czech and Italy would have both qualified- if either Ghana or America wanted to go on to the next round they would have to win).

In the end Ghana won. They’re playing well. They will play Brazil (the 5/2 favorite to win) next. If the miracle African team is going to do it then they will have to get by a truly amazing team. I wish them all the luck in the world and will root for them like my own. Hell, I think after two years in Africa I can claim that I am partly African.

America was a disappointment, but it is my home. Soccer isn’t our thing. Maybe it never will be. I think they may be a professional league in the states these days but if you have any skill what so ever you go to Europe to play. Maybe we should just cut our losses and stick to running into each other in protective plastic shells. I wonder how many American’s even know the World Cup is going on. If any of you hear that statistics on ESPN let me know.

Here’s hoping for 2010!

Football (the game with the round ball that you kick not the elongated ball that you carry) rules here. You can’t get a simpler game. All you need is ONE ball and a big open space. The ball thing is even up for discussion. Here in Selibaby I have seen kids play with shoes, bottles, coke cans, about anything you can kick. Well, last night was the pinnacle moment for football- The Final for the Champion’s League.

Champion’s League is the best of the best. Each European country has its own league. If you win you country league you are invited to participate in Champion’s League. This creates a ‘best of the best’ phenomenon which usually delivers a very high level of play. Though out the season every other Tuesday and Wednesday everyone gathers around the closest TV with Satellite to watch two hours of amazing football.

It is very European. The final was played on Wednesday night. Can you imagine the Super Bowl, World Series, or ANY American final being played mid-week? Last night we watched as Barcelona (the heavy favorite) squared off against Arsenal (one of the 5 British teams that played in the Champion’s League this year). As always some great football ensued. Barcelona boast some of the best feet playing these days and watching them play together is reminiscent of watching Jordan’s Bulls play basketball. Effortless passing, powerful shooting, and just pure athleticism exudes from your television for 90 minutes.

About five minutes into the game the goalie for Arsenal got a red card (kind of like a flagrant foul in basketball- you sit down immediately) and the second string goalie took the field. Now if this happened to Barca it would have been quite interesting, like a three legged lion chasing a full strength gazelle, but it didn’t. Now we have a full strength lion chasing a three legged gazelle. Animal kingdom aside Arsenal is still a very strong team- they did make it to the final and all. Arsenal scored first near the end of the first half. It was a beautiful. A ‘why you watch Champion’s Leauge’ kind of play.

With 15 minutes remaining Barcelona had yet to score. They were dominating the match (they had possession of the ball around 60% of the time) but it doesn’t matter unless you but it in the net. Well they did that, twice actually. With two seamless plays Barca now had a two to one advantage. For the remaining 10 minutes they just played keep-away and went home with the really really really big trophy.

The World Cup start June 9th and that should be a rocking good time as well. I don’t know if I will be able to follow Champion’s League next year. If I’m back in the states I doubt it. I think you need ESPN 15 or something. But it has been fun for the last two years.

The president came to town. Well, he really isn’t the president, but that is what everyone calls him. He is the colonel, the leader of the military. The Islamic Republic of Mauritania is a military dictatorship since our Coups de Etat last August. The Colonel is the leader of the Military counsel of Democracy and Justice. Maybe we call him the President just because to explain that he is the leader of the Military Counsel and will only be in power for two year whereas full democratic elections will take place and a fair an just government will take power would be too wordy. Anyways, The Colonel is touring Mauritania and yesterday he came to Selibaby.

African politics are really amusing. Hell, politics are amusing. Words seem to mean even less here. Basically support is bought with gifts; who gives out the best t-shirts and other real issues.

I avoided the main attractions yesterday. I walked out to the hospital in the morning and had my share of armed men with machine guns. They were lining both sides of the street with about 20 yards between him. Normally I think of the military as laughable but I had a sense that these guys had bullets. I’m happy to report that there were no problems and The Colonel has left.

One benefit of the visit was that the center square, the road to Selibaby, and the two major roads in Selibaby got cleaned and grated. This was a source of angst with many of the locals and I have to agree with them. Why make Selibaby look really nice the night before The Prom? The colonel should see what Selibaby for what it is, lots of trash and horrible roads. The visit also provided an interesting opportunity to talk politics with my friends. Almost all of them said that the event had no interest to them and they would be going. It made me think of how many people would go to see Bush if here were to speak in Community X, Y, or Z.

Khalidou’s reaction to the thing was my favorite. He was very upset at the faux-roads and was no chance in Hell that he would go to the center square to see The Colonel, but he listened closely to his address on the radio; kind of like why I used to watch the State of the Union so closely.

I must have been about 12 years old when my family got the Encyclopedia Encarta on CD-ROM. This was a much simpler time- a time when for 20 bucks you could buy a pretty inclusive listing of all the web-sites in a ‘yellow-pages’ format. Encyclopedias were not commonplace in my home. Perhaps my parents were able to provide for me as they did because the Encyclopedia Britannica was never purchased. Or it may have just been location. Rural upstate New York isn’t a bounty for door-to-door sales. For whatever reason, my dad was moved to purchase Encarta for Lucien (one year my elder) and I. As kids do, we ripped open the box and threw in the CD-ROM. This wasn’t like the encyclopedia at the school library, dusty and unused, this was multi-media and awesome. One of the sample clips to show off the power of Encarta was a short movie video of Ghana. It had people dancing and singing for freedom or something. They sang, “Gha-na. Gha-na Free-dom.” The clip couldn’t have been more the five seconds long but I must have watched it more then 20 times. I showed anyone that would watch…

Fast forward, now 22 and living in Mauritania. New to this Africa thing and planning out my vacations. Were would I go? Mali? Senegal? Morocco? Kenya? Ghana? Remembering my adolescent infatuation with Ghana, I think I looked into that vacation first. Too expensive.

Fast forward again, now 24 and nearing the end of my service. Maddie and I were planning our last two weeks of vacation time (all PCVs start out with 48 days which they can use whenever they want). Ghana? The ticket was about 600USD. When I am going to be so close again? Where else am I going to go for two weeks? Don’t I have friends in Ghana? How did that song go again? ‘Gha-na, Gha-na Free-dom.’

