Sri Lanka Background

Sri Lanka Facts & History

I realize I'm again heading off to a place most people don't know of at all so I figured I'd attach some backround on Sri Lanka and its history.

BIG HUGE FAT DISCLAIMER: this is amateurish research performed by me and doesn't even begin to really address most of what has happened since 1983. Also its biased. So nobody get any thoughts in their head that I'm an authority on this. Because I'm clearly not.

Name: Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka

Population: 20 million

GDP: 40.6 Billion USD

Ethnic Makeup: Sinhalese 74% Tamil 12%

Religions: Buddhism, Hindu, Muslim, Christian

This background is ripped directly from my final project proposal, but I think it sorta gives an idea of what's going on.


Sri Lanka is a tear drop shaped island with 20 million inhabitants. Sinhalese make up 74% of the population and are concentrated in the densely populated southwest. Sri Lankan Tamils, citizens whose South Indian ancestors have lived on the island for centuries, total about 12%, live throughout the country, and predominate in the Northern Province.1 The main religions are Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Sri Lanka gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1948.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are a separatist group born out of the Tamil community’s reaction to the Sinhalese nationalist movement of the 1970s. During that time Tamil political groups were actively protesting against the Sinhalese-run government's policies that were exclusionary towards non-Sinhalese Sri Lankans. This political movement continued to grow, militant groups were formed and separatists began to advocate for an independent Tamil State (Tamil Eelam). Groups became more active as their protests were increasingly violently repressed by the government. It is in this context that the LTTE formed and started to fight for a Tamil homeland independent from the south of Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan army fought back to regain control of the North during the 1970s, but at that time they were weak, unorganized and poorly equipped to handle guerrilla warfare tactics or
terrorism. It would take several years for the army to modernize and be able to respond to such threats. The violent conflict that many have witnessed was mostly triggered by the slaying in 1983, by the LTTE, of thirteen government soldiers in an ambush, which sparked widespread riots. In their aftermath, 125,000 Tamils living in the South left for the Tamil Northern province.2 Many Sinhalese left their homes in the North permanently. The riots also spurred a mass migration of Tamils out of Sri Lanka, causing the North and South to become extremely polarized and the two ethnic groups to become increasingly exclusionary. Both the LTTE and Government Army have been accused of mass human rights violations against all involved in the conflict. There is not enough space to go into detail here, but accusations of attacks on civilians, violent, forced migrations and recruitment of child soldiers are well documented in the media.
 
The First Peace Accord between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army was facilitated by India and signed in 1987.  As a result, Sri Lanka allowed 100,000 Indian troops to monitor the ceasefire on both sides. After three months of ceasefire the LTTE declared war on the Indian Peacekeeping force.  Many cease fires have been signed between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government and none have yielded a sustainable peace. Since 1989 until present, coinciding with Sri Lankan regime change, there have been peace initiatives with positive responses from the LTTE. Many peace agreements and ceasefires have been signed and then broken in the conflict's 26 year history. Each new government in Sri Lanka has attempted a peace negotiation with the LTTE. A number of political leaders who were involved in the political engagement with the LTTE directly or indirectly-Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi of India, President Premasada and Ministers Gamini Dissanayake and Ranjan Wijertne of Sri Lanka, A. Amirthalingam and Neelan Tiruchelvam of the Tamil United Liberation Front- have all been assassinated by the LTTE for reasons that are linked to negotiation failures.3  The government continued to negotiate with a separatist movement that in the past has used ceasefires to reorganize and arm itself and continue fighting. This also seems confusing when confronted with the fact that negotiation carries such an extreme personal risk to its facilitators on both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict.
 
