Food For Thought

Think Again: The Peace Corps
In the eyes of Americans, no government agency better exemplifies the optimism, can-do spirit, and selfless nature of the United States than the Peace Corps. Unfortunately, it’s never lived up to its purpose or principles.
BY ROBERT L. STRAUSS | APRIL 22, 2008
The Peace Corps Is a Potent Diplomatic Weapon
(http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/04/21/think_again_the_peace_corps)

No. With diplomats stuck inside barricaded compounds or loath to venture from expatriate residential ghettos, a Peace Corps volunteer is likely to be the only representative of the U.S. government that poor, rural populations ever see. As the State Department cuts back on its public diplomacy and cultural exchange programs, the Peace Corps predominantly young volunteers wind up carrying more and more of the responsibility for demonstrating that the United States still has good intentions abroad.

That puts the Peace Corps and its volunteers in an awkward position. The Peace Corps was created as a separate, independent agency so that it would not be subject to short-term foreign-policy objectives. Volunteers arent trained or expected to represent the U.S. government, its positions, or its interests. When the Peace Corps is characterized as an effective diplomatic weapon, it is thanks to the goodwill that volunteers generate toward the American people, not toward official U.S. policy.

Unfortunately, of the tens of millions of people with whom Peace Corps volunteers have interacted during the last 47 years, many have no idea what the Peace Corps is. Few have any idea that the Peace Corps is a U.S. government agency funded 100 percent by American taxpayers. On the plus side, over my five years as a country director in Cameroon, hundreds of villagers and officials told me how happy they were simply to have volunteers in their communities. Less encouraging is that just as often, I was told how fondly they remembered the Peace Corps volunteer from Rome, Paris, or Tokyo. Its tough to be an effective diplomatic weapon and build goodwill among nations if people dont understand what nation you came from in the first place.

The Peace Corps Recruits Only the Best and the Brightest

Best and brightest? As long as applicants meet the minimum standards and are healthy and persistent, the Peace Corps rarely rejects them outright.

False. The Peace Corps learned how to recruit by emulating traditional fishermen in developing countriestoss a large net and hope for the best. For decades, this system has been notoriously ineffective, sending Spanish speakers to Arabic-speaking North Africa and offering the rare, farm-raised, French-speaking applicant a job teaching English in Mongolia.

The Peace Corps claims that about 1 in 3 applicants eventually becomes a volunteer, implying that the agency is about as selective as many elite schools in the United States. Not long ago, the figure commonly cited was 1 in 7. Either way, the truth is that so long as applicants meet the minimum standards and are healthy and persistent, the Peace Corps rarely rejects them outright. Each group sent overseas includes a few highly motivated and capable individualsand then there are the vast majority who before joining the Peace Corps werent sure what to do with their lives, were fresh out of school and seeking a government-subsidized travel experience or something to bolster their rsum, or for whom the Peace Corps represented a chance to escape a humdrum life or recent divorce.

Once overseas, the chances of being kicked out are slim. I queried my fellow country directors in Africa to find out how many trainees they had sent packing due to unacceptable performance. The figure was less than 2 percent a year, meaning that once accepted, an individualqualified or not, motivated or notis pretty much assured of sticking around.

Unfortunately, the Peace Corps failure to recruit the best isnt limited to volunteers. Few agencies rival the Peace Corps for the percentage of political appointees filling mission-critical positions. Hardly the sexiest of sinecures, the Peace Corps 29 political appointments tend to be lower-level politicians, third-tier party loyalists, the relatives of elected officials, or minor political underlings who get parked at the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps Sends Volunteers Where They Are Needed Most

Rarely. Like many bureaucracies, the Peace Corps operates predominantly on inertia. The agency sends most volunteers to the same places where volunteers have been sent before, often to do the same thing volunteers were doing 20 and 30 years agoregardless of whether their mission still makes sense.

Reviewing the most recent U.N. Human Development Report shows that the Peace Corps is active in 10 countries with high human development, 49 with medium human development, and 11 with low human development. With so few resources to achieve its goals, one wonders why the Peace Corps hasnt concentrated what little it has on the worlds poorest countries, where the need is likely greatest. Granted, half a dozen of those places are either so unstable or dangerous that theres little hope of achieving much. But even if the Peace Corps didnt concentrate only on the poorest of the poor, one has to question what it is still doing in Romania and Bulgaria, two countries that have already become members of the European Union.

