14 January 2006 - 12:37
New Years in St. Louis was even better this year than it was last year. A crowd of Mauritanian PCVs swarmed the charming French colonial city again, and we had the same basic poor-man's setup as last year - one hotel room to store 30 bags and a few tents on the beach to sleep in. Of course, we all had a good time enjoying nice restaurants, efficient transportation, and beautiful scenery like we did last year, but me and my friends took it a step up this year - we rented motorscooters. Motorcycles were too expensive for us, but motorscooters, while definitely not cool in just about any other situation, were heaven for us, since we're forbidden from riding them (or operating any other vehicule, for that matter) in our own country. Having the freedom to travel where we wanted, when we wanted, without having to hunt down a taxi, was great! And the afternoon that Caleb, Aaron, and I rode our bikes down to the tip of the peninsula and then rode back up the beach at low tide just before sunset was about as close to bliss as I've come since moving to West Africa.
Then there was the bodysurfing. The beach on the St. Louis peninsula is really great. It's pretty shallow for quite a ways out into the water, so you can stand chest-deep in water about 50 feet from the shore, right where the waves are breaking. Keith showed me how to bodysurf, and we spent several hours out in the water, catching waves and riding them in (sometimes) or being smashed around when we caught the wave wrong. All in all, a pretty intense sort of fun. I didn't get stung by any jellyfish, which we saw floating around occasionally, but I did end up leaving the water with the beginnings of an earache. Remembering the pain and weeks of medication I went though last year from the same malady, coming from the same beach, I immediately rode into town to buy some rubbing alcohol to pour into my ear, only to find that all the pharmacies in town were closed. Sure that my ear would be pounding the next morning, I got creative and headed to the hotel bar, where I bought my first shot of vodka, which I poured
straight
down
my...
ear canal.
And it worked, saving me from a lot of pain!
This disaster averted, New Year's Eve went really well. A group of French tourists staying at the same hotel paid for an African drum and dance program early in the night, and all of us got to watch as well. Several of our volunteers could speak to the drummers/dancers in one of the several languages (other than French) that they spoke, so it ended up being a pretty funny situation for us, talking to them and making fun of the French patrons who had paid for the show. Caleb and I bought a bunch of fireworks and set them off on the beach, and then, since we had used up all our firewood in the bonfire the night before, everyone went to a club and danced the night away. The next day, most of us joined the Polar Bear Club, going for a nice leisurely swim in the ocean on New Year's Day. Granted, being this close to the Equator doesn't make joining the club that difficult, but we're in, nonetheless.
We made it back to Nouakchott a couple days later, sunburned and happy (wow, it feels good to be sunburned!) for the training sessions that were scheduled for the new volunteers. I was presenting a session for the health volunteers, so I stuck around for a few days, then headed back South again with Crista to spend Tabaski with her at her site. Bruen is a small village about 15K from Rosso, populated entirely with Wolofs. Since the Wolofs are generally known to be much heavier partiers than Moors, I figured I was in for an exciting fete. Tabaski (or Eid Il-Ham, as the Moors call it) is the Muslim celebration of the Biblical/Koranic story of God/Allah providing Abraham with a ram to sacrifice in place of his son. Accordingly, every family kills a sheep for this feast. Or in the case of Crista's host family, which happens to include the chief of the village, FIVE SHEEP. Crista and I spent the day laying around, playing cards, and watching and taking pictures of the sheep getting slaughtered, skinned, cut up, and cooked, all within a matter of hours (I should have pictures of the whole thing up next month). After all was said and done, I felt like I had eaten a whole sheep by myself! The fete itself was much more laid back and simple than I had expected, but we had a good time anyways.
The next day, I biked back to Rosso to hang out with some other friends for a couple days and waited for word on a Baaba Maal (pretty famous Senegalese singer) concert that was supposed to be happening right after the fete. It got pushed back several times, and I got tired of waiting and started missing Tidjikja, so I got in a car and came to Nouakchott. I finished up the little bit of work that I needed to do here, and now I'm heading back to Tidjikja this afternoon with several pounds of cucumbers to pickle. Mmmm. I've got so much work to do in the coming weeks that I may not even have time to pickle them, but we'll see...