Sri Lanka entered the global economy in the late 1970s.  It became a market economy and received World Bank and IMF loans to facilitate development. This had a lot of influence on governmental action throughout the conflict. If peace is to be considered a precondition for prosperity, then development aid may be an incentive for recipient countries affected by conflict to cooperate with donor agencies. In highlighting the link between conflict and peace, development objectives become increasingly tied to security agendas.3 The Sri Lankan government continued to negotiate with the LTTE due to international pressure, which sometimes were preconditions to financial assistance. Meanwhile, the LTTE was able to mobilize support from the Diaspora and the international community when confronted with attacks from the government. This powerful minority was able to lobby and make donor countries take a tougher stance on Sri Lanka when it came to conditions of aid as well as bilateral trade. The Sri Lankan government continued to cooperate in negotiations with the LTTE knowing that it would receive additional aid, regardless of the outcome of the negotiations. It was impossible to determine whether aid was distributed to the north or east of Sri Lanka.

Current Context:
The situation changed drastically in May 2009. The leader of the LTTE Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed in battle, the group surrendered and the government declared a “peace.” The government retook control of the north and east. As is probably obvious, this government declaration doesn’t not resolve the conflict or address any of the issues that caused it. Most recently the context has changed through the presidential and parliamentary election process. On January 26, Mahinda Rajapaksa was re-elected for a second term. He has since placed his main presidential opponent and former employee Sarath Fonseka in jail for an attempted coup, almost immediately after winning. Riots followed after this as election results were disputed, much of the support for Fonseka came from Tamil dominated north and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. Voter participation in the former conflict zones was also particularly low compared with the rest of the country. Parliamentary elections took place on April 8, with Rajapaksa's party winning 144 of the 225 seats.4 The ruling party is just short of the two thirds vote it would need to amend the constitution. Voter turnout was considered very low, which leaves a lot of open questions. Sri Lanka is in an especially unique position of being able to lay the groundwork for constructive change as this nation tries to mend broken relationships and avoid the path back towards civil war. The conflict dynamic has added a certain level of politicization to Sri Lankan elections in the past. Polling stations became sites of intimidation and violence as LTTE members tried to force citizens to boycott elections in the past. The government has been accused of using state materials to promote their party’s campaign within IDP settlements with allowance for competitors.
The conflict also has left a legacy of mass migrations. Hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans have been forced to leave their homes on several occasions. Certain groups were only allowed 24 hours before they were removed. There have been several waves of displacement since 1983 at the start of the conflict. The United Nations is an active player in the resettlement process that has been occurring since May 2009. They estimate that 93,000 internally displaced people await resettlement in the north and east.

Next Up Sri Lanka

Latest blog post:

Hi all its been approximately one year since I last posted on Underneath the Charging Sky.
Since then I got accepted to Columbia University's International Affairs School – SIPA and started classes in the fall. These last nine months have certainly been a challenge, albeit it a welcome one. I've met amazing people and have been pushed to my personal limit when it came to economics, papers and groupwork. The class I liked the most was Applied Peacebuilding- at SIPA there are certain classes in such high demand that you actually have to apply for entrance into the class and try to justify your being there. The professor chooses the applicants for the class. Due to some stroke of luck I was actually accepted, and the first several weeks of the class was spent picking a local partner abroad that needed an intern for summer work. The real lure for my interest in this class was the post-conflict development aspects. The professors arranged Terms of Reference for each organization available. As students we had an embarrassment of riches when it came to picking projects – places like Lebanon, East Timor, Kenya & Jordan, just to name a few. The partnering organizations also varied, from United Nations Offices to grassroots organizations.

Upon choosing a project I got in touch with my counterpart and we contacted each other weekly to plan out what the project would be. I chose the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Sri Lanka.
Wait – Sri Lanka? I thought you were Africa Girl! This is true, I had a big internal struggle in deciding where I would be this summer and I decided Sri Lanka would be best. I felt I could learn the most from the Sri Lanka conflict and apply it to my career in the future. And let's be honest, working in Sri Lanka has no negative bearing on my plans for the future. I've spent a lot of time studying and researching the conflict as an undergraduate was well as a part of my graduate work.
So here I am again. Sitting in the Dubai airport waiting for my connecting flight to Colombo. This airport actually has a live lobster tank in it.
I'm very excited and am having trouble imagining what Sri Lanka will look and feel like. I have many pictures in my head but none do justice. I've researched the academic side where everything is cut and dry, the development indicator side where everything just corresponds to numbers, and lastly the tourism side, where everything looks like a mawkish postcard sunset and there is no mention of the atrocities that occurred in the past. I can't reconcile these images. I just have to go live there and see for myself. I promise to keep you all posted on the sights sounds & experiences of Sri Lanka this summer via my blog.

