closed doors & open windows my video submission for nicholas kristof's 2011 win-a-trip competition, which will give a student an opportunity to accompany him on a reporting trip to africa or india/pakistan/nepal. comments and feedback are appreciated! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viEBFiB5BOQ

sai hankuri, again

my thoughts were with my friends this week, as the peace corps program was closed in niger. i can't imagine how it must feel to be uprooted so abruptly from an experience like peace corps, where every day is such a beautiful and bittersweet war. because as much as i loved my two years, every moment was a struggle - a struggle to understand others, to understand yourself, to constantly convince yourself that you're where you need to be. and at the end of the day, i often found that i didn't want to be anywhere else. so to be ripped away from that, from the kind of conviction that takes months to build, the kind of love that comes from a hard-won argument with your own demons... it must be something like being taken out of the race when you're 22 miles in. i used to laugh when nigeriens told me 'sai hankuri' (have patience) in the face of a disappointment or failure; it never seemed like enough. but now i understand that these small words, passed along with a slight shrug of the shoulders and some sympathy, are sometimes all one has to offer. so sai hankuri guys, better days are on the way.

two years in three minutes

one of the hardest parts of the readjustment process has been trying to summarize my experience. people keep asking me for the highlights and the low points, the best and the worst - but how can you summarize 27 months of living abroad with the peace corps?

so here's two years of photos from niamey, zinder, guidiguir, dakar, marrakech, fes, essaouira, grand popo, cotonou, lome, kpalime, accra, cape coast, tunis, el haouaria, palermo, barcelona, inca, madrid, toledo, and more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utngN1zYbP0

**music by amadou & mariam (mali) - "sabali"

hard to explainif a picture speaks a thousand words, than maybe a 4-minute video can help me put the last two years into words...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XoM5bxlVFo

Broken cameras, unbroken spirits, and a change of perspective Every day I rode into work last week, there was a kid waiting for me with a broken camera. Burned out batteries, prematurely rewound film, jammed shutter buttons, and frowns all around. I did my best to survey and patch the damage, but mostly I just had to shrug my shoulders and tell the kids what I’ve been told so many times here: have patience. Turns out that some of my donated cameras are just too old, too vulnerable to whatever power Niger exerts on technology. The kids are putting on brave faces while I order some more cameras online, and despite the snags and bumps in our plans, we had a great critique last week. I’ve posted some of my favorites below. The print quality isn’t fantastic, since we’re working with some old film and chemicals, but the creative intent is definitely there. These kids see everything with new eyes, take every picture with new and unsure hands. Last week I was talking to a dear friend about how difficult it is for me to take pictures here now, how everything seems so ordinary and blasé. He told me, wisely, knowing me so well, that I should just take my camera with me everywhere anyway. Take pictures of the ordinary, instead of the epic. That sometimes the mundane can be beautiful. And he was so right – these pictures, these tentative steps towards self-expression, are simple proof of that fact. a girl on her way to class, by ramla a woman reading the koran, by bibido baby sister, by lalla accidental self-portrait, by nana something high up, by ramla different levels, by bachir kids, by bachir

If you catch me at the border, I got visas in my name I haven’t left this country since April. Understandably, I’ve started feeling restless, ever-so-slightly unhinged. It’s definitely time for a vacation. But since I have too much work to take time off until next April, I thought I’d post about my last vacation, the one I never got around to talking about. Most of this is just scribble from my journal on the road, snapshots, definitely not a complete picture of the trip. Also way overdue, but better late than never. April 2009We hadn’t left Niger in 9 months. 9 months of living in a fishbowl, minus the water. So our goals were simple – anonymity, adventure, and alcohol. We would avoid big cities, stay within our $600 budget, and sit on no-name beaches until our brains fried. Five girls, four countries, three weeks – easy. We stumbled into each new city with no place to stay, no maps, no friends, no language – just a 7-year old Lonely Planet guide and our wits and charms. Niamey to Cotonou (Benin)The ride was stifling, almost painful, humid and cramped, sweat dripping down my chin and neck. The air from the windows felt like the blast of a blowdryer. We passed through N’Dali and Parakou and Berekembe, a film strip of drooping mango trees, the ground littered with rotting yellow fruit. Immediately after crossing into Benin, there were signs of development: roofs made of tin, cement-bricked houses, an abundance of shade trees which hadn’t been felled and carted off to make fires. Watching the countryside’s slow transformation from behind our bus windows, we waved at slim topless women with shorn hair and thick bone necklaces. When it got dark, I drifted in and out of sleep, watching small campfires and lanterned shacks waft by, enjoying the growing scent of sea air, dreaming of coolness. In Cotonou, near midnight, over the thrumming motors, we woke to the scream of an ambulance – the first we’d heard in almost a year. Typical DayAround mid-trip, we settled into a stride. Typical day: The two filthiest travelers wake up at 5 or 5:30, in order to allow time to bicker over who gets to shower first (the second shower is undesirable, as the cumulative steam from two showers makes it too steamy to get pants on afterwards), the rest of the pack is up by 6, pinching the air out of the inflatable mats which were a mistake to bring but are being put to use in order to avoid looking like an overpacker, slathering sunscreen, grumbling about toploading backpacks, sniffing & slipping on yesterday’s clothes, patting selves down for passports and ipods and digital cameras, waiting for the overpackers, and we soar out the door by 6:30 to find a taxi for the next great destination. OuidahA small voodoo village on Benin’s coast, Ouidah was a primary departure point for slaves boarding ships for the New World. We trekked up and down the Route des Esclaves, the weight of our packs and the oozing sun a weak simulation of history. The red-walled cobbled streets housed an air of spirituality. Unlike the snap-happy kids of Niger, children in Ouidah shied from our cameras, covered their faces. Women sold akasa – pounded corn, boiled into a gelatinous mound – and we smothered it in oily fish sauce. The bars were outdoors, we were shocked to discover, and filled with both women and men in broad daylight. Our Muslim-attuned sensibilities bristled subconsciously. Grand PopoWe’d heard rumors of Grand Popo – white sands slung over Benin’s coast, rum punches and miles of nothing. We stumbled onto a silent beach, rows and rows of brown shacks battered by the sea, fishermen pulling needles through wiry tangles of net. Our bikini tops felt obscene. Long pirogues were nestled into the dunes, resting, overlooking the heavy waves and the promise of fish. It was paradise, just not the kind we were expecting. Not a flash of white flesh to behold, just black bodies carved out of long mornings hauling nets, shirtless marvels strewn in the sand, trawling for fish. When we woke in the morning to scour Benin’s unplucked coastline for seashells, there were huddled masses dotting the shore. Kids with their pants down, crouching where the water kissed the sand, waiting for the tide to whisk their excrement away. The boats were mere pinpoints on the horizon. We settled in with a small group of fishermen. Moustapha, who spoke to us in Hausa, and Espoir, whose name, fittingly, means ‘hope’. They made the beach feel like home, invited us to dine on steaming silver trays of fresh catch. We sat in the sand, licking spicy sauce off our fingers. TransportationTransportation was the melanoma, the great festering scab on the skin of our travel plans. The eagle-eyed porters who snatched our bags and pinched our elbows even before we stepped off the bus, desperate to secure a fare, demanding that we ride with them. The ticket sellers who couldn’t meet our eyes when they swindled us, only seeing money in the color of our skin. We spent hours arguing with them in French, in Hausa, and when all else failed, in a combination of high-pitched English and irate sign language. Most times, holding a tenuous grip on sanity, I had no choice but to settle into my corner seat and let my anger blow out the window with the wind. Good SamaritansCrippled by our sudden inability to communicate in local language, we found ourselves relying on the kindness of complete strangers. Good Samaritan #3: Abdul Salaam Abba, a taxi driver at midnight in an unfamiliar city. Five girls fresh off the bus, big backpacks, no hotel. We crammed into the backseat, eyed each other in increasing panic as he drove us up and down dark alleyways, rambling on in French, then dropped us off in front of a brightly lit auberge, and refused to take our money. Good Samaritans #5&6: two curly haired and tan French ladies who spotted us on the cusp of a two hour walk in the sun. They pulled up in front of us, called “hey, America!” and beckoned, insisting on giving us water, and then a ride. MarvelingWe couldn’t help marveling at the luxuries that our West African brothers enjoy – Trashcans! Polite children! Seafood! Toyotas! Bridges! Grass! We marveled at the subtle presence of non-Muslim spirituality. For example, shop names: “Fear God Bakery”, “Christ is in Me Fashions”, and the ever-popular “Only Jesus Loves You Auto School”. We marveled at the fact that, in some places, the language was different, but the words remained the same – marry me, give me your watch, where are you going white devils? We Drove to the Middle of Nowhere and then Walked BackI had grand plans for the group to do a canopy walk, sleep in a giant tree, and then take a day-long boat ride to some magical rocks. Turned out the canopy walk took only 15 minutes, the giant tree was on the wrong side of the jungle, and the boat ride wasn’t worth the price. So we drove to the middle of nowhere, couldn’t find a taxi, and had to walk back. Hot Hot HeatIt was the peak of our first hot season, temperatures soaring above 110 degrees. At night, sweating into our pillows, tossing and turning with just the tease of a breeze evaporating across our ankles. The humidity gathered like a crescendo during the day, conjured heat lighting at night. The ragged limbs of the trees stenciled black against the silver of sky, over and over, spelling out the darkness in an unknown language. No choice but to sit up, facing the amorphous throbbing night, praying for sleep. The Green TurtleThe last official stop of our West Africa Tour – the famed eco-tourism lodge on Ghana’s hidden coast. We splurged on a honeymoon-style bungalow, ate eggs and thick slabs of brown toast and honey for breakfast, fried chicken and plantains for dinner. The ocean was freckled with wet heads, so we plunged in to flounder in the surf with the other expats. Heart pounding, head swirling from a two-beer buzz, the current was terrifying, relentless. The sky inhaled the water in waves. A storm rolled in and we stood on the shore, gaping at the roiling ocean and black sky, laughing when the pelts beat on our shoulders. The heavy tide gathering fistfuls of seawater, curling and pounding and retreating. The offshore clouds were as red and ragged as some sunken reef. 48 HoursEager to get back to Niamey, and disappointed in Ouagadougou’s stark resemblance to the bleaker parts of Niger, we jumped off the STC bus after a 17-hour ride through the night (Kumasi to Ouaga with a three hour “layover” in an abandoned bus station), and hopped right into a bush taxi. The plan was to suck up the pain for 6-8 more hours on the road, and to be home just after nightfall. We were elated at the possibility of catching the bureau before it closed on Friday, pleased at our own knack for travel efficiency. But the plan hit a snag when our bush taxi halted 172 kilometers from the Niger border. We were to stay overnight in this village, they informed us. What village? we wondered, gazing skeptically at a small collection of straw mats and food vendors gathered beside the road. There were bandits on the road ahead and it was unsafe to traverse at night. Enraged, we settled into our straw mats, watching as bush taxis trudged into weary lines along the street, male passengers unloading and milling around. There were no female travelers, save for the five of us – young, white, unprepared. We demanded to sleep in the car, but quickly evacuated when two stubborn men edged their way in and bedded down in the backseat. Stretched out on a mat, under a hangar, lying next to my travel-weary companions, clutching my camera bag in one hand and my pepper spray in the other, dreaming of pirates, I was able to fall asleep for about an hour before the lightning started. We hightailed it back to the car, which was immediately infiltrated with foreign bodies as the rains came. We hunched down in the strobed dark, a carful of people going nowhere, exhausted from over 48 straight hours in a vehicle, but unable to sleep in such cramped and humid quarters. The windows fogged, the Africans dozed upright, the lightning snaked down from above, and we sat starkly awake, watching the storm until the sun rose weakly over a bleak, wet day. Full CircleWe rode buses until the heat drew sores on our backsides. The days slipped through our hands in a blur, frozen in photographs. We carried no watch, instead measuring our days by the crux of the sun, a gnawing in our bellies, the heaviness of our lids. Everything we owned was damp and stinking, sweat-laden, worn three or four days in a row, and then balled up and shoved deep into a bag which sat under the sun all day. Over and over, we penned our names and origins into customs forms before stepping across imaginary borderlines to unfamiliar territories. Pushing west, shouldering our packs, turning one cheek to the impending fatigue. Twenty-odd passport stamps and 21 days later, we rolled across the Burkina-Niger border, back to everything that was strangely familiar.

