November 12, 2011

There was a day two weeks ago when the wind in Saint-Louis switched directions mid-step. In a matter of hours, the Atlantic breeze was overcome by a barrage of red dust and purple clouds rushing from the east. When winter comes to the northern hemisphere, this easterly wind barrels across the north of the African continent, whipping the dunes skyward until large swaths of the Sahara are airborne and the desert covers the sun as it covers the earth. Swells of this great shadow are carried hundreds of miles out to sea and can be seen from space. This is the Harmattan.

When the Harmattan arrived in Saint-Louis two weeks ago, the clammy, oppressive heat that follows the rainy season evaporated and the weather turned cool with speed normally only afforded by climate control. This abrupt shift in the weather signaled the arrival of cold season in Senegal and, for me, carried with it a quiet but firm reminder my time in the Peace Corps is rapidly coming to a close.

When I sat down to count the weeks I have left, I was genuinely surprised by the little time I had left. It’s not that I had been so consumed with surviving the heat, I hadn’t bothered to examine a calendar—I knew what day it was—but I hadn’t really been looking ahead. So long as the days were muggy and slow, I was able to skate through the haze of an Indian summer pretending it was still July.

To be totally honest, even before this first cold day in November, the reality of leaving had crept into my mind from time to time, always sending me cartwheeling in gusts of panic. Should I leave as planned in February or should I extend my stay six more months? I thought so seriously about staying I started writing the email to change the official date of my close of service. I thought so seriously about leaving I started applying for jobs and emailed a couple people in Seattle about renting a room. In trying to force a decision, every other day I would reach a new altitude of certainty in my choice between these two alternating futures: to go or not to go.

In the end, I’ve decided to leave in February as planned. There are lots of reasons why this is the logical choice, but more important than logic I can feel the wind ushering me forward, turning the pages to the next chapter of my life. It’s time to go.

Paradoxically, all this mental turbulence carried me backwards too, to my first weeks of training in Niger. I was so overwhelmed by the journey ahead that a single day seemed to last years; I though the close of my service would never come. I remember feeling absolutely overcome with envy upon meeting volunteers who were only weeks away from finishing their service. I ached to be them. It wasn’t that I wanted to quit (though I did think seriously about going home several times over the past thirty months), but I was so sure finishing two years as a Peace Corps volunteer would be a moment so saturated with a deep sense of joy and accomplishment, I couldn’t help but salivate over it. What a thing I will have done. I thought going home would be like enjoying the sprawling view from the top of an especially steep and treacherous mountain.

But as my departure approaches I find I don’t feel that way at all now. Once again, (as with departing for the Peace Corps and during the evacuation from Niger) I feel like I’m losing all the relationships and landscape that underpin my life. And my triumphant finish? Any triumph I feel is too heavily diluted with anxiety and nostalgia[1] to notice. Though I was warned many times returning to the States can be the most challenging part of a volunteer’s service, I was still surprised at my feelings, especially when lain along side my expectations from training.

So I thought about it, and here’s what I think happened: The moment I got off that plane in Niamey, I was swept all across the Sahel like a grain of sand at the mercy of the Harmattan. While I was consumed with the agony and ecstasy of this adventure, a subtle truth took root in my life: At some point, I stopped climbing the mountain and started living on it. West Africa stopped being the thing I was doing and became what I am. I live here. West Africa feels like my home, yet I still feel the pull of my family and life in Seattle. So it is from this seed of truth that my confusion now blooms. I belong in two places, and a thousand places; or (perhaps) we, the voyagers, belong no place and are left suspended like bridges between the islands of human existence that were once our homes. [1] I learned recently the Greek roots of the word nostalgia can be translated as “pain from an old wound. I think that’s lovely.

October 14, 2011

The past few times I’ve sat down to write a post, I’ve struggled to find topics I feel are interesting. I’ve often reflected how, during my first year of service, everything that happened to me was an epic tale—everything was worth reporting. Lately, however, I am short on anecdotes or cultural observations (which I think always make the best blog entries.) So, I’ve often wondered if interesting things have actually just stopped happening to me or if I am now so accustomed to life here I don’t see the things I used to.

I was ruminating over this exact question on a car ride from Dakar back to Saint-Louis a couple weeks ago. One thought in particular kept resurfacing: I don’t even see transport in West Africa as the adventure I used to; it was now just routine. Just last month, my sister and father had visited me in Senegal, and on the same trip I was now making (from Dakar to Saint-Louis) we’d gotten in a minor car accident. Maybe I was just too busy or distracted at the time, but I didn’t take any of the mental notes needed to transform the collision into a story. I just got back in the car and didn’t give the situation a second thought.

