Photo by: Val Nelson

The author and her host mother at home in Chegar, Mauritania.

My neighbor turns to me. “What are you?” she says. I wonder for the thousandth time if Mauritanians ever imagine the existential dilemma this question poses to a recent liberal arts graduate.

It is evening. Across the colorless dunes the sun is red and sinking. I am one of 10 adults and six children squeezed into a station wagon, homebound after a weekend in my regional capital. I consider her question and decide it’s best not to make things too complicated. “I’m a Peace Corps volunteer,” I reply.

Either she has never heard of the Peace Corps, or she’s pretending she didn’t understand. I repeat myself in Hassaniya, and again in French for good measure. She stares blankly. I often meet Mauritanians who tell me I’m the first foreigner they’ve ever seen. “Where are your mother and father?” she asks.

“In America,” I say.

I feel her stiffen. “Are you a spy?” Other passengers turn to stare.

I inhale once, sharply. It’s my job to make friends. “No,” I say, “I’m a volunteer.” I force a smile.

My new friend’s eyes are still narrowed.

“What do you do here?”

What can I say? That I wander around and chat with locals? I spend afternoons with women who roll couscous for dinner? I wait for the summer rains to come and replenish the ground water so gardeners can plant and I’ll have work? That I curse the locusts? I drink tea?

“I’m an agricultural engineer,” I reply. “I work with women’s cooperatives.”

Her hostility melts. She beams with surprise. “You speak Moorish! Did you know Hassaniya before you came to Mauritania?”

I didn’t know the Islamic Republic of Mauritania was open to Americans until the Peace Corps told me they were sending me here. “No,” I say. “I learned Hassaniya in Chegar.”

Another passenger heading to Chegar, a highwayside town of 4,000, cranes around from the middle bench of the station wagon. Men and women are not allowed to touch. But he leers as close to me as possible. “Truly, she has become Moorish,” he says. “She is one of us.” The woman beside me, who moments ago suspected me of espionage, nods in studied agreement.

Photo by: Val Nelson

Karin Elisabeth Dahlgren in the windswept landscape of Chegar, June, 2005.

Moors. I’m either with them or against them. “Thanks be to Allah,” I say.

My neighbor holds my hand. “Where is your husband?” she asks gravely. This question is the substance of half my conversations here. The other half begin with, “Do you pray?” I bite my tongue instead of asking if her small-mindedness comes from the desert’s monotony or her lazy imagination.

“I’m not married, yet,” I say. The child in her lap awakes and cries. She flips her nipple into his mouth.

“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want kids? Don’t you want a nomadic tent?”

I readjust my head-to-toe veil. “Yes. Someday.” I gesture toward the suckling infant. “I’m waiting until your son is older. Allah willing, you will be my mother-in-law.”

Ten months here and I’ve learned what to say. Eavesdropping passengers chuckle. Her eyes gleam like cut diamonds. “You’re waiting until you leave Mauritania to marry a white Christian,” she accuses jealously. She’s another predatory Moor. She wants to swallow me alive.

This woman’s skin is lighter than my own. On my other side, my neighbor’s pigmentation is the darkest shade of Africa. I’ll get married when pigs fly, I think to myself. “Not necessarily,” I say aloud. “Mauritania and America are one. They are the same to me. As soon as I find a nice man, I will settle down.” The difference between integration and absorption.

“Marry a Moor,” she advises. “A white Moor. Black Moors and Africans are vile.”

Chegar’s cell tower flashes past the window. Five more kilometers to the Western edge of town. Five more kilometers until I wedge my way out of the car and walk across the arching sands to my rented room in Chegar’s poorest black neighborhood. Even when moving at the speed of a dilapidated station wagon, five kilometers isn’t long enough to argue against centuries of social conditioning.

I nod. I smile politely. I’ve had this conversation so many times that by bedtime I won’t remember a thing. The woman sitting next to me, however, isn’t likely to forget quite as quickly.

