A couple of weeks ago I celebrated the six-month anniversary of my return to the US by hanging out at my sister's apartment in Milwaukee and taking stock of my situation.

The months since returning from Niger can be summed up in a few words, and I've listed these below, since I am not Mark Twain, and I am not succinct.

January - shock, one friend gets married, shivering, inability to drive, begin addiction to gym, panic.

February - relearn to drive, seasonal affective disorder-related haze, despair, restlessness, frustration, lots of sleeping, first game of volleyball in years, thinking about god/universe/everything.

March - happiness at not having to wear socks anymore, ease on my favorite coast, visiting friends in three-hour increments, falling out of the gym habit, exhaustion, another friend gets married and one gets engaged, The Brittany Show, tired of hearing myself talk about myself.

April - return to obsession with gym... begin to earn money, substitute teaching, but only when I feel like it... malaise.

May - finally begin to feel like myself the day it hits 81 degrees in Wisconsin and I can open the doors and windows in Mom and Dad's house. Gardening, traveling, happy to be home (WI/WI). Still bothered by the phrase "real world." Certainly it's not my real world.

June - business, guilt, euphoria, shame, stress, happiness, sense of usefulness.

July - move to Fiji.

I arrived in Suva, the capital of the Fiji Islands, yesterday morning. Check out my "Fijian Daydreamin'" blog at http://South-sPacifics.blogspot.com. But I must say, people do indeed drink Fiji bottled water here.

Voila, my Christmas picture-postcard.

In a few hours, Danielle and I bid bye-bye to Mali and its horrendous buses, and in a day or so I'll have to start wearing closed-toed shoes again. That's all for now...

This is it, our COS date. On Wednesday, I moved out of Tamtala (again) and took my last bush taxi (in this country, anyway) into Niamey and started the bureaucratic part of finishing up my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Since then, it's been constant motion, parties, signatures, grant reporting, last-minute gifts and lunches with city friends, very little sleep, competing for space in the Tillaberi room, editing a certain movie, packing, plodding through sand, chasing down visas... and now it's all over.

In a few hours, Danielle and I will get on a bus and head to Ouaga, en route to Mali, on a trip that we've barely prepared for because of all the rest of our duties this week. And in a week and a day I'll be in Chicago again. Just like that.

I'm so glad I got to come back and finish up here, if for nothing else than the fantastic bon-voyage party Tamtala threw for me last weekend. In the midst of preparations for Tabaski, all the ladies in the village piled into my concession at midday last Saturday, saying it was time to braid my hair for the party. I surrendered myself to whatever might happen to me in their hands - a valuable skill I learned during those early days when I had crappy Zarma and no choice but to trust them. They brought out all the Bella wedding accoutrements, weaving coins into my hairdo, painting black lines down my nose, on my cheeks and chin, and rerouting my eyebrows. I was handed a huge lime-green shirt and an ancient indigo headscarf, and my "mom" Amina wrapped me in a wedding blanket. During all this, the ladies were chatting and Zeynabou, Maimouna's daughter, was calling for coins and dancing. She was hilarious. Each time someone came to the concession and dropped a few CFA (or a bowl of millet) at my feet, she picked up the money and yelled into my face: "You see this, Sakina?! So-and-so is thankful to you! S/he greets you on your patience and a job well done!" etc, etc, and then Zeynabou stomped around shaking her butt as the old ladies clapped and yelled.

Real brides are supposed to be demure and quiet during this part of the day, but, as usual, I got a free pass and was chatting and laughing along with the rest of them. My stalwart Kate and new friend Maria both came to Tamtala for the fete, and kept the ladies entertained and hydrated with a bucket of Crystal Light from the States. Poor Cat was scared - there had never been so many people in our concession - and she hid in the house. Zeynabou kicked dust up, the old, almost-toothless women grated kola nuts with improved tomato paste cans and stayed jacked up all afternoon.

When I was good and ridiculous-looking (I mean ridiculously good-looking), Illiassou the school director came in with a video camer (what?) to film the procession to Ousemane's house, where a string-and-sticks fence had been erected to keep the crowds at bay during the presentations that were to follow (Nigerien crowd control can be somewhat disconcerting to foreigners, as it usually involves whipping the ground DirectlyInFrontOf the first line of spectators with millet stalks, stinging little toes. During tech trip the village had learned this lesson - hence the fence). Dignitaries had been invited from as far as Tillaberi and Niamey, but most were unable to make it, which left Amirou apologetic and shaking his head, and me quite relieved. There were several speeches and a precious poem presented by three boys from the CM2 class (about 6th grade). And then a line of girls sang a song and danced - all composed by them (well, by Illiassou, surely) and about me, extolling my myriad virtues and thanking me for my work in the village. Very, very humbling.

When all was finished, Kate and Maria stayed over, all of us sleeping inside my house because it's so cold! Kate and I recorded our farewell radio show using a handheld tape recorder and my mp3 player inside my house, having to stop and re-record a few times when goats wandered in and wanted to talk on the radio too. When she left, Salley cried. I nearly panicked and cried myself, but left that for Wednesday.

After the party was over and guests had gone, there was little to do in the village other than walk around saying goodbye. My stuff was packed already, the cereal bank is up and stocked (wahoo! Just in time!), the Moringas are recovering from their October blight, so I only needed to go and thank everyone who had shown me patience, indulgence, friendship and/or help during the last two years.

Monday was Tabaski (which lasted into Tuesday). I wrote about last year's in here, and it seems it's pretty standard year to year. I made popcorn and juice (no, I didn't kill a goat) and handed it out to friends, who in turn brought me red sauce on rice, rice and beans, and chunks of meat (which I re-gifted... most of the time). Like everyone in Tamtala, Cat loves this holiday. I do too, but not because of the meat. New Year's is my favorite. It's so hopeful. "Ka Yeesi," everyone says for Happy New Year, and everyone asks each other's pardon for offenses in the past year and says things like "May your feet that walk this year walk next year," and "I'll see you next year at this time." I especially like the pardoning part. We need it in Amerika.

Tuesday night Maimouna came over to spend the evening chatting, as happens often. The moon was incredibly bright. I wrote in my journal without a light (good thing, since I'd given mine away). We sat on mats in my concession, with Cat curled up at her feet, not mine ("Kitten knows," she said). We told stories and laughed until it was very late, and she went home.

Four o'clock in the morning I woke up, heart pounding, knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep again. I waited for prayer call, then went into our family concession wrapped in my blanket to watch the sunrise. As everyone else woke up (lots of hocking and spitting, it being cold season), I headed in, packed up, and called Amirou to call Djibo with his cow-cart. I'd been warned to leave really early, or everyone would be around to watch and cry and make a scene, so it was good that only a dozen or so of us were up in the first hour of daylight to "duum" (accompany) me to the path to Lossa, where Djibo was waiting. We took one more picture, and Amirou, Maimouna and I, with my backpack, climbed onto the cart for the ride to the paved road.

On the way, along with more final instructions for them - please have patience with Ali, he's new and just learning, please bring the barrels to the Moringa plantation, etc. - we told the story of my live-in, when they'd first duum'd me to Lossa, and we got a flat tire and nearly lost each other on the path on account of the wind. At Lossa, this time, a taxi was quick to come, unremarkable (I mean really, by this point I've seen it all... I hope), and got me to Niamey before 10am.

And that's about it. Kala Niamey, with (most of) the rest of Ag/NRM 2007: running around, saying goodbyes, crying, telling "remember-when" stories, making plans for our reunion (next year New Year's, Vegas), etc.

I'll be in Lake Geneva for Christmas, Minneapolis for New Year's, and Seattle for Inauguration Day. Friends who I know and love in any of those places - give my parents' house a call.

This isn't the end of MeAndMySwissArmyKnife, incidentally. I'll take a few months off and start up again in Fiji in July. Because apparently multi-tools are useful for opening coconuts. Mmmmm.

I don't mean to be dramatic, but...

My worst fear since before I arrived in Niger came true. My grandma died while I was here. I found out that Thursday alone, in a tree, with my dad on the other end of the phone watching the slow orange sunrise in Chicago, and me with no one else to cry to in English for hours.

It was the worst afternoon I've ever had. As I hurried to regain my composure and tell my chief as soon as possible - I had to leave, I had to leave NOW, someone get me out of here RIGHT NOW, help, oh help, oh my poor mother, her mother, someone help me figure out what to do with all of this crap in my house, just take it, I don't want it, what am I doing dealing with all of this stuff anyway, I need to get to Niamey RIGHT NOW and get a flight home TODAY, please, thanks, a donkey cart would be great, thanks Djibo, you've always been a great friend. No, not going quite yet, but please get it ready, thank you. No, I can't go and come back. Peace Corps will pay for me to fly home. I can't pay for it. When I get a big person job in Amerika I can come back, but it will take a long time. I'm so sorry. Leaving like this is not sweet. No, it is not sweet.

Amirou sent for Maimouna to come over and closed my house off from visitors, knowing the whole village would come to wail as I shoved my things into my backpack to bring to the city, or into one of two trunks - one to try to ship home later, one to leave for my replacement. Maimouna came and sat on the floor, staring and saying nothing. I told her to take whatever she wanted. She didn't move. I babbled and cried and reminded the two of them, and Ousemane and Djibo, that anasaras cry sometimes, it doesn't mean we're crazy, but please don't let anyone else see me cry. Please don't tell them yet, I'm not ready to leave yet. A few more minutes. I'm not ready. Ugh, all this stuff!

Please, have the moringa committee meeting without me. Oh no, we didn't talk about the food for the tech trip all the trainees are going on in two weeks. Sorry, I can't. This pile is for Djamila. This is to be split between my women friends in the village. Ousemane, write your new number, and Amirou, yours too. I'll call you. I won't forget Zarma. Nadia and I will practice. These pictures aren't even mine - take them. The food - Maimouna, take what you want. Oh that one, well, you just open it here add some hot water and wait a few minutes and then you can eat it. Anasaras bring it when they go camping. That's when you pretend you live outside. Yes. Take what you want to your house - you know who my friends are - give them the rest. Be fair. Yes, of course, the stool, I know we've fixed yours twice and it still always falls. No, the stove and the water filter have to go back to Peace Corps. All this stuff here. They'll come pick them up when they bring the new person, or maybe when all the trainees come - can you guys show them around if I'm not here? Come on, please? Thanks. I know you can. Haoua will be here. And my cat? Kadi will take care of Kitten. She'll bring her a bit of howru, and she'll water the trees in my yard.

I barely said goodbye to everyone in my concession. It was a race to get to Niamey as soon as I was packed. My loyalties came into sharp focus as the rest of the world swam in my vision at odd angles. I climbed, shaking violently, onto the oxcart and thought about how Illou, Samira and Mardiya won't remember me. I should go see this old lady and that old lady, and Djamila and Mohammadou. No. I already missed seeing my grandma. I'm going NOW. I need to get to Niamey by 6, my dad's going to call to see how fast I can get home. They're waiting to have the burial for me. Yes, women in Amerika do that. We go.

We passed the school fast enough that the kids were blithely unaware of the circumstances and waved just as enthusiastically as they always do. The oxcart ride to the road whizzed by, with Amirou and Maimouna and I talking about cereal bank money, tech trip logistics and food, and what they shouldn't forget about how to treat my replacement. Before I knew it we were at the road, arranging ourselves under a tree for the excruciating wait for a bush taxi. We were desperate for one to come, and also for time to stop.

A very small wait produced a relatively comfortable van, and after terrible goodbyes with my brother and my best friend, I took a deep breath and re-explained to the wide-eyed group of Nigeriens in the car that sometimes anasaras cry, it doesn't mean we are crazy... It was a textbook bush taxi ride, including a detour into Sansane Haussa to pick up a guy and his cow, and me telling the guys on the roof of the van to arrange the cow so it won't pee on my backpack, because they won't let me into Amerika with cow poop on my bag. Frantic text messages with bureau staff and friends - some of whom just didn't seem to get it - made the rest of the ride pass quickly, and I got into a city taxi in Niamey in enough time for Haoua to call me and start crying, which made me cry again, at the prospect of never seeing each other again, because Allah only knows.

In the meantime (as I found out much later), after I left Tamtala, the entire village gathered in the chief's concession to do the alfatiyah for several hours. They prayed for the soul of "our" grandmother, that Allah would bring heaven to earth for her, that she would have a smooth transition, that Allah would bring patience to our family to relieve our suffering.

At the Niamey hostel, hugged well and handed a glass of wine by Drew and Kate, I got ahold of Chris, who was acting Country Director. He informed me that yes, there is a flight out Friday night, but that means Friday at 12:10am, not Friday-I-have-all-day-tomorrow-to-prepare. Friday 12:10am is in six hours.

Presently dad called and changed my plans: "Boo - of course we'll fly you home. We want you to be able to finish properly."

Oh. Meaning I CAN go and come. I DON'T have to join the 17 in my stage who've left early for one reason or another. I don't have to leave us with a weak 19 remaining in country. I didn't have to say goodbye forever to my village (I called & let them know - to everyone's relief and an audible sigh). But I DO have to get a ticket NOW. Kate and I run to the bureau to try the internet. No luck. Can't buy Air France from Niger within three days of the flight. I ask Issaka, the most helpful person in the world, to do his thing. He calls a friend at the airport: "Really, I'm sorry, the flight is so full," he reports. Oh crap. Dad calls. I have a reservation? A ticket? A reservation. Can it be? Pat, our admin person, happens to be in her office. I can take vacation days. Well, great. Issaka and Pat are on my list of people that need presents from Amerika when I come back. Issaka jumps in a car to take me to the airport, which allows me 10 minutes at the hostel to pack a bag. Needless to say, I pack nothing that will do me any good, and my baggage allowance is wasted. Issaka calls his wife on the way and I apologize to her in the background. He talks our way into the airport. I am checked in, Air France staff in the only air-conditioned room in the building, speaking not only proper French but English, thinking I'm crazy having had three people confirm my reservation on my behalf (unbeknownst to me) in the last half hour. I check in. I am safe. I am so lucky.

Breathing, for a moment, I realize I've had no water all day. At the darkened airport bar, Paul from Bolgatanga, who made it to his own home just in time to see his father die years ago, was doubtful that I would be able to drink the airport tap water. On the flight, Compaore ("like the president") from Burkina was on his way to Japan for a teacher training but had to stop for his visa in Paris. He'd worked as a language trainer for Peace Corps/Burkina. During my six-hour, 3-degrees-Celsius layover in Paris, I experienced my first full-length mirror in half a year (traumatizing me through my daze) and stared at all the white people going by, thinking I saw my dad. Wondering if I can still walk in heels like all the women clicking past me. On flight number two I watched "Forgetting Sara Marshall" and made lists of Niger work to follow up on, gifts to bring back, food to eat and people to call. I landed and didn't have to yell at anyone at customs. I was smellier than I ever have been, hugging my expanding family with a Boo Basket - it was, after all, Halloween.

I spent a week there in the States, close to my mother. Everyone back here asked "how was it?" - which is what I'm supposed to write about here - but why? It was terribly sad. It was a neverending wake followed by a funeral. I was furious that I was just hours away from having gotten to talk to her again (she'd been in the hospital for three days), but had no one to blame for that. It was lonely. It was painful to watch the six siblings have to deal with all the technical stuff one faces after a loved one's death. It was cool that so many of us wore pink to the funeral. I will never forget Shannon telling me the story about the sunrise, which made everything that much more okay. I got to go to Goodwill (Amerika's Dead Mans' Market) with Bridget, the chain's best customer. I got to meet Shannon's Ryan and talk African politics with him over Land Shark beers. Mom and I had two lovely dinners at Bridget and Ty's (one with Shannon too, and desserts she'd made as a new pastry chef). I got to feel out of place in the Well Spa at the Pfister, where Bridget works. I plowed through ten episodes of "Men In Trees" in the full-to-bursting living room of a house hardly resembling the one I'd left six months ago. I'm glad I got a glimpse into what I'll be walking into in a month. I'm glad our cousin Paul, the priest who gave the funeral sermon, was able to say at church that the entire family had made it together. Mostly, I'm glad I was there for my mom.

The silver lining of all of this, for the Catholics in and among us, is that Gramma is finally with her husband, who died on the 11th of November 21 years ago. I flew back into Niamey on that anniversary, and was lucky enough to get myself and my bottle of Kahlua, padded with two bags of marshmallows, back in without a problem. My two bags consisted of 90 pounds of food, having been emptied of the random junk I'd stuffed into them in my two hasty stages of packing the week before. Upon walking back into the oven that is my beloved host country, the chocolate in my backpack melted, I started sweating again... but I knew how to get a taxi. I was still genuinely charmed, like any naive first-time-visitor to the developing world, by the half-dressed kids kicking a crappy soccer ball through the red sand among the yawning, putrid gutters in Niamey.

After a day and a half of jet lag - up from 1am on the roof of the hostel, watching the bright bright moon edge across the sky and the stars swing round after it - I went to Tamtala for an hour or so with Haoua, scouting for Tech Trip and letting them all know that yeah, I'm back! Believe it! Um, can I have my blankets back please? Just for a couple of weeks? And my water bucket? Thanks guys. I'm okay without the rest. I was surprised they left my maps on the walls.

Then we headed to Hamdallaye, where those clean and shiny Americans I watched get off the plane in October are getting browner and sandier by the day. These guys are badass - community-based training from the very beginning, and most of them biking 14-22 kilometers at least twice a week in this heat (oh but the heat has decreased in the last two weeks! oh it is so very nice and cool! oh how I went to bed with wet hair and got a cold! oh how this morning I wore a sweatshirt until 10am!).

My first day with the trainees was site announcements - the day Peace Corps tells you which village they've chosen for you and the next two years of your life. The trainees had tons of questions - about their specific villages, about Niger in general. I realized how normal life here has become for me. I spent hundreds of CFA text messaging my stagemates across the country, most of whom are being replaced by people in this group and were anxious to know the fate of their villages. Obviously this was a big day for me, too, since I was there to see who would take my spot in Tamtala. I was happy for Tamtala. Their new guy's name is name is Ali (in Niger), he reminds me of my cousin Billy, and he'll do great.

Ali and 12 of his stagemates - all the environment-sector (NRM) volunteers - were lucky enough to see OUR village this week on Tech Trip, a whirlwind 36 hours in three villages where NRM trainees get to see real NRM projects in action. In addition to checking out the Moringa plantation, the healthy millet grinder, the under-construction cereal bank and the Gum Arabic plantation, and planting trees at the school, we spent the night in Tamtala after an evening of drumming and dancing. Though this is REALLY uncommon, the village pulled out the stops for the visitors. Maybe Americans think that every African dances to drums all the time, and we wanted to deliver that fantasy - I don't know. Regardless, the women hauled out the water tubs, calabashes and sticks only used for "karyan" at the end of Ramadan and at Tabaski, and everyone gathered near Ousemane's house to watch the spectacle. The trainees provided much of the entertainment to the villagers, and vice versa. Amirou's mom Leitchi (who lives in Tillaberi and is part of a singing group that has performed across Europe) was the headliner and sang a bit before the big dancing began. Old ladies shook their stuff, village conflicts that had recently been resolved were re-enacted in a kind of theater, and Ali, Tamtala's new American, made himself loved and famous by joining in much of the dancing, along with the rest of the trainees. Good job guys.

So I had a practice day for leaving my village. Practice for my last bush taxi ride (as if I needed that). Practice reentering American society. Practice going to a grocery store and not hyperventilating. Practice answering unanswerable questions about Niger. Practice using English to talk about all the work I've done here. It's all coming up for real in a month... wish me luck.

Greetings again from Niamey!

Having sufficiently recovered from that nutty trip to the Gerewol, I am set to head back to the bush tomorrow with a brick of cash for the cereal bank... don't tell anyone on the bush taxi with me. They're all convinced my bags are stuffed with cash anyway. Markets here don't take plastic, so I have to bring the cash back, in small bills, on my person. I've done this before. Not my favorite thing.

I've been out of the village for what seems like forever now (trainer training, Gerewol trip, now this!). Last night I called Maimouna and asked her to pass on congratulations to my neighbor Saouda, who gave birth to a baby boy last week. I'm so upset I missed the naming ceremony yesterday. I got so antsy to go back to my mud house and my friends that I'm downright panicked anticipating what I'm going to feel like leaving them for good in a couple short months. Yikes... sad... not going to think about it.

But hey! Good news! We know how YOU fine people can donate to the Moringa project, meant to improve the nutrition of thousands of children in southern Niger. Thanks to the generous efforts of the South Whidbey Rotary Club, along with several other clubs in Rotary District 5050, and, of course, our local club here, we have a fundraising goal of $4,000 by Thanksgiving. This should allow Peace Corps Volunteers in at least four villages to get big plantations started in March 2009.

So - for anyone who missed donating to the cereal bank, or to the milllet grinder, or to both - this is your last chance to donate to one of my projects (because I'm coming back soon!). Here's how:

- Make out a check to the "South Whidbey Rotary Club Foundation" with "Moringa Project" in the Memo line

- Mail to:

Catherine Scherer

2280 Whidbey Shores Rd.

Langley, WA 98260

Donations are tax-deductible and Cathy will be keeping track of all the accounting. You'll be sent a letter before tax time attesting to your contribution. Checks should have your name and current address printed on them or included in a cover letter.

Phew!

Tomorrow Kate and I will record two shows in Tillaberi, along with new volunteer Aisha (her name since Amerika - her parents were PCVs in Chad and Burkina - Tamtalans were pretty excited about that). Kate and I, after more than 50 radio shows, are looking forward to NOT writing a script every week! In Tillaberi I'll buy Saouda's little boy a little boy outfit wrapped in crappy Nigerian plastic, and I'll get her some soap, because that's what you do.

Wednesday I finally get to be home, isha'allah. I finished my bean harvest before I left, making edamame three nights in a row: delicious! The women in my concession were very impressed that I could cook something Nigerien right on the first try. But all my millet and all my sorghum is still in the ground, waiting to be "killed," as we say in Zarma. Luckily I'll have "demysters" this weekend, two or three current trainees in my village to see how a volunteer spends her time in the bush. Maybe they'll want to help...

Yes, that's right - 26 new people showed up two Thursdays ago, all bright and shiny, pale and clean, coming off the plane. Because I'll be a trainer in a couple weeks, I got to go with the group to the airport and welcome them with warm bottles of water and much enthusiasm. They seemed excited, dazed, hot... like looking at myself two years ago. It's strange to think that among these people is one that will inherit my village, my house, my friends, my cat.

