Interview with “Planet Nomad”

“Planet Nomad”

http://planetnomad.wordpress.com/

The real reason is that I love to write and this is sort of like an open journal. It also provides a good way to share my everyday life with my friends, since I’m terrible at email.Where in Africa do you live?Nouakchott, Mauritania.Why did you move to Africa?We work for an NGO and teach English; we run a bookstore / library / English center called Oasis Books. What are the greatest blessings for you and your family living in Africa?I think our children have really benefited by living in an environment where they are aware how much we, as Americans, as Westerners, are blessed materially. They think we’re rich and they are right, although you probably wouldn’t think so. Also, they are growing up with a much broader worldview than if we’d raised them in the States. They are bi-lingual and are aware of many viewpoints on things as diverse as religion (we live in a Muslim country) to soccer, which of course the rest of the world calls football.What are your biggest challenges raising a family overseas in Africa?Hmm…there are several. For one, a lot of things are really frustrating here, but we don’t want to pass on our frustrations to our children, so that they are unhappy or prejudiced in any way against our host culture. Another, and this will sound awfully superficial, but I get frustrated at the lack of options available here. It’s hard to find decent-quality toys to get for their birthdays, or decent quality shoes for them to wear. Everything here is really poor quality. I hate spending money on toys that break in literally half an hour, but there are no other options.

One month

Life here; my university students, my kids’ reaction to local food, a trip we took, things like that.

I read finslippy-everybody reads her. But she’s a great writer.I also like Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer, and Antique Mama. I always read my offline friend at WackyMommy too. She’s the one who got me started.Also, by following other people’s links at random, I’ve found all sorts of great blogs-too many to list. (I’ve got to figure out how to get a blogroll!)

Yes. I love getting comments!

Yes, lots. One of the reasons I started it was to keep up with them.

I had read about it in articles, but didn’t really understand it until recently, when we got internet at the house at last, and I started reading my friend’s blog and following links. Suddenly I realized how much time I could waste

My offline friend has a blog called WackyMommy.org. Before her, I didn’t even really understand what a blog was.

Coffee.