I guess West Africa just doesn’t shock or awe me anymore, I thought while drifting to sleep in the back of the car, squeezed between a large Senegalese woman, the car window, some suitcases, and a live chicken. (Imagine a series foreshadowing minor chords.) I awoke as the car slowed. The drivers will pull over a lot or run errands, but never stop in the middle of the road like we were. It was then I saw a plume of thick black smoke billowing from the middle of the road.

There was a large garbage truck in front of us, so I couldn’t see the source of the smoke, but I was immediately certain there had been some terrible accident. The people of this small, roadside town were going crazy. Everyone was running in all different directions and yelling. Only…they didn’t seem upset. They were fired-up to be sure, but no one was crying or looking shocked. Also, the driver of the truck in front of us seemed more angry than concerned.

It was then that the large truck pulled off to the side of the road, making room for us to see what was happening. There was no car accident or mangled bodies on the road, but rather an enormous pile of flaming tires, bordered by strategically place bricks, which combined with a mob of townspeople, effectively blocked any forward progress. Oh, I thought, I get it. This is a protest.

For those of you haven’t been following Senegalese politics, here’s what you need to know: Throughout the past year there have been increasingly violent protest in Senegal over the long-incumbent, 80-plus president’s decision to run for another term. It’s all vaguely legal, though apparently less-than-palatable to many Senegalese citizens. In addition, Senegal is suffering through an energy crisis. As the government connects more and more villages to the power grid, they have failed to create any new sources of power. Thus, the six (coal-fired?) power plants in Senegal are failing to fulfill power demands. As a result, the major cities suffer almost daily blackouts and/or water cuts that can last days. The Senegalese, perhaps inspired by the Arab Spring, have started protesting.

As far as I know, there haven’t been any deaths or violent retaliations, like in Syria, but there have been numerous causalities and many Dakar-based mobs were so bold as to burn government buildings. (Imagine my friend Phil’s surprise and disappointment when, after trekking to his daily lunch spot, he discovered it had been burned down the night before. That’s what you get for having a government bureaucracy as your neighbor.)

This is what is running through my mind as I looked at the scene unfolding in front of me. My driver called someone over to the car to ask what was happening, and though I don’t speak a lot of Wolof, I understood the village hadn’t had water in more than a week. Yeah, I thought, I’d be pissed too. The driver yells at the villager pointing out he had no control over the water and was just trying to get to Saint-Louis. Out of the corner of my eye, I see another car trying to circumvent the blockade, only to be swarmed by the mob. Whether or not we could bring the village water, we were stuck here.

At this point, my car was the closest to the flaming roadblock, only about ten yards away. My driver, clearly angry, got out of the car and started pacing. He opened the trunk and pulled out a large water jug, like he was going to put out the fire. I, meanwhile, am cowering (cowering) in the back of the car, trying to seem inconspicuous and silently begging my driver not to get involved as it might somehow draw more attention to me.

Blending it is a key survival skill in many circumstances, like, for example, when a clown asks for a volunteer from the audience or if you are a zebra. Unfortunately, being a tall white girl in West Africa, I never blend in. I am constantly the recipient of all kinds of unwanted attention. Besides frequently being seen as a kind of living ATM, potential second-wife, and/or omniscient, I have in different moments been blamed for calamities that were laughably beyond my control, like the socio-economic fallout from imperialism, gun-deaths in Africa, and Sarah Palin. So, sitting in the back of that car, I was thinking, please don’t let this be on of those moments. Let me be one with the upholstery.

Meanwhile, the scene was escalating. A police car arrived, but as the two rather slight officers stepped out of their car, they were immediately overwhelmed by the mob.

I had my phone in my hand wondering if I should call the Peace Corps security officer, but I stopped myself, knowing there wasn’t anything he’d be able to do besides tell me to stay in the car, which I was already doing an exemplary job of. Self-doubting to the end, I did call my friend Hailey to ask if she thought I should call the security officer. It was then I discovered I didn’t have adequate cell coverage, so the call she received must have sounded something like this: “Heeeeey Hailey, I think I’m in trouble. (Static)…flaming tires and a mob… (static) …can’t move and there’s… (static)…call for help? (Static)…zebras.”

It was then another truck, carrying a squad of riot police, showed up. They lined themselves up along the right side of the road, the mob on the left side. As the police loaded their guns, the villagers starting throwing rocks. Shit’s getting real here. I didn’t see if the police were shooting into the air and I don’t know if they were using rubber bullets or something, but I definitely heard gunfire.

