From my first day in her dusty West African village, my host mother and I have played charades.
"Women in Mauritania have a lot of work," she says, circling her hand over a pretend bowl. She's making couscous.
"Do you dance at weddings in America?" She closes her eyes and sways with an exaggerated look of rapture.
"Did you do sports today?" She pumps her massive arms like a jogger. "One day I will come and do sports with you." She wags her arms again, pants, wipes sweat from her forehead and finally falls into a heap. "Oh, sports make you tired."
These pantomimes began out of necessity. When I moved in with my host family after training, I found that, away from my Hassaniya teacher's slow talk and patient ears, I couldn't understand anyone nor they me. Thus my host mother, Dayda, began the pantomimes: she'd compliment even the simplest dialogue with motions to ensure that I understood.
As the weeks passed, I began to replace the pantomimes with words, mastering the vocabulary that I needed to function in a Mauritanian family. Dayda and I could finally share simple stories or laugh at my little brother as he learned to walk and dined on handfuls of sand.
But although I believed I was saying the same words as everyone else, visitors to our compound got blank looks in their eyes when I asked them what seemed to me like the simplest of questions. I'd look to Dayda.
"What she means is, 'Have you always lived here?'" she'd explain.
I'd often find myself looking at her again to put their responses into language that matched my vocabulary: my mother translator.
As my language progressed, we didn't abandon the pantomimes. Our favorite remained, 'Mauritanian women have a lot of work.' This expanded over the months, partly in response to my host father's insistences that it was not true. We danced a line of making couscous, washing clothes, bending over to sweep with short straw brooms, pulling water from the well and rocking babies: a representation of women that always ended in laughter.
Throughout this time I continued my Peace Corps work teaching English at the local high school and trying to connect with this society that seemed so foreign from my own. More than anything, I wanted to uncover ways in which I was the same as these people from this different world. The longer I lived in Mauritania the more dissatisfied I became with my search. Even the elements of society that seemed the most basic to me were different. Good friends, for example, seemed to be judged not by how well they knew someone as an individual, but rather on the amount of time they spent together. I began to wonder if there was anywhere where our cultures touched.
Then one day my little brother, Daya, began to talk. At first all he said was 'Dayda,' but soon he began to voice many words. The only problem was that I couldn't understand a thing he was saying.
But Dayda could, and she always answered him seriously.
"You're thirsty?" She'd send one of his older brothers to bring him water.
"You want candy? You can't have any now, you just had a piece."
She'd lay on her back with Daya perched on her stomach and together they'd repeat word after word and they'd laugh. The same way she did with me.
So it was motherhood that shone through the density of cultural differences. In both countries, mothers serve as the first teachers and the first friends. They bring us into and guide us through the first years of life. Most, like Dayda, carry out their role with such joy. We are very lucky to have mothers.
I imagine Dayda's pantomime of mother would contain the same elements as that of woman, accompanied, of course, by her deep, rumbling laugh.