So...I'm sorry...hasn't really been a lot of down time/time that I am in the mood to write since I last posted a blog, like forever ago I know. So when I went back to Niger from my visit home in November, I went back to my village for a couple weeks, and organized final preparations for building the Housing Patient Facility, which got fully funded and thank you all for your help (more about that later)...So I had two more weeks in my village until I became the Regional Volunteer Leader (RVL) for the Maradi Region, a job that I applied for and received in September. As the Regional Volunteer Leader, I was responsible for communicating and relaying information to volunteers in my region from the bureau, and to serve as a support for volunteers in my region, particularly new volunteers. So I had a good last two weeks in my village, and planned on staying involved with them while performing the role as RVL, So I moved to Maradi, the capital on the 22nd of December to celebrate Christmas with my fellow Maradi team members. Living in Maradi was the other end of the spectrum in terms of volunteer lifestyle. Lets start with the house, First it was an actual house, bigger and nicer than any apartment or dorm room i've ever had, it had electricity (when Nigeria decided to let Niger have it that is), a bathroom with toilet and shower equipped with hot water heater, a fridge, and an A.C. Unit in the bedroom, this was ridiculous to me, and I enjoyed it to the fullest. In addition to the house, Maradi came with its own perks, including fruit and vegetables, and beer, and delicious whole chickens roasted for two dollars...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :)...It was such a different lifestyle, one of the things that sticks out in my head is how different it was being inside all of the time, with fluorescent bulbs, I had spent the previous 15 months living predominately outside, like unless I was cooking, I was outside, even then my house was very open. As the RVL, I did a lot of paperwork and organization for implementation for things like installing new volunteers in their villages and things like site development. If I had to choose, I'd say that life as a bush volunteer was more my style, the city living was very different, it didn't last very long though...

A new group of volunteers completed training and were sworn in on December 30, 2010. 9 new volunteers were placed in the Maradi Region, they were brought to Maradi on New Years Eve, we had a nice dinner and dancing, spent the weekend preparing them for installations into their new villages. We spent the next week installing volunteers. We finished Friday January 7th. On that night two young french citizens were taken from a bar in Niamey, the capital by some members of Al Queda in the Islamic Maghreb, the men were killed later that night. We were informed on Saturday morning. And then we waited, Those of us who had been in Niger for over a year were kind of wondering what this meant for us. And we waited...I woke up Wednesday morning, we hadn't heard anything, I kind of figured that maybe they were French and Americans weren't being targeted and maybe they were just gonna keep an eye on it, and keep telling us to maintain low profiles. Anyways, I was having a great day, I had a meeting with our Eastern Regional Coordinator, and was preparing to test a new theory I was formulating with my charcoal project. At 10:30 I received a call from my supervisor, telling me that due to security concerns in Niger, Peace Corps was evacuating....I was numb...I'm still numb as I sit in my house in Dallas and write this...So what happened..well...On Thursday and Friday I helped to facilitate the retrieval of 22 volunteers in my region from their villages to the regional capital in Maradi, I disbursed my money for the hospital projects, I bought mattresses, beds, mosquito nets to go inside the building when it eventually gets completed (more on that later). On Saturday I shopped for gifts, something that I had been putting off for a long time, stupid procrastination!!!, Then about 20 volunteers from the far eastern region of Zinder came to Maradi for the night, and Sunday we caravan-ed in Peace Corps Vehicles to Niamey, a 10 hour trip, We were flown out of Niger Monday morning at 2am to Morocco, where we attended a Close Of Service Conference.

So what's gonna happen with my hospital project? I am lucky enough to have great villagers and friends in Niger, as well as a man named Soba, he is the Eastern Regional Coordinator for Peace Corps Niger, he is Nigerien, and he agreed to see the project through to completion. I spoke to him recently and he informed me that the bricks have been made and are almost dry. He will keep me posted and send pictures when he's done, and as he keeps me posted I will keep you all posted. Please know that I trust this guy like he is family and I can assure you that your donations will not be wasted, and that the people of my village are very thankful for all of your support, as am I.

So We had a close of service conference over three days, I won't go into it too much, but I was kind of numb through the whole process, some of my friends got the opportunity to go on to something new with Peace Corps, unfortunately my fluency in Hausa wasn't a big help to me, and my lack of french skills kept me off the list of potential transfers. To be honest though, I'm not sure I could have just gone somewhere new like that, ever comparing it to Niger, and the wonderful people and experiences I had there. God...I miss it so much already...I'm sad, I am and I will be for a while, but you know, I'm not done with Niger, My experiences in Niger have made me a better person overall and I have to feel blessed that I got spend the time I did. I've made a personal commitment to revisit Niger every five years for as long as I'm able, I figure that's the least I owe them.

So what's next. My overall goal is to do my hardest to MAKE SURE THAT IT'S NOT LIKE I NEVER LEFT...and I'm gonna try to explain what I mean by that...what I mean is that, it could be really easy to go back to living my life the way I was before I left for Niger, not that that was a bad life, I just want to take all that my experiences in Niger have taught me, and apply that to something new. I really like helping other people, I do, and I loved helping Nigeriens because they helped me so much. I'm not sure how it's gonna work out, or what it's gonna end up looking like, but i'm gonna do something that allows me the opportunities to keep Niger and places like it, a part of my life forever. I guess I'm gonna get a job, or go to grad school, I'm not sure how long my parents will let me crash their house, so I better get searching pretty soon here.

I'll keep you posted, and if you have any ideas, please feel free.

Take Care - Ousmane

I can’t seem to let myself enjoy this, the way I would like to….as some of you know I am home in Texas, unfortunately my father is ill, we have high hopes that he will fully recover, and. Well shit….he better cause I’m not quite done learning from him yet…So I’m in Texas…in Dallas at my parents house and its strange…I didn’t really prepare for this, how could I??? When you go home at the end of your service, they have a conference three months before you leave that not only helps prepare you for leaving Niger, but also for coming back to America. Its’ taken me a while to figure out, accept, and put into everyday practice that Niger, is not America, and Niger does not work like America, and that it takes adapting to the way Niger works in order to work and live successfully in Niger….Now, in a matter of days I am going to have to get used to how America works, and re=adapt myself back into America for a few weeks. So as I started out saying, I’m having a hard time letting myself enjoy my time here (I’ve enjoyed it very much so far, it’s just when my mother or friends ask me what it is I want to do while I’m here, I don’t really have any answers) I have a couple of theories as to why this might be. The first being , maybe I’m jet lagged and I really don’t know what it is that I want to do, maybe there are so many choices that I’m just overwhelmed by it all, and I rather curl up and read until its’ time to go back to Niger. This kind of crosses over into another theory, which Is that I don’t really think I’ve earned this time, and won’t let myself enjoy it…I mean I’m here to be with my father because he’s sick, and because I love him very much…and I really do miss my family, and my friends while I’m in Niger…but when I left America, I left with the intention of being gone for two years, and was looking forward to seeing who I was, and what America had become after those two years….maybe I feel like this is cheating, and that’s not letting me enjoy this time…and the last theory I have is that I traveled in planes over 5000 miles, more than 19 hours in a plane, from the poorest country in the world to the richest country in the world and because of that, I won’t let myself enjoy it…last night when my parents and I were having pizza and beer(real pizza, and real beer)… My mother offered me a dinner the next evening at a restaurant that would probably have cost me and my family 250+ dollars to eat at (I’d like to say that my parents are middle class, and they don’t pay for 250 dollar meals very much, my homecoming and my fathers sickness constitutes spending it I guess, but my parents aren’t lavish folk, my mother did complain recently that she feels like a bum driving my old run down 1999 camry into work, where she’s the boss, but she will continue to do so, cause they enjoy living a modest lifestyle, and a lifestyle full of giving, they have always been advocates of volunteerism (where do you think I got it from), and they give more of their money to more charities than I know), but the thought of spending that much money on a meal…more money than anyone in my village makes in a years’ time…I can’t do it…I was talking to a friend in Niger online today, this internet thing is amazing, anyways..I was telling him about how I was feeling, and he said that he was afraid that that was going tohappen to him to when he finished his service, and he was like, “your mom probably looked at you like you had this holier than thou attitude.” And I don’t want my family or my friends to think that I am judging them for anything they do/buy/say/anything…first of all I am friends with amazing people who are down to earth and I have an amazing family as well…second, THIS IS NOT NIGER…THIS IS AMERICA, and I have no right to judge anyone because the circumstance of Niger and America are extremely different…I told my friend, I think my biggest worry is that I’ll forget…I don’t want to forget how fortunate I am to have been given the many opportunities available to me just because of where I was born. I think, rather, I know that part of the reason I wanted to work for the Peace Corps was because I didn’t think that I appreciated all that I had, that I took it for granted and really didn’t fully value it….my friend was quick to point out that he didn’t feel like he was better off because he was from America, I pointed out benefits of America like health care and education and he said “I don't feel more fortunate because I don't see a difference in happiness level and death and illness happens everywhere, people here are as happy, if not more, than people in the states so sure, we get better medicine but it's hard for me to feel like I am more fortunate.” I remember blogging early on about how I felt that the average person in Niger was happier than the average person in America, and I still feel that way…The fact of the matter is that the way I feel is probably a large combination of all of these things put together, I’m tired from flying, I’m shocked at just being in America, and I’m scared because my dad is sick(this is a big one that I’m having a lot of trouble with, that I’m not really sure has hit me yet, my family has a really healthy outlook on life and we choose to live one day at a time because that is all we are truly promised, in light of many events in my life, both past and quite recent, this is all we can ask and hope for…one day at a time, and so I’m glad that I’m here with my dad today). And maybe this wasn’t expected, but yet another thing that I have learned in Niger, is that you can’t expect anything(unfortunately it took the AQIM to teach me that but whatev) , so I’m just going to have to let myself enjoy my time here with my family, however unexpected, it is fantastic to see them, and to see my friends, and to eat some sandwiches while doing so…Until Next Time – Ousmane

So I have realized that I have mentioned my hospital project in my blog in small blurbs on occasion, and I wanted to take this opportunity to really expound upon this project, because I do truly think it’s of great importance to my community at large. And because I need your help to make this dream, a reality.

