Anton J. Peace Corps Volunteer Maal, Brakna, Mauritania
Dear Michele,
It is the most amazing thing to live amongst the camels and with people who live under tents, and to visit them at night drinking rounds of tea in little shot-glasses, speaking Arabic with them and your students stop by to practice their bad English on you ....
There's a cool wind blowing from the West through my little house this late afternoon, and it's a welcomed change from the heat of the day. For now, it is one of the few reminders that there is a West.
My birthday was two days ago. I asked my host mother, Khadijetou, to make a feast (with my money of course) so that my Mauritanian friends and family could celebrate with me. I gave her 7000 UM, which is one-fourth of my monthly allowance I live on. But it was worth it! There were twelve of us; everyone older than me except my host niece at 5 years old. She's here in Maal to learn Classical Arabic and the Quran. We started the night by drinking Zriig; a tasty drink made of soured goat's milk, water, and sugar. Then we ate dates with cream. Next came a large platter of Mauritanian salad (beats, shredded carrots, tomatoes, sweet potato, and egg). We all dug into the platter sitting around it talking about how good it tasted. We never eat veggies or fruit out here. This conversation was in French because it is our common language. Not everyone speaks Hassaniya/Arabic. Sidi is Soninke, Dia is Pulaar, Mamadou is Wolof, Mohamed Ali is a black Moor and so are Hassen and my host family. They all have their own languages, but French unites them all. My friends are all teachers. The second course was an entire goat split into two platters toppled with slices of fried potato and a very good onion meat sauce. This was followed by three rounds of tea and finally the third course, Moroccan Couscous with carrots and more goat.
I literally ate more that night than I do during an entire week! The twelve of us ate like kings even if there was no silverware. They don't really celebrate birthdays here, as most people have little clue to when they were born and at best know only the year and the season. They asked me about birthday celebrations in America and I was embarrassed to bring up alcohol more than once. It is, of course, forbidden in this country in that it is an Islamic Republic. They all thanked me for this great feast and I thanked Khadijetou for making it. By night's end they managed to sing about half of "Happy Birthday" in English before they realized they didn't really know the words, but the la la la version wasn't bad.
The thing is ... If I traded $24 American dollars for Ougiya (UM), I would get 7000 UM and hence afford this huge feast for a party of twelve. I never realized how powerful the American dollar is in the fourth world. It is the currency the black-market in Nouakchott loves the best. A Ben Franklin makes for the easiest thing to trade in the world.
The Ambassador of the United States of America to Mauritania was touring my part of the country and my village somehow made it on his list of places to stop at. It could have had something to do with the conversation I had with him at the Embassy after my speech in which I told him of Mall's beauty, though I doubt he remembers. At least he agrees now that Maal is beautiful. The Mayor, Deputy, and Hakem slaughtered five goats for his arrival and I got to attend this feast with the Ambassador. He arrived in a long procession of cars, all SUVs or Jeeps. One had the American flag insignia of the Peace Corps on it. For a village who rarely sees a car, this was a very big show. At the feast (much better than my birthday) I sat next to him on his left in a room of officials covered with a Persian-style rug. The whole room was decorated in Arabic purples, reeds, and burgundies. Next to me on my left side was the Director of the Peace Corps in Mauritania. Needless to say, I felt like a million bucks. After the feast I got into the Ambassador's car and we toured the lake and its gardens in this long procession of cars. I had a great conversation with him about Maal and fishing and then was dropped off in the center of the village, from where they soon drove off to Boghé, leaving a trailing cloud of dust in their wake. At that moment I had about 50 villagers come up to me in a circle as if I were magical. I almost felt as if they were waiting for me to say something very important. But I didn't. I greeted them in Hassaniya and walked off to my little house to eat the brownies and read the two copies of The New Yorker that the Ambassador gave to me as gifts. He really knows how to make people feel important, but then, that's his job.