Maddie has quite a knack for reading travel books. She planned a really great adventure for us. We landed in Accra, the capital city, around 3PM. (Editor’s note from Maddie: Although I do enjoy reading travel guides, we would not have enough days for the complete adventure I had planned, which included a 10K hike on the beach and an expedition to the far northern backcountry to see hippos. Brock was the event editor and therefore deserves credit for planning and making the trip so amazing.) Accra, or maybe any African capital city, isn’t really a place you want to be a tourist. So first on the agenda in Accra was leaving it.

My father always told me to look at systems as I travel from country to country. How do people get around? In Ghana you have three options: tro-tros (basically busted up mini-buses), buses, and private cabs. Locals travel by Tro-Tros. As soon as the bus fills, it goes. It is dirt cheap (the cheapest country that I have ever visited and transport costs were the literally pennies). Being new to the country we weren’t ready to ‘Tro-tro’ so we went straight to the bus company. Now, I really like bus travel. It is simple, cheap, good way to see the county, etc. Ghana has an awesome bus system: clean, timely, organized, user-friendly.

Our first stop was Cape Coast. It is about 100KM east of Accra. The coast of Africa is beautiful. It is untouched in so many places. Ghana follows suit. Cape Coast offered two main attractions, St. George’s Castle and Kakam National Park. St. George’s was the first fort built in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was built by the Portuguese to provide protection for their missionaries and eventually became an ivory and gold trading post. When the slave trade started, St George’s started trading humans rather than ivory or gold. When it was taken over by the Dutch, it really came into its own as a slave trading post. The most telling story is how the Catholic Church, a central building in the castle courtyard, was turning into an auction house. The tour, given by a Ghanaian, brought us though all the dungeons, torture rooms, and the Door of No Return. It was a sobering tour. UNESCO has declared the site a World Heritage site and the Ghanaian government has done a really great job restoring and training staff.

Kakam National Park is a rain forest. Ghana on the whole is pretty green. Maddie and I we slack-jawed for most of the trip because everywhere we went was lush, green, and beautiful. You live in the savannah for long enough and you forget that there are places that are alive. Kakam’s main attraction is a canopy walk. They have a series of seven suspension bridges from redwood to redwood that take you on a tour of the forest at about 40m above the floor. All in all, pretty awesome. This was also the first time I walked though a rain forest. The hike up to the first bridge was breathtaking. Large bunches of bamboo lined the path as we left the info center. Then we walked though a section where thick rubber vines dangled from enormous trees. There were lots of butterflies as well. Very different from the Adirondack forests of my youth but still there was a familiar scent and feeling to being in the woods.

We left the coast the net day. STC is the main bus line in Ghana. It is the largest, safest, most reliable, and most expensive. Maddie and I were still new to Ghana transport so we just went to the bus station in hope of catching the 11AM bus to Kumasi. We were making our way north to Tamale where were going to meet Chris and Sayward, two of my friends from the MI program out in Michigan. This was the first point at which we meet frustration on our trip. The bus station was pretty full with people and every time we asked if there was a bus to Kumasi that afternoon we were told, “yes.” Probing any further and asking if there were any spaces available proved an unanswerable question. Cape Coast, not being a hub, was privy only to seats if people on the buses that arrived got off in Cape Coast. Traveling with STC didn’t look that promising. We met another man, Fredrick, at the bus station with a similar problem. He was born in Ghana but moved to the US about 25 years ago. He has US citizenship and came ‘home’ to visit his ailing father. He was really upset about the bus situation. He kept on saying how awful the systems were in Ghana, “How is it that they don’t know if there are seats to Kumasi? Don’t they have computers that tell them what is available? This isn’t like Greyhound.” Maddie and I just shared simple smiles as we relished in the fact that there was a bus station while our countryman muttered under his breath. From talking to those in the know (side note: Peace Corps survival tip number one- Always ask the locals) we decided the we would Tro-Tro up to Kumasi. This was a pretty easy thing to do. The tro-tro was about 15 passenger thing that was a little tight. The tightness was due in part to the size of the vehicle and the number of travelers, but it was also influenced by the fact that our countryman was a rather typical size for an American. The ride was uncomfortable but a lot better then transportation in Mauritania. The stunning beauty of the ride distracted us from quality of the ride. I don’t Maddie took her eyes off the country side for the entire trip. Every once in a while we would stop and women and children would run to the car selling plantain chips, bananas, pineapple, filtered water, nuts, smoked fish, and other assortments of road food. As soon as we hit Kumasi we went directly over to STC bus station. We did tro-tro that morning so we wanted to live it up in style for the rest of the afternoon. For the cheap price of 10USD we got to ride the rest of the trip to Tamale in air-conditioned comfort.

The bus ride was really nice. The A/C bus was a weird but good. The weirdest part came when they put a movie on. So the TV starts playing some film and I thought, hmmm I wonder what quality 80’s film we are going to watch tonight… Imagine my surprise when we started watching this Nigerian movie. On one level I was really interested in seeing what Africa had to offer in terms of entertainment. There is a reason that Blockbuster doesn’t carry Nigerian flicks. More entertaining than the movie was watching the Ghanaians’ reaction to the movie. They often yelled their opinions or advice for the characters.

We got into Tamale very late, 2AM. Chris had given me one name for a hotel that was over by their PC office. He had also sent me an email saying that we were welcome to stay at the PC guesthouse for 20000 cedi a night (2 bucks) but I didn’t receive this message before we arrived and instead asked to go to the Relax. It was late, we needed a place to stay, hopefully there would be a room available. We got to the Relax, woke the guard, and asked for a room. They did have rooms but the cheapest one was 450,000 ($45). In Chris’s defense, he had said that he didn’t know anything about the place and wasn’t sure how much it was. We all laughed about it for the rest of the trip. Our one night at the Relax equaled the amount we paid for almost all of our travel around the country.

Now with Sayward and Chris in our group we traveled to Mole National Park. Mole is an elephant reserve that sports a lodge over-looking a watering hole. We got to the lodge rather late so we didn’t do any animal spotting that night. The next morning we were going on a walking safari at 6:30 and I woke up around 6ish. I went to check the watering hole and I was happily surprised to see about a dozen elephants wading around. The walking tour was pretty cool. We had a guide with a gun but he said that they don’t like to us it because if the elephants get spooked by the gun they won’t come back to the watering hole for several weeks. We walked down the bluff to the watering hole and saw the elephants up close. In the pond there was a few lurking crocodiles stalking small birds drinking on the ponds edge. At the end of the walk we had the chance to see an elephant walk into the pond. We were about 20 feet from this enormous creature- think zoo but without the electric fence between you and the elephant. When we got back to the lodge the monkeys were out. There were baboons walking poolside looking for someone’s unguarded fries. We spent the rest of the day poolside just enjoying the view. Around 2ish all the elephants left the watering hole and walked back into the reserve. Later that day we followed suit and walked the 5km back out to the village with the sun setting behind us.