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The milkweed infestation in the dry lakebed between my neighborhood and town is my favorite part of my daily trip to the market. It is a solitary 25-minute walk through lunar desolation. The dusty sky is the same gritty bleached grey as the dusty land. This morning I take my time. I’m in no hurry to get lost in Chegar’s vegetable ladies’ fast-paced conversation.

I round the corner of the primary school and pop out to the pavement. A hunched and toothless woman shuffles past. “White woman,” she wags her finger. “You’ll eat fire in hell if you don’t wear a mulhafa.” Veils and strong winds do not mix. Today I left my mulhafa at home, but my head is covered and a long dress hides my ankles and my elbows.

I cringe. “I know, grandmother. Thank you.” She means well.

Across the highway, Isha sees me. She claps and ululates. “Where have you been?” she asks. “You were gone so long! Did you get married?”

I laugh and return her handshake. I’m surprised how much I missed her. I say the same thing I always say: “Isha, when I find a man who’s good enough, I will bring him back for your daughter before I keep him for myself.”

It’s her turn to laugh while I recite my half of the morning greetings.

Photo by: Val Nelson

The vegetable market in Chegar, “Where the wind's roar is silence.”

The other women beneath Isha’s vegetable tent laugh, too. Zeyna elbows Yummoi proudly. “Kareena knows Hassaniya so well!” she brags.

“She is a daughter of Chegar.”

Yummoi agrees. “Kareena is our sister.” I am the town foreigner. I am everybody’s favorite.

Two years as a lonely American in a Moorish village is a long time. The women’s greetings this morning are encouraging. Perhaps two years will be time enough to carve myself a home.

I settle back and happily survey the market while talk picks up around me. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Most West African markets are full of dancing and bright colors and music, in addition to fruits and vegetables. But Mauritania is nothing like Africa. The wind’s roar is silence. The weight of the empty desert oppresses our sounds and movements. Women’s veils and men’s robes billow like sails. People drift by gracefully in slow-motion.

Yummoi interrupts my thoughts. “Have you heard anything from your family?”

“No,” I say. “But I have other news. I made some phone calls while I was gone and, Allah willing, I think we can get some money to dig those two wells.” The women listen carefully. “But the money I found won’t be enough. We need to hold neighborhood reunions this week to recruit men willing to donate their time for labor. Women need to volunteer to feed the workers. And we should choose the places where we’ll dig.”

“Thanks be to Allah!” Yummoi exclaims. I’m glad she’s excited. I’ve been resisting this project all year. Being a conduit for money instead of ideas makes me uneasy. But until we have water, Chegar’s 60-plus gardens will stay empty as sandboxes. I’m here to work with locals to solve community-defined problems. And everybody I meet tells me right away, “We have no water. Can you help?”

Besides, I’m tired of walking 20 minutes every evening with a bucket of muddy water balanced on my head. Building a well in my neighborhood isn’t such a bad idea.

Zeyna protests. “Only two wells? We’ll fight over them. Some people will try to keep other people from using them. We need more than two!”

In most situations, Moors are too proud to wheedle for handouts. Conversations with development workers unfortunately are not one of them. “Two wells for two neighborhoods is more than enough,” I say. “And it’s best to dig before the rains. Two wells in three months is plenty.” I thought the benefits of two deep, sturdy wells full of reliable and clean water would be more self-evident.

“With enough money, we can get anything done,” Isha says. I’d like to encourage her optimism, but I can’t ignore her greed. I express an unpopular opinion. “No matter what, hard work is more important than money.” She is too polite to disagree.

“She looks at my white skin and sees a well-educated, highly trained farm and garden expert. I look at myself and see an overeducated, adventure-seeking twenty-something avoiding a real career.”

Sometimes it seems we have nothing in common. I want Isha’s friendship. She wants money. I’d like to build her self-confidence. She would rather I build her garden for her. She looks at my white skin and sees a well-educated, highly trained farm and garden expert. I look at myself and see an overeducated, adventure-seeking twenty-something avoiding a real career. What am I doing here? I ask myself. I have as much greed and as much optimism as Isha.

My host brother’s wife, Mimma, joins us. The women change the subject and are talking, fast. It’s taken me months to get used to so much listening without understanding.

