2004-07-03 - 9:58 p.m.

This is my second entry for the day to see old posts click on OLDER. Also if you want to write me a short note click on sign my guestbook.

I know many people are probably worried about my safety here. However, I'm not lying when I say that I couldn't feel safer. Mauritania s the safest country in West Africa. PC volunteers walk around the capital city at night all the time and have never been attacked. Anyway, for right now PC is keeping the new trainees under lock and key. We were all getting cabin fever these last few days but yesterday we went to the market in a big group, and have been given the freedom to come and go as we please ever since.

The Market was great. The people wear so many colors, and the outfits are beautiful. All of the vedors line up next to each other on the main street and peope come up and negotiate for a price. The streets are covered with garbage. They have no system of garbage colection so items are just thrown out the window or on the street or in a field whenever they are no longer wanted. The Wolof word for floor is the same as the word for garbage. The market itself smelled like a farm with a hint of garbage dump.

I will find out tommorow what language I will be learning and thus what area of the country I will be moving to after training. On Tuesday our group will split up into smaller ones and we will be shipped to surrounding villages to live with a host family and work on projects. Ether one or two other environmental education (ee) volunteers will be in the same village, but will be staying with different families. During the day we will take language classes together. I feel bad because the ee volunteers will be given no French training. We will either be learning Hassanyan (arabic) or Pulaar. The thing is that class will be taught in French. So those people who have not had much French background will be learning a language they don't know in a language they don't know. They assure us it will work, but I remain skeptical.

I have been able to keep running. Apparantly lots of volunteers both past and present have ran and exercised in their villages without much trouble. I'm going again tommorow morning and I will try to go when I get to my training vilage on Tuesday. We have been given a set of tasks that we are supposed to complete in the next two weeks, one of them is to establish our exercise routine in the village if we have one.

I will return to Kaedi from our village after two weeks for two days. We will be as one big group again then. It is going to be hard to split up, but I think it will help us to learn the language and culture. Right now it feels too much like summer camp.

love and miss you all

previous - next