Like the other post, this is actually a group email I sent out several weeks ago, which is easier to copy and paste than to write something new, and I'm a little lazy and short on computer time, so there you have it :)

__________________________________

Seasons Greetings! I haven't seen a single Christmas tree yet, so
it's been a pretty strange December for me. I'm still enjoying warm
weather here with the occasional cold night, but mostly pleasant days.
So let me give y'all a few updates on what's going on in Mauritania.

Since I last sent out an email, I got to experience my first Ramadan
(the Muslim holy month). During this time, everyone fasts all day and
then stays up practically all night eating. In other words, nothing
at all gets done and everyone lies around generally hating life.
However, at the end of Ramadan, the whole Muslim world parties for
days on end (soberly, but it's still fun). There is food everywhere
and everyone dresses up and is thrilled that the month of hell is
over. Oh, and a nice thing about the fête is that if you ask someone
for forgiveness they have to give it to you. It's all very enjoyable.

Oh, and my birthday was fun and pleasant, and the weather was perfect
all day! I wore pants too (a rare occasion to be sure) and drank wine
and ate Oreos and biscotti — courtesy of my wonderful mother and
brother :)

After that, there were the first elections since the coup last year.
Yes, there was a coup here last summer, and it was practically
bloodless! It has been officially classified by Encyclopedia
Britannica as "The Most Boring Coup Ever"—Peace Corps at no point left
the country and life went on as usual. Interesting note, the
president of the preceding 20 years (who is from the town I live in
now) also took power in a coup and had "elections" after that,
miraculously getting re-elected over and over again, how bout it.
Then his army buddy took power from him by not letting him fly back
into the country after he left to go to the funeral of the king of
Saudi something or another. So to elect some new and improved corrupt
officials, Mauritania is going through its first round of possibly
legitimate elections ever. And if you think American politics are
ridiculous, please try to envision the Mauritanian version. Everyday
for 2 weeks straight, starting at 9 am, at the latest, your campaign
consists of playing your personalized theme song—and only that
song—over a rigged loudspeaker for the entire day until, I don't know,
1 or maybe 2 in the morning. And make sure you play it loud enough,
because you want to be heard over any thinking that might be
happening, not to mention the other 30 or 40 parties in town. And
don't forget to litter the streets with pictures of you looking
identical to everyone else because you're all wearing the same boubou
and deadpan expression. It's okay though, the goats will eat all the
fliers anyway. And I was lucky enough to have one of these parties
RIGHT NEXT DOOR to me. Ah democracy…or something pretty similar.

So since PCVs have to remain apolitical, we decided we should get out
of town. Destination: middle of nowhere. No really. We took a
camel trek out into the desert and then to an oasis. I mean, what
could be better than walking for hours in the middle of the desert?!
Only riding a camel for hours in the middle of desert! I have
included a few pictures in case you don't believe me. To appreciate
what's it like to ride a camel, the best way we have come up with to
describe it is "spastic rocking chair". It really wasn't too hot at
all; it even got pretty cold at night. And the oasis was fantastic!
In general, the trip was really nice and scenic and relaxing.

Then we had an amazing Thanksgiving feast despite the lack of turkey,
stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and most everything else you
would associate with Thanksgiving. However, we did have some awesome
squash pie which tasted suspiciously like pumpkin, chicken, some
random side dishes and homemade wine, the best batch yet, care of our
sitemate Kris—how lucky we are to have someone who brewed beer back in
the states for 5 years.

Oh, we have discovered this great program called Skype. It's this
online service that you sign up for and you can talk to other users
online anywhere like a telephone, all for free. If you want to call a
real phone with it, I think it's something like 3 cents a minute.
This is particularly good for me, because if I call someone in the
states for an hour, that amounts to a full ¼ of my salary for a month!
Needless to say, I try to limit my calls to the states. So if
you're interested, look into it, and we can talk there! Praise Allah
for technology!

Anyway, because of everything that's been going on, all the projects
took a long time to get started (my exceptionally bad French not
helping matters). But now that it's all over, things have really
really started picking up. I'm taking a French class which is
helping; I still can't figure out how people manage to function using
a language where half of the letters are dropped off at the end making
the word practically unrecognizable and sounding exactly like 4 other
completely different words. Okay, English does that sometimes too,
but at least we only have 3 pages of irregular verbs at the back of
the dictionary instead of, oh I dunno, 22. So other than French, I'm
teaching English classes (obligatory for PCVs everywhere I think) and
teach girls at the mentoring center, stuff like reproduction, AIDS,
disease transmission, etc. There are a lot of projects in the works,
but they are too tentative right now to mention. Otherwise, the plan
for the next little while is to finish working on stuff here for a few
more weeks, go to the capital and have a huge party on Christmas with
all the other volunteers, down to Senegal to have New Years on the
beach, back up to the capital for a work conference, and finally back
up here to Atar after my long wonderful vacation. So until I have
some (hopefully) great stories about what's to happen in the next
month, I'd better get back to work!

Merry Christmas, etc, etc

Kristen