CereAmine Queen

Undoubtedly, you will soon be receiving an invitation to my coronation as the Queen of CereAmine. I have just finished my 3rd training. To be more precise,1 training and 2 in a supervisory role, and I can toss the skins off of beans and hot peanuts with some finesse. To be candid, I didn’t expect too much or rather what I expected was much chaos for this particular session. Zeina had spent much of the original training in the tea maker role and didn’t seem very dynamic. To be fair, she was kind of the lone man out if that can be possible in this small town where everyone know, in infinite detail, everyone else. She was the only representative of a cooperative that was not a member of the Union of Women for Self Sufficiency. Her cooperative is a member in good standing of my counterpart’s lending institution. But I’ll be darned if she didn’t have the session really, really well organized. There was enough equipment so that everyone could work at full tilt and much was accomplished with half of the workers. As for the ingredients, we were a little heavy on the peanuts, this particular batch was 10,10,5,5,3 (should have been 2.5) but we always seem to lose a lot of peanuts during the grinding process. A substantial amount of the nuts don’t get ground finely enough to be siftable into the end product thus we end up with a pile of teeny but not teeny enough unusable peanuts. And, I ask you, can you have too many peanuts? Inshallah, it doesn’t throw off the proportions and destroy the complete protein aspect of the batch.

During the tea break Zeine read aloud from the booklet that Kristen so painstakingly created. This was refreshing, as the Union didn’t even bother to bring their copies along on our last batch. She also took fly control and hand washing seriously. It was helpful that her cooperative makes soap. When we arrived to do the final step all of the doors and windows were draped with old fabric. Flies hate darkness and a light breeze.

Also, I am getting a small vocabulary of Arabic, which was convenient because for this session we had no translator. Here’s some cultural exchange for your edification. Goomee means Move It, Hymee means Hot. Hymee is particularly useful when one is roasting grains for hours without hot mitts. Next time, I have got to remember to bring a dishtowel. The ladies simply use their mulafa’s for this purpose. Heck they use their mulafas for everything: hot mitts, dishtowel, handkerchiefs, bedding, baby butt wiper. But even with no translator we were able to communicate. I took on the afternoon session of roasting solo as Morella was previously engaged with a hand washing sensiblization. The washing lessons were to commemorate the opening of spanking new toilets at 3 local elementary schools built as a Peace Corps project. Even without Kristen, I was confident that I could supervise the roasting of the grains even without a common language. Thus “goomee, goomeee, goomee, hymee, hymee, hymee” translates to “stir it faster before it burns because the pan is really hot”.

It was a lovely afternoon and I finally feel that I am back on track with what I can accomplish here. The women respond to my silly nature. Whenever Zeine’s phone rang, her ring tone was reminiscent of 60’s beach rock, think “WipeOut”, I couldn’t help but dance. This, in turn, livened the mood and they, Ziene, Zeine, Mariam, Tarbe and Aicha proceeded to sing to me as we worked using plastic oil tubs as drums. At one point I was offered a lovely cadeau, gift. There was a beautiful new born girl, 2 months, with us and she is either mine for the taking or they have named her Sharon. I am still not sure which. Alas, nuance remains my problem. However, when asked if I was a Madame or Mademoiselle, this time I responded with Madame. It’s just easier. If word gets out, I’ll say that I got hitched over the weekend. It can happen that quickly around here. One of our neighbors (she’s Mauritanian) met a man when he walked into her family’s boutique to buy some cigarettes. She was married the following weekend. They take love at first sight to new heights. Anyway, the terrorists may have scared my tourists and taken my fete, but they can’t take my hungry children or women in search of income.

When doing these trainings, which are 2 very full days, my schedule gets overwhelming. I end up running a Western calendar without the Western luxuries. In the morning I threw in a load of laundry (into a washtub) then hustled over to the coops where we cleaned and dried 33 kg of grain; then I ran to lunch; then home to finish up the laundry, and grab my notebook and dictionary for my French lesson; back to the cooperative for an afternoon of roasting grains. I spent this time stretched out, if I can describe it that way, between 4 huge Marmites (those large pans you see in my photos) over charcoal, teaching them the smell and sound of roasted grains. As you would expect, the roasted corn smells incredible (I am a Hoosier and I love my corn) and you can hear it start to pop; but what you probably don’t know is that millet does the same thing only smaller. When it is ready, the little tiny grains, which are about 4X larger than a couscous grain of 4x smaller than a small caper, pop and make teeny tiny pieces of popcorn, or rather popmillet. As for lying between all of these roasting marmits, you know it is hot when your knee pits are sweating. The ladies were very kind to me; they bought me a bottle of water, which in their estimation must be a terrible waste of money. I offered it around but they shook their heads no, pointed at it and me and said Nassraniya, meaning that they could drink the well water but knew that I could not.

