Amanda le Petite

First post from West Africa Mauritania!! It has been almost 5 days since I’ve been at our training camp in Rosso, however, I’ve been a little too overwhelmed, busy, hot and just plain lazy about this blog. That goes for pictures too, but it’s hard just being caught up with all that is Mauritania and Peace Corps. Where to start….well, first and foremost, everyone here, volunteers, staff, the Mauritanians I’ve met are great.

Volunteers: It’s odd to be surrounded by a group of people that is so similar to me. My friend Teresa put it really well to her mom. “People just care.” Imagine taking all the kids who participated in class, were really outgoing and funny, interested, and interesting, and then putting them in one small sand box. Friday, we actually go to live with our host families, which is exciting, yet scary. It’s been really really fun here at the training site. A lottt like summer camp. We have tech sessions aka our training, lots of medical and S&S sessions, XC activities and skits, but most fun of all is lunch and dinner where we all sit around a plate of food and dig in with our right hands and shove everything from rice to couscous to spaghetti into our mouth. Oh yah, the goal is to roll it up into a little ball, and then pop that into your mouth. It’s so messy and so fun. Notice I wrote right hand. That would be because you reserve your left hand for potty time–no toliet paper here in the RIM. All the girls stash their 80 lbs of stuff in one massive room, and the boys have theirs in another. Cause it gets so hott, we all put our mosquito nets, aka tiny see through tents outside in one common area. It’s so much fun giggling and staying up late with our flash lights. Even now seems campish as we all sit in the boy’s room on our laptops enjoying our 2nd to last day of wireless. I know, everyone reading this is probably expecting or hoping for me to comment on the culture..but all will come in time. It’s very very different.