I'm off now, then, to work on letting go.

Editor’s Note: Ms. Gallagher was set to write a post today, as she has recently returned from the famous Gerewol festival (what, you don’t know about it?). She wanted to talk all about it, but only got as far as posting the pictures. The adventure, which she undertook with four fellow PCVs and a Nigerien “guide” (who turned out to be not so much a guide as a paid-friend-of-a-friend) included four days during which there was no bathing due to lack of water, lots of dancing men in makeup, no silverware save a single fork, one two-person tent that filled with sand during a ten-hour dust storm, gorgeous, haunting chanting and drums at night, biting flying ants, grand grand boubous, one scorpion the not-guide adroitly squashed, bouts of embarassment and fury (of both the acute and the slow-burn variety), amazement, lots of turbans and makeup, an enormous and very public “toilet,” Lulu’s authentic pouf hairdo and resulting suitors, joy, a ride in the back of a pickup with the stinkiest armpit in Niger (causing not one but two pukes-in-the-mouth, we had to say it, sorry, it was really gross), descent into hilarity, 3litersH2O/6people/12 hrs bush taxi = thirsty, and half a dozen thoughts that “ahh, THIS is what I expected Africa to be like.”

So, maybe tomorrow.

First, about the Moringa project - I ask you to put it aside for today, and just enjoy the new post. I'm still working on the details. And thanks for your patience!

I just picked up the expedited check for Tamtala's cereal bank - yippee! The turnaround time for this project has been faster than expected, and I'm very pleased with my good luck. As soon as Ramadan and harvest are over we'll be able to spend all that money on stomach-filling grains for the coming year.

Rainy season is taking its last gasping, pathetic breaths, after a season very much the same. Niamey has been consistently soaked every three days or so all summer. Tamtala, however - not the same. This season we had three periods of two weeks with no rain, and once we went without for 21 days. When your rainy season is less than four months long as it is... you growl at Allah. Thankfully, this is not the case in most of the country, where harvest this year will be better than last. In my village, though, we're looking at "below average" at best. A perfect time for a cereal bank, if ever there was one.

Literacy class is going well, with six women consistently showing every night for an hour and a half of reading and writing (9:30 - 11pm, you'd better believe I'm not getting up at dawn anymore). The seventh, Fati, came for the first couple of nights and then stopped. Her husband had refused to let her attend anymore. Needless to say, I'm angry. All the rest of the women in class agree that he's "bad" and "dangerous" - but no one can talk sense into him. A husband has final word as to where his wife goes, what she does, and when (this is part of the reason why Maimouna is such a powerhouse in the village: her husband isn't around). Fati's husband is a jerk anyway, and I can imagine why he wouldn't let her attend: she should be cooking for him, watching the kids, she should be kept ignorant so she can't stand on her own and has to depend on him, etc. Hell hath no fury... I will spare you all the diatribe on gender relations in Niger until a later date. Suffice to say when Save the Children ranked this country dead last (another bottom-of-the-barrel ranking?!) on their list of "Best Places to Be a Mother or a Child" study, relased in May of this year, I was not too surprised. I'm sure there are countries where things are worse in some places - countries currently at war, countries where women can't vote or drive - but I haven't been there (yet).

There's the debate as to whether Islam is to blame. I've read on the topic and have come to the conclusion that it isn't at fault any more than the other major religions, most of which, at some point in history, have been pointed to in order to justify the unequal treatment of women (or of other groups in a society). It's not the religion that's the problem: it's the people pointing to it, using it, twisting teachers' and prophets' words to support their own goals of subjugating parts of the population.

Dismount soapbox, continue.

Ramadan will be over in a couple of weeks. Last year I fasted for two days, to mixed reactions. It was hard - if I haven't mentioned this, it's really hot, and dehydration is a problem. I did another two days where I didn't eat during daylight hours, but I drank water - and my villagers' prevailing opinion was that I might as well be eating. With that in mind, and it being hotter this year, I'm not keen to fast. But people are constantly asking. My response is a simple "No, I'm not fasting," but that always elicits the "you're not fasting?" response (statement of the obvious - very quintessential Niger). To this, I have to say something, because repeating oneself is pretty mind-numbing after a while. "I'm not a Muslim," I say, and people usually say "you're not a Muslim?" (again), but I had one old guy say to me:

"Are you fasting?

"No, I'm not fasting."

"You're not fasting?"

"No. I'm not a Muslim."

"Don't say that!"

"What, that I'm not a Muslim?"

"Yes! Don't say that!"

"Well, I'm not."

"Don't say it though! That's not good. Just say you're not fasting."

I've also had one or two people respond to the not-a-Muslim thing with "Oh, you're a Christian," to which I either give up and say nothing, or change the subject, or note that two PCV neighbors are, or disagree, if for no other reason than to dispell the stereotype that all white people are Christians. One day at Kokamani, another old man observed, astutely and in English:

"You're not fasting, you are not a Muslim."

"That's right."

"You are a Christian, then."

"No." (devilish glint in my eye brought on by non-adherence to major known monotheistic religions, and therefore heathen nature)

"Ah, you are a pagan."

Riiiight.

My training group (stage) has dwindled down to 20 from the original 37. We've only got a matter of months (or weeks, or days, depending on who's counting) left in Niger. We just had a close-of-service conference aimed at telling us how [hard it will be] to reintegrate into Regular American Society, how to write our experiences into resumes, and celebrate our accomplishments. We had panels with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (your newest acronym to understand, my friends, is RPCV) working for NGOs in Niamey, and advice on how to get into graduate school. There may have been ONE person who didn't insist on graduate school for someone in my position, but I can't think of anyone at the moment.

I'm in a bit of a better place than some of my peers, because I've got a draft of my resume that was successful in helping me toward that Rotary scholarship - and, on top of that, I've received my study institution assignment: to the University of the South Pacific, in Suva, the capital of the Fiji Islands. That's right. I have somewhere I'm going, and it's a tropical island (BIG SMILE). But it's not until January 2010, giving me an entire year back in the States in the interim. This information is still really new, and now I'm trying to figure out what to do for one year, no more, no less. I'm trying not to dread the inferiority complex I'll have in the face of Friends With Real Jobs who may be hosting me on their couches, and I'm still trying to be here in Niger for the next few months, and finish my projects and do well in Tamtala.

I may have mentioned that we're working on a five-year development plan for the village in partnership with a local NGO. I may have mentioned it's been challenging, but overall it's great to see the village council-people thinking deliberately about priorities for Tamtala. Unfortunately, the women have a hard time participating fully because they are expected to prepare lunch for all attendees, and are illiterate in French. Everyone also seems to have a hard time differentiating between the causes of poverty and its effects. It's a self-perpetuating problem, making everything muddy.

To unwind and escape the stress after that series of ten-hour-long meetings, I thought I'd pick up some light reading. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was the only novel left in my house. Bad choice. Who needs to read about drought and worthless land and human suffering? Not I, not here, not now.

A fellow PCV's counterpart, a veterinarian in a big town equivalent to my area's "county seat," came to Tamtala to see any sick animals (the art of the house call is alive and well here, not to mention utterly necessary). He really and truly does speak some English - not "small small" and not "Broka" - so he was a logical choice early in her service to be a go-to person, and I facilitated their partnership when she was a new volunteer. The visiting vet and I chatted between bellowing cows about the book I was reading, Aung Sun Suu Kyi's Freedom From Fear. I was impressed that he knew who she was, even though he had the details a bit off. We had another religion-centered session of "head-opening," (as we say in Zarma for "enlightenment") and as he was leaving, he said, "Thank you, Sakina. You look like a wrestler!"

Jaw dropped, laughing, utterly confused, I said goodbye and shook my head. Who knows what he meant by that?

I'm also preparing to be a Volunteer Assistant Trainer for the new crop of AG/NRMs arriving in Niger on October 9th. Staff is busy preparing for their stage at Hamdallaye, and Haoua recently informed me that she's chosen Tamtala as the site of the NRM "Tech Trip." This means I've been walking around the village with Amirou, assessing all the work that's been done that we can show off to the new people. One project that predated my arrival was a series of demi-lunes south of the village. These are half-moon shaped holes in the hardpan designed to catch rainwater and renew the soil, and are often coupled with a heavily manured "zai" hole in which a tree is planted. Since it's common to plant Gum Arabic in zai holes, we want to take the trainees out there so they can learn to prune them. as Amirou and I were preparing to go out there one afternoon, he asked where my machete was.

"My machete? We aren't going to prune the trees," I said. "They're too small for a machete anyway. But we're just going to look. The visitors will be pruning them."

"I know, I know," he said. "But I've misplaced my machete. We need one."

"No, we are not pruning the trees," I repeated.

"We cannot go into the bush without a machete," he insisted. "It's not good."

I relented. Though it may sound exotically dangerous to you at home, "the bush" is not. Never once have I felt unsafe walking through it. Bush Nigeriens are harmless, helpful, and very friendly. But they are all afraid of the bush. We don't have lions or any scary wild animal, just wandering donkeys and cattle (though there once was a hyena - once). I've never felt the need to be armed. But I grabbed my dull machete in its pretty pink sheath and walked out of the village - fifteen minutes, maybe - with Amirou, looked at the tiny spiky trees, and came home without event. Good thing we had it, though, just in case. Now if only my villagers would plan for contingencies like that when it came to saving money to buy medicine for their children in case they get sick. Bah.

Oh, I just got Facebook, finally. I wanted to see some current pictures of my friends, and for that it's been good. Anyway, FYI, I'm findable on there now too. Anyone who wants to give me a high-paying job in Seattle or Portland for March through June of next year, I'd be happy to hear from you. Seriously.

To, kala ton-ton.

I sure do have a sunburned neck, at least. I spend the rare cool days weeding my millet, sorghum and beans, but West African sun shines through the clouds. Realizing that one day I do have to go back to the land of Bath & Body Workses, I have tapped into my precious supply of Lush and Aveda soaps, send by loving sisters and friends. But today, for example, my feet look rather gangrenous. Don't worry - it's just the acid-black henna dye fading in green splotches.

I do behave like a "child of the bush" sometimes in Niamey, with the loud voice and exaggerated gestures of an ill-mannered, uneducated "hick" - forgetting that the difference between bush Niger and city Niger is not to be underestimated, and that as a foreigner, I'm supposed to be super educated (aren't I?). Bush Nigeriens and city Nigeriens are worlds apart, and the divdes are apparent at prickly points when they interact, particularly in commerce and when working together. Wallahi (swear to Allah), it's something to see. To realize the PCV in the village has an easier time getting around Niamey than most of the village men - you wouldn't think that's the case during your first year, when Niamey bewilders you - but even then, you have an easier time navigating it than your village's head honchos do. It's then you realize your power.

Wield it with care. Your grip is tenuous. I've been in the bush for three weeks (hence the dearth of posts for more than a month), and that rollercoaster ride continues. I feel great about it at the moment. Of course, I just got the news that THE CEREAL BANK HAS BEEN FULLY FUNDED. Can you believe it? All of you who wanted, meant to, intended, tried, really tried, several times, to donate, and were frustrated because it had disappeared from the Peace Corps website, I commend and thank you, and I apologize with a humble smile. We got very lucky, and after only a few of you threw in your chips, a big fish came in and took care of the rest in one swoop. I know there are several of you who wanted to participate in the sustainable development of Tamtala and haven't had the chance. But fret not! There's more developing to be had - as it appears that way from where we stand, dusty, shiny-handed, in our parched fields with their scrawny millet plants, there is no limit to the development projects we could use.

This must be done carefully, and it's apt to get out of control if we aren't careful. I read somewhere a quotation that begs the case of sustainable, meaningful development: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." That's the source of a lot of my frustration these days - begging people not to use chemical fertilizers, but being unable to offer an acceptable alternative, haranguing men for taking extra wives when they should be buying animals (which act as bank accounts, to sell in times of hunger), knowing but being unable to convince my neighbors that one of the biggest roots of their problems is the fact that they (and all of us) are having too many children. Amirou keeps asking for me to go to Nigelec, the national electricity company, and ask for power lines to be brought to the village. No matter how many times I tell him it'll be no good - we're an hour's walk from the road, there's barely a dirt path to get to us, it would be far too expensive - he insists my whiteness will make it happen. And I suggest our resources could be used better to improve the village's access to water and support the health hut and a million other things - and he agrees. But he adds I should go to Nigelec anyway, since I'll be in Niamey.

About the cereal bank. There are at least two more opportunites for you at home to support Tamtala and Tamtalans - and to do so wisely. I have only a few months before my Close-of-Service (COS), and I'm working on my projects for posterity. First, I'm writing a big proposal to my home Rotary club* on South Whidbey Island to double the size of our Moringa plantation next year, and to make it possible for at least half a dozen volunteers to do the same thing in their villages. If you want to donate - please send money their way, and earmark it for this project. More information on this is to come by mid-September, insha'allah.

Second, I'm searching - carefully - for a market for my women's group to sell their tabarmas (woven grass mats). The traditional big mats are a bit unwieldy and I couldn't fathom a use for them Stateside; here the Fulans use them as walls. So I had the women make some experimental table runners, placemats, and coasters - see the photos at left and tell me what you think (leave a comment or email me). At the moment I've only got the tablerunner-sized examples. Niger PCVs want them - they'll use them as decorations for their mud walls - so I could sell some here, but if there's an opportunity for a larger market, I'll go for it. But PCVs are sorely out of touch with what's fashionable in America. I myself haven't been there for more than a month (at a time) since 2006. I don't know what people are doing over there. Would having dried grass mats on their dinner tables be cool? How about making these into shades for windows (send the measurements of your windows and we'll custom make them)? And - IMPORTANT - if any of you dear readers have ideas about how I might hope to ship this stuff, or to sell it in larger quantity in the US, let me know. Niger, landlocked, stranded, is a seemingly terrible point of origin for export. As if it needs one more point against it.

In my wildest dreams, the sale of these tabarmas would not only provide the women with a decent income, but might allow us to one day bring my best friend Maimouna (the head of the women's group) to visit the US. Unlike the random Nigeriens I meet - walking along some obscure bush path, riding in a taxi in Niamey or up and down the Tillaberi road - Maimouna has no interest in coming to the States to seek her fortune. She just wants to see my "people," and use the few words of English I've taught her. After all, I got to see her people, learn her language... why not vice-versa? There is so much about the States that she could explain better than I could hope to.

A short post for today, but there's much to be done in the city, as always. There are so many stories to tell: my battle with a bat, the sad tale of the fattest baby I've ever seen, the wild success of the August 3rd tree transplantation, Djamila cheating on her 40 days, how best to (unintentionally) numb one's mind in Tillaberi, realizing the world is not a playground, getting cheated at Katako and taking it on the chin, an old man's "convenient" second wife, my favorite Mediya's malaria, why I don't close my door during nighttime storms, forgetting how to play checkers... but you'll have to wait for the book!

A parting thought, a song stuck in my head these days - both appropriate and calming.

Jason Mason hears the sound

of whistle blows in Congo town

and the mail boat's in

Mail boat's in

Brings in things from oh so far oh,

magazines and Snicker bars

A simple man

A simple plan

The world's too big to understand

Be good and you will be lonesome

Be lonesome and you will be free

Live a lie and you will live to regret it

That's what living is to me

That's what living is to me

On a timeless beach in Hispanola

young girl sips a diet cola

She's worlds apart

worlds apart

Spirt of the black king still

reverberates through Hatian hills

he rules the sea

and all the fish

What if he had a TV dish?

Be good and you will be lonesome...

(-Jimmy Buffett, because who else? With help from Mark Twain)

Oh, and Happy Ramadan. It starts today (aka last night), which means - for us - it's harder to get street food in Niamey, and we'd be wise not to try to hold big meetings or work parties in our villages.

*For those who haven't heard, Rotary of South Whidbey sponsored me for a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship this year... and I won. :-) Thanks to those guys! I'll be studying sustainable development during the 2009-10 scholastic year, but I don't know where yet. Sweden, New Zealand, South Africa, Fiji, India, or somewhere... Insha'allah, I'll know in December.

Night before last I stood in the middle of my field, torn. Not a cloud in sight. Mesas to the east. Beautiful, too-fast sunset to the west. How are things these days? Good, bad, not terrible, awesome. Yes, all of those. In training, we get a graph, a nice medium-frequency, high-amplitude wave, showing us what to expect emotionally out of the next two years. It's a decent guideline, except for the frequency part. I ride one of those waves from trough to crest at least once every two hours or so. This morning I woke up screaming because my cat has attracted two other cats and they were fighting inches from my head, which of course my slow-to-wake self had registered as Immediate Danger to My Own Life. Heart pouding, I lay back down and caught a glimpse of the wildly pink sunrise beyond Saouda's house. I'm usually not up for that (some things never change). How nice of the cats to wake me up in time to see it before I set off to Niamey.

Back to my field. My millet is barely an inch tall. We haven't had rain in Tamtala two weeks. It's supposed to be the height of rainy season; the sky should be falling routinely, every three days (usually at night, usually with a windstorm as a warning). Instead, two weeks of nothing. So I was worried.

Also prematurely nostalgic (I have a propensity toward this. Terrible, weak human thing.) - because I was standing there, surveying the land, feeling very famer-ish and close to the land and all that noise, kind of proud that I was all worried about the rain like a Real Person, all Connected To The Earth, etc. All cheesy and leaning on my crude wood-and-metal farming-by-hand tool, getting ready to miss this place. Very aware of the sunset on the red mesas, made ever more deeply red by the unabashed greenness of even this weak rainy season. Thinking that it's my last rainy season, and how tragic.

Really. My LAST rainy season? My SECOND rainy season. In Peace Corps, the second is the last. Get over it.

What's tragic is this: this rainy season sucks, and we're already short on food. We're eating two meals a day in Tamtala. Millet is 24,000 CFA a sack, which is 10,000 more than it was last October. We can only hope it'll go back down to that this October, so we can buy up as much as possible and stock our cereal bank.

And this, I mention casually as if it's not the Big Major Point of This Blog Post - our cereal bank! Washington has approved my proposal, so we're ready to start accepting donations! Yippee!

To those of you who donated to the millet grinder project at Christmas time (thanks, thanks, y'all are super), you'll know just what to do (even though you're off the hook as far as I'm concerned).

To those of you who missed your chance, here it is. This will be my last call for donations from the general public while I'm a PC/Niger volunteer, so do not delay - whip those credit cards right out and get ready.

A bit of background on the project: (also posted on the Peace Corps website)

"Hunger season in Niger means that the last few months before harvest are spent working hard in the fields, but having little to eat at home. Millet and sorghum stores often run out a few months short of the September/October harvest, during the busy rainy season, and prices in the market skyrocket.

The construction of a cereal bank in my village of about 850 people means that villagers can take part in a farmer’s cooperative in order to ensure lasting food security for their families. They will pool their resources to buy grains at harvest time and store them in a grain bank, to be opened when the hunger season begins. During hunger season, grains from the bank can be bought below market price but for more than their harvest-time purchase price.

The community has been actively involved in making a plan for this cereal bank system. They have formed a committee, led by women’s group members and neighborhood leaders, to manage the bank. They have committed to covering every cost related to constructing the bank structure, and each family is donating a bit of money to buy initial stores of millet. A family can purchase membership in the bank for one small sack of millet a year.

A cereal bank will increase the capacity of everyone in the village to have enough to eat all year long, contributing to overall health for 850 men, women and children. This proposal asks for donations to cover initial food stores in the bank."

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How to donate:

Go to www.peacecorps.gov

Click on "Donate Now" - one of the yellow options on the left

Click on "Donate to Volunteer Projects" - first option on the list

Search using whichever criteria you'd like - Food, Africa, Niger...

There are only 3 projects (as of today) going in Niger, and the first one is ours: "A Path to Food Security." Click on it to learn more and donate!

--

To, Madallah! Thanks for doing your bit. If you want to do more... well... buy local, organic and fair trade food, use public transportation (and vote for more of it), change out your incandescent lightbulbs for flourescent, etc. If everyone who reads this blog (apparently there are a lot of you!) did that and told your friends to do it, the world would be that much better. It might not be immediately noticeable on the global climate-change scale, but that's a crappy reason to keep doing nothing, isn't it?

Anyway, it's rude of me to lecture, especially since I just asked you for money. Well, Tamtala's farmers' association asked you for money - I just translated. I'm proud of these guys - they are taking the initiative, and during rainy season nonetheless, the busiest time of the year (I guess with no rain this year it's easier to tear yourself away from weeding your field, since even the weeds aren't growing). The men seem to be hearing me talk, even if they don't listen to my advice - a step in the right direction. Baby steps count, especially considering these guys aren't used to giving a woman the time of day. It's a bad habit of theirs, but it doesn't mean they should have to go without food.

Well. I wouldn't ask you all to part with your hard-earned money, especially considering the economy in North America these days, without regaling you with some Sahelian Stories. Since I last wrote...

I went to Tahoua again, more precisely, to Tabalak and Kahehe, where a PCV friend threw herself a birthday party and took advantage of the available labor to have us all dig 200 holes in a field for her Gum Arabic plantation - a fantastic idea. We went swimming in her village's gigantic lake - much to the amusement of the entire village, who'd come down to see the white people floating around in their clothes (or sitting on pagnes, fully clothed, on the beach, or walking on the shore, gaping at the massive body of water). What? Of course we went swimming in our clothes. What else would one wear to swim? Sheesh.

That night we volunteers camped by the lake, with a bonfire and marshmallows from a care package and chatting all night. Full moon on the water, a nice big fish, a mango crisp someone had baked, a cool breeze, all quite lovely. Oh, but I slept through it. Whoops. I'd been setting up my awesome little tent and thought I'd just lie down for a 20-minute power nap, and then I woke up and it was morning. Guess I was tired. Something about all that swimming, and maybe a bit of stress. Yes - even in West Africa, if you're dedicated to it, you can enjoy a similar stress level to the familiar one you knew in Amerika. I don't HAVE to have four major projects going, and I'd eventually regret it if I wasn't working this hard (though it's quite possible to just hang out here for two years - if you have no conscience). But still. I needed that rest in Tahoua. But again (remember, we're on a rollercoaster here) - will I ever have another 2-year period in my life where it's POSSIBLE to just hang out? Well. That's not why I came. Not all of it, anyway. A big part of it IS, actually - learning to "just be." Am I failing? Oh goodness. Rollercoaster rider or schizophrenic?

