Ketchup!

So now that I have internet access, I’ll try to catch up on all that has happened in the last three months.

I. April
Hello and happy hot season to all! I’ve been away from Magtalahjar for three weeks and holy crap, it got hot while I was gone. Stepping out into the sun makes me go “guh!” like I’ve just been smacked in the face. This is a source of amusement to whatever Mauritanian I happen to be with. “You poor thing, you don’t know the sun,” they say. “I’ve been here three years, I know the sun, I just don’t like it,” I reply.

I’d been having a hard, hard time in Magtalahjar since Mom’s visit, which I guess was pretty evident in the last letter. I was feeling discouraged, irritable, resentful and totally done with the people of Magtalahjar. I couldn’t wait to get out of town. And then one night, as I lay staring at the ceiling, a calm washed over me. Contentment replaced bitterness. I smiled. I am continually amazed by life here. It’s astonishing that three years into this, the lows are still so low and the highs so high.

I’d been planning for weeks to go to Aleg for the day of the second-round presidential vote. It had been the light at the end of my weeks-long dark tunnel. But then after finding my little nugget of contentment, I felt like I wanted to stay in Magtalahjar. I didn’t want to be gone for three weeks! But of course, off I went anyway.

Once in Aleg, I talked on the phone with Limnaya as I struggled from the taxi park to Greger’s with my two heavy bags. We hung up and I dropped my phone into my purse. Fast forward four hours to when I start looking for my phone to call Limnaya back- hmmm, nowhere to be found. I flash back in my head to the dropping of the phone into the purse…and cuss. I hopelessly retraced my steps, shuffling down the dusty road, head swaying from side to side as I searched for my phone. I’m sure I looked absolutely nuts because people kept coming up to me and asking what I was doing. When I responded that I was looking for my phone and had they seen it?, they chuckled and matter-of-factly informed me that it was long gone and I should get out of the heat.

When I got to Nouakchott a few days later, I grudgingly bought a new phone and went to the Mauritel Mobiles office to buy a new chip and get my old number back. “Pas de probleme, Madame,” she said, as she typed my number into the computer. “You’ll have your number back when the system resets tomorrow at 6 PM.” Excellent! The next day at 6 PM, I got a call from someone asking for Aicha. And then another and another. I called a friend to see what number would show up on her screen and lo and behold…it’s not my number. The woman mistyped the number and gave me someone else’s, apparently Aicha’s. Now I have to tell everyone about my new number and keep fielding Aicha’s calls. Amusing, isn’t it?

II. COS = Come on, Steve? Cut out scissors? Call out Sharks?
Another Peace Corps acronym to know is Close of Service (COS), which means finishing and going home. It can be used as a noun – “Yikes, COS is close!” a verb – “I’m COSing in September” or a modifier – “Remember to take care of all of your COS forms and your COS medical before leaving for your COS trip.” There is also the COS conference, when Peace Corps shells out a relatively large chunk of change (roughly about the same amount of money spent daily on batteries for the armed forces’ TV remote controls, in my estimation) to get all the COSing volunteers together in a nice hotel to talk about the looming, unavoidable re-entry into American life. Our COS conference was held in a place eerily similar to Dougia, the resort north of N’Djamena where we always had our conferences and from whence we were evacuated. Everyone else was oohing and ahhing about how cute it was but Greger and I had to cling to the wall to ride out the time-warpy vertigo of being back in a place so Dougia-esque at the same time of year as we were last there.

It was a very useful conference, with lots of talk about resumes, interviewing, how to apply to grad schools and basic re-entry stuff. I feel at an advantage to a lot of people. There are people who have busted their backs to apply, interview, and get into grad school from their village and who are totally stressed out because of it; there are people who have no idea about what they want to do and who are totally stressed out because of it. I know what I want to study and where, but I’m just not going to worry about it while I’m in the middle of the Sahara. It’ll work itself out when I get home.

