Life here in Mauritania is hardly what we call a piece of cake (they can’t even make cake for birthday parties because most people here don’t have electricity). And I still have to figure out what they do to celebrate birthday’s. I’m not expecting them to have the same rituals that we do. The goodies and candies that they are familiar with are gum and suckers of abotu 1/120th the variety we have in the states. Instead of home baked oatmeal rasin, peanut butter, ginger, chocolate chip, or sugar cookies they hvae crackers. Sometimes waffer like, sometimes oreo like, sometimes twinki like. but normally they are way too expensive for a normal Mauritanian to buy on a daily basis. Here adults treat themselves to three cups of tea the first one bitter and the last one infidently sweater. If you are wealthy enough you can have three full shot glasses of tea three times a day. Be careful though, they don’t drink them from mugs like we do in the states. So that’s nine shot glasses of green tea with mint sometimes sugar. Lets just say they have the same dental problems that we do but mostly from the lack of calcium, vitimins, and brushing of teeth. Instead you can typically see people walking around with a branch that is brissled otu oand used to pick pieces of food and plac out of their mouthes. Women spend hours in front of mud stoves every day making the classic Mauritanian dishes like rice and fish, maccaronie and meat, or kuss kuss and meat. I can’t emajine it’s a piece of cake cooking Jubba Jin in front of a mud stove at one or two in the afternoon. Jubba jin is their classic lunch special packed in with cooked cabbage, pumpkin, eggplant, carrot, and pototos that lies on top of rice and if lucky seasoned with lemon. All meals are commmunal; that means that the one piece of fish is sharred between six people along with the vegetables. Also, it’s first come first serve, so no deviding into 1/6th evenly. Children who aren’t quick enough often are left out of the vegetables left to eat rice and are seen with beloated malnourished bodies. they generally look younger than they actually are because of this too. When resources are scarce or when most of the countries food supply is imported from neighboring Senegal or from the EU children are the ones that suffer. If your a child who lives five plus hours away from a river or the regional capital than I feel even sorrier for you. People say that we have enough resources to feed everybody the daily callary requirements to lvie a normal life. If you are somebody who quotes thsi statistic ask yourself how you are going to supply fresh vegetables and fruit to children too far away from paved roads where delivery trucks and supermarkets can’t go or be made. Ask yourself how we are going to feed the children in villages too small to even be on a map where they speak an dialect of the local language so far off that even their local countrymen and women can’t understand them. After you’ve asked yourself these questions kindly wake up. Stop using that statistic. realize we have a huge problem and start working on a possible sollution. And I mean a possible one. We have a consumer problem in the US. We have the need to waste our natural resources like wood to make tissues when people in Mauritania and other dessert climates lack enough firewood to cook with. Not only do we need tissues we need 60+ varieties. People here don’t use tissues. they don’t use toilet paper. they can hardly afford notebooks for school. I get excited to sit under a tree in the middle of the afternoon but even that is rare, for how many trees are able to survive in the Sahara? When it lacks water. Some people may say that people shouldn’t live here if they don’t have enough reseources to get by, but where else can they go. Who is going to finance this? the Sahara is expanding. Mauritania use to have trees and wild animals. Now they have pest like goats that eat the remaining vegetation. These people weren’t always without. now what caused that I wonder… Just think about it. It’s all connected. And we all are able to help, somehow if we just try.

~ by avalambrecht on November 11, 2008.