Back in Tamtala, I'd been gone eight days, and we'd had two births and one divorce. The divorce didn't last, though. According to midday-meal gossip with the ladies of my concession, Haissa's husband left her, saying he wanted a divorce, but was back within two nights (or three nights? It was the second night, Sallei said. No, no, the third one, Saouda insisted, because he stayed at his brother Moodi's. Ha-ah, two nights, Bouli supplied, because I saw him the second one doing this-or-that, and on and on, until I'm pretty sure it was the second). Then they turn to me - "Sakina, in Ameriki, there's no divorce, wala?" And I laughed, and said that it seems to me that marriage problems are pretty universal. But I suggested that if I were Haissa I wouldn't take the guy back. And they laughed.

Ousemane, the true "child of Damagaram," our health agent, came to see if my Hausa had improved after my foray east, and decided it had. Suuuper. He'd been working hard. It's malaria time, you know, because all the rain we had a month ago left breeding puddles for mosquitoes (damning us and leaving, cruel, fickle rainclouds). Yesterday he had 16 cases of malaria, all in children under five. One, a two-year old girl, died. She'd been sick for four days before her mother brought her in. And I sit here wondering what to say about that. Malaria medicine is FREE for the under-5 segment of the population. Why wait? Probably her mother didn't know it was malaria - she'd seen her get sick and recover before. If she was a little boy, though, that kid would've been at Ousemane's on the second or third day.

All 16 of Ousemane's cases were in kids under 5, but that's not because adults don't get malaria - I'd definitely have it if I wasn't taking prophylaxis - my legs and arms are covered in firey itchy welts. Most people simply suffer through, or die from it, rather than going to the doctor. If you're over 5, malaria treatment is about $2.50 - totally out of reach for most everyone. As if Allah had planned it, the "Malaria Prevention and Treatment" radio show Kate and I recorded a few weeks ago aired yesterday afternoon. Ousemane greeted me on our work, saying it was good, we did a fine job. Maybe tomorrow it'll be 15 instead of 16 cases.

I'd come into the village on a Peace Corps car, piled high with 150,000 CFA worth of fencing and posts for protecting our about-to-be-outplanted Moringa plantation. Cheif et al knew it was coming, we'd all talked about it, we're all very happy. That doesn't mean the men are ready to set the stuff up yet, of course, because they haven't done their part and scrounged up the concrete and wires and labor in a nice orderly pile waiting for me - but they will. I trust them, which is a great feeling. I've seen this happen now, twice. It's not how I would run things; it's certainly not efficient in my sense of the word, but it's how things work, and work they do. When I get back on Sunday, I expect posts to be in the ground in some concrete - unless Allah brings some rain this weekend, in which case I'll give them a few more days. Regardless, we will have big-time tree planting on August 3. The nursery looks awesome, too. We're excited. I've got a couple pictures of its lush green spectacularity... but my beautiful and trusty camera is toast now, died in a dust storm. Sad, but a small casualty, when I remember to keep perspective. Perspective smooths out the roller coaster to a nicer path, merely a potholed laterite road.

With that, kala ton-ton. I'm off to search for some calamine lotion.

Meh... flurry makes me think of snow. No snow here!

On July 2, the wedding anniversary of a friend I've known since preschool who is now teaching little tykes in Wisconsin, some star alignment created a flurry of activity in Tamtala. We finally, finally, finally got rain last week, and had been planting (yes, I am in Niamey, leaving my field half-covered in manure, awaiting sorghum planting. Yes, this is late, but the time hasn't totally passed yet.). I guess it really started July 1, but all of the following took place in the ensuing 48-hour period.

My friend Djamila, who has a four-year-old daughter, Wassila, gave birth to a boy. Only three days earlier, she'd been winking at me saying that she expected to give birth this month, and that no, she wouldn't tell our health agent, Ousemane, (the closest thing we have to a doctor), but she'd tell me. I fretted, wondering why, but the answer wasn't hard to reach. Medical ethics haven't reached American proportions here yet, and a lot of bush women fear the prenatal consultation. Ousemane is very professional by all accounts, but there is still distrust when one is in a room alone with a man. Djamila had been at Ousemane's office last week, though, in the prenatal consultation room. I was there, under the shade hanger with the Unicef scale, for baby weighings like I am every month. This time I'd brought bags of dried Moringa leaves to give to mothers whose little ones had lost weight since May. There were more kids than the twenty bags could serve, but I've just bought more at the Yantala Market in Niamey. One day, insha'allah, the women will be able to take care of all of this themselves, because many of them are growing their own Moringa (I am a seed distributor as well, you see). Asking the handful of vendors at Yantala, they said their leaves came from Maradi - halfway across the country! I know there are Moringa plantations south of Niamey. Obviously we need more...

Some of you know that, because of my practical obsession with this tree, I was lucky enough to get selected to attend a West African sub-regional conference on Moringa in Burkina Faso. Along with "ay baaba," three volunteers and their counterparts, and three PC/N staff, we trucked it 12 hours overland to northwestern Burkina Faso (which means "land of the brave" or something similar...). We had a fabulous four days sharing ideas, successes, failures and recipes with volunteers from Ghana, Togo, Benin and Burkina. I met another Gallagher (probably not really related to me, but also traces his lineage to Donegal). We PCVs exchanged Franglais puns. We ate egg sandwiches and yogurt and compared Biere Niger with their two equivalent options. We ripped on the Ghana PCVs for getting to speak English all the time. We tried to come up with cool stuff Niger had that the other countries didn't. Our list: giraffes (although they're in Benin too, so geez, nothing?!). How about Tuaregs? Land mines? An overabundance of sand? No?

Over the course of the conference, Chris mentioned to me that somehow Niger seemed... different. It was true. As I wrote in an article for our PCV newsletter here:

"During the conferenece, we Nigeriens showcased for the other attendees the best things about our culture. We thought these little quirks were rather pan-West-African, but as it turns out, other countries seemed to have a bit more alhali [manners/behavior] than us, even though the Niger PCVs knew it was just stuff we'd gotten used to... Our offenses included stealing control of entire sessions in order to overexplain a point, and then doing it again five minutes later, burping, laughing at inappropriate times, not being able to speak French OR English, refusing to turn off our cell phones, showing up late to sessions because some of us were praying, snapping ("moi, monseiur!"), stealing the soap, stealing seeds, stealing food, talking when someone else "had the parole" and various other faux pas everyone else was too polite to call to our attention."

In truth, I don't think we (and by we, I don't mean the PCVs) were too badly misbehaved (and I do recognize that it's a bit snobby to quote myself on my blog, but hey, I gave permission), but we were really the only country that brought counterparts who couldn't speak English or French, including my baaba (also the primary burper and laugher). Shrug and sigh. I was made to once again examine my feelings about colonial languages: they sure did make life easier for 90 percent of us that week.

Anyway, I digress (although really, is extolling the virtues of the Miracle Tree ever irrelavant? I think not.). I was telling you all about July 2. So Djamila had a boy. I'm glad she did, I guess... she already has a daughter, and people here always prefer boy babies to girls. But I have to say, she was my closest shot at having a villager name a baby after me, since she is my closest young-woman friend. This is kind of a rite of passage for a PCV. Anyway, she's got a healthy boy who pooped on me when he was three hours old. He won't have a name for another couple of days, but my bet is Mohammad or some variation of it.

Big event number two: a ruckus outside my concession. I went out to see what was going on. Fati (and when I say "Fati", you say "which one?" - this Fati was the first neighbor I had, my Live-In week in February of 2002) has two boys. The older one, Souley, was tied to his grandma's back, which is very normal, but a knot of women were fussing over him. As I got closer I saw red streaks on his face. I'm ashamed to say it, but for a split second - just a second, to calm myself down, because I knew what had probably really happened - I had some thought like "wow, maybe this is some "African" face-painting thing I don't know about." Terrible, I know. But anyway. What's just as terrible as my ignorance is the fact that Souley had been injured by a donkey cart - stories were flying every which way as to exactly how and who was to blame (the blame, apparantly, was mostly Souley's, since "little boys in rainy season don't behave"). What was apparent was blood clotting on his forehead and soaking the pagne tied around his head in back. The women debated the possibility of getting him a donkey cart, but they had all gone to the fields (overnight we'd had rain, yes RAIN!). And Ousemane was in Lossa, our town at the road. So his grandma was preparing, gathering money, to walk him the hour-plus to the doctor's office. In the hubbub I managed to check his alertness and speak soothingly (I think) to his mother and aunts, explaining that we could see his eyes were open and were following movement, and that was really good. I don't know what my opinion was worth to them, but noting this made me feel better. Through the whole clucking-women chaos, Souley was incredibly calm. I couldn't tell if this was because he was in incredible pain, or if he, at three years old, had just developed the uncanny patience common to many a long-suffering "child of the bush."

I went out to my field to spread more piles of poop on the sand and await the owners of any animals to get to tilling my 40x40-meter plot. I am planting sorghum and beans until I run out, and I've got some hibiscus left from my garden. Might add millet and peanuts depending on availability too. I'd set up my 5x4-meter garden plot inside my concession, complete with a drip-irrigation system, and planted carrots, tomatoes, hibiscus, melons and lettuce. The lettuce won't make it - it doesn't like the heat. But the melons and hibiscus should be fine. And the tomatoes are special rainy season variety from ICRISAT, so there is hope for produce for me this year.

I'd had a screamer of an evening on the first, when an enormous creepy-crawly creature invaded my house. I was brushing my teeth by the light of a battery-powered blue lamp. This creates an effect not unlike moonlight in the house. Cat rushed in, running erratically. This is not strange. Cat is still an idiot in some ways. But she did indeed appear to be chasing a dark shadow, so I grabbed for my flashlight and spotted a Big Gross Thing running up my wall. It froze on my bookshelf, and I fumbled for my camera, making the shot you see to the left (it was the first day I took my camera out in Tamtala since getting back from America). Training the light on it, I stooped for the cat, toothbrush still in my mouth, eyes on the Bug. Oooh I hope this is not a scorpion. Oooh those things hurt. It doesn't look like a scorpion. What is that crazy tentacle-looking Thing on it? Is it a chariot spider (so named because they're big enough to be a scorpion's ride)? I place Oblivious Cat on my trunk, four inches from the Thing, staring straight at it, and she loses interest three times before she finally gets it and pounces for the Thing. I might have shrieked at this moment, but probably just started doing a little stomping dance until Cat reappeared with Bug in her mouth. Frantically cranking my flashlight (after a year those battery-free wind-up flashlights need to be constantly encouraged to work) and nervously scrubbing my teeth, I train the light on the cat and scoot toward the door.

Then, of course, I knock over my broom, scaring all of us. Cat loses Bug, I lose Cat, etc. Cat streaks out the door, I jump onto a stool, and somehow manage to spotlight Bug again, this time on a piece of 2x4 leaning against the wall. Cursing the cat for her uselessness ("Kittennnnn, I this would've been a reaaaaally good thing to start your killing on"), feeling very girly for being so creeped out by this bug, wondering however I'll make it to my bed with Bug between me an it, not to mention sleep safely knowing Things like That are out there, I continue to brush my teeth (dental hygeine is important). My heavy Chacos are on the other side of the room? What can I reach from the relative safety of my stool? Ah-ha, my Reefs, which might seem flimsy to some of you, but I wear them to farm, so I know how strong they really are. I took the right flip-flop and wound up, thought better of it, leaned closer, switched hands, cranked the flashlight, aimed and chucked the shoe with all my might at the top of the 2x4. It looked dead-on, but of course during the throw I'd lost the light on the Thing, and after I recovered it, Bug was gone, shoe was on the floor, etc. Whimpering (okay not really...), I decided that I could talk myself into thinking I'd killed it and could go to bed, letting it escape from my house in the night. Luckily my mosquito net was set up, and all I had to do was crawl in and squeeze my eyes shut. Cat not allowed. Cat has betrayed me. I needed Cat, and Cat did not hold up her end of the deal. She can sleep alone tonight. But then madness set in and I imagined the thing lifting the feather-light Reef on its strong Bug Shoulders and darting out to bite my ankle and cause me screaming pain. So I grabbed the fallen broom and gave the shoe a few good whacks. I heard a crunch! Yes! I shooshed the flip-flop aside and saw the telltale spot of ooze on the concrete floor. Victory was mine. Vindication. Self-actualization. I don't need any cat to save me from any scary bug. Until next time. And that it the story of the picture to your left.

Now I'm exhausted, but I'll give you a rundown of the rest of July 1 and 2, exciting as they were. There was a landmark soccer match in Tamtala, where young men play on festival days (Muslim holidays, weddings and baby-naming ceremonies). This occasion was a big-deal wedding. Samira's dad was getting remarried, a mere three months after his divorce from her mother, whose picture I'd taken and had developed at home, but who had returned to her parents' village. Samira, one of my favorite kids, was still in the village, but her little sister is with her mother. This is because once kids are big enough to be useful they are the property of the father, but if they are little enough to need caring for they are the responsibility of the mother - and that's how divorce works here. Yeah - yuck. Anyway, there was a big wedding. I dug out my Swear-In complet, which I'd worn to the wedding I'd gone to last year with Maimouna's daughters in a nearby village. The young wife from that wedding was in Tamtala for this one with her new baby - a testament to how much time I've been here. A year and a half - plenty of time.

The soccer game was monumental in that it got so heated that the completely impoverished farmers in my village felt compelled to buy sweets from Weyla, the table-seller, to give out as bribes for the winners, and to toss to the groups of fans (boys, young men, old men, a lazy girl or two - because all the women, of course, are working). Great extravagance in the face of poverty. Was it brave, a display of joy and passion, or foolish? I am in no position to judge. I keep joking when I go to the water pump in the evenings, and watch the men play and the boys stand around, that tomorrow the men will pull water and the women will play ball. Everyone is scandalized, of course, but the hangers-around seemed genuniely impressed when i went out to juggle a half-flat ball with some eight-year-olds while I was waiting my turn at the pump. It has been proven true to me, what they tell us in training - female PCVs often pass as a "third" gender, doing things a Nigerien woman could never get away with. This is just one example.

Afer working in my field and my garden, and finishing Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (very inspiring! I've been tempering it with an account of 1990s China - fascinating as well, in a very different way), I went out to see if Souley and his grandma were back. Sure enough, they were - both of them. He had two huge bandages on his head, and she told me he'd gotten pills to take twice a day for four days, and that was that. It was a great relief - and even better to see him horsing around with the other boys in the sand as I went to the pump that evening.

Two NGO vehicles rolled into Tamtala over these two days, too. The first was from Quatar Charities. A representative came in and the chief called a village-wide meeting which was incredibly well-attended, especially considering there had been rain the night before. After asking all about the history of the village (I learned a lot myself) and about the resources available, the guy asked what problems there were and what the village wanted. This is pretty typical NGO protocol, from what I've seen. I did it too, in a way, when I got to Tamtala. I'm a bit tired of it all. I was just talking to my friend Danielle about this yesterday - what we need here is small business development. Small-enterprise loans, not handouts. Encouragement of entrepreneurship. I wouldn't have said this two years ago. But I am so tired of seeing this culture of dependency reinforced by people in white SUVs swooping in and handing stuff out. The QC guy was good, and I know what he is doing is with good intention. It's the same thing Peace Corps does (in part). We all seek the participation of our beneficiaries. I still have some faith in this system, but my tolerance is running low for watching villagers wait and wait and wait rather than go out and seek for themselves a way to get out of poverty. An ambitious chief here, like mine, is one who seeks partnerships with NGOs, not one that lures investors to the village. Two big things are to blame here: a lack of education and a lack of infrastructure. People don't know what's available to them, and there aren't clear avenues for getting goods to market on a large scale. There is very little disposable income. At least two, but maybe all four, of the other Peace Corps programs represented at the Moringa conference were running Small Enterprise Development sectors. We in Niger aren't even there yet. We're still trying to keep people fed.

The next day the biggest Nigerien I'd ever seen came to town, with two friends. He works with an NGO in Tillaberi with which Peace Corps has a good relationship. Since Amirou was very regrettably out of town at the market and his brother Dullah was in his field, I was kind of the unofficial high-ranking Tamtalan, as it was. These guys wanted to have a meeting with the village (probably the exact same thing that we'd gone through the day before). I knew my chief had been waiting for them and would be disappointed he'd missed them. I made Crystal Light for them and chatted with the super tall guy. His brother works for Peace Corps in Dosso as a driver, and he knows my friend Genghis Khan, now back in Minnesota being a 'regular person again.' He asked about him and suggested I leave Tamtala to come work with them in Tillaberi, and I respectfully declined, saying I had plans to go back to the States and then to graduate school. He said, "you will become a big important person, and then you will come back to Niger and bring us another NGO."

Exasperated, as politely as possible I told him that there are already bazillion NGOs in Niger. "But poverty is not finished," he said.

That's right.

At this same time, when I really wanted to get to the bottom of things with him, my boss Haoua was persistently calling my cell phone, which gets one bar of reception when I have it hanging in my shade hangar (enough to get texts or calls, but not to respond to either). While trying to talk to this guy like a grown-up, I was hauling my tree-climbing chair behind the house and excusing myself, thinking there could be an emergency here to deal with and knowing I had no money left on my pay-as-you-go phone to call her back. Haoua explained that there are issues with the exchange rate on one of my grant reports, and said I need to come to Niamey. So here I am. I got to go to an Independence Day reception at the US ambassador's house the night I came to town, which means that the electricity-less (and thus mostly unproductive) day I'd had at the bureau discussing exchange rates was not entirely lost. I'd been planning on being in the bush for three weeks straight, but oh well. Now you all can read this blog post and get more excited to donate to the cereal bank project - which, because of the trouble with the grant reporting, is not yet ready to receive your hard-earned money.

I'll take this opportunity to plug it a little, though the big push will be in a couple weeks (hopefully before August). I learned a lot from the millet grinder project, which was seen by the villagers as a gift to Tamtala, and I'm determined that this will be something different. We've had a lot more meetings with interested farmers, setting up a men's cooperative (to complement the two women's groups already in existence). There had been no formal men's associations in the village, since NGOs largely aren't interested in the men. Yes, the situation of women in Niger is worse than that of men. But it kind of reminds me of Title IX, under which my university had Varsity Women's Lightweight Crew but no Varsity Men's Baseball team. That's not to poo-poo on rowing. It's a tough sport. But no baseball? Come on people. Anyway - I have focused on empowerment and giving the men a lot of decision-making power (a difficult balance to strike, because I don't know if they are simply not deferring to me because I'm a woman, or are 'getting it' more quickly than the women's group did, or what). They know they're getting a donation, but that it's only a percentage of the grain they want for next season, and they have to get the rest together or it won't work. They are responsible for building the house and maintaining the whole thing for years to come. And this is not a project to be administered by the chief; as trustworthy as he is, he is oveworked (and a bit of a control freak). I'm lucky because he is not corrupt and he tries very hard - he hasn't burned out after 18 years as chief, and that's remarkable. One of my biggest challenges is convincing him to let these guys have some control over their cereal bank - hard because they often defer to him, of course. What to do?

Obviously I am wrestling with the idea of development work. But as far as it goes, it would be impossible at this point for Tamtala to stock its own cereal bank, even if everyone sold all their livestock and the xima made lots of spells and everyone went into debt. We don't want that. The structure available to us at this time is once again asking for donations from global citizens such as yourselves who want to reward the efforts of this small group of farmers on the edge of the desert and help them make it through next year's hunger season with more ease. Not that I need to guilt you all, or convince you of the importance your donation would make to the village, but I figure the more information, the better. Don't hesitate to ask any questions via email or text (if you're one of those lucky few who can text me, it's often the highlight of my day to get a message).

I've got a gross story about jumping weevils in my last breakfast mango of the season, a lot to say about farming (very funny Jodie), many overused phrases about how much more tolerable life is now that the rain brings cool breezes every three days (I haven't even sweated today!!!), and some commentary about the quality of light at sunset on Saouda and Dullah's house, but I've entertained you all enough for today. Soon, soon, I will invite you to lighten your wallets. For now, I thank you for reading (all ten of you).

The rain is late this year.

This would be bad news any year, but this one especially is hard. Those of you who are paying attention know we're already short on food. Corn is twice as expensive as it was in October. Rain fell last night, but it's still not enough for the whole village to start planting.

I came to Niamey a few weeks ago and spent four fourteen-hour days at the bureau, writing and reporting on grants, chasing down members of the bureaucracy for signatures and approvals, etc. Also got up before dawn to wait in line to grovel at the main police station in Niamey. The groveling, which I'm not good at, was so my "baaba" (so called because he has a daughter also named Sakina) could get an ID card so we can travel to Burkina Faso tomorrow. Yes, I shouldn't technically have to go along to get someone else an ID, but, you see, I am white. No, that's not fair. And it didn't even work.

Ay baaba is the super-motivated Moringa man in Tamtala, and I'm excited we finally got a travel card. We spent two days trying to get a National Identity Card for him, but apparently they only issue 15 a day. In the entire country. Photo IDs are required even if you want to travel on a bush taxi, otherwise you pay a fine (if the police don't get too bored checking other passengers' IDs before they get to you). Yet it's nearly impossible to get one when following 'normal' protocol. Since there are rules about how much Truth I can actually write on this public blog, I'll once again stop the story there and just let you all know that we did manage to find some sort of solution without bribing anyone, and insha'allah we will cross into Burkina tomorrow without too much hassle.

It's been hard in general to be back after having been in the States. The first couple weeks were really strange. I had nightmares. I also had no appetite, which is actually great for a girl who went home to everyone saying "you look so HEALTHY!" - American code for "oh, I thought you'd come back from Africa looking like a 1990s Somalian, and you've actually put on weight." Thanks guys. Really makes me feel better for getting fat in a country where people are dying of hunger.

I also had the chance to ponder my friends' and family members' comments, specifically about how much I haven't changed. At first I thought this was great; a confirmation of my hunch that I was a PCV before I became a PCV. But now I really wonder: oh crap, is it true that I could possibly NOT have grown while I'm here (or worse, that I have regressed)? I had some kind of fuzzy goals coming into Peace Corps about being present in the moment, and enjoying being in one place rather than being obsessed with the past and planning for the future. I wanted to become more patient and be kinder to people. Instead, when I went home, I treated people the way I always had, and this is no good. Even if I am better here, I don't want to lose that as soon as I get back onto American soil.