The Slacktard Email: Aka, what I have been up to for the last several months.

For some reason, both times I have returned back to Mauritania from America, I find my life as a volunteer turned upside down.

December: I spent the month at home for the holidays. It was time well spent and I got to see alot of people. I didn’t plan on going home but Christmas at home was great for me, considering the circumstances.

January: I returned back to site just as Israel starting bombing Palestine. I was honestly shocked to see how many Mauritanians took to the streets to protest against Israel. Nouakchott and Aioun were hotbeds of protest. I was driven through tear gas ridden protests upon leaving the capital to head to Aioun. The protests went on for several weeks. At times it was impossible to leave the house to go to the market. Students voiced their outrage by throwing rocks at the high school in an attempt to destroy it. Neighbors looked after us (to keep us from being injured in a protest) but it was extremely difficult to carry on as normal as the Arabic news channels blamed the US (by extension) for the deaths in Palestine. I really did not think that Mauritanians had the capacity to be this belligerant, ever. This is a complete turn around compared to how people behaved after the coup. The government succeeded in throwing out the Israeli Ambassador. I have another, angrier blog post about this, but I decided not to post it.
Mid January I recieved the news that a close family member had died, the day of his funeral my house was broken into.

By the end of January things were normal as they could be in Aioun, and I started up work again with the Aioun CFPP. The director assigned me 18 hours of class in 4 hour blocks, without a tutor. I was to teach computer theory to students who only knew Arabic. It started off as a struggle, and I realized that there really isn’t any point to stress myself out and bash my head against the wall trying to get people to learn in the wrong language when the CFPP has perfectly capable professors who are fluent in Arabic. I begged the director for a translator, he laughed at me and told me to “force” my students to learn French. I told him that was impossible and told me to contact him when he found an appropriate translator. He never called.

At this same time I encountered an amazing woman through my sitemate. Khadjia Mint Kardidi runs an NGO in Aioun and gives trainings to women. She is very successful but low on cash for trainings. She is a case example of something we in Peace Corps call a Community Power Broker. She’s smart, talented, and well respected, when she talks, people hang on her every word. When she plans a meeting, people actually attend. Best of all, she was on board with Peace Corps goals and wanted to work with us. In the end of January, my sitemate Susie gave a training on canning vegetables, Khadija led the training, and I led the business component, trying to get the women to figure out the cost of materials and how to set prices. The training was successful, and we did follow up several weeks after the training, the women knew the method for canning vegetables by heart. It was very impressive, considering they didn’t even write the steps down (Mauritania is not a literary society, books do not exist except the Koran). It’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do, and I had the directions written down in English!

After that first training, Khadija mentioned interest in training the Cooperatives in Aioun. She wanted to educate women on the basics of running a cooperative and responsibilities required of the executive members. I wanted to stress the importance of critical thinking and decision making before starting new business ventures. Our plans meshed well together and we decided to hold a 3 day long training. We invited the president and secretary general from 10 women’s cooperatives based in Aioun in February. The training was a success.

