See also

Just to clarify, reference points for the Overall Riot Rating scale are as follows:

10 - Reginald Denny
1 - Dakota Fanning

Also, please see Isaac Fitzgerald's new website, in which he solicits money to go dance for democracy in the jungle or something. Link is to your right, or you can be lazy and just click here: http://www.isaacfitzgerald.com

Finally, I went to Europe a few months ago. It was excellent. Here is a photo from Lisbon.

Gui Boratto - Chromophobia

Third world product reviews - Mauritanian Tear Gas

Gorgeous scents of blackberries, truffles, damp earth, and choke. Opens up on the palate with an absorbing, chewy mouthfeel, and follows with notes of oak, chocolate, and tears. Though effective, probably can not stand up to its international competitors. Still, keep an eye out for this one in 10 years!

Race. About two months ago, I had the opportunity to visit Cap Blanc, the northernmost boundary of the Banc d'Arguin national park on the southernmost tip of the Nouadhibou peninsula. It's slightly less than 20 kilometers from town, but involves about 10 kilometers of fairly rough off-road driving, so offered a spot in a 4x4, I took it. The area we visited is downwind of the SNIM port, Mauritanian iron ore's gateway to the world, so the sand and rocks looked nearly identical to images of Martian landscapes. Home to seaside cliffs, an old lighthouse, an enormous scuppered ship and the world's last remaining monk seals, the trip was well worth it. Of course, on the way back to town, when I regained network coverage and immediately weathered a deluge of calls from around the country demanding information on the race riots that I had apparently missed, I suddenly didn't really care if those goddamn seals got sucked backwards through a jet engine while being clubbed to death by pregnant teenagers. F.

So, this is the story. A white Moor woman went to a black Moor butcher, and asked him how fresh his meat was (insert punchline). He claimed it had been butchered that day. Being the wary customer that any third world market demands, she smelled the meat, which highly offended the butcher. He yelled at her, she yelled back, and the whole exchange degraded into a screaming match which I'm sure looked not unlike every other interaction I witness in this country. And then the butcher slapped the woman, in the face, with meat. I imagine this is somewhat similar to the fateful beginnings of the Burr-Hamilton duel.

The woman's husband had some connection with the gendarme, so when she cried "foul," four marines came to the butcher's shop, beat the living shit out of the man, and tossed him in jail. Livid that he had not been read his Miranda rights, the butcher demanded to see the police commissioner. It was a Saturday, and he was told that the commissioner would not be in until Monday, so the marines let the man go. Come Monday, the butcher returned to the police station with friends, several brandishing meat cleavers because, hey, a respectable butcher never confronts authority without large, sharp evidence of his career choice. The police would not let the man's posse into the compound (one can only speculate on their reasons), so they milled angrily on the street out front. Over time, they were joined by friends and rabble rousers, mostly black Moor.

No one is sure what instigated the first act of violence, but rocks eventually became airborne. The gendarmes responded by throwing them back. (Sam and Erin have video of the gendarme's tendency to fight fire with fire, but are still working on getting it into a net-friendly format). From there, people dragged furniture, tires, and trash into the street and started a bonfire in the main intersection of town. One volunteer saw multiple cars being driven by white Moors which had had windows smashed. At least one shop was broken into, and minor looting ensued. But by the time I got to town, the only evidence of any of it was the deserted main road, save a few police. At one point on my walking tour of the aftermath, the wind changed direction and my face suddenly exploded into tears, which was the high point of the whole thing.

Reflecting upon the incident, people around here almost universally point to a couple of things. The first is that the riot and subsequent looting occurred mere days before Eid, the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. It's kind of like the Christmas season, because there are certain financial obligations expected of people; money was tight, and people saw an opportunity. The second is that the racial aspects really only existed between black and white Moors. African blacks (Pulaar, Wolof, Soninke, etc.) didn't really come into the mix, which is a blessing. Had that occurred, the unrest could have potentially spread beyond Nouadhibou. The country is still mopping up its mess from the events of 1989, and no one wants a reprisal. According to a journalist friend, the press even exercised a silent, self-imposed moratorium on stories about the event. Last I heard, the woman, the man, and the 4 marines were all in jail awaiting review. But it's been a while, and I think it's very safe to assume that there were few, if any, repercussions for anyone's actions.

Overall riot rating: 4/10

Money. More recently, the whole country experienced a spate of riots in response to the climbing prices of almost all market goods, as well as gas. They reportedly began in a town called Kankossa, which is in the south of the country. The story that I heard was that a high school student was killed when gendarmes fired their weapons into the air in an effort to disperse rioters. A bullet descended and killed a kid. Now, I don't know if any of you have ever caught "Mythbusters" on A&E, but of the one episode I think I've ever watched, they disproved the idea that a stray bullet descending from the heavens could have enough force to kill anyone. My call based on my collected experiences with gendarmes in this country is that, while exercising more restraint than counterparts in several other neighboring countries, they consider themselves above the law, and go out of their way to protect their own. Just sayin'.

On my way to a cybercafe one morning, I noticed an enormous crowd gathering at Carrefour Cansado, the place to grab taxis and start riots. It was roughly noon, and most of the people were young, so I assumed that school had let out and there was a natural rush for taxis. I continued to my destination, but was kicked out of the place within minutes. I went outside and watched, while students greeted me. Eventually, the crowd grew to a few hundred, and began to move down the street towards the mayor's office. Finally aware of what was about to happen, I took up a post at the corner of a building just off the intersection and waited. Soon enough, pickup trucks arrived with gendarmes piled more than a dozen to a bed. The game seemed obvious enough to me. The kids ran from the police because the police chased them, and the police chased because they ran. The occasional rock was thrown, but mostly, it was just wind sprints around the block.

Finally, I heard a *foom* and found myself within feet of a freshly discharged tear gas disk (canister? puck? saltlick?). And I stood there listening to Final Fantasy on my iPod while I became enveloped in vaguely yellow clouds. The crassness of the cultural divide was not lost on me. I embraced it. But the gas was weak, and frankly, disappointing. Some kids tore around my corner and ran down the alley behind me, towards my house. The police were not immediate in chasing them, and I silently lauded their realization that it was an infinite, pointless loop, until a sizable piece of concrete landed suspiciously close to my back. I turned around, and the police sped past me while the kids disappeared into my alley.

I thought I had witnessed the pinnacle of excitement, and was considering returning home when several pickups skidded to a halt in the middle of Carrefour Cansado. Gendarmes poured out of the back of them and indiscriminately started beating and arresting anyone standing around. I was far enough away to not be particularly worried about my own wellbeing, but I got a good show of police with batons beating the crap out of people that didn't really look like they deserved it. And after they had tossed a few hapless victims into the back of their trucks, they disappeared up the road. I went home with my expired souvenir.

My first riot left me with a cheap feeling. It was incredibly dumb, ostensibly over increasing commodity prices that the whole world is experiencing and the government can do little to constructively control. And no one bothered making a point. You gleaned the origins from bystanders, but the actual rioters consisted mainly of high school aged boys running from wildly overaggresive police. No signs, no chants, just teenagers sprinting with insane smiles plastered across their faces, as if this was the most fun they had had in ages. Sadly, it probably was.

This was all over a month ago, but fallout continues in NDB. Apparently, while chasing students past the high school at which I work, the gendarmes fell upon two unfortunate teachers who had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They administered a good beating and then departed. My administration immediately went to the governor to demand retribution, and was told that the matter would be handled as soon as the rioting died down - they didn't want to anger the military when they needed them most. Well, the riots have long since died down, and representatives of the school had a meeting with the governor on Monday, in which, according to a fellow teacher, they were told to "fuck off" in so many words. And so, like every story in recent history, this is culminating in yet another day off from school, as there will be a citywide educational walkout, public and private, in support of the teachers who were beaten. Will this bring results? Judging from the way things have been going, probably just another riot.

