Foxhole Cooking

For the first time in the history of foreign assistance, an international relief and development organization has issued a famine alert for its own employees. Due to poor grain harvests and dwindling livestock counts, Peace Corps volunteers in the African Sahel are dropping at an alarming rate. Size 12’s are wearing 4’s, and pants lacking drawstrings are now adorning scarecrows in vegetable patches.

The United States Government has responded to this emergency with typical generosity and efficiency. Until further notice, PCVs can request Meals Ready-To-Eat (MREs) from their medical office.

As a city volunteer, I generally get enough to eat and suffer only from monotony and small portions. In fact, the military rations are probably more closely intended for two married volunteers on the edge of the Sahara, who subsist on boiled grains, occasional meat, and their imaginations. We’re talking about two narrow individuals before Peace Corps, but now I’d estimate they weigh a combined 135 pounds.

So it wasn’t without a tinge of guilt that I sucked in my stomach and limped into the medical office complaining of blurred vision and a diet of boiled cardboard. I limped out with high-calorie, vitamin enriched, and surprisingly tasty proof that women play an important role in military policy and planning.

The days of You-Know-What On A Shingle are over. My entrée options include Vegetarian Fettuccini Alfredo, Beef Teriyaki, and Chicken Strips with Chunky Salsa. You can start off with jalepeño cheese spread on a vegetable cracker, or maybe some spiced apples. And for dessert, why not enjoy a cup of coffee and lemon pound cake?

The best part is there’s no stove required, thanks to the smartly named OPN63 NSN 8970-01-321-9153 heating unit. Just plop the main course into this plastic sack with a chemical wafer at the bottom, add water, and in 10 minutes it’s ready. They even throw in a kind piece of advice: “the contents will be HOT.”

I can’t find an expiration date anywhere on the packaging, but judging from the serial numbers on the rancid Snickers bars, I’m guessing our batch is from 1998. But the shelf-life is impressive, as the parts of the MRE are zipped up separately in high-tech shrink wrapping by DOD contractors like Sopakco Packaging, Mullins, South Carolina. I imagine the corporate tagline “You make it, we’re fixin’ to pack it.”

Each meal comes with an accessory packet containing plastic spoon, napkin/TP, wet wipe, tiny bottle of Tobasco sauce (I imagine tiny Mexican women squeezing tiny red peppers), matches, and beverage powder, everything it seems except for a temporary tattoo or hologram toy.

As if this all wasn’t quite enough, the boxes are stamped with nutrition information written in unmistakable Pentagon-speak. “Fortification Provides you the Additional Edge to Maximize Your Performance.” I suppose, but after the beef stew and brownie, the last thing I’d want to hear is “MOVE OUT, MEN.” I require a nap, sir.

From one perspective, MRE’s are a desperate last resort to starvation, and my level of enjoyment stems mostly from the memories of American food evoked in the face of monotonous desert fare. But still I’d say that MRE’s are so ingenious and fun, it’s only the low pay, physical requirements, and dislike of raised voices that’s keeping me from enlisting right now.

Until then, I’ll assume the diet and attitude of a 21^st Century Yossarian with a billet that’s decidedly more Rear Echelon.

No Respect

My knowledge of the American comedy scene is on a serious time lag. First I read that Rodney Dangerfield died. Then someone tells me that Johnny Carson is doing the great open-mic in the sky, both of these events occurring last year. And finally I hear that Mitch Hedberg, one of the most talented comics of my generation, was recently found dead in his hotel room before a gig in New Jersey.

Now that I’ve dimmed the lights, allow me to introduce the shaky and blatantly opportunistic premise for this segment. Did you know that before getting his big break Rodney Dangerfield was a Peace Corps volunteer in Mauritania? I found his final site evaluation hidden away in my regional office. Here are the highlights…

The Peace Corps, man, I’ll tell yah, it’s a racket, they pay you fifty bucks a month. I could make more dough juggling for the blind.

And you get no respect at all in the Peace Corps. No car, no money, no wife, no respect at all. People think I’m an albino panhandler, I tell yah.

A lot of drug use in the Peace Corps, though, I tell yah, I can’t keep up with these kids. The Peace Corps motto should be Semper High. Just my luck, no Marines in the audience, go ask your recruiter to explain that one.

But I smoked dope here in Mauritania one time, and I tell yah, it wasn’t pretty. Why’s that, I’ll tell yah why, there’s no good snacks. I got the munchies and ate my house. It’s tough, I tell yah.

Not a lot to do out here in my village, I can tell you that much. They don’t have dirty magazines here, so I have to watch my neighbor breast-feed her kids. The other night I asked if I could be next, that’s how bad it is.

My host family, that’s some group, I tell yah. My father is half Pulaar and half Moor. He wants to beat himself up but he’s too lazy. It’s tough. And his wife, I tell yah, she’s 16, she’s his cousin, sister, niece and possibly his mother too. It’s a mess.

You know they circumcise the women here? It’s supposed to make it impossible to enjoy sex. When I heard that, I called my ex-wife and told her it wasn’t my fault after all. Come on people, these are called jokes.