The difficulties weren't all of that nature, though. While in the States, I had more than 200 photos printed, many of which I brought back to the village to give as gifts. This was a HORRIBLE idea. Tamtalans don't often get the chance to have their picture taken, and whenever I take my camera out I get mobbed. Consequently there have been some beautiful shots that have remained uncaptured. But what's more - there are more than 800 people in Tamtala, and there's no way I can - or would want to - take every single one's picture. But somehow everyone thinks that was possible. They also can't tell the difference between my still and video cameras. What this all translates to is a genuine reluctance to leave my concession, because when I do, adults and children alike forget their manners and instead say "Hey, Sakina, man ay fota?!" which is, of course, "Hey, Sakina, where's my photo?!"

In a society where immediate profuse greeting is the name of the game, I have found myself lecturing Nigeriens on their own culture on a daily basis: "You don't even ask after my health! You don't know how to behave! You just see me and think 'photo!'." I'd return to my hut exhausted and hating myself for not having more patience - of COURSE everyone wants their own photo. This has been their only chance in their lives to get one (yes, most bush Nigeriens don't have that photo ID required for traveling. Shocking as that may seem, it is sometimes possible to talk and buy your way out of an official reprimand.). Of COURSE they can't tell the difference between my cameras, which each cost more than any of them make in a year.

So... I've been grumpy lately. I've also noticed that my normally jovial Nigerien buddies-at-large (because every Nigerien is just a friend I have yet to meet) have been kind of quick-tempered. The bush taxi passenger-wrangler guy, who usually keeps his patience when I lose mine, is angry. There have been several possessions in Tamtala since I've been back. I've seen two fights in the village in two weeks (as many as I've seen in the past year). I wonder if it's just me noticing the negativity, or if everyone - even if s/he is not actually directly involved in farming - is feeling the stress of the late rains and expensive food.

There have been those nice moments, though, usually in the too-short dusk after a day of work when I know I've done well. I know I'm supposed to be here. I know my work is not done, and I am working hard. I've had some great conversations with fellow PCVs lately about our roles in our respective communities and about development in general. There are two camps among PCVs - those who think we should throw up our hands and leave Africa altogether - all the NGOs, everyone - and force people to figure things out for themselves. People will die. But it might be the only way that anything development-related might actually happen. The other camp is those of us wanting to go into sustainable development, or, the others say, those of us good at "selling ideas to people." This grates on me, but I'm working on it.

I do believe in the Peace Corps model. I believe in us as an empowerment organization more than a development one. The problem is, it's easier to buy your village something with donations from well-meaning first-world-dwellers than it is to convince them that they can get it themselves. This is made even more difficult by the fact that an "enterprising" village chief, such as mine, is one that actively searches for partnerships with NGOs rather than encouraging small business development. Not that there's much of any infrastructure to support small businesses, especially in the bush.

So what have I done about this, all you who donated to the millet grinder project are asking? Well. I've placed stricter guidelines on my village in general (chief, neighborhood leaders, women's groups) about getting funding for x and y through me. The cereal bank that my chief has wanted for years and years is not going to happen, I told him, without serious participation from each and every family in the village - in the form of labor and/or monetary donations. Over several afternoons of intense negotiations and fevered insistence on my part that it is the VILLAGE, not me, that is bringing ITSELF a cereal bank, - plus the use of a favorite proverb "Irkoy ne 'tun, ay ma ni ga," which translates as "Allah said 'get up, I'll help you," or "God helps those who help themselves" - the five most 'important' people in Tamtala (Amirou, Maimouna, and the three neighborhood leaders) seemed to "get it."

The cereal bank is not a gift from me to the village, as the millet grinder is seen, much to my embarrassment. The millet grinder, though, really bought me some credit and clout with the bigwigs. It was as if showing that I had access to tons of money proved that I had enough education and training to dispense advice instead of just medicine (which was assumed to be my job for a while). I recently got the cereal bank grant application approved, so check back here soon for instructions on how to donate to it in order to help the village make it happen (NOT to make it happen FOR the village).

My newfound credit has made it possible for me to launch another big project in partnership (partnership is crucial) with Ousemane, Tamtala's health agent. We are planning a 480-tree Moringa plantation to be planted near the health hut. Again, I had to get funding for this, but that money, we agreed, is limited to buying the fencing and the irrigation kits (to be donated by Water Worldwide, my dad's company's philanthropic arm). The village is responsible for pooling its resources to buy the seeds, the plastic pots for the nursery, etc. Last Sunday the women's group prepared the nursery - so! There's a small victory for us all. It would be perfect if they all understood that this money was an investment in the trees that will eventually produce leaves that the women can dry to not only eat themselves, but to sell in the market for profit.

I'm learning more about the undercurrent of animism in Tamtala. Possessions tend to happen more frequently during hot season, so I've gotten to see more lately, and a few more exorcism dances. This heat would drive anyone insane, especially if there is no option for escape to Niamey for air conditioning and showers. There was one night (June 1) when two people got possessed, and it was scary - too much screaming and other haunting noises to fall asleep. More nightmares that night.

A guy in my village, Issa (Nigeriens' name for Jesus), teaches Arabic, the language of Islam. He's also the guy who will write protection messages for you (in Arabic) to wear around your neck (to protect you from vampires, etc.). There's also the option of writing the messages with washable ink on a board, washing the board, and drinking the water. I find this... hilarious. And also tempting. There are certain cases that lend strong support to the effectiveness of his juju, including that of Ay Baaba's youngest baby, who is the fattest baby I've ever seen, and also whiter than both of his parents (a big blessing in the eyes of Tamtalans). But once upon a time he got very sick, and the medicine from the doctor in Sansane Haussa couldn't cure him. Finally his parents took him to Issa, who charges a pretty penny but wrote the 'tiny papers', which Mahama (woodcarver and leatherworker) sewed into pouches and put on a necklace. Ay Baaba told me not to worry about our trip to Burkina, as he produced a huge tangle of leather and lines - as long as I'm with him, I'm safe. His wife Biibo agreed, even though at first she was confused as to why Peace Corps didn't supply us with "guns or something" for protection when we travel.

Last year I seemed to have a lot of horizontal, too-hot-to-nap time during the hot afternoons, but this year I think I'm managing the heat better and working through it. Face stinging with sweat, I do more than just miss the ocean these days. I sew (skirts and complets, but I'm pretty bad at it), I read (lately Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen and The Natural Step for Communities by Torbjorn Lahiti and Sarah James), I write (journal entries, plans, lists, and letters to ex-boyfriends that I'll never send). Maimouna comes to study and we chat. I meet with Amirou to discuss projects as he drinks tea. I don my straw hat and go to Djalika's to check on her moringa trees (doing great!) and sit while she works until the kids drive me away. I play with my kitten, who I've had since I got back in May. Her name is Kitten (so far). She hasn't killed anything yet and is still just another consumer of powdered milk and peanut butter in my household. The rest of the time, I sell people ideas: plant moringas for health, care for your gum arabic trees for money, save your money in case of an emergency, wash your hands to prevent disease, make children with diarrhea drink clean water, send your daughters to school.

Finally, an anectode. On a bush taxi the other day, Kate and I were talking in English before she got out to go back to her village and I stayed on toward Tillaberi to talk about - what else? - Moringa on the radio. The well-dressed man in front of me turned half around, then thought better of it. A few seconds later, he turned full around and asked very carefully in English,

"Are you from M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I?",

a question to which I could not immediately respond because I was laughing too hard. He also did a decent job with the first half of the tongue twister "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" Turns out a PCV in Gotheye had taught him those years ago. That bush taxi ride was fun. A lot better than the one on the way to my village from Niamey last week, when the tire blew out and I thought we were going to die. And a LOT better than the one back from Tillaberi, during which another English speaker sat on my lap as fish-gut-ooze dripped on the passengers from the leaky bag on the roof. Ew.

And one more proverb:

"Ay ya tundu no. Boro ba, ni man ba, ni ga goro ay bon." That can be understood (allegedly) as "No one knows his fate, so don't mock the misfortunate," but it literally it says: "I am a butt. Even if you don't want to, you sit on me."

Until next time, which will hopefully be next week, when you'll all get the chance to help Tamtalans help themselves have enough food next year. I know you can't wait.

Ah, Niamey! Showers, chocolate, electricity – the wonders never cease.

Except today, I’m irritated that the showers have very little water pressure, the chocolate is mostly vegetable oil, and the electricity goes out every few hours. That’s because I was just in America.

America! Where everything was clean and cool. Where I could eat or drink anything I wanted whenever I wanted it. Where the sweet sound of Spanish being spoken over the PA system at O'Hare welcomed me home.

I was so overwhelmed with the constant availability of everything that after less than 24 hours of amazement, shock and gluttony, I could think of nothing I wanted. I had no cravings to soothe. Good thing I made lists while still in Tamtala; but I still found myself looking at them, wondering why I listed “sleeveless but modest

shirts” – wouldn’t sleeves be okay? It can’t be that hot in Niger.

The Niger I had so recently left at 118 degrees. Oh, how soon we forget!

Everyone kept asking how it felt to be home. Well, I positively laughed with delight when I saw the mountains again. The guy next to me, changing flights at SeaTac to go to Alaska, thought I was crazy. “I just love it here,” I told him, trying to control the cheesy smile. But beyond that…

“Is it totally weird to be back? Are you freaking out?” Well, I guess I would, if I had the time to react. But there was next to no time to reflect on the year-plus I’d just spent away, and certainly no time to put it in perspective, to create coherent sentences about what I’ve learned so far. It was all I could do to manage the constant stream of information and interrogations coming in. Answering questions isn’t so hard, and it was really often quite interesting and fun, but my previously keen ability to tell if people think I’m crazy has dulled. I actually unwittingly led a group of people to think I had converted to Islam. Not that that’s unheard of or bad – I just haven’t, and it didn’t occur to me to clarify that.

I need to step back for a moment and give thanks for a billion things. I’ve only today gotten the chance to slow down, and for that I’m grateful. But more than that, I’m indebted to a whole slew of Americans and Canadians who teamed up to fill my trip to the brim with activities that will now serve as cool memories – was I really shivering by Lake Mendota on Shannon’s graduation day? Was it really cold enough to make dipping my toes in Puget Sound not only impractical but undesirable, despite the fact I hadn’t seen it in a year and a half?

So. Here we go.

To my parents, for the funding, the transport, the beds, the encouragement, and the patience when I whined about driving a very big car (and other things).

Especially to Mom, for the “Mother’s Day” party that was also for me – she didn’t get to rest a moment. And all who came to chat me up and enjoy the delicious food.

To Cathy Scherer, the do-everything woman, for the cheerleading, reassurance and chauffering, and to Dave for the scones.

To my Whidbey parents, Clyde and Marcia, for throwing a great party! And to everyone who stopped by and added to my joy on a dreary Wednesday evening, including and especially Laura, who drove 2 and a half hours for it, and Kristian, who came while he was "at work," and the Adamses and the Petersens for understanding. And to Bayley for being herself, and Peanut for dancing these days.

To Bridget and Shannon, for gracefully performing the flip-flop job of hosting their older, less fashionable sister, with extra points for patience. Props to Bridget for the perks and the spotless Public Market, and to Sha for letting me sleep on her featherbed.

To Kristy, for laughing too.

To Meggie, for being so charming, as always.

To Bean, for driving up early from Portland to enjoy the Emerald City with me like no time had passed.

To Gramma, for doing the Gramma thing and also speaking passionately about Survivor. The pretty pink shirt has received many compliments already (sleeves are okay when you have air conditioning at the Peace Corps bureau).

To Jenny and Steve, for loving the ecovillage idea and constantly evolving.

To the Gallaghers (and McGraths) who made the trip from Chicago or Fontana - always wonderful to see you guys. To Joan and Jim and the dogs. To Meg for bringing her girls and surprising us!

To Sean and Sara, for their continued excellent taste in everything, their good humor, honesty and steadfast friendship.

To Tyler, for being so cool.

To Matty, Ryan and Seabass, for also being weird, and not quite at home in America. Especially to Seabass for the movies.

To the Rotarians on South Whidbey and at the White Rock Millenium Club, and all the District 5050 folks who made the extra effort to come and hear me speak about Niger.

To Jay Hudemann, who is, always has been and always will be there for me in a pinch.

To the 5th-8th graders at St. Francis, who asked great questions.

To my cousins, especially those who came to the party, and especially Eric and Zach, for being genuinely interested and quite remarkable dudes.

To anyone I've forgotten to thank who fed me or bought me fancy cocktails, or held his or her tongue when I made no sense, or who wished me well despite thinking I'm crazy.

---

I landed in Niamey Hamani Diori International (all two gates of it) at 4pm and walked into a 100-plus-degree oven, much more like what I’d expected as an arriving trainee back in January 2007. My first adventure consisted of rapidly losing my temper with the suspicious cus…

(Wait, this will be one of those censorable stories you’ll have to email to get. Sorry.)

… One overloaded, overpriced taxi ride later, back at the hostel, some fellow PCVs happily received their American market-gifts. Powdered donuts, anyone? How about 150 movies? Wireless internet?

Then the sky darkened, and we were instantly in the middle of a dust cloud – indoors. Everything was hazy, our teeth were fuzzy with dirt, and then the clouds opened. Sweet, sweet rain. The temperature dropped 20 degrees and we went outside and danced in the downpour, which lasted hours. I ended up falling asleep on the porch and getting rained on, which probably didn’t affect my nasty cold at all. Seriously. Two more good rains and it's time to plant.

Welcome back, though. The second day I was here there was a big but orderly demonstration in Niamey protesting the rapidly rising cost of living here (read: World Food Crisis). For more information, send me an email and I’ll forward you the documents provided to us about this year’s “hunger season.”

For one reason or another, I didn’t talk much about this at home. I suspect this is because it’s a huge, awful problem with no easy solutions, and I was having a difficult enough time making myself understood as it was. People at home want to know how they can help, and all I'm able to say is "donate to the World Food Program," because what I really want to say is going to offend them. Because the problem is, worldwide - there's not enough grain to feed everyone on the planet this year, unless some of us give some things up right now, and adjust our lifestyles for the long term.*

In Niger, for example, we'll need at least an additional 120,000 tons of rice, millet and sorghum to get everyone through September. Rice is currently about $100,000 a ton, almost three times its cost this past December, and importing from Asia is not an option this year as it has been in the past (as anyone who's been watching the international news wouldn't be surprised to hear. Thanks to Chris Burns for these numbers, as well as this sage advice, applicable to everyone worldwide: "the food crisis may indeed be of immediate concern, but it is unlikely to go away any time soon. Longer term solutions are just as critical at this point in time." (emphasis is mine)

What we're doing here this year to mitigate some of the effects:

- Planting lots and lots of my favorite tree, Moringa Oleifera (the miracle tree)

- Intercropping fields to protect against disaster if one fails

- Planting Nitrogen-fixing trees to increase the nutrient content of the soil

- Planting rainy-season gardens (lots of tomatoes) and using small-scale irrigation

Bigger changes in other, more developed parts of the world need to be made to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t keep happening. For example:

- Drastically reduce use of fossil fuels (but don't automatically turn to biofuels - read up on your options and keep an open mind)

- Stop eating so much meat (if you live in the developed world). Grain-fed cows consume TONS of cereals, grown on land that could be used to feed people.

- Reduce the birth rate (yes, here too, of course). We say the developing world is causing the most problems in this area, but I'd like to call to mind that ten Nigerien kids use fewer resources than one American.

In the interest of not getting too preachy, I'll stop there. But I'm serious, folks. I haven't seen much in the way of effects myself beyond what I talked to many of you at home about (I've only been back a few days), but fellow PCVs have already been talked into giving food loans to Nigerien friends, and it's not even June.

I was only kind of amazed to see that gas is $4 a gallon at home. I guess I'd expected it to be even more by now. How expensive does it have to get for people to stop buying it?** Here it's 700 CFA a liter (almost $2) these days, up 50 CFA from 6 months ago. This might not seem like much compared to what drivers in the US are facing, but relative to income, the mild form of extortion practiced by taxi drivers here is downright excusable.

I admit I fell right back into old habits in the States, cherishing the freedom that comes with a car, and the ability it gave me to squeeze in as many visits as possible in as little time as possible (ie, driving rather than taking the bus to Madison). But therein, too, lies a problem. Understandable under the circumstances - perhaps we all need to just slow down.

Allrighty, it's time for some mad grant-reporting action on the millet grinder project. Another big THANKS to all who donated, and a heads-up to all who didn't get a chance: you will have a chance to fund a grain bank, so check back over this summer.

For those of you who just can't wait to send me things - don't worry, I'll always have enough food. It's not fair, but that's how it is. The problem is dealing with how to not be giving away something-for-nothing, which only strengthens a culture of dependency already rampant and growing like a cancer in countries like Niger, where

outside aid is one of the main sources of income. If you want to help my village, hang on a bit to donate to my next project.

If you want to make ME smile, make some CDs with any great-to-mediocre music that's come out since January '07, or send DVDs of your favorite movies. It looks like I've missed quite a bit of culture in the past 17 months. I thought American culture was available everywhere... but apparently not in Tamtala, except through me. Big thanks to Sara for setting a great example.

With that attempt at lightening the mood, I bid you kala ton-ton.

*This isn't a sacrifice. This isn't a bad thing.

**(Very strong effort applied here to continue with the paragraph's original plan rather than going down a tangent about the need for a system-wide transportation revolution in America. Refer to the need of a dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels in the World Food Crisis section.)

Well, I took that fabulous weave out. It was time. My real hair is so soft! And don't worry folks: even though my post-weave hairdo would've been a perfect starting point for dreadlocks, I have not taken that step into the void of Real Hippiedom.

Bigger, more important news: The millet grinder is up and running! It thumps away every day from late morning until dusk (thereby not disturbing my sleeping - smile, smile). Tamtalan women are congratulating and thanking me still, which makes me very, very uncomfortable, but they are super excited to show me their hands. Pounding grains by hand creates calluses that would be envied by ballerinas, metalworkers, and everyone in between for their utility. After a few days of not pounding from morning until night, my neighbors calluses are starting to "yuut-tu" - fade away, get better, etc. The need for the giant eucalyptus mortar-and-pestle set has not come close to being eliminated: there are many steps to making delicious howru (dinner) that still need these tools. But the really hard work is now done by a machine ("like in Amerik," says my friend Medina, "where machines do people's work for them.").

I finally received the list of folks whose generosity made the millet grinder possible, so they will finally be receiving official "Sakina Thanks You" notes - insha'allah - very soon. For now, TANIMERT! from the bottom of our Songhai Bella hearts here in Tamtala.

--

"This year's hot season," I wrote in my journal just last week, "doesn't seem as bad as last year's. The neem tree flowers smell so good I want to bottle their scent and carry it with me." Butterflies and sparkles and happiness and relief at the idea of not suffering this April as much as I did last year. That very night, mere hours after that fateful entry, I woke at 2am with that old familiar feeling: a pounding headache and desperate thirst - despite the fact that I'd drunk nearly 16 ounces of water right before bed. The still, devilish morning confirmed my dread: it's now that hot. Back to sweating 24 hours a day for three months. Back to bordering-on-dangerous dehydration.

I went to the doctor two days ago for my mid-service exam, and he said I am days away from having kidney stones. "Brittany: drink lots of water, right now!" It's nearly impossible to stay hydrated, and I try to conserve water in the bush, like the rest of the village does. I've weaned myself off carrying a bottle around constantly. By now, though, I'm up to "footing" a bucket a day, to bathe, drink, etc. Last year my feelings toward pumping water alternated between amusement and annoyance, but by now it's just a part of the routine.

Also last year, I noted here that I don't hate lizards - after all, they eat ants. Well, my feelings have changed - because they also eat my moringas! I have made several pastes to keep them away - one with neem leaves and ash, one with tobacco leaves - but they don't care. I hate hate hate them. We are locked in a battle of epic proportions, with them skittering around my concession and me shaking sticks, throwing rocks and yelling at them. But I will not put chemicals on my little trees whose leaves I want to eat.

Some of you may know about the "Three Moringas in Every Concession" campaign (I've probably written about it). Slowly but surely, there are trees popping up in concessions around the village. My friend Djamila's mum has had much better luck than me (perhaps she has more 'wani' (knowledge/experience) than I have). She doesn't seem to have a lizard issue, but she did have a problem with frogs. On her own (no outside-world prompting here), she made a tobacco-and-ash pesticide to keep the pests away, and her trees are thriving! I am so proud of her. Last week I gave her more seeds. The news is spreading, and the other women in her concession have planted teeny trees too. We are on our way.

--

In other news, Kate and I went to a meeting at Union Dabari, a development organization run entirely by Nigeriens. Fantastic! Since our goal as PCVs is to work ourselves into obsolesence, it was great to see the place held up entirely by brilliant, motivated, educated local folks. The meeting was for stakeholders in communities all around Tillaberi, mostly village cheifs and women's leaders. Our presence was endlessly entertaining (of course). They loved listening to us speak Zarma. My favorite ironic moment was when I was talking with UD's president about the importance of education, and he was telling me about the residential school they run - taught in Zarma as well as French. "It's an imported language," he was telling me, "We teach in Zarma here so our own language will not die. Why would we teach our children a foreigner's language, a colonizer's language?" I am nodding and agreeing, and smiling... because this whole narrative of his was conducted in French.

--

Switching gears here: important news that I hope has reached American ears and eyes: For myriad reasons*, we in Niger are in quite a bit of trouble this year, food-wise. During our Mid-Service Training (three fabulous days of -again with the irony- overfeeding my stage in Hamdallaye), we had a session on the "World Food Crisis" hitting this year. Unrelated (or seemingly so) global causes abound, creating what Chris calls "the perfect storm" of food crises.

In Niger, last year's harvest wasn't as strong as people had hoped (the rains stopped early in many places). Food is running out already - and we haven't even started planting for this year. This time of the agricultural calendar, called "hunger season" in Niger, is always a bit thin. In bad years, the World Food Program and other NGOs come through with sacks of famine-relief grains. But programs like that are strapped for such things, and for cash, and they have had to ration their aid this year.

I've spoken to village men about it, and they do little more than agree: "yes, this year is bad. Already a sack of millet is 13,000 CFA in the market." My cheif sold one of his bulls a month ago, and already the money is gone. His family goes through a sack of millet every two weeks, and he only got 22,000 CFA for the cow. Animals are like money in the bank for bush people. What do we do when they're gone? When I explain to the men that the whole world is feeling "hunger season" this year and that those white people in white SUVs might not be coming with handouts this time, I am met with blank looks, or, at best, "yes, we heard that on the radio."