A lot of shit has gone down during my Peace Corps service, but this was the first time I was genuinely concerned for my safety. I had the same thought I always do when in legitimately dangerous situations such as the one unfolding before me: When is this going to escalate to a point that I won’t be able to control or escape from.

But in a flash my driver dove back into his seat, slammed the car in drive and sped through the hole created by the advancing police and the retreating mob. Then we were on our way. Within minutes we’d arrived in Saint-Louis and I was standing the sun and chaos of any other ordinary afternoon. The whole thing hadn’t lasted more than ten minutes.

I called Hailey back to tell her I was ok, and called the security guy to report the event. Then promptly forgot about the whole thing…but not before making a mental note not to tempt the wrath of West Africa with further delusions of my immunity to its capriciousness.

From Cape Verde:

Magical bar on a beach.

Shipwreck on Boa Vista.

The most beautiful beaches I have ever seen.

Me, with some new PCV friends/gracious hosts.

I went scuba diving...in a pool...

Senegal:

Me at work, drawing with the talibe.

The kids with their drawings.

Me with my fruit seller.

My sister and me kayaking on the Senegal River.

The kids at the center.

September 18, 2011

It’s been too long since I have written. SORRY MOM! But you know how it goes…first I was on vacation in Cape Verde, then I had a busy couple of weeks at work, and most recently, my sister and father were visiting.

I’ve also had a rather difficult time deciding what to write about. Normally my entries just roll out in front of me. Several equally pleasing topics will wrestle each other back and forth until one, fortified by spontaneous narrations that spring up in my mind, will evolve into entire passages floating around my head. Then, all I have to do is run home and transmute the thing into paper. The past few months, however, I keep doubting the appeal of my ideas and so haven’t gotten anywhere[1].

I’ve realized, though, I need to stop waiting for things to be just right and just write. So, I took an idea and went with it. I’m sorry to say the following contains no amusing anecdotes, but rather a commentary on Peace Corps life. Specifically I want to talk about an alarming illness that befalls many volunteers during their service. Something I call, PCE.

You may already be aware how, in the bacterium/virus/fungi-rich setting of developing West Africa, volunteers frequently fall ill, develop strange medical conditions, contract exotic skin disorders…and/or sometimes…mutate. However, the wider world may not realize how frequently volunteers actually grow an additional appendage, most often sprouting from the torso.

This affliction takes form differently in every volunteer—some are less affected than others—but more often these excrescences grow to be large, cumbersome, and disruptive. The ballooning limb is extremely sensitive, leaving a volunteer in a state of constant agitation. These “arms” obstruct volunteers’ vision. Worse still, they frequently injure unsuspecting bystanders. It’s the PCE of the PCV. I’m speaking of course, of Peace Corps Ego.

Enough of the clever metaphor! Let’s be real here. Peace Corps volunteers have huge I-am-super-hardcore-and-know-way-more-about-development-slash-what-is-acutually-happening-in-the-world egos. Of course, there are exceptions, but I am not one of them. I burn with irritation when someone talks about how their two-week trip to Ghana changed their whole life or when someone makes a broad, sweeping commentary regarding Islam. Oh lord, and if a volunteer who left a couple months after installation claims to be a RPCV…my fingers sweat; my face turns red; and an onslaught of angry protests lodge in my throat in their eagerness to make themselves known. I think to myself, these idiots have no idea. It’s obnoxious. I know it, but I can hardly help myself.

In my experience the PCE manifests in two ways: 1. PCV v. non-PCV. These attacks could be spurred by anything remotely related to the PCV’s work, site, region, host country, host continent, or anything regarding the world. THE WORLD! 2. PCV v. PCV. In this case the discussion is almost certainly limited to whose site was more hardcore/who suffered more during his or her service.

I’m going to address the second item first: PCV v. PCV.

I don’t know if a non-PCV would pick up on all the subtle way volunteers size each other up in their first few minutes of acquaintance, but no matter how friendly the conversation, it happens. Where did you serve? What was your site like? What was your sector? All of these questions just to ascertain whom you’re dealing with. Did she have running water? Electricity? What was his house made out of? How isolated was this person? And of course, the kicker, how hot was it?

Peace Corps volunteers in West Africa are obsessed with proving they suffered through hotter weather than anyone else, as if our value as a volunteer could be measured out in drops of sweat. If not hotter, volunteers are constantly insisting their host country was poorer, more corrupt, less developed, but the people were friendlier and it’s still the best place you could hope to serve—everywhere else dubbed the Beach Corps or Posh Corps.