Overall riot rating: 3/10

General gripes

Because nothing endears a reader like long periods of absence followed by complaining.

Today I went to school, and the gates were locked. It is "Teacher Unity Day," a holiday seemingly arbitrarily created about a week ago, and in keeping with the standard operating procedure, no one told the white guy. While I like a day off as much as the next global citizen, my classes still have yet to gel, and made-up holidays don't really grease the wheels of a well-run educational system. Tomorrow is Mauritanian Independence Day, which also means no school.

The election of a brand new president came with the predictable appointment of brand new ministers. This includes the minister of education, who promptly excited the country with talks of wide! ranging! reforms! Classes would be capped at 45 students. New materials would be available to students and teachers alike. The antediluvian (thanks Sam!) system of separating students along essentially racial lines will be discarded in favor of a mixed French/Arabic education. And school will start at full speed on the day it is supposed to.

Well. They handed out some snazzy papers on nice card stock in which teachers were to record all info about their students. But two months into school, I still can't come up with a class list, for several reasons. The first is that they are still shuffling schedules, which means I've constantly got new students. Second, each student is assigned a number by the school, but many of my students don't know or have yet to receive their own. Third, the education system has failed these children so greatly that more than a handful of students in each of my classes (I teach the equivalent of junior year in high school) does not know how to spell his/her name. Sure, my students are taught in Arabic, but one would think that by 18 years old they'd have a handle on the transliterated version of their own name. For example, I've got one student who has spelled his name Tidjani, Tigane, Tigone, and Tysoni. Paired with the penmanship of a 5 year old and shifting numbers, I spend about an hour each week for each class just trying to keep track of attendance and grades.

One of my classes was eliminated a week or two into the school year, and the students distributed to other classes. A couple of weeks ago, the class was resurrected. When I went the following week to start class, I found that it had been eliminated again. And of course, I find all of this out from the students standing around, smoking outside of the empty room.

My classes all have over 50 students. The new materials consist of one empty notebook per class. Students are still being divided by Arabic and French language ability, and they wonder why there were race riots here a couple weeks ago. And of course, school started two weeks later than intended, and I still have new students every week.

The president and minister of education came to NDB a few weeks ago. They repainted the entire high school and half the town in an effort to impress. The minister stayed for less than 48 hours, neglected to visit any schools, and failed to even meet with the local minister of education - basically the equivalent of the superintendent for our city. She has promised compensation to all teachers for the inhalation of chalk dust to the tune of 15,000 ougiya per month, to be paid in one lump sum at the end of the year. That is a huge sum of money. My roommate is skeptical that it will actually come.

There are simple and obvious answers to these problems. Registration and scheduling should be done at the end of the previous school year and during the summer. Instead of dropping money on a few meaningless supplies to every school that will inevitably be ignored within days of their arrival, they should train people in the implementation of real administrative reforms and send them around to oversee changes within the schools.

But, of course, that means the people at the top would actually have to give a shit about their work.

Let's start a roll, slowly

Recent news:

1. Went to Europe. Had a good time.
   
2. School started. Now I teach, but barely.
   
3. Race riots in NDB. Tear gassy.

I got photos, so patience. PATIENCE.

Revelations

For the last year I have been eating beef almost nightly. Turns out, it was camel. Hmm.

Got some photos here

Just some random stuff from the past couple of weeks. Wanted to get something up before I leave for the grand European vacation. The site will be back at full strength upon my return.

NDB has demonstrations. I never manage to notice anymore.

Garli, one of the villages I visited.

More Garli. They've got birds.


Amadou, one of the guys I stayed with.


Samba. That's a chicken that we just killed.


Forlorn children. I swear they requested this photo.


Back in NKT, Nick and I pose for our cd insert.


We make NDB the wonderland that it is.


Enlightenment.

State of the union 2007

Been a while. Let's shake the dust off, 'cause God knows there's about 14 metric tons.

Q: Where've you been, slacker?

A: Around. Mostly in Nouadhibou, but I spent a couple of weeks in Nouakchott, Boghe, and Kaedi a bit ago. Other than a trip to Atar back in the beginning of April, it was my only time out of the city since my arrival. Boghe and Kaedi are in the South, about an hour's drive from each other.

Terjit, an oasis outside of Atar.

Q: And your excuse for leaving?

A: Work. It is the magical time of year in which the volunteers arrive and commence their training, and I was on the committee that processed them through their first steps in NKT. In the actual day and half we spent with the "stagiers," I had perhaps two conversations that lasted over five minutes, and none that hit ten. Despite my inability to warm up to people in a short time, they seemed nice.

A couple of weeks ago I returned to Kaedi to give a lesson to the education volunteers on teaching vocabulary lessons - a skill, ironically, I don't consider myself particularly good at. I had the opportunity to get to know some of the new folks a little better than I had, and my conclusion remains unchanged and just as vague; they seem nice. It seems odd that I don't really have any kind of feel for the new people, as four will be arriving in NDB tonight to get a brief idea of their new home for the next two years. They are more than doubling the volunteer population in our corner of the country, and I have mixed feelings that lean towards optimistic about the "surge."

Q: We've got time for your "feelings" later. How was the glorious return to Kaedi?

A: Actually, just that. It was great. You know how I wrote about the trash and the heat and the animals and the shit and the rain and the bugs about a year ago? Well it turns out the place is actually nice. I assume that I don't need to go into the mechanics of the change in superficial perception that takes place in over a year, but after all that time, surrounded by your most accessible complaints, they tend to all but disappear. Or you go crazy and leave. And what's left are the good things.

Here's what I notice: as you progress south, the sand shifts from a washed-out, bone white to a tan that I never would have considered, but now do, to be the very definition of rich. The farther you go, the more frequently it is punctuated by green carpeting and the occasional tree with the occasional leaf. By the time you hit Kaedi, the sand has gained the same tone as the sky ten minutes before sunset, and a few of the plants have strained upwards against all odds to provide a canopy. Full grown trees remain one in a million, but next to NDB (where greenery goes to die), it is profound.

Q: Well this seems like an appropriate time to segue to Nouadhibou. You've lived for just under a year in one of the only two locations in Mauritania that ever gets any international press. Simply put, how's life?

A: Until recently (and I'm still guilty of this), I had griped about the fact that, relatively speaking, NDB is a metropolitan place. Unlike many volunteers, I live in an apartment, not with a family. I'm not pressed with the urgency of "getting to know your community" in the way many other people are before they can get any effective work accomplished. There is the anonymity of city life, at once countered by the fact that I'm white, and rebuffed by the presence of dozens of NGOs. I've got only a small handful of people that I'd consider my friends, and I spend a large majority of my time alone. But I'm trying to embrace a proactive outlook. We'll see what happens in the coming year.

I had wanted to go to a small, inaccessible village because I'm not predisposed to opening up to strangers, to putting myself in a potentially uncomfortable situation with other people. I had hoped that a different site would give me no other option, and I used the city as an excuse to remain introverted. Aware of that, I'm trying to rectify.

