January 2009: Senegal, Riots, Obama, Countdown To WAIST

The day before New Years Eve (New Years Eve Eve?), Adam and I, along with five other volunteers, set off to cross the river, into Senegal, Land of Opportunity. After stepping off the ferry into Rosso, Senegal, it felt as if a great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders! We ran to the garage to get a car to St. Louis with out one glance back to say a brief farewell to Mauritania. Sadly, the car we got, had no shocks, so the driver didn’t go over 30 kilometers per hour. However, the ride gave us an opportunity to admire how “African” Senegal is. The little villages we saw along the way reminded me of about a year ago when I was trying to picture what life in Africa would be like. We finally arrived in St. Louis, on the “mainland” part of town. We all took off by foot to the island. Adam and I went in search of our hotel. I feel weird calling it a hotel and see it more as a bed and breakfast establishment. The place was incredible. There were three levels. The first one was a little restaurant-bar area, in an open-air court yard. The next level was for the rooms. The hotel has 8 rooms. Ours was the nicest. The room was big, with a queen size bed and a table and chairs. We had a private toilet and a cute shower and sink area. The room was given a rustic look as decorations. It was cleaner and cozier than the hotels I’ve stayed in in America. You could tell that special attention was paid to each room to give it a unique feel. The sheets weren’t the generic white sheets that all hotels tend to have. Our room was on the corner, so on two walls, we had double doors opening to a walk around balcony. Our balcony looked out over the river and to the part of St. Louis with the beach. (We couldn’t see the beach from our room). Even if I had gone on vacation in America and stayed in a place like this, I’d have been blown away. But to be two volunteers who have been surviving in Mauritania, in the middle of the desert for six months, we had to pinch ourselves to make sure it was real. On the third floor of the building was a terrace looking out all over St. Louis. There were tables and chairs up there, if one wanted to have their meal on the terrace.

After cleaning Mauritania and the taxi ride off of us, we set out to explore and to find some PIZZA! The first café we came to had an assortment of food. Even though I wanted pizza, it was hard for me to turn down so many items on the menu. Adam and I split a pizza with “ham and egg” on it. The ham ended up being hot dog slices and the egg was fried up and in the middle of the pizza. As weird and crazy as it sounds, this was one of the best pizzas ever. So many flavors at once were a little hard to handle. Hot dogs being another food I’ve craved (not as much as pizza), that little extra kick just made my day. After the amazing pizza, the waitress asked if we wanted chocolate mousse. An exchanged look, shrug of the shoulders, and reasoning of “we’re on vacation!” settled it. Chocolate has never been so delicious. Even though through out our entire trip we had better food, no meal was as satisfying as this first one in St. Louis. With a beer to wash it all down, we were probably the two happiest people in West Africa as we set out to see the town.

St. Louis is what you would imagine if you took old style Europe, New Orleans, and West Africa, threw them all together, shook them around, and splattered it on the coast. The architecture was adorable and the feel of the town was comfortable. St. Louis is set up in three sections. There’s the mainland, which isn’t really touristy. Then there’s the island, which has that New Orleans feel. The island is sandwiched between the mainland and the beach mainland. I’m not sure if the mainland wraps around the island or if the beach area is a separate island. We spent our entire first day just exploring the island. We’d run into some fellow volunteers occasionally, but it was the perfect vacation to get away from Mauritania.

That night, Adam and I decided to have dinner at the hotel. As we were enjoying our seafood pasta and calamari, a group of Americans our age came in, seeming to know the place fairly well, and headed to the rooftop terrace to have a beer. When the waiter came back to the table I asked him who they were. He told us they were Peace Corps Senegal volunteers. After our meal, we decided to go up and greet them. We were given some nervous glances, which I can only assume is because of the reputation PC Mauritania has received by being raving lunatics at WAIST (the West African Invitational Softball Tournament….one month away!!) However, Adam and I were dressed in nice attire and are, perhaps, two of the most unintimidating people ever. We were invited to sit and chat, and almost immediately, I regretted my decision. Let’s just say I learned that vacation is a time to NOT talk about Mauritania.

Our second day in St. Louis started with hot cheese and ham croissants. Enough said. After breakfast, we got ready for the beach. Our lunch was a baguette, camembert cheese, and Roquefort cheese. And potato chips!! (Another amenity not found outside of Nouakchott in Mauritania). We sat on the beach all day with a group of volunteers. The water was violent and cold, but still an experience we had to take advantage of. It was a beautiful day on the beach. Adam and I went back to the hotel to clean up for dinner. Eli came over and we all enjoyed a glass of wine on the balcony while we watched the sunset. For dinner, we went to a place called “The Casino”, named so for the small casino hidden behind the upscale-ish restaurant. The waiters and waitresses wore white collar shirts and were professional. The food is all exceptional, apparently. To continue with our pattern, Adam and I ordered pizzas. These weren’t just any pizzas. They were brick oven cooked pizzas. They totally blew every other pizza we’d had out of the water. The pizzas were devoured in a matter of minutes. After our nice dinner, we set out to meet up with the other volunteers. Eventually, everyone had convened at “The Tavern”. We counted down until 2009 and had hugs and kisses all around. The Senegalese band played songs while people danced. I never thought that within two days, I would feel so far from Mauritania.