We were there in this strange faux-Dougia on the year anniversary of the day I left Bol for the last time. I was teaching my favorite sixth graders that day and there was an eclipse. In a pinhole-like effect, we could see the moon’s shadow in the spots of sun coming through the holes in the tin roof. We stopped class to watch and I let them out early so I could pack my bag. And that was it.

It was an intense week. I found it tough to sit and listen to my friends reminisce about their training and the first time they all met and who was friends with who and who had a crush on who. They talked about how difficult it would be to leave all their Peace Corps friends and their friends at site. I took deep breaths and shot knowing glances at Greger. I was jealous of my PC-RIM friends and felt like they had no idea how lucky they were to have the opportunity to take leave on their own terms. But then again I was also very glad to have met them all, and to have a second chance at goodbyes. It was a very intense, thought-provoking week.

III. Morocco - An Islamic Republic that knows how to have fun
Finally it was time for my much anticipated trip to see Darren (of Darren and Patrick and chicken-killing fame) in Morocco. Right after COS conference, I hopped on the 3:30 AM flight out of Nouakchott to Casablanca with two other RIM friends. That flight is torturous. It’s only three hours, but they serve a meal in the middle of it. I do not want a meal at 1:30 in the morning, Royal Air Maroc, so just shut off the lights and leave me alone.

When we stepped off the plane in Casablanca at 6:30 AM, we could see our breath. Once inside the airport, we put on every layer we could dig out of our bags. No one had warned these two other PCVs about the cold (Darren warned me in an email, I told him I was tough, the Aleg girls insisted on lending me warm clothes, I accepted) and all they had were long sleeve button-ups. I am not tough when it comes to cold, it turns out. I used to be, but I guess that was before 100 degrees felt like a cool day.

I was blown away by everything in Morocco. For starters, there are nine trains a day from Casablanca to Fes and they run on time and they’re comfortable. There are orange trees everywhere, including beside the train tracks in Fes. All three of us eyed the fallen oranges. Would it be uncouth to pick them up? Darren met us outside of the train station in Fes and it was such a bizarre time warp. It was just like seeing him in N’Djamena, like we’d just been at site…for a year. We spent that day in Fes, strolling around its beautiful, cosmopolitan streets and catching up. Shadows crept in as we sat by the pool of a French hotel, drinking Moroccan wine and eating local olives. I tucked my hands into my armpits, I bounced my legs- I was cold.

The trip continued in that vein - fantastic food, excellent conversation, and miserably freezing weather. The final verdict, though, is that Morocco is beautiful and fascinating and as soon as I can figure out a way to live there, I will.

The anniversary of the evacuation fell during my time there and Darren and I passed it in Rabat, Morocco drinking the same Cameroonian beer that had so sustained us during the evacuation conference. We met up with a man who had been a PCV in southern Chad during the shit-crazy early 90’s evacuations. He told stories of a helicopter coming to rescue the volunteers consolidated in N’gouri and Zaghawa rebels firing on a PCV-Marine softball game in N’Djamena. Their stories totally trump ours.

III. Alhumdulillah
My return to Mauritania was uneventful, though difficult as always. The April heat felt delicious and familiar. Limnaya wasn’t there to welcome me, as she was up in Atar training other Girls Mentoring Center mentors. It had been weeks since we’d seen each other and had a long, giddy chat on the phone. The next day a PCV friend who had been in Atar with her called and said, “Did you hear about the accident?” My skin crawled. “What accident?”

Limnaya and her cousin were traveling in a taxi on the paved road between Atar and Nouakchott. The front right wheel came off and the car rolled three or four times. Limnaya and her cousin were in the front seat (they put two passengers in the one front seat). Her cousin was crushed and killed by the car as it rolled, but Limnaya was thrown free.