A brief list of things which are routinely screamed at me as I ride down the street on my bike - Anasara! (White man!)- Anasariya! (White woman!)- Japonais!- Chinois!- Ma cherie! (see: Stevie Wonder)- Kay! (Hey, you!)- Ssssssttt!- *Kissing noises*- Hee haw! (Bastardization of “ni hao”)- Ching chong chow! (Bastardization of the Chinese language)- Ba ni cadeau! (Give me a gift!)- Cadeau! (Gift!)- Dauka mu hoto! (Take our picture!)- Sakina! (My Japanese next-door neighbor’s name)- Samira! (Name of the Japanese volunteer who lives on the other side of town)- Amina! (Name of the Japanese volunteer who lived in my house 4 years ago)- Chamsia! (My name, used seldom to never) Lights, camera, action… I think I’ve mentioned before that kids in Niger don’t have art classes. Even in a larger city like Zinder, there is little evidence of art or creativity in the streets – signs are monochrome and poorly lettered, most architecture is square and functional. And this makes sense, after all – how can someone worry about painting rainbows when they are confronted daily with meeting their family’s basic needs? We kicked off our photo sessions last month with an informational meeting for parents and school directors. The kids filed in nervously, sat down next to their fathers, shyly eyed the two point-and-shoot cameras I’d brought as examples. When we explained that each kid would be in charge of his or her own camera, their faces lit up like flashbulbs. “My kid can’t be trusted with a camera!” one father crowed. Flashbulbs extinguished. The other fathers were immediately in agreement. “We should hold onto their cameras for them! They have to be supervised!” It took an hour to calm everyone down, to convince the parents that their children could handle the responsibility. Thanks to my counterpart and his word magic, everyone pumped my hand and thanked me at the end of the meeting, and we were off to a good start. We’ve had four sessions so far, talking about creativity and self-expression, getting to know each other. I asked the kids to bring an example of art to class, something from their everyday life. One girl brought a TV remote control, said the buttons were pretty. On another day, we looked at famous photographs throughout history - Capa’s images from WWI, Salgado’s work on Africa, Yosemite through the eyes of Ansel Adams. The kids kept begging to go back to Margaret Bourke-White’s image of Gandhi, just sitting next to his spinning wheel, reading. Last week, they got their cameras and a roll of film. We called their names one by one, and each kid came up solemn-faced, holding out two hands as if receiving a gift. They took the cameras back to their seats, stared at them. We showed them how to load the film, talked about respecting boundaries, gave them a scavenger hunt for homework, and they were off. 15 normal kids, suddenly empowered with a mission to tell a story.

On Travel The magic of travel is that you leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity, but as you travel, the world in all its richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent, you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in space and time. You return a different person. Many people don’t want to be travelers. They would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other people’s lives while never really leaving their own. They try to bring their world with them wherever they go, or try to recreate the world they left. They do not want to risk the security of their own understanding and see how small and limited their experiences really are. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small, and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; we don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Travel, no matter how humble, will etch new elements into your character. You will know the cutting moments of life where fear meets adventure and loneliness meets exhilaration. You will know what it means to push forward when you want to turn back. And when you have tragedies or great changes in your life, you will understand that there are a thousand, a million ways to live, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind. - Kent Nerburn

Peace & Conflict Studies The past few months have been so rocky here, and most of it is stuff I can't talk about. Be assured that when I'm finally cleared of the censor, there will be lots to tell. In the meantime, here's some reading material on the current state of affairs in Niger: http://www.state.gov/p/af/ci/ng/prs/2009/132170.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8181537.stm http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/10/05/09/norway-tops-un-human-development-index-china-moves In a Niger State of Mind I haven’t written anything in months. These days, it’s impossible to get anything out that’s honest, complete. Life has expanded to the point where I can’t get my head around it, can’t communicate it to anyone else, on any terms. I’ve stopped eating books as a form of escape, stopped leaving my little trail of blog crumbs to help find my way back. I’ve started to lose myself in all this. During my first 12 months, it was easy to sit around with other volunteers asking ourselves “what does it all mean??” Trying to rationalize this crazy experience was part of everyday life, a means of survival. Our sanity and well-being demanded that we constantly reaffirm our reasons for being here, our goals and sense of purpose. I spent hours dreaming up the perfect blog entries to describe my state of transition, trying to define my emotions. So much to say, to share! But now, with the clock ticking down the months (only 9 left!), I’m so swamped with plans and activities and responsibilities that I can’t find room to take a step back. This is the only life I know now, the life that has me eating and breathing and sleeping small development projects, the life that thinks in three different languages at once. It’s a life that feels so far away from where I came. Sometime after my first year, I crossed over to this side of the world, and haven’t looked back. And I’m starting to think that I’m addicted to feeling displaced, uprooted. Next year I’m supposed to return to what’s “normal” – a job with a time card, friends that are only a muni ride away, and everything I could possibly want at my fingertips. Everything, that is, except for this bittersweet feeling of not belonging, of reaching for something intangible, the conviction that my path in life isn’t a straight line. No, life out here is more like a boat awash in a choppy sea. No particular destination or deadline. Only the stars to guide me, the waves to continually nudge me along, the dream of some far-off shoreline, and the fire inside telling me that I’ll get there eventually. It doesn’t matter when. So I’m starting to feel like I’m not done yet. Not ready to go back to what’s familiar and normal. Not ready to plant my feet, not ready to halt the momentum of this train wreck I’ve initiated. I know it sounds crazy. To some, it may sound as though I’m afraid to return to my responsibilities, to real life. But what could be more real than this? What life could be more rewarding? I’ve written to my country director requesting the possibility of extending for a third year in another country. On to the next adventure, the next crooked road, the next state of mind… Thanksgiving 2009 Another thanksgiving, another year of things to be thankful for. As we sat around our two-week early no-turkey dinner, I looked around the table at the people who have become my family over the last year and a half, and I felt so grateful. Spend two years in a foreign country with a group of people, and you’re bound to form some close ties. I’ve been irrevocably altered, rounded out, molded by the hands of everyone I’ve met on this journey. At home, I knew one kind of people, people from one state, one country, one ethnicity, and I never thought it strange. I surrounded myself with people who looked, talked, lived like me. But now I’ve filled my life with friends from around America, people with strange tastes in music and different upbringings, exotic tales of varied travels around the world. The COSers are leaving in a couple weeks, and I can't believe it's already time to stay goodbye to these people who have stamped a little part of themselves on my soul.not thanksgiving, but an example of the crazy people i'm surrounded with here

