2006-01-16 - 4:52 p.m.

14 January 2006

Half of the first month of the New Year has already flown by! I am back in Magta Lahjar after spending a wonderful first week of the year at Touabab Diallaw in Senegal at a hotel called Espace Sobo Bade (www.espacesobobade.com) built extravagantly with shells, mosaic tiles, and clay artwork on a cliff overlooking kilometers of pristine white sand beaches and calm, clean ocean water just an hour south of Dakar.

Aaron and I enjoyed fresh seafood, delicious food and drinks everyday, taking in beautiful views and sunsets, meeting interesting people and artists who took advantage of the local percussions and dance classes, spending very little money considered the quality, beauty, friendliness, and cleanliness of the place! Thumbs up and full recommendations for Sobo Bade!!

The end of Aaron’s trip to West Africa came sneaking up on us and we said our sad goodbyes in Nouakchott last Monday (Jan 9th)… he is planning on visiting again at the beginning of May and will be helping me “long distance” with the Girls Mentoring Center trying to set up an exchange program with a Muslim Student Association back in the States, as well as sending me lesson plan ideas and resources for our weekly meetings.

Everyone in Magta Lahjar will be ecstatic to see Hadrami again in May, as he made quite an impression on everyone old and young alike, women, men and children! Especially since we decided to have a small Mauritanian ceremony to make us “married” as far as all of my fellow Magta Lahjarians are concerned… they were so glad that Aziza had finally gotten married and to Hadrami of all men! :-)

Of course, I will also be extremely happy to see him again, as the Mauritanian wedding wasn’t just a façade, but a very romantic and unique way for us to become engaged… I will be moving to Florida after my Peace Corps service is over for a short period of time, before moving together to wherever I end up starting grad school!

If time continues slipping by as quickly as it has so far, then it won’t be before too long that I will be picking up Aaron again at the Nouakchott airport!

While I was gone, Limnaye took full ownership of the Girls Mentoring Center and hosted the program with confidence and energy, holding review sessions and administering “tests” on everything we had covered so far (AIDS, Career Day, basic hygiene and health, geography lessons, computer lessons, etc.). Yesterday we had the girls make their own “report cards” as an arts and crafts activity… with paper, scissors and watercolors (they love them!). They made colorful badges with their name and “grades” for each subject, which were then hung on one of the walls at the center to give it a boost of color and energy! The top girls got little gift bags that Limnaye put together with the money remaining from our quarterly funds.

Today in addition to having girls act out role-plays and talking about “Effective Communication Skills”, we will have them write short essays on what they have done so far at the center and what their favorite activities were, decorating them with drawings…. We plan on distributing copies of these essays and drawings as the first issue of the GMC newsletter to families, schools and local authorities as a way to involve the community and present our efforts to a wider audience.

It will probably be a useful tool to counteract the few people who’ve been busy bashing our efforts following the AIDS awareness weekend we held at the beginning of December… yup, another town hall meeting was held at the mosque in Magta Lahjar with people who thought our work was “haram” (prohibited by the Koran)!

I am so glad we had brought in an independent Nouakchott-based NGO to facilitate the session and I purposefully did not intervene throughout the sessions: it was Mauritanians, Moors, and Muslims just like them who spoke and educated the girls on such an important yet sensitive issue. We also showed a video-taped interview in Hassiniya with a well-known imam who was talking about the importance of parents educating their children on sexually-transmitted diseases, the role, rights and responsibilities of spouses when sexually-transmitted diseases are involved, the view of Islam regarding sex education and sexual life, etc.

The girls were very receptive and interacted comfortably with the guest speakers, after the older male facilitator established the ground rule that the Girls Mentoring Center was a safe space where they could openly talk about sex-related issues despite the gap in age and gender of the group (the cultural norm is for such topics not to ever be discussed in front of older people, and especially in front of the opposite gender) – highlighting the importance of communication and information-sharing for the battle against AIDS.

Another advantage of having this NGO come in to present, was that the girls were able to see yet another example of a successful, educated, working woman, in one of the presenters (Khadi) who was young and energetic, enthusiastic and professional – they all really enjoyed meeting her and hearing her speak.

So all in all, 2005 ended for me with great satisfactions and achievements. I am excited for this upcoming year and looking forward to overcoming the last challenges of my Peace Corps service in Mauritania before embarking in yet another adventure: life back in Italy and the States in almost exactly 8 months from today… the countdown has started! :-)

Many greetings and best wishes to all friends and family reading this journal…

With love and good thoughts,

Jordy and Pesto (the melon and cucumber-eating turtle… he won’t eat anything else!!!!)

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