Limnaya said she heard someone screaming. She noticed blood and dirt all over her hands and clothes. She stumbled over to the screaming man, whose hand was pinned. She says they waited two hours for another car to come along. Finally a Land Cruiser came upon them and brought them to the nearest hospital. She saw the doctor’s face over her and realized she knew him. She mumbled, “Do you know who I am?” He said, “Yes, Limnaya.” She said, “Alhumdulillah” and passed out. They rushed her to Nouakchott in an ambulance. The doctor called someone in Nouakchott, who knew Limnaya’s mom’s phone number, and called her. Lim’s mom, oldest sister, nephew took off for Nouakchott right away, and arrived at the hospital just after Limnaya.

I went to their house and sat with Limnaya’s family as neighbors and friends streamed in and out. Limnaya’s sister explained the story over and over to each new visitor, without tiring. I couldn’t really understand the Hassaniya and sat there panicky and nauseous waiting for news. Finally, a call from Nouakchott: she’d broken her leg, the other foot was seriously cut up (they described it as “meat”), her face was black and blue and swollen, and the bridge of her nose was cut. I finally got through on her phone and she weakly, groggily slurred “Zahra, I’m sick.” I went home and cried.

Even in horrible pain and anguish, she stayed sassy. She refused to spend the night in the hospital (she didn’t like that they would only let one person in to see her), and so they took her to a family member’s house in Nouakchott. She convalesced there but admitted to me that she couldn’t rest because so many people kept coming to greet her. Each day, the family took her to the hospital for the doctors to change the dressing on her wounds. When I asked how she was, she would reply, “I’m fine, thank God, nothing hurts, thank God, it’s God’s will, thank God, God is generous.” They waited a few days to tell Limnaya that her cousin had died. She kept asking to see her cousin, but they would tell her that she was resting. When they finally told her, she fainted. When she woke up, weeping and berating her family for not telling her sooner, her family assured her that it was God’s will, that her fate had been written since before her birth.

She spent two weeks in Nouakchott and was finally given the okay to come back to Magtalahjar the day before I was to travel down to Nouakchott for a meeting. She decided to spend one more day there so that I could meet up with her there, rather than crossing each other on the road. She was still at the hospital for one last checkup when I got to her family’s house, so I sat and talked with Dayda, Limnaya’s mom. Dayda has long been a non-fan of pretty much anyone not from Magtalahjar, but she said over and over how wonderful the Peace Corps staff had been and how there’s no one like Peace Corps in the world. Having been on the receiving end of her hateful anti-outsider, anti-infidel, anti-Kate Van Roekel tirades for a year, chills ran up and down my spine as she enumerated what all the staff and volunteers had done for the family since the accident. Care and support and human kindness had changed this stubborn old Moor woman’s heart. Peace! We made peace! Isn’t this exactly what I came here for? Incredible.

A car pulled up outside and I heard the Limnaya ordering people around. I waited eagerly in the hallway. The door burst open and in came Limnaya’s brother-in-law, Limnaya tiny in his arms with a bandage on one foot and cast on the other. Her eyes were blacked, her skin pale, her smile huge. We both got a little misty as we greeted and greeted. She told me again the sequence of events, intermittently thanking God that she was alive. We chattered about Magtalahjar and Nouakchott and the afternoon passed quickly. At about four, they packed up to head back to Magtalahjar. Her brother-in-law effortlessly picked her up (no wheelchairs, no crutches, no way for her to get around) and trundled her out to the car.

Since then, she has been totally immobile. She lies on a thin foam mattress all day, every day. During the day, she lies in the house; in the afternoon, her nephews pick up the mattress and carry her outside on it like a stretcher. Because she has no way to get to the hospital on the other side of town, she has her doctor friends come to her. The first she called was a roly-poly Moorish nurse who toddled in on the high-heeled sandals so beloved by style-conscious Moors. In bumbling, seemingly random order, she squirted stuff on the dressing and went about changing it. It was the first time I’d seen Limnaya’s foot and I struggled to repress my horror. A huge black red gash, sewn together with angry black Frankenstein stitches ripped across her foot. At intervals, the flesh was yellow and wet looking. I went home and cried.

