25 May 2005 - 20:36
Most of you probably haven’t heard of this holiday, and until yesterday, neither had I. From what I’ve observed, Africa Day in Mauritania is celebrated in much the same fashion as any other holiday here – offices and schools close, and everyone does even less work than usual. Personally, I celebrated today in a manner that I think is representative of life in Africa…
First, I met with the NGO that was supposed to be collecting information on the malnourished children in the neighborhoods where we are opening our feeding centers next month. Three weeks ago, they agreed to do the legwork on collecting the data for us since they are opening centers nearby and had to do the data collection anyways. Three weeks ago, when this NGO agreed to help us out, I assumed this would mean that they would collect data on ALL of the children in the neighborhood, then take the MOST malnourished children and put them on the list for the feeding centers. This morning, I found out that I assumed wrong – they decided to collect data until they found 25 children (the number for their center), and then stopped. And they decided not to help us because they wanted control over our two feeding centers and they wanted to be paid to run them, which we can’t allow them to do. So we’ve taken one step forward and two steps back.
Then I stopped by the garage to inquire about renting a car for the day (I have a friend coming up who needs to go out en brusse to look at some sites), and the guy in charge inflated his price (I already had a decent idea of how much it should cost) and then wouldn’t give me a firm figure. He said we could discuss it tomorrow when we wanted to take the car. Right.
Then I walked to another NGO’s office to meet with someone who told me he’d be there this morning and found out that he’s not even in the city. And he’s outside of cell phone coverage.
So I stopped at the cyber café to try to get some work done on the computers. I spent half an hour there, trying six different computers, all in varying states of uselessness due to hardware malfunctions (mouse doesn’t work, keyboard sticks) and software problems (every computer has been rendered completely useless because they let teenage boys go in there and play on the computers unsupervised – they download porn, games, and tons of spyware and viruses that have killed the computers).
So I came up to our office to use the internet instead, only to find that the guardian who works in the building had padlocked the door, left, and turned his phone off. There’s only one key, he had it, and he was apparently wandering around town because no one could find him and he wasn’t at home. No one seemed to want to help me, so I called another man who works in the building and told him that it wasn’t a problem, I would just smash the poorly welded handles on the door and get rid of the padlock. He arrived three minutes later with a saw, and I sawed the padlock off.
So that’s my day so far. And that’s why I love living in Africa.