I listen for a pause. “What does qaddim mean?” I ask.

They hesitate. They are either unsure of how much to tell me or of how to explain. “Ah, you don’t speak Hassaniya at all!” Mimma accuses. “You don’t know anything!”

Mimma and I are about the same age. I eat frequently at her house. I’ve spent more afternoons with her and her age-mates than with anybody else in Chegar. I respect her. I trust her. Mimma is my closest friend—maybe my only friend—in Chegar.

“Qaddim means a woman slave,” she says. “Like me. I’m your qaddim. Right?”

The women laugh. I trip over myself in shock. “What?” I say. Where on earth did that come from?

Photo by: Val Nelson

The author's host sister, niece, and nephew.

“I work for you, don’t I? I cook your meals. You have white skin. I’m black, black, black. I’m your qaddim.”

Suddenly the wind relents and the dust clears. Everything is sunlight. I’ve never felt more mocked.

Although Mauritanians made slavery illegal years ago, reminders of that historic inequality reappear in stereotypes and casual conversations. Even so, I’m a contemporary American volunteer, not an ancient Moorish aristocrat. I thought she knew the difference. Are the women laughing because she said what they’re too shy to say, or because they know she crossed a line? I feel 5 years old.

I want to tell her that I hang out with her to be polite. I want to say that more often than not I force myself to visit. Struggling through Hassaniya, fending off her four runny-nosed curious children, choking down her tasteless food, and embedding myself in the monotony of her housebound days is hardly my idea of fun. I live here, same as her. When will that count for something? Before I can say anything, she announces, “After all, you’re not from here. You’re not one of us.”

If I weren’t a foreigner Mimma wouldn’t be so cruel. If I weren’t a stranger I wouldn’t feel so alone. I tremble. I hold back tears. I hold back rage. I’m too ignorant in this culture to feel confident that my reaction is appropriate. After all, I’m their guest. I don’t want to offend.

Do Moors veil their ingrown xenophobia behind politeness and reserve?

Do I prefer feeling grateful for their companionship, hospitality, and patience rather than admitting I can’t stand them and their backward ways?

Mimma speaks when I don’t. “I’m only joking,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. I don’t feel all that reassured.

Her smile widens. “By the way, where’s my trip-gift? What did you get me while you were away?” She’s really pushing. Hard. The other women nudge one another in anticipation of my response.

It’s only a job, I remind myself. A foreigner is entertainment. This conversation is their recreation. I’m not like them. This is my work.

Photo by: Val Nelson

Members of Dahlgren's extended host family.

“Ask my mom,” I say flatly. I am exhausted. “Everything I brought back I gave to her.” How much am I required to give?

The women are delighted. “You’re Moorish!” Isha says. “You speak Hassaniya so well!” says Zeyna. “Ask my mom,” repeats Yummoi. I said the right thing at the right time. This time, though, it’s not another line. This time, it’s true.

Mimma extends her hand to me. “I’m heading back. Are you ready to go?”

I stand up, marveling at how intricately my life folds into theirs. One moment all of us are posing as characters in an elaborate game of make believe. The next, Mimma and I are two women walking home from the market. So many compromises. I understand completely. I don’t understand a thing. I am beginning to understand.

Before I go, Yummoi shakes my hand. Her round face is solemn. “Kareena, don’t go back to America,” she says. “What will we do without you? We’ll miss you when you leave!”

Mimma and I wind our way through the milkweed. Date palms poke up from the horizons like toothpicks. The sky is so huge and so silent it’s impossible to forget I live beneath it. I am a hundred different people at the same time.

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Karin Elisabeth Dahlgren, a native of Madison, Wis., graduated from Beloit in 2004 with an interdisciplinary studies major in Narrative, Imagination, and the Cultural Construction of Reality. She is midway through her two-year volunteer commitment to the Peace Corps in West Africa.

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RELATED LINK:

"Beloit and the Peace Corps: Adventures in Service," Beloit College Magazine, Spring 2001

EMAIL:

Susan Kasten - Editor, Beloit College Magazine