Too Good To Be True

Let me update you on what’s been happening around here:

We had blessed, unlimited dsl, for a brief time. It was a taste of what’s to come. Some fella loaned us his sexy little USB gizmo. It connects your computer to the internet sans hardwiring, just a little antenna, so that we could fix our bureau computer, which crashed with yet another power outage. So for the 2 days when not working on the bureau computers, those of us with laptops wrestled for the gizmo. I posted my last blog, hung out on You Tube and Skyped whoever I could. I am going to be the hippest 45 year old on the planet when I’m done with this gig. As I seemed to have lost track of the time changes around the globe, my deepest apologies to those of you that I called at the crack of dawn. We should have that handy, dandy usb gizmo up and operational in just a few weeks. Naturally, they are cheaper in Nouakchott than in Atar. However, they are out of them in Nouakchott. Inshallah, it will be on the next shuttle up here on the 27th. As it stands, we have no internet at the bureau as we dumped Mauritel in anticipation of the switch to Chingatel. I bet you never thought you’d know so much about the telephone/cellular/internet services available here in Mauritania. In the meantime, there is a brand new cyber in town which is very fast and thus far, free from all of the viruses that the other cybers are infected with.

I planted my garden, finally. Pictures to follow. Inshallah, the seeds sprout, don’t get eaten or die of thirst while I am in Senegal for WAIST. I have a volunteer tomato from the dirt that they used to plant the palm trees. I also have 2 volunteer tomatoes from the compost pile that I have transplanted into the plot. There are, in order of rows, bottom to top: Sweet Peas (for shade for spinach), Radishes, Spinach (please god let it live), Peppers orange and yellow (for shade for the cauliflower), Cauliflower (a long shot), Beets, Lettuce, Carrots (purple) and finally Tomatoes (again for shade for the lettuce) I also have a few Sunflowers along the Southern edge, again to help shade the delicates from the blazing Saharan sun. In 10 days I am going to try another crop of spinach and lettuce, you know, so that I can have a salad day after day after day. It could happen!

Chateau Deatrick is back to full production after a holiday break. I even had to hire additional help. We anticipate a full house when we host a Trash Marathon at the end of March and the casks are running low.

We reset the GMC schedule due to the fact that the College (Jr High) changed their hours from a continuous day to a split day making it impossible to schedule classes for the College girls during the week. Okay, no problem, we’ll teach the Lycee (High School) girls Tues, Wed and Thurs and leave Sat for College. It’s not fair but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances. The College girls now have class till 5 and need to be home before dark which is 6:15. There is no way to fit in a weekday class. Then this past Thursday, at the end of the Lycee’s French class, the girls inform me that the Lycee has also changed its hours to match those of the College thus eliminating the Lycee girls from our center as well. Grrrrrrrrrowwwwwwwwwllllllllllll. It’s a pain for us but it is a much bigger imposition for the families. Some of these kids walk an hour each way. To cut up their day from 8-12 then again 3-5, will require them to walk or take a taxi 4 X per day. Honestly, what does the Ministry of Education think this move will do to the dropout rate? Yes, if they offered lunch on campus that would be helpful; but the schools have neither the infrastructure nor funding for that kind of off-the-cuff change. In this culture, actually any culture, what parent would leave their teenagers unsupervised, in the big city, for 3 hours each afternoon.

I am continually amazed that enormous changes are enacted over here with little to no fanfare. About 3 weeks into this school year all of the directors (principals) were rearranged throughout the country. This process took 1.5 months to settle down. These folks had to uproot their families and move hither and thither around Mauritania, with literally, one weekend, 3 days notice. After that little exercise, the teacher’s class schedules have changed no less than 3 times in the fall semester. Now this, a complete restructuring of the school day. I can’t believe the entire educational system staff has not up and quit. I am sure they would have if there were any other jobs available in this country.

As you can read, my days are very full. Between gardening, wining; the daily chores, (see previous blogs) writing blogs, reading War and Peace (page 1200), there is little time for much else. I have dropped my journaling as I just run out of steam. It will be difficult to piece together the book at the end of this.

What about the French, you ask? That seems to be at a stand still. I blame it on Mark as he is bogarting all of the good French books. Not really, I just wanted to use the word “bogarting”in a sentence.

Work, you ask? Work, French, would you stop with all of the questions already!