Limnaya joked later that she knew Roly-Poly didn’t really know what she was doing, but that she was the only one in town. A few days later, Lim got ahold of another doctor friend. When he came in the door, I thought he was a crazy man come to beg. His hair was uncombed, his eyes yellow and glassy, his hands cracked and dirty. I set water and soap out as a suggestion, but he just went for the rubber gloves Limnaya had bought, touching the outside of them all over with his dirty hands. It was time, he said, to remove the stitches. Did anyone have a razor? Tweezers? Yes, he removed Limnaya’s stitches with a razor blade and my eyebrow-plucking tweezers. He was rough about it and Limnaya howled and prayed and bit her hand. Onlookers yelled at her to be strong and stop crying. “Be patient, Limnaya, God is generous!” I grabbed her hands to stop her from swatting at the doctor and she screamed at me to let her go. He finally finished, she slumped back sweaty and teary-eyed, and I bolted. I went home and cried.

Finally, she decided that these doctors were quacks and she was tired of relying on them. I came over one afternoon and there she was, changing her own dressing. “Zahra, hold out your hand. I have something for you,” she said, dropping a pile of scabs and dead skin into my hand. Uggghhhh! Not funny, Limnaya. So she took to cleaning and dressing her own foot, leaving it uncovered during the heat of the day to allow it to dry. And lo and behold, it started to heal.

V. Finally, Suddenly
My last weeks in Magtalahjar passed in typical time-warp fashion. I was busy with wrapping up Girls Center activities, administering and grading final exams, and visiting friends to say goodbye, yet the days just could not pass fast enough. Finally, suddenly the big day arrived. I was in my house, packing up the last of my stuff when my school director called and asked me to come to school. I was afraid I’d filled out my grade cards wrong and would have to redo them. Errrrrr. The school was empty except for the director in his office. He invited me to sit down. “I wanted to thank you,” he said, “You came here and lifted up my students, you taught our girls, you showed us a face of America that was peaceful and not political. I know it was difficult for you, but you showed yourself to be courageous. We want more Peace Corps. Tell your director to send us more.” Oh my god, what? I did? Really? I went home and cried. I swear I’m not saying this to be braggy or to make myself sound like a saint. I did nothing remarkable during my service. I just smiled at people and lived and taught some mediocre English lessons. I’m saying it because it shows why I believe in the Peace Corps and its mission. 187,000 volunteers have served since Peace Corps was established in 1961. If you figure that maybe 1/10 of these volunteers were jerks, that leaves 168,300 cool PCVs. So then, assume that each PCV had a positive affect on 5 people (which hardly seems like shooting for the stars), that means 841,500 people around the world have a better understanding, a personal understanding of America and Americans. Then add to that the number of people in the states that gain a better understanding of the world from hearing returned PCVs stories. See? Peace Corps rules. And yes, I had to use the calculator on the computer to do that math. I’m screwed if I have to take the GRE.

I spent my last afternoon at Limnaya’s. We joked and laughed and I taught her pick-up sticks, tic tac toe, and hangman. The hours ticked down and the heat of the day abated. Our laughs dissolved into reminiscences and then into goodbyes. It was time. I had long imagined the glee I would feel as I watched Magtalahjar recede in the rear-view mirror, but it turned out to be more complicated than that. It turned out that I felt a clinging sadness - not so much for Magtalahjar but for the end of my PCV life, this crazy life that I have been living so long and have loved so much.

But by the time I’d gotten to Aleg, pure holy-crap-I-did-it glee coursed through my veins and I did a little dance that my region mates didn’t think was all that funny. I did it some more when Greger got back from the market and he proudly hugged me and poured me a celebratory Kool-Aid and Senegalese gin cocktail.

I DID IT!