Kodachrome “To be a photographer, you have to be a child, always full of wonder, looking at the world with wonder. Making a photograph only takes a moment of time, but then you spend the rest of your life figuring out what it means.” - Leonard Freed I learned how to use a camera when I was 14. Those first few years, running around with my friend’s grandfather’s heavy Minolta, making horribly exposed images of mundane things, counting down the seconds in front of a glowing enlarger, they shaped me as a person, changed me forever. And now I (with your help) have the opportunity to bring the same amount of creative splendor into the hearts of the kids I work with here in Niger. This November, I’m kicking off a Youth Photography Project in my village. I’ll be putting cameras and film into the hands of 14 middle school students, and teaching them how to tell stories and express themselves creatively. Students in Niger do not benefit from art or music classes; critical thinking and self-esteem are seldom encouraged. These 14 students will have the unique opportunity to document their lives, to communicate with the rest of the world about this little-known landlocked country in the Sahel. Over the course of 8 months, the kids will learn how to compose images, critique their work, and curate a final exhibition. They will also produce and market a collection of Niger postcards to generate income. In collaboration with the San Francisco First Exposures program, the students will exchange photographs and letters with American youth, fostering cross-cultural exchange and friendship. So, I am asking for your help. I need to raise about $2000 for film development and other project expenses. I want you to think back to your very first artistic endeavors, how it felt to hold a paintbrush, play the piano, or write a story. Think about the creative images, words and music which have changed the way you view the world. Now think about the possibilities of putting a camera in the hands of a child. By making a donation to the Zinder Youth Photography Project, you will not only be helping a Nigerien child develop a roll of film, you’ll be giving them an opportunity to express themself, incentive to continue their education, and most importantly, a voice. You can make a tax-deductible donation and find more information on the project at the following link: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=683-173 I would like to thank the people who have helped me get this far in the project, by donating cameras, film, batteries, and precious words of encouragement: Zach Williams, SF Camerawork’s First Exposures, Erik Auerbach, Jamie Lloyd, Hayes Firestein, Kyle Yugawa, Joyce Liao, Anne Tsuei, Remy Chang, Peggy Mahlik, Randahl Matsuno, Christi Hernandez & the Academy of Art University, Will Mosgrove, and all of the other individual donors who slipped rolls of film into my care packages. The project would not have been possible without your support!

The Simple Life “Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left to rattle like brittle bush in a dry wind.” -B. Kingsolver For the past year, I’ve lived in a clay shoebox. It leaks when it rains, warms up like a slapped sunburn every afternoon, and the upstairs tenants are an incorrigible bunch of web-happy arachnids. But I love it. Life in this little house is beautifully uncomplicated, and I’ve become accustomed to the certain quality of life that having little affords. Sleeping outside with the stars, rain or shine. Washing everything I own in a bucket, carting the water back and forth from the well. Planning my day by the whims of the weather. Sweeping my sand. Only buying as much as I can consume, or finding a way for things to keep in the heat and the damp – chilled near a sweating clay pot, submerged in water, kept in the shade, hidden from things that fly and crawl. Learning to live with the bugs, because there will be more, eventually. Watching melons sprout out of my groundhole compost. Accepting new ideas of hygiene (“clean” = cleaner than before, clean-looking, clean enough). Sleeping when it’s dark, waking when it’s light, working in the coolness and resting in the heat – because there are no electrical distractions or solvents, no air-conditioners or water coolers. There is no controlled environment, no artificial homeostasis, no autopilot. Just life, turning and changing on an unseen impulse – the lifecycles of insects, the length of the day and night, the green of the landscape, the water damage in the roads, the heat and the dryness and the winds and the wetness. But now, after a year of this life, I’m packing up my hermit crab abode and moving to the big city. Those porcelain flushing things I used to be so familiar with? My new house has two. While my first year in Niger was all about getting my bearings, learning the language and customs, letting go of my American notions of productivity, it looks like my second year is going to be more about Getting Shit Done. I’ll be working in Zinder, picking up where the last volunteer left off, and hopefully having a real chance to accomplish some of my grand plans. Now there will be new challenges: being the new girl all over again, tackling large-scale projects in French, getting reacquainted with urban life. But I’ll never forget my village, the year that showed me the difference between my wants and needs, and the people who taught me how little is necessary for happiness. In my little mud closet, I’ve realized what it means to undress my life, to test that in myself which has only known one way, one perspective. I know now that it’s not normal to eat nectarines in the dead of winter. I know that one 10 oz rib-eye could feed an entire wedding party, with leftovers. I know that it’s possible to take a bath with a 2-liter Pepsi bottle full of water, and that my own hands can do a damn better job than any Maytag. So you have to ask yourself, how much is truly necessary to live, to satisfy the soul? If you pick up your life and take it apart, what is left standing? Maybe you don't have to go halfway around the world to find out.

The Simple Life “Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left to rattle like brittle bush in a dry wind.” -B. Kingsolver For the past year, I’ve lived in a clay shoebox. It leaks when it rains, warms up like a slapped sunburn every afternoon, and the upstairs tenants are an incorrigible bunch of web-happy arachnids. But I love it. Life in this little house is beautifully uncomplicated, and I’ve become accustomed to the certain quality of life that having little affords. Sleeping outside with the stars, rain or shine. Washing everything I own in a bucket, carting the water back and forth from the well. Planning my day by the whims of the weather. Sweeping my sand. Only buying as much as I can consume, or finding a way for things to keep in the heat and the damp – chilled near a sweating clay pot, submerged in water, kept in the shade, hidden from things that fly and crawl. Learning to live with the bugs, because there will be more, eventually. Watching melons sprout out of my groundhole compost. Accepting new ideas of hygiene (“clean” = cleaner than before, clean-looking, clean enough). Sleeping when it’s dark, waking when it’s light, working in the coolness and resting in the heat – because there are no electrical distractions or solvents, no air-conditioners or water coolers. There is no controlled environment, no artificial homeostasis, no autopilot. Just life, turning and changing on an unseen impulse – the lifecycles of insects, the length of the day and night, the green of the landscape, the water damage in the roads, the heat and the dryness and the winds and the wetness. But now, after a year of this life, I’m packing up my hermit crab abode and moving to the big city. Those porcelain flushing things I used to be so familiar with? My new house has two. While my first year in Niger was all about getting my bearings, learning the language and customs, letting go of my American notions of productivity, it looks like my second year is going to be more about Getting Shit Done. I’ll be working in Zinder, picking up where the last volunteer left off, and hopefully having a real chance to accomplish some of my grand plans. Now there will be new challenges: being the new girl all over again, tackling large-scale projects in French, getting reacquainted with urban life. But I’ll never forget my village, the year that showed me the difference between my wants and needs, and the people who taught me how little is necessary for happiness. In my little mud closet, I’ve realized what it means to undress my life, to test that in myself which has only known one way, one perspective. I know now that it’s not normal to eat nectarines in the dead of winter. I know that one 10 oz rib-eye could feed an entire wedding party, with leftovers. I know that it’s possible to take a bath with a 2-liter Pepsi bottle full of water, and that my own hands can do a damn better job than any Maytag. So you have to ask yourself, how much is truly necessary to live, to satisfy the soul? If you pick up your life and take it apart, what is left standing? Maybe you don't have to go halfway around the world to find out.

