Going To Kiffa With An Achin' In My Heart

Hello everyone,

Just a short message to let you know that my site has been selected; I'll be going to Kiffa, the capital of the central/southern Assaba region. This good news, I think. Sorry about the bad Zeppelin reference in the title of this email...

Here's a map of the countrywww.only-maps.com/mauritania-map.html

At around 32,000 people, Kiffa is one of the biggest cities after the capital Nouakchott. It's predominantly Moor with a few minority communities including Pular speakers and even some Malian immigrants. It's hot, of course, but relatively dry (my trainer said she rarely saw a mosquito) which is good for the malaria issue... I might well have electricity, cell phone no problem, but running water is still a work in progress, I hear...

My job will vary depening on what I decide I want to do and how the wind blows, but officially I'm assigned to a vocational school as a Business Education Advisor. Typically in this role volunteers teach basic business or computer classes, but I hope to do some more general small business/cooperative consulting in the community as well. I think they might go well together. I will not be taking over for another volunteer -- there has not been a PCV in Kiffa for a year or more... but I don't mind (I can do it MY way)!

And in other good news, Adriana and Andrew, two of my favorite stagiaires who's names start with A, will be in Kiffa too... teaching and doing health work, respectively. Caleb will be a couple hours south of us working the agriculture angle, along with my new friend Annika (Berkeley grad, as is Adriana) who is a 2nd year volunteer in Kankossa. And we're on the paved "Road To Hope" that goes from Nouakchott all the way to Nema 1200 km away so it's not too difficult to get around (not EASY, but not as bumpy) and volunteers should be passing through every so often.

There's even an airport that has flights every so often. I leave tomorrow morning at 6:30 am for a 5 day trip. We'll meet our counterparts, get to know the area a bit, and then take our first intra-city public taxi trip back to Kaedi for the remaining weeks of pre-service training. In a wacky coincidence, my counterpart is the husband of a former Peace Corps volunteer who I met in DC at a film screening...

Should be fun! More to come.

--Luke