The West wind brought dark clouds and a light rain last night. This morning is gray and a breeze continues to make a pleasant weather. Last night I fell asleep listening to the tapping rain on my tin roof. It reminded me of the green house when it rained in California on our old house.
This morning a little black girl came to my door with a bowl of carrots and tomatoes from her mother's garden. I bought some and made a very good vegetable soup. My friend Sidi (the French teacher) stopped by about an hour ago with bread made in the mud ovens here and I made coffee and tea to go with the soup and bread. Sidi said it was the best breakfast he's had in Maal, and so it was with me.
We talked about life; vegetable soup in England, traveling, growing old, raising children, and surviving day by day as a way of life in Africa. I know that most of what I talked about he will never experience. I wonder if he envies that different way of life impossible to him. Perhaps.
I miss home. I don't miss America, I only miss being a little kid in Diamond Bar helping dad in the garden, running laps inside the swimming pool to see how fast we could make the water turn, playing with my G.I. Joes and toy cars, complaining about hanging the clothes on the clothes-line, watching cartoons with you after school and Star Trek with dad at night and mom walking into your room on your birthday in the morning singing at the top of her lungs. I know I am only remembering the good but this is my only idea of home. I don't know what it is now. The former is a life that is gone as much as our old house. I guess I feel displaced; out of time and place.
I suppose out here I've had a lot of time to think about life ... and in a much more profound way that the busy life of L.A. never afforded me. I have clearly thought about what is most important for me; that which makes me passionate for life.
First is love in all its forms ... for family, for life, and of course romantically. What would life be without love?
Second is beauty; beauty so intense that you don't want to let it go.
Third is the pursuit of knowledge. The more I know the more I am fascinated by who we are; humanity. Just to think and know about our long line of history and the rise and fall of the great civilizations blows my mind. Out here I have read a lot of history, literature, and about political affairs. I have followed closely the development of the Arab world and its clash with the West, and see our past colliding with our future. I know now what Shakespeare was thinking when Hamlet says, "What a thing is man..." all his plots, and wars, and struggles ... for what? Ideology? Land? Love? ... Survival? It amazes me what man has done and of what he is capable.
I have now made French as natural to me as Spanish and English and am adding Arabic and its culture to who I am. It makes me feel like four persons, each as different as speaking Spanish with mom and speaking English with friends on a night out. Four lifetimes in one. Most of these villagers are blind to the outside world and know only what they see here. They will never know what it is like to eat Chinese food with chopsticks or what the world looks like through the window of an airplane, or what it is like to have thousands of spectators clapping after your performance, nor will they stop and wonder what the last Caesar was thinking/feeling as he watched the Visigoths pour over the hill and into Rome! When I say knowledge I include experience of life and travel.
Both of these lead to adventure. By this I don't mean "Raiders of the Lost Arc." Very few of us can ever experience that. By adventure I mean the undiscovered. We all know Robert Frost's little line "And so I chose the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference." Adventure is a leap of faith into a place, or employment, or existence in which you have no idea what to expect. Mystery. The voyage of self-discovery. It is the way I felt at the airport just before I walked into the plane and said good-bye to Larisa. And again I felt that way in Boghé when a Mauritanian boy in tattered clothes told me in Africanized French to follow him, that I would be living with him now, and I completely stepped out of my known world. It is that feeling heavy in your stomach and light on your shoulders that keeps you asking "What the hell am I doing?" It is the ultimate reminder that you are truly alive.
I told Larisa at LAX that if I died right then that I would be satisfied that I had lived a full life. I said this looking into her eyes aware of all the love I had for her, remembering my childhood adventures, the students that cried for me as I did for them, flying over a car during a motorcycle accident, driving myself on the wrong side of the car in England, getting lost in the mountains of France and California, singing in front of a packed hall, and flying to Pittsburgh to find a lost love. And I turned away from Larisa and looked towards the airplane and said to her ... "the craziest part of it all is that my life will really begin once I step onto that airplane."
And so it has ....
With Love, Your Brother. Anton