19 March 2006 - 00:00
Dear Crossing
As part of the Peace Corps’s World Wise Schools program, I have been put in contact with Ms. Pat Brackley’s 3rd grade class in Sheridan, Wyoming. They write me letters occasionally, and I write back, giving valuable insight into life in Mauritania to the students in Ms. Brackley’s Cultural Anthropology class (yeah, I know – I didn’t take Cultural Anthropology when I was in 3rd grade either, but apparently these kids are pretty smart). My letters to them are probably more informative than most of my journal entries, so I’m just going to cut and paste a little and share my dialogue with my third-grade friends…Here’s me influencing the minds of America’s youth:
Dear Matt,
Hi. I'm Tom. What kind of things do you do at Mauritania and what are the people like? What do you do with your free time or are you always helping the people? I usually play basketball on my free time.
Sincerely,
Tom
Dear Tom,
Hi, how are you ? I'm doing well. The weather here in Mauritania is
very nice right now. The winter here is more like late spring in
Wyoming, so I'm enjoying the cool weather.
As I'm sure Ms. Brackley has told you, I'm a volunteer here.
Officially, I am supposed to work in the health sector, teaching
people how to improve their health, hygiene, and nutrition, which I
do, but I also do a lot of work in other areas too. Last year,
locusts ate up a lot of the food that was grown in Mauritania, and we
didn't get very much rain last year, so there wasn't a lot of food.
During the summer, I ran two feeding centers that fed children who
didn't get enough food at home so that they could gain weight and be
healthier. A lot of children here don't eat very well, so it is a big
problem, but we're trying to change that a little bit at a time.
I have also helped doctors and nurses here on polio vaccination
campaigns, where we travel around and vaccinate all the kids in the
country against polio. Polio doesn't exist in the U.S. anymore
because they did these kinds of campaigns several decades ago, and the
doctors in America wiped out the disease, but there are still cases of
polio here, so we're still trying to get rid of it.
Right now, I am working on setting up a community garden so that
people can eat healthier food and have a better diet, and I'm also
organizing an English-speaking club for students to practice speaking
in English – here, most people speak French and a type of Arabic
called Hassaniye, so it's hard for people to learn English well so
that they can visit America, and I try to help them speak better.
The people here are very different from Americans. Only fifty years
ago, most of the people in the country were still nomadic – they
traveled around the country with their families, herding their sheep,
goats, donkeys, and camels, and they never lived in one place for very
long. Now, most of the people live in cities, but it is hard for a
lot of people to adjust to modern life quickly. Also, there are not a
lot of people here who are not Mauritanian, so the only thing most
people know about outsiders is from what they see on TV. A lot of the
people are very cautious, but a lot of them are also very curious
about Americans. The culture is very different, so sometimes the
people here seem rude, but it is only because many of the things
Americans think are rude are not considered rude here. For example,
people here almost never say please, thank you, or excuse me, but to
Mauritanians, that is perfectly acceptable!
I do spend a lot of time helping people, but I have free time too. In
my free time, I read a lot of books, I write about my experiences in
Mauritania, I cook delicious American meals, I visit friends, and I
take care of my pets (a dog named Rockus and two desert tortoises
named Marco and Polo). I would like to play more sports, but the city
where I live doesn't really have any places to place sports because it
is so sandy – we live right on the edge of the Sahara desert in an
oasis.
Thanks for writing!
Matt
Dear Matt,
My name is Andelien Lee. Where do you live in the United States? How old are you? I live in Sheridan and I'm 9 years old. I go to Coffeen Elementary and take piano lessons. I like to ride my bike and like parties. Hope you have fun.
Sincerely,
Andelien
Dear Andelien,
I like your name! I am originally from Arizona in the United States,
so I am used to living in a desert like Mauritania, but the plants and
animals here are quite different from American desert life. My
parents live in Oklahoma now, and that is even more different than the
environment here!