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes It’s been a year, and most days, I still can’t figure out which direction is east. I shamelessly throw trash out of bus windows. Have learned to elbow my way into the best seat on the bush taxi. Can’t remember the last time I shaved my legs. Still haven’t finished the bottle of shampoo I brought over in my suitcase. Waited 11 months before lopping off the three inches of dead hair on my head. Often wear sweaty shirts for longer than is decent. Am sometimes too lazy to wash my hands between carrying a naked child and putting things in my mouth. I’ve traveled so far down the path of assimilation that I can’t remember where I started. So the other day when we went to the airport to pick up the new trainees, it was a little like welcoming a spaceship full of aliens to our planet. Their calf-length skirts were so short, their Nalgene bottles so pristine, it took me a moment to realize that I was instinctively looking at them through Niger-colored glasses. Maybe we were the aliens. Last week, we ushered 32 Americans into the ranks of Peace Corps Niger, offering warm bottles of water and an air-conditioned ride to the training village. They have nine weeks of training ahead of them, and I’m one of ten veterans who will be showing them the ropes. They are strange creatures, so clean and shiny, so full of questions, so determined to succeed and set themselves apart from the group. They speak our language, but they talk about things that are completely foreign – some movie about being hungover, some dance called the ‘stanky leg’, some guy rapping about being on a boat. I realize now that I’ll be bound to my training group forever by the two years we’ve spent away from American pop culture, a common gap in our youtube repertoire. It’ll only be a matter of time before the newbies find themselves in our position – standing on one side of the glass, gaping at the apparitions of their former selves, not even realizing that, somewhere along the way, they’d crossed some invisible line to the other side, come out as something completely else. After all, it was only a year ago that I stepped off that plane with clean hair and no clue about Niger. Since then, I’ve learned to like the swish of a skirt against my ankles. I can consume any and everything without fear of gastrointestinal repercussions. I stopped craving American foods long ago, and am perfectly content to munch on leaves, raw carrots, prunes. I’ve filled an entire moleskine notebook with bi-polar rants about bugs. When I’m sitting with a group of Nigeriens, I can actually understand what they’re saying. I can’t say that I’ve done a whole lot of “work” (by American conventions, anyway), but what exactly would you call all of that living I just did? Happy One-Year Anniversary, guys. Here’s to our next and last one! volunteer assistant trainers (VATs) waiting to greet the noobs at the airport

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes It’s been a year, and most days, I still can’t figure out which direction is east. I shamelessly throw trash out of bus windows. Have learned to elbow my way into the best seat on the bush taxi. Can’t remember the last time I shaved my legs. Still haven’t finished the bottle of shampoo I brought over in my suitcase. Waited 11 months before lopping off the three inches of dead hair on my head. Often wear sweaty shirts for longer than is decent. Am sometimes too lazy to wash my hands between carrying a naked child and putting things in my mouth. I’ve traveled so far down the path of assimilation that I can’t remember where I started. So the other day when we went to the airport to pick up the new trainees, it was a little like welcoming a spaceship full of aliens to our planet. Their calf-length skirts were so short, their Nalgene bottles so pristine, it took me a moment to realize that I was instinctively looking at them through Niger-colored glasses. Maybe we were the aliens. Last week, we ushered 32 Americans into the ranks of Peace Corps Niger, offering warm bottles of water and an air-conditioned ride to the training village. They have nine weeks of training ahead of them, and I’m one of ten veterans who will be showing them the ropes. They are strange creatures, so clean and shiny, so full of questions, so determined to succeed and set themselves apart from the group. They speak our language, but they talk about things that are completely foreign – some movie about being hungover, some dance called the ‘stanky leg’, some guy rapping about being on a boat. I realize now that I’ll be bound to my training group forever by the two years we’ve spent away from American pop culture, a common gap in our youtube repertoire. It’ll only be a matter of time before the newbies find themselves in our position – standing on one side of the glass, gaping at the apparitions of their former selves, not even realizing that, somewhere along the way, they’d crossed some invisible line to the other side, come out as something completely else. After all, it was only a year ago that I stepped off that plane with clean hair and no clue about Niger. Since then, I’ve learned to like the swish of a skirt against my ankles. I can consume any and everything without fear of gastrointestinal repercussions. I stopped craving American foods long ago, and am perfectly content to munch on leaves, raw carrots, prunes. I’ve filled an entire moleskine notebook with bi-polar rants about bugs. When I’m sitting with a group of Nigeriens, I can actually understand what they’re saying. I can’t say that I’ve done a whole lot of “work” (by American conventions, anyway), but what exactly would you call all of that living I just did? Happy One-Year Anniversary, guys. Here’s to our next and last one! volunteer assistant trainers (VATs) waiting to greet the noobs at the airport

It could have been worse When I open my eyes, we’re at a 45-degree angle. Our punch-drunk bus is staggering at the hand of some invisible fist, canting horribly to the right. There is a collective gasp as the driver wrenches the moaning beast too far to the left, the sound of 40 passengers steeling themselves, hands clutching seatbacks and flying to gaping mouths. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real. We’re going too fast. The momentum is too much. The bus pitches left, we’re up on two wheels, galloping forward, and my seat is airborne. This could be bad. Two heartbeats. Two great wheels spinning at the sky. And we’re suspended for a sickening moment, caught in a gross dismount, the sound of steel twisting, wheels churning at nothing. Then I’m scrabbling at the window and we’re going down, everything coming undone, the overhead baggage avalanching around us, the windows splintering as they grind against the ground, the catch and release of gravity pulling us from our seats and hurling us down a gauntlet of armrests and flotsam and bodies and jetsam. Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Is everyone ok? Whose blood is this? Where’s my other shoe?? Are you all right? Ohmygod. Ohh, my lip is cut. Is this your shoe? How do we get out of here? This is unbelievable. Your face is bruised, are you ok? Ohmygod. We hoist ourselves out of a door that is now a skylight. Nigeriens immediately clamber onto another bus that has stopped to rubberneck. Shaking, bruised, cut, and missing shoes, we pat one another down in shock. When the adrenaline drains, I have a chipped tooth and a rapidly swelling lip. Must have hit my face on something. Purpling limbs and nails chipped to the quick, sore necks and a bleeding thigh, bruised cheeks and scratched backs – thankfully, the extent of our injuries. That, and an inescapable fear of horrific traffic accidents - in a country of dire roads, non-existent speed limits, and antiquated automobiles, a country where one can’t go anywhere, if not by bus.

It could have been worse When I open my eyes, we’re at a 45-degree angle. Our punch-drunk bus is staggering at the hand of some invisible fist, canting horribly to the right. There is a collective gasp as the driver wrenches the moaning beast too far to the left, the sound of 40 passengers steeling themselves, hands clutching seatbacks and flying to gaping mouths. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real. We’re going too fast. The momentum is too much. The bus pitches left, we’re up on two wheels, galloping forward, and my seat is airborne. This could be bad. Two heartbeats. Two great wheels spinning at the sky. And we’re suspended for a sickening moment, caught in a gross dismount, the sound of steel twisting, wheels churning at nothing. Then I’m scrabbling at the window and we’re going down, everything coming undone, the overhead baggage avalanching around us, the windows splintering as they grind against the ground, the catch and release of gravity pulling us from our seats and hurling us down a gauntlet of armrests and flotsam and bodies and jetsam. Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Is everyone ok? Whose blood is this? Where’s my other shoe?? Are you all right? Ohmygod. Ohh, my lip is cut. Is this your shoe? How do we get out of here? This is unbelievable. Your face is bruised, are you ok? Ohmygod. We hoist ourselves out of a door that is now a skylight. Nigeriens immediately clamber onto another bus that has stopped to rubberneck. Shaking, bruised, cut, and missing shoes, we pat one another down in shock. When the adrenaline drains, I have a chipped tooth and a rapidly swelling lip. Must have hit my face on something. Purpling limbs and nails chipped to the quick, sore necks and a bleeding thigh, bruised cheeks and scratched backs – thankfully, the extent of our injuries. That, and an inescapable fear of horrific traffic accidents - in a country of dire roads, non-existent speed limits, and antiquated automobiles, a country where one can’t go anywhere, if not by bus.

My eyeballs are boiling in their sockets We thought we’d vacationed straight through the worst parts of hot season, cheated nature by retreating beachside. We returned to the typical dry heat, the sun not exceeding its predictable glare, temperatures to which we were accustomed. There were even small bouts of rain, prompting people into the fields to plant the year’s harvest. But we were premature in our hopes. Just as we began celebrating our Get Out of Hell Free card, God took out his magnifying glass and trained it on Niger with a snicker. The newly planted yawns of baby millet tufts withered.Temperatures rose to one hundred and ten degrees in the shade. The sand spilling over our slippers began to scorch our feet flesh. Now, you have a choice between sitting outside in a hot breeze, tormented by hoards of heat-crazed flies, or retreating to the indoor sauna, as cool and comfortable as a bikram yoga studio. At night, the warmth props your lids open, makes unconsciousness an impossibility. You wake to the damp of your own shirtfront, the echoes of your own subconscious panting, the dried-over sweat rivers webbing down the cracks of your body, the gritty film of silt blown over your bed sheet by the harmattan winds. People met the first true rain of the season with grateful exuberance, children screaming and sliding in the damp sand, roaring trucks hauling loads of singing men to the fields. And me, dry under my shade hangar, smiling to myself at the first damp earth I’ve seen since August, soothing a cat who’s never heard thunder before, wondering when the mosquitos come back. Ting Johnson I used to lay awake at night, sleuthing out exactly what kind of something was slithering or puttering or skittering around in my forest of a ceiling (it’s quite leafy up there, making for THX-quality skitter reverberation). But after my recent acquisition of Ting Johnson, I no longer play that game. Instead, I lay awake at night, wondering what will be lying mangled at the foot of my bed in the morning. Listening to the happy crunching of small bones, the pit-pat sounds of paw to victim. Imagining the game of dead lizard handball he plays up and down my yard, all night long. Marveling at the terrific yowling that emanates from over my wall during the nightly kitty brawls and pussy raids. In the mornings, he’s always lounging calmly in the sand, meeting my suspicious disapproval with a teenager’s indifference. He waits patiently for me to inspect the carnage, waits for the requisite once-over from whiskers to tail, and then trots off to feast on half of the carrion. The other half, he hides somewhere for me to find later, ant-infested entrails and rigor mortised digits and all. If he finds the meal disagreeable, he doesn’t hesitate to firstly, enter my house, and secondly, vomit a chunky pile in a place that’s out of sight and hard to reach. But I have to say, even as a die-hard dog devotee, I don’t know how I ever lived without him. And these days, there’s nothing skittering in my ceiling. hunting lizards on the roof at dusk"don't worry, this isn't going to become one of those cat blogs."