When I first arrived in my village, like a week into my service, a man approached me to ask for help regarding the lack of space for overnight patients at the small hospital in my village. Now, when I say hospital, I mean a cement brick unit, with one room and a desk in which the one doctor and his two assistants, who show up randomly, serve the 50000 people in my commune who walk from 20 kilometers out just to get treatment. Last year my doctor treated over 14000 people. The building, which also has a maternity ward, is about 20 years old, built by an NGO back in the day, and is run and funded by the government. This hospital in the middle of nowhere is not high on the governments list of things to tend to in the near future, what with the political situation and the instability of Niger as a whole. There used to be two, two room buildings that were used to house patients overnight, but they have slowly been destroyed, and are now unsuitable for housing patients.

I know I blogged about how rainy season in Niger brought me to the hospital many a time, because of the amount of malaria that takes over Nigeriens, who have no real assess to decent prevention. I have stayed the night with friends and family who were suffering from malaria, overnight in the one building that still stands, barely. Let me tell you, it is not a place you’d want to be while trying to recover from a sickness that takes your body over with unbearable pain. You lie on the cold floor, maybe on a mat if you thought to bring one from your home, you sleep with no mosquito net, which only exposes you even more to more malaria. If it starts to rain, the windows and doors don’t close, and the ceiling (if you could call it that) leaks all over you. Think about the last time you were in the hospital, and imagine if the roof caved in on top of you, as you were recovering.

So, I originally told the man who asked me for help, to wait a while, until I had kind of gotten a feel for the language, and the community, and was really ready to take on a project of this size. He was very respectful of my wish, checked in with me on a weekly basis, not to ask about the hospital, but just to ask how I was doing, and has been a great support for me in my service. One day I approached him, and said, lets have a meeting, see what we can do. The next day, the entire board of directors for the hospital was ready; they laid out what they needed from me. I told them what I needed from them, and we got to work. My villagers are donating the water, sand, time, labor, food and lodging for contractors from my regional capital Maradi. They also came up with $180 dollars to buy some bed’s and mattress’s to put inside. Now I know that $180 dollars may not sound like a lot of money, but lets just say that 33000 of the 50000 people in my commune experienced hunger this past year, so it’s a lot. They are also helping transport materials from Maradi to my village.

We are building a two room facility, completely out of cement with metal doors and windows and a metal roof. We will put 3 beds and mattress’s in each room with mosquito nets and poles for the IV bags. This will be place of recovery, a clean, nice place that the people of my village and commune deserve to have. As my wonderful Aunt Dorthy wrote to me… “I am so excited about your project. Such a simple project - a room for patients to recover - with such far-reaching benefits.” Thanks Aunt Dor :)….You can’t begin to imagine the benefits that this will have. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope that you will consider donating to this project, I think my friend Jason said it best… “This is an opportunity to directly touch the lives of real people living in his village -- the same people who were gracious enough to take Will in, share with him with what little they have, and make him a part of their community.”

I’d like to end by saying that, this is the perfect time to implement this project. Harvest season is coming to an end, and the people of my village can afford to share food and money with those construction workers who are coming in from Maradi to help to build. It is also a down time for my villagers, who have worked the fields all rainy season, and are available to help in the construction process. That being said, please donate as soon as possible. I know you will be as generous as you can be.

You will be able to follow the construction process, online on my facebook account, with many photos for sure!!!

Thank you, and my villagers thank you. – Ousmane

Donate Now!!!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=683-190

As we grow older, I feel that many things change, and that life throws more at us, tests us more frequently. Over my 15 months in Niger, I have been tested more than I could have ever imagined, from Terrorist groups threatening to kidnap ex-patriots in Niger, to family emergencies that I could not be present for. With the help of family and friends support and guidance, I have had the ability to overcome and conquer these tests that life has thrown my way, and I am proud to say that I have met these challenges with ultimate success. It was my Peace Corps Niger family that came together to help overcome what is by far the biggest challenge we have faced as an organization since my time here.

Last week, a newly sworn in volunteer named Stephanie, passed away in her home in the Eastern Region of Zinder, after only having maybe two weeks in her ville after training. This had a very powerful affect, as you could well imagine, on all of the volunteers in Peace Corps Niger. We are a family here, there are those who were greatly affected who had never even met this fantastic girl, because there are so few of us, we must be a family for each other in order to overcome the many challenges that Peace Corps in Niger present on a regular basis.

I feel very fortunate in the fact that I did have the opportunity to spend a short 2 weeks with Stephanie. She came to Niger to volunteer in Peace Corps from working as an accountant, probably living the lifestyle of one as well, and she gave that up to work with and support and better the country of Niger and its people. She was amazingly funny, and could brighten a room with her smile. I remember helping her to buy fabric to have a shirt made, that she really wanted, she just had to have it, and I spent like thirty minutes with her bargaining with this guy just trying to rip off a couple of ex-pats in Niger. She gave all the Niger staff American names, with whom she had developed very close relationships, and who were all greatly affected by her passing on as well. Needless to say, she stood out amongst her stage(the group of people you come to Niger with) mates, whom I know have been very deeply affected by this incident and I can’t begin to imagine the pain that they are experiencing.

Stephanie, you will be truly missed, know that you touched many people with your personality and your smile while you were on this earth. I’d like to share a quote that she kept on her blog…”I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now.” Stephanie lived this quote in her life everyday. May we all hope to do the same. Allah Ya Jikinta. (May god watch over her as she passes on)

Take Care of yourselves and each other – Ousmane

What a month...

So a lot has happened over the past month, and in spite of the following blog and some of its sorrowful nature(at the end, you'll get there), it was probably one of the best month’s I have had in village.

-4:10 a.m. - WAKE UP, WAKE UP, DRINK WATER, EAT FOOD, WAKE UP, WAKE UP!!! (I awake to the loud speaker, the gentleman who calls to prayer at each mosque is waking everyone up with the help of other fellow town criers so that everyone can get up and eat food and drink water before the sun rises and the fasting for the Holy month of Ramadan begins. I role over in my bed and put my pillow over my head.)

-4:30 a.m. - COME BUY BREAKFAST!, COME BUY BREAKFAST! (These are kids yelling in the streets, their mothers awoke hours earlier to cook breakfast to sell) My alarm also goes off at this time in case I have by slim chance actually slept through these callings which is not a frequent occurrence. I wake up, I put on pants and a shirt and I walk outside of my house to buy food from one of these kids, I go back in my house, I put the food on the table, I go to the stove and I heat up some kunu(a pounded millet porridge that is SOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOD, especially with a little sugar) I bring the heated kunu out to the table with my purchased breakfast (fried pounded millet, hard to explain but delicious with sauce). This and a very large bowl of water is my breakfast. Many people do different things to start off their fasting for the day, my friend Nuhu likes to stay up all night till around 1 or 2 a.m. eating food and then he awakes right before sunrise, drinks some kunu and sleeps the day away(he’s relatively wealthy and so doesn’t have to take the morning trip to see the farm, he pays someone to do that for him). I chugged water in the morning, and at 1 p.m. in the afternoon on days that were hot, I am aware that this is cheating, but my reasons for fasting were various and this did not interfere with those reasons, judge away if you must but its not easy anywhere, and most certainly not in Niger.

-5:15 a.m. - I move my bed inside so as to not be awoken by the sun, and I lay down, my curtains are drawn and my windows covered so that I can try and get some more sleep. But I can’t sleep, not at least for a half hour, my stomach is so full and my brain wide awake from the activity. (By the end of the 30 days, my stomach could handle the breakfast much better and I could fall asleep a little faster)

6:15 a.m. - Get up to pee, go back to sleep.

6:45 a.m. - Get up to pee, go back to sleep.

