28 November 2005 - 09:12

Thanksgiving in Kiffa was awesome.  We all had a great time, with 30ish volunteers showing up for a feast, expertly organized by the volunteers there.  It never ceases to amaze me what incredible meals that Peace Corps volunteers here can cobble together with the scarce gastronomic resources available locally, supplemented with bits and pieces gleaned from care packages or imported from Nouakchott, and cooked with tiny gas stoves and a toaster oven.  Mauritanian PCVs definitely have to be among the most creative and resourceful people on the planet, as you can see from the list of food we consumed over Thanksgiving weekend that Adriana posted on her site.

The Kiffa volunteers had even arranged to have a turkey imported from Mali for the event.  However, the fated fowl received a pardon from the border police, who wouldn’t allow it to be brought into Mauritania due to a problem with visas or licenses or some such technicality.

Another event put a slight damper on the mood of the weekend, when we found out that Luke would be leaving us to work with a new NGO in Chad.  His departure brings my group to a total of ten people lost so far out of the original 42, but Luke was the first of my good friends to go.  I’m sad to see him leave, but I’m glad he’s found somewhere he’ll be happier.

Copying the ingenuity of my Halloween outing, the Kiffa volunteers also put together an afternoon trip to a box canyon 70 km outside of town, where there’s a small pond year-round.  We saw a couple of crocodiles, remnants of a more lush time in Mauritania’s past, as they headed back into the water ahead of the crowd of rowdy Americans invading their space.  The area was really beautiful, and we ended up finding a small dead crocodile, tangled in netting.  We attempted to bring “George Washington,” as he was posthumously dubbed, back to Kiffa to show the party-poopers who didn’t go on the outing what they had missed, but were thwarted by GW’s overpowering odor.  On the long, slow, painful ride back to Kiffa, Jenny had the ingenious idea that we should take our minds off of our sore, taxi brusse-beaten behinds(we had about 23 of us crammed into one pickup) by having a group sing-a-long to 80’s classics, the crappy music we used to sing in our cars with the radio while driving to high school, and hits from musicals and Disney movies, crowned with a stunning rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.  We rocked.

Overall, the Thanksgiving feast and the crocodile outing was a great start to my bigger vacation, traveling through Mali with Andrew and Rachel.  The three of us left the next day to go down to Selibaby with the Guidimakha volunteers returning to site.  We made good time on the trip, making it back in just in time to catch the daily car to Kayes – we’d be in Mali in six short hours!  Or so we thought…

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