Morella and I, along with her APCD met with the feeding centers, Les Enfants Du Desert, last week to present CereAmine. Scheduling a meeting in the country is rather tricky. The APCD’s (I can not tell you what that acronym stands for but we have one for each of 5 PC sectors working in this country and they run the sector) come into town for just a day or two; one isn’t quite sure when they will arrive, how long they will stay and what their intentions and goals are while in town. Throw in the obligatory protocol with the town officials and the long, long, long Mauritanian lunch and you are left with very few usable hours with which to work. So after 3 reschedulings, we finally meet up with the Les Enfants Du Desert. Stepping into her compound was like stepping into paradise. She has furniture, trees, foliage, shade, a breeze, the place is tidy as a pin and a teenage pup who wants to nibble on your toes and/or skirt hem. We arrived just before 9 and the place was abuzz with the volunteers who were getting ready to head out to one of the 7 feeding centers they have in Atar. It was a treat to feast one’s eyes on a dozen, young, virile frenchies. They shake your hand, kiss your cheeks and embrace you; men and women alike. It’s a wonderful thing. There are also half a dozen folks there just to meet with us. All, except for Aicha, are volunteers in town to help for 2-3 months. One couple are a repeat volunteers who apparently come down each year. She is a nurse. He, I never learned what he does, but his T-shirt bore the word Spiruline (or something like that...not sure how to spell that) which they kept referring, so I suppose he does something with that. The conversation was, naturally, in French and since Mark has been bogarting all of the books I was a little out of the verbal loop. Praise Allah that Douda was with us (APCD) and could speak to the history and fill in many of the specifics of CereAmine, because although I have had a thorough 45 minutes of training on the product. I still didn’t feel quite up to pitching it. Anyway, we sat around on couches, sipping café, discussing nutrition and feeling fine. After about 45 minutes and dumping our literature on a flashdrive (god bless technology) for them, we headed out to tour a couple of the centers. We followed them through parts of this city that I have never seen. Many areas of this town look like scenes from The Pianist; they are just in rubble. I have no idea why. These centers are run differently from the other one I described to you a few blogs back. This one is open all morning and is for children that are not yet old enough to attend school. Each serves about 50 kids. There is a room for the infants and toddlers and a room for the older children. The older children are taught their colors, numbers, letters, etc. The centers are run by a combination of Mauritanians on staff and a couple of French volunteers in each. The children receive a meal, are weighed, their general health checked, are administered vaccines and other medicines. There was one little boy there who had received a horrible burn a couple of months back which they felt compelled to show me. Ouch. His initial visit was to the hospital, but after that the dressings were changed by the staff at the center. His family, no doubt could not afford the trip (via cab) or the visit to the doctor so thankfully, the center staff could administer this care. All of the information is kept on a chart for each child.

In our research of CereAmine, Morella and I came across an anecdotal account of how much 0K should serve. According to that story of 11 children, 2 meals a day for almost 2 weeks brought us to the belief that 10K should make 300 servings, which we present to the center. This combined with the sheer nutritional impact of a complete protein convinced them to try CereAmine at their centers in February. I later learn that they felt that the increase in cost was offset by the nutritional benefits the children would receive. God love the do-gooders.

Holy crap, they want to start in February. It’s mid January and we haven’t trained or rather re-trained, the cooperatives on how to fabricate it, let alone be ready to supply a group that feeds 4-500 kids a day. Not to mention that we are headed back to Senegal mid-February for WAIST (West African Invitational Softball Tournament) But Morella and I as well as Douda are feeling very pleased with ourselves and our work. I don’t recall if I told you, but I became acquainted with the name Les Enfants Du Desert when I purchased some of the cards in the airport and turned them over to see who published the little gems. Then, one Saturday back in early December, while sitting around at Tent City doing handwork with Zeinebou a couple of their volunteers came by and spent a hour or so sitting around too and having tea. They gave me some brief information on where they were located. I mentioned this to Morella, the health volunteer here in Atar; and lo and behold, once back from Christmas, off we go in search of them. She’s only got a few months left of her service (she’s a year ahead of me) and we need to get moving on this.

Okay, it’s the next day and Morella and I need to make a plan. My stomach is in a knot trying to figure out how we can get enough kilos of CereAmine in their hands within a couple of weeks. There is no way the coops can get this pulled off in this short timeframe. Not only is there training to be made; there is also an awful lot of financing that needs to be secured in order to get that volume pumped out. Morella and I meet in the bureau to brainstorm. Do they want to do the trial at just one center with 50 kids or the entire Atar population of 350 kids? There are also another 125 or so, kids out in the environs of Atar. Wow, that’s a lot of mouths, a lot of monthly servings. I (of all people) work on the numbers. 300 servings per 10K for 1 center for 24 days (Feb is a short month) is about 40K. All 350 mouths are about 130K (or something, I’d have to look at my notes) For fun, I quickly run the revenue for the coops if the trial proves successful and they decide to proceed with this project. The ladies will make quite a tidy sum. Lord, we might have to get a factory. Who needs the tourists and their fickle travel plans. There is always a market of hungry little mouths in Atar.