7:15 a.m. - Pee, sleep.

7:45 a.m. - Pee - consider getting up for good this time…Perform the morning rituals, get dressed and what not, and head out to greet the family and friends. In Hausa, you have different greetings that you perform at different times of the day, and during Ramadan a new one for the morning, is basically “how was rising at 4:30?” - The correct response, a hard one to truly muster is “Da Godiya” I am thankful to God. I find this a very interesting part of the culture, the greetings, and don’t be surprised when I came back home and ask you how your tiredness, your family, your work, your getting out of bed, your farm (J) are within the first minute of our conversation.

8 - 10 a.m, - I gotta keep busy…sitting around thinking about hunger and thirst is not for me, I work on collecting old millet stalks that have fallen down (much like my concession wall) in the rain, splaying them to dry out in the sun (when available) and then burning millet to store for making bricks in the coming months, I am planning on starting a income generating activity with them. So I work now because its cool enough and then its shade time.

10 a.m. - Noon - I work on some Foreign Service Exam stuff (I take the test October 9, wish me luck) and I also read (This month I read The World is Flat and Guns Germs and Steel, both good books)

Noon - 2 p.m. - I sleep in the shade of a tree, its nice, no one talks, my friends who went to check on their farms are sleeping; everyone has no energy to do anything, even the women are resting (which they don’t get the opportunity to do a lot.

2 p.m. - 4 p.m. - I do some more reading and some more foreign service studying, this is the slowest part of the day!! It’s grueling, my mind and body are now fried and when I get up to prepare for breaking fast (in three hours) I feel very light headed like I may pass out. But I am excited because the time is soon approaching.

4.p.m. - 5 p.m. - I clean my dishes from the morning and the previous night, and I head to the main road with my thermos to buy ice (a special treat for me and my family with whom I will break fast). The Ice goes fast, so I’ve put an advance down for the week and they ice guy (who is not on anyone’s schedule but his own and will come when he wants) will save me a nice piece of ice. On the way to the road the only people working are tailors who are making outfits for the end of Ramadan celebration (good time to be a tailor in Niger), everyone wants new clothes for their kids and themselves if they can afford it. I get my Ice and go to visit one of my favorite Tailors. I call him Mai Kiran Sala (The prayer Caller, which is an honor in the culture if you are the one who calls the prayer five times a day), his real name is Hachimou, but that’s my best friends name so I go with Mai Kiran. I make a loop back around to my house.

5 p.m. - 6 p.m. - Gotta keep busy, I read, I play the guitar, It’s hard not to break into some of the treats I’ve bought to break fast with my family (potatoes, fried beans, juice and sugar), But I manage, I feel proud to say that I didn’t eat any food during daylight hours, which was one of my goals.

6 p.m. - 7 p.m. - I prepare to break fast, I boil sweet potatoes and mix the juice (kool-aid-esque) and sugar with water and poor it over ice so it has time to get cold. I get everything ready and head over to my family’s place, right next door, around 6:45p.m. The sun sets around 7,

You break fast slow, your initial instinct because its hot and you’re parched is to go for the ice cold juice, you can have a little, but a lot will give you stomach cramps, the trick is some nice warm kunu and a little bit of food to ease into it.

8 p.m. - I feel bad because my family doesn’t have any food to eat, its hunger season, which is kinda weird that they fast anyways cause most of them don’t have any food where I live, and a big reason why I chose to fast with them. So for about the first 10 days at 8, I got up and went to my house and cooked myself a substantial meal, while my friend and his family got a little food from friends who had it, or just drank kunu, which is not at all adequate.

8 p.m. - 10 p.m. - I listened to several programs on the BBC and took a bath and went to bed, we’ll get to the news I was hearing a little later.

So that was an average day during my last month in Village, a great bonding experience with my villagers, although hard, worth it. We’ll see if I try again next year.

So what happened after the first 10 days??? USAID happened…they came to my village with 15 huge 18 - wheelers full of rice, oil, sugar, and corn flour and provided food aid for my village and many of the surrounding villages. My family and most all of the families in my village were given enough food to last until harvest season which is just around the corner, and I am very happy to say that in my village, the harvest will be very good this year, as opposed to the drought that we experienced last year, this year has been full of rain, and I cannot begin to explain to you how happy that makes me. So for the remainder of Ramadan, I would buy rice and sauce ingredients to contribute to family meals, and we would all eat together, and I mean, there are a lot of stuff I know I took for granted living in America, food was never one that crossed my mind. It will now. The mood in my village, you could feel it, just changed, people were not only happy that they got to eat, but more so that their kids could eat, it was amazing. Thanks for paying your taxes. Sometimes America does get it right. - Sometimes America gets it wrong, we’ll get to that soon though.

So that was Ramadan, the Ede (and I probably spelled that wrong, its called Idi in hausa), is the festival to mark the end of Ramadan, and it’s a smaller version of a bigger celebration called Tabaski which I have written about before, but its just like any other holiday in America, you give gifts, you eat good food (we killed 6 chickens, DELICIOUS!!!!). I walked around in my new party (Nigerien) attire and handed out candy to kids and greeted everyone on the ending of Ramadan (BARKA DA SALA!!).

So Ramadan was awesome and led to what I would again call one of my best months in village, however, there were some things that were not so good, which brings us to the somber part of this months blog.

It’s interesting, with different seasons come different challenges it seems. It is currently rainy season in Niger which means a large increase in the number of malaria carrying mosquitoes, and the number of patients at the village hospital is ten times that what it is in off season. It is a challenge when everyday you see someone you know either going to the hospital themselves or taking someone they know to the hospital. When, “how is the morning of the sick?” becomes a standard greeting in your everyday routine. It’s even more of a challenge to watch a mother hold her sick child in her arms, fever of 103, and she can't take her to the hospital because she doesn't have the money for medication. We are taught in PST (Pre-Service Training) that it is best not to diagnose, and especially not to give medicine to villagers because it will inevitably lead to you being seen as a doctor and there is no way that you have the capacity (physical, emotional, or monetary) to deal with all of them. So you watch, you make sure they drink water, and eat food, and you hope and pray, that they will get better on their own. And once you've seen this once, you go around the village and you make sure that people are sleeping inside mosquito nets, and that they are doing it properly, because after all, prevention is the best medicine. There were several deaths in my village this past month, mainly those of the too young or too old, who can’t handle the disease on their own. I know I’ve said this before, but they way that Nigeriens handle death is, to me, beautiful, they acknowledge that it was time, they grieve, and they move on.

In addition to having to deal with the sicknesses of family and friends, I had to deal with the news from the outside world. The news is usually kind of depressing, but this month’s news was not only depressing, but also very, very embarrassing, and I’ve personally struggled with whether or not I wanted to write about this in my blog, for the same reason a lot of people didn’t want to talk about it, because it really doesn’t deserve the attention that it has gotten. I am speaking of course of the preacher in Florida who threatened to burn copies of the Koran, and also of the debate over the mosque near the site of the twin towers. I can say that when I first heard of these stories I practiced the phrases, “some Americans are kind of not intelligent,” and “I’m really sorry for this, it shouldn’t happen and I hope it doesn’t” in Hausa so I could explain to my friends what was going on in America and why because they we’re hearing the same news I was hearing. EMBARRASSING!!!!!! I’m not going to dedicate a lot of time to this, but he was wrong, and the fact that people care where a mosque is being built in New York (one of the most diverse places on the planet!!!!!!!) is beyond me? That just seems like a really big waste of time and effort. BUILD IT SIR, BUILD IT and use it to teach Americans about the real Islam, and in time, I hope we can look back at this, as a road hump in our history, and not something that propels us in the wrong direction as a country. I would like to say how relieved I was when the gentleman in Florida said he wasn’t going to burn the Koran. I can’t imagine how relieved other foreigners in countries where radical Islam is active. And the fact that he didn’t do it, gives me some hope that this too, will pass.

Well that’s it for this month, it was a long one I know, I hope not too long. I’m off to Niamey, the capital, for a week to celebrate the swearing in of about 30 new volunteers who just completed their pre-service training, still can’t believe that was me this time last year.

Thanks!! Love ya!!

- Ousmane

I’ve spent the last five months, very good months, traveling all around Niger doing all sorts of interesting things, I just spent the last three weeks working with 33 new volunteers. This last three weeks gave me some great rejuvenation, the year mark is a hard mark for volunteers (Man I can’t believe it’s been a year), In the beginning I spent so much time integrating into my village that it was like a full time job, learning the language, meeting new people, learning how to live in Niger. And now life has kind of normaled out a little bit, a bit mundane to be honest, I speak Hausa with relative fluency, I know the people I want to talk to and interact with, I am integrated. This combined with the fact that it is rainy season and most of our projects get put on hold because everyone is concerned with farming, this happens to be a boring time in the Life of a PCV in Niger. I am hopeful that in the next few months that It will pick up again, and I can deal with my little issues, as long as it continues to rain and my villagers have adequate food supplies come next hunger season. Being able to transfer all of the knowledge that I have learned to the new volunteers has been really good because, I feel as though I have actually gained a lot of skills by being here, and that I really have grown in many ways in the last year. The 33 new volunteers are an amazing group of people, I think that the recession in America caused a bunch of qualified people to sign up for Peace Corps, because this group has their sh*t together. I really enjoyed my time working with them and can’t wait for them to be out working in the field.