My eyeballs are boiling in their sockets We thought we’d vacationed straight through the worst parts of hot season, cheated nature by retreating beachside. We returned to the typical dry heat, the sun not exceeding its predictable glare, temperatures to which we were accustomed. There were even small bouts of rain, prompting people into the fields to plant the year’s harvest. But we were premature in our hopes. Just as we began celebrating our Get Out of Hell Free card, God took out his magnifying glass and trained it on Niger with a snicker. The newly planted yawns of baby millet tufts withered.Temperatures rose to one hundred and ten degrees in the shade. The sand spilling over our slippers began to scorch our feet flesh. Now, you have a choice between sitting outside in a hot breeze, tormented by hoards of heat-crazed flies, or retreating to the indoor sauna, as cool and comfortable as a bikram yoga studio. At night, the warmth props your lids open, makes unconsciousness an impossibility. You wake to the damp of your own shirtfront, the echoes of your own subconscious panting, the dried-over sweat rivers webbing down the cracks of your body, the gritty film of silt blown over your bed sheet by the harmattan winds. People met the first true rain of the season with grateful exuberance, children screaming and sliding in the damp sand, roaring trucks hauling loads of singing men to the fields. And me, dry under my shade hangar, smiling to myself at the first damp earth I’ve seen since August, soothing a cat who’s never heard thunder before, wondering when the mosquitos come back. Ting Johnson I used to lay awake at night, sleuthing out exactly what kind of something was slithering or puttering or skittering around in my forest of a ceiling (it’s quite leafy up there, making for THX-quality skitter reverberation). But after my recent acquisition of Ting Johnson, I no longer play that game. Instead, I lay awake at night, wondering what will be lying mangled at the foot of my bed in the morning. Listening to the happy crunching of small bones, the pit-pat sounds of paw to victim. Imagining the game of dead lizard handball he plays up and down my yard, all night long. Marveling at the terrific yowling that emanates from over my wall during the nightly kitty brawls and pussy raids. In the mornings, he’s always lounging calmly in the sand, meeting my suspicious disapproval with a teenager’s indifference. He waits patiently for me to inspect the carnage, waits for the requisite once-over from whiskers to tail, and then trots off to feast on half of the carrion. The other half, he hides somewhere for me to find later, ant-infested entrails and rigor mortised digits and all. If he finds the meal disagreeable, he doesn’t hesitate to firstly, enter my house, and secondly, vomit a chunky pile in a place that’s out of sight and hard to reach. But I have to say, even as a die-hard dog devotee, I don’t know how I ever lived without him. And these days, there’s nothing skittering in my ceiling. hunting lizards on the roof at dusk"don't worry, this isn't going to become one of those cat blogs."

Support the InsaneTwo crazy bike rides, two great causes, two masochistic bike psychos men who aren't afraid to wear padded spandex shorts:http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/TourAlps09/kyugawahttp://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/magnuts

Support the InsaneTwo crazy bike rides, two great causes, two masochistic bike psychos men who aren't afraid to wear padded spandex shorts:http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/TourAlps09/kyugawahttp://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/magnuts

With a Little Help From My Friends Over the past couple of months, I’ve had a bunch of people ask me how they can help, if they can send school supplies, if there’s anything I need over here. So if you’re one of those people, and you’re looking to help out with a good cause, here’s your chance - I need film, camera batteries, and snowboards. 1) Youth Photo Project I’m currently laying the foundation for my primary project – a youth photo program for the high school kids in my village. Ten kids will be given point & shoot cameras and taught how to document their world over the course of a year. Through fieldtrips, writing assignments, documentary projects, exhibitions, and discussions, these kids will be given an opportunity to express themselves creatively, think critically about their lives, and thus empower themselves through photography. Some of these kids have never used a camera, never even had an art or drawing or music class, never been given an avenue to make their voices heard. The project will give these kids a voice, will educate the people in our village, and will create a window to their lives for people back in the states. So here’s where you come in – I’ve been fortunate enough to inherit cameras from a previous volunteer. But I need film and batteries for the cameras. If you are interested in donating, please see below! Film- any brand of 35mm film, black&white or color, no slide film- 36 exposures preferred, since I’ll have to pay for development by the roll- ISO 100-800 Batteries- AA Alkaline- CR123A or DL123A (3V) – can be found in most convenience stores Mailing – very important!- please mail your film in padded envelopes rather than boxes – I have to pay for each box and USPS priority flat-rate package I receive, but I don’t have to pay for small padded yellow envelopes (the kind you can pick up at a convenience store)- UNLESS for some reason you have access to large quantities of film and wish to send a box – then a box will be fine!- The address one more time: Marisa Wong Corps de la Paix B.P. 641 Zinder, Niger 2) Snowboards I'm working on a secret project right now. It's a secret because you guys will think I'm crazy if I tell you about it. I need a couple of used, unwanted snowboards, the kind that have been sitting in the back of your closet or storeroom for the past 6 seasons because you got a new board, or you decided you actually hate snow, or you're just too damn busy to go riding down icy mountains anymore. Maybe you've been thinking about selling this board on ebay or craigslist, but are too busy or lazy or sentimental to get up and do it. I NEED THAT BOARD! Email me at marisawong64@gmail.com if you have such a board lying around, and I'll arrange to take it off your hands. If you give me your crappy old snowboard, I will even tell you what I'm going to use it for! Believe me, it's worth it....!

With a Little Help From My Friends Over the past couple of months, I’ve had a bunch of people ask me how they can help, if they can send school supplies, if there’s anything I need over here. So if you’re one of those people, and you’re looking to help out with a good cause, here’s your chance - I need film, camera batteries, and snowboards. 1) Youth Photo Project I’m currently laying the foundation for my primary project – a youth photo program for the high school kids in my village. Ten kids will be given point & shoot cameras and taught how to document their world over the course of a year. Through fieldtrips, writing assignments, documentary projects, exhibitions, and discussions, these kids will be given an opportunity to express themselves creatively, think critically about their lives, and thus empower themselves through photography. Some of these kids have never used a camera, never even had an art or drawing or music class, never been given an avenue to make their voices heard. The project will give these kids a voice, will educate the people in our village, and will create a window to their lives for people back in the states. So here’s where you come in – I’ve been fortunate enough to inherit cameras from a previous volunteer. But I need film and batteries for the cameras. If you are interested in donating, please see below! Film- any brand of 35mm film, black&white or color, no slide film- 36 exposures preferred, since I’ll have to pay for development by the roll- ISO 100-800 Batteries- AA Alkaline- CR123A or DL123A (3V) – can be found in most convenience stores Mailing – very important!- please mail your film in padded envelopes rather than boxes – I have to pay for each box and USPS priority flat-rate package I receive, but I don’t have to pay for small padded yellow envelopes (the kind you can pick up at a convenience store)- UNLESS for some reason you have access to large quantities of film and wish to send a box – then a box will be fine!- The address one more time: Marisa Wong Corps de la Paix B.P. 641 Zinder, Niger 2) Snowboards I'm working on a secret project right now. It's a secret because you guys will think I'm crazy if I tell you about it. I need a couple of used, unwanted snowboards, the kind that have been sitting in the back of your closet or storeroom for the past 6 seasons because you got a new board, or you decided you actually hate snow, or you're just too damn busy to go riding down icy mountains anymore. Maybe you've been thinking about selling this board on ebay or craigslist, but are too busy or lazy or sentimental to get up and do it. I NEED THAT BOARD! Email me at marisawong64@gmail.com if you have such a board lying around, and I'll arrange to take it off your hands. If you give me your crappy old snowboard, I will even tell you what I'm going to use it for! Believe me, it's worth it....!

