As it turns out the Swearing-in ceremony was in Kaedi, not Nouakchott, so I did not have access to a scale. However, due to medical problems (see a later post) I came to Nouakchott last Monday and was able to weigh myself ( Read more... )

Today was swearing-in, and I stopped being a stagier and officially became a Peace Corps volunteer ( Read more... )

It all started out harmlessly enough on Sunday. I was doing the Peace Corps Mauritania version of meet the parents. Amy's host sister has been pushing Amy to have me over for lunch ever since the middle of July when she saw the two of us alone together in the market, walking around buying things. In Mauritania, two unrelated people of the ( Read more... )

After a month of traveling around te world, it felt good to finally get back to M'Beidia last week. For the first two days I even had good food because the agfo/health PACA demonstration for Hassaniya was there. After that it been back to the normal class, watering the garden, and pretending to eat ( Read more... )

I am so over stage. Granted I have missed most of it, but still I cannot wait until swear-in in mid-September ( Read more... )

So last week we stagiers got our site announcments for where we will be for the next two years. I will be stationed in N'Beika, an oasis town of about 3000 in the Soutern Tagant ( Read more... )

I arrived safely in Nouakchott about an hour or so ago. I'll be staying the night here a local hotel, and will leave tomorrow for Kaedi ( Read more... )

I started reading TE Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and I identified with the opening paragraph. I'm not sure how much of an authority he is on Arab culture, but the dude used to sport a howlie, so he must know something ( Read more... )

The day started out well. Michael drove up last night from Georgia to visit for a few days. That was really nice of him ( Read more... )

(Note - This is a reconstruction and expansion of a post I wrote after my first week of Community Based training in mid-July. The original post that I wrote in Kaedi did not work because I ran out of time. I decided that I should take advantage of high-speed, reliable internet access while I have it ( Read more... )