As for NDB being a news hot spot, things are more low key than news organizations tend to portray. There has been a spate of articles recently, meant to elucidate life here, and they generally host at least a couple of inaccuracies in each. About a month ago, the New York Times ran an article about the iron ore train connecting NDB to Zouerat. The author referred to the day-long journey on the outside of the cars as "exquisite torture," a term so gaggingly flowery and far from reality that I questioned whether he actually rode the thing. He also mentioned the Chinese restaurant/whorehouse that I frequently visit (for the beer, thanks), but incorrectly located it in his description. Call me territorial, but that annoyed me. Maybe four months ago, BBC News ran an article about the underground meteorite trade in "lawless" NDB. I've been to the market and seen the goods, and while the article indirectly conjured images of the kind of illegal trades you see in a Steven Seagal movies, the atmosphere of high international crime and an utter disregard for morality is lost on the 60-year-old mulhafa-wrapped woman selling a bowl of rocks next to her incense and henna.

The fish market.

Q: Don't you live with a Mauritanian?

A: Yeah, Ousmane Ba. I've been meaning to dedicate at least an entire post to the man, but obviously never got around to it. He's in his mid-30s, Pulaar, and an English teacher at the school I work at. He married in January (side note: Mauritanian weddings annihilate American weddings on the tear-inducing boredom front), and his wife lives in Dakar currently pursuing a doctorate in chemistry. I suppose I haven't written anything about him because we get along so well that nothing stands out. He is a genuinely good person, a pious Muslim, and very interested in changing the country for the better. His recalcitrance in the face of the all-powerful status quo regularly inspires me to keep caring.

Q: What's it like living with a "pious Muslim"?

A: You know how sometimes you go to the zoo and watch apes throwing their own shit at each other for hours on end...

Q: Whoa whoa whoa. Not the direction I thought your were going.

A: Well, I was going to say, it's not really like that at all. His daily religious routine consists of the five prayers and thanking Allah for any good fortune. I regularly invite him down to the whorehouse to tie one on, and he tells me to find God. I'd be mortified if he ever accepted my offer. He doesn't condemn me for the eight-year blunder that is U.S. foreign policy, and he defends me if anyone does. His open-mindedness (and the term has nothing to do with his tendency to agree with me, or me with him) easily makes him my most valuable friend here.

Ousmane and Medina on our front step.

Q: What is the nature of your interactions with other Mauritanians? At the risk of stereotyping, do you have anything to say about them as a whole?

A: As I said, I don't have a large number of friends. The people I do spend time with are exclusively teachers or reporters or both. They are all black (as opposed to white Moor-Arab), though the racial demographic of my friends was not a conscious decision. I've got several friendly acquaintances who span the gamut of ethnicities.

Outside of social obligation my relationships are restricted to business. As elaborated in a previous post, I think my director is a prick. He's a black Moor, for what it's worth. It is white Moors who run things around here, and aside from a few scant exceptions, my dealings with the director of our bank, the local minister of education (the DREN), and anyone else in a position of power generally end up a little strained. And as a disclaimer, I don't think it's a race issue. I find that these people are more interested in projecting the power they hold than exercising it, and I am perhaps not as patient as I ought to be. I become tired of the muscle-flexing bullshit far quicker than the average local (something that I'm sure can be - and maybe is - perceived as Western entitlement), and more often than not, it makes my life more difficult. Conversely, I turn into a deferential pushover when people display a modicum of humility and acquiesce to the standard-operating-procedure demands I make of them. Then I reprimand myself. It's a tightrope, and I probably spend more time hurdling mid-air than remaining balanced. A constant learning experience. I'm interested in how it will affect interactions stateside.

Generalizations. It's difficult to generalize about Mauritanians as a whole, because social identity is far more determined by race, tribe, and family than by nationality. I have trouble drawing relevant parallels to the States. White Moors are the most foreign to me. I've noticed one paradox though. Common interaction involves 90% talking and 10% listening. The greeting process is a great example. Salutations can go on for minutes in which the speakers ask about family, health, work, the heat, the wind, and just about anything else you can think of. Party B answers with a standard set of responses, and it quickly becomes clear than neither one is listening to the other as they swap between greetings and responses that have absolutely nothing to do with what was just said. People seem to yell at each other a lot. More than once I have marveled at the fact that anyone has any friends. "Please" and "thank you" practically do not exist. But for all the assertive, curt, and abrasive things people say to each other, confrontation is a whole other dimension. Authority is made clear in social interaction, and to challenge it throws everything into chaos. People criticize each other constantly, but the second you mean it is the second you need a third party to mediate. To me, on the surface it seems like people are refreshingly straightforward, but if you go any deeper you're neck-deep in it.

Q: So just to be clear, how does the social hierarchy go?

A. 1. White Moor
2. Black Moor
3. Pulaar
4. Soninke
5. Wolof

And this does absolutely no justice to the intricacies of any of it.

Much of this was solidified in 1989, a fateful year for the country. I know too little to say anything intelligent, so I will keep it topical. There was a push for national Arabization as far back as the 60s, which caused racial tensions within the country as well as between Senegal and Mauritania. In '89 Mauritanian herders and Senegalese farmers found themselves in a dispute that lead to two deaths and several injuries. From there, Mauritanians in Senegal were deported north, and somewhere in the realm of 250,000 black Mauritanians were stripped of their land and homes and sent south. Then, in 1990, claiming a coup plot within the army, the Mauritanian regime executed 503 people of Pulaar and Soninke decent, some rather violently. Killing and tension ensued for a few more years, but finally subsided with some diplomacy that included Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali. Most people have been repatriated, and the ongoing righting of wrongs is a major feature of the new administration's domestic policy.

As I said, I know almost nothing, so my observations lack nuance, but in my experience I have noticed little overt discrimination, but regularly pick up on more subtle, deeply embedded preconceived notions about the different ethnicities.

Still, contemporary racial struggles stateside pale in comparison.

Q: Gosh, your perspective is so fair and balanced.

A: Thanks. That means a lot coming from such an objective disembodied tool for the progression of a discourse involving only myself.

Q: You implied that you occasionally take some heat for being American.

A: It's extremely rare, and pleasant interactions deriving from the revelation that I am American far outweigh negative ones ten to one. Of the garbage that I have faced, almost all of it was directed at Westerners or English speakers in general, as opposed to a particular nationality.

Q: How do you handle it?

A: I still try to explain myself when it seems pertinent. But when I'm faced with someone who claims that America hates Islam, or just yells at me, I tell them that they are not accurate and leave the situation. At times it feels like I've got a dozen battles to choose from every time I walk out the front door, and those involving religion or politics will never have a mutually acceptable outcome. Better to stay quiet, do my job, and argue by example.

Q: Is your time in the Arab world giving you any insight on American politics?

A: The only profundity is that I have not heard a single profound viewpoint or had a single profound realization about any of it. American foreign policy is alienating the world, which has been clear for almost a decade, if not more. Neoconservativism is a massive failure. Misguided and seemingly purposefully ignorant unilateral policy has eroded worldwide respect for a country that once was an icon of the future. It's disgusting and hard to watch.

In a dream, we would rebuild the out-of-control machine that is our government from the ground up. We would have the transparency the Democrats have promised and will never deliver. Lobbyists would find themselves out of a job. We would legitimize the international organizations that we had a major hand in creating by actually acknowledging them and adhering to their rules. Foreign policy would feature far more détente than containment, thus galvanizing actual, meaningful support for our interests. Domestic policy would hold corporations morally responsible, and actually collect on the billions in taxes so easily avoided by opening up a mailbox in the Caymans.

I know that there are subtleties to governance to which I am not privy. But it is nauseating to watch the US insist on standards in war-ravaged holes while corruption and ethically-questionable activities are daily protocol at home. This is not partisan. While I tend to respect Dems a hair's breadth more than their elephantine counterparts, I think both sides of the aisle should be fired for gross dereliction of duty. As I bury myself progressively deeper in current events and foreign policy analyses, I am stunned at how many good, reasonable ideas seem like common sense, and how often they are completely ignored.

