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| AZ Opening |
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Center is Open!
It's been a lot of work but our center is now officially open!
It was a chaotic morning. I'd say it went successfully, although I've learned my lesson about putting out free food. When we gave the go ahead it was a riot, we lost all four jars of jam and chocolate spread for the bread in the first thirty seconds. People were running off with whole packages of cookies. I hope that everyone has a great thanksgiving! And thanks for your comments. I'm sorry Zoe, I gave my green mulafa away so I don't have a picture of it but I guarantee it was amazingly ugly.
It was a chaotic morning. I'd say it went successfully, although I've learned my lesson about putting out free food. When we gave the go ahead it was a riot, we lost all four jars of jam and chocolate spread for the bread in the first thirty seconds. People were running off with whole packages of cookies. I hope that everyone has a great thanksgiving! And thanks for your comments. I'm sorry Zoe, I gave my green mulafa away so I don't have a picture of it but I guarantee it was amazingly ugly.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Nothing like fresh hot milk on a 100-degree day
I wished so badly that I could have been home November 4th. We stayed up late here and at 3am or so we knew that my boyfriend Barak Obama will be the next president of America! Hamdullilah! We celebrated with something like cinnamon rolls the next morning but I don’t think that can compare to partying in the streets of Seattle. But being abroad at this time is pretty amazing, even people who don’t have electricity know about Obama and some offer congratulations. To the global community the impact of Obama being elected is immense.
In response to Aunt Ann and Stu’s questions about the things I do daily, I’ll give you a little sample. A typical day for me begins by being woken up to morning prayer call, around 5:30am. I usually go for a run either into the desert around the town or along the road that runs through town (it is one of the two paved roads in the country, it goes from Nouakchott to Timbuktu). I bathe in a mud “room” with a tin roof that is about fifty feet from my house. I use a bucket and a cup. And soap. Sometimes.
We have class at the GMC four times a week where we teach English to about 25 women. If I am not teaching I am cleaning my house. You’d be surprised how many times I have to sweep the sand off my floors. Although there is not a whole lot to buy in the market, I often cruise around there before lunch or in the evening. I can always find potatoes and onions.
I typically make one meal for myself a day, either lunch or dinner and eat with a family for the other. The lunch and dinner menu don’t really vary, and there is always GOAT. I’ve even seen it eaten for breakfast. Lunch is goat with rice and dinner cous cous and goat. It is common for people to ask me if I like milk and cous cous. I get that question over three times a day. “Do you like milk?” Well….. before I drank soymilk, but now I love milk, if it’s camel even better, and if the milk has a little sugar in it OH MAN. I am not being sarcastic; I crave it when I haven’t had it in a while. Kack I know you are probably gagging as you read this. Usually I teach an English lesson in the afternoon and then prepare for nighttime back at my house. When you don’t have electricity and you’ve seen scorpions around your house, you don’t want to be searching for your flashlight in the dark. I get water from a spigot near my bathroom/hole in the ground room. I always have to fill up a few buckets for the next day so I spend a lot of my pre-dinner time hauling buckets of water around. When it gets dark I cook on a small gas burner, I eat a lot of onions fried up with potatoes and canned veggies. Not bad. I sleep outside my house on the cement stoop, usually I’m in bed early (like 8pm…23 years old going on 70). I do a lot of stargazing.
We’re hoping to open the GMC in a few weeks and get started teaching our younger girls group as well as the class of mentors we have now. I really like teaching, and it makes it even better that my students have never really seen or heard English so they don’t know when I goof up. Women in our class range from 16 to 40 years old, most haven’t had the opportunity to continue with school past a sophomore in high school level. They are hilarious and think I’m kind of crazy but I think we’re all growing pretty attached to each other.
The other morning I was running along the road back into town and people and families were greeting me from their tents, as they often do, when I saw a women running towards me. She was one of the older women from class and she was carrying a bowl full of…you guessed it, MILK! Warm milk+6:30 in the morning+ exercise+ empty stomach= did not feel good afterwards. But it’s the thought that counts.
I miss you all very very much! I am trying to get my camera working again and put up some pictures.
Xxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
In response to Aunt Ann and Stu’s questions about the things I do daily, I’ll give you a little sample. A typical day for me begins by being woken up to morning prayer call, around 5:30am. I usually go for a run either into the desert around the town or along the road that runs through town (it is one of the two paved roads in the country, it goes from Nouakchott to Timbuktu). I bathe in a mud “room” with a tin roof that is about fifty feet from my house. I use a bucket and a cup. And soap. Sometimes.
We have class at the GMC four times a week where we teach English to about 25 women. If I am not teaching I am cleaning my house. You’d be surprised how many times I have to sweep the sand off my floors. Although there is not a whole lot to buy in the market, I often cruise around there before lunch or in the evening. I can always find potatoes and onions.
I typically make one meal for myself a day, either lunch or dinner and eat with a family for the other. The lunch and dinner menu don’t really vary, and there is always GOAT. I’ve even seen it eaten for breakfast. Lunch is goat with rice and dinner cous cous and goat. It is common for people to ask me if I like milk and cous cous. I get that question over three times a day. “Do you like milk?” Well….. before I drank soymilk, but now I love milk, if it’s camel even better, and if the milk has a little sugar in it OH MAN. I am not being sarcastic; I crave it when I haven’t had it in a while. Kack I know you are probably gagging as you read this. Usually I teach an English lesson in the afternoon and then prepare for nighttime back at my house. When you don’t have electricity and you’ve seen scorpions around your house, you don’t want to be searching for your flashlight in the dark. I get water from a spigot near my bathroom/hole in the ground room. I always have to fill up a few buckets for the next day so I spend a lot of my pre-dinner time hauling buckets of water around. When it gets dark I cook on a small gas burner, I eat a lot of onions fried up with potatoes and canned veggies. Not bad. I sleep outside my house on the cement stoop, usually I’m in bed early (like 8pm…23 years old going on 70). I do a lot of stargazing.
We’re hoping to open the GMC in a few weeks and get started teaching our younger girls group as well as the class of mentors we have now. I really like teaching, and it makes it even better that my students have never really seen or heard English so they don’t know when I goof up. Women in our class range from 16 to 40 years old, most haven’t had the opportunity to continue with school past a sophomore in high school level. They are hilarious and think I’m kind of crazy but I think we’re all growing pretty attached to each other.
The other morning I was running along the road back into town and people and families were greeting me from their tents, as they often do, when I saw a women running towards me. She was one of the older women from class and she was carrying a bowl full of…you guessed it, MILK! Warm milk+6:30 in the morning+ exercise+ empty stomach= did not feel good afterwards. But it’s the thought that counts.
I miss you all very very much! I am trying to get my camera working again and put up some pictures.
Xxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Monday, October 13, 2008
Mulafa-ed
A mulafa is the bed sheet like wrap that every single woman wears in my town of Awaynit Zybil. Except for me. I've been semi successful at avoiding the questions of "why don't YOU wear a mulafa? They are so pretty!" Until the other day. I left my house to get soap and I came back six hours later with my hands and feet decorated in henna and wrapped head to toe in a mulafa. The boutique owner who I tried to buy soap from took my integration into her own hands by driving me (one of the first women I've seen in this country driving a car) out to the countryside, feeding me lots of goat and painting me with henna. When we returned to her boutique six hours later she wrapped me up in a neon green mulafa and sent me on my way. She doesn't know it yet but she exactly the kind of woman I need running the show in the girls' center. She'll get things done! I hope she's interested.
I've been trying to make friends with female boutique owners in town, especially the ones who sew. I'm looking for mentors for our center and, including the woman who briefly kidnapped me, I have many in mind.
I'm praying that Obama wins the election. He stands for an opportunity for America to get its head out of the sand and acknowledge it's place on the world stage as a powerful nation that can work with other countries, not dominate them. I miss the Seattle rain and the leaves turning colors, but I miss you all much more!
Lots of love, xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
I've been trying to make friends with female boutique owners in town, especially the ones who sew. I'm looking for mentors for our center and, including the woman who briefly kidnapped me, I have many in mind.
I'm praying that Obama wins the election. He stands for an opportunity for America to get its head out of the sand and acknowledge it's place on the world stage as a powerful nation that can work with other countries, not dominate them. I miss the Seattle rain and the leaves turning colors, but I miss you all much more!