One might also ask why there is approximately one volunteer sent to Tonga for every 3,800 Tongans but only one sent to Tanzania for every 245,000 Tanzanians. Or what the logic is of having one volunteer for every 2.5 million Mexicans when tens of thousands of Americans live in Mexico, millions of Mexicans live in the United States, and the two countries are among each others largest trading partners. The reason, in many cases, is that someone simply decided on a number and no one asked if it made much sense. Of course, closing a program in one country and transferring its resources to another requires explanation and large expenses, and is often resisted by the State Department and by zealous, vocal former volunteers who hate to see programs in their countries shut down.

Some will argue that wherever there are poor people the Peace Corps has a role. But with the Peace Corps 8,000 volunteers spread out across more than 70 countries, giving each one such a small presence guarantees that no one can say with any authority if the agency is making a difference or not.

The Peace Corps Is a Development Organization

Says who? Since its founding in 1961, the Peace Corps has probably sent more development workers overseas, now upward of 190,000, than any other organization. But if the Peace Corps is a development organization, then its a bit like the late, bug-eyed comedian Rodney Dangerfield who, no matter what happened, claimed, I dont get no respect.

Indeed, if the Peace Corps were as successful at development as its literature and many volunteers and staff members attest, one would expect other organizations and scholars to cite it as a model. Yet pick up any of the recently popular books on development by Paul Collier, William Easterly, or Jeffrey Sachs, and you wont find a single reference to the Peace Corps. Tony Blairs 464-page Commission for Africa report? Not a word. Beyond Assistance, the 215-page report of the HELP Commission on foreign-assistance reform? Just three passing mentions.

The reason the Peace Corps is overlooked as a development organization has a lot to do with the youth and inexperience of the majority of its volunteers. Equally important is its unwillingness to decide if it is a development organization or an organization with a mission to promote world peace and friendship, as stipulated by Congress in the Peace Corps Act. It would like to be both, but finds itself falling short on both objectives because it cannot decide which is the more important.

Many Peace Corps staff and volunteers see development work as a burdensome obligation undertaken only to legitimize the cultural exchange aspects of the agency. But without a focus on economic development and an improvement in standards of living, the Peace Corps is really little more than an extended, government-sponsored semester-abroad program. For applicants, the Peace Corps emphasizes the personal experience, not the volunteers development impact. That, of course, is not how the Peace Corps pitches itself to foreign governments, to whom it promises significant technical development assistanceonly to provide predominantly recent college graduates who may or may not have any useful skills to offer.

The real problem is that the Peace Corps has never done a serious job of evaluating its impact. If it is a world peace and friendship organization designed to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served, then, as a start, it ought to ask the peoples served if they even know which country Peace Corps volunteers come from. If its a development agency, then it needs to undertake rigorous measures to assess its impact. Currently, it does neither but rather relies on biannual surveys in which volunteers comment on whether they think they are making a difference. Its a bit like asking a bunch of doctors how they think they are doing without ever talking to the patientsor even checking to see if they are still alive.

Locals Love Peace Corps Volunteers

Not always. People everywhere almost always get a kick out of hearing a foreigner speakingor trying to speaktheir language. In small villages around the world, a foreigner who can use local parables correctly or dance the sacred traditional dance, or who appears content to sit around the village circle for hours on end, is a curiosity, an amusement. Lifelong attachments can and do grow. In Cameroon, dozens, if not hundreds of times, I was asked what had become of so and so, a volunteer who had served 30 or even 40 years earlier. I loved that many people had such fond memories of volunteers. For better or worse, people often loved their volunteers as much for the volunteers willingness to buy rounds of drinks as for any concrete thing he or she might have achieved.

But just as often, people were disturbed by volunteers who had set terrible examples by abusing drugs or alcohol or violating cultural sensitivities and professional norms. The Peace Corps strives to represent the diversity of the American population, but in casting its net wide, it scoops up many who represent less than the best American traditions of dedication, persistence, creativity, optimism, and honesty. Like any large organization, the Peace Corps has its share of deadbeats, philanderers, parasites, gamblers, and alcoholics. The problem is that the agency sends these people tens of thousands of miles from home and expects them to work responsibly with minimal supervision. Disasters logically result.

The Peace Corps is remarkably effective at cleaning up the messes those volunteers make and getting them back to the United States before local authorities step in. Whats less clear is the Peace Corps overall impact on peoples impressions and understandings of the United States. Does the goodwill generated by the small minority of great volunteers outweigh the indifference or outright hostility caused by the mediocre or truly sinister ones? The agency doesnt know, because it doesnt ask.

