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I and my fellow IT types got to visit Nouakchott for two weeks during training. We were given new host families to stay with. This is a picture of my new family in the boutique they run just outside their house.

This is the view from the street. The neighborhood is called the Cinquieme and it is a melting pot of Mauritanians, Senegalese and other West Africans.

Now you are looking in the front door of my Nouakchott host family's house. As you can see, it's really more a collection of rooms than a house. This is somewhat typical of the older sections of the city. Often houses have a nice courtyard where the family hangs out. This is not the case here, the family mostly hangs out in front of the boutique.

Here is my damp, dingy room. There are lots of mosquitos in Nouakchott, so the tent makes for more comfortable sleeping. Having to sleep inside during August, however, sucks. Many people sleep on their roof during the hot months to enjoy the ocean breezes. Unfortunately, my family had tin roofs that are not good for this purpose.

Across the street from my new house is a laundrette of sorts. Those giant blue things hanging on the line are boubous, the traditional (and everyday) dress of Mauritanian men. The come in both blue and white, and some have fancy embroidery on them. They are sort of like wearing a big sheet with a hole in the middle for your head. Boubous tend to billow when one walks and Mauritanian men spend a lot of time folding the boubou over their shoulders or gathering it behind their back. I've been told that boubous were banned from government offices because people kept getting them caught on computer equipment, but I've been unable to verify the story.

Here I am on the beach. There are hundreds of miles of nice sand beach here and the water is great for swimming.

These are fishing pirogues. Most of the them are owned and operated by Senegalese as the Mauritanians are historically desert people more at home herding camels.

Not sure who left this here.

This taxi driver touted the services of his 'belle voiture!' Though this is one of the worse looking taxis on the road, it actually seemed better than average from a mechanical standpoint.

Jay and Matt wait for language class to begin in our improvised classroom in Nouakchott. Definitely not as nice as the tree we sat under in Kaedi.

Now were back in Kaedi for a few days of meetings before being sent out on site visit. The highlight was Stage Olympics, which commenced with a mini basketball tournament.

Next came the mulafa relay. The idea was to do a set of typical Mauritanian chores while wearing a mulafa.

And the mulafa is not properly afixed as well. No Mauritanian women would expose so much leg.

Here's my team claiming victory in the relay.

What olympics would be complete with out a boat race? For the uninitiated, a 'boat race' is a relay in which there are two teams and each team member chugs a glass of beer. The second chugger cannot begin until the first has finished, and so on with each successive team member.

Seeing as this is Mauritania, we were supposed to be chugging bissap, a sugary drink made from hibiscus leaves (a non-intoxicating beverage, unfortunately). But someone forgot to make the bissap, so we ended up chugging water.

Here is the team of (mostly) Mauritanians. As you can imagine, it's not smart to enter into a water chugging contest with a bunch of desert dwellers...

Now it's back to Nouakchott for site visit. Normally this is a volunteers first chance to get away from their training site and have a look at their specific reality for the next couple years. Since those of us in the IT sector had already spent a couple weeks in Nouakchott, this was an opportunity to get back to the big city and also get our first 'taxi brousse' experience. In much of West Africa one can travel between cities by buying a seat in a car. Often these are beat up old Peugeot station wagons known as 'sept place's because there are seven passenger seats. Well, in Mauritania they go by the same name, but they actually sell nine seats. This means two people in the front bucket seat and four people in the middle row. Not the most comfortable situation when one has a 400 Km journey ahead. Luckily, on this specific trip the Peace Corps rented the whole taxi and only stuffed six of us into it.

Here a view out the window during the trip to Nouakchott. The scenery varies between flat sahel with a variety of grasses and small trees to vast dune fields. The tents in the background are called haimas. Going out into the desert and living in a haima during the summer months is a popular pastime here.

There is a town about half way between Kaedi and Nouakchott called Boutelimit, we all think this is quite amusing. Here is the view out the back of one of Boutelimit's restaurants. Like most roadside restaurants here, one sits on the ground and eats from a common plate with one's companions.

Here another view from the road.

Now we're back in Nouakchott. This is one of the big food markets.