Lots of love, xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Friday, September 19, 2008
The Spoils of a Coup d'Etat
Hey Everyone!
Finally moved into my new home. I don't have electricity, sometimes I get running water, but I do have a house! It's Ramadan right now so there's not a lot of action in town, everyone is fasting and most people are in the countryside.
Work for Mike and I won't start until after Ramadan but remarkably we already have some supplies and a space for our Mentoring Center! The Mayor of the town found us an ideal spot in the school for our GMC and on the same day we received supplies from the Girls Mentoring Center in Nema that was shut down. The Nema site was closed and the PCVs and their projects have been moved because of the coup d'etat that happenened last month (that and becuase of budget cuts). Mike and I clearly benefited from a crappy situation.
Because Ramadan has been slow we've been giving English lessons to the Hakim (step up from the Mayor, escentially the guy who runs the town) and his wife. He is the only guy who has electricity in the town (he gets it from the cell phone company-don't know if they know that) so I get to watch plenty of Al-Gezira news, eat goat and drink a lot of milk (luckily the Hakim's not fasting). He lived in Cincinatti as a cab driver for a few years so I've easily fallen into adopting him and his wife as my second family.
Mike hasn't found a house yet so we've been sharing my house. We built a fence so we can start a garden. The weather and the goats make me think that most of the stuff we plant probably won't grow but it's worth a shot.
I come into my regional capitol once or twice a month to check mail, charge my phone and use the computer so I will be able to write more often. Snail mail works well and I been writing lots of letters so please send me your addresses. My e-mail is Jackeann@gmail.com. I'll put my address here on the blog and a link to Mike's blog since he's much better at updating his.
I love you and miss you! xoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Finally moved into my new home. I don't have electricity, sometimes I get running water, but I do have a house! It's Ramadan right now so there's not a lot of action in town, everyone is fasting and most people are in the countryside.
Work for Mike and I won't start until after Ramadan but remarkably we already have some supplies and a space for our Mentoring Center! The Mayor of the town found us an ideal spot in the school for our GMC and on the same day we received supplies from the Girls Mentoring Center in Nema that was shut down. The Nema site was closed and the PCVs and their projects have been moved because of the coup d'etat that happenened last month (that and becuase of budget cuts). Mike and I clearly benefited from a crappy situation.
Because Ramadan has been slow we've been giving English lessons to the Hakim (step up from the Mayor, escentially the guy who runs the town) and his wife. He is the only guy who has electricity in the town (he gets it from the cell phone company-don't know if they know that) so I get to watch plenty of Al-Gezira news, eat goat and drink a lot of milk (luckily the Hakim's not fasting). He lived in Cincinatti as a cab driver for a few years so I've easily fallen into adopting him and his wife as my second family.
Mike hasn't found a house yet so we've been sharing my house. We built a fence so we can start a garden. The weather and the goats make me think that most of the stuff we plant probably won't grow but it's worth a shot.
I come into my regional capitol once or twice a month to check mail, charge my phone and use the computer so I will be able to write more often. Snail mail works well and I been writing lots of letters so please send me your addresses. My e-mail is Jackeann@gmail.com. I'll put my address here on the blog and a link to Mike's blog since he's much better at updating his.
I love you and miss you! xoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
I've seen my future, and it's in cow poop
No joke, my future home in Mauritania is called cow poop. The name of my town Awaynit Zybil, which means water and cow poop. I, along with another volunteer named Mike are the first volunteers in the area. We're a two day drive from the capitol of the country, and the community is pretty conservative so it looks like I'll be wearing a mulafa (think Charlie Brown's halloween costume but pastel) everyday. But I'm really excited about the possibilites we'll have in the next two years. The officials in the town seem really receptive and are pretty eager for us to return in September after we finish up language class and are officially sworn in as volunteers. I ate a lot of goat and drank a lot of hot camel/cow milk straight from the source. Yum.
