This past weekend I helped with another CereAmine training in a town about 1.5 hours from here called Aoujeft or Owjeft or Aujeft, take your pick. The spelling changes from sign post to sign post. Aoujeft is a town that by my impression, is being engulfed by sand dunes, at least, the old part of town where I spent all of my time. I have not been so physically uncomfortable since I got out of Stage in Boghe, and you all remember how miserable that was. It’s hard to believe that that misery was just one year ago. The year feels like a lifetime and yesterday all at once. The trainer, Zeina and I left on Thursday evening in a very comfy ride. Comfy is defined as the car only having 4 passengers rather than the requisite 6. The ride took longer than expected because it seemed as though we were driving around in circles out in the dunes just a few kilometers out of town. I could see the town but we couldn’t quite seem to make it. The driver wasn’t lost, we were merely dropping some fella off out in the middle of nowhere. We finally arrive and everyone notices that Zeina is 8 months, 4 weeks, 5 days and 36 hours pregnant. How did I miss that? (go to the flickr photos and see if you can pick out the pregnant woman) I know that in the South, in the African culture, one doesn’t mention someone’s pregnancy. You don’t want to attract God’s wrath. It is the same reasoning behind having bridesmaids in a wedding, to confuse the evil spirits. I am not sure if the same goes in the Moor culture, so to be safe, we don’t say anything.
First thing we do after we arrive is deposit Zeina at our counterpart, Amenitou’s house. Amenitou is a cross between the Energizer Bunny and Joan Rivers. It felt odd to just leave Zeina at a house of strangers, but I am assured that that is how it is done here. And considering how pregnant she is, I was fairly certain she didn’t want to trudge up and down any more sand dunes than necessary. So off we go, Jolene, Heather and I, to organize for the next day. Thankfully, a Peace Corps vehicle had come through Atar on its way out to Aoujeft a couple of weeks before and I could send the grains along with them. To your door service in and Land Rover is far, far superior to lugging 39K over wretched sand dunes on foot. So the 3 of us take some time, sit down, and go over our game plan. We trudge back up the sand dunes for dinner at Amenitou’s house and then trudge back down to Jolene’s for some shut eye, dripping puddles of sweat all along the way. Amenitou did not join us for dinner as she was orchestrating the movement of a sand dune.
Yes, the town is moving a sand dune. Apparently, this particular dune is the route into town and had become too steep which made entering Aoujeft treacherous. As I hadn’t seen the beginning of this project, I couldn’t really wrap my brain around what and how this was being accomplished, or actually if anything was being accomplished. But nonetheless, great hordes of folks would gather on the offending dune each evening around sunset, many with shovels and rice sacks, and many just for what appeared to be moral support. Those with shovels shoveled and those with rice bags dragged them loaded with sand away until late, late in the evening. Mind you, they didn’t move the sand far, just to the side, or bottom of the dune. I suspect that the next good wind storm will put all of the sand right back to where Mother Nature had so carefully placed it before, but what do I know.
So we are back at Jolene’s for some shut eye with the alarm set for bright and early. I take a quick shower, in the yard (more on the facilities later) to wash off the sand and sweat and cool myself down so that I can fall into deep slumber. I need my beauty rest as Heather and I are to slog back up the damn dune to pick up Zeina and escort her to the training location. Jolene’s task was to organize the movement from the grains that are being stored at the Jardin des Enfants to the training location.
Jolene’s place is astonishingly Spartan. She has no electricity, no source of water (well or robinet) and no toilet; although every other house I visited in Aoujeft had at a minimum of 2 of those 3 luxuries. For water, one must walk across a sand lot to the Jardin Des Enfants to fill your 20L bidon at their spigot and drag the blasted thing back. For nature’s call, during daylight hours, one goes back to the Jardin to use that toilet. During darkness, one merely pees in the yard. God knows what happens if one had to do any real business in the middle of the night. Or worse, what would one do if one was stricken, as we so often are, with some nasty intestinal crud ? I suppose one would just lay in the Kindergarden yard and hope for death or health, which ever came first. Luckily I didn’t have to face that dilemma. She also has no wall to speak of surrounding her compound, so I am rather sure a few of the neighborhood goats cuddled up with me during the night. And lastly, she has no roof. Well, she has a roof, but not one that would hold the weight of a slumbering body. So we had to lie in the yard which is oddly, not covered with sand, but with boulders. I am still asking myself, and anyone else I can find, how she has lived like this for 2 years
At any rate, I am clean and damp so I fall asleep. But not for long, as soon as I dry I am drenched in sweat. I haven’t been this hot at night since last summer in my beloved Boghe. Oh how I longed for my rooftop perch. Being up on the roof gets you up into the breeze and up off the sand and its store of ambient heat from the searing hot, Saharan sun. It is easily 10 degrees cooler up on a roof. I pass the night tossing and turning on the rocks, slick with my own sweat and snuggled with my goats. As you can imagine, I sure was bright-eyed the next morning.
