01 January 2006 - 14:52
Warning: This post is verbose, verbose is this post, verbose, unlike most of the posts from your host (but that’s the only line that was channeled through Dr. Seuss, I swear).
Happy New Year!!! If you’re Muslim, that is, which you’re probably not, so nevermind. But just in case you’re curious, today is the first day of the Muslim new year, which commemorates the day Mohammed and his buddies got kicked out of Mecca. “Happy New Year! You’re homeless!” hollered the infidels as the Muslims left, oblivious to the fact that in only eight short years, the Muslim army would return to rock Mecca so hard that they converted en masse to Allah’s team. Why the Muslim new year doesn’t start on Infidel-Butt-Kicking Day instead of Don’t-Let-The-Door-Hit-Your-Behind-On-The-Way-Out Day, I have no idea. But irregardless, this isn’t an actual holy day, just a holiday, so no one works, but no one parties either. I have come to believe that Moor society has to be the least celebratory culture on earth in all of history. They don’t celebrate anything – the three Islamic holidays amount to not much more than extra meat for dinner, I saw only one flag waving on Independence day, I think that most people in the country don’t even know International holidays exist, birthdays are nonexistent (a lot of people don’t even remember their birthdays, so a large number of their identity cards list January 1st of whatever year they think they might have been born in as their birthday), and weddings are not much more than a horn-honking event. Ho-hum. I know there’s not much money in the country, but I’ve always held that all you need is a little imagination to throw a decent party. Unfortunately, I think most Moors rarely check into the imagination station.
However, that does bring me to one thing that I really admire about Moors – they know how to handle boredom. In fact, they almost revel in it. I get irritated with myself sometimes because I have an attention span that is best measured in microseconds, and I hate not having anything to do. That’s one thing that pushes the limits of my sanity here – a lot of times, there is simply nothing to do. And I just can’t deal with it. I’m pretty sure it’s culturally imbedded in my psyche that I always have to be DOING something. And I’m pretty sure that’s not such a bad thing, but I would like to be able to say that I can have yogic concentration sometimes, which I can’t. I’ve tried to meditate (I’ll go ahead and say it for you, Aaron… “Britton, you’re a dirty hippie. Go shower or save the world or something.”), but I just don’t have the patience. Every time I try to just not do anything, my Big Brain (that’s a Kurt Vonnegut reference, not bragging) says “GET UP AND DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING! JUST DO DO DO DO!” But Moors, man, they can sit and do nothing all day. All week even. In fact, they pride themselves on how little work they do. About the only way you can get anyone to work moderately hard is to make them think that if they work hard now, they’ll get to a point where they don’t have to work anymore period, which is a lot of people’s motivation for holding a job at all. The most successful people in this society are the ones that have made it, that own shops and have other people work for them so they can just lay around all day themselves. My host mom when I was in training used to move three times a day – she’d wake up and stay on the bed platform until the sun got too hot, move under the shade of the family tent, move when the shade moved off of her, and then move back to the bed platform again when the sun went down, directing the kids in everything that needed to be done all day from her perch. My host family in Lehweitat used to sit around and stare at each other (actually, they used to stare at me more than they did each other) all day, every day. There were times when I was so bored that I started twitching. When you don’t have any work, you can only read so many books before even reading gets boring. It was more than I could handle. Moors’ idea of having a good time is sitting around and drinking tea, which only requires one person to do a little bit of work. You don’t even have to talk. Just sit. Good times. Vacations are often an extension of this no-work idea – they go out to the countryside, where there’s even less to do than in the city. You basically just sit out under a tent in the desert and don’t do anything all day. For days on end. Amazing. I would go nuts. I think if we would send prisoners out on vacation with Moors instead of sending them to prison, we’d have a much higher reform rate. In prison, at least you have stuff to do, things to read, cards to play, people to talk to, and different meals. En brusse with Moors, no way, Jose. One month out there, and criminals would swear off a life of crime forever. It blows my mind how Moors can do it. I’m totally impressed.
However, it does seem to be something that is learned, because kids here don’t have nearly the capacity for doing nothing as do their parents. It also takes them a while to learn to be intentionally rude (this is different from the unintentional rude behavior that is inherent in children everywhere), mean, diffident, smug, self-righteous, sleazy, sneaky and lackluster, which is probably why I like kids so much. During our training, we’re taught to ignore kids because it’s beneath adults to talk to children, and we’re told that if we acknowledge their presence, Mauritanian adults will look down on us. Some volunteers flat out hate kids (they do get annoying a lot of the time), and most of them follow the Piece Corpse’s advice and ignore them, but I think that on average, most kids are way nicer and cooler than most of the adults I meet. And since most Moors look down on me already because I’m a) white, b) not Muslim, and c) I don’t wear a bedsheet over my clothes, I figure that I don’t have much to lose by associating with kids. And if I’m here to change people’s perceptions of Americans, I have a much better chance of doing that with kids than I do with adults who are as set in their ways as most old people in America. Besides, adults won’t field my softballs for candy when I play homerun derby in front of my house, get me bread in the morning when I’m too lazy to go to the market myself, or work around my house for less than $2 an hour. That’s not to say that kids here aren’t enterprising – some of the children in my new neighborhood have recently set up the Mauritanian equivalent of a lemonade stand on the route that I walk to the market once or twice a day. Five of the cutest kids I’ve seen here have set up a little wooden table in the narrow, winding path through the old city, and they sell animal crackers, candy, peanuts, cookies…and cigarettes. Awesome. They say thank you every single time I buy something from them, which is more than I can say for most of the boutique owners that I purchase from regularly. Which is why I’m a repeat customer, even though I don’t eat anything they sell, and I usually end up giving it back to them on my way home from the market (you should see their faces light up when I break open the pack of cigarettes and hand them out!). So cute.
One a series of totally unrelated notes (as if do-nothingness and kids weren’t unrelated enough for you), Marco and Polio, my two tortoises are doing well (they eat tomatoes from my hand now!); I’m fighting a never-ending battle with my horny dog who has learned how to jump over the wall to go try to make puppies with her boyfriends at night if I let her stay outside and will sleep on the couch if I make her stay inside; I finished my last batch of pickles (I now have dill, sweet, curry, and cinnamon pickles that will be ready to eat in a couple weeks…mmm); my garden project in Bouar is going well (just got back from a project visit a few days ago – didn’t seem like too much had been stolen, they only asked for more money a couple times, everyone seemed happy and appreciative, and I went home with some good vegetables from the garden and more beans that I can possibly eat before the end of my service); it’s so cold here that I have to wear socks with my flipflops sometimes; my Mauritanian boss sucks; I managed to get our $600 internet bill taken care of without anyone flashing knives; The Penguin History of the World, while a longer book with smaller print, is still more interesting than The Brothers Karamazov; we’ve started an English conversation club at my house every week to help broken-English speakers practice speaking and listening; one of the six volunteers in my region was medically separated this week because she contracted amoebas and e.coli that they couldn’t cure in this country; I had a final raging battle with my old landlord over old bills, which I ended up paying, but made him think that he lost anyways because I didn’t pay everything he was asking for (imagine that – compromising on paying what I actually owed him!); my handlebar mustache is in desperate need of mustache wax, but looks good (good = funny); I had a dream about a miniature rooster with an oversized, hooked beak last night; and I made a awesome gumbo today.
I love you.