Traveling across Mauritania this past week was eye opening. Besides giving me a sore bottom from off-roading (which is only fun for the first five minutes), I got a better sense of the different cultures here. There are many, sometimes in the same village or city, and I get the sense that tensions still run high in many areas. There's a presence of NGO's like World Vision and Oxfam in bigger towns but definitly not in Awaynit. Our goal is to open up a Girl's Mentoring Center within a year but I'm sure Mike and I will also have many other side projects. I'm hoping to start a garden (in the desert? YOU BET) and possibly a small library but I'll have to get back there and see what the community wants from us before we begin anything. And I'm really going to have to work on my Hassaniya. Although greetings here can last five minutes I'm probably going to need a little more vocab than hello, how are you with the rain/work/heat/etc. I miss you all very very much. Hope summer is beautiful where ever you are.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Traveling across Mauritania this past week was eye opening. Besides giving me a sore bottom from off-roading (which is only fun for the first five minutes), I got a better sense of the different cultures here. There are many, sometimes in the same village or city, and I get the sense that tensions still run high in many areas. There's a presence of NGO's like World Vision and Oxfam in bigger towns but definitly not in Awaynit. Our goal is to open up a Girl's Mentoring Center within a year but I'm sure Mike and I will also have many other side projects. I'm hoping to start a garden (in the desert? YOU BET) and possibly a small library but I'll have to get back there and see what the community wants from us before we begin anything. And I'm really going to have to work on my Hassaniya. Although greetings here can last five minutes I'm probably going to need a little more vocab than hello, how are you with the rain/work/heat/etc. I miss you all very very much. Hope summer is beautiful where ever you are.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Friday, July 4, 2008
Hey Everyone!
Happy Fourth of July! We're been here in country for about two weeks and I've already had plenty of adventures. I'm living with a host family in Rosso which is a border town next to Senegal. Rosso is chaotic, difficult, and a trip to the market here is always an opportunity for me to make a fool of myself. I'm learning Hassaniya, it's a language similar to Arabic. My host brothers have been teaching me and hopefully I'll pick it up soon. The language barrier makes simple interactions way too difficult. The other night I cut my foot open on a rock and my brother ran off to get "in-namus." If I understood I would have realized that he was about to spray my wound with bug repellent. Oh well, it's not infected yet. I have about twelve family members, I'm not quite sure who's who but I know I have four brothers and three sisters all around my age. Last night we had our first sand/wind/lightning/rain storm. I was really scared. I locked myself in my room (just me and the bugs and rats) and when it was finally over I was covered in sand! I've had lots of interested gentlemen come around my house to check me out. I may not know the language but I do understand "hegela"= single, "zane" = good, and often "visa Amerik." I miss you all so much, almost as much as I miss vegetables.
xoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Happy Fourth of July! We're been here in country for about two weeks and I've already had plenty of adventures. I'm living with a host family in Rosso which is a border town next to Senegal. Rosso is chaotic, difficult, and a trip to the market here is always an opportunity for me to make a fool of myself. I'm learning Hassaniya, it's a language similar to Arabic. My host brothers have been teaching me and hopefully I'll pick it up soon. The language barrier makes simple interactions way too difficult. The other night I cut my foot open on a rock and my brother ran off to get "in-namus." If I understood I would have realized that he was about to spray my wound with bug repellent. Oh well, it's not infected yet. I have about twelve family members, I'm not quite sure who's who but I know I have four brothers and three sisters all around my age. Last night we had our first sand/wind/lightning/rain storm. I was really scared. I locked myself in my room (just me and the bugs and rats) and when it was finally over I was covered in sand! I've had lots of interested gentlemen come around my house to check me out. I may not know the language but I do understand "hegela"= single, "zane" = good, and often "visa Amerik." I miss you all so much, almost as much as I miss vegetables.
xoxoxoxoxoxo
Jack
Monday, June 9, 2008
One Week Till Take Off!
Dearest loved ones,
After a year of paperwork, medical exams, stalking the mailman, and waiting waiting waiting I've finally received my placement with the Peace Corps. I will be leaving for Atlanta on Tuesday, June 17th for staging, then to Dakar, Senegal where I'll be taking a bus to my new home, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania! Thanks for all your support and encouragement as I embark on this exciting adventure.
After a year of paperwork, medical exams, stalking the mailman, and waiting waiting waiting I've finally received my placement with the Peace Corps. I will be leaving for Atlanta on Tuesday, June 17th for staging, then to Dakar, Senegal where I'll be taking a bus to my new home, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania! Thanks for all your support and encouragement as I embark on this exciting adventure.
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