I am working on a proposal for a hospital building, running into a couple of road bumps which may prohibit it from happening but hopefully all will work out and it will be online, looking for donations, within the next couple of months. This hospital building will sleep up to 6 patients who currently have to sleep outside when they are sick. In the mean time I am burning more millet stalk, saving up charcoal powder to form it into briquettes when rainy season is over. This next year is going to be full of analysis of the project, making sure that is it worthwhile, and profitable, I will also be testing it to see what kind of things I can cook with it. Then I will spend some time training other volunteers and villagers from within my community to make charcoal in their own villagers.

I’ve been future thinking a lot lately, I don’t know why, maybe it’s the boredom, maybe it’s that I only have a year left in Niger (they say the second year flies by faster than the first), and I have no idea what I am going to do after I’m done here. I think that’s okay, and I’m open to all sorts of suggestions. I’m actually taking the Foreign Service Officer Exam in October (gonna spend the next month in ville studying for that). Maybe grad school? Maybe Peace Corps work? I guess it comes little by little, and you just gotta let it happen. I’m excited about the FSOE, and about the next year in Niger, hopefully it’ll be a good one J

So, lastly I’ll talk about Ramadan. Niger is a 98% Muslim country, and all of my friends are fasting for the holy month of Ramadan. Its an interesting time in Niger, and I think I am going to fast when I go back to Ville in a couple of days. When they fast, at 430ish to a guy banging a pot, and singing to wake every one up, they drink and eat and then have their morning prayer. Then its nap time, they wake back up around 7 and head to the fields to check on their crop, then for the men, it’s basically nap time for the rest of the day, before the second to last prayer they begin to prepare their food and drink to break fast with, everyone has their own breaking fast rituals (what they like to drink and eat and how they like to drink and eat that). A lot of money is saved up and spent on good food, ice, biscuit crakers, and other treats to break fast with, which means good dinners at friends’ houses for the next few months. So I am going to give it a shot, and I’ll let you know how it works out next month when I come back in from Ville.

Take Care - Ousmane

So...here we go...Ghana..Beach...Beer....Awesome!!! So my friend Brian (A fellow volunteer who was actually my roommate in Philly for the two days before coming to Niger, we've been friends since we bonded over a beer and philly cheese steak and the fact that we were both like, what the hell are we doing?!!!) we went on a 16 day (well 15 cause we ran out outta money, which gives you a pretty good idea of how much fun we had) vacation from Niamey, through Beinin, Togo, Ghana and Burkina Faso. PC Niger volunteers call this the loop, cause you can buy a visa that allows you one enterance into each of these countries. We had a lot of fun, we traveled alot, every day in fact for the first like 6 days. We got in a bus at 5 am in Niamey and drove 18 hours through Benin, into Lome, the capital of Togo...we arrived in Lome in the middle of the night, found a GHETTTTTO!! Hotel and crashed after a fan millk(basically like chocolate ice cream in a bag, which they sell out of carts in all the countries we went to, they cost about 35 cents a piece, i think Brian and I ate about $40 dollars worth of them, so goddam DELICIOUS :-)!!!! anywho...we woke up and got our ghanain visas(not included in the loop visa) then we set off to find the Peace Corps Office, we found some really nice volunteers, who we ended up having some beers and some dinner with (good night!!!). We stayed the next night at a volunteers home, she lives at the base of this mountain...amazing!!!, me and brian got up the next morning and took a taxi to a bigger city nearby where we exchanged our Niger money into Ghanaian money, then we went to get a car to cross the border into Ghana. The taxi driver, the money exchanger, and the guys who got us a car to cross the border were all from Niger, and spoke the local languages that me and brian speak, and were kinda blown away at the two americans speaking Zarma and Hausa. We went into Ghana that afternoon, chilled in Ho, next to lake volta, and then went to Accra, the capital of Ghana. Up untill this point we had been taken aback by the mountains, the green, the water, but other than that, where we had gone, was most certainly more developed than Niger, but not significantly, Accra, blew our minds, Accra has skyscrapers, a huge ass mall, that would rival malls in America(Brian and I had draft beers and called our mom's from this bar for mothers day, what good son's we are!!) We were in Accra on a Sunday, and the south is predominately christian, therefore, much of Accra was shut down, so we didnt get to a PC Niger favorite Irish bar or Sushi restaurant, but no big deal...When we woke up monday, it was like the city came to life, people everywhere, commuting to work and what not, and it was nuts, It had been 9 months since I had seen that many people, cars, hustle and bustle, and it was honestly overwhelming....and it was really weird, being from Dallas, a huge city, I figured i'd be totally fine. But living in a village of 3000 people for nine months has apparently taken an effect. anywho...Brian and I got outta there real fast...took a bus to Cape Coast. Cape Coast is...well... a coastel town that was, during slavery, a port for shiping slaves. It is this amaizing post colonial town with beautiful old building and rich history. Me and Brian both are in agreement that the place we stayed in Cape Coast was by far our favorite, mainly because it had a roof top bar with a great view of the city. We tthe day there touring an old slave fort, learning about the history, really moving and informative, something I obviously missed in History class. The next morning we went to a national park and walked a famous canaopy walk, (pictures will come, some time)....then we headed off to our real destination, a Beach resort(a cheap but cool, PC volunteer favorite) called the Green Turtle outside of Takrodi. we spend about 4 or 5 days here, chilling on the beach, swimming, playing volleyball, drinking, EATING, reading, sleeping, really the most relaxing part of our trip. Then we were basically just traveling home, we went north to Kumasi, where the biggest market in West Africa is located, we spent the night at a PC hostel and then went to the market the next day where we were amazed by the market, it was so huge, and a really cool part of it, is that there is a huge Hausa population there, so i got to get a quick refresher before going back to Niger. We went through Burkina Faso, stayed for two days at the PC Hostel there, met some cool volunteers, and ate some pizza delieverd to the hostel (AMAZING!!) Then we made our way back to Niger, I think the last four days, we rode busses for 38 hours or something....So this is what I did...how I felt though...i think is different...It felt nice to eat some good food, drink some better beers(I think we tried every kind available in each country) and to relax a little. But I did not enjoy being a guest in a place of the world where I have currently resided for almost a full year. Having lived in Niger for 9 months before we went on vacation, we knew the rules, the languages, how life works here in Niger, from prices of food to taxi prices, and just knowing the local language gets you so much respect (for example, when we got back from vacation, all the taxi drivers who were outside the bus station knew that our bus came from burkina faso, and probably figured that i was a visitor to Niger, a driver greeted me in French, I responded in French where I needed to go, he quoted me a price in french (the wrong price, 1000 cfa (2 dollars), and I reponded in Hausa with the correct price (i'll give you 2oo cfa my friend), and he responded in Hausa, okay lets go). So we kind of got tired of being treated like visitors, even though thats what we were. And, please no one take any offence to this whatsoever, but there are no other people in the world like Nigeriens when it comes to honesty, niceness, hospitality, and what not, and the West Africans we met on our journey, with exeption of course, were not as nice as Nigeriens, and by the end of the two weeks, we both wanted to be home in Niger again.

So I came back to my village for a couple of weeks before leaving again (we'll get to why)...and I kind of got back into the swing of things, and worked on my house a little bit, I added two new doors to my house and re-cemented one of my rooms' floor because I was unable to properly sweep it before, and now my house is breezy and cool, and now I can actually nap in my house which is nice. Rainy season is coming, so charcoal is gonna kind of take a back seat to the farming that is, right now, far more important, the rains have started, and are coming every few days, I plan on getting back to village and heading to the farms with my friends to get a better idea of what it is that they do out there all morning. Its really interesting how life changes depending on the season here in Niger, i mean in America, whether its spring, summer, fall, or winter, you're still going to the gym, to the office, to the grocery store on saturdays and what not. During rainy season, women get up super early to pound millet to take to cook lunch in the fields, and everyone heads to the farm untill it gets to hot to work...I'll blog more about farming when I find out more, but i'll end by saying that if farming doesn't get better this season, that next year the hunger is going to be really bad...currently, my friends have a rotation system going on where everyone goes to someone's house for dinner, so that way they all get a little something to eat.