Our next stop was the Volta region. The Volta region is on the eastern side of the country boarding Togo. Maddie had done a really great job planning the trip and we both wanted to go over the Volta for three reasons: Chris and Sayward’s village is over there, the Wli Waterfalls, and the Tafi-Atome Monkey Sanctuary. The Tafi-Atome Monkey Sanctuary is an old Peace Corps project. Peace Corps has been very active in Ghana; to put it in Chris’s own words, “45 years and no exit strategy.” You paid to stay at the village guest house and you ate traditional food in the village that night. A group of French tourists were at the guesthouse with us. This provided an opportunity to practice our French with real French speakers. The monkeys had been habituated to the village to you could see the monkey packs playing in the woods around the village. Again, think zoo but no fence. The Wli Waterfalls are the highest waterfalls in West Africa. Waterfalls are always beautiful and this one held suit. Almost better then the waterfall was the hour long walk up to the waterfall. A very dense forest with 1000s of butterflies; how could you go wrong?

Chris and Sayward live in a village similar to many other African villages that I have seen. They have made a nice home for themselves in spite of the fact that they live about 10 feet for the one diesel generator that pounds away from 6 till 10 even night. We happened to be in the village for Easter. Lucky for us there are 9 different churches for Damanko’s 9000 people. We chose the Roman Catholic. Easter mass was pretty interesting. The service was in the local language so I couldn’t judge the message but they were selling it pretty hard. After the message they put the collection box out. Then we all danced up single file and gave our donation. The music was awesome. Lots of drums, lots of Africa. We did the collection thing another time a little later. Chris said there was one church that he went to (it seems like this multiple collection thing is common) where they counted the money collected and declared it wasn’t enough so they had to have another collection. After the second pass of the proverbial hat there was an auction of sorts. The preacher would carry a good around the church and people would bid on it. Kind of strange way to celebrate the rising of the Lord but to each his own…

After Mass we went and had Guinea Corn Beer with one of the women of the church. She told us how they had a priest come up about once a month and how the first collection was for the church in Damanko and the second collection was for the diocese. Some things are Universal…

After the Volta region we went back to the coast for our last two nights. We ate lobster and drank margaritas for two glorious nights at a place called Big Millie’s Backyard. The resort came highly recommended by Chris and Sayward and with good reason. It’s a Rasta hangout and the ‘chill’ vibe permeates every corner of the property. It was a perfect end to a perfect vacation.

And we we're off. We had rented out a full car and were going towards the Senegalese boarder. We had to rush because we needed to get across the river by 6 PM. We needed to get across the river by six so we could get to Dakar before 5 AM the next morning. We needed to get toe Dakar by 5 AM so we could go to Ghana.

Let me take a step back. As many of you know, I am a planner. I like panning things and I take pride when a good plan comes to fruition. Maddie and I planned to go to Ghana for more then a month now. We had positioned the trip right after our Close of Service conference and the FSWE. Everything was well planned. We had our visas. Maddie had bought our tickets while in Dakar for WAIST. The test was the 8th and we were flying out the 11th. Lots of time to get to Dakar…

So we called to confirm our tickets with Slok Air on the 8th. The person on the phone informed me that there were no longer flights on the 11th, Sundays and Fridays only. Hmmm. The FSWE went till 2:30 PM on Saturday and the flight would be 7AM on Sunday. We talked to our local logistics expert and he said as long as we could get across the river by 6 we would have no problems getting to Dakar in time. Being American we knew how to solve this problem, throw money at it. We reserved a car that took me directly from the test to the boarder. Crossed and ended up in Dakar around 2 AM. Funny enough, from a previous trip to Portugal I was very familiar with passing the night at the Dakar airport.

Of course, the Dakar Airport was a ghost town for most of out stay there. I didn’t really have any confidence in Slok air and was ambiguous about them just letting us use our tickets for the 11th on the 9th. Well, Africa always surprises you. No problems what so ever.

After leaving Dakar we stopped in war torn Sierra Leon and Liberia before landing in Accra. From Accra we hopped on a bus and went directly to Cape Coast and had dinner last night watching the waves roll in.

Currently I am working on growing Tilapia in Selibaby. I fished about 39 fingerlings out of Senegal River Friday the 24th of March. I lost a few before we left for Selibaby and by the time I got back to Selibaby I had 25 fish. Since them many of that original class have died. My favorite death story was when the water level in my pond got to so low that it was basically sludge. Granted, the water network in Selibaby is new and week long shortages/ interruptions in service are too be expected but I was feeling the pain of all my fish. I texted Suzanne to pass the message, “fish need water to live” on to her host brother as a reminder to fill the pond that day. It has since become a classic joke.

To back up a little, I have two demonstration ponds here in Selibaby. I have one earth pond with a plastic liner and one below ground cement tank. The earthen pond is 3.5m by 7.6m and the cement tank is 2.5m by 1.5m. These ponds are on the small side but they are demonstrational ponds only. If the demonstrational ponds prove successful I will start building 10mx10m ponds in N’Diéo and other communities.

My goal in Selibaby is quite modest, to grow fish. We are hose feeding both of the ponds. The water is coming for a groundwater source about 8 km from town. Both ponds have a clay/sand bottom and a depth of about 1 meter. I am experimenting with some aquatic plants in the earthen pond. If these ponds are successful we will use the young to create other ponds in several of the communities around Selibaby and eat the larger fish. I may also try to do a mono-sex culture with the first spawning here in Selibaby. As a source of Tilapia in Selibaby, it will become a teaching tool as well. We will be able to use the ponds to teach about sorting males from females, how to correctly harvest and transport fish, and other general pond/ fish maintenance.