Still, I'll come home and vote for the guy on the left.

Q: You've got a little vein pulsing on your temple.

A: Fuck.

Well it's not to say that the US is the only one on the wrong track. Each country has its own little stake in fucking up the world in its own special little way. I'd move to Norway, but I don't want to pay half of what I earn in taxes, and I don't like death metal.

Q: That soapbox you're standing on seems stressed to the breaking point, fatty.

A: Despite concerted efforts to gain weight, I remain at least ten pounds lighter than when I arrived.

Q: So your daily routine consists of eating. What else?

A: When my months were not interrupted by several small trips out of the city, I would go to the gym for a couple hours in the morning. Then I spend an hour or two studying French and another few hours reading. At some point I wander to the office to check my email and loiter online, and sometimes I try to get some writing accomplished, which I have found to be largely impossible in front of a computer. Sometimes I take a nap, then I have dinner at the same restaurant I always do. The evening is when I get most writing/work accomplished. Then I go to bed.

As for work, with no school for the summer I have to find things to occupy myself. I am putting together an exercise book geared towards the Mauritanian high school English curriculum at an incredibly slow pace. I have also just taken over the PC Mauritania newsletter as co-editor, which mostly means struggling to come up with content and producing much of it myself. I am the regional coordinator for NDB, which means that I occasionally pay bills, run errands, and deal with officials on the organization's behalf. And sometimes, I travel south to participate in the training of new volunteers. Reading back over that, it sounds like much more than it really is.

Q: And your plans for the summer?

A: Another trip to the south to visit several villages, and help out in this year's model school. Then it's back to NDB for a few days, and finally, sweet Jesus, vacation in Europe.

Q: A vacation from vacation. Nice.

A: You have no idea.

Q: Well, am I forgetting anything?

A: Probably. You never have been very organized. I'm open to questions should any of the five readers feel shortchanged.

Salutations

Coming soon.

Disturbingly hilarious

Introducing the cogs in our machine.

Tim, how'd you ring in?

One year down

This might be a little long and tedious and lacking in a sense of humor. Apologies.

In early January I was elected "English department coordinator." I was flattered, but I suspect my ascent to departmental greatness had a lot more to do with no one wanting to do more work for no extra pay, than any actual qualifications I may possess. After accepting the offer, I asked the director and other teachers exactly what the job entails, to which they all similarly responded, "You coordinate the department if the department needs coordination." Right-o. Thus, I assume that the position was superfluous and just needed to exist in name - and that someone would tell me if I needed to do something.

About a week before the second trimester exams, the director walked into the secretary's office where I happened to be standing with another English teacher. He informed us that the exams were to be the same across each level (this was not the case for the first trimester exams), to which I asked how that was possible with only a week's notice. He seemed surprised at my concern that there was no way all of the students would be prepared for the same material, and the English teacher immediately moved to defensive mode, saying that there had been no coordination. I stood there stunned, but nothing really came of it. We did our own exams for each class, and I finally learned what was expected of me. Yeah, I know the title is pretty self-explanatory, but when I asked what was expected of me, I got blown off.

With about two months to go in the scholastic year, I hit my stride. I busted my ass to track down the elusive teachers (two of whom I had yet to meet) and arrange a meeting in which we would decide what would be on the final exam, essentially laying out the syllabus for the remainder of the year. As I sat on the cusp of finally finding a suitable time for a meeting that wouldn't conflict with anyone's schedules, my boss decided to come to NDB to see how everything was going. During the subsequent meeting I explained where we were, coordination-wise, to him and the director. In the presence of my superior - a white Moor who pulls quite a bit of weight in this country - the director suddenly gave a shit where previously there was not so much as a fart to be whiffed. Ignoring my work, he set our department meeting for the next day when every single one of us had a class to teach. I was annoyed.

The next day we spent almost two hours deciding what to teach for the rest of the year. In front of my boss the director was in top form, feeding us milk and bread, taking everyone's phone numbers for easier communication in the future, etc. By now my opinion of the guy was pretty low. I watched him prostrate himself, and was disgusted at how transparent and child-like he was. I realized that I hated this guy as a representation of everything wrong with the system. But I thought I hid the sentiment well enough.

Because the students are notorious cheaters, we decided to create multiple versions of each exam. I spent a few entire days putting them together and making sure they were of equal difficulty. Only Ousmane helped. Three days before the final, the secretary told Ousmane that the 4th level exams would be provided by the DREN (the state-level education ministry). I flipped my shit, and with Ousmane at my side, stormed the director's office. I had finally snapped on eight months of inconceivably shitty administration. First I asked how long he had known about the new exam. "Depuis longtemps." For a long time. The answer I expected, so I lit up like a firecracker, asking why, after sitting in our meeting, he had neglected to inform us that half of our (my) work was totally unnecessary. First, he blamed us for not coming to school (not true), then shifted the blame to the DREN, and finally settled it on the secretary. I asked why he hadn't called me and he denied having my number. The image of him writing it down was seared into my memory, probably in expectation of that exact situation. I called bullshit, and fed off the third English teacher writhing quietly in palpable discomfort directly to my left. The director told me to sit down, I yelled at him to listen. I consciously shifted all my addresses to him to the informal. And throughout it all, he continued to invite other people in to say "hi," punctuating our discourse with tacit periods of impotent rage. Ousmane then showed him all the versions of our test, and before he listened to our plan to curb cheating, denounced it as impossible. Ousmane diplomatically took over, and the director finally conceded. We would use our exams instead of the DREN's, and I would come in the morning of the final to collate and prepare everything. We were victorious.

The final began at 10:00. I arrived at 7:50 to prepare. I just needed the director to give me the photocopies so I could start. He told me to wait, and continued to leave me waiting until 9:15. Then he handed me a box of about 1,200 exams, and I began. By 10:00 I had run out of 5th level exams because administration had not made enough. Proctors trickled into the secretary's office to pick up the tests. I had finished three of twelve 4th year classes, and by 10:20 people were getting frantic. I kept my head down and collated while teachers who had praised the idea of multiple versions the day before called it a failure. At 10:30 the director entered and screamed that if we had done it his way, we wouldn't have this problem. I informed him rather loudly that we wouldn't have this problem if he hadn't made me wait for an hour and a half for no reason. I finished at 11:00, an hour after the official commencement of the final. There were not enough copies for all of the students.

I shouldn't have lost my composure the way I did. After watching the director capriciously and ineptly run our school for a year, I lost it when his ego ran over mine. I focused a year's worth of frustration at all incompetent higher-ups (from the bank, from school, from my office building, from the police, from the government) into the explosion in his office, and he fucked me. No one advances based on merit. This place runs on nepotism, and suffers for it. And it isn't my fight. I graded my exams (incidentally, a practice deemed "a waste of time" by a disturbing number of other teachers), filled out report cards, and left for four months.

Next year ought to be fun. I suspect I'm going to leave the "coordination" up to some other sucker. I enjoyed the teaching, and will happily focus on that. My students did better than all others on their finals, and that was gratifying. But that doesn't seem to matter. This is a copy of this year's BAC (similar in significance to the SATs). You'll notice, aside from several copy-editing errors, that one of the first questions is literally impossible. And this BAC is one of the best I've seen.

I need a vacation. And some perspective.

The school.


One of my classrooms.


I didn't write that.


My 4th year Arab class. Unruly lot, but fun.

Jon says we "got cred"

http://theroughguidetowestafrica.blogspot.com/

Both of us are sitting atop the pile of linked blogs. I had several drinks with Roger Norum a few months ago at the ol' Chinese whorehouse, where he impressed everyone with a usable grasp of Chinese. He grilled the owners as to the contents of a bag that they seemed strangely excited about, and they were in turn very stingy with info. Weird.