Here is a row of shops all selling plastic floor mats and other household items. For some reason, shops selling essentially the same goods like to congregate together.

This is one of the ubiquitous donkey carts, and the donkey is actually getting a moment of leisure, which is unusual. Donkeys have a hard life here what with spending all day pulling heavy loads and being beaten mercilessly by the cart drivers.

The two barrels loaded on the back of this cart are for water. Many houses in Nouakchott are not hooked up to city water, or if they are, the water does not come regularily. The city does provide public locations where one can get water. Typically the cart drivers will fill up at one of these locations a deliver the water to those in need for the equivalent of a dollar or two.

Now we're back in Kaedi again for the last three weeks of training. Here is the prepartion for the night's dinner. Though some might find it disturbing to see this part of the food chain, at least we can rest assured that the job was done humanely and we're eating free range, hormone-free meat.

And this guy really was next. That was a sheep in the previous picture, and this is a goat. That fact that they killed both for the same meal explains why I sometimes have a hard time getting a straight answer when I ask what kind of meat I'm eating. Often one Mauritanian will say goat and another sheep. Maybe they are both right.

One of the more insidious insects in this part of the world is the blister beetle. Supposedly it pisses on you and the acidic liquid causes a blister to form. For some reason these things loved me. This is fourth blister I was given by the little bastards.

Though Kaedi is mostly drab brown houses, there are a few interesting bits of architecture.

I'd been in Mauritania for almost 3 months without seeing a camel up close so I couldn't resist getting a picture when I was finally introduced to one. This guy was waiting for his master to do some shopping.

The small enterprise development (SED) and IT people go out to visit one of the commercial gardens along the Senegal river. In the foreground from left to right: Cat, Margaret, Marc, and Mark.

From left to right: Hector, Virginia, Miriam (in back), Jen, Kari, Scott, and Lisa.

A bunch of us attended the wedding of our friend Biri (he's the one in white), one of the language teachers. He is a Soninke and is from Kaedi. Two of his brothers and a cousin also got married at the same time so there was a huge celebration. Mauritanian weddings normally take place over three days during which the bride and groom are kept apart. The brides remain in a room with her bridesmaids and receives visitors while the grooms hangout while people eat and dance and generally sit around.

Here Biri listens as a group of women sing for him. Typically a bride and groom receive a huge number of wedding gifts. This means that, for the moment a least, they are wealthy. Thus, many people approach the groom asking for money at this time, or, like the women not pictured, show up and give an impromptu performance expecting to be paid something in return.

One can still make a living as a shepherd in this country.

It doesn't rain much here, so when it does the kids take advantage of it. I found these guys splashing around without a care in the world.

Here is a sampling of the mulafas for sale in the market here. Kaedi is known for it's dying of mulafas with many of the local women do this kind of work from their home.

Supposedly orange mulafas are especially prized, but they come in an amazing array of patterns and colors.

There are many boutiques dedicated just to mulafas, but this lady just spread a sheet out on the ground and starting doing business.

This is one of the market streets in Kaedi. There is a wide variety of goods here.

Here is a sampling of the kids living with my family.

As you can see, this is a female dominated household. All the men were off 'working in Nouakchott' during the three months I spent with the Derdeshs.

The true matriarch missed the group photo. Don't know how old she was, but it's probably not as old as she looks.

Molly and Ayrin sport mulafas at our swearing in ceremony.

More volunteers all gussied up and eager for the festivities to begin.

Aly was a great French teacher and a good friend during training. And luckily for me, he lives in Nouakchott so I can continue take French lessons from him.

The San Francisco crew (all of us except Aly, obviously, are from the Bay Area) can now begin cooperating for real.

Molly, Janine, Melanie, Jill, Stephanie, and Julia

The full SED/ICT group, along with Adda and Chris (the tall guy in the middle) who organized training.

This is the class of 2003. We started training with 57 people and ended up with 47. Not too bad by Mauritanian standards. Now were being dispersed to the 4 corners of the country for the next two years.

These trucks may seem piled hi with baggage, but I've seen many a vehicles on the road with luggage racks that would put these to shame.