Ah, the radio. Kate and I are busy at work in Tillaberi, every other week recording two shows, so that people from Tera to Ouallam can hear our funny accents in Zarma every Thursday afternoon. We've gotten popular - everyone in Tillaberi knows us when they hear our names. And some people even repeat their favorite parts of our broadcasts back to us on the spot. We've recently been talking about conserving food and money, and about enhancing the nutritional content of a family's diet using peanuts and -yes, again - moringa. Our radio work has gotten a boost from a Peace Corps-sponsored training held a few weeks ago for volunteers and counterparts nationwide. The conference also served to underscore several Big Frustrating Cultural Differences that make it difficult to work in Niger (as if we needed the reminder). Ironically (yet again!), it is with the educated Nigeriens that so many challenges and misunderstandings abound. I find it's much easier to convince villagers that, even though I am young and a woman, I am serious and smart and have a few ideas worth heeding. This is muuuuch more difficult with fonctionnaires in general. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, and our Radio Tillaberi counterpart is one - he's great, patient, and has gentle manners. We are lucky!

Well, there's more to talk about, but I'll save it. As some of you may know, I'm coming back to the States for home leave - I board Air France in two days! So - we'll talk then!

*I'd love to expand on this with anyone interested in hearing about it. Be warned, though, I might drop some strong hints about becoming a vegetarian.

All of the sudden, we have less than a year left. Last Friday was my one-year mark in Tamtala. I celebrated as I usually do, handing out popcorn and Gatorade. Lots of fun.

I was in Niamey the week before to welcome a new AG/NRM (“sister”) stage and bid goodbye and safe journey to our old one. The hostel was packed. There was nowhere to eat, sleep or work. Now it’s eerily empty – the old stage is gone, the newest one is out doing their First Month Challenge in the bush (the challenge being: can you stay in the bush for an entire month?).

I’m here for one night only to buy and arrange transport for the long-awaited millet grinder, and I have a moment to write because my chief, who is in Niamey too, insists he will get a better price if he goes to buy it alone. This is almost certainly true, and he is so trustworthy I would’ve given him the money to buy it now – but, for the sake of inefficiency as well as transparency, he and two others have gone to discuss the price with several merchants before they come back for me and my envelope full of cash.

Back in the village, the women who believe this is actually going to happen are ecstatic. The men began building the hut for the machine while I was gone. It’s a comfortable distance from most of the village, but I fear it’s close enough to my house that the frenzied, rapid-fire thwap-thwap-thwap of the motor will replace the deliberate thumping of the mortar and pestle that underscores my attempts at sleep. Nigeriens, I think, have the admirable ability to sleep through anything. Biiba, my friend who braids my hair and whose daughter Anifatou I practice carrying on my back, lives next door to the new structure. She’s not concerned about the noise, so I won’t worry. Hopefully the rest from constant pounding will be peace enough for her.

Between my last post and the week of festivities (and proposal writing, and movie editing) in Niamey, I spent three glorious weeks in Tamtala. Bitterly disappointed at first because the cold season women’s garden was an unequivocal failure due to my absence for most of cold season, I consoled myself with the work left.

GLOBE, our environmental education program at Tamtala’s primary school (as well as schools around the world: www.globe.gov), got off the ground –finally- and is going well, with the kids taking temperature readings (this is depressing, because it’s sooo hot, and I can only sit and watch it rise by almost a degree Celsius a day lately), learning about soil, trees, wood conservation and the water cycle. I sit in as Illiassou, the headmaster and teacher of the CM2 class (about 6th grade equivalent), presents the modules. I don’t do much other than assist and ask questions of the kids in halting French or clarify points in surreptitious whispers to them in Zarma.

Illiassou’s a good teacher, generally patient and understanding, and feels for the poor kids who must pass exams in French but are barely literate in it and have little support from parents at home. Illiassou dreams of constructing a school library so the students might have resource for language learning, but I’m trying to urge him to start small – with perhaps a few textbooks in the corner of a classroom. His enthusiasm is waning, though, and he wants to go back to university for another degree. Teachers here, like in the States, are overworked and underpaid. And that’s where I stop in order to remain as apolitical as possible in my blogs.

I’ve got moringa trees growing in my concession, and my host family even watered them while I was in Niamey! The lizards are awful pests, but I should have two nice-sized trees this year. Moringa, “the miracle tree,” grows like a weed and its leaves are incredibly nutritious. I’m growing them to show my neighbors how easy they are to care for, how quickly one benefits from a little bit of effort, and how yummy the leaves are in sauces. Maimouna, Djamila, Djamila’s mum and several of her neighbors are all now growing trees because of my promises. The deal-breaker, though, is whether they’ll like the taste of the moringa-leaf sauce. No matter how nutritious, they won’t eat it if it tastes bad. Same goes for water. No matter how much I encourage drinking pump water - which comes out clear, which, in a pinch, I can drink without filtering or bleaching and not get sick – it’s a bit salty and therefore “si kanu” (“not sweet”), and Tamtalans won’t drink it. The filthy, cloudy, disease-ridden well water is almost a kilometer away from the village center, but it’s free of charge and salt-free, both essentials for my friends the villagers. Sigh.

The first days back (a month ago now) were rough and wonderful at the same time. My chief and others who’d heard I went as far as Dakar for treatment were sure I’d just continue to Amerik and they’d never see me again. Not so, ouiza, though Dakar is, in more than one sense, one step closer to the US. There was the aforementioned Huge Bummer of the Failed Women’s Garden – but what did I expect, missing the entire cold season? If they’re not going to do it without me, it’s a waste of effort anyway. The women have more than enough work, and I don’t blame them for not planting. The problem is, if they don’t cultivate fruits and veggies, they won’t eat them. They won’t use the money they earn from weaving mats (tabarmas) and making water-cooling pots to buy produce; they’ll buy millet, because millet fills them up. Hence the rampant malnutrition, hence my current push for moringa trees in every concession.

My biggest tear-jerking event upon return to Tamtala wasn’t the marriage and departure of my friend Saouda, who’d I guess at about 17 years old, nor the betrothal of little Haoua, who definitely just turned 16. It was the death of an old man, Maimouna’s uncle. Barely able to see and older than Allah, I never saw him outside of his concession. He and a younger man, Weyla the table-seller’s dad, died the same week. Everyone was sadder about the latter, because to die young is of course a bigger tragedy. But I had a harder time with the dotiijyo (old man).

When I went to greet his wife on the death, she welcomed me warmly, as usual. She and her husband had always been kind when I made the treeless and rocky trek past the pump and across the cracked-mud soccer field to visit them. The old man would greet me and chat, and never failed to send me away with an embarrassingly precious gift – once even carefully filling a teacup with powder to make "anasara milk," despite the fact that I always have a huge, extravagantly expensive tin at home. Anyway, the old woman knew I’d been gone and sick, so she greeted me on my travels and congratulated me on surviving the ear infection. I hurried to assure her I was fine before expressing my condolences.

Uncharacteristically, she threw up her hands in an energetic show of emphasis. “Sakina, when the old man died, he asked about you!” Oh really? She continued, breaking my heart, “He said, where’s Sakina? Why hasn’t she come yet?”

What in Allah’s name I was able to get out of my mouth by way of apology before tears choked me, I don’t know.

This, and the warm welcome I received from people who literally thought I’d died – because that’s what happens here: you get sick, and you die if you don’t get better – threw me down a small dark hole of despair (and, of course, guilt). I listed to myself the number of times I would have died if I’d been born with the circumstances of a true Tamtalan (four: 1. at birth – premature, frank-breech, Cesarean; 2. at age four, in Chicago, with pneumonia; 3. five years ago in Florida, with that anaphylactic reaction to fire ants everyone heard about for the following year; and 4. here, in January, from some germ in my ear). Instead, I’ve had proper care whenever I needed it, and someone has been able to pay for me. THIS IS NOT FAIR.

As has happened more than several times in the past fifteen months, my ability to bounce back astounded me. With nothing constructive to do with that guilt, I buried it, or burned it, or let it go somewhere where it wouldn’t prevent me from functioning. I didn’t even really cry. I prefer to think I’m not heartless… am I not paying attention?

I went on to have a fantastic few weeks in my favorite place in the country. They were so good and full of productive work I thought briefly about not taking vacation to the States (but am now looking forward to it, seeing as though it’s 115 degrees again). I thought about extending my service beyond my original two-year commitment. I thought about how much I believed in the Peace Corps model of development, even while at the same time, I am suffering from the oh-so-typical mid-service crisis of disillusionment common to PCVs when they see that perhaps this pervasive NGO presence in their capital cities does more harm than good.

One tiny thing that bolstered my belief that What I’m Doing Here is Good was my ability to facilitate a connection between Mamoudou (“any PCV’s dream”), who I wrote about last summer after Kate, Kurt and I worked with him to start a Gum Arabic plantation near Gotheye, and my chief. Amirou and I went to Gotheye to visit Mamoudou’s garden, which, like his plantation, is awesome. “Of course it is,” Amirou said to me, gesturing to the canal that bordered one side of it, “he has water!” Mamoudou has every tree known to PCVs growing in his garden, including grafted versions of the pomme du Sahel, which Amirou also has in Tamtala, and from which he took scions to graft on in the village (a skill he and Maimouna learned at ICRISAT during our training in December).

In Gotheye I stopped by our transit house to say hi to Alison and pick up packages, most of which had been sent before Christmas (yes, it was March). Though I hadn’t planned on it, I stayed the night – because we went to see Nouhou, our neighbor the Xima! Seabass, who’d been en route to my village (to prove to Tamtalans that he, too, was alive, a year after doing my “live-in” while I was just a scared little trainee), changed his direction and met us for the intrigue.

He met us at dusk, and we headed over to a mud-brick concession that looked precisely like all the other mud-brick concessions on the block, except there was magic! inside (I say this with a wink, I hope that’s coming through). For the price of nothing (or the gift of a bag of onions) we were ushered into a spirit house. What does such a thing contain, one may ask? Hundreds of bottles of perfume lining one wall, costumes for the spirit mediums hanging on nails (18), various animal skulls, skins and sacks, a basket full of powders tied in bits of plastic bag and old pagnes, a bloody machete and two knives stuck in the sand, and a mat and mosquito net set up for the guardian to sleep. Sometimes this guy will be awakened by the spirits asking him to get them a bottle or two of beer (apparently they aren’t Muslims either), which he is obliged to do before going back to sleep. When he wakes in the morning, the bottle is empty, but it’s still sealed... creeeeeepy....

Nouhou called to his wife and she brought a calabash bowl full of water, which he placed in a depression in the sand until it was very still. Then he started untying the bundles of powders, all made by pounding leaves or bark of local trees. Daintily he sprinkled six or seven types of powders on the surface of the water until he’d made a sunburst-type pattern with powder covering the entire surface of the water except for a circle in the middle. He then proceeded to mutter spells over the calabash, after each he spit lightly three times in its general direction. Interestingly enough, each spell began with the Arabic word “bismillahye,” which good Muslims murmur dozens of times a day at the beginning of anything (beginning to cook a meal, starting a journey, opening a book to write, etc). Anyway, the particular spell he was concocting was a marriage one – if you knew who you wanted to marry and wanted him or her to agree to it, you ask Nouhou to take the steps outlined above, then you drink four handfuls of the calabash water and bathe with the rest of it. If you don’t know who you want to marry and you want to find someone, Nouhou places a shard of mirror in the bottom of the calabash, so you can see it through the non-powdered water (as Seabass astutely observed.: you will see a reflection of yourself), and you do the same thing.

The price: again, nothing. Until you get married. Satisfied customers come back and pay big for their happiness, he told us. There are “I need to find a good job” spells, and those guys come back with tons of money for their Xima.

This was a trip for us. Alison and Seabass had been here for more than two years without seeing such a thing, and here it is, right behind our transit house. Alison managed to go again before she left Niger and had her cowrie shells read (another of Nouhou’s many talents). We’ll see what comes true...

Seabass and I headed back to quiet, pious Tamtala, where the villagers loved him, the men told him he spoke better Zarma than me (jerks), and not a single person asked if we were getting married. It appears as though my constant refrain of “I don’t want to marry, it would only bring me suffering” has worked. He was my first visitor in a year, and it was nice to have an excuse to “cook” some precious American food for the occasion. It was also fun to tell my villagers that, while I was out working at the school, he was cooking for me. Hah! Allah is big.

The next week, after Kate and I talked on the radio in Tillaberi (which we also did this morning), we headed to Niamey for the bi-annual Gender And Development auction, a barbecue to welcome the newbies, and, of course, their swearing-in ceremony at the ambassador’s. We all ordered or sewed crazy outfits, sipped on fancy drinks, caught up with Hausaphone friends, etc. for a few days, said goodbye to the old AG/NRMs and welcomed the new ones, who will only know each other as ghosts and in legends.

So there have been complaints of me downplaying this whole "third-world hospital stay" thing. I couldn't guess why. To allay some fears and concerns, I'll share with you all the fact that I saw the PC/Niger doctor this week and he is not sending me back to Amerik for surgery. I had an acute otitis media and mastoiditis (forgive me, med student friends, if these are incorrect spellings). I think this means that the nasty middle ear infection was in the bones around my ear too.

For those of you who didn't hear, it all was so bad that the PC/N doctor threw up his hands and shipped me off to Dakar, Senegal, home of the whole Sahelian region's PC doctor. I'd been on heavy IV antibiotics for weeks, and I was getting better until I got worse, still unable to hear out of my left ear, but at least it wasn't bleeding onto my pillow anymore. So it came time to put me on a plane, not my first-choice experience when I'm healthy, but even less fun with an ear infection.

I flew into Dakar at night and saw the big black ocean from the plane, lines of waves rolling in with white crests pounding the beach. Tears sprang up. When we disembarked, the air was humid and smelled salty. I felt like I was coming back to Florida. So happy.

Dakar itself delivered a small culture shock. I was there for a week, during which I had a few appointments with a specialist and a CAT scan. But there was plenty of free time to explore the city, and I was fortunate that my buddy Seabass was also on MedEvac to get a new tooth, so we got to tool around that crazy place together. We marveled at the sidewalks, the commerce, the availability of pizza and beer, the beauty of the spoken French, the art, the high-fashion crowd, and of course, the ocean. It was also nice to have a man to walk around with, because it's not the safest place in the world, and everyone seemed to be hustling. Pressure to buy souvenirs, trinkets and paintings was intense, and we'd been warned about pickpockets and scams. But we couldn't resist going out on the town to watch the first-round games of the African Nations Cup and eat ICE CREAM! every night.

The specialist prescribed urinelike nasal spray and steroids, which carried "more side effects than almost any drug," as the doctor said. My favorite (because it was the most interesting) was the sensation that my veins were full of liquid metal, and my least favorite -of course- was the rapid weight gain/water retention (nothing like being at your fattest on the beach). I'm sure Seabass loved the dizziness (was that a side effect or due to the middle ear infection?), which meant that periodically I'd run into furniture, doorways, or him as we were wandering around. Comical.

We flew back into Niamey on a Monday night, me still mostly deaf, him with a new tooth, and were struck by how quiet it was. Calm, cool, dark, with little traffic, it was quite the change from nutso Dakar. But the frenzy was about to return: At the hostel, I had seven hours to unpack, get medical clearance from the PC/N doctor to travel, get some awful news from home on the phone, have a good cry, breathe, repack, hang out with Kurt's family visiting, and get to the bus station to go to Benin - first stop on the way to Ghana.

Ghana... the elusive paradise

When 3am rolled around, Kevin, Kate, Khoi and I headed to the bus station and made our way into the back of a very comfortable coach that began its way toward Gaya. Sleeping soundly would have been GREAT at this point, but I spent most of the ride being awoken by the jolt of potholes and seeing Kevin's limbs fly in the air with the bumps, and laughing.

We reached Gaya at about 8am and the border crossing was closed. Bummer! Closed... for the next NINE HOURS, because two drivers had been arrested. Umm... What could we do? Absolutely nothing but wait, chat, finally sleep, laugh about it, giggle excitedly about the trip to come. We finally walked across the bridge at sunset and were in Benin. Instantly the world was greener. Getting back on the bus after fielding the first passport-stamping marriage proposals of many to come on the trip, we again had the goal of sleep and the reality of potholes. The bus lumbered along until just after midnight, when we came to a stop in Parakou. Thrilled that I could sleep, I passed out until sunrise, when my companions informed me that we would be here for a while: the bus was broken.

Twelve hours later, when THAT day's bus had arrived from Niamey (sans border delay and upholstered seats), we got on it, lined up across the back, a little more cramped this time and definitely stinkier. Should we have ditched the bus and bush taxied it to Cotonou? Perhaps, but we didn't. In Parakou Kate and I had found a Catholic church (church!), where the associate pastor sat us down for coffee (well, Nescafe), led us through a hall with paitings of a black Jesus in familiar scenes, and offered to let us use the shower at the rectory. We definitely should've taken him up on that. (Also in Parakou we discovered FanMilk, a wonderful Ghanaian brand touting strawberry yogurt, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate milkshakes - all, of course, in plastic bags. Apparently they were once in Niger, but Allah has taken even that away from us. Anyway.) Should we have made a big fuss about the delays and tried to get a refund on our bus tickets? To my knowledge no other passengers else did, and among the four of us, I'm the feistiest, and even I was good at having patience.

We were back on our way by midafternoon. As we whizzed and bounced through Benin we watched the scenery change from dustily Niger-like to Paradisical (these are opposites, which I already knew, but I know even more now). Elevation change! FOREST - real live forest - densely packed trees with leaves! Evidence of rain! Smoke from cooking fires curling up through the dark green leaves among dark red mud huts, richer soil. I'm left with the memory of a sensation of hurtling down Benin as if through the universe itself, inexplicably and guiltily happy, but feeling fiiiine despite the ear issues.

After a brief stop in noisy Cotonou to pick up and drop off passengers, catch the second half of a soccer game on TV, and wolf down an ice cream cone, we crossed the eerily quiet border and eventually made it to Lome and found a guesthouse near their PC office. We crashed, but I was up all night thanks to the bacteria in my intestines... The next morning we pursued our Ghanaian visas on empty stomachs, which was a horrible idea, especially because the folks at the embassy were soooo mean! We eventually breakfasted on Snickers and Red Bull (another bad idea), but got a lot happier once we met up with some Togo PCVs for Lebanese food.

After some drugs for the intestines and a nap, we found a bar next to a pizza place and watced Senegal tie South Africa 1-1 over Eku beer and delicious pizza. Twenty-four hours later we finally made it to Kokrobite, our beachy destination in Ghana, after a long, sunny, windy, pricey car ride haggled at the border with a driver named Gabriel ("the second angel"). Our beach time having been eaten by sitting in Benin, we had one glorious day to relax and drink Star beer while watching the waves, and two nights to dance away with Castle Milk Stout and Rastafarians. Then it was off to Accra, for an insane evening with the Togo PCVs, where we managed to get flair and tickets to the quarterfinal game featuring Ghana and Nigeria.

This was easily the greatest sporting-event experience I've ever had. We found our way into the second row after Nigeria had scored its only goal, and just about 10 minutes before Ghana scored its first, immediately before halftime. The place erupted, cheering, dancing, screaming at the top of its lungs for twenty minutes. And we were right there in the middle of it. Awesome. Ghana scored once again in the second half to similar celebration, and the city 'jubilated' all night.

While the Ghanaians were jubilating, we Americans moved on to a sports bar called Champs (yes, like in Lake Geneva) to watch the Super Bowl in the middle of the night. Lucky us. Next day was back to the beach for more delicious consumables (pizza, stout, ice cream) and relaxation before heading north.

It always feels wrong to leave the ocean. But knowing what you're headed for (more dust, cramped transport*, hot season) made it harder. Lucky for us, we had two important missions to break up our trip.

The first night we made it as far as Kumasi, where masses of screeching bats at the zoo bore some poetic symmetry with the pulsing market across the street, which can be looked upon from a safe distance above but takes an iron heart to actually delve into. The greatest thing about Kumasi was the rain. As soon as we arrived in the city, lightning blew out the entire place's electricity, and we trooped around looking for our lodging in a thunderstorm - fantastic. First rain in more than four months.

The objective of each mission in northern Ghana was to locate and greet the host families, colleagues and buddies of a former PCV (Chris in Tongo and Dave in Navrongo). We did so, along the way judging the concerned RPCVs as spoiled because their posts have electricity and running water, not to mention pito, gin, Guinness, and English speakers. We did concede that they are indeed among the hardest-core Ghana PCVs, because that bus ride from Accra and surrounding beaches is lonnnng. Beach Corps they were not. Anyway, each mission was a smashing success.

In Tongo, we were on the lookout on behalf of Chris, who's now #2 (or so) in the PC/Niger bureau. Apparently he planted a bunch of trees in Tongo, and to be fair, his term there predated the arrival of electricity. His friend Paul welcomed us at 10:30am, taking us immediately to the pito (millet beer) bar, where we downed half-calabashes of the delicious stuff before going to greet the cheif. This could only be done properly after buying a bottle of gin and a bag of kola nuts, and we were told to only ever say "Naaa" in response to any question posed by the old man. No shoes were to be worn in the hut, which was adorned with animal skins and bones and packed full of elders. They assured us that there was no cause for alarm, which perhaps was what we were feeling seeing all these old men gathered in one place - they were just there because it was Friday morning, and that was the time to discuss village issues. This struck us as infinitely funny, because sitting around talking is the ONLY thing old men in Niger do.

After sieste in Bolgatanga, we continued north to complete our second task, meeting & greeting in Navrongo for my Whidbey friend Dave. I was a little nervous about this, as it was kind of my show and I was dragging my four companions along, but they were all game for the marathon discussion on God and Africa that ensued within five minutes of meeting Dave's host brother George. We spent an evening at Perseverance (a great name for a bar), and the following morning with friends and family who remember him fondly. It was pretty cool for us current PCVs to see how well loved and remembered we can hope to be.

One more Star beer at noon at the border bar, then we headed into the nightmare that was Burkina Faso - a lot like Niger except with twice as many trees. The bright spot in the entire experience was a certain Ouagadougou restaurant called Le Verdoyant, with the best pizza any of us had had in a year (okay, excepting that one of us who'd been to the States). By Sunday night we were back in Niamey -minus one Genghis Khan- in time for the CAN finals. Phew!

