I think my Dad once told me that his father would come home for lunch every afternoon and spend a few hours there until the worst heat had passed. I remember hearing stories about summer days spent in the shade of a porch, enjoying iced tea with visiting neighbors. This was lost with air conditioning, which gives everyone a good reason to stay locked away inside their homes. A/C opened up places like Texas and Arizona to comfortable living and huge population growth. It also increased the length of our working day and our productivity.
If A/C ever reaches Mauritania, I imagine it will have the same effect. Families will move inside and focus their time and resources on that space, and the open, active communities that exist now, communities where every door is always open and anyone can visit anytime, will be lost; but, my God, will it be a more comfortable place to live.
My host family already spends the entire day with the television dragged outside and turned on. Even now, when people visit, greetings are exchanged and then everyone watches TV together, only occasionally talking. All the controls on the front of my host family's TV are broken except for the volume up button. The remote recently died from a severe sand stroke. When I first arrived, the volume was up to 50, about halfway to the top. Everyday since, someone has stepped up to the TV and pressed all the buttons in an attempt to turn it off, turn it up, turn it down, or adjust some other setting, but the only control, the single button that works turns the volume up one more click. It's been a month and half now and it's up to 100, the very top of the dial. It's so loud most shows are lost in a blur of flubbing distortion. Nothing can be done short of pushing the small screen a little farther away, so it stays like that and conversation is that much more difficult. I guess the lesson is that technology will change things and poorly made Chinese technology will change things for the worst.
[1]When it's really windy, it's hard to keep these blue and white tumbleweeds from blowing into the communal food bowl. This is really disgusting when you consider the filth these things have been through. Before the really big storms, there's always a sandstorm. But even before the sandstorms, there's always a plastic bag storm.
Seriously, plastic bags are actually a huge problem here (along with all the other trash). They're everywhere and they take years to disintegrate. The animals eat them and get sick. Plastics bags are the perfect example of a terrible invention with unintended consequences. In the States we're better at hiding them in landfills but here in Mauritania they are taking over. Next time you’re in the grocery store, ask for paper! Or even better, buy some cloth bags and use them every time you go shopping.