In early February I took a trip to the south of Mauritania the hard way. I met up with my friend Edna in Kiffa and we took a 15 hour long offroading trip to get to Selibaby. I actually had bruises on my head and shoulder from bouncing around in the cab of a toyota hilux. It gave me a ton of respect for the volunteers of that region, they offroad like that whenever they have to leave site! Selibaby was a great town, a 360 degree change from Aioun. People were friendly and spoke French. I was able to give a neem soap training to the Girl’s Mentoring Center and it went incredibly well. The students were so polite and well spoken! It was amazing how shaky my french was considering I’m used to peppering it with Hassaniya so people actually understand me in Aioun.
After Selibaby I headed down to Dakar to attend my second WAIST. WAIST this year was amazing. The Mauritanian pirates won the social league division, our country director was there and my american style homestay was amazing. Over 100 Mauritanian PCVs attended. Dakar, as per usual, was amazing, and crazy and bustling, and I got the sushi plate I look forward to every year. In the market near my hotel, they were selling tee shirts that say (in french) “If you piss me off, I’m going back to Senegal.” The sentiment made me laugh, because it is probably the reigning attitude of PCVs towards their communities on bad days. I didn’t buy a shirt that said that because I couldnt get a decent price.

I returned to Aioun after WAIST and held another business training with Khadija. This time we trained 20 cooperatives. It went well and it became clear that the cooperatives have a serious lack of artisinal skills that was limiting them from achieving their full potential. I planned to have a tie dye training when I found out that the funding I have been using dried up. There was a special Gender and Development fund that I was using to pay for the supplies for the conference (mainly lunch each day and transport money for the participants). We planned on holding the next training immediately but couldn’t.

March 8 was International Women’s day. I met multiple times with the Director of the Condition Femenine (Government post that deals with women’s issues) to try to make the festival a big deal. Last year, both Aioun and Nema had really huge parties to celebrate Women’s day. It was a good time to exhibit the work of artisinal cooperatives, as well as skits and performances by womens’ groups and girls’ clubs, not to mention local food vendors. I spoke with the director, and explained my plan of renting a large tent (and paying for it with Peace Corps $$) and having music and food, she seemed not enthusiastic. She then commenced in blowing me off, and I figured they had some sort of plan. Well, Womens’ Day arrived, I put on a veil and headed to the place where they were holding the ceremonies. The scene was a total mess, the cooperatives were stuck in the back of the meeting hall, trapped and no one could see their wares, the front of the room was choked with VIPs and the rest of the people attending were stuck outside in the sun for hours. There was no food or drink for sale and people were loud and pushy. All the dignitaries were hours late (you cannot start anything formal in this country unless you get a speech from the mayor, hakem, and wali) all of them were men. The CF director kept trying to drag me around to show off the white girl in the veil (definitely a downside to keeping in line with local customs). At this point I was dizzy and tired from sitting in the sun and wouldn’t have anymore of it, I left before all the bigwigs made their speeches.This might be my perspective as an embittered 2nd year volunteer, but what’s the point of having a womens’ day if you treat it like a total joke? Why even bother if you have to stand around waiting for men to show up and justify even having a day such as this? I took this a little personally, and am still frustrated that they turned me down even though I showed up with a plan for the day and money! I guess there are reasons why this woman is ignored by most of her colleagues. Its frustrating that they have money for skills trainings for women but it just gets wasted on whatever frivolties the CF Director wants.

The end of March was marked by our Close of Service Conference. It was a 3 day long conference that focused on handholding and trying to process our last 2 years in country. There was also a lot of career advice as well as pressure to apply for government jobs. It was also the last time I would see alot of our class of 60+ people who came over with me in 2007. I’m no longer afraid of entering into the job market, even though the economy remains a mess. It was also great to see old friends and hear about what their plans for the future are, many are going on to grad school, also there’s a large chunk of people heading on to Peace Corps China. It was a plan I myself considered.

So herein lies the big question, what are my plans for after August 6? I applied to 5 graduate schools in December, I got rejected by all but one. I am on the waitlist for Columbia University and plan to stick it out. I actually got rejected by my Alma Mater (AU grads who read this, the next time they call you for $$, tell them to go to hell for me!). I blame alot of this on the crappy economy. Needless to say, this was probably one of the toughest times being in Mauritania, all the waiting and rejection has made me miserable. There is nothing in Aioun to keep my mind of the crushing amount of defeat and rejection I feel besides old beat up paperbacks in our library. No food, no beer, no entertainment. Just heat and misery to get you through the day.