The Peace Corps Has a Strategy

Nope. The Peace Corps has plans, not a strategy. A strategy implies a conclusion, a final goal. The Peace Corps has none. In Washington, plans are already underway to celebrate the agencys 50th anniversary in 2011. Celebrating half a century of existence ought to be a dubious benchmark for any development organization, particularly one that actively encourages its volunteers to work themselves out of a job, yet has no plans for doing so itself in any of the more than 70 countries where it is currently active.

The Peace Corps is unable to do this because it never has had any benchmarks to signal when the mission has been accomplished. In Cameroon, volunteers are still teaching math and science, the job they originally came to do in 1962. This was a situation I tried but failed to change because the placing of volunteers in the field was more important to the Peace Corps than questioning whether the Cameroonian government had failed to do its job by not training and hiring adequate numbers of local teachers over a period of more than four decades. In any case, doing the same thing for 46 years ought to indicate that something is broken, something the Peace Corps is unlikely to fix. A serious development organization would either not allow such a situation to persist or would refuse to abet it.

The Peace Corps Is One of the Greatest Things America Has Ever Done

Dream on. Today, the Peace Corps remains a Peter Pan organization, afraid to grow up, yet also afraid to question the thinking of its founding fathers. The rush to fulfill John F. Kennedys 1960 campaign pledge was such that the Peace Corps never learned to crawl, let alone walk, before it set off at a sprinters pace. The result is a schizophrenic entity, unsure if it is a development organization, a cheerleader for international goodwill, or a government-sponsored cross-cultural exchange program. In any case, the Peace Corps tries to do too many things in too many places with too few people to really get much of anything done at all.

Despite these inherent faults, the Peace Corps is probably one of the least-expensive development agencies ever created. Supporting a volunteer in the field costs just $41,000 a year, including overhead. Thats about $12,000 less than a years worth of tuition, room, and board at Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service and a small fraction of the cost of supporting a single American diplomat or USAID worker in a developing country. The agency has long prided itself on doing more with a dollar than most other development outfits. Peace Corps Press Director Amanda Beck estimates that the agencys direct expenditures per volunteer are actually only $3,000 a year. But if that is the case, one then has to wonder what the Peace Corps is doing with the other $38,000 it spends per year for each volunteer. However you count it, the agencys relative leanness says more about the lack of significant results in the development business than it does about the Peace Corps cost effectiveness.

Based predominantly on the life-changing experiences volunteers had while serving, the Peace Corps continues to generate strong support from the American people. But for the agency to approach its potential, deep, substantive changes must be made.

Sargent Shriver, the agencys first director, recognized that a Peace Corps, small and symbolic, might be good public relations, but a Peace Corps that was large and had a major impact on problems in other countries could transform the economic development of the world, according to former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford. Because the Peace Corps has tried to be all things to all comers, that grand vision has never been realized or even approached. To become effective and relevant, the Peace Corps must now give up on the myth that its creation was the result of an immaculate conception that can never be questioned or altered. It must go out and recruit the best of the best. It must avoid goodwill-generating window dressing and concentrate its resources in a limited number of countries that are truly interested in the development of their people. And it must give up on the risible excuse that in the absence of quantifiable results, good intentions are enough. Only then will it be able to achieve its original objective of significantly altering the lives of millions for the better.

Is West Africa a Country?

While waiting for my medical clearance to head to BF, I am living the life of a retiree and fielding questions that I don't know the exact answers to. Every day, I read the paper, do the crossword, putter around the house/yard, and take afternoon naps. Sometimes, I walk to the library or my retired family members invite me out to lunch, and we leisurely enjoy a meal with other retirees and young families. At the same time, families/friends/strangers ask me many general, well-intentioned questions about Africa and my upcoming assignment (see blog post title for an example). If I learned anything from preparing for my Mauritania and Morocco assignments, it is that I should instead enjoy my time in the States and never avoid an opportunity to fulfill goal 3 (PC plug). I’ll understand my assignment and buy things I need when I’m in-country. Besides a sharp cooking knife, deodorant, accounting notes en francais, and a couple cans of SPAM, what do I really need* to pack anyway?