So when I left my ville I headed straight for Zinder where we held a conference for every PC Niger Volunteer...Zinder is currently the eastern most region (however Diffa will be opening up soon, another story)...I worked with 4 fellow volunteers to help throw this conference together, I have to say that my two years working at the University Center in college was invauable when it came to getting this thing off the ground and running smoothly, I mean I felt home kind of, chairs, tables, lcd projectors, screens, tents, laptops,(all this a little less sophisticated than what I had at my disposale at UTA :)..) But it went so freaking amazing. I mean, putting together something like this in Niger is not easy, there are huge concerns on the part of Bureau concerning travel and what not, and the logistics of having 56 volunteers in the same place, feeding, bathing, not to mention teaching them something, and it went better than i think any of the planning team could have possibly imagined. We had volunteers present on projects they had completed in their villages, with some great information exchange. Volunteers reviews were amazing, it was something many of them had been looking for from PC Niger for a very long time, and I am very, very proud that I got to be a part of the team putting it together, and cant wait to do it again next year!!!!!

So whats next, well, this summer will be full of fun and alot of travel, in 2 weeks I get to go prepare for my sister stage to come to Niger, the new volunteers arrive July 8, 2010, a day before we celebrate our 1st year in country. As a Volunteer Assistant Trainer, I will train with the training staff for a week, welcome the new volunteers off the plane, then head back to my village. We have a great team of VAT's this year for training, and to tell you the truth I've wanted to be a VAT since my first few days of training in Niger. I will be a vat during the 3rd and 4th week of training, which means I will be traveling back to village, then turning around two weeks later to go right back to the capital to help with training, the new volunteers will swear in at the end of september (they have extended the training 2 weeks) and I will be allowed to go back into Niamey for their swear in, which is a really cool week, full of fun events!!! Another thing I will be doing this summer is fasting for Ramadan with my friends. I'll probably have a lot to say about this later, probably the fact that I regret doing it, but we'll see. And I will be finishing my proposal for my hopital buildings as well as working on some cheap but effecient handwashing stations...and working out a training for my charcoal project for some neighboring villages next year...all of which I will hopefully, and timely blog about as they occur... Keep reading...i'll try to keep writing...thanks - Ousmane

I am Texas born and bread, been living there all my life, spent several a summer at camps for months at a time with no air conditioning what so ever....seen 102 degrees in the shade before...and i would give anything to feel that again :-)...NIGER IS HOT!!! My dad called me the other day to complain that his AC broke in his car, and i pretty much yelled at him and told him to go see how hot it was in Niger that day, 113 degrees F!!!! HAHA! So what do you when its that hot??? We'll aside from vast amounts of sweating, You sit for hours on end...from about 10 am - 5 pm, during the hottest part of the day, from about 1-4, you make sure that the smallest amount of your body is tocuhing something, you lie...spread out on a mat in some shade, with the minimal amount of clothes on and you wait....you fall in and out of sleep, you scream, you kill mass quantities of flies, and you wait some more....

Now considering this, i've actually managed to do alot of work lately, and am about to venture out on my first vacation. Since I last wrote, I have done alot of work with my charcoal, testing different binders, and working on making it more profitable, and a better product as a whole. I have also begun corespondence with a team from M.I.T., from whom i got the idea in the first place, to see if they would be interested in maybe helping me out a little. My neighbore Lachland, a 4th year volunteer and amazing artist has a goal of putting Africa and Niger maps in all the Primary schools in my commune (about 38 spread out within a 50 kilometer radius). So we have started in this venture, and hope to complete the goal over this coming rainy season. My villagers are in the process of planting 30 trees that I grew from seed in my home, and the garden has been utterly destroyed by the heat of the sun, but now that I know how it all works here, I am planning a larger garden for next year!

VACATION!! Me and my friend Brian are going thru Burkina Faso to Ghana for a couple weeks of Beaches and Beers. This is the perfect time to get away, because its hot, and villagers dont do much of anythng during this season...hopefully when we get back the rains will come and I may learn a little bit about Nigerien Farming.

I am ready for vacation...but I think you all should know how freaking happy I am here...I love this place, these people, my life here. I never in a million years would have considered ever coming to Niger, hell i didnt even know where or what Niger was when I got invited to be a Peace Corps volunteer. But i most certainly wouldn't trade it for anything.

One last note...there is an Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, who severved here 5 years ago, who has come back to do some work for his masters, and its been really cool to sit and chat with him about how life has changed here since he was here, for instance, there were no cell phones when he served here, and now they are everywhere...and he still speaks the local language he learned when he served here...I hope i keep my Hausa!!!

Take Care...I'll let you know how vacation goes - Ousmane

Hi Friends, Sorry its been a while, but life has actually been really busy lately, per usual this will be a very unorganized blog post full of random thoughts and experiences ive had over the past couple months. For starters, i feel very much like a real Peace Corps volunteer now after completeing in service training. In a few short days I will have been here 9 months, and to me that is utterly astonishing, considering how slowly some of the days pass, the months fly by so damn fast. In a few short 3 months, we will be welcoming the new group of Education and Community Development volunteers to Niger, and saying goodbye to the people who welcomed us when we landed, which is so weird, i can vividly remember getting off the plane and meeting these people who had just completed their first year, and who will be soon leaving, i guess time flies when you're having "fun". So I guess i feel more like a real volunteer because I actually have work to do now. I have started working on several projects, and juggling just living in Niger, with now working in Niger has had its ups and downs. Integration is such a big part of the first few months in ville, and you would be suprised how much drinking tea and speaking Hausa all day with frineds in ville can really take up alot of time, along with taking alot out of you, to the point that its totally feasable for me to go to bed at 830 or 9 and sleep till 7...coupling this with work has been hard, but very good and rewarding as well. I have been working on a charcoal project, where I am burning millet(local grain) stalks and carbonizing them and making briquettes, which will/should end up becoming a small business enterprise in villages all over the country (I have more information and pictures on my facebook)...In addition I have also just submitted a proposal for a latrine for the primary school which serves 500 children and is without a proper restroom or water resource to wash their hands...the last thing i am working on is prepping a small business club that I want to start after the next rainy season ends, so farmers can have time to participate, I am currently working on translating teaching materials from english to Hausa. I have also done a few smaller projects like painting large maps of africa in the primary school which has no real resources for their students. Now me being extremely artistically challenged, I recruited the help of my closest neighbor Lachland, who is a fantastic artist, and they turned out awesome. So thats an update on my current life workings in Niger, now lets get to the heart of the reason for the title.

Hot season is a coming, now we have been "fortunate" for the past couple of weeks because huge wind storms have kicked up so much dust and sand that it has blocked out the sun, and kept it a little cooler. Now the reason I put the word fortunate in quotes is because, as a result of the sand and dust everyone is facing upper respitory illnesses, my throat and mouth are consistently, and i mean consistently dry. but everyone says that its coming and to tell you the truth i am not at all looking forward to it. I asked my best friend in my village what people do in the hot season in Niger, and his response was, look for a place with shade, sweep place with shade, sit in swept, shaded place. So that it'll be my days for the next couple of months, with a 2 or 3 week vacation thrown somewhere in the middle, hopefully i'll get out during the hottest part :-)...but we'll see.

I would have to say that before I came here, i had this preconcieved image that popped into my head when the word poverty was spoken, someone said poverty, and i guess i thought sadness, bad life, depressing. And i have to say that, living in the most impoverished country on earth, its nothing like what I imagined, I would be hard pressed to find much depressing and bad life about Niger. The people, for the most part are some of the happiest and kindest and sweetest people i've ever met, and i would say that the average Nigerien is alot happier with their lives as a whole than the average america. Impoverished just means different, they dont for the most part have electricity, they use the sun and the moon, and the occasional flash light when the moons not bright enough. They dont have air conditioning or fans, they use the wind and water, the way they utilize the wind in their everyday lives is amazing. I definitly as an american took for granted many of the luxuries, not neccesities, that I was given access to. Life here is quaint, and slow, and beautiful and I dont ever feel without here, I know that when I eventually come back home, there will be things i totally forgot about, that i trully dont miss. Now this being said, life here is no picinic when the rain doesnt come. Last farming season (basically when we got off the plane) there was very sparse and in adequate rains that have led to the nearly 7.5 million people who will go hungry in Niger this hunger season which is fast approaching. This year is said to be the worst since 2006. However, the government, and Aid organizations are planning in advance this year and it is said that they will be able to at least lessen the effect. But my friends here have already started skipping meals, and looking for alternative food sources like leaves, and roots that will supplement their diets. It is a very eye-opening experience, and for someone who has been taught to give to others his entire life by his amazing parents, who lead by example, it is extremely difficult to sit back and watch, when my stipend is enough to feed my entire village for a week or even more. But we are discouraged heavily against doing that for many important and obvious reasons. I have found ways to help ease my longing to help, by begining to eat more with my best friend Hashemu and his family, and I can chip in for money for sauce materials, and he supplies grain that he succesfully harvested last season, and the small amount of money i pay can provide sauce for the 14 people who live in his concession, and that makes me feel good, and its on the down low between me and him, he saves face and provides for his family, i get a meal, and good conversation, and good feeling's, for about the price of a quarter a day.