So at this point, I return home to insanely high student loan payments and no job, woo! I plan on moving to DC (sorry New Yorkers, I tried but NY doesn’t really have a develpment industry like DC does) probably by mid August-early September. At that point I will be applying for the spring term at a couple of grad schools in the area, and working my butt off.

So yeah, I haven’t posted in a very long time, but I just kept putting it off because I had nothing really positive or exciting to post about. So I just decided to clump it all together in a big fat whiney blog post, all negative-style. Sorry about that, but this isn’t a blog about how I moved to Africa and started censoring my reaction to things.

My official Close Of Service date is August 6, 2009. I will be bringing my dog, Nancy Sinatra with me. Take some pleasure in that.

Thoughts on the President Elect

Election day/night/early morning was quite a scene out here in Aioun. I'd like to thank everyone who voted on election day, please be aware that living in a country under a military dictatorship makes you much more appreciative of American Democracy!! I'd like you all to know that there were about 12 volunteers in town election night, frantically reloading CNN and NYTIMES webpages trying to glean any sort of information on election results. My friend has a chalkboard at her house and I drew a map of all 50 states and used red and blue chalk to color in each one. The pictures are on facebook. The strongest of us stayed up until 4 am when the election results were decided! It was like 8 consecutive years of Christmas saved up for some of us, and for others it was a crushing defeat. Also it was amazing to be in Africa as we elected the first African American president of the United States. I really do wish I was at home in NY or DC, but I'm happy for the unique experience I shared with my sitemates. Needless to say I am very happy because my candidate won. But I think that the ripple effect felt out here in Mauritania was much bigger than I expected. Perceptions of Americans changed dramatically November 5th. People kept stopping by my house to congratulate me, and wish us well. They are overjoyed that the president elect has an African Muslim father. I'm pretty proud of it too!

I'm also glad I wont get yelled at in the street for any more of George Bush's policies (Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, threats to Iran) anymore.

Another thing I'd like to mention is Obama's campaign promise to double the number of Peace Corps Volunteers by 2011. I'd like to start by saying that we need money more than we need volunteers at this time, our budget has been cut in half! But at the same time increasing our numbers could work at a time like this, with a new administration that is incredibly welcomed by most countries abroad.
Either way, if you'd like to support me, sign this petition below:

http://www.petitiononline.com/morepc/petition.html

Looooong Overdue Update

Ok so many many apologies for this long winded and way overdue email. Many things have changed in my life as a volunteer since the month of August!

August 6^th was an interesting day for me, especially since I was in the capital. A military coup was staged that morning and the president was supplanted and jailed. I know a lot of people were concerned about my safety, but really, it was probably one of the most nonchalant coups in history. People protested the overthrow of the president, (he was the first democratically elected one in the nation’s history) there were a few demonstrations, but thats about it. I was able to get onto my flight out of Dakar and head home for vacation. How did the coup affect Mauritania on a macro level? Well, aid money got incredibly tight. The United States government suspended all non-humanitarian aid, the funding from the European Union and the Millennium Challenge Corporation got cut. What does this mean for me? Peace Corps will continue its work as usual, although thanks to the state of the economy, this means on a super tight budget. How tight? Well, I found out while I was in the US on vacation that Nema, my site was to be closed and that I was to move out of it immediately. I was incredibly shocked by this, mainly because I was so far away and had no control over what was happening. Peace Corps did a very good job of convincing me that everything would be taken care of so I would have no problems when I got back. I was allowed to go back to Nema for 2 nights to say goodbye to everyone, it was really sad. I felt the worst because before I left, a lot of people joked with me and exclaimed that I would go back to the US and not come back to Nema because life there was so hard. Well, it ends up that I did have to leave Nema right after my trip home. People were really understanding, because it was not up to me to decide, and it was based off of Peace Corps concerns about finances and safety. Leaving was emotional and difficult because usually you are given 2 years to plan your goodbyes and not 5 days, but all in all it went well.

