Chapato doesn't know chapati

Last spring I made friends with a wonderful Burundian woman in Nouakchott. She invited me over to her house and cooked chai and chapati for me. When I asked her grown sons if they love their mom's chapati as much as I did, they didn't know what I was talking about. My friend laughed and said, "Chapato doesn't know chapati." Moorish people are called "chapato" in Pulaar, and since her son's father is Moorish, she was having fun with words. I told her sons that they were missing out. East African chapati is one of my favorite foods! 

I was pleasantly surprised last week to discover a Moroccan version of chapati, called msimn, at a Nouakchott cafe. It was a little tough, square, and needed more salt but it was close enough to the real deal. It is freshly made by a woman every evening and served warm. It is served with Moroccan soup (harira) and the waiters only knew it as "the bread that comes with soup." I passed on the soup, preferring instead to eat mine with a nice cup of espresso. I will definitely be going back for more soon.

Maybe chapato do know chapati after all!

Birdhouse in My Soul

My downstairs neighbor had a beautiful garden in his front courtyard. I was always envious  of this luxurious green space in a sandy city. I have no balcony, courtyard, or roof. I have only small windows and an even smaller view of the trees around my apartment. 

Last spring I woke up one morning to a ray of sunshine coming in through my front window for the first time. I looked down and saw a young man madly chopping down anything green in sight. My neighbor had just gotten married and in an effort to please his new bride, he cut every living thing in his yard. Evidently she was not fond of the mosquitos hiding in the dark spaces.

However, my window was still covered in dead tree branches, caught between in the bars. I asked him to please remove the branches and he said he didn't have a ladder. He pushed a stick through my screen and I then begged him to stop. 

When I came back this fall, I found that some birds had decided to make good use of these branches. They made a nest in my screen. They destroyed the screen further, forcing me to close the glass or face the consequences: Feathers and twigs flying into my house! 

I don't plan on staying here long enough to evict my newest neighbors. I like their singing and maybe I will have a little family coming soon. 

Every time I look outside I think of this song: 

Homecoming

I am back in Mauritania! 

My contract was due to end last summer. In fact, it DID end. I threw myself an enormous goodbye party, hired a dj, and danced with all my best friends until 2:00 am. I visited all my friends in the villages and said tearful goodbyes. I gave away everything I owned and packed my most sentimental belongings in two suitcases.

I left Nouakchott on July 24, arrived in Minnesota on July 25, went to sleep and woke up July 26, with a job offer to return to the same position. I spent three months at home with my family and then came back. 

This country has a hold on me! 

Battles

I took a long break from writing. I needed to be alone in my head for a few months. I am coming back to the rest of the world, slowly walking back to my life before everything changed. The day my dad fell and hit his head, suffered from a stroke that caused serious damage to forty-percent of the right side of his brain. Putting it in writing makes it real- a reality that has been difficult to comes to terms with.

I spent over four months in the hospital between in March and October. That stale, sterile, sour hospital smell still lingers in my nose. The smell that served as a daily reminder of the assault on my family: My father's struggle to live without pain or suffering. Arriving to my dad's room and seeing him crunched into a ball, not knowing if I would find my exceptionally kind and laughing, "dream dad", or difficult and irritable, "brain-damaged dad." Regardless of his state of mind, visiting my dad every day in the hospital provided precious quality time, something we never really had before. Despite the difficulty of witnessing my father face the  biggest battle of his life, I treasured the chance to listen to his stories, jokes, and political perspectives. I savored the time to simply hold his hand and tell him what an incredibly inspiring and genuinely kind human being he is. Maybe I never told my dad enough before how much I truly admire and respect him.  

Sitting in the hospital day after day helped to gave me a balanced perspective. Although I felt isolated by my grief, I was never alone. Every room was occupied by a patient and a family rallying to provide love and support. Tragedy surrounded us. Some of the patients were doing much better than my dad, and I eyed their progress with envy. However, there were also patients doing worse, and I felt intense empathy because I knew that it could be my dad in their places. It could be me, for that matter. There is so much to be thankful for, so many reasons to be grateful. 

