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.