For the most part fish ponds year round here are out of the question. N’diéo is the only community that I know of, not on the river, that has a water source year round. Even with the water source the irrigation canal will only have water in 9 months out of the year. If they want to continue with their ponds after the canal stops running then they will have to irrigate the ponds with a motor pump. Seasonal fish ponds would be more practical. With a seasonal pond you would prepare the ponds before the first rains (June) and maintain them till the water dries up (late October or November).

Fish ponds are very new to me and I am learning every day. Both of my ponds are cool in temperature and the fish don’t seem to be coming up for air so I think there is enough dissolved oxygen in the water. I am going to start supplemental feeding with Cereamine. I’m looking into supplementing with Moringa leaves as well but I still need to find out more about that.

This project has been a lot of fun and frustration. The first batch of fingerlings that I broght to the ponds have pretty much all died. In the first few days of the 16 fingerlings that I brought to the earth pond seven had died. I am pretty sure it was stress. The way they were fished and transported was poor. Since then I have done a fair chunk of research on the transport/ treatment of fish. I’m not too worried about the losses of those original fingerlings because our second fishing trip proved much more fruitful.

On March 29th I had a second fishing mission. This time we went to Saboucerie. Saboucerie is a Soninke town 7 Km from Khabou. Dauouda had to do a site visit in Khabou so I took that opportunity to do some fishing in Saboucerie. Abdou, Khadiou’s son and a very good friend of mine, went with me.

Saboucerie has an erosion dam. These dams are about 1.5 meters high and are designed to decrease surface erosion. In about a month this water will dry up. Khalidou and Dia both have told me that the Saboucerie dam was filled with Tilapia but I didn’t really believe them, it seemed to easy for that to be true. Well, it was true. The water has receded a lot and there was probably a pool no bigger that 10m in diameter of waist deep water that pin wheeled out to about four shallower fingers. We arrived in the village and talked to the President for the Management of the Dam. He said we were free to fish and even let us use his nets. I had brought an old mosquito net that we used to fish. We were getting thousands of fry and fingerlings. This pond was really full of Tilapia. The odd thing about it was that the only type of fish we were catching was Tilapia. Looking back I think I understand why. The water was very dead. It hasn’t had any new water added to it since the last rain (October) and was very turbid. I imagine if we had dug into the muck at the bottom of the pond we would have found catfish as well but the only fish that could live in the water was Tilapia.

I wanted to keep the fish in the water for as long as I could. I think that one of the problems that I had on my first fishing mission was that I took the fish out of the water and then transported them hours later. The clock starts ticking the moment you take them out of the pond. I would have preferred some kind of netted cage but I didn’t have time to make this before the mission. I settled on a barrel that I could put a screen top over. My idea was simple. Fill the barrel with fish, put the mesh lid on, and sink the barrel. I was going to sink it so that the dissolved oxygen and the temperature of the water would be constant with that of the pond. After catching about 20 brooders (sexually mature fish) and over 1000 fingerlings we sealed and sank the barrel. Around three o’clock we had started fishing again. There were some local boys that asked it they could help us fish so we gave them the nets. This was really fun because Abdou and I could stand on the banks tell the boys where to put the drag the nets. The nets were better for catching the larger fish because they allowed the smaller fish to pass though. I would say that the kids caught us another 50 brooders.

At this point I went back to my submerged barrel to find a discouraging surprise, dead fish. This is a not too unfamiliar site these days. I am constantly on ‘floater watch’ in Selibaby. I later realized that there was very little oxygen in this water. There were still some larger fish that were alive but all of the fingerlings died but I didn’t really mind because we had some many brooders and that was what I was really looking for. We stacked the dead fish that were eatable and decided to give some to the President of the Dam and bring back a good bag for our families back in Selibaby. I feel that I should also mention that there were lots of dead fish on the side of this pond. Where as normally I would feel bad about killing all these fish in about a month that water is going to be gone and all of the fish in the pond will die. Dauouda joked that the fish that make it to my ponds in Selibaby are really lucky.

With probably about 50 brooders I started to prepare the fish for transport. The first time I transported fish I made a lot of mistakes, but this time I was ready. I was using a bag system. You put about eight liters of water in a bag and then pump air into the remaining space. Ideally you would fill the remaining space with pure oxygen but I didn’t have that option. I put my bags of fish into my barrel and packed some ice on the top of air. One of the mistakes I made before was putting the ice directly into the water. I prepared four bags of fish and took about another dozen in the cooler that carried the ice. When Daouda returned we quickly loaded the car and were on our way. The whole process was like a comedy of errors. The bags were really weak and many of them had holes in them. The water was heating up really quickly. The barrel was really heavy. I was dubious if any of these fish were going to make it the hour and half back to Selibaby. But looking on the bright side, any of these fish that didn’t make it back to Selibaby could be eaten.

When we got back to Selibaby I floated two bags of fish in the pond at Khalidou’s. You need to float the bags so the water temperature equalizes before you let the fish go. The fish in the cooler were still alive and I took one bag over to PNS with a male and a female from the cooler. Now, at bare minimum, I would have one male and one female in each pond. After waiting 15 minutes at PNS I opened the bag find all almost all of the fish alive! There were two that were dead and I added them to the eating pile. I then released about 10-12 fish into the pond. I didn’t get a good number because I was counting by feeling around in the bucket and these fish were very active and alive. When I was sorting though the fish there were two fish that I thought were dead so I put them aside. A few minutes later I saw then trying to breathe so I tossed them in the pond. The next morning I found them dead but those are the only fish from this batch that I have found dead.

At Khalidou’s we released about 21 fish into the pond. One of the good things about the brooders is that they will start reproducing immediately. With the larger fish I was finally able to tell the difference between the males and the females. Initially I wanted to record how many of each sex we were putting into the pond but I didn’t want to stress the fish more then they had already been. I also think that the older fish were more resistant to the traveling.

For the next three weeks I won’t have any direct contact with the ponds. Khalidou and Abdou are taking care of their pond and Achiu is taking care of his. Hopefully the fish will live. I was encouraged that the fish were living in such disgusting water in Saboucerie. I am very excited to see where this project will go next.

My good friend Gretchen has been interested in coming to Africa for some time. For those of you who don’t know, she and I both attended Manhattan College at the same time. After graduation she left the States and studied, and then found work, in London. We have had the good fortune of several reunions, be it Europe or the US, and our friendship has endured.