As it stands I am hoping to be cleared to go back to my village on Tuesday. Here's hoping they aren't too shocked to find me alive after such a long absence. I was able to pick up the check for our millet grinder - once again, THANKS to those of you who donated - and we'll be holding a happy meeting when I return and get down to work finishing the house for it.

Enjoy the photos!

*Actually I shouldn't whine too much about transport, especially in Ghana, where it's relatively fast, cheap and comfortable (this is relative to Niger, not to the cush stuff you're used to in Amerik). Avid blog readers will remember horror stories about being shoved into a mini-mini-van five across for adults, plus vomiting babies, filthy children, pooping goats, nervous chickens, boxes of rotting fish, etc. Not so in Ghana, which can easily be classified as "developing" rather than simply "undeveloped": tro-tros rarely allow more than four people in a three-person seat. In fact, taxi drivers seemed to respect the police force in Accra, which acually seemed like it was there to help people and keep them safe. Anyway, more than once on our travels we Niger PCVs had to be reminded by locals or the Togo kids that it was not necessary to sit on each other's laps in the back of cars.

Yesterday marked my one-year point in Niger. As if to celebrate, an angel sent me NBA basketball highlights and a Gwen Stefani music video, which I found on the television at the private hospital on the river in Niamey, where I'd been hanging out since Wednesday, when the Peace Corps doctor didn't know what else to do with me and my left ear, which had been oozing blood and pus, and the rest of my body, which had been soundly rejecting (through vomiting and indifference) any antibiotic or painkiller he threw at it. A land mine also exploded in Niamey on Wednesday, so that was extra exciting.

Anyway, the hospital had French television, which marked the first time I'd seen a car commercial in a year. Too bad I was too sick to watch it until the day I was leaving.

Since I'm in Niamey for continued convalescence, I thought I'd shed some light on what the past year has brought. It's the longest I've been in one place since graduating high school, so that's a big deal, plus, well, it's here.

I haven't recognized changes in myself as I'd expected, although they may exist, but I've watched my friends change. I guess I was a pretty 'typical' Peace Corps volunteer before I was even a Peace Corps volunteer, so I didn't do as much adjusting as some to this life of constant traveling, camping, simple eating, quiet, independence, and being alone in a crowd.

During the past year, I:

cut ten inches off my hair for practical purposes: it was too hot long, and short it saved water. Helps that I only wash it once a week in the bush now.

bought toilet paper once (a 4-roll pack) before dismissing it as an unnecessary expense.

changed from a lover of vegetables into a worshipper.

abandoned use of separate soaps for laundry, dishes, body, face and hair. I bought shampoo and conditioner once; I save them for use in Niamey. In the bush I use one bar of soap for face, hair, body and laundry. Dishes get washed with filtered water when they're lucky. If clothes are really dirty, they get soaked in blue powder soap from the market.

wore high heels five times. Most days are spent in $1 flip-flops, which can be repaired at the market for 10cfa (a penny). I bought new flip-flops once because I'd worn through the heels of my first pair.

farmed. And I ate my work.

along with my friends, lost the ability to follow plotlines in movies because we are too busy exclaiming over the food featured in a given scene (its apparent deliciousness and/or the wasting of it) to pay attention to the dialogue.

learned how to spit. And how to blow a snot rocket. That sounds disgusting, and I'm sure it is, but kleenex is also a waste.

dreamed about cake on a monthly basis. The dreams usually included some other event, like a birthday or wedding, but really, they were about the cake.

developed the skill of passing an afternoon without so much as a book for entertainment. Turns out time just passes.

decided I really do like millet mush with snot sauce.

spent, percentage-wise, more of my income on chocolate and beer than anything else - other than fruit & veggies, of course. This is due mostly to the fact that chocolate and beer are relatively expensive (esp. chocolate), but also to the fact that I like them.

worked for every drop of water I used in the village, and adjusted my consumption accordingly.

got good enough at Zarma and French to not be able to sleep if the radio is on next door. At the beginning, I could tune out the incomprehensible babble; now I listen to the news.

heard precisely one of Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 100 Singles of 2007. Now I pick up the gossip magazines lying around the hostel, sent from Amerik, and I don't recognize the celebrities they're talking about, nor have I heard of the movies or television shows they're in. And the clothes are preposterous.

came to prefer the village to the city, regardless of the availability of ice cream. But I still love ice cream.

grew to know my neighbors, and not to mind when they called over my wall to ask how I'd slept while I was still asleep.

---

That's about it for now, actually. Those of you who are still hanging on for more anecdotes from the SIDA bike ride, or speculation about the placement of those land mines, or plans of my recently planted garden plots (four big ones), or details about the recent oozing from my head will have to wait for my book to come out. Kala suru.

Until next time, when I'll have been to GHANA and back, I bid you peace on earth and sustainable living.

Wow!

I haven't even had the chance to post another note up here to encourage you all to donate to my millet grinder project, and -ouiza!*- it has been fully funded! What?! My family and friends are the best in the world? That must be it. I haven't gotten the official notice from PC/Washington, so I don't have your names yet, but when I do, you'll get some love.

Thanks to all of you who donated, despite the difficulties the PC site may have presented to you. And if you didn't get a chance to throw your two bucks in, there is another chance to help out the people of Tamtala - and this one's for the kids! I'm working on a budget, but for now I am putting out the call to anyone and everyone who has a functional but out-of-use 35mm point-and-shoot camera lying around: send it to me! A volunteer out in Zinder and I are organizing a cross-cultural arts (specifically photography) workshop for our village kids, and we need easy-to-use cameras. For more info on this, see the sidebar.

For those of you thinking that teaching a photography class isn't the best use of my time in a place where most everyone is malnourished, I offer this: I struggled with this idea too. But I concluded that arts education is just as vital to sustainable development as most anything else. We cannot leave the arts for when there's enough time and money to spend on it, because they will be lost, and priceless parts of history and culture will die. We are in danger of this in the States, too. So yes, people need food, but they also need outlets for self-expression! ... And we'll have snacks at art class.

Thanks also to the several of you who resurfaced at Christmas and sent me letters & cards, and even more thanks to those of you for whom the "Christmas" letter/package to Niger was just one of a bazillion you've sent all year. I hear there is more waiting for me in Gotheye, so if I haven't thanked you personally yet, I should soon! Seriously, it was so great to hear from so many people. And if you haven't written me yet, it's not too late. Make a New Year's resolution to get on that.

Many of you heard about the shaky security situation here. For those who didn't, a cursory overview: a few weeks ago, land mines exploded near Maradi and in Tahoua, both in the central/eastern part of the country. The explosions coincided with a big "Republic Day" festival being held in Tahoua, so Peace Corps took some precautions. All PCVs were ordered to stay put immediately and avoid all travel until further notice. For me, this meant staying in Kate's village, to which I had walked early in the morning to work on a radio show to be presented the next morning.

We had to postpone recording the show, send a bush note to my village cheif, cancel my women's group meeting, and cross our fingers that our cell phone batteries would last until PC told us we were able to move again, because the one source for charging phones in Dembo (the chief's mini-moto battery) was broken.

So we sat, and speculated, and stretched our food supply (I'd brought no food and very little money; Kate had been at post for weeks and was so broke she only had enough to get her to Niamey - and she was running out of almost everything). Luckily, in Niger, your guest is your god, and her chief's family loves me (what's not to love? I speak Tamasheq!), so the children dutifully brought us millet mush and sauce every night. That stuff is delicious! Seriously, I hated it when I showed up, now I miss eating it when I'm in Niamey.

Maybe I've been here long enough.

But no! We were a little worried we'd be evacuated, because the imagination tends to run wild when you're stuck in the bush with no contact with the outside world (her villagers hardly even listen to the radio! They had no idea this was going on). We did not want to leave Niger. Our work is not finished. This is a good way to feel at this point in your service!

I had such fun with Kate - we studied Tamasheq, taught the schoolkids some English, wrote weeks' worth of radio scripts, planned a road trip, decorated her moringa tree for Christmas (this meant coloring plain white paper with red and gold crayons, cutting it into strips and making a chain without the assistance of tape or staples), did yoga, explained sumo wrestling to her villagers, and made lots of lists (mostly about food, and a little about eco-villages**).

After about a week in Dembo, though, I'd run out of malaria medication and we'd gotten word that we could travel, but only on foot, away from the road, and back to our villages. No problem for me - just a three-hour scurry through the bush back to Tamtala, and I was home. I'd wanted to be back for Tabaski.

FYI - Republic Day is always December 18, but Tabaski follows the Muslim calendar, not the Anasara calendar, so it changes every 'year'. Thus, its coincidence with Republic Day and Christmas is just that. Next year it'll be mid-December (This applies for Ramadan as well, which means that some years, Ramadan happens during hellish hot season and Muslims can't drink water in the 125-degree April heat. Thanks be to Allah this is not the case in Anasara year 2007).

With one day to go before the hoopla, the young women in the village fixed me up, dying my feet with caustic black henna and ever-so-gently yanking my filthy hair into cornrows (my hair cannot be freshly washed or conditioned if it is to work, apparently).

The biggest party I've seen so far erupted the day after Republic Day, when dozens of male sheep and goats were slaughtered (um, sacrificed) in every corner of Tamtala (and in every village in Niger). I hid in my concession until I was pretty sure I wouldn't have to watch the actual throat-cutting, then went out, thinking this would be a good way to curb my appetite for the afternoon. All over the village, men were cleaning guts and stretching each animal's body over an X of wooden posts, and leaning the X over a crossbar between posts over a bonfire. The neck gets tied to a separate post with an intestine (which of course has to be squeezed empty first), the head gets fried and boiled in sauce ("the best meat of it all"), the testicles are cooked to perfection.

All afternoon, the sheep and goats cooked slowly over the bonfires, protected from the east wind by woven grass mats purchased for the occasion. And the next day, when the meat is done, villagers bring their friends bits of meat, so those too poor to buy a sheep get some. In fact, everyone gets some - even the American vegetarian, whose protests are futile. My neighbor Saouda (who knows me well) wouldn't hear of me not taking - and tasting in front of her - some leg of some animal. Everyone gets dressed up and cavorts around the village looking fancy, dancing and banging on whatever's available as a drum, and wishing their friends a happy new year (more or less): "May your feet walk next year!" - "See you this time next year!" - "May Allah show us blessings next year!" etc.

A bit perplexed that I hadn't bought something to sacrifice like everyone else ("What, you have no ciimsi sheep? But you are rich!"), I spent both afternoons madly popping popcorn and delivering it to every Tamtalan. This was a horrible idea. I killed a kilo of popcorn, most of my salt (Nigeriens love salt), but, most dearly, a $10 liter of olive oil. Children and adults alike scrambled for their handfuls. A few women who had been to baby-naming ceremonies in Niamey had tasted it before, and it was uniformly loved by all. Then I ran out.

Crap! I searched my food trunk, then my medical kit. Bingo! I mixed up the last of my Gatorade in a small bucket and brought it around with a tiny plastic cup as a consolation prize. No problem, they loved that too. And by the end of the two days, I was exhausted, having "ka-yeesi'd" all 850 people in my village. So. Blessings for the new year.

A day or two later it was time to walk, yet again (still not supposed to get in a bush taxi) to the Gotheye side of the river, pick up my bike, and ride into Niamey on the 23rd. Christmas goes by unnoticed almost everywhere in Niger - can't blame them - they don't do the "Christ" thing - so I figured my first one away from home would be best spent with fellow PCVs.

Usually one of my favorite days of the year, December 23rd is my daddy's birthday, and I was excited to get to Niamey so we could talk on the phone. The trip was on a laterite road, bumpy and dusty, with two monster dunes to overcome. Luckily Kate, Alex, Alison, Rachel and I stopped often to rest. we were having a wandiyey wangarey time until we realized that 80 kilometers is just too damn far for most of us to go in a single day. When an NGO truck offered to pick us up after 65k, I couldn't turn it down. My butt, knees, sunburn were all screaming for a rest. We arrived at a hostel full of merry PCVs who sang Happy Birthday on the phone to Wisconsin.

Christmas in Niamey was wonderful. I was worried about being homesick, but there was little time. On Christmas Eve, a few of us girls and guys sewed 31 stockings to be hung with care on the porch doors of the hostel. Seabass's mom, in from Vermont as Christmas Mom, oversaw the making of a cauldron full of chili (and a smaller pot full for those of us vegetarians not broken by Tabaski). She brought a bag full of balsam needles, which we agreed - upon smelling - made it really Christmas. We made specialty cocktails (busted the bank on these!) and threw an all-night dance party in the living room, not unlike Thanksgiving Eve's. Elves filled our stockings sometime between first prayer call and dawn. In the morning, we had pancakes and watched Christmas movies as we opened our goodies (cell phone cards! doodles from Santa! a ring from Ghana! maple syrup candy from Vermont!).

Note on food: We also had scrambled eggs dyed red and hash browns dyed green. The eggs were curious-tasting, and I put quite a bit of cheese (yeah! someone had invested in cheese!) on them. Delicious! But when I walked into the kitchen and Jimmie saw me eating just the green hash browns, he said "oooh, I'm sorry Boo, I didn't make you any eggs without bacon!" ... Well, that's okay, I didn't know there was bacon in the eggs... most PCVs would kill for bacon... Uhhh... good thing I ate that goat last week.

After all the eating, we went over to the Burns house for cocktails and cheer. Jimmie dyed himself green and a handful of us put little ponytails on top of our heads - the Grinch and the Whos from Whoville. We decided to walk, which provided much entertainment, as everyone on the street who usually gawks at us for our whiteness now had even more reasons to stare, comment, run away in fear, etc.

Boxing Day brought more festivities, as there's now an Englishman in our midst. Her Majesty the Queen sent him with a case of Biere Niger, each with a Christmas Cracker Joke tag attached. Brilliant. Why don't skeletons go to the prom? - Because they have no BODY to go with! Bra ha ha ha ha ha!

The next night we made s'mores - kind of - digestives instead of graham crackers, Haribo brand marshmallows, and imitation Nutella instead of chocolate bars. Incredible nonetheless.

The past few days have been consumed with a nice solid work reason to be in Niamey - Gum Arabic training for PCVs and villagers. It is now high time to be tapping your Gum Arabic trees, and we had some funding from Rotary International (I'm a huge fan, really I am) to bring our counterparts and most-kokorante villagers into Niamey for three days of lectures, pruning practice and grafting lessons. I managed to bring both my chief and Maimouna, because she's the women's group leader. PCVs from as far east as Guidimouni (past Zinder) came in with their counterparts, but Maimouna was the only Nigerien woman. And she rocked! She asked questions and swung that machete with the best of them. No shame. Most of you reading this won't be able to grasp what a big deal this is and why I am so proud of her, but if you spent any time in Niger, you'd begin to get it. She even signed her name on her transport receipt without any help. Wonder of wonders.

We are no longer forbidden from traveling but are being careful. I feel as safe as ever, so, if this unfortunate news from Niger happened to reach you, please know there's tons of great stuff going on too, and that Tamtala remains a peaceful place to grow and learn. Everyone is better fed than they've been in months, although we're looking at another year before many of them eat meat again. Lucky for me, it's (cold) veggie season, and I couldn't be happier. The other day I had a SALAD. Lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, etc. A moment of silence in appreciation for a salad, please people.

.

Thank you.

Now if only I could so much as see a strawberry or a red bell pepper. But let's not get asky here.

Today I'm tying up some loose ends and getting the doctor to look at some wicked sore on my ankle (I tried to climb a table... oh, never mind). But there will be more news in a few weeks, as I'll be back in town to celebrate my first year in Niger, toast to Danielle's birthday, welcome a new stage, and arrange some visas for a trip to the promised land, aka GHANA, where I am going to watch crazy amounts of soccer and sit on the beach for several days with Castel Milk Stout and friends.

One more big thanks to the millet grinder donors, one resounding Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you blog-readers. If you're still in a giving mood after all your holiday cheer, check out the sidebar.

Love love love - Sakina

*Ouiza, or weeza, means "therefore, it seems that, evidently" - usually with an element of surprise. It's a crowd favorite.**I may have found my life's calling. More on that as it develops.

... is a millet grinder for my village.

(Never mind that they don't celebrate Christmas. They will if they get a millet grinder!)

Good news, folks, that project proposal I've been writing about for the past eight months has finally been approved! I know you all have been itching to donate, so HERE'S YOUR CHANCE. It's easy, tax-deductible, and safe from corruption! I researched and wrote pages upon pages of detailed narratives, timelines and budgets, and you can be sure your money's going where I say it is.

I don't think I need to reiterate the importance of a millet grinder to a village like Tamtala. Women in Niger work incredibly hard, all day, every day. Having a grinding machine would save precious time and energy currently spent in the endless food-acquisition-and-preparation race-against-the-sun run day in and day out. Hopefully, this will save girls from being pulled out of school to help with chores (yay, girls education!), and it will empower my village women's group to take charge of its finances and invest money made from running the machine wisely (yay, empowerment for women!).

So let's give these ladies a break! Here's how:

Go to www.peacecorps.gov.

Click on "Donate Now" on the yellow left-hand side column.

Under Donors, click on "Donate to Volunteer Projects."

Choose a Region: Africa

Scroll down until you get to "NIGER: Millet Grinder for the village" - click it to learn a bit about the project, or just enter in a dollar amount in the space to the right to donate.

There are other millet grinder proposals going in Niger, so make sure you get the right one! (Even if you don't, Lulu and Joey's villages need them, too, so it's okay...)

It's that easy! Shap, shap, paht!

In other news, I'm just back from Dosso, where we finished the 2007 SIDA Bike Ride on Saturday. At some point soon (maybe after I see some of you dear readers have thrown some money our way), I'll regale you with stories of spending a week on top of an SUV filming 25 of my friends on bikes, biking a bit myself, playing DJ, sleeping on the ground, an old man with a megaphone, dancing like an idiot, losing my toothbrush, Mr. Poopy Pants, who-stole-my-Thermos-woman, and teaching "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" in Zarma. It was a trip. But, like a streetcorner performer, you've got to throw a coin in my millet grinder case before I tell you about it. So pony up!

For now, satisfy yourselves with a few photos to the left, all taken by new volunteer Jeremy K, whose fabulous camera I have a crush on.

Love, peace and freshly ground millet,

Brittany

P.S. I feel obliged to mention that Thanksgiving was awesome. We had a lovely party in Niamey, everyone cooked (even me - I mashed squash), my buddy Greg's buddy Matt from Florida showed up after wrestling alligators in Parc W, the embassy gave us a turkey AND a ham (not that I care), Michelle made the best chocolate mint pie in the world, we had a dance party that left my legs sore for days, THEN we went to the International African Fashion Festival - holy crap! A fashion show! In Niamey?! I swear it happened, and that it was cool.

Now go donate to the grinder project already!

So. About that catching-up. Rather than leave town before I let you all know what's been going on in Niger (really, how could you live without it?), I'll give you a cursory overview of the events of the past few months.

Since mid-Ramadan:

The Director for Peace Corps worldwide came to visit Niger while we were celebrating 45 years of uninterrupted PC service here. Because of my illustrious film background, I was selected to follow him and his entourage around for four days of touring. During this time, we spent a night in the bush, where the director danced with village kids and tried his hand at pounding millet; we chased giraffes in Koure with my PCV friend Barbara; we attended the swearing-in of the newest stage; I passed out from heat exhaustion/dehydration on a sack of cement while visiting the awesome gardens of Winditan; the director got an attack of bacteria in his intestines; we toured the National Museum in Niamey; we attended the 45th Anniversary Open House at the bureau; we watched PCVs play ultimate frisbee on a riverbed... it was crazy nuts. I have 12 hours of film I've only now begun to look at again.

Kate and I set up a training for Tamashek, which is spoken by Tuaregs (Buzus in Hausa) and Bellas. Five days of cramming 18 PCVs' heads full of weeks' worth of language training and we are all now fluent in Tamashek! Not really... but it was fun. And my villagers congratulated me on my effort.

I arrived back in Tamtala with only a couple days left of Ramadan, only mildly prepared for the "Jingaryan" (praying) party at the end of the month, during which everyone put his or her finest, newest outfit on and paraded around saying "ka yeesi!" which literally means "come new year!" We brought each other food, everyone went out to pray in a field east of the village (the whole morning reminded me of Easter at the Lake Geneva Manor, except hotter), and children scurried around trick-or-treating in their new outfits. A dozen or so little girls from Balleybongu, a Fulan village about 3 kilometers away, came into my house at midday, all sparkly and shiny to the point they blinded me with the glitter on their face and in their hair.

Having spent so much time in Niamey, though, I'd drained my bank account. I really had to budget for a while. Then my stove broke. Peace Corps provides volunteers with a gas stove and a canister that's supposed to last us a year. Well, seven months into my time at post - seven months I spent very carefully conserving my use of resources - my gas sputtered and died while I was trying to cook Maimouna some bread in a frying pan in celebration of breaking the fast. I'd been planning on being in the bush for a while, so in order to eat, I spent a day or so mooching off my neighbors, and then constructed a three-rock stove. Three rocks make a triangle inside which you build a fire, upon which you stick a pot, and that's your stove. It works okay, but eats a lot of wood, and Peace Corps encourages its volunteers to teach our villagers to constuct "improved cookstoves" - essentially a three-rock stove inside a little mud case, which is good for insulation and thus, conserves wood too, saving trees and money.

Anyway, building the improved cookstove was a curiosity to the villagers - several women came to watch my progress - and hopefully it sparked enough interest that they'll want to do it for themselves when I come back.

At one point I walked three hours to Gotheye and four hours back to buy pasta to cook on my stove, because it was cheaper there than in the village or at the Kokamani market. When I got into town, Kurt and Matt kindly fed me all day. Krut made tea, peeled oranges and sliced coconut. Matt made my favorite, a vaguely Thai dish called gad-gado, for lunch. Matt, what am I going to do without your gado-gado!? I didn't feel guilty eating piles of it, because of all the walking.

During this time as well, Kate and I began traveling up to Tillaberi to talk on the radio (This involved me walking to her village, which takes 3 or 4 hours as well. Hey, it's keeping me in shape!). We've now, along with our three new volunteers in the region, done a few broadcasts on Peace Corps (we are volunteers, not doctors), wood conservation (don't cut down your trees), and nutrition (a balanced diet includes more than just millet mush and sauce).