Day 1: Friday the 13th
It was blistering hot. Bright and early, Heather and I trudge up the dunes to fetch the trainer as scheduled. But there is no one home. We trudge to a neighbor’s house where we ran into the rest of the participants the previous evening. No one home there either. We trudge back to Aminetou’s house to pilfer her kitchen equipment and trudge yet again, back down to the training facility. Let me clarify, this training facility is a vacant house owned by Aminetou. It’s 7:30 am and we are drenched with sweat. We arrived at the training locale and many of the women had gathered, quite early by RIM standards. We had suggested that the training start at 8 am but it seemed that Aminetou had scheduled it for 9 am so we waited for the rest of the women to arrive. By that time, the sun had taken over most of the courtyard (see flickr photos) and we were pressed into the little shade left against the walls. With great relief, unlike the first training, these ladies embraced the soap. We had to buy more for the second day. They would rinse, lather and repeat, all the way to their elbows, between each step and before and after each meal. It was such a relief. I only had to become cranky pants at one or two women on only a couple of occasions.
We spent the day cleaning, washing, roasting grains and getting to know each other. It was a physically miserable, miserable day. I was filthy and my eyes were red and swollen from the sweat that dripped off my brow all day. I think I made a faux pas though at the end. It’s kind of hard to tell as the women spoke Zero French and I speak Zero Hassaniya (yet again). Also, the cadence and tone of their language makes it incredibly difficult to decipher mood. They might just as easily be telling you off as wishing you a happy birthday; Hassaniya is just harsh on the ears. My error was that I took a bucket bath right next to the cistern. I just threw my BouBou over the doorway for a bit of privacy and rinsed off. As I always have soap in my purse, it was easy peasy. In my defense, I saw one of the RIM ladies doing it earlier in the day…so I figured what the heck. I was desperate to get the sweat, sand and grim off of me and cool down. Add to that the fact that I didn’t want to spend any more time in the toilet at that house then absolutely necessary and you can see my rational and motivation to bath where I did. My clue that I might have done a no-no was that when Heather went to follow suit, she was shooed into the nasty bathroom. Ah well.
We finally broke about 6:30. Heather, Jolene and I go back to Jolene’s place to reorganize for the next day, sort out the money and receipt so that every ouguiya is accounted for, and relax a bit. We trudge up the sand dune yet again, for dinner, which was served really late. We weren’t entirely sure we were going to get dinner. While we were sitting around on the natte out on a sand dune waiting, the cook took a 45 minute nap. Also, the women who came from out of town were suppose to be eating with us but they were no where to be seen. We had been told by Aminetou to purchase a kilo of meat to feed everyone, but no one was there. Then when the plate finally came, there was so little meat on it, we were suspicious. Where did all of that meat go? As Aminetou was on Sand Dune duty, there was no way to find out. When I am working with HCN’s I am often confused as to the who, what, where, when and most perplexing, the why of things. For example, we tried all day to explain to the women that we needed more equipment to work with. They had been given a list, in Arabic, of items needed. And further, the PC Staff went over the list again, when he delivered the grains, in fluent Hassaniya. Yet, after all of that, we didn’t have nearly enough tubs, bowls or Marmit’s (the big cooking pots). One of the difficulties setting up a training where the women travel in from surrounding villages is that you can't ask them to lug along all of their kitchen equipment. Therefore you have to rely on the women that live locally to empty out their kitchen. Which didn't seem to happen, Jolene ended up empting out her and her neighbor's kitchen. To avoid this problem for the next day, before we broke for the evening, the trainer explained that we needed more large vessels and sifters for the following day. After dinner, we trudged back home to bath in the yard and go to bed.