Girls Education A young woman in Niger wakes up at dawn. She is stoking the fire and sweeping the yard before her family is roused by prayer call. Her bare feet busy themselves around the house where she will be bound for most of the day. We follow her out the door and down the dirt path, to the small high school. Within the straw mat walls, the classroom is filled with smug boys and peppered with the occasional girl, brave flowers peeking out from the numerous leaves. White shirts, black pants and skirts. She may know the answers, but the teacher will not call on her, especially when so many boys are leaping out of their seats, snapping their fingers and shouting, demanding to be seen. If she goes home for lunch, she may not come back. Inevitably, she’ll find distraction in a basin of millet that needs to be taken to the grinder, water that must be drawn from the well, a tired mother demanding respite from her most recent newborn. She thinks about marriage, because it is the only certainty, her only guarantee. School is just a bookmark, holding the page until her antagonist shows up in chapter four, until her Nigerien fairytale unfolds. A husband, a home to tend, and babies, babies, babies. Does she wonder about city life? Is she angered by the fact that she will be a cloistered, uneducated wife before she is 16? Does she ever think about the future? About whether she has the power to change the direction of her own life? Will she ever be aware of her own potential? Does she know that her country can never move forward without her? zinder girls' health & creativity camp 2009 My last couple of months have been consumed with girls’ empowerment projects – a regional soccer tournament and a week-long health and creativity fair. Opportunities for sports, health education, and art are not readily encouraged or accessible for young women in this country. As Peace Corps volunteers, one of our jobs is to create such opportunities for these girls, to show them what they are capable of. zinder girls' soccer tournament semi-finals penalty kicks at the finals the girls learn how to make tofu at the health & creativity camp summer leads a yoga session yoga balancing act faiza ad-libs 'where the wild things are' in hausa happy girls at the end of the camp

Girls Education A young woman in Niger wakes up at dawn. She is stoking the fire and sweeping the yard before her family is roused by prayer call. Her bare feet busy themselves around the house where she will be bound for most of the day. We follow her out the door and down the dirt path, to the small high school. Within the straw mat walls, the classroom is filled with smug boys and peppered with the occasional girl, brave flowers peeking out from the numerous leaves. White shirts, black pants and skirts. She may know the answers, but the teacher will not call on her, especially when so many boys are leaping out of their seats, snapping their fingers and shouting, demanding to be seen. If she goes home for lunch, she may not come back. Inevitably, she’ll find distraction in a basin of millet that needs to be taken to the grinder, water that must be drawn from the well, a tired mother demanding respite from her most recent newborn. She thinks about marriage, because it is the only certainty, her only guarantee. School is just a bookmark, holding the page until her antagonist shows up in chapter four, until her Nigerien fairytale unfolds. A husband, a home to tend, and babies, babies, babies. Does she wonder about city life? Is she angered by the fact that she will be a cloistered, uneducated wife before she is 16? Does she ever think about the future? About whether she has the power to change the direction of her own life? Will she ever be aware of her own potential? Does she know that her country can never move forward without her? zinder girls' health & creativity camp 2009 My last couple of months have been consumed with girls’ empowerment projects – a regional soccer tournament and a week-long health and creativity fair. Opportunities for sports, health education, and art are not readily encouraged or accessible for young women in this country. As Peace Corps volunteers, one of our jobs is to create such opportunities for these girls, to show them what they are capable of. zinder girls' soccer tournament semi-finals penalty kicks at the finals the girls learn how to make tofu at the health & creativity camp summer leads a yoga session yoga balancing act faiza ad-libs 'where the wild things are' in hausa happy girls at the end of the camp

Transition It’s been two months since our three weeks of Inter-Service Training, and I still haven’t found the words to talk about it. The stentorian stimuli of Niamey, the frustrations of living out of a top-loading bag, the jarring reintroduction of commerce, traffic, technology. After three unmediated months in the bush, pushed out east in the fringes of Peace Corps influence, living the village life and digging my heels down to slow the pace of my days, Niamey was the late night phone call that roused us from the reality we were only dreaming. It was shocking to see how I’d adapted, how accustomed I’d become to a quiet life in the bush, how I had to struggle to readjust to city life. I’d forgotten the clusterfuck of donkeys and taxis sharing a thoroughfare, the mélange of hausazarmafrencharabic on everyone’s lips, the scandal of citified women riding motorcycles, defiant, their bright hijabs blasting behind them like a statement. We emptied our pockets into Lebanese coffee shops, import grocery stores and specialty tailors, hungrily trying to make up for three months of mandatory abstinence. Shuttling ourselves back and forth from the bush training site to the Niamey hostel, we relearned how to feel at home in borrowed beds. Reunited with Anglophone companions, our tongues settled back into their old habits. Immediately, I felt the radius of my Hausa vocabulary shrinking like a noonday shadow. After so much time apart, the latent competition among us was stifling – who was the most language proficient, who used a teapot of water instead of toilet paper, who had the brightest project ideas, who had the worst diarrhea. We wore our struggles like flags of success. Shedding our restrictions, we became our corrupt old American selves. We got drunk and toured the city at night, Akon blaring from terraced nightclubs. We were high off our new confidences, our refined sense of belonging in this country, the freedom to wear jeans and leave our heads bare again. Niger no longer felt like an exotic and frightening stranger, but simply a single-storied nation, trying to stand on its own two feet. It was easy to get lost in it all. Inevitably, we tired of each other. By week two, we grew cross at our cramped quarters and our overused inside jokes. Driving past trenched landfills and catching whiffs of the city’s bitter exhalation, we missed our villages. Two female volunteers were mugged at machete point. Another suffered a concussion after a motorcycle slammed into her on the street. It was time to go home. The remarkable part was the realization that ‘home’ had become a village somewhere in the outskirts. After months of trying to find a niche in this brown country, balled up and shaped by so many hands, months of looking through internet cafes like a window to real life, months of balancing a borrowed language on my tongue, unconvinced that this narrow existence belonged to me - after so many months, home turned out to be a quiet hut where my heart was anchored like a bank pen on a chain. cramped quarters at the Niamey hostel

Transition It’s been two months since our three weeks of Inter-Service Training, and I still haven’t found the words to talk about it. The stentorian stimuli of Niamey, the frustrations of living out of a top-loading bag, the jarring reintroduction of commerce, traffic, technology. After three unmediated months in the bush, pushed out east in the fringes of Peace Corps influence, living the village life and digging my heels down to slow the pace of my days, Niamey was the late night phone call that roused us from the reality we were only dreaming. It was shocking to see how I’d adapted, how accustomed I’d become to a quiet life in the bush, how I had to struggle to readjust to city life. I’d forgotten the clusterfuck of donkeys and taxis sharing a thoroughfare, the mélange of hausazarmafrencharabic on everyone’s lips, the scandal of citified women riding motorcycles, defiant, their bright hijabs blasting behind them like a statement. We emptied our pockets into Lebanese coffee shops, import grocery stores and specialty tailors, hungrily trying to make up for three months of mandatory abstinence. Shuttling ourselves back and forth from the bush training site to the Niamey hostel, we relearned how to feel at home in borrowed beds. Reunited with Anglophone companions, our tongues settled back into their old habits. Immediately, I felt the radius of my Hausa vocabulary shrinking like a noonday shadow. After so much time apart, the latent competition among us was stifling – who was the most language proficient, who used a teapot of water instead of toilet paper, who had the brightest project ideas, who had the worst diarrhea. We wore our struggles like flags of success. Shedding our restrictions, we became our corrupt old American selves. We got drunk and toured the city at night, Akon blaring from terraced nightclubs. We were high off our new confidences, our refined sense of belonging in this country, the freedom to wear jeans and leave our heads bare again. Niger no longer felt like an exotic and frightening stranger, but simply a single-storied nation, trying to stand on its own two feet. It was easy to get lost in it all. Inevitably, we tired of each other. By week two, we grew cross at our cramped quarters and our overused inside jokes. Driving past trenched landfills and catching whiffs of the city’s bitter exhalation, we missed our villages. Two female volunteers were mugged at machete point. Another suffered a concussion after a motorcycle slammed into her on the street. It was time to go home. The remarkable part was the realization that ‘home’ had become a village somewhere in the outskirts. After months of trying to find a niche in this brown country, balled up and shaped by so many hands, months of looking through internet cafes like a window to real life, months of balancing a borrowed language on my tongue, unconvinced that this narrow existence belonged to me - after so many months, home turned out to be a quiet hut where my heart was anchored like a bank pen on a chain. cramped quarters at the Niamey hostel