I’m actually looking forward to getting away from America’s consumer culture. Yesterday, I finished reading "When a Billion Chinese Jump," by J. Watts. The book went on and on about how China's the western world's dumping ground and how the country is sacrificing the environment for its unsustainable economic growth. Since the author portrays a pretty dismal future, I would have liked him to go more into what grassroots/international efforts can change this system. Hope is not enough. I think PC volunteers tend to be very hopeful (at first anyway), but we lack proper training and leadership to make much of a long-term impact. Perhaps I am cynical and hypocritical, yet I still hope working with PCR beats doing nothing.

This entry is digressing from the reason I wanted to post a new entry. Victoria’ Secret sent my retired aunt a heart-shaped coupon for a free Valentine’s Day thong. I don’t want to think about what kind of underwear my aunty wears, but I took her coupon and picked up the thong. I’ve never been inside the Ala Moana store before, and I wanted to see consumers’ fascination with Victoria’s Secret, especially after reading this article last December:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2074278/Victorias-Secret-Luxury-underwear-cotton-picked-abused-child-slaves.html
Of course, my underwear wasn’t free.

Whether child labor should or shouldn't be supported is another entry...

Something else to consider, BF lost 2-1 to Sudan in the African Cup football/soccer quarterfinals game. When did Sudan become such a football powerhouse?

___
*Okay, I still am an American consumer. Many thanks to Aunty B for the clothes, toiletries, kitchen/office supplies, duct tape, etc. that will definitely help me with settling in and save some CFA.

Hello Again, West Africa!

I've read some really great PCV blogs and some pretty annoying ones over the past three years. My own half-cared-for blogbaby is something I put together mainly for my mom to see what I've been up to on the other side of the globe. Because I emailed and posted photos online, spent most of my time with my community, and am still a pretty ignorant, self-absorbed "chinouiya westerner," this blog took a backseat. Retrospectively, I'm not too proud of my posts.

All that will change!!! Inshallah...

Once I get medically approved, I will head to Burkina Faso (see the tan-colored country below Mali) for a 6-month contract with FAIJ, an organization that provides the Burkinabe youth with microfinance loans for their entrepreneurial projects. Here's more info about FAIJ copied from its website (oui, je dois parler en francais pour ce travail, mais, alhumdulilah, il y a googletranslator):

PRESENTATION
Le Fonds d'Appui aux Initiatives des Jeunes est une innovation du Gouvernement visant à améliorer l’accès des jeunes en général et singulièrement des jeunes formés en entreprenariat, au financement des micro-projets. Il a pour objectif l’insertion socio-professionnelle des jeunes par la création des opportunités d’emploi.
Le Fonds a donc pour activité principale, le financement des micro-projets des jeunes aux conditions établies.

OBJECTIF GENERAL
Le Fonds d'Appui aux Initiatives des Jeunes vise globalement à réduire la pauvreté, le chômage, le sous emploi des jeunes en milieux urbain et rural.

OBJECTIFS SPECIFIQUES
•Financer des prêts individuels et communautaires.
•Suivre et encadrer les promoteurs.
•Former la jeunesse.

BENEFICIAIRES
Les bénéficiaires du Fonds d'Appui aux Initiatives des Jeunes sont:
•les jeunes de nationalité burkinabé âgés de 15 à 35 ans ,ayant reçu une formation en entreprenariat et porteurs d'un projet ;
•les associations de jeunesse détentrices d'un projet générateur de revenuset /ou créateur d'emplois et dont deux(2)responsables(au moins)ont bénéficié d'une formation en entreprenariat ;
•toute personne ayant un projet susceptible de créer des emplois pour les jeunes.

CONDITIONS D'ELIGIBILITE
•Etre jeunes, de 15 à 35 ans.
•Avoir suivi avec succès une formation en entreprenariat.
•Avoir un projet générateur de revenus et créateur d'emplois.
•Etre de bonne moralité.
•Avoir l'aval d'un Mentor ou d'un Parrain.
•Accepter que le fonds assure le suivi de l'activité de l'entreprise investissements réalisés , comptabilité ) et cela jusqu'au remboursement intégral du prêt.
•Participer aux actions de formation et d'encadrement proposées par le fonds.

CONDITIONS D'OCTROI
Le FAIJ ne conditionne pas systématiquement son financement à une garantie ou un aval. Le traitement sera au cas par cas en fonction du montant sollicité. C'est la nature de l'activité financée et la qualité du promoteur qui seront les facteurs déterminants dans l'octroi du crédit.

Les concours du Fonds varient de 200 000 F CFA à 2 000 000 F CFA. Le taux d'intérêt est de 2% pour les personnes handicapées, 3,5% pour les filles et 4% pour les hommes.
La durée de remboursement est de 3 à 36 mois.Il peut être appliqué un différé de paiement de 0 à 6 mois maximum.