Turns out, she is a social softball enthusiast. She doesn’t play, but she loves the stuff more than life. She used to spend every weekend in NYC going from park to park to watch social softball. Unfortunately, being in London has really cut down her exposure to the ‘Greatest Game Ever’ but she is dealing with it. She tried cricket a while back to get her fix but it just didn’t feel right. Where was the drinking on the field, where were the overweight players in spandex, the high pitches, the overflowing pitchers, and why did both teams wear white cardigans? Not the same.

After months of trying to figure out a way for Gretchen to come to Selibaby it became evident that neither time nor finances were in favor of the voyage. We cut our losses and planned a very nice reunion in Portugal. It was a very nice visit, short but nice. I don’t remember if it was at that junction of shortly after where I mentioned the option of coming to Dakar in lieu of Selibaby.

Dakar boasts many amenities that Selibaby lacks; also there are direct flights there from Europe. The plan was set; she would come to Africa for WAIST. Now normally I would say that would be a bit weird, coming to a continent just for a softball tournament, but I was knew her love of the game.

I need to say that Gretchen and her traveling friend, Scarlet, were excellent. They found themselves a really nice little hotel not to far away from the club where we were playing, and just kicked back and enjoyed a very nice (and needed) vacation. They came to a few games, which was very kind of them, and explored Dakar on their own. We would play our games and come back to find them poolside at the American Club.

It was nice that Gretchen had someone to tourist around with during the tournament. When the tournament ended I needed to get back to Selibaby but they still had three or four days in Senegal so they went to Toubob Diallo with Suzanne and Maddie. Toubob Diallo is a African resort outside of Dakar where you can learn African drumming, dancing, or other artsy things. From all accounts, they had a great time.

For the last few Saturdays I have been joining my friend Khalidou in a fight against erosion. I know that I have mention ‘marigots’ before in my writings but for those who don’t remember they are seasonal drainage ways, basically a creek that dries up in the hot season. The idea behind a ‘diguette’ (pronounced dig-it and French for ‘little dike’) is that it will slow the water down and cause the marigots to fill back in with soil.

It is decent work. A truck dumps a pile of rocks next to marigot. A ‘charge’ of rocks cost about 30 USD. The cooperative of Elemine (where Khalidou lives) received funding from several sources to build these things so along this serpent like marigot is about a dozen piles of rocks. Every Saturday the cooperative assembles. If you don’t show up you have to pay and there is always gossip about who is or isn’t there. We sting a line across the marigot and start moving rocks from the pile into a wall like break in the marigot. One rock at a time, back and forth, with 5 guys, for about three hours and a wall is built. They chat away in pulaar and I spend the hours thinking about life, my future, and moving rocks.

I started doing it for the exercise. Beyond the fact that I walk everywhere, I don’t exercise very much here. I lounge around my house and then walk to a friend’s house to lounge around. It was also way to build relationships with Khalidou’s friends. I have been planning this family planning project with him for some time but it never seemed to get off the ground (no pun intended). I then realized that I was a really good friend of Khalidou’s but his neighbors didn’t know who I was, past the fact that I was a white guy that hung out at Khalidou’s. Would you rush over to talk to a stranger about sex? I wouldn’t. So I decided that need to infiltrate their group: one rock at a time. I don’t know how long it will take, but more of them remember my name each week.

The team assembled for its first practice the 16th -A motley crew at best. We found the equipment bags, filled with gloves from the eighties, bats from the early nineties, and any miscellaneous stuff that was shoved in them at the close of the season last year (one excellent find was a very tired and dusty looking Manhattan Jasper hat that I had lost last year, I took finding it as a very good omen).

As the defending champions we were filled hope and arrogance if nothing else. One thing Peace Corps teams are forever plagued with is the two year drain. Yes, we won the championship last year, but we also lost all but two member of that team. We had a good pre-season, pre-service training, where we found a lot of talent in the new class, but it wasn’t like the titians we put on the field last year. This year wasn’t a sure thing.

The first practice went well, I think everyone got to hit. We finalized our team lists. This year would be sending two ships to the port of Dakar, The Pirates and The Swashbucklers, as well as twenty spectators, The Seamen. As the Commodore of these vessels I had been working for months on arranging our attack. We had received some fire from the Dakar Ex-pat community about some old volunteers that partied too hard et al. but really if you read between the lines it was just jealously.

It was the eve of WAIST 2006 with about 70 volunteers in town so there was only one thing to do- RISK Tournament. There is something perfect about a board game that takes 4 hours to play and Africa. RISK Tournaments takes the dorky-ness of playing RISK to new levels. We start with three boards (18 players) and then the top two from each board play in the final. We started around 7:30 and I think the last die was cast around 2:00AM. Normally this would be a little late for an evening to wrap up but the morning of the 17th we were starting our decent on Dakar at 5:30 AM so the adopted mentality was “Party all night and sleep on the bus.”

I was quite happy to report that all but one of my fellow volunteers honored the 5:30AM departure. By 6:00AM everyone was accounted for and we were rolling south. We had decided that traveling as one block of 60 was better then traveling as 10 groups of 6. Our Admin had prepared an ‘ordre de mission’ for us and we hoped that busses would save time and frustrations. They made things easier, but not faster. We had two 15 passenger vans and one 30 passenger bus. The 30 seat bus had no problems at all. Between the 2 vans we had 7 flat tires. This made us very late. It was unfortunate but helped solidify our team sprit.

At 10:30 PM we arrived. A big part of WAIST is Mauritania. Simply, we bring the fun. WAIST 2006 had begun.

The first day of the tournament is round robin to determine the seeding for the double elimination tournament. The Pirates had three games the first day with our first game being against The Tigers. The Tigers, as some of you will remember, are the missionary kids that kicked our ass last year. This year we were fired up to play them. We squeaked by, 13-12. It was exactly what we needed. Get those nerves out early. Our Swashbucklers won their first game as well. The Swashbuckler’s victory was quite important as it fulfilled one of the goals of the weekend: Pirates to win the championship, Swashbucklers to win a game, drink, drink, drink. The Pirates next two games were against Peace Corps teams. We dominated. AWESOME. We were seeded number on and we were all feeling really good about our chances.