What happened in during the night? The wind kicked up and a sandstorm took hold. Evidently, Allah wanted her sand back where she put it. Being far too hot to go inside, we just suffered through it. Truth be told, I was too tired to be conscious enough to suffer. I’d just wake up every once in a while, reposition on the boulders and try to keep the sheet wrapped tightly around my head to keep the sand out. In my book, sand and wind are far superior to heat and sweat. Heather urgently disagrees. The direction of the wind was from my feet so it kept blowing up my neck and into my nose. If I would have had any sense I would have turned around….but I didn’t. I just tried to sleep. Besides, I already knew the comfy spots between the boulders. Although I had the sheet folded into 8ths, just to protect my head, every time I moved, a shower of sand would come sifting through the fibers onto me. What a night. What a mess. Another bleary-eyed morning.
Day 2:
We show up in the am and once again, most women were there bright and early. They had already started the tea and were awaiting a bowl of CereAmine. To that end, they proceed to light the charcoal to heat up two enormous pots. This seemed premature to me as we hadn’t finished making it yet, which we try to convey, but no one was listening. It's like herding cats. Then, in walks Aminetou. She flips out (at least I think she did) about the coals being started and possibly that we were sitting around and hadn’t started working yet. (At least I think those were the problems, as I said, it was all in Arabic). The coals made sense to me but the not starting work did not as the flour had not been delivered from the miller and we couldn’t do anything until after that happened. She was speaking very, very, very harshly to everyone, (or wishing us happy birthday) I tried to calm her down with a bit of success. She calmed down for a bit, but she flared up again. The poor woman needs more sleep, we all needed more sleep. The flour finally arrived with a receipt larger than anticipated. I quickly pull out my phone (it has a calculator) to figure out the problem. This is another tricky part of doing projects. One has to be careful that the resources are being spent and distributed appropriately and not lining the pockets of a favored relative or vendor. And 32kg at 40 um per Kilo is not 1500um. With one issue pending about last night’s meat, I wanted to make sure that all knew that I was keeping track of each Ouguiya. After that, and many a ruffled feather, we started working.
And no, there was no more equipment brought for the mornings work. Arrrggghhh. It is so difficult to get a straight answer or give a directive around here. Just trying to record the participant’s names and birth years is impossible. Heather explained that many don’t know their birth year but I am not buying it. Everyone in this country has to carry an ID card and present it at every check point and their birth years must be on that card. My belief is that the women were just messing with us. I will confess, I am not keen to shout out my birth year anymore. So they were probably having a few laughs at my expense. It certainly isn’t the first time in my life that has happened and I am confident it won’t be the last. Honestly, teasing is a way of life here. I suppose they believe that the levity eases the stress. Fo me, on this particular day, not so much. Ir was yet one more straw to the camel’s back of communication challenges. As they say, timing is everything.
As for equipment, come to find out that those handy dandy “high tech” sifter (they look like a big can with wire on the bottom) are not used in the villages, that’s only for city folk In the villages, they just tie a mulafa over the tub (see flickr photos) and push the flour through. It all worked.
About 10, in the middle of the sifting, they finally start heating up the CereAmine. At this point we have an accident. As one woman was carrying the Marmit to a more protected place, out of the sand storm, she turned and in the process she sloshed boiling water all over another’s hand. I chased the burned hand around trying to pour cool water on it. Said victim finally slowed down and lets me do it. I then had to get some ice. Glace is what it’s called. I try to get someone to point me in the direction of a boutique that has a working freezer. I pulled out a 100 um and they gave it to a kid who hurries off. Kid returns and I get the wounded one to sit and hold the ice on the burn for awhile. No more did we settle down from the burn then one of the little one’s came in the room howling. Lots of snot, crocodile tears and cries of agony. She had been stung by a scorpion between her toes. Poor little thing. I took the ice from the burn victim, she’d had it on 20 minutes, and put it on the little one’s foot. They all looked at me as if I was nuts. I tried to explain that it won’t fix the sting but it will help with the pain, at least that is what our first aid handbook recommends. Scorpion sting care was the first paragraph that I read. I hope to never put it to use on myself. I pulled out the change from the 100um and send another child off for another chunk of ice. The silver lining, all of these accidents provided us the perfect opportunity for a first aid lesson.
We finally finished sifting the CereAmine about 11. Time for a little celebration. Drums, dance, laughter. All the while, the sand storm is blowing outside.