However, when we try to plug these numbers into a spreadsheet some volunteer formulated for CereAmine and Feeding Centers the numbers are WAAAAYYYYYYY off. In dissecting the formula, the spreadsheet has a serving at anywhere from 125 - 187g depending on the age of the kid. We settle on 150g’s with which to work. I’ll let you do the math but let me tell you, it ain’t 300 servings in 10,000g. Damn the metric system. Who can work in those amounts? Why can’t I have gallons, ounces and pounds? Why don’t we have serving information on our product? Shit, shit, double shit.

And this is where it stands at this moment. Morella and I have to get back in there and find out exactly how much cereal they are currently purchasing and take our numbers from that. Possibly they weren’t listening when we said that 10K would feed 300. Although, they did ask us a couple of times for clarification on that specific detail. In retrospect, they should have been skeptical at what we were saying as they are experts at little mouths. But instead they must have been amazed at this miracle power we were presenting. Being Peace Corps gives us far more credibility than we deserve.

I was going to wait to write a blog until the above situation had resolved itself. But in rethinking it, I thought it would be much more edifying for you to live through this process with me. Stay tuned.

Cheers from here

Here is a website for you: http://www.lesenfantsdudesert.org
Also I hear that www.france24.com piece on Mauritania has an English translation, just click around. Here is the youtube site thanks to Lisa, another hipster....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YS9ayJWbu4

LET ME KNOW IF ANYONE IS READING THIS...IF YOU ARE, MAKE A COMMENT OR SEND ME AN E-MAIL.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Me, my life is going on. I have been a bit blue. The post-holiday doldrums; the nytimes op/ed; the terrorist attack(s), Kenya’s implosion all weigh heavily. I am also feeling fat. The mirrors and store fronts in Nouakchott and St Louis were not a help. Neither were the 25 beers and pizza everyday. I gotta tell you, living without mirrors is liberating. Now, after all of those mirrors, all I can do now is ruminate on how badly I need a haircut.

In many ways, the op/ed it is an accurate assessment of the Peace Corps. I have voiced a similar sentiment just recently. We can’t be too effective if development if after 40 years here, the population still doesn’t wash its hands nor eat vegetables in sufficient amounts. Mauritanians have created their own outreach programs, doing community assessments, with huge sums of money to invest in regional projects in a quest to keep folks from flocking to the capital. So they, themselves, are starting to do the work that we aspire to do. PC could use older, more experienced volunteers. However, if it wants to attract older, more qualified volunteers, it will need to evolve considerably, not that anyone with PC has asked for my opinion on this matter. But if they were to, I’d say, for starters, the pay is too low to live comfortably unless you have recently been accustomed to living by a students standards, a budget so tight that you have to weigh out the cost of a soda; the training and living conditions are physically grueling to these old bones; and the rules seem designed to keep a fraternity in line rather than those of a professional organization. In its defense, the staff is charged with keeping these kids safe inspite/despite (I never know when to use which) of themselves. Many of these kids would like to believe that they are grown up and autonomous, but if one, mashalla, went a-missing DC would erupt with unhappy parents. DC, in turn, would come down heavily on the Peace Corps staff and more rules would have to be enacted. I’m confident that Terry McGraw nor the board of directors of McGraw Hill would not have been remotely influenced if my mother had called complaining about my treatment or safety. I on course, can only speak for my experience in PC RIM, no doubt, PC Belize and/orTonga is different animal, the lucky bastards.

As for PC Kenya, they must be heartbroken. It's disheartening when one of the more stable countries in Africa goes to hell in just a few hours. Is there truly hope for any of them?

As for my work, the cultural fair is probably not a worthwhile endeavor, at least for now. The tourists have all but dried up because of the attacks in Aleg. The mood here is bleak. The tourists are a major source of income for many people and the flights are arriving virtually empty. The attack was unsettling for me personally, as I don’t want to be killed by terrorists. A stunning admission to be sure. Although I can’t say that I have changed anything I am doing because of it; honestly, I don’t know what I could change. But as the 100 of us set off from the capital last week to go back to our sites, I thought, holy shit, we are awfully vulnerable. The night before I was to depart, I ran into the US Ambassador at a restaurant, and he, in a very heartfelt manner, asked that I be very careful traveling. Makes me wonder what he knows that I don’t. There have been no threats to the Peace Corps, as such, but honestly, how can a nut distinguish us from a French tourist and frankly, would said nut care. I take comfort, and so should you, that Mauritanian’s pride themselves on their non-violence especially in light of what is going on in the rest of the African and Arab world, which this country straddles. So far, the worst offense I have encountered has been an offering of a relation of love. (see previous blog) Heck, they want to marry westerners not shoot them.

