Back to reality

After a temporary hiatus from village life, I’m back in my dusty familiar home. Christmas and New Years was spent with other Peace Corps volunteers in Saint Louis, Senegal and in Mauritania, Nouakchott. I was very happy to find warm showers, toilets (with toilet paper!), beer and cheese waiting for me, but found myself itching to get back to my work here. Upon arriving I found the landowner’s family finally moved into my house. A mother and her five children have become part of my everyday life, which for me is awesome. They own a boutique attached to the house and I find it very useful to pop my head in and buy soap or phone credit from them when I need. They are a wonderful family and I’m excited to get to know them over the years.
The youngest girl, Mariem, is about 5 years old and slowly warming to me. She is still unsure of me and with good reason… I often joke with her and try and play little games – which for her, an adult willing to play with kids is unreal. I am reminded of my dad back home in Kansas City, who often has water fights, roller-blade races and secret snacks before dinner with our next door neighborhood kid Conrad. I take his cues and know that eventually I’ll be accepted as a worthy playmate.
My homecoming has been a little hectic, and a bit hilarious. Since the new family has moved in the house I live in has been under some reconstruction. They cleaned the yard, put more bricks on the wall and built stairs up to the roof. The house, which is all concrete, has 3 rooms and a salon. Fatou and I have two of the smaller rooms and the family has the salon and the big room. In Fatou’s room there is an indoor bathroom, which isn’t really much nicer than the one outside, but has the perk of not walking across the yard to the wooden outhouse. In her tiny bathroom there is a creaky faucet with a bucket underneath (the bathtub) and a hole in the ground (the toilet). I returned from Nouakchott with visions of showers in my head and sighed as I squatted down next to the faucet to fill my bucket with cold water to shower.
Now, before I continue, I must add that one of the renovations that the new family had was fixing the outdoor faucet, where they get all their water. Because of this the water switch which controls both faucets, which is a latch about 7 inches down in a dirt hole, was switched to On and buried and packed under the dirt. This resulted in a constant drip in the indoor faucet, which wasn’t a lot, but was enough to get my attention. As I finished filling my bucket I turned off the faucet and watched the water continue to drip drip drip. I decided that the best way to remedy this was to try to turn the faucet off as hard as I could… Guess what happened… Yes. It broke. And not only did it break, but water shot out with so much force I sat for a second with my mouth hanging open watching it blast against the opposite wall in the bathroom before I could process what had happened. On top of this disaster, Fatou was in Nouakchott visiting her family and it was about 11:30 at night. So the family in the other room was asleep and quiet as I sat alone in the bathroom with the water blasting, spraying and soaking everything in the small room. I ran outside to look for the water switch and found smooth dirt where the hole used to be and felt the panic creep up my spine. I went inside, soaking wet and wild eyed, knocked on the family’s door and was greeted by the sleepy eyed mother. In my broken Hassaniya I think I must have said something along the lines of “Much much water in room, I don’t know no turn off… - Help!”
The message must have been somewhat clear, because she looked at me with a slight shake of her head and called her 8 year old son over. She told him to go outside and dig for the switch. So that’s how I found myself dripping wet and digging frantically in the dirt at midnight with an 8 year old. Fatou returned home to find a piece of wood hammered into the faucet pipe, wrapped with rubber and she knew exactly who to call. Now our indoor faucet has a new, non-rusty, head and holds tight. I would say I’ve been more careful with Mauritanian products, but when I left with Fatou one night to eat at our friend’s house, I turned my key to lock my door and the whole lock fell out onto the floor. I stood shaking my head staring at the door while Fatou crumpled in laughter next to me. I told her that I guess I was just to strong for my own good, and she nodded and told me, through a half smile with crinkled tears in her eyes, that she would call someone tomorrow.
And so my story continues – fixed and better than ever.