The Swashbucklers played the next day at 8:30 against the Tigers. The Pirates would play the winner of that game assuming we won our first game so we all came out to support the Swashbucklers. The Tiger won, which was too bad but expected. The Pirates took the field at 9:40 against a PCV team from Dakar. We weren’t playing like champions, mistakes left and rights. The wind left the sails for good when a lefty pulled one over the right field fence with two people on base. Opps. Coming into the bottom of the last inning we were down 4-7. We had a mini rally but still LOST 6-7. SHIT. Well I looked like the Pirates would be playing the Swashbucklers, but not in the winners bracket- we were damned to the losers bracket.

Last year we won so I didn’t really look at the loser bracket that much, but it takes a lot more games to make it to the final if you are coming up though the loser bracket. If we were to make it to Monday we would have to win 4 more games that afternoon. Our first game was against the Swashbucklers. Though sad, we eliminated them from the tournament. But, in what happened to become a theme throughout, once beaten by the Pirates they joined us on the fight. Pirates and Swashbucklers became the RIM. We faced two other PC teams that afternoon and last in game Todd came over to me and told me that I had to take over the team because ‘coach is drunk.’ Sure enough, he was- God bless him. I brought the team in and thinking back to all those coach’s pep-talks of yester year came up with something inspirational. What ever it was, it worked. Our last game that afternoon was against the teachers of the International School. They practice. Come to find out, all the teams that weren’t PC teams played in a league from October to February. It was a good game but we had so much momentum that we just rolled over them.

We made it though Sunday. Monday we would play two more games before the championship. We started at 8:30 AM (for the third day in a row) and we would be playing, drum roll……… The Tigers. We were much more cautious this time, arrogance landed us in the loser bracket the day before and another slip up would send us back the Mauritania with no trophy. I don’t remember the score just that we won. It was amazing. We had a great team. We don’t know where they came from, but we were clicking. Our sideline was lined with Yellow shirts and a mix of other PC teams that had come to cheer us on. We were the under dogs. The funniest moment of this morning was that our DH was having a morning brew and Coach told him to watch the sauce today. He answered, “Yea, I know. I just need to keep drinking so I don’t become hung over.”

With the Tigers going back to the zoo we were in the top three. We watched the semi-final match knowing that we had to play the loser for the second spot in the final. The two teams left were the B team from the Embassy and a Senegalese team. They were both decent but neither was unbeatable. The Senegalese team lost and the Pirates took the field. The biggest assets to the Senegal team were their legs. If the got on base in a blink they would be home. It was a tight game but a mid game rally gave a decent lead. The Senegalese team rallied back in the bottom of the last inning but our lead held and we advanced to the final. All that was left between us and the trophy was Sahel’s Angels.

We took Ebits field with lots and lots of energy. We had played 7 games to get here. Now it was more then just RIM, it was Peace Corps. Ebits field was a lot harder then the other fields we had played on and our first inning was filled with errors. Sahel’s Angels jumped out to at 3-0 lead in the top of the 1st. We scored two in the bottom of the 1st and took the field down one run in the 2nd. The second inning was pretty equal but then it happened. Just as in all those Disney movies, it clicked. Granted, in this Disney movie there was an inebriated woman in an inflated sumo suit running up and down the side line, but the magic was there as well.

I brought the players in and we just focused on the top of the third. A stop here would swing the game in our favor. Three up, three down- we’re were back up. This is when it happened. The field was as hard for them as it was for us. We started to hit grounders; hard, bouncy, nasty grounders. We batted though our line up (11 batters). The top of the 4th was all business. We learned how to field and we were ‘in the groove.’ We held them to no runs and then batted around the order again (for the WAIST tournament once you batted around the inning the inning was over). Now we were up by 10 runs. The Elimination Rules for the tournament were ‘up by 10 runs in the 5th inning’ or ‘15 runs in the 4th inning.’ If we could hold them in the top of the 5th inning we would win our first game. Nothing but momentum: three up, three down.

Because this was a double elimination tournament we had to play the Sahel angels again. They had no idea what happened to them. They had been the front runners all along and a massive pirate shit was pillaging and plundering all over them. The second game started with us at bat. I was going on pure energy at this point. We couldn’t lose now. We just eliminated them in the first game, all we needed to do was keep the energy flowing. We just got stronger and stronger. By the fourth inning we were up by 15. If we held them in the bottom of the 4th we would take the trophy home. Hold we did. Amazing, WAIST Champions, 2 years in a row.

That night I accepted the trophy with a few of my fellow players at the banquet. The Chief de Mission for the Dakar Embassy was MCing the event. Here I was, collared shit, mustache, mohawk, and sporting the ever fashionable socks and sandals look. Classy right up to the end!

On the long ride back to Selibaby I thought back on the tournament. We don’t have the largest PC in West Africa. If anything we are the smallest. By random chance alone you would think that the other PC teams should be able to assemble a better, more talented, team. All the other teams practice regularly, so they should definitely beat us. Why, how, did PC RIM win? And two year running? I think it is the simple fact that we like each other. We are not a jealous team. We are not a bunch of super stars, we are just a really really tight bunch of friends. Momentum and energy can do amazing things. There can only be 10 players on the field, but with PC Mauritania there are also 50 others on the side lines cheering like this is the most important thing in the world. Energy and momentum.

Congrads and thanks to my fellow PCVs. Next year someone else with lead the attack, God Speed!

The goals of Peace Corps, as I have talked about before, are three fold. Cross cultural exchange is very important; it is two thirds of our missions here. Whereas I tell my stories, though emails and this forum, there is so much that I can’t even begin to explain. What the smell of Nouakchott’s markets? What does the desert look like when you are rolling doing the Road of Hope? What is the reception that a stranger gets in an African household?

Because there are so many un-sharable aspects it was with immense joy that I welcomed my mother at the Nouakchott Airport. Mom was encouraged to come by a retired Mauritanian Ambassador. I was very excited to show her Mauritania. Her visit was only a little over week so we were kind of on a time crunch but I think she got to see a good cross section of Mauritania.

The tour began in Nouakchott. From Kurt’s visit, and subsequent other family visits, we learned that a few days in Nouakchott is good to ease one into Mauritania. We were staying at a very nice hotel that was well taken care of and quite comfortable. The Peace Corps community in Nouakchott is wonderful. They love the volunteers and they are always very excited to meet our families. Showing mom around the bureau was very time consuming process because everyone wanted to talk to her: what a wonderful delay.