Thank you Sonal

I hope anyone's natural reaction to getting shot with a laser gun would be fisting a shark.

Playlist du jour and one big question

1. Good listens in rotation.

• The Bronx - Heart Attack American
• Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea (High Contrast Mix)
• Alan Braxe - At Night
• Cut Copy - Zap Zap
• Stereolab - Percolator
• TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
• Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up
• Cannibal Ox - Atom
• Ugly Casanova - Things I Don't Remember
• Tom Waits - Alice
• Palace Music - New Partner
• Thievery Corporation - Exploration
• Sufjan Stevens - For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
• Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)

2. Back at the gym, and want to gain weight. Caro thought hearing about my attempts to become a fatty would be hilarious, but I don't even know where to begin. Somehow even though half of America seems to have mastered the technique, I have to ask, how do you gain weight? Seriously.

More points of note, and a mystery

1. There was an article on BBC a couple of weeks ago about a clandestine meteorite trade right here in NDB (if I find one, I'm buying, much to the chagrin of scientists everywhere). The article itself was of moderate interest, but the most interesting thing I noticed was that the writer called my fair city "lawless." I scoffed at the idea. I see police everywhere, though admittedly, a few of those times involved them demanding bribes from some unsuspecting immigrant. But that's standard operating procedure for Africa, and I shrugged it off as just part of having a police presence in the city.

Well I scoffed a bit too soon, because the latest buzz about town is talking about the plane that stopped at the airport 5 minutes from my apartment last Wednesday on a massive heroin run, with the consent of higher-ups in the police and several patron businessmen here in NDB. According to my reporter friend and the Moor guy that eats dinner at the same restaurant as me, a policeman came to the control tower and told them to allow the plane to land. The pilots waited for a contact at the airport for about half an hour, while someone else employed there thought that the plane had landed unannounced because there was some sort of emergency. So said random worker called the hospital, which sent a couple of ambulances. The sirens frightened the pilots, who promptly reboarded their aircraft and flew straight into the desert. They abandoned the plane, chock full of millions upon millions of dollars of heroin and disappeared into the ether. Supposedly the police are going to bring the drugs back to NDB and burn them, but all parties consulted seemed fairly certain that much of those drugs will disappear again. And to add to it all, the son of one of the presidential candidates was implicated in the whole matter. Excitement!

2. When I lived in Paris and people would ask where I'm from, I'd get this little ball of awkward shame in the back of my throat as I feebly said "the U.S." and immediately followed with an apology. All but one time it didn't really generate a negative reaction, and in retrospect, I'm slightly annoyed that I felt so timid about my origin. It's not my fault the administration follows each terrible idea with something inconceivably worse, and actually, I'm kind of happy to be from the States. It beats being from 97% of the rest of the world. But French people still shit all over Sarkozy because he envisions a decent relationship with the States. I say, he may actually do you some good.

3. So now, when I'm eating dinner, and the nice Moor guy next to me starts telling me about how much he doesn't like any English speakers, I smile until I taste bile. And when he tells me that he supports bin Laden (though the September thing was terrible), because Bush responded by murdering far more people than "the terrorists" ever could, I actually empathize a bit. But then he checks my empathy by making blanket claims that all Americans only care about money, that we're withholding a cure for AIDS from Africa because we want to see people die, and that we hate Islam, and I refrain from saying, "You know, that sounds an awful lot like me telling you that all Muslims are terrorists." But the fact of the matter remains, there is a ridiculous number of people in the world that hate us, and those numbers are in direct correlation to the foreign policy of the Bush administration. So somehow, I come out feeling proud and defensive of my country, and hating the people in power with a previously unknown passion, because their actions are indefensible.

4. We got animals. Tons of them. Everywhere. Goats, donkeys, cats, children, dogs, mice, chickens, cows. I can't leave my apartment without seeing some pathetic procession of creatures down my street, chewing on whatever plastic bags they can find. And I've been witness to some miracles of mother nature (have you ever sat and watched a goat give birth? 'cause I have, and it's disgusting), and I've seen her savage cruelty. I've seen cute baby animals playing with each other, and I've seen them lying dead on the side of the road. I've seen a dog eat a kitten. But what I've never seen, and at this point it's such a mystery that I'm hyperaware of the situation wherever I go, is a baby donkey. They're all exactly the same size, and they all look haggard. Maybe they just kind of sprout, full-sized, out of the ubiquitous mounds of donkey poop, or maybe all the animals got together and agreed to stop breeding because their lives were just so miserable, but whatever it is, baby donkeys elude me and everyone I know. Figure that one out.

Third world product reviews - The Closet of Narnia

This being the third world, occasionally we here in NDB find ourselves yearning for items that aren't readily available. English reading material, for example, or VHS cassettes of film classics such as "Smoke Signals" and "Elizabethtown." Sometimes our cravings become more exotic, and we find ourselves jonesin' for a 1986 economics textbook and a pair of used, red swimshorts. Back in the dawn of our time here, when Erin and Sam occupied the room that now belongs to Ousmane, it was not at all uncommon to find the three of us sitting, staring at each other, silently confounded that no one could find a 5-year-old printer box filled with suspicious, off-brand condoms and a stapler. They were hard times.

But lo, the sun has risen and shed its light unto the dark ages through which we wandered. Upon moving into their new apartment, which has passed through the hands of several volunteers, Sam and Erin became the unwitting guardians of an 8x4x2 ft. portal to a world of magic and intrigue.

Sam recalls, "I remember seeing the closet and thinking, 'Great, somewhere to put my many, many pairs of shoes.' Then I opened the thing, and the disappointment was excruciating."

"Sam just started tossing junk out of the closet," Erin explains. "But it never stopped. Crap streamed from the open door like a clown at a children's birthday party, pulling a never-ending handkerchief out of its sick, fat mouth."

Eventually, her husband disappeared into the depths of the closet, and Erin called me, frantic. When I arrived, she was standing in the middle of the room, knee-deep in satellite receiver boxes and copies of Newsweek dating back to 2003, which, judging by the sheer numbers, must have had around 63 months. It was a bizarre, worrisome scene, and I could only think of one thing to say. I looked at the girl, staring into the black expanse as if it was the edge of the universe. "Let's get something to eat."

We came back two hours later to find Sam lying barely conscious at the door, pants torn and a sizable patch of hair missing from the left side of his head. He kept muttering something about a lion, so I gave him some french fries. He couldn't really chew, so we dipped them in ketchup and just kind of laid them on his cheek.

Eventually, after watching ketchup drip into Sam's eye with no noticeable reaction, Erin and I realized the gravity of the situation and sprung into action. For weeks we nursed him back to coherence. Erin really proved the strength of their marriage vows, giving him daily sponge baths and regularly fixing an edible puree to feed him until he relearned how to feed himself. It was sort of like a fish and carrot milkshake. For my part, I spent a lot of time with Sam at the parallel bars as he took his first baby steps for the second time. We also read "Green Eggs & Ham," and he inched his way towards literacy. But for some reason, every time I brought out "The Cat in the Hat," he would cry softly to himself. It took a while to figure out why.

We kept Whitney Houston on constant, 24-hour rotation to give the whole thing a montage-esque quality. I don't think Sam even knew what was going on, but at the very least, I found it inspiring. And after three months - three long months of blood, sweat, and tears - he bounced back. It was an emotional time for everyone, and I think we all became a little bit closer.