This coming Tuesday we're recording a show on HIV/AIDS, which, as you all know, is a huge problem all over Africa. The official numbers for Niger are low compared to the rest of the continent, but the fact is infection rates are definitely underreported here. The practice of going on "exode" - when young men leave the village to go to Nigeria or Ghana to look for work - often leads to infection of wives in the village. And most Nigeriens living in the bush never go to the doctor. So every volunteer in this country, regardless of sector of specialty, spend some time doing "SIDA" sensibilizations.

Two weeks ago, a group of Gotheye volunteers organized a "SIDA Party" in a mining town nearby. I, of course, was along as videographer. We brought volunteers, professional educators, and a hip-hop group from Niamey to the village of Kongo Moussa, which had been renamed "CFA Moussa" - because everyone there is looking for money.

The whole place gives off the feel of a refugee camp, or what I imagine one would be like. It was eerie - I've lately been considering what I'd do after Peace Corps, and one option attractive to me is teaching at a refugee camp (strange as that may sound). So there I was, getting a taste of what I might be looking at in a few years, albeit without the war/genocide/etc. Adults and children alike, wandering around listlessly, prostitutes, an obvious lack of a sense of community, no school, people from as far away as Benin and beyond... the place had a strange vibe. But the spectacle of a bunch of Americans and a whole lot of noise from our Niamey Rasta band attracted crowds of them, and hopefully the presentations about risky behaviors, condom demonstrations, skits set in the doctor's office and songs about SIDA had an impact. At one point I interviewed a group of girls during a break in the music, with just simple questions - where are you from, have you gone to school, how long have you been here - and I was left with the sense that if I thought my villagers had it bad, I was wrong. Wow. And it gets worse than that?

Immediately after the SIDA Party, it was back to Niamey and beyond - I took my first trip to Hausaland for a training on moringa, known as "the miracle tree" because its leaves have more calcium and protein than milk and tons of vitamins. We had a great, informative, laid-back lesson and discussion about how to plant the trees in our villages, and went on a tour of a moringa plantation near a volunteer's post. We also took the time for a little Halloween party at the Konni hostel. More on that as the pictures come out!

To get back to Niamey (where there is now HOT WATER in the hostel! WOW!), it's about a six-hour bus ride. I headed to the station one early morning in my pajamas and without the sharpness of mind brought on by food, bathing, and/or coffee. Lacking the ability to converse in Hausa, I was getting frustrated trying to order an egg sandwich (one of my favorite foods) - who would've thought that pointing to eggs and bread, miming and saying "omlette" wouldn't work? - when an angel saved me.

The angel was a French-and-Zarma-speaking rich guy from Zarmaland who now occupies an important enough post in Madaoua that he has a chauffer and driver in TWO cities. He snapped his fingers and his chauffer dashed out into Konni, coming back with an egg sandwhich. How could I not sit next to this guy on the bus ride into Niamey? We chatted, and clarified some cultural differences - the first being the reason why he helped me: he can.

At one point, I took out my mp3 player, which has headphones (of course), and he explained that using that is totally rude. He showed me his cell phone, which plays music from a speaker - because, as he explained, you shouldn't be enjoying your music when no one else can hear it - that's selfish. Ohhhhh... so that's why Nigeriens blow their speakers out at all hours of the day and night - they want everyone to hear the music and be happy too. I laughed my way through trying to explain that this was totally the opposite in the States.

During a standard discussion about Nigeria and why I'd never go there, he mentioned that America is dangerous too, though, right? I admitted that yes, he had truth. Some people there do have guns. And he said, well, so does he. Right here in his briefcase. Do I want to see it? So the angel had a gun. Eek.

I made it back to Niamey in one piece and prepared for the next videographing adventure - this time, the Young Girls Scholarship Conference. I scooted up to Tillaberi and helped one of our new volunteers bring three girls to Niamey for the five-day show. Five other girls from Zarmaland who are at the "College" level (aged 13-17) and have received Peace Corps-sponsored scholarships came in from the bush with their volunteers to hang out and be inspired.

I can't say how cool it was for these girls to get a chance to see what they did this week. They went to a school and watched other girls their age playing basketball, they visited the TV station and the School of Public Health, they spent a day shadowing professional artists, journalists, doctors and other women with good jobs in the city. We PCVs and bureau staff delivered sessions on self-expression, study skills, and of course, HIV/AIDS.

At one point during the professional women's panel, when a doctor, an assemblywoman, and a professor were telling the girls their stories, it hit me just how much the odds were stacked against them. The women were not exaggerating the hardships they endured to get where they were. Even with the scholarship, these girls are facing an uphill battle. The very fact that one of our sessions was based around skits in which an Al-Haji (rich man who has gone to Mecca) tries to get a girl to drop out of school and marry him - the fact that that was necessary - was so sad to me that I made a mental promise to contribute $200 a year (the amount of a scholarship for one girl for one year) to the YGS Fund once I get back to the States.

It should be noted that school and marriage are not mutually exclusive (contrary to popular opinion), which was another point we tried to drill home to the girls. Once they get older, they don't have to discontinue their studies to have a husband and children - but they must make sure they choose a man wisely, one who will support his wife being educated.

This scholarship-conference story is a good segue to my departing note, as I am finally, finally headed back to the village. Today I am supposed to get approval for my millet grinder proposal, just in time for the Season of Giving back there in the States. Insha'allah, I'll be able to post a link so those of you who've been following my trials and tribulations on this site and wondering how you can help will have a place to direct your energies and money! In the meantime, if you haven't already signed the petition for my friend Matt and other veterans-turned-PCVs like him, please do so. The link and story are below.

Nearly two months have passed since I last wrote, and there's no way I could explain what's been going on since Ramadan in a single post. My apologies for the "geyyan" - but life has been in the way, and it's been good like this. A returned PCV friend advised me to live my life here while I was here, rather than live only to report to people back home, and I've been doing a good job of that. But, as a result, I've gotten concerned emails from people asking if I'm okay: thank you! and yes.

The biggest thing that's happened lately most of you know about from a recent mass emailing: my good friend Matt, a fellow Gotheye volunteer, was ordered by the army to abandon his post here in Niger to report to Fort Benning. Matt served four years of active duty as an infantryman, including one year in Iraq and another in Korea. He'd been listed as 'inactive reserve' until recently, when it was decided that taking him out of his PEACE Corps country to send him back to war was an acceptable idea.

This is outrageous and disgusting. It looks like the work we do here isn't valued in the eyes of our government. But I have to mention that those are my opinions as 1) a human being, 2) an individual American, and 3) a friend of Matt's, NOT necessarily the opinions of the Peace Corps.

Matt was one of the first buddies I made, though at first he drove me nuts. He sat next to me for part of the ride over the Atlantic and talked my ear off when all I wanted was to sleep. He leapt at the chance to be interviewed for my little movie about our training class, cracking jokes and making faces for the camera. Once in Niger, he immediately set to work as an agriculture extension agent (literally, the night we landed he requested farm tools). He spoke Zarma more unselfconsciously than anyone as we stumbled through the learning process. After our first month at our respective posts, he greeted me at the door of the transit house in Gotheye with my first Nigerien birthday present, having remembered the date. In his village, he ate all the local food he could get his hands on and quickly made friends. He built big plans with his local women's group, working on an income-generating project selling sesame products. He planted huge amounts of millet during rainy season and was in the middle of harvesting it when he was ordered to leave.

A group of us (again, please note, independent of Matt) have written a petition to prevent this from happening to other volunteers who have completed their active duty commitment in the military and have chosen to continue serving their country (and the world) as Peace Corps Volunteers. We think they should be allowed to finish their commitment to the Peace Corps without being called back to war. If you agree, please sign the petition here: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-reservist-peace-corps-volunteers-out-of-military.html.

Further, we've written a press release to be used by anyone who has connections with the press or politicians. A version of this was sent out to those of you who received the mass e-mail, and it has since been modified. I'd ask any of you who have used it or think you could to please DO SO, but let me know, so I can send you the updated version and direct you to others more experienced and knowledgeable than myself who may be able to better answer questions.

If this convinces you to leap into action, now is the time.

If you need more information, please contact me.

More to come.

It's mid-September already, nearing the end of the rainy season. Most of Tamtala's millet, sorghum, beans and sesame crops have "given birth," as they say, and harvest is a short way off. The greenness has cooled the countryside down considerably during the past few months. When I think back to how miserable it was here in May, I realize just how much rainy season has contributed to my happiness. But enough about that. We know all about that.

Arguably more important than the impending harvest, last week marked the beginning of Ramadan, the monthlong Muslim fast. During our sessions on Islam at the training center in Hamdallaye, we were told that Muslims everywhere observe Ramadan - during which they neither eat nor drink from sunup to sundown - in order to increase their compassion for those people in the world too poor to have enough to eat.

In case this has not been made clear, I am living in the poorest country in the world, in which NGOs routinely hand out food as they would during "food shortage emergencies" and "famines." The very people who the rest of the world has largely forgotten are the ones who observe a fast intended to make the rest of the world remember them.

The irony of this, of course, is lost on the average villager. Upon quizzing several Tamtalans as to why they fast, I got no more sophisticated answers than "because Allah wills it," or "Mohammed said to." Perhaps they believe there are people somewhere - maybe in Sudan or Iraq - who are worse off than they. That or this attitude is a vote in favor of the generalization that bush Nigeriens raise their children to obey without question, and these children grow up to be adults who seem to lack some pretty standard critical thinking skills.

Those literate in Arabic (and thus able to read the Qu'ran) would be the only ones with the potential to understand what Ramadan is really all about. But most villagers just mentioned being thankful. It's convenient that this year Ramadan falls during "hungry season," that pre-harvest time during which last year's grain has run out and this year's isn't quite ready yet. Maybe we'd be having smaller lunches than usual anyway. Might as well fast (for my part, I'm thankful this is happening now and not during the hellish month of May).

Ramadan habits and discipline seem to vary village to village, perhaps along the lines of piety. For example, when I ask my villagers if they suffer going without food or water when it's a hundred degrees out, they say no, not at all, of course not, Ramadan is sweet. When my friend Kate asks the same questions of her villagers, they own up - heck yes, we're thirsty. This is hard. The adolescent girls sneak new beans when no one is looking.

Ramadan came one day earlier than I'd expected it, while I was in my nearest big village, Sansane Haussa, staying with a current trainee who is going to be posted there.* We had gone to see a woman she will be working with, and I was gulping water in the midmorning heat when the lady tactfully informed me that last night someone had glimpsed the first sliver of a waxing moon: the first night of the month. Oops. No need to flaunt my infidelity and make things harder for anyone - I apologized, and we ate lunch inside, out of the sight of the villagers.

I walked back into Tamtala two days later, after having been gone for far too long (again). "Me-how" was the word on everyone's lips. "Me-how" is the Zarma name for Ramadan, and it literally means "mouth tied." The breaking of the fast (and the name of the month following Ramadan) is called "Me-feri," or "mouth open." Standard greeting inquiries after one's health and that of the children now included "How's me-how?" I answered with the catch-all avoidance response of "Praise be to Allah," which is what one says when one does not wish to lie but still has to be positive and thankful.

My curious villagers, however, want to know more. "Sakina, did you see it?" is the way of asking if I am observing the fast. After a day or two of saying no, no, I'm not a Muslim (which they already know), I decided I'd give it a shot. If I'm supposed to be a "child of the village" I, of all people, should skip lunch for a couple days in order to know what my neighbors are going through.

Maimouna discouraged me; she and at least two other women laughed and said the same thing when I told them my intentions: "You, you are always drinking water, small small from your bottle. You should not me-how, you will suffer."

Now I'm determined to do it. On Friday night, after the village men had arrived home from spending the holy day at the big mosque in a neighboring village, I told my chief I was going to try out me-how.

"Ah, ni ga taba me-how," he said to me - literally, "You are going to taste Ramadan." You are not going to taste so much as your own saliva (the good Muslims spend all month spitting), but you are going to taste the sweetness of the fast (ostensibly). "Ah, ni kokary, Sakina." Sakina, you try.

Saturday morning I woke up with everyone else at quarter after four, when the sky was still inky black. Every morning during the fast at that time my friend Djamila's dad walks around the village yelling in Zarma and Arabic and banging on something, called konku. My first few minutes of consciousness listening to the noise were spent trying to figure out what it was: is there a special drum for this purpose? No, it doesn't sound that sophisticated. Could it be as rudimentary as whacking a stick on a water jug like the toddlers do? I haven't yet found out - as most of you know, mornings are not my prime time.

I groped for my water bottle in the blackness and slowly drained it. Lying back down and dozing, I heard the imam call for the first prayer of the day. Faced with the option of giving up now (who in their right mind gets up in the middle of the night?), I berated myself like a good Catholic, located my flashlight, and dragged myself into the house to refill and force more water into my body.

I cooked up a double helping of my standard breakfast of oatmeal, honey and powdered milk with a dash of cinnamon. Apparently we're allowed to eat from first prayer until just before six, but as soon as I'd finished eating and drinking (2.5 Nalgenes worth) I went straight back to bed.

On advice from the villagers - "if you lie down, rest, nap, you don't suffer" - I slept late. When I woke up from some dream about shopping for a Halloween costume, I reached for my water again - a bad sign. Recoiling, cringing, and steeling myself, after bathing I went out to the village for morning chats. It was mercifully overcast.

I spent the first part of the morning at another Djamila's house. She is the sister of a girl I knew, Bellacisa, who was recently married. Cisa already had a daughter, and was not therefore marrying "up" as she might have hoped to do otherwise. I remember being at her house for the bride's half of the wedding, when the groom's friends come to bring her back to his village. The old ladies of Tamtala were arranging Cisa's things for transport on the groom's donkey cart as it got dark. We waited and chatted. I took an inventory of Cisa's belongings: a few pagnes, a new bucket and kerosene lamp, some enameled pots,a new pillow (a luxurious gift). The whole pile would have fit into my backpacking sack, except for the bucket. This was what she was bringing for herself and her two-year-old girl to start her life as a married woman in a village half a day away. The men finally arrived as it was fully dark and took Cisa and her daughter away. Old Fatimata went along too. I haven't seen Cisa since. I heard a few weeks after the wedding that she was doing fine but that her baby had died.

Cisa's sister, Djamila, the new mother, had just given birth to a girl and had several neighbors and cousins around pounding grains and bringing water for her. This is standard practice in the village and is a great example of the way people take care of each other. I hung out with the ladies, who decided that since I was fasting, they weren't going to ask me to pound.

The sun came out angrily at midmorning and I fled to the shade of a neem tree, under which I sat chatting with the women pounding there. "Hey Sakina, where's your water bottle?" they asked. "Ooooh it is far from you, because you're tasting me-how. You try!" I had plenty of time to sit there and space out, alone in a group, and wonder why the heck I was doing this. Do I feel guilty? Left out? Am I really just that respectful? I helped an old lady slice up the first of this season's okra, using an old 2x4 as a cutting board and a handle-less knife. Girls braided each other's hair. I chatted with another old woman about her son in Ghana. I asked her which city. "GHANA," she repeated. Ahhh, I understand. Apparently an ignorance about African geography is not limited to American minds.

A third old woman brought me a pinch of fragrant seeds in a bit of plastic bag, explaining that I should put it in my water when I break my fast so my stomach won't hurt. A young woman asked me how much it costs to go to America, and I explained it's a million cfa and you must take a plane. Explaining air travel to villagers was particularly entertaining, seeing as though most have never seen a seat belt or had an entire seat to themselves on a bush taxi. They explained alzan-na to me. A particularly sharp woman was able to define the criteria: if you do ten things, and seven are good and three are bad, when you die you will go to alzan-na. The teenaged girls dozed on the sand. Everyone spat periodically.

Ali, one of my male neighbors, happened by the tree and we greeted him. "How's me-how?" I asked, and he giggled. "I don't see it," he said. I didn't understand. Why? Is he sick, or traveling, or breastfeeding? Those are the only sanctioned excuses as far as I know. No, he said. He just can't do it.

I turned back to the women once he'd left. "Will he still go to alzan-na when he dies?" They didn't presume to know. Some people can't do it, they explain. That's all. One of the women isn't fasting either. She explains that when she goes to hell she will just kick at the dogs dragging her into the fire and she will be fine.

Okay, I think, maybe I will eat lunch.

Around one o'clock a baby named Safura peed on me so I had to go home and change my skirt. I looked longingly at my water filter and had to leave the house immediately to avoid temptation. My neighbor Saouda had just returned from walking all the way to the millet-grinding machine in Lossa - a 14-kilometer trip in the angry sun with no water. She was sitting in the shade with Ramatou, my cheif's first wife, who was pounding millet. Since she just had a baby she is exempt from the fast for now and will make it up sometime in the next year. They asked how everything was going and I had to break the standard everything's-fine custom and say "I'm thirsty!" They laughed.

Just before 2:30 prayer Maimouna came by wanting to study, so we went back to my concession and hung out. She read and I sewed, helping her with difficult words. She's getting really good. We chatted about giving money to your family if you go on exode, having babies (they prefer boys - boys bring in more money), and whether I would, as an adult, ask my parents to give me money just because they have a lot and I don't (no). It was a little frustrated...

Maimouna stuck around until it was time for her to go prepare food for her kids' supper. I actually asked her not to go because I knew I'd be tempted to go inside for some water. I didn't even feel hungry. Just so thirsty. So I followed her out and greeted her neighbors. I puttzed around the village, certainly no longer spitting, until it was getting close to me-feri time. When the suspense was too much, I sought solace at the concession of Samira, my favorite three-year-old.

I went back to my house to bathe, telling Amirou as I went in to yell at me as soon as I could drink water. When I was back taking my bucket bath, I heard him finally yell: "Sakina! Drink water!" And I had to laugh. Day one. I made it.

After guzzling two Nalgenes worth of water and treating myself to some freeze-dried REI food and fried millet cakes with sugar from a tray carried on a village girl's head, I was relaxing waiting for the last call to prayer, at which I would go to mosque. It was dark again, my quiet time, when no one is supposed to visit, so I was startled when I heard a voice: "Salaam Alekuym." I come in peace.

It was Haoua, a 15-year-old who attached herself to me immediately when I arrived in the village. I'd gone to work with her and her sister in their okra fields a couple of times. She alternately drives me insane and makes me feel guilty for thinking she's anything but perfectly deserving of my devotion. This time she'd come to bring me "Treetop" - a West African Kool-Aid, which of course I couldn't drink because it had been mixed with well water, and kooko, millet mixed with well water and sugar and heated. I boiled the kooko to drink it, though I had no desire for anything else in my stomach. Haoua's particular brand has tonko (hot pepper) in it - not so delicious. I told her the next day I'd bring her Ameriki Treetop.

At safo, the last call to prayer, I donned my long headscarf and went over to the mosque. Women are permitted at this time (about 8:15pm) during Ramadan, though of course they are relegated to the last two rows of prayer mats. I didn't pray, but watched because I'd been invited. I was congratulated by my villagers on the drinking of water, and everyone asked when I was going to start praying. Uh-oh.

*For the long version of this "Live-In" experience, as it's called, send me an email. The story is rather short on diplomacy and is therefore inappropriate for public posting. Current trainees swear-in next week.

Happy Birthday Bridget and Shannon! (Well, Happy Birthday tomorrow...) Sorry I can't be there for you this year - but I was able to watch a little movie we made at Wando's one year ago today... Hilarious! You are both rock stars. In celebration I found a coconut chocolate bar at the mini-mart by the Peace Corps bureau in Niamey. I already ate it.

Everyone reading this post - send my little sisters a little love. Thanks.

Sometimes we forget why we've come.

I am a committed idealist. At home many of you know me for my refusal to use plastic bags, eat meat, kill anything, go near pesticides, etc. I've considered those quirks - whatever you call them - manifestations of my ideas of how the world should be (cleaner, more aware, kinder, more compassionate). Coming to Niger as a Peace Corps Volunteer seems like the embodiment of those ideals.

But I've found myself bogged down during these past seven months. Things are different here. Plastic bags are everywhere. I avoid them whenever possible, but it seems futile when they litter the landscape in a country without waste management. Meat-eating makes sense. If it didn't gross me out, I'd do it. I'm now able to squish ants between my fingers and stomp on scorpions. I even dusted my house with Rambo (white powder bug-killer), and I lather my legs and feet with Cutter (DEET in a stick).

I was surprised at how fast it faded. When stripped of all but two bags' worth of my possessions, when I could be down with amoebic dysentery in an hour for the next two days, when it's so hot my eyes feel like they're boiling in their sockets - that idealism, the patience I told myself I'd have, the honorable way I'd envisioned conducting myself - takes a distant second to meeting my needs for food, shade, something to use as a fan, someone to understand my intestinal woes. During training, we were understood, indulged, coddled. I whined because I could. I sought comforts like chocolate or Gatorade or a new zara*, and I could afford them, and so could all my friends. We were in this together - let's make it easier on ourselves.

At some point the we changes. I've been waiting for this chip to fall. In a taxi in Niamey a month ago, I wondered - when will I stop being relieved that I don't live here and realize that I do?

In the bush, especially at first, I was all-basic-needs, all the time. Tons of sleep, tons of water, tons of alone time. The illusion that I was going to become "a child of the village" was cute but looked less likely with every day**. I was paraded around, celebrated for my whiteness. People whose extended family make less in a year than I made in a month as an AmeriCorps Volunteer brought me precious food that was neither tasty nor at all necessary to me. I felt guilty. But I can't turn it down. I can't make myself understood. I came to think of myself in the village as like a person who dresses up as a character at Disney World.

Inside my house or concession, where it's by no stretch of the imagination 100 degrees, I wear shorts, cook pasta, read for pleasure, plant flowers because they're pretty, et cetera. I'm Brittany. If I'm going out into the village, it's on with the ankle-length skirt, the headscarf, the sleeved shirt. I bring my water, my epi-pen, and until lately my notebook (for new words). I am Sakina.

I am in the village but not of it.

No wonder people ask me to take their photo or give them money or medicine all the time. I have the capabilities to do this. I remember the rules though: development does not happen when you merely hand out food or pills. We are here to help people help themselves.

The past few months, as evidenced by my raving about what a wonderful time I'm having, I have gotten more comfortable in the village. I'm certainly not treated like any other village woman, but everyone calls me by my name, lets me pump and carry my own water, and is no longer shocked when I am headed out to farm (although that isn't typical village-woman work, it's village-person work). There is a tenuous, wordless agreement in place about what villagers can't do to me that they would do to other Americans - constantly ask for presents, call me Anasara, etc. I can never know whether or how much they resent how much food or medicine or clothing I have in my house while they go hungry or sick or ragged. It's terribly unfair.