Mom first real taste of Africa came the last night we were in Nouakchott. It was very important to visit my host brother Moctar. He was a very close friend of mine back in Selibaby and I am very proud of his efforts at University. We meet him around 4:30ish in the afternoon. From there we went to Moctar’s house.

The Peace Corps bureau is in a very nice part of town, the Upper East Side, if you will. Moctar lived in Brooklyn. It was really cool for me to see because I have never been on that side of town, but I think mom was really taken by African city living. We had tea and zrig with my host aunt, Faty, and chatted about life in Mauritania. It was wonderful. It was simple and wonderful. This was my extended family in Nouakchott that I had never met opening its doors very wide not only to me but to my mother. I love this place.

After tea and zrig was finished we rode around with my other brother, Moussa, back to the nice part of time. Nouakchott can be a very busy and scary place. Driving around streets I didn’t know with my mom isn’t something that I would normally do, but with the safeguard of my brothers I felt completely safe. One family meeting another family; my African family uniting with my American family.

The long trek southward started the next morning. We were going to travel all day and hopefully get to Selibaby by nightfall. We had planned to make a quick stop in Aleg because Maddie was doing a Cereamine training. We arrived in Aleg around 12 and I thought I made it clear that I wanted to leave at 1. There was a miscommunication somewhere and our driver didn’t come back till 3; unfortunate but manageable. This put us back two hours and made the rest of the day feel kind of rushed but we did get to Selibaby around 10:30PM that night.

It was at this time that one of my favorite moments of the trip happened. There are four women at my house. Two of them are about 30ish and they do most of the work at the house. The eldest woman is my host mother, Bocar’s widow. She is aged, by time and by an African life. The fourth is some old aunt that nobody pays attention too. When mom arrived Mari and Hawa ran over to greet her. They yelled back to my host mom who jumped up and ran (really, she moved fasted than I have ever seen her move) to greet my really mom. It overwhelmed mom with emotion.

The time in Selibaby was too short. We visited many of my homes and friends. Our last night in town we ate with Barro Sow. Sow has always been a very good friend of mine but this evening he went above and beyond my expectations. After dinner he said that he wanted to give mom something and then Sow and his wife disappeared into their bedroom and emerged with some very nice bou-bou fabric. This was quite an amazing gift. Mom and I were very taken back by it. The kindness of African never ceases to amaze me.

The next day we started the off-road part of our trip. The stretch of road north of Selibaby is very beautiful but also very rough. We broke up the travel over two days and I think it worked out well. We spent the first night in Kankossa, a small lake village north of Selibaby. I had not spent much time during the daytime in Kankossa because normally I am merely traveling thought it but mom and I had a good few hours of day light there. We crossed the lake in an African canoe and spent some time with a cooperative that Caleb was training. It was great to see mom interacting with the African women. Verbal communication is one thing but communication happens on many many level.

The next night we were with Maddie in Ayoun. It was important to me to get out to Ayoun not just because Maddie was there but also because the landscape or Ayoun is completely different. It is very rocky and there are many rock formations that you can go hiking on. Because we had the advantage of a truck I got a chance to go visit some rocks that I had never visited before.

For our last night we stayed in Kiffa. It was 220 Km closer to Nouakchott. Our last day we drove back to Nouakchott. We got there with enough time to shower, shop, and de-velocitize a little before ‘good bye.’ It was sad to see mom get on the plane but her place isn’t Africa. She has worked to hard in life to be living here. It was wonderful to show her something that will forever be unexplainable.

After mom left I went back to the hotel and crashed out. A very tiresome week that was about to lead into a very tireing weekend. WAIST 2006 HERE WE COME!

Music is a petty universal thing. It has the ability to smooth over the rougher points in the day to day monotony of life. Most families will have some sort of noise on in the background for most of the day. The other day, while sitting with my host brothers, doing the whole tea ceremony thing, the radio was blaring, comme tout jour.

Normally we listen to Senegelse music. It is hard to describe. Imagine heating some oil on a griddle and dropping a quarter teaspoon of water on it. Ok, now take all those spits and spats and make them into s drum beat of sorts. Now take any instrument that you can find and start making noise with it. Now for the vocals take the most romantic feral cats serenading the night away. Though in some French/ English/ Wolfe/ and Pulaar and you got most tracks. You get used to it. If you are really interested check out Baaba Maal, here is the local favorite.

But the other day we didn’t have African music for our listening pleasure, we had 100% French Rock and Roll. It was odd. I liked the beats, I dug the groove, it al seemed really familiar except for the French part. *Side note: For a good number of months I’ve looking for French music in a hope to improve my French, so I was really intrigued by this whole thing* Thinking that I had finally found the French rock and roll king that would delivery me to fluency, my interest what at an all time high for afternoon tea.

My first question was who it was. That returned a simple, Francis Cabrel. Ok, now I got a name to go from. Why is it that I never heard of this guy before? I thought all French music was just mimes with accordions!

The afternoon progressed with the smooth sounds of Francis in the background. Conversation shifted to my musical likes and dislikes. As it happened to be, I was wearing my Jackson Browne shirt. The fact that Americans confuse Jackson Browne, James Brown, and Michael Jackson prepared me following on slew of questions. Then something miraculous happened. Rosie came on.

For those of you that don’t know, Rosie is one of Jackson Browne’s more famous songs. It is a song about a roadie that found a homely looking gal waiting out side a loading door before a show. In hopes of getting some late evening payoff, he invites her backstage for the show. But, as it happens, ‘but when they walked off stage, the drummer swept that girl away.’ Which leads nicely into “Rosie you’re all right/ you wear my ring/ when you hold me tight/ Rosie that’s my thing/ When you turn off the lights/ I’ve got to hand it to me/ Looks like its you and me again tonight/ Rosie.”

As a Jackson Browne aficionado, I am quite familiar with the song, Rosie. The song that was now coming from the radio was definitely, Rosie, but there was something wrong. Instead of my normal lyrics, this version was in French. Francis just translated the song. My brothers, amused by my amusement, kindly rewound the tape and it started right off with “Elle était déjà là bien avant/ Que les camions ne viennent.”

The gag is that Rosie is a double entendre that just didn’t work in the French song. The French song is really a song about a girl named “Rosie.” I don’t even know if ‘de rosiers’ would have carried the same double meaning.

