2005-11-16 - 5:49 p.m.

Adjusted excerpt from an email to mom.

Dear friends and family,

Aaron and I caught a Peace Corps ride into Aleg to use the internet for a couple of hours and then will head back to Magta Lahjar to my new pet… a turtle at last!!!! It is so cute and adorable!!! Heavy too!! Its name is Pesto… after a happy medium between Pestilence (for Aaron’s claim that it is not advisable for me to keep it in the kitchen because it spreads diseases such as salmonella) and my love for mom’s delicious Pesto Sauce!

It just rode down from Tidjikja in the Peace Corps car today. After a whole year (plus) of telling the entire Mauritania population (locals and non) that I really wanted a turtle for a pet… a fellow Peace Corps volunteer finally found me one!! Thank you Matt!!!!:-) It now has a nice outdoor home (Aaron won this one!)… he shoveled a square basin for it to walk around, we put water and shrubs in for it and a little shaded corner too. I told my neighboring laundry man to keep an eye on it while I was gone for the day and to make sure it didn’t wander off somewhere else! Limnaye is also supposed to stop by to check on him today! I’m so excited, he’s soooo cute!!!

Shoveling sand around seems to be one of Aaron’s favorite pastimes since we got to Magta Lahjar. ;-p He borrowed gardening tools from Deidda (Limnaye’s mom) and started breaking my courtyard soil away, tilling the ground and preparing neat rows for what will soon become my very own vegetable and fruit garden! He has all sorts of ideas for home improvements but very limited resources, a small challenge for such a creative mind… very helpful and quite a God-send! :-)

Having a permanent guest has forced me to take better care of myself as far as nutrition goes. I am not skipping dinner anymore and have been planning nutritious meals ahead of time… yummy ones too, including a delicious pineapple cobbler baked in my very own “brousse oven”!

We finally opened the Girls Mentoring Center!!!! We have twenty-one girls on the roster and quite a fire-cracker bunch! Limnaye, Aaron and I fixed up the place pretty nicely with a make-shift sign above the door, a mulafa-covered thumb-tack board for pictures and documents, colorful hand-painted posters, make-shift cubbies and shelves (made of cardboard covered with pretty mulafa material), etc.

Everyone showed up at the opening and we served drinks and snacks, showed a slideshow of photos I had taken from other GMCs around the country, the mayor spoke, Limnaye spoke, and so did a Peace Corps representative who had come from Nouakchott for the event. We changed our operating schedule to take place during weekends as opposed to weekdays… so from this week on I will be at the center every Friday, Saturday and Sunday having fun with the girls! I will also be inundated by phone calls and visits of concerned mothers and fathers of girls who didn’t make the cut and would like for them to be included in the GMC program (I think I might have already received over fifteen of such requests!). My standard answer to them is: “Tell your girls to keep studying really hard this year so that when the new academic year starts and we get to look at their results they will be at the top of their classes and be able to join the Girls Mentoring Center!” Inshallah that will motivate them to study harder…

I have quite a few events planned for the next few weeks and already got the funding for them. I will write more about them as I get them over with!

In the meantime wish me luck and keep sending me your love and good wishes!

Ma’Salaam,

Jordy (a.k.a. Aziza)

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