The next morning, we had our cheese and ham croissants and headed to the ocean again. Most of the day was spent taking it easy and relaxing. So far, 2009 was perfect. We had dinner that evening with Chris Paul and Anna, one of the married couples in PC RIM. Not only were they so generous to correspond with me long before I received my placement to Mauritania, and not only do we have mutual friends, but they’re automatically awesome because they’re from North Carolina. We all dined at a Vietnamese restaurant, which seemed more like Thai food, but nonetheless incredible. On our last morning, we had our usual breakfast, got packed, and headed back to Mauritania. That’s when 2009 started to go down hill. It took twice as long as usual to get to Rosso because the ferry was closed for lunch (until about 4:00). We got to Mauritania, and then had to wait forever to get through customs.

The next morning, we took off as soon as possible for Nouakchott. Early Term Reconnect/In-Service Training (ETR/IST) was starting the next day for all of the first year volunteers. This time, I stayed in the Atlas hotel with the SED and Health volunteers. We got checked into the hotel and grabbed a bite for lunch. We relaxed in the hotel until dinner time. For dinner, it was, of course, pizza. The only thing scheduled for the next day was shots from the PCMO whenever you could make it to the bureau, and a session at 2:00.

Adam and I went to the bureau to take care of shots and check out the bureau. At about 11:30, we decided to go to the restaurant a block away and grab burgers, take them back to the room, and watch a movie and eat lunch until the session at 2. A few days before we arrived, we’d heard that since Israel had attacked Gaza, there was an attempted bombing at the Israeli embassy in Nouakchott. Luckily, the Molotov cocktail didn’t detonate and no one was injured. Adam received a text our first day in Nouakchott from a PCV living in Nouakchott saying “There’s increased police presence. Keep a low profile”. Other than that, we had no clue how elevated the situation would become. After we had ordered our hamburgers and were waiting for them, we were talking with the worker at the restaurant. There were a lot of high school/college aged kids on the streets, which made since to me, since everyone is let out for lunch. They were just standing around socializing. It gave me no reason to think it was anything more than friends standing around talking. There was a police truck on the corner, but this wasn’t out of the ordinary, as we had seen police trucks all over town the day before. I mentioned the police to the restaurant worker and he was like “Yeah, people are made at Israel right now.” He went back to getting things ready for us, then said “You should stay here for a few minutes. I think people might get crazy”. I told him our hotel was real close, so he gave us our burgers and said, urgently “Go there NOW”. We weren’t sure why he was acting this way, but didn’t question it. In between the restaurant and the hotel, we stopped in a boutique to get Cokes. As we were waiting, we heard a commotion and looked out to see a large group of people running, in the direction of our hotel. The boutique owner looked at us with a concerned look, gave us our Cokes, and we started booking it to the hotel, right through the middle of the crowd. Immediately, we were noticed and people started shouting at us “F*** You Americans!” and screaming “Nasaraniye!”, which is Hassaniya for “white people” or “Christians”. Either way, people were not happy with us. We darted for the hotel, and got inside just in time to warn others not to leave. We went into our room on the third floor and out to the balcony just in time to see angry protestors throwing rocks at the police and the police shooting tear gas bombs at them. A couple of PCV’s in a taxi got caught right in between the protestors and police. When they finally arrived at our hotel, people were outside were pulling on their bags and yelling at them as they were trying to get into the building. For the next three hours, we watched the show from the roof of our hotel. The protests were making the rounds around town. People were lighting trash and tires on fire. We would see the black smoke of the fires rising, followed by the white smoke of tear gas. Numerous times throughout the afternoon, the protests would loop back to right in front of our hotel. Though a little nervous, I have to say that, while at a safe distance, it was a pretty cool to watch. The rest of the week of ETR/IST was relatively uneventful after that first day. Some kids would yell stuff at us. We had a few things thrown at us here and there, but no angry mobs to speak of. One day, there was a HUGE protest that went through town, but it was “government sanctioned”, which meant it was to be peaceful and the police would escort everyone. The crowd went by our hotel and we stood on the balcony watching them. There were thousands of people. A few people would see us, point, then give us the peace sign. A couple of big milestones over our break were the two celebrations of a) 6-months in Mauritania and b) 200 days in Africa. A quarter of our time in Africa is already over.

All good things must come to an end, including vacation (or being away from site). The car I was in from Nouakchott to Magta Lahjar kept breaking down, so it took us 8 hours instead of 4 hours to get to Magta. After ETR/IST, I’ve had more motivation to get some work done. Also, after speaking Hassaniya in Nouakchott to Moors who aren’t used to white people speaking Hassaniya and loved it, my confidence was much higher, and I’ve definitely noticed an improvement in my language. While in Nouakchott, almost all of the towns with Girls Mentoring Centers were given phones and a hook up for the internet, so I am happy to announce that I now have access to the internet in Magta Lahjar! It’s extremely slow and I’ll probably wait until I go to Aleg to update my blog and pictures, but at least I can keep in touch with people and stay connected with the world. Also, since I’ve been back in Magta, Mauritania has cut all ties with Israel, which isn’t necessarily a great thing, but hopefully this means the protests will end. We’re also eagerly awaiting the inauguration of our new President, Barak Obama, TODAY!!!

Now the countdown to WAIST begins. I found out last week that I’m playing on the “C” team. I’m definitely excited about going back to Senegal and to see everyone again so soon. Sorry for the delayed update and if you actually read all of this, thanks for getting through it all! It’s been an interesting month with some really great moments and some really stressful moments. I’m looking forward to the next adventures West Africa has in store!