This week, after nearly nine months of hospitalization, my dad is coming home. I wish I could be there to see him smile, as I know he will be, to see his precious kitties (hellions Ray Ray and Bon Bon) and be back in his element. I hope beyond hope that this homecoming is the best  medicine. 

Thank you to everyone who has helped me during this difficult time. I feel your love and I am appreciative beyond words. Thank you. 

Deep in the Fouta

We took a taxi from Nouakchott to Maghama. After Lexieba there is no road, just tracks to follow in the dried dirt. After an hour of driving off-road, the car stopped. I thought we had a flat tire. I looked at the setting sun and pictured a long night. To my surprise, a man got out from the front seat of the car, collected his baggage and started walking. I looked closely in the direction he was going and saw the outline of distant houses. I stared at him until he disappeared into the horizon. How did he know he had arrived? We drove for another two hours and never saw another person, animal, or village. 

Paintin' Up a Storm

My third year in Mauritania has turned out to be about doing all the things I have wanted to do since I arrived but couldn't accomplish during the first two years. I went to Ouadane, bought a taxi, recorded audio files and created a mural with my students. I am so happy that I have been able to finally cross off so many things from my long list of things to do. I have six more weeks and want to keep finishing all these great initiatives my students and I have started. 

One of the projects I am the most excited about is creating murals! I worked with my teacher-trainees in Nouakchott for the first one and then I took the two most experienced painters and we traveled to Maghama to work with the students of the English Club there to create another mural. 

For most of the students it was the first time to hold a paint brush. It is so important to let them try in order to learn from experience that they can do it on their own. It has been a really fun project! I had no previous experience painting but I discovered that I am not too bad! My role the last two times has been as a toucher-upper for the students' work, after they have finished with their part. I clean the lines and make things more correct. 


I have enough paint for at least two more murals and need to work on deciding where to paint them. I think I will do one in Nouakchott and one somewhere else, maybe Rosso. I want my teacher-trainees to take a leadership role in deciding where, when, and with who! More on this topic soon!

Three Days in Tergit

I just returned from three days in Tergit with thirty-eight teacher-trainees. I organized the retreat with my first and second year students so we could learn and share ideas outside of the classroom environment. This year I was lucky to have two amazing groups of students and so it was really important for me to be able to provide an opportunity for them to spend time together. The students organized and facilitated all of the activities for the entire weekend, including 10 mini-workshops, a football match, egg-spoon race, tug-of-peace, sack race, and evening entertainment. One student summarized the weekeend perfectly, he said, "One College, one team, one group, one dream, peace love and harmony here we are at the ENS where we are brothers, where we shared activities, traveled together, ate and prayed together, holding the rope of hope and friendship."

I organized a meeting on the first day and asked the students what they think the goals for the weekend should be. I was so proud when they mentioned many important and introspective ideas. One of the most interesting discussions was about how the weekend could provide the opportunity for the group to learn about other cultures and form bonds with students from different ethnic backgrounds. One student commented that the English department represents all Mauritanians, as opposed to the Arabic and French departments, which tend to be less diverse. In the past, most students from the South only studied in French, where as the East and North only studied in Arabic. This means that the two languages divide the country and in return, the population. However, English is a third  (or fourth) language for everyone in Mauritania and in that sense, is studied throughout the country (for only two hours a week in secondary school). 

I am proud of my students for realizing the importance of cross-cultural exchange and for being open-minded enough to be able form lasting friendships across this divide. This adds another element of importance to the classes I teach, where as always, teaching is about so much more than just the content itself- values, beliefs, and ways of thinking are also part of the curriculum. 

The retreat was wonderful- we spent three days together learning, teaching, singing, clapping, dancing, swimming, hiking, napping, rapping, playing football, running, skipping, and laughing. One student wrote to say, "Colurful, wonderful and beautiful three days in TERGIT! I will never ever forget these days in which harmony, unity, sympathy and empathy were key concepts. I got no words that can express how happy I feel about Tergit . If there is a word that is more valuable than thanks I would say it."