The shutter-click shower of candy This morning I met a woman at a birth ceremony. Her face was hardened by wind and work, deeply lined like a wood engraving. I looked into her milky bright eyes while she held my hand and laughed. Motioning joyfully, she stretched our arms out side-by-side – look, we are different. Her face crinkled. Another woman with two gold front teeth handed me her 7-day old baby, its toenails no bigger than a pinhead. She told me he was too small, no good. His ears were black. I cautiously drew my camera out of its case, wanting to capture the crinkling, the black ears, the easy trust. Snap. The LCD screen shows two stricken deer, hands already airborne to adjust a headscarf, mouths twisted into shy grimaces. The moment, the easy trust, gone. These days, my camera isn’t aimed at much except the inside of its zippered case. Besides the sandstorms, and the fact that my copy of Photoshop has curiously petered out and died, there is the fact that sometimes, I feel like I’m holding a giant sign instead of a camera. A sign that says: “SHOW ME THE WHITES OF YOUR EYES.” As soon as my camera is out of its case, the kids come flocking, as if to be in a photograph is to be bathed in a golden ray of goodness and free giveaways. Like the photograph is a piñata and all the children are swinging wildly to get the best hit, waiting for the shutter-click shower of candy. Like they’re not people, but meerkats, alerted to some impending sky-bound danger, heads whipping around, poses forming even before I can click the shutter. This is the self-consciousness of a people who are not used to seeing themselves, a people who can’t go outside without covering their heads, but would breastfeed their babies on national television. I write and photograph to make the experience tangible, real, lasting. To fulfill my responsibility to everyone at home, a heavy responsibility that weighs on me some days, keeps my fingers from writing the words. But when I look at the pictures and reread my ramblings on slips of paper, I see that I am failing. This is not Niger. The photos simply don’t do it justice, for the eye wishes to be amused and drawn to the unfamiliar. You frequently read about low literacy rates, but most likely not about the World Bank’s imprudent program to restructure the education system, the overwhelming number of unpaid and untrained teachers. You see the round bellies and you think: hungry. But you don’t see the dinner split between twelve people as the result of poor family planning. And what of assumption, that slippery predecessor of prejudice? I myself envisioned Africa as one might entertain fantasies of a first kiss, not understanding that once you find yourself pressed up against the thing, lips parted and soul bared, it’s a different thing altogether. I can’t be sure that people read these entries. I can’t guarantee that anyone does much more than fast-forward through my photos, on their way to a sensationalized news story or another link to tabloid fodder. If anything, I can only hope to stimulate enough curiosity for you to find out for yourself. To picture Niger the way I see it, with or without a viewfinder, the good and the bad, the way it looks before the click of a shutter. Cold Season Mornings are milk-white and blustery, a phantasmagoria of fog and grit that blows over the naked desert and lends everything a scorched smell. The plain sky siphons fog off the gray land, filling like a cloudy beaker, making smears of the trees. After so many months of sitting in your own sweat, you are surprised to find yourself sleeping under a thick blanket, shivering when the winds cough dryly from the west. You wake with sharp morning headaches, sore throats, nosebleeds. And the dust! It paints a powdery film over everything, settling in like a second skin. The leathery hides of your heels become impervious to every lotion and pomade and salve. They crack as deeply as the desiccated riverbeds, and seep blood into the sand. But cold season is heavenly, your obvious favorite. The bliss doesn’t stem from the breezes, or the fact that your leftover food now takes more than a day to rot. It doesn’t matter that you have to shower in the middle of the day to avoid the evening chill – in cold season, you’ve found that it is once again possible to stop sweating. No, the wonder of cold season lies in its essence, in the fact that everything hibernates in the winter, including the bugs.

The shutter-click shower of candy This morning I met a woman at a birth ceremony. Her face was hardened by wind and work, deeply lined like a wood engraving. I looked into her milky bright eyes while she held my hand and laughed. Motioning joyfully, she stretched our arms out side-by-side – look, we are different. Her face crinkled. Another woman with two gold front teeth handed me her 7-day old baby, its toenails no bigger than a pinhead. She told me he was too small, no good. His ears were black. I cautiously drew my camera out of its case, wanting to capture the crinkling, the black ears, the easy trust. Snap. The LCD screen shows two stricken deer, hands already airborne to adjust a headscarf, mouths twisted into shy grimaces. The moment, the easy trust, gone. These days, my camera isn’t aimed at much except the inside of its zippered case. Besides the sandstorms, and the fact that my copy of Photoshop has curiously petered out and died, there is the fact that sometimes, I feel like I’m holding a giant sign instead of a camera. A sign that says: “SHOW ME THE WHITES OF YOUR EYES.” As soon as my camera is out of its case, the kids come flocking, as if to be in a photograph is to be bathed in a golden ray of goodness and free giveaways. Like the photograph is a piñata and all the children are swinging wildly to get the best hit, waiting for the shutter-click shower of candy. Like they’re not people, but meerkats, alerted to some impending sky-bound danger, heads whipping around, poses forming even before I can click the shutter. This is the self-consciousness of a people who are not used to seeing themselves, a people who can’t go outside without covering their heads, but would breastfeed their babies on national television. I write and photograph to make the experience tangible, real, lasting. To fulfill my responsibility to everyone at home, a heavy responsibility that weighs on me some days, keeps my fingers from writing the words. But when I look at the pictures and reread my ramblings on slips of paper, I see that I am failing. This is not Niger. The photos simply don’t do it justice, for the eye wishes to be amused and drawn to the unfamiliar. You frequently read about low literacy rates, but most likely not about the World Bank’s imprudent program to restructure the education system, the overwhelming number of unpaid and untrained teachers. You see the round bellies and you think: hungry. But you don’t see the dinner split between twelve people as the result of poor family planning. And what of assumption, that slippery predecessor of prejudice? I myself envisioned Africa as one might entertain fantasies of a first kiss, not understanding that once you find yourself pressed up against the thing, lips parted and soul bared, it’s a different thing altogether. I can’t be sure that people read these entries. I can’t guarantee that anyone does much more than fast-forward through my photos, on their way to a sensationalized news story or another link to tabloid fodder. If anything, I can only hope to stimulate enough curiosity for you to find out for yourself. To picture Niger the way I see it, with or without a viewfinder, the good and the bad, the way it looks before the click of a shutter. Cold Season Mornings are milk-white and blustery, a phantasmagoria of fog and grit that blows over the naked desert and lends everything a scorched smell. The plain sky siphons fog off the gray land, filling like a cloudy beaker, making smears of the trees. After so many months of sitting in your own sweat, you are surprised to find yourself sleeping under a thick blanket, shivering when the winds cough dryly from the west. You wake with sharp morning headaches, sore throats, nosebleeds. And the dust! It paints a powdery film over everything, settling in like a second skin. The leathery hides of your heels become impervious to every lotion and pomade and salve. They crack as deeply as the desiccated riverbeds, and seep blood into the sand. But cold season is heavenly, your obvious favorite. The bliss doesn’t stem from the breezes, or the fact that your leftover food now takes more than a day to rot. It doesn’t matter that you have to shower in the middle of the day to avoid the evening chill – in cold season, you’ve found that it is once again possible to stop sweating. No, the wonder of cold season lies in its essence, in the fact that everything hibernates in the winter, including the bugs.

VisitorIn the 4 am darkness, I shifted my foot in the bed, and heard something scamper away to a corner. Simon or Garfunkel, I thought, and groggily listened to the bastard scratching around in the dirt. A splash, the sound of something spilling, and I was roused, flashlight in hand, clicking a dusty stream of light over an upturned milk bowl, with no culprit in sight. I blinked in half-conscious confusion, listening to creature footsteps now under my thin cot, and let the light leak over to the trunk top. One, two, three, four… I counted four eyes and two kittens perched vigilantly on the trunk, gazing calmly into the shadows. My mind fumbled for logic as a third sizable body slithered into my periphery to disappear behind a bookshelf. A stray cat, I drowsily deduced as I probed the bottom shelf with a finger of flashlight, stretched out from within the safety of my net. And then. The beam dragged itself over something rigid and pink, twitching, longer than my forearm, thick and wrinkled like a sucked thumb in the dark mouth of my nightmare, peculiar, because you were expecting a feral cat, but instead it’s just a tail, and this is no cat’s tail, not even one of those creepy Chinese hairless tails, and recognition begins to claw its way out of those sleepy depths, shifting and putting on a number of hats until it finds the one labeled ‘horror’, and just then out comes the twitching rigid pink plump body of a RAT, the biggest motherfucking rat on growth hormones you’ve ever seen or imagined and he’s so big that he looks like some pointy-nosed toddler crawling around on your floor, scrabbling at the screen door and dragging along this foot-long tapered large intestine of a tail, and it’s so big that you have to wonder if this is some hilarious dream that you’ll forget in the morning, but you look around and no, you’re not dreaming, you’re just sitting up in bed at 4 am in Niger, watching this roided bicep, this Princess Bride Rodent of Unusual Size, this brontosaurus of a rat let itself slip out into the night, with only two stunned kittens for witnesses.