During all of that time, those whole three months and then some, the door of the room with the Closet remained closed. Shut to the world, until one day, I asked Erin for a hammer. Without even thinking, she replied, "Why don't you check the Closet of Narnia?" So I did. And you know what? I found that hammer. And I found a light bulb, and some hot sauce, and some porn. We discovered that the Closet held just about everything we never knew we needed, and as long as you didn't venture too deep, it was relatively safe. Which seems like a shitty metaphor for life.

So I give our Closet of Narnia a 4 out of 10. I mean, sure it's a repository for all things known to mankind, but I'm using C. S. Lewis' version as a point of reference. We've got around 50 movies in there, but they're in friggin' VHS, and we don't even have a VCR. I'm pretty sure Lewis' would have had DVDs. Our Closet also loses points because Lewis' version (again, relatively speaking) of the magical world didn't have a giant, obnoxious lion that used weak, liberal sex-crimes legislation as an excuse to do unspeakable things to whoever wandered too far in. If it had happened to me, this thing totally would have been docked another point.

I Phantom (someone better comment)

I've been a bit bipolar for the last two and a half weeks. Starting when several good friends came to visit, I realized just how jaded I was getting with the grind. We then moved the party to Atar, where I promptly drained my precious endorphin supply until I was running on fumes, and finally, about a week ago, I returned to Nouadhibou.

Waiting for me were my students' second trimester exams, which only proved that either I'm a shit teacher or I'm teaching to blocks of concrete. It was a real low point, including repeated musings about what the hell exactly I'm doing here. I came knowing it wouldn't be Dangerous Minds, but that didn't really matter. I suppose I was a bit naive to think that even though these kids entered their 4th and 5th years barely able to string together a 4-word sentence (no exaggeration), I could somehow catch them up to the point the syllabus claims they should be at, and continue to aid them in their path towards fluency. Yeah. I know. Duh.

Anyway, I woke up a couple days ago and finally recognized the end of this leg trudging through the slough of despond. Actually, I'm pretty pumped about nothing in specific. And I want to hear from people, so this is a formal call for comments. I'm asking you to roll it out on this one, because otherwise, this is going to seem really, really pathetic. Remind other people. NYC, and specifically Brooklyn, I'm looking in your direction. 'Illadelph and Beantown, I'm looking in your direction. To the people grinding it out in the District's political, law, and liquor store machines, I'm looking in your direction. Chi-town, Bay Area, Portland and L.A., I'm looking in your direction. Paramaribo, London, Lahore, and everywhere in between, this means you. Hell, I don't even have to know you.

It takes about 30 seconds. Want a higher purpose? Consider it an apolitical way to show your support for a generation coming into power during a particularly crappy time in history. Prove the value of fruitless labor for the sake of the Good. Take the soapbox, or just say "yo." And if nothing else, answer the following question: It's 4:00 PM. Do you know where your moms' is at?

Silk Road

People ask how I stay sane, and I generally reference some form of writing, either read or self-produced. It's an easy answer, but I think it neglects a key escape. It's time you know about the Chinese restaurant.

This is a dry country, and as the axiom goes, you don't know what you've missed until it's gone. The Hong Kong sits between the port and the rarely-used municipal stadium, on a relatively insignificant stretch of paved road that connects with the main artery a bit farther south. Like most everything else here, it hides behind 3 meter walls of sand-based concrete, whitewashed into an inconspicuous uniformity. Out front there is a man selling phone cards to passers-by from a throne of garbage. One can count on at least one feral dog lingering nearby, teats wagging and head down in an attempt to avoid any unnecessary beatings from anyone in the mood. The pitiful eyes mostly evoke disgust, and given enough time, it almost seems as though it is awaiting its own death with the same resentful impatience of the rest of the city.

Inside the compound there are trees fighting through the concrete. Greenery is personal. Trees and bushes left in the public are inevitably cut down for charcoal, and new growth is hindered by roving goats and donkeys desperate to supplement a diet of trash. The trees have been decorated with lights, strung along anything that will support them. Below, there is patio furniture, a perfect target for cockroaches abandoning the leafy canopy. I generally choose to sit inside.

Follow the lights through the patio door and you enter a foyer-turned-bar. To the left are posters of half-naked animated women. To the right, next to the alcohol, is a calendar consisting of Chinese characters and a picture of Jesus. At the bar is the same sun-withered Spanish man jawing with the family that runs the place about who knows what. He punctuates his diatribes by flinging his greasy ponytail. If it is early enough, some members of the Spanish consulate will be eating and drinking whiskey and laughing about something. They used to become silent when I entered, but that has long changed. Now I nod and the conversation continues uninterrupted.

My seat is in the next room. The lights that lined Jesus and the naked women wrap into and around the dining area, ending their journey behind some fake leaves hanging like a limp rag from the corner of the ceiling. I always take my place at a table that affords a view of the bar and the dining room, because I am a spectator. Not to play up the excitement of watching people eat. I sit there because I can watch the Chinese family and the Spanish men and the Nigerian whores. Occasionally, there are Moroccans and Russians, and the din of five to seven languages occurring at once is refreshing. The aunt will bring me a can of beer adorned with characters and the phrase "Laotian Beer," while the uncle shakes my hand and offers me a cigarette from three different brands. Sometimes I eat, but usually I drink and read or watch.

Once the ships have docked, a familiar crowd of Spaniards trickles through the screen door, and the mother, a perpetual hostess who has recently taken to applying bronzer with the same zeal as someone painting their car, screams an enthusiastic "hola!" at anyone and everyone. She is a dynamo, and constantly directs traffic, shoving family members in the direction of anyone who needs attention. She seems friendly and impenetrable.

I am two beers deep, and the first of the Nigerian women have taken their places at the benches across from the bar. They are discrete, despite their wigs. The fact that they are moderately clothed overrides the bouncing knees. They will sit there all night, waiting. Sometimes they will drink a Coke. They are thick, and I can't tell if they are new to the work or players past their prime. If they are lucky, no other women will arrive, and the odds will remain in their favor. Good things come to those who wait.

One time I saw a fight. I don't know what happened, but the uncle was shoving a long-nailed woman out of the compound while she screamed and spit over his shoulder. Another woman stood at the door, antagonizing her. Maybe it was over money. Maybe the one at the door borrowed a book and wouldn't return it.

The daughter brings me another beer. That makes five. She looks around 16, and she reminds me of a bird. She is incredibly businesslike, and though she is the only one I ever speak to, our most in-depth conversation has only consisted of me quantifying how many drinks I want. But I watch, and I wonder what it's like to grow into adulthood in such a place. Aside from a furtive glance at herself in the mirror, she acts like no teenage girls I've ever met. I want to ask her hundreds of questions, but any deviation from the norm seems wildly inappropriate in such a setting.

One time a woman in a mulafa came into the restaurant. From the outset it was jarring. She traded greetings with me in Hassaniya, and then asked for a beer. As the people I was with shooed her off, I noticed a very young girl in a mulafa hugging the wall behind her. She was obviously mortified, and it wasn't until her mother had moved to a table of Chinese sailors that I realized what was going on. She goaded them for alcohol, and by the time she finally convinced them to give it to her, her daughter and one of the men had disappeared. About twenty minutes later they reappeared and the girl smoked a cigarette. The next time I saw the woman at the restaurant, the uncle kicked her out immediately.

Tonight she is sitting alone amidst the crowd, hopelessly outclassed. A slick, relatively youngish Spanish man has arrived with two women hanging over his shoulders. They are wearing incredibly tight, incredibly little clothing, with thongs sticking out above their jeans and glitter on every visible part of their bodies. They shine under the eternal Christmas, like oily, liquid sex. With their arrival the party has hit unseen heights, and Spanish dominates all audible noise. This is the zenith of their weekend.