Take Care of Yourselves - Ousmane

Hey Everyone!! So...For the past three weeks I have been participating in In Service Training, the second of three trainings over the course of my two years here in Niger and I have learned alot more about doing actual work stuff with my service along the lines of Proposal Writing for funding and about other opportunities available to me as a volunteer. I also had quite a bit of fun, catching up with the people I started with here in Niger. Of the 32 of us who came, there are 22 who remain, and alothough those who left Niger were deeply missed, it was great to catch up with all of those who stayed. To share funny/scary/weird/amazing/life changing stories with them. Some of the training sessions that interested me the most and that I got the most out of were 1) A fellow volunteer Nick who was evacuated from Guinea due to the unstable situation of the country where he was a Small Business Volunteer gave a session on starting groups geared toward teaching people about Small Business Practices like Accounting and Cost/Benefit Analysis and what not while having group members contribute to a fund which will then, after several months loans can be given out through group members choosing which business plans to approve, then the loan can be paid back with interest and the group can make money as a whole. 2) The other thing that really interested me was Scouting in Niger, The executive at the National Level came to give a presentation about what Scouts is in Niger. And I am really looking forward to seeing how much interest my community will have in it the program. As most of you know scouts was a great part of my life and probably a big reason as to why I am here in Niger with the Peace Corps. It was a great three weeks, for many reasons, but I am ready to get back to Village, see my friends and my garden, and start working on some projects in my community. Thanks to all of you who wrote/called/facebooked/emailed me for my bday!! I had alot of fun, some of my great friends here bought me some yogort in bag (one of my favorite things here) and suprised me at breakfast, and I got a cake, all and all it was a great day!!! I did have a bit of a holy shit I am 25 moment, what am I doing with my life kind a thing??? And I realized that I am exactly where I want and need to be at this moment in my life, once again...I thank you all for your wonderful support and the time you take to read these posts. I'd like to end by thanking my Godmother Judy Hembree, She has invested a great deal of her time and efforts through volunteerism and helping those less fortunate than herself. She has made several trips to Haiti to volunteer in a hospital there, and as a result of the recent catastrophe is currently making plans to get down there as soon as possible. She is one of my biggest supporters, and this may be unknownst to her, but one of my biggest inspirations to continue my life filled with volunteerism. Thanks for all that you do Aunt Judy. Love You - Ousmane

The crowds gathered to see the wrestling matches in my village. Young wrestlers came from the nearby villages.

Market day in the Village is every Thursday. The Market is huge with a wide variety of food and material items. People come from neighboring villages to sell and buy.

Will and his friend built a garden on his concession(property). The project started in September. He and his neighbors are enjoying the fruits of their labors currently.

I am on my way to spend a couple of nights in a friends village, decided to stop through and just write for a minute or two while I had the chance.

I love my life here, but If I had to say my favorite part of everyday, its the first two hours of every morning, I get out of bed, its winter now and im getting great use of my sleeping bag (thanks Aunt Judy), I get dressed, walk out of my concession, and head to a local tiny store, I have a cup of coffee with sweet milk and a fried bean breakfast treat that you eat with a locally made spice. I shoot the shit with some of the natives, joke around, buy everyone a little breakfast sometimes as is customary in Nigerien lifestyle, I am returned the favor many times over. After about an hour i walk down next to the Maigari's(local tribal leader) house to greet and sit with him and his brother who is a Malam(which is a leader in the mosque) and sit with some of the higher level(older) villagers and discuss local happenings, wedding, naming ceremonies of the day, then I carry water to my house with my best friend and we water my vegetable garden and tree farm. It is a simple life here, a great life.

Untill Next Time

- Ousmane

Books of the Week - African Friends and Money Matters, Gives great perspective on how we view money differently, and made me understand more about the Nigerien Lifestyle, should be a requirement before you serve in Africa, or come here to travel for that matter, and Water For Elephants, just a great fun easy read..loved it!

I would like to preface this blog by saying that, as you all know I am not that good of a writer and that so much happens here it is kind of hard to put it all in words, This blog is a combination of current feelings and input as well as past journal entries over a months time..thanks for taking the time to read it. Love you all!

When People told me that this was going to be one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do, or will ever do for that matter, I had some trouble believing them, and up until now, this experience has come so naturally and I’ve enjoyed it so much, that it didn’t seem very hard at all. Don’t get me wrong, there have been definitly days, usually accompanied by sickness, where I would have given anything to be home in America. Once physically well however, those feelings quickly reverse and I begin loving it once again. In the past month, as a result of a security issue in the Northern region of Niger, 4 of my best friends from my team in Maradi, including my best friend Anna, decided that it would be better for themselves and their families, if they returned home to America. I support each of their decisions as them all, 4 woman, lived in bigger villages and faced what I would describe as a higher safety risk than me, being a man who lives in a rural village where I feel no security threat whatsoever. I feel safe here, very safe, but loosing these four individuals kind of left me with a whole in my heart, I have known and bonded with them in this very un-normal situation that is Niger, very, very fast over the past 6 months. (Having initially journaled about this when it was happening to me, I would just like to say now, that two weeks has gone by since they left, and life in my village is getting back to normal, I have re-connected with other friends from my training group who have been really, really supportive and great, however I will always miss Anna, Cariad, Katie, and Liz!!!) So now out of 10 people on my team from my training group, we are now 4, we lost two others before the security incident. From about 130 Nigerien volunteers we are now 77 in country. Life here is not easy, the days are long, sometimes the minutes pass by so slowly I feel like I’m going insane, my mind is therefore free to wander, so when they left I started thinking about all the things here that I really don’t like and it started to take its toll on my brain. I struggled for a while with my decision to stay or go, and I started journaling about my decision. What it came down to was that this is my service, and I really don’t know how them leaving will effect my service, I spend about 26 days every month in my ville, and 4 days with these people (usually with a weekend trip in between to see a fellow volunteer in their village). So really the majority of my time is with my villagers, which are who, I came here to be with. If I become miserable, which I don’t see happening, I can always choose to come home, As I said before life here is not easy, some days I find myself counting down the days until I get to leave this place, and other days I think about projects that I would love to start that would take a lifetime of commitment to carry out and see to the end and I think that I could do that, that I could live my life out in Niger forever. Part of my current frustrations come from a lack of work to do, I have now spent nearly three months in my village, and am awaiting our second training which has now been pushed back until the end of January. I have small projects, like a tree farm, and garden that I am working on with some of my best friends in my village, but the bigger projects the ones I am going to look to all of you to fund :-), will come after this second training. I will learn, with a counterpart from my village who’s name is Idrissa, how to go about writing proposals, looking for money, and getting the community involved in helping with these projects. However frustrated I am though, these three months have been so incredibly invaluable. I learn something new every day, whether it’s a new word in Hausa, a new phrase, a new project idea, I learn something new about life in Niger. Some of the biggest things I’ve had to learn is that this place works nothing like America, for instance I am working on a charcoal project which I needed a 55 gallon drum for, of which there are plenty in Niger that they use to carry water with, but I just couldn’t get my hands on one for a month, In America I would of gotten in my car, driven to home depot and picked one up, here I had to wait to stumble in to a random conversation with a guy on the street who knew some 55gallon drum guy. On the same lines, we have a saying, if you see it, and you think you want it, buy it. This is because it may not be there again the next time you want it. I also had a list of project ideas that I wanted to do in my village, and over the last three months, most of those ideas have been erased from the list, mainly because stuff that I saw as a problem in Niger, isn’t a problem to Nigeriens, and therefore, I started listening and trying to address what they see as issues in their community and take my interests and combine the two to come up with a new list of projects that I want see through. So now that I have learned to walk, I’m very excited to get to run with my ideas at our next training. So I take it a day at a time here, slowly, cause life here is slow and uneventful most of the time. But the times that its not, the times where you really connect with your friend over tea, you watch as your neighbor sacrifices 6 goats on a religious holiday, then you walk around the next morning from house to house eating meat(from which I surprisingly didn’t get sick), it’s the random morning you wake up and are taken to an open field where traditional wrestling and your village comes to a standstill for the event, it’s the ideas that your friend has to better your community and how much he enjoys someone listening and responding to those ideas. It will be a compilation of these brief moments that I will look back on and say…it was hard, but it was worth it. Thanks Again - Ousmane

Good Morning

The daily life in Niger over November caused the Peace Corp to gather all of the volunteers in their designated hostels. Twenty six folks spent 10 days together waiting for the government to decide the future role of the PC in Niger. Will assumed his role as "event manager" and organized food and fun for all. His funniest story was of a "Survivor" game complete with mud pit. For Thanksgiving they paid some locals to shoot 3 turkeys. Will said they were the smallest turkeys he had every seen, but roasted with a glaze sauce the crew thought they were delicious. The crew pooled their boxes from home and from the local grocery and seemed to come up with almost all of the traditional trimmings.

The officials of the Peace Corp, after much deliberation , said the volunteers may return to their villages. At this point, the volunteers also had the option of returning home. Many of the volunteers decided to return home and that loss of friends and support was a terrible blow for Will. We think he could rationalize why they left, but he will miss them and his current decision is to stay. He has taken steps to research the current climate in Niger, spoken with all of the right folks to get the data and his plan is a day at a time. He has good goals for his role in the village and his role with the PC in Niger and would like to be able to see them through.

