Thursday, August 16, 2007

SITE ANNOUNCEMENT- NEMA

Well it finally happened after much nail biting and anticipation and threats of torturing our training coordinator (Aaron), the group called RIM 69 made it to site announcement. And what a blast it was!!! I've been placed in Nema, the newest Peace Corps Regional Capital. There has not been a Peace Corps Volunteer in that region in over 20 years (Since the conflict with Senegal). I am a mix of completely honored and a little perturbed at being given such a large responsibility. Never in a million years would I have expected to be placed in such a pioneer-ish position, in Mauritania! I consider it to be one of the best challenges for me, in the field of development, to cut my teeth on. It is about 3 days by car from Nouakchott, the capital, if those days are dry. If it's rainy, then I really can't tell you how long it could take me to get there. The drive out to Nema was absolutely beautiful. Once I was there things didnt go as smoothly as I would have liked, as I got really ill during the site visit but I have very high hopes for all that can be accomplished during my 2 years. There is electricity and running water and alot of camel meat, and it appears that there is a true desire for peace corps volunteers. My two concerns are that I found the site to be rather conservative compared to Boghe where I am living now, and almost all of the people speak Hassaniya, which I havent had the chance to learn yet thanks to the wonderful language department. That is incredibly frustrating to me but I think I'll pick it up quickly and I may have found a tutor while I was Nema, so this may be less of a problem than I thought. I was also pressured to wear a mulafa, a head to toe, hair and face covering veil, so I did wear one for one day, and really didnt like it. I'm struggling against wearing it because it really just grates against my principles, I feel like I'm giving into to something mysoginistic by wearing it. It doesnt help that I was reading the book "Reading Lolita in Tehran" while in Nema. The author was expelled from the Iranian University for refusing to veil herself. I just dont see the point if I already cover my head anyway as a sign of respect for all Mauritanians. I feel like I'll have to justify wearing it for myself before I just throw on a mulafa to please others. It's sort of a one way street with clothing over here, once people see you in native clothes they tend to expect you to wear them all of the time and make fun of you if you wear Western clothes, and ask you what happened to your african garb. I'm really not ready to be asked where my mulafa is every day when I get to Nema if I only wear it once. We'll see how it goes though, the fact that they have not had a peace corps volunteer to judge my behavior against means I get alot of freedom to set the standards for Americans, be that exercising or wearing pants, or not wearing a mulafa. Time will tell, as I want to be respected and credible in Nema as well. I guess that's all for now only 16 days left of Stage till Swear in and NEMA! YAY!

SITE

Nema and