I was quiet, switching constantly between book and bar. The daughter flitted around the crowd like a hummingbird among cacti, always working, always focused. The women slithered up and down the men, taking over as waitresses and plying their conquests with alcohol. The scene has never been this frantic. Maybe this is perverse, but I usually find it contenting. Though it is cliché, I like to romanticize the grime, and it is definitely not Mauritanian. I finished my beer and waited for the warm embrace around my chest that always cued departure. It never came, but I left anyway.

Tonight I went home profoundly sad.

Couple things

I was sitting next to my mother, mid-flight. We were probably a couple thousand feet over central Asia - Russia, China, Mongolia, I don't know. There were trees and grass, so my guess is that it wasn't the Gobi desert. There were several intercom announcements detailing how the world's biggest powers, Russia, China, and the U.S., were fully mobilizing for war. The urgency was ever-so-slightly muted by the glaring absence of a reason, but nuclear war being a zero-sum game, I was nervous nonetheless. The sky had turned dark despite the fact that it was daytime, so I started to contemplate life post-nuclear holocaust. It seemed like the kind of thing one plans for. And as I worried about the future of all existence, the plane flipped into a downwards barrel roll, and we headed straight for the ground at 600 miles per hour. For about 7 seconds I considered the possibility that the plane could right itself, probably knocking everyone on board unconscious in a 4G sudden change of direction. Then we died.

1. Pat has been trying to "geolocate" me with Google Earth ("It's an art." - Pat Opet, Mar. 25, 07), based solely on the scant photos I have provided. After much discussion, we have decided to turn this into a contest, open to all. Not that anyone but him will participate. Anyway, I'm going to take some photos of my apartment. Then I'm going to take some photos of various landmarks around the city, looking at said landmarks from the direction of my apartment. That way, by drawing some lines and finding out at which coordinates they intersect, you can divine exactly where on this brown blob of misery dripping into the Atlantic I live. And, as always, we're open to suggestions.

2. About a month ago, Ousmane Ba moved in with me. He is an English teacher in NDB, and as of two weeks ago, he works at the same school at which I work. The man is in his mid thirties, just got married in January (his wife is finishing a doctorate degree in Dakar), and is Pulaar. He speaks 4 or 5 languages, and is relatively progressive. So I put forward the following proposition: come up with some questions for Ousmane, and comment or email them to me. I will then make a brief video in which he answers said question(s), and if there are enough, it will become a semi-regular feature. Don't be shy about the content - I will take care not to offend his delicate sensibilities.

3. G. Jane and G. Bob, please check your email. Because I sent an email. To your email.

4. Larium. It's a different adventure every night.

Second trimester exams - will you pass?

It's about that time again, which means many of you have seen me online for upwards of six hours a day while I crank out seemingly endless variations on several exams in an attempt to curb the rampant cheating that somehow became "part of the process." In the spirit of giving, I share with you now a sample exam, cobbled together from the tests of four different classes (about 16 total). I also invite you to enter any and all answers into the comments section to prove to the world how well you are at English!

And no cheating.

Part 1: Simple Present/Present Continuous
Directions: Conjugate the verb in parentheses in either simple present or present continuous tense.

1. Where (Jim, go) _______________ every night? I can never find him.


2. In the evening, Faty (make) _______________ dinner for her family. This evening, however, she (help) _______________ her father fix his Mercedes.


3. A: What (you, do) _______________ right now?
   B: I (write) _______________ a story about a boy who can’t read.
   A: (it, be) _______________ a sad story?
   B: Yes.


4. Every day Mark (go) _______________ to school, and if he has the time afterwards, he (meet) _______________ his friends.


5. A: The phone (ring) _______________!
   B: I’ll get it. It is your sister. She (call) _______________ from Vegas.
   A: What (she, do) _______________ in Vegas?
B: She (say) _______________ that she (search) _______________ for happiness.

Part 2: Simple Past/Past Continuous
Directions: Conjugate the verb in parentheses in either simple past or past continuous tense.

1. A: (you, make) ____________________ the cake that we’re eating?
   B: No, I (have – negative) ____________________ time. I (buy) ____________________ it at the bakery.


2. They say Carly Simon (write) ____________________ "You're So Vain." I'll bet you (think) ____________________ the song was about you.
   


3. Jack had a great day yesterday. First, he (go) ____________________ to the market, where he (find) ____________________ a very nice jacket. Then, as he (leave) ____________________, he (see) ____________________ one of his best friends.


4. A: How (you, break) ____________________ your legs?
   B: I (walk) ____________________ down the stairs when my dog (run) ____________________ under my feet.


5. Last week we all (travel) ____________________ to Atar. While we (ride) ____________________ camels through the desert, a sandstorm (come) ____________________ and we had to leave.

You have two hours to finish. Turn off your cellphones. And I want everything off your desks. Good luck.

People I have known: Wul Choud

“Hey, Big Daddy.”

I was standing in one of the offices at school, talking with a couple of administrative staff members about the upcoming vacation. No one had any plans that were of particular interest to the other parties involved, and so we had reverted to the usual repetition of questions about work and family. I heard it behind me. Ibrahim, one of the people I had been speaking with, was looking over my shoulder. He speaks English, but I had never heard him speak it with anyone other than myself. The look on his face indicated that the bizarre salutation was not addressed to him, and I quickly realized that I was “Big Daddy.” I repeated the address to myself. “Am I ‘Big Daddy’?” “Did he just say ‘Big Daddy’?”

“How are you, Big Daddy?”

Turning around, my hand inadvertently met his. In retrospect, it had no choice; he was standing incredibly close, and his hand all but rested directly on me during the uncomfortably long journey from my lower back, along my left side, around to my abdomen as I rotated to face the greeting. So I grabbed his hand and shook, because to do otherwise would have been a matter of grave effrontery.

My eyes were fixed waist-level, on the hand that had traced a hemisphere of my torso, the hand that I was now holding. His palm was very sweaty, and as my hand became increasingly moist I ventured my gaze upwards to meet the visage of my new acquaintance. Small chin, tenuous smile, aquiline nose, and two beady eyes, set noticeably close together under a protruding brow. And above, above, his forehead soared upwards in all directions. Not one single hair on his gleaming pate, and all I could think of as I struggled to keep my eyes from lingering so far north of their destination, was lightbulbs. He was a rabbit burrowed into a mountain, and my hand was wet.

I smiled and responded in French, fairly sure that no regular English speaker would refer to me, or anyone, as “Big Daddy.” He continued in English.

“How are you, Big Daddy? Nice to meet you.”

Despite the fact that there are a number of students at the high school who have long forsaken their teenage years for a cyclical and repetitive young adulthood of academic mediocrity, this man was not a student. I would have put him in his early to mid 40s, allowing a certain amount of leeway for general weathering by years of living in a desert. Thus I assumed he was a teacher. Ibrahim clarified, introducing me to one of my colleagues, Wul Choud, the English professor.

***

I had finished classes for the day, and was walking out of the compound. Passing a doorway, I looked in and made eye contact with Wul Choud. He was exactly halfway through an English lesson, and immediately diverted his complete attention to the departing figure.

“Hey, Big Daddy. Nice to meet you.”

By the third time I had learned to accept my fate, and found that embracing it yielded a far more enjoyable experience than trying to rush it along. As I had done several times before, I turned to address the man calling me “Big Daddy.” We did the hello’s, the how are you’s, the how’s work’s, and found ourselves in the familiar position of having run out of things to ask about. This time, Wul Choud picked up the slack and told me, rather unexpectedly, that he had lived in the United States.

“I lived in Kentucky for three years, and I worked as a dishwasher at a Cracker Barrel.”

