We all witness delirium. We share the experience of this place in our sites, our communities, our region, our country of service. Sometimes we brag. Sometimes we only search out a laugh, sometimes we search support, sometimes the experience is so embarrassing that it is difficult to actually admit. By now we have all lived through at least one hot season, one experience of training and adjustment, one taxi brousse voyage, and we all have our stories to tell. Our very own Country Directrice Kateri Clement herself has had a famous account from her Peace Corps service. Her’s is a story told in second person where she claims to have found a fellow volunteer, one who tended to refuse all “unnecessary” amenities (e.g. – electricity, beds, house made of anything other than mud and straw), curled up, naked, in the coolest shaded corner of a hut—crying. Breaking point: that asphyxiating moment when it is not just the heat that bothers us anymore. And the delirium sets in.
We can all share with each other, because we have all sensed our own particular delirium. We can share these moments of emotion, frustration, anger, peace, embarrassment that are sometimes joyful, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes neither or both. Sometimes the delirium starts with that contagious, maddening laughter over something so trivial for the mere sake of being one amongst a crowd. Sometimes it is the heat and the invited pleas from a colleague to “get up, brush off, put on some clothes and come join everyone else in front of the fan,” that notices our delirium so that we realize it for ourselves. Delirium is connected to the realization of place. It is the effects of the place in which we find ourselves, along with the way we interact with the company in which we find ourselves, that determines a state of mind. Delirium is the way that life in this place makes us feel.
And it is Delirium the literary journal that attempts to provide an outlet. It attempts a glimpse at the insanity, for better or for worse, that we’ve all married ourselves to. It is a glimpse of life in this place, from the eyes, hands, pens and journals of volunteers, that nudges at the re-evaluation of self for which delirium calls. Our Delirium strives to illustrate a common condition that is full of joyous qualities as well as spectacular faults.
And so with the second, long awaited, volume of Delirium, now provided to you in a new on-line format and dedicated to a true enlightening mentor of academia, the great philosophical conversationalist himself, and creator/original editor of this literary journal - Mauritanian RPCV Paul Woolridge, I extend the invitation and promote any further submissions to the up-and-coming third edition ... inshallah. Please submit, by attachment to an email, such material to wittdmc@yahoo.com and/or someone else in country who is interested. This small project is a privilege and so much thanks goes to Paul W. for providing the original idea and format, then passing it along. Its potential to expand on the experience that is Peace Corps knows no bounds. Thanks also goes to Alden Kline who has found time away from her usual Nouakchott Notes staff in order to lend her strict editing skills to our delirious compilation, and to Audrey Bottjen for the insightful entry on drunken conversations. Convincing!
Daniel M. Carman
2004