Six months isn't a long period of time, and my role will be to act as a business/financial adviser in the capital, Ouagadougou. What this job (and the culture and lifestyle accompanied with it) actually entails, stay tuned!

A Color Town

After visiting Chefchaouen last spring, I came back to Btown with an idea to increase tourism in town. Google Chefchaouen, and you'll see that the town is painted in beautiful blue and white tones. So I told some rug sellers here (half joking), "What if we paint Btown green? We'll be known as the green city, and all the tourists will come here and buy your rugs!"

A year and a half later, my idea's catching on...Check out these freshly painted neighborhoods:

Flashback Email from RIM

Oh, how innocent and excited I was when I first joined PC!

-----Original Message-----
From: K [mailto:@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 2:59 AM
Subject: Life with a Host Family, unproofread and written fast, pls feel free to fwd to friends/fam

Been living with my stage family for just about three weeks now. The worse few days have been the last few days, because I had a really bad case of diarrhea (I think it's because I was dumb and had a couple of frozen hibiscus sugar popsicle-like things called ball de bastiques, which are made with unfiltered water). That's pretty much out of my system thanks to antibiotics. Got to spend a day back at the Peace Corps center in a fly-free, ac room, drinking all the Gatorade I wanted (which wasn't much at the time, since whatever I ate went straight through me). I'll no longer take for granted being in a room with less than ten flies, furniture, or moving air. The up sides of having diarrhea have been getting to bond with other sick volunteers (bowel movement is a popular topic of convo) and not being afraid of using the outdoor bathroom/douche (aka hole in the ground). I've become completely efficient at bugspraying the douche and using a teapot sans toilet paper, all while holding my flashlight in between my head and right shoulder.

In other news, I'm starting to get adjusted to life here. Every morning, I have bread and tea for breakfast, which kind of makes me feel like I'm in prison, but it's food so I can't complain. Then, I walk for about ten minutes past the goats, cows, chickens, dogs, and donkeys that roam the sandy road to my 4-hour long language class. It's not very productive for me, but I just keep telling myself that any French I learn is helpful.

Doesn't matter that most people here speak Hassaniaya.. We eat rice and fish every day for lunch, called maruhoot. It's so hot and humid in the afternoon, it's no surprise the whole town shuts down between 12-4. I usually hang out with my family or with any neighboring family (a few PC volunteers live near me and my neighbors have electricity and tvs). At 4:00, I go back to language for a couple hours. Me and two other kids are learning French now, and hopefully, inshallah (if god wills it), we'll switch over to hassaniya soon. After class, I either visit friends, play cribbage, play Frisbee, or watch tv at someone else's house. I've hit it off with a 27-yr old Sonnike woman. We sometimes have dance parties, joke about stealing babies, and pretend to steal other people's husbands. Sounds strange, I know. But here, marriage, kids, and religion are life. To be 23 and not married with no kids is crazy. I've received countless marriage proposals, questions why I'm not married, and offers to convert to Islam.

Sometimes I can joke around with answers, and sometimes I have to talk to really ignorant people who get me so mad. I just have to keep putting myself in their shoes: some toubab (foreigner) who doesn't know our culture, speak any one of our languages, and doesn't cover herself from head to toe in 100+ weather, and who left the land of riches and opportunity to come here, single and old, must be crazy. Why else would she come here?

My 14 year old sister is married and has a baby. Right now, our host mom is in Nouakchott, so it's the 14 yr old, me, our 5 yr old brother, and the baby at the "house." Typing this now, it sounds odd that she's taking care of everyone, and the 5 yr old is already an uncle, but that's pretty normal here. Naked babies and naked kids, who pee anywhere they please. I had another brother, but one day he left for Nouakchott and I don't think he's coming back soon. He's 8, and the 5 yr old really misses him. Since he's been gone, I've become one of the 5 yr old's favorite toys. The kids on my street think I'm a great toy, and there are so many of them, and they all know my name (I realize my English grammer sucks now). My neighbors have a pet cow and goat, and my other neighbors have a pet monkey. Kids are free to roam around the town. It's so interesting how there are no street signs and people don't know what day they are born on, but everyone knows their way around and how old everyone is.