It came crashing down this week. I was walking around greeting, trying to be fair, stopping a little while at each concession, chatting, moving on. Near my friend Amina's house is a small family with a 4-year old girl named Haoua. I stopped by and commenced greetings as usual:

Greeting - How's everyone's afternoon? Response -We're in health.

G - How are the children? R - They are thankful.

G - How's work? R - Thanks be to Allah.

After these initial niceties it's usually time to move on, but I noticed little Haoua didn't pop up to say hello from where she was lying on the mat. In fact, as I approached she was downright unresponsive. It was eerie. She barely looked in my direction when I took her hand. Her mother told me she'd been sick for a week with fever and diarrhea, and she'd taken her to see Ousemane, the village doctor. He'd prescribed penicillin. Interesting. I fretted and quizzed Haoua's mum and asked her if Haoua was eating. No, not for days. Drinking? Unsure.

In Tamtala, people take advantage of the relative abundance and availability of water to save 150 cfa (30 cents) a month and get their water from maasa-maasa (holes dug into a riverbed) rather than from the pump, which charges this fee in case it needs repairs. The relative cleanliness of pump water could save them from so much suffering, and it would be even better if they strained and boiled the water before drinking it.

All that is far-fetched fodder for public health talks, which I've tried to do informally. I don't hold a lot of sway, though. I don't have any kids, I get sick sometimes like everyone else, I've not even seen the end of rainy season yet - so what do I know? The village women look at me like they've been getting on fine without me so far, so why change? It seems our definitions of fine vary.

I went back to my house from Haoua's and raided my US-government-funded Peace Corps Health Kit for some Oral Rehydration Salts. It's basically a mixture of sugar and salt to be added to water (filtered and bleached like a good PCV's, of course) when you've gotten dehydrated from too much diarrhea (and who will disagree when I say any diarrhea is too much diarrhea?). I filled my Nalgene with my sparkling-clean water and brought everything over to Haoua's***. I showed her mother how much solution to put with how much water, how she should mix it with a clean spoon, how much salt and sugar she should use to recreate the stuff when the packet ran out. I explained that it would be best to boil water or at least use pump water. She nodded, stirred it up herself, and got Haoua sitting up to drink half a cup. I left everything there saying the nighttime blessing, "may we sleep in health."

The next day I walked around as usual but didn't make it over there in the morning. After lunch I thought I'd better go check up and get my cup back, and on the way I noticed more double-headscarves than usual on the path to their house. I immediately knew what was wrong, before anyone asked me if I was going over to the buyan e-do or "house of the dying." My heart sank. Indeed, my friend Zalika accompanied me there saying Haoua had died just a couple hours before. I wasn't dressed in proper costume (one headscarf only, farm clothes) but walked over a little dazed and greeted the parents on the death. Fonda tilas. Irkoy ma suuji, a ma'a yafa.

I hadn't known Haoua's father by name, but I knew his face, and he sure knew me. He spoke to me in broken English picked up from working in the shipping yards in Accra. "Sakina, thank you for a-give my daw-ta medicine yes-ta-day. I thank you ah very much." Sunken heart broke. Tears sprang up, and I had to get away - adults don't cry in Niger.

I can't make much sense of the story. It still dazes me. The wall that I'd built between myself and 'my' villagers has steadily been crumbling, and this dark event knocked a big hole in it.

* Zara = Zarma for pagne, which is French for "piece of fabric you tie around your waist." A fellow PCV remarked toward the end of training: "I never thought I'd be so materialistic."

**I should have patience. I've certainly made progress toward, though never imagine actually reaching, that goal.

***It's against the rules to give out medicine to villagers - as an American, I imagine this might have something to do with lawsuits, but it more likely is a way to protect us from being seen as "Doctors Without Borders Without Licenses" (as one PCV-made shirt says) and being subject to constant begging in the village. Rules or no, the ORS aren't really 'medicine' and are easy to make oneself - I just wanted to give a little headstart to Haoua's mother, who may or may not have had sugar that day.

Greetings!

I'm writing as I am finally about to leave Niamey, after having been here for almost two weeks. I've gotten a lot done, like surviving giardia, being trained in environmental education modules along with my village school director, fending off multiple Nigerien suitors, bargaining my butt off for some souvenirs and translating for a group of visiting university students.

The week before I came to the big bad city was a busy one in Tamtala. We had a funeral and two baby naming ceremonies. It was my first funeral and -if any of you were doubting Niger's exponential population growth, hear me now- these were my 12th and 13th naming ceremonies.

A still picture of a funeral (if it was socially acceptable to photograph) wouldn't look too different from one of a baby naming ceremony at first glance. Women sit inside the concession, men sit outside. Put on your nice clothes. Don't forget your headscarf, and bring a bit of money to give to the hosts. After the formalities, there's food.

At the funeral we greeted the family on the death and blessed the dead woman, saying something about how Allah should give her a better setup in heaven than she had here. At the baby naming ceremonies we greeted the families on the births and blessed the babies, saying that Allah should let them be in this world. At funerals people speak quietly, at naming ceremonies I always develop a headache from the noise.

Funerals and naming ceremonies are big social events. People put off working in the fields and going to the market to attend. The first naming ceremony fell on market day, but I skipped the trip and instead donned my most restrictive complet-and-double-headscarf getup, headed over and chatted the morning away as another female Tamtalan received the name Musulmatou. Thursday I did the same while another male Tamtalan came to be called Mohammadu. "You won't call him Peter, or David, or Andrew?" I teased my friends as we sat under the blessedly overcast sky with our party favors, two hard candies and half a kola nut each. "There are 10 Mohammadus in Tamtala already. Won't you get confused?" And they laugh and try to pronounce the Anasara names, and ask my American name again ("Bariitani Agalonga," Maimouna says).

The funeral on Tuesday was a surprise, held mere hours after the old woman died. She was Leila's paternal grandmother. Leila has a clubbed foot and is one of my favorite kids. Her speech isn't very clear yet but she laughs a lot and runs pretty well despite her twisted foot. Her parents live in a village half a day's donkey cart ride away,and she is in the care of her maternal grandmother, a woman who speaks so softly to me I have to read her lips. When I learned her name I immediately sang the Clapton song to her (an American kid called Leila would be sick of this by age 5, but she loved it). She was one of the first kids in the village to be bold enough to climb onto my lap. I'm working with a friend's NGO in Niamey to correct it... more on that later, as it's been a little frustrating...

Bush Notes and Other Favors

Wednesday market is usually my time to meet up with fellow PCVs and speak English while people yell "Anasara! Come buy this! Hey, anasara, hey!" at us. Because I missed out on the experience this week, I sent my fellow anasaras what is known as a 'bush note' with my greetings to them.

A bush note is an informal letter, folded and unstamped, with the intended recipient's name written on the outside (if the route is simple and the person delivering your bushnote is illiterate, you can skip this step). You simply hand it off to someone going your friend's way and poof! It gets there. Insha'allah. It's quicker than regular mail, more reliable than text messages (sent through Celtel, anyway), and cheaper than anything. In Nigerien culture it's very common to ask someone to "fo" someone else, much as your friends would ask you to "say hi to so-and-so" for them (every time I go to Niamey, one or two villagers will think I'm going to America and will tell me to "fo" my family for them). A bush note is just a step above a "fo," and it's nice to have been here long enough to have friends deliver these for me on occasion.

I've come to depend on people doing favors for me, and it still feels like a precarious existence. I've spent my adult life trying to get away from asking people for favors, and now I'm faced with it being almost necessary, as my text messages don't get received and inter-village communication is essential to some of my projects. With bush note service I can stay in Tamtala and farm and attend naming ceremonies, and still get word to my counterpart inviting him for tree-planting day this week.

Aside from bush notes, it's nice to be able to ask Maimouna to pick me up 100 cfa worth of onions when she goes to the market, especially because she gets more and better onions for 100 cfa than I do. And in return, I'll bring her a mango from Niamey, because they're no longer in the bush markets.

The biggest favors are intra-PC, transcontinental deliveries of risky-to-mail stuff, like when my friend will be bringing my nice camera back from the States this fall. Wahoo!

"Hiney Mashin"

The first part of this visit to Niamey was spent - as mentioned - down with giardia. But the reason I'd actually come was for training for the GLOBE program, an environmental education project organized by PCVs so we and our village schoolteachers can teach environmental ed modules on a weekly basis during the coming school year. Seeing as though this was a career option I've been kicking around, I've been happy to be a part of it. Two Niamey PCVs put on the training and did an awesome job, especially considering the language barrier - everything had to be translated at least once.

I'm also well on my way to writing a grant to get a millet grinder (also known as a "hiney mashin" in Zarma, there being no real Zarma word for "machine") for Tamtala. I'm still working on the budget and other details, but it should be finished and up for bureau approval in the next couple of months.

Way back in early April, I was first approached by my neighbor Fati (to the north), whose pounding wakes me up in the morning before dawn and lulls me to sleep at night. She, and many after her, made a compelling case for wanting a grinder. One day I went over to say hello, which involves commenting on whatever a person is up to - like pounding millet.

"Fonda goy," I say. ("Greetings on your work.")

"N'goyya," she replies, and we greet back and forth on health, kids, etc.

"You are pounding," I say, already a master of the West African habit of Stating the Obvious.

"Yes," she says. "Women pound millet all day. We are tired."

I nod. I'm thoughtful and sympathetic, but my Zarma is worthless at this point.

"Look," she says. She shows me her hands, callused all over from a lifetime of manual labor, and points to the hard lump at the base of each thumb. "From pounding," she explains earnestly.

I half-mock-gasp and show her my privileged, moisturized palms and run my fingertips over the lumps.

"You should not pound or your hands will be made like this," she says.

I absorb this.

"We suffer from this work and our bodies hurt," she says. "You should bring us a millet machine."

I was a little taken aback at being asked for something so quickly, but I've chalked it up to a combination of cultural differences (this is a culture of asking for favors, after all), and the possibility that she didn't want to miss the opportunity to ask the white lady for something that would be useful while I was still here. It is pretty novel to have an American come sit in your village for two years, after all, so I wouldn't be surprised if she doubted it.

Dozens of women have approached me separately over the intervening four months to ask about a millet grinder. I finally held a meeting to see if it was what they wanted the most: more than another well, more than a sign pointing the way to Tamtala, more than cold-season work for the men. Indeed, the millet grinder won out. While cold-season work for the men is next on my list and is one of the projects I'm researching this week, I'm committed to this grinder. I held a women's meeting in Tamtala on Tuesday saying that I was writing the proposal and asking for input, and I was met with applause. Applause! My goodness.

It's no wonder a millet grinder is seen as the solution to every woman's problems: pounding millet is actually often inefficient, taking more energy than is replaced by the resulting meal. Women who are days away from giving birth continue to do it, girls as young as seven and eight are kept home from school to help, sick children don't get taken to the doctor because the rest of the family needs to eat that night. A woman's time and energy are at a premium, and a grinder could save some of both.

Hence, the proposal-writing. Stay tuned to this blog for updates and information about how you can donate to the project. How exciting!

What with all my millet-grinder research, I've spent a bit of time pounding millet myself. This has resulted in a marked increase in my arm muscles' endurance. I can now not only pound millet, but I can put my full-to-the-brim bucket of water on my head alone instead of having some tiny wiry girl help me do it. Phew (and it only took six months)!

All the pounding leads to cooking, of course, and I've gotten to taste all variety of sauces available in the village. At first I was a little worried that my PCV friends were all eating with their villagers while mine remained a little wary of the fact that I didn't eat meat - which evidently meant I didn't eat anything. But after tasting the sauce and being sure to comment favorably on it, I've been the grateful recipient of invitations to lunch and occasional delivered plastic bowls with 'hawru' (generic term for pounded starch) and sauce made with squash, pounded dried okra, baobab leaves, and/or canned tomato paste, always with some salt and spices for added deliciousness. I was so happy to finally get to eat in the village. I felt like I'd really made a cultural breakthrough.

And then I got giardia.

19 July 2007, in the shade, Tamtala

It's three in the afternoon and I'm dripping sweat (as usual) here at post*, typing on my laptop, which is run by my new-to-me solar power system! It's one of the greatest things to happen in the past month. Rainy season has brought delight after delight until I can hardly stand how sparkly and pleasant my life in Tamtala is. With the break in the heat, everyone is farming. It's inspiring and humbling to look at how hard my neighbors are working day in and day out. I've helped a bit, but unfortunately there's so much going on elsewhere I'm not at post as much as I'd like. After months of trying to get used to being here, when I find myself out of the village I miss it. I truly look forward to getting back these days.

This past week a team of us Gotheye volunteers transplanted 400 gum arabic trees along with a farmer named Mohammed. This guy is a PCV's dream. He has so much effort, he's educated, a good conversationalist, receptive to ideas, etc. We planted the trees on a hecatre of his land which will become a demostration plot for us and future volunteers to show Nigeriens who are interested in planting gum arabic. It took three hot days of work, during which we entertained each other singing (and, um, rapping) and exchanging proverbs** with Mohammed. He is doing everything we would want him to, including intercropping. And he's great on video.

Which brings me to the next fun and delightful rainy season development. That film major is having real practical implications for my Peace Corps work (a huge relief for those of us who paid for 3.5 years of college). Opportunities for photographing and filming are popping up all over the place. Yesterday I gave the market a shot... It didn't work out so well. Some Nigeriens fear the camera (something to do with spirits). Those who don't won't quit asking for their photo to be taken, and once it's done will hound you for it on paper every subsequent time they see you. And Allah help you if you show someone that your digital camera has a playback function.

Sadly, mango season is coming to an end. The tragedy of this should not be underestimated. Mangoes have been the only fresh fruit available at bush markets since cold season ended. They're getting smaller and harder and greener. And we can do nothing but watch them disappear, leaving us with nothing from the ground except for onions (I eat at least an onion a day). However, rainy season's got our back. The magically sprouting grass gives nutrients to our friends the cows and chickens, so these days we get milk and eggs! The vegetarian in me is a little nervous about eggs (no guarantee they're not fertilized), but so far so good. Here in Songhai land, we've got a sprinkling of Fulans, who are the guys with the dairy cows.

A story about milk: A few days ago I was visiting Kate and filming her prayer caller for another project. Her village, like Lulu's, seems to mirror her personality. It's uncanny. Anyway, her villagers were very sweet to me and quite welcoming. I stayed for two nights. The first night her cheif came over after dusk while Kate and I were inside. She went out to speak to him and I heard nervous laughter and snippets of Zarma, so I ventured out, to where she was holding a live chicken at arm's length and trying to explain that we were thankful for the chicken but couldn't eat it. Vegetarianism (mine, not hers) aside, we'd already eaten, neither one of us has ever slaughtered a chicken, and we'd been warned up and down by Peace Corps about the bird flu. Declining politely seemed to work. The next day we spoke with the cheif and thanked him profusely. After making sure nobody was offended, we had a nice conversation about traditions for welcoming guests in Niger, and the division of labor in the US:

Cheif: "If an outsider comes to town here, we kill a goat or a sheep, and if we don't have one, we kill a chicken. Yesterday when you came you saw me give the small boy two thousand cfa. He was supposed to go to the next village and buy two chickens for you. He came back without any. They had come from the market alive but all died."

Kate and me: (thinking) Bird flu bird flu bird flu bird flu

Me: "Why did the chickens die?"

Cheif: "We don't know, some illness."

Kate and me: (still thinking) Bird flu bird flu bird flu

Me: "That was very nice of you anyway."

Cheif: "But then we got the one chicken and brought it to you. You don't like chicken? Nadia (Kate) has eaten it."

Kate: "I do like chicken. I just don't know how to kill them or prepare them."

Me: "In America one person in the town has all the chickens, and he kills them and prepares them. He saves some in a refrigerator so people can buy them."

Kate: "People buy chicken in a store."

Cheif: (totally blank look) "God is big."

(pause)

Cheif: "So if you don't eat chicken, what should we bring you?"

Me: "Milk!" ("nothing, I'm better fed than you" is not an acceptable response)

Cheif: "Okay. Great! You really hear Zarma! Nice chatting with you."

Little did we know, that night we were to receive three calabashes of milk, and another in the morning. We stared at all this milk and decided on a new slogan. MILK: IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER. Don't worry, we boiled the living anything out of it. I hadn't had cow's milk in years. It was odd-delicious-strange. Anyway, it's one more bonus about rainy season.

___________

Months ago at IST I'd spoken with the forester in Sansane Haussa, my nearest 'big' village (10k away) and home of various provincial government offices. Ahmed is a nice guy. He wears fatigues and eyeglasses. Zarma is his fifth language, so we have something in common. He'd promised me in May that he would come to Tamtala in June to do a gum arabic training and pruning session with me and the villagers. In the months since then, I lost my phone, got a new one, didn't go to market for six weeks; his motorcycle broke, so he couldn't make the trek out here. I finally saw him at market yesterday and he said he'd come this morning. I negotiated to make it this afternoon, arguing that everyone is farming until alula (eary afternoon prayer, about 2pm). So far, no show. Kala suuru. Maybe tomorrow.

Three years ago this week I was at an All-Time Low. These days things are looking pretty excellent. The weather is relatively fabulous, work feels good, I understand people when they talk and they understand me (or pretend to). And I can take a break from gardening, type a blog post and listen to Coldplay (because we must acknowledge how far we've come).

But there's a flipside to this oh-so-shiny coin. As peaceful and productive as things are here, news from home has been troubling lately. I feel guilty not being around my family and friends in hard times, and there has been more than a fair amount for those dearest to me this year. Friends here have been reassuring when I've expressed doubts that staying here is the best thing to do, but we Niger PCVs are all in the game of keeping each other around as long as possible. As much as the universe seems to be in line here in my village in the middle of where God lost his shoes, it's not the case everywhere... I am so physically detatched, and my day-to-day is so different, that my mind and spirit are struggling with being in sync with friends and family at home and my life here. No real solution to this one, so no happy ending for now, but that's the end of today's notes.

*Don't get the wrong idea. I don't have internet here. Just the computer and a jump drive. Saves internet cafe time in Niamey.**Compare "Once a crocadile's head is in the water he is swimming" with "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Deep, huh?

____________________________

22 July, Sunday, internet cafe Yantala, Niamey

I have the best luck of anyone in the world today. It is pouring rain outside and deliciously cold. Probably somewhere around 80 degrees. Awesome.

I left Tamtala this morning against the advice of Amirou's wives, but insisting that I needed to get going if I was going to be in time for my meeting. Apocalyptic clouds were grumbling on the eastern horizon. Normally I wouldn't cut it this close, but Ahmed was delayed coming to Tamtala. He didn't show until yesterday; a friend's dad had died (in yet another case supporting the use of "insha'allah"). So I stuck around the village because The Big Gum Arabic Meeting and Work Party has been a long time coming!

Ahmed and the mayor, or someone who works for the mayor (who ever really knows?) in Sansane Haussa rolled in at about 3:30 yesterday. The sound of a motor in Tamtala brings children and adults alike to our little village meeting circle of dirt (right in front of my fu) in curiosity. I'd been talking for days (weeks, months!) telling my villagers that when Ahmed comes we're going to meet and go work on the trees, but oftentimes in the Peace Corps these efforts are wasted because you didn't count on it being Friday, or everyone's farming, or it's a baby-naming ceremony, or a zillion other cultural things of which you, PCV, are ignorant, and better luck next time.

I had luck this time. Tons. I'll give myself a little credit and say I had planned for it being rainy season and I had been doing shameless meeting-promotion chats in the village; and I had patience, and I sacrificed my Saturday in Niamey (not a huge loss there) to be flexible to Ahmed's plans. Most important, I think, was getting Amirou on my side and having Ahmed, professional forester, there to lend credit to reltively skinny pale woman's assertion that THIS is a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon.

But my villagers qre the ones who made it work: 68 adults showed up roughly on time, at least a dozen more trickled in, and there were of course a thousand kids. They all listened (or at least didn't talk through the meeting), and they all trooped out to the gum arabic plantation after the meetiong, machetes in tow, and took it to the house on those trees. We now have 50 or so GORGEOUS, pruned and happy gum arabic trees, and I couldn't possibly love Tamtala more. It's really gratifying that they took me seriously enough to show up, listen to my crappy Zarma (Ahmed and Amirou did a lot of the talking, really) and then be psyched to go prune some trees in the hot sun. Now it's done, and my face hurts from smiling, and Amirou wants us to prune another plantation to the west that I haven't seen yet. Niiiice.

It was difficult to get to sleep last night, but I made it out of the village after the warnings from Ramatou and Oumou, and Dulah's suggestion that I RUN to the road. I hustled down my path, a gargantuan wall of black clouds chasing me. The sand is deep these days (riding a bike wouldn't have worked), and I didn't make it any faster than I usually do, but I wasn't too worried - tiny hamlets can be found all along the trail to the road, and I could duck and cover in any of those. The people there know me and greet me while I'm rocking out to my mp3 player and dancing down the trail. There goes that crazy anasara, singing to herself again. Hey Sakina! You're traveling? Bring me back some bread!

I got to the road dry. With no bush taxis in sight, so I headed south. And the wind kicked up. And I took out the headphones to listen for a car. I still wasn't nervous. Then I got a gust of truly cold air, which made me think of my fancy raincoat packed away in my trunk in my hut. Luckily a taxi came shooting in from out of nowhere at that very moment. I didn't have to haggle the price, it wasn't packed to the gills, and it started raining just as I stepped in. Allah loves me!

In order to give this story a nice pleasant ending, I will not detail the ride into Niamey, during which a teenage boy fell asleep on my shoulder (they'd come from Mali), we spent more time hydroplaning than gripping, and one half of one windshield wiper functioned properly.

The end.

July 2007Welcome to the reincarnation of meandmyswissarmyknife.com! Mom and Dad were having way too much trouble with the host of the site, so we've moved it over here to blogspot. Hopefully this will make it easier on everyone. I've moved most of my words to this site, but pictures and a few special features aren't here yet - kala suuru. See left for old posts.I was called into Niamey by surprise last week because I've been chosen as one of three PCVs to work on a multimedia pilot project with Peace Corps's World Wise Schools program. I had to come in to find out more about it. But I'm headed back to the bush here in a minute - where I now enjoy solar power but still carry water on my head. Take care everyone!