I am 25 years old. When I was nine years old, I went to a school
called Alhambra Traditional School in Phoenix, Arizona. I like to
ride my bike too. Here, it is hard to ride in most places because it
is very sandy, but in my city, we have several paved roads that I can
ride on. There are not very many bicycles in my town though. Most
transportation here is by car. When someone wants to travel, they
have to buy a ticket to ride in a car because most people don't own
their own cars here. And in every car, there is usually way too many
people in the cars for seatbelts! Most of the time, two people share
the one passenger seat in the front with the driver, and four people
sit in the three seats in the back. Even in bigger cars, Mauritanians
try to fit as many people as possible in the cars to save money. One
time, I rode in the back of a pickup truck with 17 other people! It's
not very comfortable or safe, and sometimes, I get pretty scared!
Sometimes, instead of cars, nomadic people will ride camels or donkeys
to get from place to place! Those are usually safer than riding in
overcrowded cars, but much slower, and not much more comfortable!
I like parties too, like you, but in Mauritania, there are not many
parties. There are only a few holidays that are celebrated by
Muslims, and they do not have very big celebrations. Yesterday,
January 31st, was the Muslim new year holiday. Muslims use a
different calendar than Americans because their calendar is based on
the cycle of the moon, so all of the months are different, and their
year is shorter than ours! Actually, they use the same calendar as
most of the rest of the world for business and government, so dates
can get kind of confusing sometimes!
Sincerely,
Matt
Dear Matt,
Where do you live? Do you have a house or do you live in a motel? Or do they have motels in Mauritania? If so, do you have locust in them?
Sincerely,
Steven
Dear Steven,
I live in Tidjika, which is a city of about 10,000 people, right in
the middle of Mauritania. Tidjikja is an oasis with a lot of palm
trees in the middle of the desert. In fact, I bet there are more palm
trees here than there are people! The palm trees are an important
source of income for the people who live here because they produce
dates during the summer, and the people here sell them. They also eat
a lot of them during the date harvesting season, and a lot of people
visit their families here then. To harvest the dates, men climb up
the tall palm trees, often with bare feet and no rope to secure them,
and take the dates off of the branches right below the leaves. Ms.
Brackley has some pictures of men harvesting dates in Tidjikja that
she can show you.
In Tidjikja, I have my own house. When I first started working here,
I lived in another village called Lehweitat. In Lehweitat, I lived
with a host family, and I ate all of my meals with them. But when I
moved to Tidjikja to work, I decided to have my own house because I
like to have my own space, and I like to cook for myself, but I still
eat many of my meals with my Mauritanian friends in town. A lot of
volunteers here have their own houses, but many of them live with host
families also.
They do indeed have motels in Mauritania, but they are a little
different than American hotels. There are a few hotels like the ones
in America in Nouakchott, which is the capital and largest city in
Mauritania. But in most of the rest of the country, the "hotels" are
called auberges. Some of them have individual rooms, but many of them
are just tents that people can pay to sleep under. In the hotels that
have rooms, most of them do not have locusts, unless there is a locust
invasion like we had at the end of 2003 – then, the locusts get
everywhere, even in hotel rooms!
Good to hear from you!
Matt
Dear Matt,
Today we spent some time studying about Mauritania. Unfortunately I couldn't get the slide show of your pictures to work or I would have shown them -- perhaps next time. I'm wondering what you like better about the Mauritanian culture and what you like better about the American culture.
Thanks for helping us learn about the Mauritanian culture.
Sincerely,
Ms. Brackley
Dear Ms. Brackley,
Tell your class that I'm impressed with their detective work in
finding out where I am living! Did you ever get the slide show to
work for the class?
One of the things that I like about Mauritanian culture is that life
here is very laid-back. In America, it seems like everyone is always
busy, always working hard, and here, people tend to take life a little
bit easier, so it's not as stressful. I also like the fact that there
is a very low crime rate here. Mostly that is because communities are
not very large, but I think it is also due to the fact that people
here are mostly very religious Muslims. In the southern part of the
country, where the culture is more African than Arabic, the music and
dancing are very exciting and fun to listen to and watch.