I think what I miss most about the states is all the diversity. With food, people, ideas. Tradition is pretty big here. You don't question why things are done a certain way (which of course frustrates me cos I'm a huge WHY person). Yet at the same time, I think I'm slowly accepting everything and trying to fit in. Mark called me the other day, and I cried at the end of the call. There's no such thing as privacy here: during the call, the 5 yr. old was on me, the baby was crying a few feet away, and my sister was trying to listen in on an English conversation. She asked me why I was crying, and I told her that I really missed my family and friends back in the states. She started crying with me and we bonded. She said that she cried because her mom's in Nouakchott for a couple days (a 6 hour taxi ride I think? away). It was funny because we had a business lecture today, where the man said American and Mauritanian women can bond over emotional attachments, and here I was, bonding.

Two funny stories before I sign off. Yes, random haphazard email, I know.
1. There's a soda called Hawai here. I tell people I'm from there, and sometimes that my family owns the soda. It's great.
2. Last night, if I can't create any positive change in Mauritania, at least I know that I've been able to educate another family about my culture and life in general. I was visiting a friend, and her host brother asked if I knew Jet Li. I said he's my brother, and they got sooo excited. So I said I was just kidding, and explained that the difference between Chinois/Chinese and Japonais/Japanese people (the family thought they were the same). I also was able to explain that so many different kinds of people immigrated to the States, so that is how I'm Japanese and also American, and how there are so many kinds of people in the USA. My family doesn't speak French as well as this family, so I'm sure they still think I'm weird. But this family at least knows. I also told them I ate frogs and snails in the states, and they do not, so they still think I'm weird. It's a good weird though.

Tea is a huge custom here, and I had tea at their house. The more foam in your shot glass, the more esteemed you are, and I had 75% foam. It's the most foam I've ever been served. Me and my weird eating habits, someone who doesn't eat fish and rice for lunch every day, someone who wanted rice for dinner instead of lunch (very shocking and unacceptable here), got 75% foam. So all in all, despite the diarrhea, wild animals and crap everywhere, lack of material comforts, and extreme heat, life is pretty good here.

In a couple of days, all the volunteers regroup from their stage families and come back to the center. We'll head out on a week long site visit to wherever we will be for the next two years. Word on the street is I may end up in Atar. Google it, and I'll confirm the next time I have internet access...

All the best from RIM! Please keep in touch and let me know what's new with you. Sorry if it takes me awhile to reply back (even though other volunteers have updated blogs with pictures). I've been hanging out with local families and other volunteers instead of going to the cyber cafes. Also, my family's kind of poor, and I don't want to flash my American wealth yet. But I appreciate America more than ever and can't wait to come back!

Kathryn

PS my cell phone may be broken? Not sure, but I'll try to be late to class one day (stores, like the post office, are only open during the same hours we have class) to visit the phone store and find out.

Jellaba Bead

Despite growing up in the technological age, I'm still a novice with my video camera. I'd like to blame 3 years of usage on this continent as the problem, but that would be a lie. Either way, here's my first video on how to make a jellaba button. Fatima, the woman whose hands are shown here, is one of the ladies who makes buttons for the Marche Maroc jewelry. She had a welder grind up a nail, which she used to hold the plastic inner tube.

In this culture, one learns by watching. It took me at least 4 demonstrations before I was kind of able to make my first bead. Thank Allah Fatima was so patient. However, I am an excellent shopper. So, mom, look forward to arts and crafts projects with +5,000 beads to choose from!

Soooo....my internet is too slow to load a video. Here are some photos instead:

(Fatima teaching her daughter how to make a button)

(Osama, Fatima's son, and our adorable distraction during the whole process)

(After observing, I finally had a hands-on opportunity)

My Nokia Torch

In 2008, I purchased this cell phone in Mauritania.

It's been with me ever since.

I dedicate this entry to this phone, which accompanied me to many toilets, to 7 countries, and inside my mosquito net. It's guided me through blackouts, sandstorms, camping adventures, and empty streets. It was the only light source (after my rechargeable flashlight broke) for my first host family. Many meals were prepared and a baby named after me was even given birth by this light. It has probably been the closest thing to me these past three years (is that sad?). Here are some stats:

Messages sent on it=4905
Messages received=9998
Duration of all calls sent=6 hours, 50 minutes, 45 seconds
Duration of all calls received=90 hours, 11 minutes, 43 seconds
(*This counter actually reached 99:59:59 in 2009 and reset itself to 0, so I really received +190 hours of phone calls)

And, I'd like to thank all my loved ones and fellow PCVs for making these stats possible. May Allah reward your parents.