VisitorIn the 4 am darkness, I shifted my foot in the bed, and heard something scamper away to a corner. Simon or Garfunkel, I thought, and groggily listened to the bastard scratching around in the dirt. A splash, the sound of something spilling, and I was roused, flashlight in hand, clicking a dusty stream of light over an upturned milk bowl, with no culprit in sight. I blinked in half-conscious confusion, listening to creature footsteps now under my thin cot, and let the light leak over to the trunk top. One, two, three, four… I counted four eyes and two kittens perched vigilantly on the trunk, gazing calmly into the shadows. My mind fumbled for logic as a third sizable body slithered into my periphery to disappear behind a bookshelf. A stray cat, I drowsily deduced as I probed the bottom shelf with a finger of flashlight, stretched out from within the safety of my net. And then. The beam dragged itself over something rigid and pink, twitching, longer than my forearm, thick and wrinkled like a sucked thumb in the dark mouth of my nightmare, peculiar, because you were expecting a feral cat, but instead it’s just a tail, and this is no cat’s tail, not even one of those creepy Chinese hairless tails, and recognition begins to claw its way out of those sleepy depths, shifting and putting on a number of hats until it finds the one labeled ‘horror’, and just then out comes the twitching rigid pink plump body of a RAT, the biggest motherfucking rat on growth hormones you’ve ever seen or imagined and he’s so big that he looks like some pointy-nosed toddler crawling around on your floor, scrabbling at the screen door and dragging along this foot-long tapered large intestine of a tail, and it’s so big that you have to wonder if this is some hilarious dream that you’ll forget in the morning, but you look around and no, you’re not dreaming, you’re just sitting up in bed at 4 am in Niger, watching this roided bicep, this Princess Bride Rodent of Unusual Size, this brontosaurus of a rat let itself slip out into the night, with only two stunned kittens for witnesses.

Thankfulness Apologies for the lack of entries lately - been off battling a recurring case of amoebic dysentery and an even more persistent bout of writer’s block. I still have a little bit of both, so bear with me.The highlight of my past month came unexpectedly at 3 am, the week before I left my village to celebrate Thanksgiving with the volunteers in my region. The nights are rapidly cooling, evidenced by the appearance of green vegetables in my market – vegetables which I bleached and rinsed before gobbling… yet I got sick all the same. So, roused at 3 am, I crouched in the cold, half asleep and trying not to fall into the hole, the crickets dashing spasmodically in and out of the shadows, my stomach clenched like a fist, swinging. Last I’d checked, my fever had topped out at 103, and I tucked my hands into my oven-like armpits while shivering from waves of chills. Switching off my bug-magnet of a headlamp, perched over the dark abyss like some grimacing gargoyle over a sleeping city, I felt like the only person awake for miles. It was then that I managed to turn my eyes upward, glimpsing the 3 am Nigerien sky for the very first time. Luminous, uninterrupted, perfect. And even though my ankles ached from the prolonged bouts of squatting (it all makes a pretty picture, I know), and even though medical salvation was a week and 120 kilometers away, I couldn’t help but feel thankful. Lami I was thinking about doing laundry when they called to tell me that she was dead.I was in a bush taxi, where I do some of my best thinking, and the phone rang. I told him I was almost there, 40 kilometers away, and I was bringing grapefruits, but he interrupted me and said “Chamsia, quelque chose ici ce n’est pas bonne.” Between my primitive French and the shoddy cell phone signal, I thought I heard him say that a neighbor had died. It was dark, way past my bush taxi curfew. I listened to the dial tone and wondered which of my family’s neighbors had passed away while I spent the night in the capitol. I was returning just in time for the big Muslim holiday, Tabaski. I’d left my village for one night to fetch my camera, to take pictures of all the dead goats they’d be slaughtering in Abraham’s honor. It wasn’t until I got home, saw the men sitting in the dark outside our doorway, twenty pairs of shoes pointing unhappily into my family’s house, the women whose names I knew by heart, wailing for all the world to hear. It wasn’t until then that I knew something far worse had happened. Not a neighbor, but my neighbor. My host mom. Nine months pregnant. The woman who was the first person I saw every morning, who never failed to bring me a portion of the meals she made, who came running with a shoe when I found a kunama, a scorpion, in my hut, who taught me how to make my favorite Nigerien dish and then laughed to tears when I burned the shit out of it. Gone inexplicably. The women gripped my hands and told me to stop crying, to have patience. They said “This is life.” They wrote the date of her passing on the wall in white chalk, drew X’s over her face in the pictures I’d given them, took her body away on an ox-cart. Neighbors moved into our house for the week, pounding and cleaning and cooking for the villagers who came to kneel in the courtyard, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues. They told and retold the story of her passing, as if honoring her. She was a wife and mother, a skilled tailor and hair braider. She made snacks for the school kids at recreation time, and cooked continuously throughout the day to keep her family fed. While her husband and children spent the day flitting in and out of the house at will, on their way to visit friends, peruse the market, play in the dirt, she could almost always be found within the four walls of our concession. The wife, the anchor.Without her, the house and the people in it seem to just drift listlessly. I wondered how they would survive. Sure enough, within a week, relatives appeared to whisk the children off to their villages. Just like that, the little family which had become all I’d known of Niger, was now just an empty house next door. As if they’d never existed. As if she’d never existed.We hail from a culture of obituaries, grave markers, memorial services, eulogies, wakes, ritualized ash-spreading pilgrimages, funeral processions - endless ways by which to remember the dead, to keep them near, if only for awhile. The Nigerien proclivity, by contrast, is to release the departed from memory, to put everything in Allah’s hands, and to simply move on. So for the sake of integration, I’ll say goodbye to Lami here – goodbye to my Nigerien mother and friend, goodbye to the very first person to have passed out of my life. The words don’t seem like enough, but you will be missed. Kiki and Lami The Greener Grass My hair is falling out. It’s a combination of poor nutrition, the bitter white malaria prophylaxis I swallow every Wednesday, and having to wear my hair up all day every day, due to the dust and heat. Combing chunks of hair out with my fingers at bathtime, I am always led to reflect on the things I’ve given up to be here – little things, like iced vanilla lattes, hot showers, hair. Then irreplaceable things, like my mother’s peace of mind, my brother’s high school graduation. Thinking about what I’m giving up leads to daydreams about life at home, then homesickness, then cursing my surroundings, where I can’t write a single sentence without a Really Big Grasshopper landing with a THWACK in the middle of my page. And inevitably, these emotions have led to an influx of cynical blog entries, tinged green with my negativity. But there’s something that I need to clear up. Or rather, an apology I need to make: I’m sorry for all of The Whining. When you live in the desert, the grass is always going to be greener somewhere else. You have no grass. For a long time, I held Niger up against America like an ill-tailored suit, noting all the places where things didn’t fit. I couldn’t help thinking that somewhere out there, somewhere else, the life I’d led was now leading itself along without me. My friends were celebrating birthdays together, my brother was pondering his college applications, people were walking their floppy-tongued puppies to the park, and I was eating millet pounded into a paste topped off with snot sauce. But as of late, I’ve noticed an imperceptible shift in my view of the grass over there. It’s been 5 months now and I can feel my perceptions changing, vestiges of my dual life becoming blurred and un-interpretable. No longer a voyeur, a visitor staying in the guesthouse, I can feel the ties that now moor me to this village, making me part of the community. I’m no longer a tourist. And residents don’t shit on their front lawns. Unless they’re Nigerien. But I digress. No more Whining. Proof that Men Everywhere are the Same (aka Movember)Apparently, May isn’t the only month out of the year when men are inexplicably prone to hold Who-Can-Grow-The-Most-Facial-Hair competitions. And of course, what predictably follows is a Who-Can-Shave-Said-Month-Old-Facial-Hair-To-Most-Closely-Resemble-A-Pedophile competition.Joey prepping, Kelsey approving Happy Pedophile ChrisKira, Kelsey, and a hair extensionMysterious Biker Pedophile ChrisThe 4 lovely boys of Team Z Care Package 102 Question: What happens when you post a care package list on your blog AND you have fabulous friends? Answer: You get fat. I think it's safe to assume that I have enough peanut m&ms to get me through the entirety of my service. A big THANK YOU to all the people who have kept me swimming in packages in the past 6 months! Special thank you's to the AAU staff (for the 30 pound box!), Hayes Firestein & First Exposures (for the totally unexpected package!), and Miss Jamie Kuo (for remembering me even though I know she's swamped with school!). Since people are always asking me what kinds of things I need over here, I thought I'd post an updated list. One that won't make me come back looking like the Michelin Man. Never-fail Classics:Magazines!Movies **MusicPhotosTuna & ChickenDried FruitSauce packets (for pasta, meat, soup, etc.)Asian FoodTrader Joe's insta-foodGood old-fashioned handwritten lettersBooks Current needs:Soy SauceAdobe Photoshop CS4 ** A list of the movies that came up in the quick survey I took at the hostel. Don't know if they're all good or not, but at this point, anything is better than watching The Devil Wears Prada for the 50th time. 30 Rock!!!In BrugesDeath at a FuneralBurn After ReadingAustraliaFour ChristmasesQuantum SolaceCasino RoyaleThe OrphanageTwilightThe FountainState and MainRachel Getting MarriedLars and the Real GirlMargot at the WeddingPersepolisEvery Which Way But LooseOut ColdTropic Thunder