So please do not stop sending cards, letters, calling. Let us know if you need the Stanacard number. If you are in Dallas over the holidays, come visit...

The Parents

1. Members from the group that drink tea together every afternoon2. One of Will's soccer team members3. A good friend...and his most helpful "pet".

1. Shower2. Sleeping Quarters with shade structure3. Wall of Support

Will with 2 members of the Peace Corp Team at the Swearing In Ceremony. (Picture sent by other Peace Corp Parent).

The Parents

This has been an experience like I never could have imagined, I tried not to give myself ideas about what it would be like before I came here, so as not to disappoint myself whenever I was to see what I was given. I have found that even the small things I thought about don’t even live up to what it is actually like here. I am starting writing this particular post 18 days after living in my village. I have set up somewhat of a routine in my day to day life, but everyday seems to end up different than the last. I do some essential things each day, teeth brushing, twice daily…my mom would be proud to finally hear that, it took coming to Africa to make that a habit…I sweep out my house each morning, if I don’t than the dust and sand gets to be unbearable. I read a couple of thought for the Day books that I have, and write something, anything in chalk, on my mud brick walls, to which I have also tacked up pictures and letters from friends and family, always reminding me of the support I have from you all back home. I take some vitamin supplements as lack of dietary nutrition is very prevalent here in Niger. I run or take bush walks three or four times a week and the other days I do some exercises in my hut, which is also like a sauna so that’s working out nicely. There is a shago(store), and by store I mean a guy with a table…who sells coffee with milk in the morning for about the equivalent of 15 cents, its delicious, and I start my mornings off with him, his name is Mamman, and we talk about anything from religion, to why we only have one wife in America, my favorite answer is, more wives…more problems…anywho…I spend the mornings wondering around…having different talks with different people, I eat some street food, which is really unexplainable so I wont try..I play soccer with the kids around my house from 11-12…I eat lunch, nap, read, and listen to music in my hammock from 12-2 when its ridiculously hot…at 2 I come out of my house to have tea with my Fada (mens group) which has included such topics of discussion thus far as how to get from here to America, the concept that you fly over water is really unimaginable to them, and I try my best to explain…something really cool about Nigeriens is that they are totally at peace with just sitting in silence, which is something we don’t ever do in America and I am learning to become more comfortable in it here. So we talk, I read, we drink tea for a couple of hours, I run or practice my guitar before Dinner, which I was cooking myself until my gas ran out, then it was back to street food….I shower each night as kind of a cool down…although its getting to be cold season, so sometimes I get more than I bargained for…oh and by shower I mean I use a cup to take water out of a bucket and pour it on myself. Although I bucket bath everyday…I am never clean here…the dirt kind of embeds into your skin, sometimes I’ll start rubbing my skin and the dirt will peel off of me. I gave up on the thought of ever being truly clean out in the bush, I didn’t shave for the month and my beard came in as patchy as ever. When I got into the city yesterday I took a shower and had a shave, its an amazing feeling. So I live in a village of about 3000-3500 hundred people in East Niger, Every one of them know my name, there are two schools, a Koranic school, a small hospital(a stretch for the word hospital), and a mayor’s office, all of these buildings are wired with lights and fans but there is no electricity to power them, oh Africa. Thursday is market day where people come from the bush to my village, Thursdays are fun cause usually a neighboring volunteer comes in and we get to drink cold drinks brought down from a neighboring village that has electricity, which means ice, woohoo. The people in my village are nice, for the most part, there are exceptions, those who talk at you instead of to you and I just stay clear of them as I would in America, but I know that there are some that I will remember forever after this is done. There is a lot of kokari(effort) in my village, a lot of people who are looking to better their community, and whom I look forward to working with in the future. The days pass slowly, but the months have gone by so quickly. I have days where I am on the edge of giving up and going home, the boredom, lack of mental stimulation gets to me a lot. Then there are the days where I have experiences that make me think I could stay forever. My family has kept in great contact, whether its more for their benefit or mine, I am not quite sure but I know that I love that they do, that they want to share in this with me is so incredibly awesome and I want them to know that I love them very much, and thanks again. Thanks also to those of my friends who have called to…and those who haven’t, I love you too anyways. When I lay down to sleep on my cot, underneath my mosquito net, I have this amazing feeling wash over me as I stare out into this GIGANTIC sky full of stars that is most amazing…The sky Is worth two years.

So Now what???: so I am now free to move within the Maradi Region of East Niger, visit other volunteers, see what projects are being worked on and after two months the people I arrived here with will have a second training where we will learn about how to apply for money for projects that we want to do in our perspective villages...I will probably be in and out of this city about every month or so, maybe more depening on whats going on, we are celelbrating thanksgiving on the 21st of november so that we can all be in our villages for a local celebration called Tabaski, which is just like a huge BBQ...so i will post a new blog around then...Then we have a new group of volunteers who landed here on the twentieth of october who will do their Live in on the fourth of December, and on the third we will say goodbye to some really cool volunteers who are ending thier time here in Niger, one of whom is going to come to dallas, and I expect you all to take her out and show her a good time...more info soon to come on that...Then I will be back in for christmas and New years to do it up right in Niger. So thats kind of when you can expect some more updadtes...I am usually in a village with phone reception on sundays and really enjoy hearing from you guys. Thanks so much for all the interest and support.

So some specific things that have crossed my mind over the past thirty days….

My dear friends Alexa and Rebekah wrote a book about their travels through spain go here.. http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=63147 ..and buy it.

Congrats Ivy and Rebecca on your soon to be new addition to your family...Cant wait to come back to the new one year old!!! Congrats Grandma Aunt Ann :)

I have read a lot of books over this past month

Drish: Perks of being a wallflower..awesome..I’m planning on reading it twice more.

Ater: Confederacy of Dunces …hilarious..South Paw references galore

Anyone: The Ugly American..just read it

Dominic..you called from kazachstan…WTF??? And Happy Birthday

Jamal…congrats again on your house and starting your job..thats awesome..decorate my room so I have a place to stay when I come home.

LOVE YOU GUYS!!

Sincerly,

Ousmane

Will's first 30 days on the post are completed this weekend. This gives him flexibility to travel to more metropolitan areas. His plan is to be on line by Friday of this week and to post his own thoughts to his own blog. Stay tuned. Meanwhile he is remarkably integrated into his community. Reports his trees are growing but he has had to drape the mosquito netting over the trees to keep the lizards from devouring the leaves. This is the season to try to plant a garden so he has picked up the droppings from the animals on his plantation and is working the soil in an attempt to produce some sort of a crop. He has just finished reading "The Ugly American" and is deep in thought trying to figure something that could improve the standard of living for his community. He has his Dad reading about how to make charcoal from refuse in his village. Evidently most folks cook using charcoal and if his village people could produce the charcoal they could sell it and not have to depend on the rain ( that seldom comes ) for their lively hood. Because his role is to be neutral he does not have much to say about the election except that everyone came to his city to vote and then one man stood outside with the total vote written on a piece of paper for someone to come by and pick up.

Meanwhile Will reports letters (94 cents/letter or card ) and calls from the States keep him in balance....he thanks you and we thank you very much.

The Parents

Will shares the news from Niger. It is election time across Niger. His role is to encourage his village people to get out and vote, but his political stance is neutral. His village will elect a new mayor, Niger may elect a new president. There is unrest in many of the large cities. We must hope for a peaceful election process.

It is winter in Niger and Will reports the noon time heat is not nearly as oppressive and that the evenings and early mornings are glorious. Evidently the night skies in Niger are outstanding. He reports he has learned to cook using the coleman type burner this past week, but then his burner broke and he will not be able to replace it until the end of the month when he will journey to Maradi. Meanwhile he dines on the "meat on the street".

His accomplishments thus far include: running a hand washing education program for the children where after they demonstrated correct hand washing each child got soap and candy; establishing the jogging track for himself and the neighborhood children who along with their parents and grandparents are amazed to see a big white guy run; and being successful in having the children ask politely if it is time for a soccer game, using the 3 balls that Will has in his house.

His 30 days in the village ends at the end of the month and he promises he will journey to the city and post a big blog of his own. Meanwhile he wraps his arms around all of you and appreciates so very much your good wishes and prayers for the people of Niger, which includes him.

The Parents

Good Evening

Will got up this morning and walked to the road, waited 3 hours for the bush taxi and rode to Mayhai(our spelling is not right) where he could share the day with his friend Anna and have good phone reception. He sounds very well, but very aware that the days ahead of him hold totally new adventures. This is what he shared.