After a brilliant afternoon, I had to hightail it to French classes. At this point I am still covered with the shriveled bean skins, dirt and specs cleaning from the grains and I smell at best of charcoal and roasted grains at worst..…… After 2 hours of French I headed home for dinner and to hit the hay to start it all over again the next morning with the ladies.

French is looking up too. I am enjoying this session much more than the last. It may help that the French isn’t particularly challenging as I have studied the grammar before. That in and of itself is encouraging as Mona pointed out, I finally know enough French to be more advanced than a class. The review gives me the chance to explore more advanced usage rather than barely hanging on to the basics in a class too advanced and feeling lost and frustrated. I can understand much of what is said to me but I still have a hard time spitting out phrases freely. I’m okay if I can spend a few minutes reflecting on what and how to say it. But it is rather problematic when I run into someone on the street. I inevitably end up tongue-tied and they are left just confused. Luckily, they are getting rather used to this and are satisfied with simply stopping and acknowledging each other. It is important to keep expectations low. I have done it so many times to one of the nicest Senegalese Souvenir sellers that the last time he invited me for tea; I rehearsed an explanation (in French) for my abruptness. He just smiled and said he understood. I will sure miss him when he leaves, which is soon. I like the Black African culture and feel very at home within it. Though they are also Muslims, they come from Senegal, the land of music, nightlife, cocktails, western clothes and cuisine and are kindered spirits up here in Atar. He said he was presse (in a hurry) to get back South. Good lord, when I was in Dakar I saw a garbage truck. It seemed the apex of civilization. It struck me, how can Dakar have garbage trucks and not more than 300 k up the road, across the river, we have none? So the souvenir shop is our little oasis in a desert of Moors. The last plane is April 5. On April 6, the streets here roll up and everyone goes back home not to return until the day before the first plane, which isn’t until late October. It makes me a little sad.

In class on this particular day, we were working on Personal Ads. I have no idea who wrote the textbook for the French/Mauritania Alliance, but they will never, ever, ever, ever run into personal ads over here. A. This is an oral society, I don’t think anyone reads a newspaper and B. They don’t date; at least not in the sense that Personals would imply. I was cracking up at the teacher as he is trying to convince the class that a married man with 3 kids, free in body and mind would like to meet a woman to discuss culture, art and cinema was an honorable offer. I wasn’t buying it. He knew I wasn’t buying it and frankly, I don’t think he was buying it either. But I suppose, if they never run into this particular ad or a lascivious Frenchman, what’s the harm. Next the teacher explained sexual abstinence. I am not sure that is what the ad was implying. It seemed to me that he didn’t truly understand this particular personal. He relates to the class that all of these people are looking to find or be found a spouse. Or rather, that is the impression he needs to give, the line the Alliance must tow if they want to continue to exist here in the RIM. On International SIDA Day (just rearrange the letters, AIDS Day) the Alliance who was hosting the event made it clear that our speakers were limited to the topic of blood transfusion but certainly not unwedded sex or infidelity. Somehow it reminds me of the Bible Belt and that Intelligent Design malarkey. Don’t even come near a condom conversation unless it is with a married women regarding birth spacing. At that, I believe she has to secure her husband’s permission. It would follow that personals used for any other purpose than securing a spouse, would be out of the question. So while he was very seriously explaining abstinence, let me tell you, these folks were hanging onto his every utterance; their pens were a flying. Sex talk, no matter how innocuous, is a rarity here. They were scribbling notes faster than I have ever seen them. One never knows when one will need to know that l’abstenance sexuelle= ne pas faire de rapport. That turn of phrase, or set of words, might come in handy one day. Again I say, I was dying in my seat.

Often the teacher and I are in cahoots when trying to explain words. Words like sincere, solitude, sentimental, dynamic, these are easy for me as the English equivalent is rather equivalent. But try to explain “sentimental” to an Arabic speaker and it’s a whole new kettle of fish.

In class I have become the pied piper. All except 2 of my classmates are in high school and they delight in practicing their English on me. They also delight in swiping my pen and phone, and generally pestering the hell out of me. Just the other day, one shoved his phone before me and asked me if I recognized the photo. It took me a minute to but soon I recognized the person as our own volunteer, Ellen. I recall the day, many months back, when she had gotten a Mauritanian makeover. She had gone to a neighbor for lunch and come back looking like a streetwalker. Her navy blue eye shadow, liner and mascara (bare in mind she is a pale towhead) matched her new navy blue mulafa. She had said that when the ladies had finished with her “improvements”, they whipped out their phones and took photos. How this photo ended up on this teenaged boy’s phone is beyond something, frankly, and me that I don’t want to think about. I haven’t shared this bit of news with Ellen yet. But the kids are good-natured and I rather enjoy the interaction. So all is well.

Cheers from here

Recent update: The Union of Coops sold all of their CereAmine at the Fete De Femmes. They were the only group to introduce a new product at the event. All of the dignitaries who attended were pleased with the product, the ladies and the Peace Corps involvement. It seems that they are singing the praises of the Peace Corps around town. Warms my heart.