I got a local girlfriend though, I tell yah, but it’s not fair. I asked her for a strip tease, she showed me her eyes for two seconds. Not fair at all.

And the heat. I tell you it’s hot in this country. How hot is it? By my house there’s a road sign that points down and says “Hell, 15 meters.”

Hey, tough crowd, feels like I’ve been here two years. Ok, it’s been life changing, catch me next week at Ceasars Palace.

The Seven Year Switch

As I was about to begin my English class one evening, a student spoke up. “Mr. Luke, this woman has something to ask you.” I had hardly noticed the lady and young girl in the corner, figuring that a new student brought her kid along. “Tell him, tell him!” she says to the girl in Hassaniya. Reluctantly, then, the girl says, in distinctly American English, “My aunt wants to know if you can teach me English so I don’t forget.”

Some believe that mefloquine, the anti-malaria drug of choice for Peace Corps, can bring about hallucinations, so I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. Teach me English? Most English teachers here can’t construct a sentence like that. I opened my eyes. The girl was still there, with her head cocked at an angle and an expression that seemed to say “well?????” I asked her some questions, and she replied in English, to my continued amazement. “How long have you been here?” I asked her. “I dunno, I kind of forget a lot of things.” I had to be hallucinating.

After that introduction I visited the girl’s family a number of times and established that Hoffman LaRoche Pharmaceuticals has not yet taken my mind. Here is what I know now.

Six years ago, a Moorish couple secured a visa to the United States and moved with their one-year-old daughter Fatimetou to Columbus, Ohio. How they got visas I’m not certain, but Fatimetou told me that her father used to be the President of Africa, which has got to carry some weight at the American Embassy. After a few years another daughter was born and given the name Christine. A few more years and another daughter, this one Lalla. Both of Fatimetou’s sisters are therefore American citizens. Fatimetou is not, to my knowledge.

Earlier this year, the children’s maternal grandfather became ill. The parents decided that the father would stay in Columbus (he works at a grocery store) and the mother would return to Kiffa with her daughters, to be with her ailing father.

Fast forward a few months to the present, and now you have a household in Kiffa featuring a widow, a dozen young adults and three little girls running or crawling around in varying states of American-ness.

Lalla, at around a year old, doesn’t say much. Christine knows English, but is shy, and after a couple visits she would climb on my head but not talk. Fatimetou makes up for them both.

“Why you always wearin’ that hunting hat?” she prods in a vaguely urban accent. “Why you always wearin’ crazy African shirts?” “What is wrong with you, anyways?” When she’s not riding a goat around the living room or begging a nickel off her aunt to buy candy, Fatimetou likes to tease dorky guys as much as any American girl, it seems.

I have my own questions. Are you going to school? Yes, no, sort of, I dunno. Did you get to see your grandfather when you got here? Whispered: we aren’t supposeta talk about dead people! Are you going back to Columbus? Yes, no, maybe, I dunno.

The mother speaks decent English and is generally busy with local politics, running the mandatory street-side boutique, and looking worried about, I presume, how to get back to Columbus.

“Do you have any painkillers?” she asks me one afternoon. “No,” I say, guilt meter shooting up because it’s a lie. “We brought a lot of stuff with us from America,” Fatimetou adds. “But you used it all?” I guess, watching her grandmother cough up phlegm onto her hand and fling it across the room out an open window. “No, we sold it.” Guilt meter drops back to zero.

I think about this family with mixed emotions. Living in Mauritania is difficult, but it’s not that bad for the middle class, so I wouldn’t feel terrible if these girls couldn’t return to America.

But what is in store for them here? Fatimetou and Christine will lose their English. They will be placed in atrocious public schools or perhaps slightly better private schools. They will be expected to conform to the role of a woman in Mauritania, which is changing but is nothing like life in America.

Will they be circumcised or force-fed or reduced to domestic servility? Probably not. From looking at the young black African girl who cooks and cleans and the satellite dish that brings in must-see Mexican soap operas, it seems this family is doing well for now. But that standard of living is most likely based on a few hundred dollars a month sent back from the US.

What was life like for Fatimetou in America? She remembers good things, like Wendy’s and pizza and playing in the snow. She also recalls darker details, like the convicted sex offender who lived in their neighborhood and the school shooting she witnessed one morning at her public school. She claims that she saw two older students fighting, and when she ran to tell a teacher she heard a gunshot. Looking back she saw a boy lying in a pool of blood. He died.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t believe a word Fatimetou says. She has mischief in her eyes, and she has been through a traumatic experience in the last three months, going back to a country and climate and a way of life that conjures up no memories whatsoever. But as rarely as it happens in America, kids do shoot each other and creepy men do introduce themselves to their new neighbors with police escorts. Maybe I’m just offended that she made fun of my hat.

As I sit in the family’s living room and force down a mouthful of mystery meat, at least I don’t fear being shot on the street. Living in Washington, DC, the cuisine was fantastic, but the walk home was more un-nerving. It’s one of the many tradeoffs a seven-year-old semi-American girl and I will have plenty of time to think about.