So there you have it, what I though was good French music was just American back beats with French lyrics. On a second listen of the tape I though that many of the other songs sounded really really familiar as well. Looks like my little image of French music being a mime with a squeeze bags still holds true… at least the rock and roll still works for the vocab lesson.

Today is a cloudy day two of Tabaski 2006. Yes, that’s right, it sheep killing time. I don’t know if it just the season or if it because I saw a Christmas movie the other day, but I am seeing a lot of parallels between sheep and Christmas trees these days. You know how when you go to the Christmas lot you see one guys with a hip-pouch filled with money standing around a bunch of trees. The same thing happens here. This past week you walked thought the market and there were about five pools of sheep. And after you buy a Christmas tree there is ‘the drag’. The Drag, when you drag your new tree home or to you car, is very similar to ‘the Push.’ The push is how you get your newly bought sheep home. Naturally these sheep don’t want to go home with their new owner. They all remember Herb (French pun here), he left one day and never came back. Further parallels can be drawn from the fact that at Christmas/ Tabaski trees and sheep double (or more) in price. Would you ever pay 50 bucks for a 6’ Spruce in August? Nope, and they wouldn’t pay 25000UM for a sheep come August either!

Anyways, I wish you a happy Tabaski and leave you with this:
(12) "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." (13) Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

After a week and a half spent with my Academic Advisor in country I said goodbye to Kurt at the Nouakchott airport and got into Christmas mode. Last year I had Christmas in Ayoun with Maddie and 5 other volunteers, this year I was planning on having Christmas in Nouakchott with the masses. Normally we all gather in NKT for Christmas and then go down and have a party in Senegal for NYE. Obie, our Country Director, opens his house to us and we have a big dinner on Christmas Eve and then just hang out all day on Christmas. Being in NKT when everyone is there is pretty fun. You get to see people that you haven’t seen since training. All the new volunteers are now free to leave their sites so they were all there with their new stories as well.

One night we were all having dinner at one of the pizza places in Nouakchott and we had a Woodside guy eating with us. Woodside is the company that has the oil contract off the Mauritanian coast. He invited us to his office the next day and four of us jumped on the chance to see what their offices and operation was like. It was awesome. As someone one that is interested in development work it was really cool to learn about one of the largest players in the development business. After our meeting was over Adriana asked if I wanted to go over to Obie’s to help cook. I love Obie and I was really appreciative of him throwing this party for us so I went to help out. I had no idea what I was getting into. We started around 4 on Friday night. We were working on the flavors that night. We had four legs of lamb, four shoulders of lamb, two crown roasts, two meter long captain fish, and one ham each with a need for and individual and complimentary flavor. We were searching the joy of cooking and our own tastes to find the right flavors. We stopped that night around 12:30. The next morning we started at 9. The oven was running the entire day. We have an oyster stuffing and a sausage stuffing, two beautiful crown roasts, stew, beans, lots lamb, and lots of real creamy mashed potatoes. I think that in the end there were over 60 people that came to eat. My job at dinner time was to carve and serve the ham. It was wonderful to ask all my best friends if they would like some ham.

After the dinner we had a huge gift exchange. It was fun to see what people could up with for 1000 UM. Around 12:30 Maddie and I went back to our hotel to crash out. It was so much fun cooking all day but it knocked us both out. The next day we were back at Obie’s around 10. Risk and movies filled the day, Happy Birthday Jesus! That evening Maddie and I went over and had a small dinner with Molly, by site mate. The 26th Maddie and I got in the taxi for a long long long 18 hour ride back to Selibaby.

A wonderful Christmas weekend filled with good cheer and great food. Don’t know where the next Christmas for me will be but I would be quite lucky if it was in Nouakchott with my Peace Corps Family.

After Thanksgiving I jumped on taxi brousse and made my way down to Dakar for some rest and relaxation with my family. Ten days was too short, but then I can’t think of a time that would have been too long. Off all the things I overestimated or underestimated I think I underestimated how much I would miss having my parents a (reasonably priced) phone call away.

The trip to Dakar was filled with the normal frustrations of traveling. If you have forgotten them you can just look back at many of my previous posts…

After my 10 day jaunt in the ‘real world’ I was brought back face to face with Africa. I landed in Dakar around 2AM. I had lined up a hotel for the night but I didn’t have a good address for it and the descriptive directions that I was given for the place came way short of me finding the place. So there I was, with my bags in hand, at 3AM, on the streets of Dakar. I don’t really like Dakar. Never have. The only thing I could have done to worsen the situation was start yelling, “Mug Me!” over and over again. I saw a hotel sign so I figure I didn’t really have any other options. I walked up to the window and it was swarming with wholes and their Johns. I asked if there was a room available and the desk clerk answered, “All of them are taken right now, can you wait 10 minutes?” Disgusted I said thanks and started to walk away. I got back out to the street and started to try to figure out my options. I needed to kill 3 to 4 hours. Could I do that on the street? Was I going to get mugged now or later? Well I guess one of the nice women of dubious virtues saw something in my baby blues because she came running out after me. She explained that just the other day someone had held her up and that I HAD to stay at the brothel that night. Looking around what other choice did I have? I went back. I had to sit in the “waiting area.” I was asked where I was from and when I said I was American my guardian angel admitted that she was Ghanaian. Great, and English speaking African hooker. She continued to tend to my situation and when my room was opened up she led me to it. After opening the door she invited herself in and searched for the light switch. I was expressing in every language that I new, “thanks, good night.” I was standing by the door and she came over and started to shut the door with her on the inside. I grabbed the door and said thank you one more time and that I wasn’t in need of any other services that night. She said, “come on, can’t I have a little money? For a soda or something?” I gently pushed her out of the room. I examined the room, at least they had changed the sheets. I laid down, fully clothed, door doubled locked, and fell asleep with one eye open.

The next morning I was up and off to the garage by 7AM just as I had said I would be. I wonder if I got the hourly rate or the nightly rate, I was only there for 3 hours. The Senegalese do have one thing going for them, they figured out how to make transportation less of pain in the ass. There was a moment on my way back to the Mauritania, while jammed into the back of an old Peugeot station wagon that I looked around me and I realized that I understand what was going on. I understand how to live in Africa. I knew what they were talking about even though I didn’t speak their language. All the anxiety and emotions I was having from leaving my real family again was lifted in an instant and I got that silly grin on my face that I get when I just succumb to the joy of the moment.