Another thing that I admire about Mauritanians is that they do not
seem to have a hard time accepting difficulties in life or dealing
with problems that come up. This is due, again, to their religious
nature, because they believe that Allah will provide for them and take
care of them, even when times get tough. However, there are two sides
to this coin. Mauritanians also do not have the same attitudes as
Americans when it comes to work. Since they believe that Allah will
provide for them, many Mauritanians do not feel the need to work hard
to advance their station in life. Most Americans think very
differently – we feel that if we work hard, that we can make our lives
better, and so many of us do work hard for that reason. I have a hard
time accepting people's fatalism when it comes to their work ethic
because I feel that hard work has its rewards, and I think many
Mauritanians could improve their lives if they would try harder.
Another thing I like more about American culture is our emphasis on
efficiency. Mauritanians don't care very much about efficiency, and
that drives me crazy sometimes! Work doesn't get done very fast, and
they tend to waste a lot of time and money because they're not
concerned about it. In America, we try to things done as quickly and
cheaply as possible, while still doing good work, and I like that.
Americans also place a lot of importance on education, and it is
highly valued in our society. In Mauritania, teachers skip school for
weeks at a time, most students don't study much, and parents don't
always make their children go to school, and I think that causes a lot
of problems for the country. I feel lucky to have grown up in a
country that places a high importance on education like we do in the
U.S.
I hope your class enjoys studying Mauritania, and I hope to hear back
from them soon!
Sincerely,
Matt
Dear Matt,
My cousins live near Mauritania. They live in Morocco. I
understand that the people in Muaritania are much different
from me. I learned that mint is popular in Mauritania. how
do you understand mauritanians? What colors are
locusts? Do they look like big grasshoppers? Have you
had a locust invasion?
Sincerely,
Marissa
Dear Marissa,
If you ever have a chance to visit your cousins in Morocco, you should
take it! Morocco is a very beautiful and interesting country! Yes,
mint is very popular in Mauritania because people here use it in the
hot tea that they drink several times a day. When I was planting my
first garden when I came to Mauritania, all of my neighbors came over
to look at it. They said it was very nice, but it was not a good
garden because I hadn't planted any mint! Tea is a very important
part of Mauritanian culture – the people here make tea several times a
day. It is served very hot, in small glasses, and there are three
rounds of tea. It is very impolite to just drink one or two glasses
of tea – if you drink one, you have to stay for all three drinks!
When I came to Mauritania, the Peace Corps taught me how to speak
French so I could communicate with Mauritanians. Mauritania was once
a French colony, so a lot of the people here speak French, especially
since there are five other local languages spoken by different groups
of people in the country (Hassaniye, Pulaar, Wolof, Sonninke, and
Bambara). French helps different groups of people communicate, so
Mauritanians use it a lot for work purposes, even if they speak
another language at home or with their friends. I also speak a little
bit of Hassaniye, which is the local language that most of the people
in my area speak.
Locusts here are usually red. Yes, they do look like big
grasshoppers, and they eat EVERYTHING! We had a locust invasion last
year during the winter, which is when most of the food is grown here
because it is too hot to grow food during the summer. The locusts ate
a lot of the food here, and it caused many problems for farmers. I
have a picture on my photo website of the locusts in the trees in my
village that Ms. Brackley might be able to show you.
Sincerely,
Matt
Dear Matt,
My name is Regina and what I like to do is play with my
friends. What is the normal amount of rain? How hard is it
living there and is it harder than here? I like math, but I
don't think I am that good at it.
Sincerely,
Regina
Dear Regina,
I'm not sure what the normal rainfall is for Mauritania, but I think
it is less than six inches per year! It usually only rains very much
during the months of August and September, but last year we got more
rain than usual. In Tidjikja, where I live, there is a dry riverbed
that goes through the middle of town. It is dry almost all
year-round, but when it rains a lot, it fills up for a few days. Last
year, in the beginning of October, we got a lot of rain, all at once,
and the river flooded and caused a lot of damage to the town and the
gardens. One of my friends who lives in Kiffa had his house fall down
because it was made from mud!