I was struck by the vast difference between a life as a professional in Mauritania and a life working Stateside in a grimy interstate-exit buffet-style restaurant. But as the story of his life in the States continued, the walls of the yawning chasm separating those two lives eked closer. He told me stories about the people he met, regarding the American people as, for the most part, uniformly gracious.

“I went one time to take a break in the restroom…”

Wul Choud caught the reflection of his malapropism in my eye, and corrected himself.

“…I was taking a break one time, and I went to sit down in the breakroom, and some lady said to me ‘What are you doing? You can’t sit here.’ You know what I said to her, Big Daddy? I said, ‘Hey, fuck you, I can sit wherever I want to sit.’”

His emphasis on the “fuck” betrayed some amount of stylization – evidence that this phrase popped up with a dependable regularity. He continued.

“And I’ll tell you, Big Daddy. One time I was talking to this woman, trying to begin a relationship with her. Ooh, Big Daddy, she was very hot. So I am talking, trying to begin a relationship, when another woman comes and asks, ‘Hey, why are you talking to this man? He is no good for you.’ And you know what I said, Big Daddy? I said, ‘Hey, fuck you, she can talk to whoever she wants.’”

Most of Wul Choud’s stories ended this way. Still, he remained very generous to Americans as a whole. And any time that he asked if I knew what he said, the answer was generally “yes.” He explained it to me thusly:

“You see, Big Daddy, I have a higher level of English than the other professors because I lived in the United States for three years. Some of the others are no good, but I know the phrases; how to speak like an American.”

I thought back to my time as a cook at Western Sizzlin’. My immediate superior was an ex-convict with a walnut-sized keloid hanging from his left ear. He called it his “bump,” and I sometimes wondered, if you had cut it open, if you’d be able to count the rings and divine the number of years since his wife had stabbed him in the side of the face. I then thought about the 27-year-old mother of two who spent her time over a bowl of instant mashed potatoes alternatingly lauding the subtle pleasures of crack and asking me for legal advice based on the fact that she had heard my mother was a divorce lawyer. When my attention returned to Wul Choud, he was still talking about his sizable advantage as an English teacher because of his experiences in America. ‘Yeah,’ I thought, ‘that sounds about right.’

By now his class was becoming restless. We had been talking for over 15 minutes, and I suspect that if I hadn’t claimed that there was somewhere I needed to be, the conversation would have continued unabated. When he turned to resume the class, I caught the words “horseback riding” on the board.

***

A few weeks later I decided to spend an evening at the Chinese restaurant reading and drinking beer. It was as dead as the dead of winter gets in Nouadhibou, and the city had long been lacquered in the opaque blackness of a moonless night with no streetlamps. About a block away from my apartment I heard a voice from the darkness.

“Hey, Big Daddy, how are you?”

I found Wul Choud’s hand hovering near my right hip. This was the first (and only) time I had run into my coworker outside of the educational setting, and it had a profound effect on our topic of conversation. Forsaking his immediate dinner plans, he began walking with me in the opposite direction. When our eyes had adjusted to absence of light, he pointed out the book under my arm.

“When I was in the United States, everyone was reading. Everywhere I went, people with books and newspapers. Here, everyone is lazy. No one reads books. No one cares what is going on.”

After eight months, I still don’t know how to respond when people attack their own country. I’ve struggled with the policies and people of my country, but have come to appreciate a certain amount of national pride. Point of origin is an inescapable factor of identity, and deriding it seems as productive as calling yourself an asshole. But his rant about the superiority of America’s reading habits eventually segued into a condemnation of Mauritania’s educational system, and I felt the tickle of anticipation at being able to voice my own concerns about how things are run. My list was exhaustive: no generally agreed-upon syllabus for any of the classes, a shoddy, inaccurate, and out-of-date student registration system, no formal communication between administration and staff whatsoever, very little transparency as to how national educational allocations are utilized and no accountability when the funds inevitably disappear without a trace, no supplies, no resources, zero nationwide uniformity concerning scheduling (or anything, for that matter), and perhaps as an extension of the last point, a total inability to plan for anything more than a week in advance. I quietly waited for the opportunity to bond with a colleague over mutual grievances. He started with the teachers.

“They are no better than students. You saw them in the staff meeting. The director couldn’t even speak because they would not stop talking.”

I couldn’t disagree, but the meeting was so pointless and needlessly dominated by an unfocused, authoritative pomp and circumstance that I couldn’t blame people for not paying any attention. His attack on the teachers moved on to their lack of commitment, and eventually, qualification. The teachers, however, are perhaps some of the most qualified professionals in the country. They attend about six years of schooling beyond high school, get paid relatively little, and exist at the whim of a capricious and overly-nationalized system. I attempted to voice my disagreement, but he did not seem to register my input. At best, my comments redirected his ire towards the students, and Wul Choud fell back on the universal, albeit genuine, concern over “kids these days.”

“Listen to this, Big Daddy. The other day I saw a student of mine sitting on the street with a girl, and they were holding hands. Such disrespect! When I was a student, you would never be so disrespectful of a teacher. When you saw a teacher, you left. That was it. Now they say ‘hello’ to me as if I was one of them. And in my classes, I often see them sitting on the back of their chairs. I tell them to sit down in the chair correctly, and they continue to sit on the back of the chair.”

The heartfelt nature of his plea softened my growing distaste for the conversation. Wul Choud was visibly distressed that students occasionally regarded teachers with a modicum of familiarity, and that this was the first chink in the foundation of Mauritanian society, the global society even. He expounded on his perspective for many minutes more, and my fervent disagreement slowly gave way to a comical acceptance. We parted ways smiling.

***

The last time that I saw Wul Choud was in the teacher’s lounge, a concrete room with a table, reserved for drinking tea, mostly. I rarely spend any time in the lounge, but joined dozens of other teachers that day in finishing up grades for a noon deadline imposed only two hours before. I sat in a corner, concentrating on my work, while conversation stormed around me in at least four languages. English is never one of these languages, so when Wul Choud entered, I knew he was talking to me.

“Hey Big Daddy, you getting the pussy?”

Considering the question that was just lobbed to me across a crowded room, over the voices of at least 15 other teachers, I would regard my calm as “zen-like.” Since our evening chat about the state of mankind, Wul Choud had begun to speak to me with a familiarity not unlike the dishwashers did back at Western Sizzlin’, and this question had joined the gamut of other questions one asks when greeting a colleague. Usually it directly followed an inquiry as to how my family was doing.

“Hey, Big Daddy, how are you? You getting the pussy?”

He realized that I had heard him the second time, because I was laughing, because I am a child. I had heard this question before, but never in front of anyone else, let alone a roomful of coworkers. I shook my head at him, indicating (poorly) that this was an inappropriate occasion for said questions.

“What the fuck do they know? They don’t fucking speak English.”

And for the most part it was true. While I wallowed in crippling embarrassment, no one else so much as turned their head.

***

When I returned from Dakar, Ousmane, a close friend who also happens to be an English teacher at another school in Nouadhibou, announced that he was being transferred to the high school. He informed me that Wul Choud had left, and that he was taking his place. I called Ibrahim to get the details.

“Yeah, it’s true. Wul Choud went to Nouakchott last weekend, and on Monday called the director to tell him that he had been transferred to a high school in Nouakchott. I couldn’t believe it. People try for years to get placed in Nouakchott, and he pulled some strings over a weekend, and just like that he was gone.”

I expressed my surprise. I openly wondered about the fate of his newly abandoned class, how they would respond to such an abrupt change. Ibrahim seemed to think it was probably for the best.

“Wul Choud. There was something wrong with that guy. He just wasn’t right in the head.”

And that was the last we ever spoke of him.