Let me tell you about my new site, Aioun El Attrouss. Aioun El Attrouss literally means “Eye of the Goat.” It is 4 hours away from Nema, and 14 hours away from Nouakchott. It is a large city and has a paved road that goes into Mali. It is much different from Nema in size, amenities and ethnic makeup. The town is much larger, much less isolated and has much more people. The houses are in much better condition, the town is actually growing and is not declining like Nema. On the amenities scale? Running water, an actual restaurant, boutiques that sell oranges, apples and bananas, these don’t seem like much to an outsider, but when you go from having nothing to something, it really does wonders for morale. I loved Nema, but it was the only Mauritanian regional capital without ketchup.

One of the biggest things I have noticed is the difference in attitudes of people. Aioun is an established site, it has had Peace Corps Volunteers for several decades as far as I can tell. Nema has not had volunteers since the late 1980s. Sometimes trying to get community members together to work on projects was incredibly difficult. People were unsure of who we were, what we stood for and what they could get out of us financially. Working at the CFPP in Nema was particularly difficult due to the language barrier. Being a Small Enterprise Volunteer in Aioun will be much easier. I have a new site mate who is also in SED so we will be able to work on projects together.

I must admit I haven’t been blogging at all these past couple of months for two reasons: its been Ramadan so I have very little to report and I’ve been spending all my free time studying for the GRE and getting into Grad School. I have applied to 5 schools and there’s a 50-50 shot I’ll be living in DC or NY next year, so at least half of the audience of this blog will be happy! I’ll be pursuing a degree in development studies or economic and political development, depending on the program I get into.

This past weekend I took the GRE in Bamako with a bunch of other girls from Aioun. It was pretty much a working vacation, I got to see the sites and night life of Bamako, and spent only one day taking the test! I think I did alright, hopefully better than when I last took the test. Thanks to PC Mali, we got really nice accommodations, the hotel we stayed at had a bar and a pool! Nothing like Nouakchott! And $2 half liter draft beers! We met a bunch of Malian PCVs who were really nice, all in all had a great time, and now its back to the grindstone for me. Classes at the CFPP should be starting soon, and I am currently working in a project with a restaurant. I’m trying to get them to really start taking account of their sales, and also working on some marketing strategies. I’ll keep you posted on their progress!

Also on the packages front: I know have a legit and stable address, so if you mail me things, I will likely get them in days/weeks instead of many months!

My new address is as follows:

Heather Wyllie

BP 4

Aioun El Atrouss

Mauritania

Love and miss you all, it was great to see everyone when I was at home! I’ll be back stateside before you know it!

Video As Promised!

Vacation Wrap Up/Sorry I haven't posted lately

Long overdue update, I realize I haven’t posted in over a month, I’ve been pretty busy as the mercury continues to rise higher and higher out here in Mauritania,

A few highlights:

I went off to Jazz fest in the beginning of May, it was quite a fun trip, once you got past the amount of time it took me to travel out for a 4 day long festival. Granted, Saint Louis is practically Disneyland to me at this point and I always have a good time. But to get there I have to spend 2 days in the car just to get to Nouakchott, overnight there and then head onto Saint Louis. But the clincher is that I have to cross into Senegal at Rosso, and then get across the river itself. Crossing is always an adventure based on the mode of transport you choose to go across on. You have three choices – the BAC ferry, which is a swarming mass of people, cars, semis and sometimes camel herds. You also have the pirogue option- a small boat that is always on the verge of sinking, you have a motorized option or a non motorized option. What baffles me the most is why nobody has bothered to build a bridge in the last 50 years? More goods and people could move between the two countries if we could try to smooth out this border crossing nightmare! The worst part is the customs officials, as soon as your little pirogue lands on Mauritanian side, a gendarme jumps on the boat and seizes every westerner’s passport and makes them wait around in the heat for hours till they realize they cannot extort any money from us, we’re peace corps volunteers for crissakes we look like refugees. There is also the “exit” fee, that some random guy with a booklet of yellow papers demands from you to exit the customs area, which is gated. Some days its 200 UM, sometimes its 100 UM. Its basically just a bribe, run by one man who pays the police to look the other way when he does it. When it’s a group of 10-20 westerners, the man makes quite a haul in the space of 2 minutes! All of this is done under these giant glaring posters, (paid for by your tax dollars) that say CORRUPTION HURTS ALL OF MAURITANIA which I find to be hilariously ironic. But, we’re Peace Corps volunteers so we do everything we can do avoid the fee, which involves me sneaking out a side entrance, avoiding the green ticket bribe guy and a scuffle ensues with the next 10 people who tried to follow me out. All 10 or so of us emerged victorious from the potential scam.