After that we spend an hour or so going over our lessons: “What is CereAmine and how does it improve the Mauritanian diet”, Sanitation, the all new Burn Care, and Setting the cost of the product.
Next we gave out Certificates and the booklets. Interestingly, somehow there were more certificates being written then there were women in the room.
These trainings are an emotional roller coaster. Most of the time they are fun, but there is also alot of stress involved in corralling, cajoling and managing a large group of Mauritanian women particularly with no common language. There is also the problem with allocation of resources, primarily food. Within a family or a cooperative every little thing is scrupulously divided equally. It feels almost fanatical they way the portion and reportion the plates of food so that everything is equal. The women spend a good deal of time doing this before each meal. It is so important, that in my family in Boghe, once the plate was portioned, it was then inspected by my Mother who inevitably, moved a tad from here to there. But get outside the sphere of family, coop or tribe and it’s becomes brutal free-for-all. I have had the pleasure to attend 3 GMC closings this spring and each one of them turned to chaos as soon as snacks were served. We serve enough snacks so that each girl can have a piece of fruit, a little cake and a couple of cookies, you know, what you’d normally do at a party. Well at these parties, some of the girls took handfuls. Some were hording. It's not that all or even the majority acted so badly. It's that those who were acting so badly did so unblushingly and with absolutely no shame. I had to ask a couple of girls to open their mulafa and I took back 6 bananas and scores of the little prepackaged cakes. In Tawaz, some of the big girls bullied the younger girls into giving them their portion. Many times, these were their big sisters. The debacle left me so flustered and annoyed with the girls that I didn’t get any photos of the younger girls making bracelets which in hindsight, I regret. I can’t imagine that my older sisters would force me into forking over my goodies at a party. And if they had tried to take my food, I know I wouldn’t have given it up without a tussle. And it’s not just the girls; there was a similar incident at a recent gathering of grown women in NKC. When the cans of evaporated milk for the coffee, were placed on the table some of the women procured them all and put them in their purses. Mind you, the cans had already been opened. So these ladies must have had evaporated milk spilled all over the contents of their bags. Consequently, there was no cream for the coffee. Giving out snacks is awful. It feels like I am on the back of a truck like you see on the news, unloading supplies at a refugee camp and everyone is pushing, crowding and grabbing whatever they can. (Note to self, not the job for me). Needless to say, it is disturbing to witness seemingly sweet girls who were just working together beautifully turn unabashedly greedy.
This all leads back to Aoujeft, and since we are training women from various cooperatives, we are keen to be sure that everyone gets an equal amount of all that there is to divvy up. Being from the outside, I don’t really know where the power lies in this group, this community. So, when things seem suspicious, like where did all of that meat go, why did I pay more for the milling than I should have, where are all of the kilo’s of CereAmine, it sends up a few red flags that I feel I should heed. But worry not, all was well. The meat did get where it was suppose to, everyone was fed and the milling costs worked out as well.
Finally, lunch is served. I should have taken a photo. The plates contained more meat and vegetables then you would ever find in a Mauritania home even in the best of times. Food is cooked here to a temperature that would melt gold. Everything is brought to a molten, furious boil. The plate was a molten pile of Orzo pasta. I dug my hand in and promptly withdrew it as the food was way, way, way, way, way to hot to hold. Hymie Hotta! So I just sit there, I am sure it will cool down this century. Besides, it’s really too hot to eat anyway. The woman sitting next to me tore apart a nearby box to fan my portion. I dig in again. Wow, still way to hot. She then teaches me the correct method for eating molten food with your hand. You fan it, then scrap up just the first cooled layer, ball it and pop it in your mouth. She balls it up and handed it to me. I take it and pop it into my mouth. I then attempt this feat for myself, scraping the top layer of pasta into my hand to ball. And I can’t. Pasta is impossible to ball. I just shove the handful, sloppily into my mouth. Seeing my struggle, my neighbor proceeds to hand me pre-made balls for nearly every bite I get. I nearly fall over laughing. It was just like being transported back to training, but in Boghe, they just handed me a spoon. (see flickr photos, my savior is in the photo titled “Group Shot” in the solid white mulafa on the far front right).
The sandstorm persisted the rest of the afternoon. I finally pull into Atar that evening tired, hungry and filthy, but very happy to be home sweet home.
Cheers from here,
I am leaving for France next week so you won't be hearing from me for awhile.
