It has been a month since we arrived in Nouakchott, and as I mentioned this past week, things are settling into place nicely. My eldest daughter has made some great friends, my wife has been offered a job with the Embassy, and even my baby daughter has decided to start crawling and pulling up to a stand all in one week at 7 months old.

Her older sister was full on walking before 9 months of age, so I think this one is right on track. Nothing scarier than a fully mobile baby that has no clue what you’re telling it and has no sense of the peril surrounding it.

Another win this past week was our UAB arrived, and with it, some much needed kitchen supplies, baby supplies, toys, and my desktop gaming PC battle rig seen here:

Yes, that is World of Warcraft on my screen, and NO, I am not ashamed. Unfortunately, despite my best attempts keep it protected, on a power surge protector, and on a 110V converter, the constant fluctuations of power between the city grid and generator proved too dangerous, and one week to the day after she arrived, the windows file got corrupted, and I have an expensive bricked computer. I’m hoping reinstalling windows will solve the trick, but if it doesn’t, I’ve learned an important lesson about hauling large expensive computers halfway around the world. Next time I’ll just buy a gaming laptop.

Elsewhere around Nouakchott, we took a quick city tour with our Community Liaison Office, which resulted in some sweet goat market action.

The place was chaotic. Not pictured are some stalls down the road where you can find some of the freshest goat meat you’ve ever tasted, and if you look closely, some camel meat can be purchased too. My eldest daughter had some fun questions about where all the meat came from.

At work, I’ve done a few more site visits, and found a cath lab that does dozens of angioplasties a month, with GE equipment and Boston scientific stents/pacemakers. The standards and quality of the facilities are far below anything we see in the U.S., but I continue to find myself surprised and relieved at the services on offer here if needed in a dire situation. The job itself continues to be amazing. This past week the Embassy hosted a nice happy hour, attended by folks from other nations embassies, and expat business folk from all over the world. I had to pinch myself in the middle of it all to make sure I wasn’t dreaming it up.

I’m not sure where the last month went. I am really enjoying myself so far and have already started to wonder if my next post is going to be able to top this one. I’ve been blessed with an amazing community and amazing coworkers. Perhaps more importantly, my family is comfortable as well, and that has just made everything so worthwhile. We’re definitely going to enjoy it while we can.

Until next time! –Nick