And Then My Heart Broke....

I've tried to keep these blog posts pretty optimistic and upbeat, and to be fair, that's not too hard to do here if you look for the right things. Until last night, I would say that my service has been pretty idyllic. Ok fine, Peace Corps posted me to the hardest country that still accepts volunteers. All things considered, it hasn't been too difficult. Fine, little kids yell "Toubab" alot. And we did have a really fun indicent within our first few weeks at site, when I woke up in the middle of the night to find a strange man in my room in the middle of the night, stroking my leg. I wish that was as bad as it got here, and until yesterday, it was.

Last night, I was hanging out with my host family, just like any other night. My host sister, Aissata, was visiting us from Kaedi, where she lives these days with her husband and two babies. The girls and I did homework, and we were just sitting down to eat dinner. In Mauritania, meals are served around a large communal bowl. Before eating, everyone washes their hands in a "muskil", which is a pot that you use to pour water over your hands with a large tub beneath it to catch the water. Aissata was washing her hands just as my host brother, Alassane, walked over to sit down. I didn't hear what Aissata said to him. I just saw him wind up and hit her. Let's be clear. When I say "hit her", I mean he hit her so hard in the face that he knocked her across the yard. He must have had something in his hand, because she was literally airborne. Blood and teeth flew everywhere. Of course, it wasn't enough to hit her once. He went back for more as soon as he recovered his balance, pushing Rougi, my heavily pregant host sister, out of the way like a rag doll. We finally got enough bodies in between them to stop it, but not before a coal stove got knocked over, burning half of the people in the yard, or before every person in my family started hysterically crying. We got Aissata into Rougi's room, where she was screaming and lunging at Alassane so hard that it took 3 women to keep her from going after him with some blunt object in her hand. Alassane was outside, screaming about how she's a woman, and has to show him respect. I checked Aissata's mouth to make sure she still had some teeth left, and made sure her face didn't look fractured. Then I checked out Souadou, the youngest, who got pushed over the hot coals when the stove fell. The I went into my room and sobbed. I haven't cried like that in years.

I know that women get treated like dirt in this country most of the time. I am reminded of it daily, when every man I meet tells me that I should marry him, or asks me for "english lessons", aka. to sleep with him. No matter how idiotic and lazy men can be here, they can do no wrong. They are born with silver spoons shoved up their orifices, and they get treated like gold throughout their lives. The men in my host family get twice the amount of food as the women do, even though it's the women that are working all day. Your average Pulaar man spends his day sitting under a tree sleeping. Women are viewed as stupid, petty, and less than second- class citizens. Your average Mauritanian girl will be married by age 15 to a man twice her age. If she was allowed to go to school at all, she usually has to give up her studies by 9th grade, when her family forces her to get married. This brand of Islam allows beating your wife if she is disobedient, so in all likelihood, she will experience domestic violence many times throughout her life. I know all these things. I get condescending attitudes everyday from men, I fight like hell to keep my girls in school, and I do what I can to boost their self- esteem along the way.

I know all of these things in the back of my head, but this is the first time I had experienced in first hand. I've had many of my girls come to school with black eyes, but this was the first time I saw the sheer violence of it, and the first time I saw it happen to someone I love. Aissata is intelligent, confident, and has a good heart. She is easily one of my closest friends here, and the person that I feel like I relate to best. Seeing her get beat up last night was the hardest thing I have ever experienced. It was so much worse a half hour later. I was still crying in my room, and Kadia, my host mom, and Aissata came in to check on me. Aissata, with a swollen face and missing teeth, laughed and told me that it was HER fault, that she shouldn't have made fun of Alassane. She said it was nothing. I screamed, "NO, THIS IS NOT NOTHING. In America, he'd already be in prison." My host mom laughed and said that this is "our way".

I love this country. I love it, but it makes me ill. How can this happen? How can anyone let this happen? What kind of sick moron hits his sister like that? And what kind of society allows it? I can't condone it, and I will not. I pray that Mauritanian women stand up, and they fight. I hope they fight like hell, and keep fighting. For my part, I will never forget last night. I will never forget the way that Aissata looked as I checked her over after we got Alassane away from her. And I will never forget that these girls, my girls, deal with this everyday. I don't know what I can do, other than what I am already doing. I try to educate these kids in a responsible way, keeping equality in my classroom, and building up the girls when I can. Is it enough? No. For the first time in my service, I am rendered speechless, useless. And my heart? Broken.