He is living on a big rectangle of land. On one side of the rectangle lives the landowner, the middle part is for the goats and he lives on the other third. He reports his house is in direct sun and he goes back and forth about windows or simply adding another door. His project this week was to construct a shade structure. He reports he enlisted two of the villagers to help him. The structure is of cement bags, poles and cloth. Evidently the villagers are proud of the addition to the house, Will reports it still needs some adjustments. His big purchase this week is a "jar or pot" that holds his water and keeps it cool for the day. He reports this is a huge improvement from the warm water that he imagined. He reports his day runs like this. He wakes up and visits the "man on the street" for a bean or yogurt breakfast and then from 9-12 he plans on being with the mayor of the village and will take many of his assignments from him. Then from 12:00 until 2:00 everyone has lunch and naps. Then at 4:00 he reports all of the men of the village gather to chat it up, discussing the issues of the day. Dinner follows and he reports he has started jogging and then at 8:30 he freaks a bit as there is not a whole lot more to do other than to go to bed. Stupid us we thought about reading or writing or teaching games to the villagers but the bugs come out with the lights, so the evenings are pretty quiet for the big guy. His mission for the next 3 months at least is to simply integrate himself into the village and to determine the needs of the villagers. He was adamant today that electricity was the answer and he had the plan to bring it forward tomorrow, however reality struck and he knows that change will be slow and that he must be patient.

He speaks strongly of the community of Peace Corp Volunteers that journeyed with him to Niger, but requests that we send his best, and his love and his laugh to each of you.

The Parents

PS: The pictures are not here yet. We will post them as soon as they arrive.

So this is is the First time i have had both time and access to a real computer that has fast enough connection to support me blogging!!! Where shoud I begin...I have been here for almost 11 weeks now and I have enjoyed every minute of it...even those moments of "what the hell am I doing in this Country?"...This blog post will most likely be an un-coherent list of all the random ideas that come into my head that I think you should know about...I'll try to organize it as much as possible.

We'll start with the trainees: Wow..these are obviously some of the most selfless, caring people you'll ever meet and we all melded together so fast it seams unreal. I couln't have asked for a better group of people with whom to share these experiences. Together we will support eachother through what will probably be the hardest/yet most rewarding two years of our lives.

The Nigerien Pre service training staff: Oh my god...you have never met a better organization than these people...from the maintainance staff to the Director(Tondi) they are all the most friendly and loving people you will ever meet. I'm not sure why I was suprised to see that it was Nigeriens who taught us about Nigieren cutural traditions and Nigieren Language...but I was..and it makes such perfect sense to have it be this way. The training staff conists of very well educated Nigerins who have such pride in their country that they want to help us help their country. It truly is a beautiful thing...because anyone of them could be working anywhere and they want to work with us.

Nigierns: I was to before i arrived hear that Nigierns were some of the nicest people on earth...and they are right..not only will they open their arms to you, a complete stranger, but they will feed you, cloth you, provide you with shelter...In addition to being the nicest people on earth they also happen to be the most positive. Niger is the hottest, and one of the poorest countries in the world, they have harsh weather, and poor food availabitlity and still with all these things working against them, they remain positve each day. You are required to greet each Nigerien you come in contact with..there are 4 main greetings depending on the time of day and a multitude of additional greetings available if you want to use them...and each response given is given in a positive light...for example..you ask each person how their tiredness is..and even if they just got back from a day of back breaking farming they will answer...i have no tiredness. It is this positivity that keeps Niger going!

So for 9 weeks i lived with a family...The Salou's...the Father was a farmer and a chair maker..he and his wife have probably 6 or 7 kids, four of which live in the house along with three grandchildren...I was named Ousmane after the 14 year old grandchild who was kind of appointed to me as my guide in Hamdallye, The city where we lived and trained. A typical day during training consisted of awaking to the sound of the donkey who lived right outside my 4 ft wall at about 330..then the rooster at sunrise along with the call of prayer...everyother day I would start out with a bucket bath which is literally a bucket of water that you take water from with a cup and pour it on yourself...its not half bad and a real water saver...my roommate and i would then go get breakfast which for me was a cup of instant coffee...a bag of yogurt and some sort of fried millet or flour (really hard to describe the food here)..we had cross culutre or language training from 830-12, lunch from 12-1, more training till 5 and then free time. Free time ranges from Tea Time...Hammock Time...COld soda time...cookie time...scrabble time...spades time...friends chilling time...washing underwear in a bucket time...volleyball time..book time...etc.

The first time i really realized I was in Africa i guess had to be when after a one week trial period in the village i will be living in for two years..it was time to come back to Maradi which is the regional capial...I was in my town..which i'll blog about after my first month living there...and I was waiting at 6 am for a bush taxi..which in my town is a 1950's chevy truck with the bed chopped off and a huge rack box put on the tail...I watched as they filled the back with bags of grain...and tied 40+ buckets to the side the truck...then people started climbing on and i thought to myself...oh i guess im taking the next one...just then i was signaled to bring me and my stuff over...they through my bag over the side rail and i climbed up to the top and through my legs over the side squished in with 20+ people...as we headed out on the dirt road for four hours we passed small village after village and as the bruises began to develp on my but...i realized..."holy shit,im in Niger"

My hands hurt so im going to go now - pictures should be coming shortly..as i sent a sim card home to mom and dad - i will add another post after the first month in my village...should be back around Halloween!!!!!

Lov to you All - Ousmane

Will has left his host family. He promises pictures soon and reports his host family was outstanding. They have all moved this week into the Peace Corp Training Camp. Tomorrow he will test for his language proficiency, Hausa. This is an oral test where a villager comes in and converses with the Peace Corp Volunteer (aka Will ) and another professional Hausa speaker judges Will's proficiency. It is so important that he is proficient as he will be by himself in his village. After the proficiency test comes the parties. The big party, Thursday is at the Ambassador's house in Niger with all of the trainers and the regional directors and the Niger government folks. Will reports the ambassador's house rivals any we have seen in Highland Park. He sounds wonderful and well integrated into the Niger community-they all have African outfits for the swearing in on Thursday. It is interesting as after the swearing in his ten fellow volunteers will climb on a truck on Friday and journey to Maradi where each of them will be dropped off in thier community with a smaller party at each stop. Let the parties begin and let our thoughts be with Will this week!

Warmest regards and many thanks -

The Parents

Spoke with Will this afternoon. He is back in training camp following a week "live in" at his post (aka: home for 2 years). His town which is directly north of Maradi ( the financial capitol of Niger) has 7,000 people. He reports neighboring towns have running water and electricity and perhaps the good stuff will reach his town during his tenure but for the current time he will live like the rest of the citizens, without! He remarks that a non profit built the new city municipal building with ceiling fans and water facets...but they remain just for show. The town has 2 schools and a small hospital which is evidently typical for the larger towns. There is a market every Thursday where he can hopefully pick up some grain and fruit and a little meat. There are 10 people from Will's group that are living near by, one close enough for him to visit every Sunday. This friend will have access to good phone reception and poor Internet access so the plan is that we will hear from him each Sunday. He states he will stay over at the different post on Sunday night and on Monday he will do a radio show with the other volunteer on municipal issues and educational issues, all in Hausa.

He does not have a clear picture at this time of what exactly he will be doing. The plan is to live in the town for a month or two and learn the needs. He spoke with us today about starting a recycling program for the plastic. In a nearby city there is a plant that turns the plastic into bricks for building. He states his living quarters are a bit primitive, and that he has great plans for remodeling, talks of adding a window and building an oven to cook pizza! He sounds amazingly at home. Had us laughing over his trip on the back of a bush taxi to the city to catch the bus back to training camp. We know he had some Internet access this week and sent greetings to as many of you as he could. He said the connection was archaic! He states one more week of education at the training camp. And then a week of parties.....We would imagine by the 14th of September he will be in his new home.

Thanks for being Will's friends -

The Parents

Thirty two volunteers in his group-one married couple. They have been together for 5 weeks in the training camp outside of Niamey the capitol. Will stays with a family each evening in the near village where he sleeps out under his mosquito netting, showers with a bucket and poops without a toilet. His language training is Hausa. The training is quite intense as in mid September each volunteer will be on their own. He sounds remarkably at home in the country at this early stage in his adventure. His post is about 10 hours from the training camp. Email us jwsmith6018@tx.rr.com if you need his new address. His accomodations will not include electricity or running water. He tells us less than 5 miles from his post he will have access to internet and plans on visiting his fellow volunteer there weekly. He has a cell phone so ring us if you want his number and access to the most economical phone card. Our hope is that each of you is doing as well as Will is in Niger! The Parents

Each of you played a huge role in Will's readiness for Niger! You should have no doubt that Will values you both as individuals and more importantly as friends. John and I miss your presence in our backyard or in front of our finally big screen TV. Drop by anytime. There are always beverages in the garage refrigerator and we will cook if we know you are coming.

The Parents

I will be serving as a Municipal and Community Development Volunteer for 27 months. My service will begin with 3 months of intensive language and culutral integration during which I will have limited connectivity to the outside world. I will definitly journal during these three months and try to write a concise synopsis of my experience as I am given access to the interweb.