There was a rally today (Saturday) in Atar wanting the tourist back. One of the signs said “Mille Regrets Pour Vos Absence” or something like that. “A thousand regrets for your absence” Interestingly, some are blaming Sarkozy for the loss of tourism euros and not Al Qaeda. It makes one shake her head. There were other signs, maybe condemning the acts, but I couldn’t read them as they were in Arabic as were all of the speeches. None the less, there must have been 3-400 people in the Carrefour in support of this community and this economy. It was wonderful to see. I love freedom of speech in action. I got goosebumps as the marchers and cars descended upon the Carrefour making their voices and horns heard. I doubt that it made the news outlets but for those reading this, the headline would be ADRAR LOVES THE TOURISTS, PLEASE COME BACK AND EAT DATES, DRINK TEA, SLEEP UNDER OUR SAHARAN STARS.

On to a brighter note. I have a couple of other ideas for work that might fly, although that remains to be seen. I might have mentioned that I want to get CereAmine into the hands of feeding centers as I can not possibly create a general market for it with no money nor means for marketing. I went with my site mate and health volunteer Kristin to see Les Enfants du Desert which runs 7 feeding centers here in Atar. We are going back on Tuesday. Genevieve, a French woman, runs it with the help of a handful of volunteers who rotate out every couple of months. Kristin’s French is far, far, far superior to mine. Thankfully she’s good natured about doing the translating for me. I tried as best I could to explain the approach that we should take; she is a clever girl and handled the interaction with aplomb. I hope my sales skills come in handy on this one. By all appearances, it should be a slam dunk, but we have a lot yet to learn about Les Enfants du Desert’s funding and mission. CereAmine can be a holistic solution to some of the problems here, feed poor children a complete protein and create income for poor women who can make the stuff from ingredients found in the local market….I have the women to make it, thanks to the work of volunteers who have come before me, now I’d like to find them a source of revenue straight away—and feeding centers seem to be an logical answer. Hopefully the money will fall into place. I know ceramine is more expensive than rice, but she is buying something from Unicef. So we’ll see. If the cost of fabricating the stuff isn’t inline with the market it is certainly not the panacea that we all hope it to be.

As for Senegal. The food was great, the hotel was wonderful, the bars were a relief as was being anonymous in Nouakchott and Senegal. But it’s was difficult to see past the poverty. At first glance, Senegal seems like paradise but it didn’t take long to see the filth. I decided not to into the ocean after seeing what was on the beach just 2 kilometers up current, and trash was the least of the matter. I’ll spare you the details.

Anyway, I vacillate between actually wanting to accomplish something here and just biding my time making wine, gardening and playing twister. It takes so much effort to bridge the language and cultural gap each day that it is tempting just to make wine and play twister but I think my spirit would be better served if I could at least leave a little mark on this wretched place.

Cheers from here

Updates

I had a refrigerator delivered yesterday.
Atar elected an entire new batch of municipals officials while I was away. I am starting at square 1 with protocol.
The new mayor is installing sidewalks throughout the town.
The weekend changed from Sat and Sun to Fri and Sat.
Mail Tuesday has become Mail Inshallah
Sauces, the restaurant had a TV installed so I can see news everyday at lunch. Its European news, but I actually know what’s going on in our primaries. You will be glad to know when the news of the arrests of the evil men who shot the terrorists come across, the restaurant burst into applause.
I am 900 pages into War and Peace
We finally have DSL in Atar, therefore we should have it in our bureau very soon. I am currently using a loaner. It’s a sexy little usb interface that plugs right into your usb port. No hardwires, just antennas.
It’s a bit pricy, but I may opt for a version in my home….I can sit home during the hot months and eat popsicles and skype. Life is looking up.

Switched back to old number

Well, guess what turned up? my sim card. It fell out of my laundry from St. Louis. So i am going back to my old telephone number.

New Photos and Phone Available

I have finally managed to get my flickr photos up-to-date as of New Years 08 while in the capital with access to a fast, reliable internet connection. I also managed to lose my sim card while in St. Louis so I have also posted my new phone number as well. FYI St. Louis is in Senegal for all of those who thought I took a quick trip to the mid-west over the holidays.

Stay tuned, when I finally quit traveling (I should be back in Atar on Monday) and find the time to reflect on all that I have seen and done I will make a post.

Happy New Year