The Book of Peace Corps

===AIM Archives===
You’re not going to believe this, friends. Now you can re-read my posts and share them with friends, even though you erased the emails! I put them up on the web, but really, please don’t say you like my blog. It’s not a blog. It’s just that the word blog is in the name of the web site and I use them for the space. I don’t BLOG, ok?
http://lukepcrim.blogspot.com

===The Book Of Peace Corps===
It’s been two weeks at site, and I feel as though our presence in Kiffa is beginning to resemble an installation of Mormon missionaries. Instead of peddling eternal salvation in black suits, Adriana and I knock on doors around lunch and dinner time, hoping for cous-cous and sweet, milky zrig.

Andrew is set – he found a nice family just outside of town and has his meals there for a reasonable fee. I’ve found a house, but no regular place to eat yet. Adriana is still seeking both. But so far we can’t complain. In addition to the half dozen or so families we met through introductions from former volunteers or Peace Corps staff, we now are acquainted with another five or six families. For now, Adriana and I move as a pair, plotting our next meal with precision. “Let’s try so and so’s” one of us suggests, and armed with tea and sugar or dates or gum arabic as a gift, we open the family’s gate and peek in. After the initial greetings, you can measure the level of hospitality, but overwhelmingly, almost instinctually, they say “bismillah” and point to the tent or the salon, meaning sit down, relax, and stay awhile. You plop down on a mattress or a rug or the floor and drink tea, have lunch, and drink tea again, sometimes over a span of 3-5 hours. Don’t visit someone in Mauritania at their home if you have somewhere else to be.

Amazingly, you can do this at a complete stranger’s home with no hard feelings. Socializing is usually with the older children or family members your age, and often you don’t see the older folks at all. That’s out of respect, not indifference, as they figure that they’re cramping your style, when really, they are hoarding all the good stories and wisdom.

At first, it was hard to go about making friends like this, as I hesitate to “impose” and ask for things directly. But if a man moved to Mauritania and waited for invitations for supper, he’d surely starve within a week. So I chant the phrase “carpe diem!” endlessly under my breath and hit the pavement. I have to keep telling myself that as a rule people tend to make more food than they need, and that they like getting visits from white folks like us. Eventually I plan to settle on a few families for most meals (I’ll pay them or buy groceries), and also cook a few meals a week myself and with the other volunteers.

I am very fortunate with the discovery of my neighbours to the east. The father works for the Ministry of Agriculture and was quick to say that his home is “comme chez vous.” One woman roasts peanuts and sells them lightly salted and entirely delicious for a nickel a bag. The other woman fries up sugary donut hole type treats morning and afternoon, a welcome addition of calories to my diet.

A good number of the wealthier families in Kiffa have satellite television, and I’ve had to endure a lot of tube time so far. It’s difficult to phrase “actually I prefer not to watch television… I didn’t watch much in the states and it’s part of the reason I came here” in Hassaniya. But TV is nice because it means you don’t have to talk all the time, and while this is just a guess, I will hazard to say that Egyptian music videos are more powerful than any hallucinogenic drug, and much safer.

I will not kid you when I say that we watched a Cinemax style soft-core adult film with the naughty scenes cut out. It was called “The Fighters” and starred one of the worst actors I’ve ever seen. His character had a sort of “Shining” ability to see the future and was using it to fight crime, but chiefly he was using it to get into the pants of his female partner. I suspected the movie was a fraud, and when his partner said something like “You know Steve, I’d really like to know you better” followed by a savage cut in the film and suddenly breakfast…my suspicions were confirmed.

===Luke’s Up To The Minute Personal Statistics===
Age: 27 years, 1 month
Height: Still a smidge shy of six foot one, but a bigger smidge post-buzz cut
Weight: A lightning quick 150 pounds (down 10-15 from my fat pre-departure days but holding steady)
Favorite Song: Tie between John Scofield’s “Let it Shine” off Groove Elevation and Frank Zappa’s “Star Wars Won’t Work” from Make a Jazz Noise Here
Currently Reading: Thomas Friedman’s “From Beruit to Jerusalem”
Favorite New Personal Possession: Clear Plastic Pitcher and Set of 4 Tumblers (first batch of sun tea almost ready!)
Favorite Hassaniya Word: Majnuun, means crazy, but in a bad way
Favorite Food/Drink: 70 cent Chicken sandwich from newly discovered fast food joint down the hill from house
Number of blister beetle attacks suffered: 4
Number of blister beetles killed before they could “strike”: 100+

===The Innocents In Mauritania===
I’m nearing the end of Mark Twain’s “The Innocents Abroad” and it is now my mission in life to know more about that man (anybody got a biography of Mr. Clemens they want to send across the world?). I love everything about the book, a biting travelogue from a 19th century American travelling through Europe and the Middle East. I’ve selected a passage describing a small Middle Eastern city in a way that gives you a bit of Mauritania as well. But mind you this was written in 1869 and is a satire of the closed-mindedness of that time (at least one hopes):
“It is just like any other Oriental city. That is to say, its Muslim houses are heavy and dark and comfortless as so many tombs; its streets are crooked, rudely and roughly paved, and as narrow as an ordinary staircase; the streets uniformly carry a man to any other place than the one he wants to go to and surprise him by landing him in the most unexpected localities; business is chiefly carried on in great covered bazaars, celled like a honeycomb with innumerable shops no larger than a common closet, and the whole hive cut up into a maze of alleys about wide enough to accommodate a laden camel, and well calculated to confuse a stranger and eventually lose him; everywhere there is dirt, everywhere there are fleas, everywhere there are lean, broken hearted dogs; every alley is thronged with people, wherever you look, your eye rests upon a wild masquerade of extravagant costumes; the workshops are all open to the streets and the workmen visible; all manner of sounds assail the ear, and over them all rings out the muezzin’s cry from some tall minaraet, calling the faithful vagabonds to prayer; and superior to the call to prayer, the noises in the streets, the interest of the costumes—superior to everything, and claiming the bulk of attention first, last, and all the time—is a combination of Mohammadan stenches to which the smell of even a Chinese quarter would be as pleasant as the roasting odors of the fatted calf to the nostrils of the returning Prodigal. Such is Oriental luxury—such is Oriental splendor!”

I now have the problem of viewing everything I see here reflexively through this character’s lens… the stubborn and arrogant notion of people places and things being “improper” or “depraved” or “uncivilized” or “below average” as happens again and again in the book, is JUST TOO MUCH FUN! I suggest you try it on your next vacation wherever you go. But try to keep it inside your head, ok?

===Track The Heat===
Bookmark the following link and see what kind of weather I’m dealing with!
http://www.wunderground.com/auto/virtuallythere_jan3/global/stations/61498.html