It is pretty tough living here – the climate, food, clothes, customs,
language, and people are all very different from the things I was used
to in America. For example, most people where I live only eat rice
and meat (goat or camel) for lunch, and couscous (little balls of
steamed flour) and meat for dinner…EVERY DAY! The hardest part about
living here is getting used to different customs and values, but after
a while, you learn a lot about the culture and get used to most
things!
Sincerely,
Matt
Dear Matt,
My name is Randy and I live in Sheridan, Wyoming. How
long have you been living in Mauritania?
Sincerely,
Randy
Dear Randy,
I have been living in Mauritania for over a year and a half now. I
lived in the southern part of the country, in a city called Kaedi, for
two months, where I learned about Mauritanian culture and studied
French. Then I moved to a small village in the middle of the country
called Lehweitat. I lived there for seven months, but I did not have
very much work to do, so I moved to a bigger city called Tidjikja,
where I live now, so that I could do more work. How do you like
Sheridan?
Sincerely,
Matt
Dear Matt:
There are several things I want to know about
Mauritania. First, how nice are the beaches? I know the
east coast of Africa has beautiful ones, but I'm not sure
about the west coast. Next, did Mauritania start out small
and get larger? Finally, do your buildings that feed children
cost money. I think they don't, but I never can be sure.
Sincerely,
Thomas
Dear Thomas,
The beaches here are very nice, but not many people visit them. Most Moors come from the desert, so they aren’t big fans of large bodies of water, since most of them cannot swim. So the people here do not go to the beaches for vacations like we do in America. However, since people don’t go to the beach very often, they stay very clean, which is nice!
No, Mauritania did not start out small and get larger. Actually, there was no country in this area until the French colonized it. Before the French came, parts of Mauritania were parts of large African empires for several centuries, but no one really governed all of Mauritania as a single entity. When the French came, there were people that lived in the area that is now Mauritania, but there was no country or empire in place, so the French just divided the area that they controlled into different countries. And that’s how Mauritania was made!
Yes, the feeding centers that feed the children here do cost money to run – we have to pay for food for them to eat and for someone to cook the food, but the community provides a building for us to use for free. However, the children eat for free, so they do not have to pay for the food.
Sincerely,
Matt
Dear Matt,
How old are you? Do you have good weather? I have
very many questions for you. My name is Brayden. I am in
third grade. I like Seminar very much. And I just viewed
your slide show. I am very excited for you to write back to
me.
Sincerely,
Brayden
Dear Brayden,
I am 25 years old. In August, I’ll celebrate my third birthday in Mauritania, since I celebrated my first one during my training a year and a half ago. Yes, the weather is very nice right now. It is the “cold” season, which doesn’t mean that it actually gets very cold – it just means that it is less hot than usual! Actually, I think the weather in Tidjikja, where I live, is the best weather in all of Mauritania. It is very dry here, so even when it gets hot, at least it is not humid like it is in the southern part of the country! I am enjoying the cool weather right now because in a few months, it will be hot again, and I’ll have to start sleeping outside because my house is too hot to sleep in!
Sincerely,
Matt
Dear Matt,
I am Gaven. I like Pokemon. I have a lot of rare
Pokemon on my Game Boy which I also like. I like my Play
Station, too. What type of toys and games do kids plays
with or on in Mauritania?
Sincerelym,
Gaven
Dear Gaven,
Games in Mauritania are very different than games in America! In fact, I don’t know anyone here who has a Playstation or Game Boy with Pokemon! The most popular sport here is soccer (but here, they call it “football,” like everyone in the world except Americans), and kids play it all the time. Sometimes kids play with marbles or hopscotch like some kids in America. Sometimes they play a game in the sand that is like Mankala – it is a traditional African game between two people with six small pockets on each person’s side and a large container at either end. Some people have boards that they use to play this game, but most people just make holes in the sand and use pebbles or seeds for pieces – that way, when they are finished, they don’t have anything to carry away!
Kids here are also pretty creative – they make hoops out of wire and roll them down the street with a stick, and a lot of boys make small cars out of plastic bottles with wheels made out of parts of flip flops and held together with wire (they pull the cars with a long piece of wire too). So even though there are not a lot of toys, kids usually make something they can play with!
Sincerely,
Matt