But anyways, Jazzfest was a blast, lots of Jazz music at night that you had to pay for at night, lots of fun drumbeats during the day. I spent most of my days at the beach, a Senegalese volunteer even dragged out a sawed in half windsurf board, which I proceeded to use. The surf was pretty rough but it was totally worth the scrapes and bruises!! I discovered two pretty great edible things in Saint Louis- YogoGlace and the EggBurger. YogoGlace is just that, basically a bag of frozen yogurt, no, not froyo from a food court mall, which totally grosses me out on a scatological level and I still cannot eat to this day. Just imagine a small bag of vanilla yogurt, straight from your freezer. This is a genius Senegalese product that only cost about 50 CFA, (maybe 10 cents American) and had all the goodness of yogurt. If you find that when I go home I have a small stash of Ziploc baggies full of yogurt in my freezer, do not judge me. Also, I have to get down to business about the culinary practice in Africa of putting a cooked egg on things. Where in America we might put cheese or another slab of meat on sometime (triple whopper from BK ringing a bell here anyone?) instead a fried egg is placed on top of said item. Restaurants put eggs on pizza, burgers, and schwarma sandwiches. And if you are a PCV in west Africa, that’s just about what you can afford on your salary. But anyway, I have to say the first time I tried an egg on a burger ( I had resisted it now since December) it was somewhat of a religious experience. I went into a hole in the wall joint one of my first nights there, ordered a burger, knowing that it had cheese on it and had my mind blown by the combo of egg, cheese, burger and delicious bun. Its like half breakfast sandwich/half burger. It was sooooo tasty that as soon as I had one I instantly wanted another. But I restrained myself, a little. Being as the burgers were so tasty and cheap, and the place stayed open till 4 am and then reopened at 10 am, I was there with my friends approximately every 12 hours! It was worth it.

After that I returned back to site, as its getting hotter and hotter than ever before. Lots of things are starting to break down in the heat. Mainly my patience for things out here and the power grid. Which leads to a lot of problems. Mainly the ice crisis of 2008 in Nema. For the last week or so power has been browning in and out at random intervals, my computer classes have been a mess due to lack or power, and power doesn’t stay on long enough for fridges to work and ice to freeze! This is a big deal, I (and many other Mauritanian kids) start roaming the streets like a zombie asking at every boutique for ice, but all they can sell me is a plastic bag of cold water for the same price!! So here is the issue, when its this hot outside, every item in your home is the same temperature, warm or hot to the touch, the walls, the floor, your clothes, the metal water filter where you keep your water. Imagine being thirsty and gulping down a hot glass of water in 120 degree weather. It’s the opposite of refreshing. So its wearing on my sanity a little bit, but I’m hanging in there and wake up each day hopeful for ice…

Also, I filmed a cooking show last night with my sitemates, expect that to be posted soon!

Sweatingly,

Heather

-Also, new invitees get off the internet and go hang with your friends/fam/pets! There is no insight you can glean from this post. You’re ready for Mauritania, see you in a couple of weeks!