As I am writing this I worry I have been too sensitive to the idle comments of others, but I swear this war is real. Even in Niger there was a palpable tension between the bush (volunteers in the countryside) and the city volunteers. Bush volunteers were always commenting on how easy the city folk had it (with their fancy cement houses and electricity), and in return the urban volunteers would constantly extol the merits of a bush post (friendlier people, more willing to help.) And, when volunteers from different countries try to out-hardcore each other, the entire conversations pivots around subtle, but constant one-uping.

I find the PCV v. PCV thing frustrating because there is no one thing that makes one Peace Corps service harder than another. It depends on you, how you mesh with the culture, how easily you can learn a language, etc, and (most importantly) how well you can fence with your personal demons. Having electricity is definitely nice, but it won’t make you less frustrated with your neighbors.

Comparing Cape Verde to Niger makes this point nicely. By the PCV PCE standards, Niger is clearly the harder post—it’s hotter and less developed. In fact, we are comparing (according to the UN development index) the most developed country in West Africa with the least developed country in the world. Niger is clearly the harder post, right? I certainly would have agreed with that earlier in my service, but now I see it’s not that simple.

Capeverdians are surprisingly apathetic to the presences of PCVs whereas Nigeriens would literally trip all over themselves to make you feel welcome. Nigeriens were ever eager to collaborate, while Capeverdians (I’m told) don’t want your help, so much as a check. Also, most sites in Niger had countless projects waiting to happen, all within the volunteer’s ability to complete. Cape Verde, in contrast is developed enough that volunteers are often left scratching the back of their necks wondering if they can help at all. And if you want to talk about physical discomfort, fresh water shortages in Cape Verde forced the volunteers I stayed with to recycle their water in ways so creative it made me cringe. (Imagine four adults sharing one toilet, which they were only able to flush once a week.)

Now that I live in Saint Louis, I often get comments from other volunteers about how “easy” I have it or how “lucky” I am. Sometimes I just nod, not mentioning how urban posts have their own unique challenges. Other times, I am less patient and show off my “Niger credentials[2].” This always changes the way volunteers interact with me. They visibly retreat, then say something like, “Oh, so you know what West Africa is really like.” First of all, I don’t like the suggestion urban centers are less apart of West Africa than the bush; and secondly, just like Cape Verde, living in a place like Saint Louis presents its own set of challenges for PCVs. (Just one example: The harassment I get from men in Saint Louis is by far the most grating and sapping thing I’ve had to deal with in any site.)

My point: it is impossible to say which post is harder, but when a volunteer tries to assert that her post was harder and therefore somehow her experience more valuable, it demean the experiences of fellow volunteers. Peace Corps is hard. Everyone struggles. After having seen and lived in so many different Peace Corps sites, I have concluded the only thing that really makes a volunteer’s sight easier is the quality of her work partner—how motivated the partner is/if there is work to do. A good work situation is the best a volunteer can hope for, and that is almost completely independent of UN development index.

With non-PCVs, the PCE outbursts more often take the form of telling the ignorant masses about what the world is really like. I wasn’t surprised to learn recently RPCVs have a reputation in the development world for being irritating know-it-alls. I don’t excuse myself from this at all. When I was visiting the States last October, I had to consciously stop myself from starting every sentence with, “Did you know in Niger…”

I also spend a great deal of time hinting to others how difficult my Peace Corps service was, without ever saying the words. Just last week spent a good five minutes reveling in the way the Italian intern at my office’s jaw dropped when I told him I lived with out electricity or running water for 18 months. I shrugged casually at his disbelief, then reassured him it was the most amazing time in my life. This is the basic message we PCVs always want to convey: it was unbelievably difficult, but I still loved it.

The veracity of that last sentence makes this whole critique more complicated. After all, “it was unbelievably hard, but I still loved it” is probably the most accurate way one could describe Peace Corps—the hardest job you’ll ever love. Living for two years in a developing country, speaking their language, eating their food is really hard. Honestly, it is something to pat yourself on the back for completing, but I find it very interesting how often our self-congratulations slide into elitist bragging. I especially notice this sense of superiority when volunteers compare themselves to missionaries, tourists, and volunteers who left early. (And once again, I am just as guilty as any for adopting this attitude.) I see volunteers make painstaking effort to distinguish us from them, and I think this condescension is all too apparent in our interactions with these groups.

Missionaries honestly still make me uncomfortable, but I can’t deny they do some very thoughtful, valuable work. As for the tourists/PCVs who leave early, here is what I tell myself now: These people could have gone of vacation to the south of France, an all-inclusive resort in Hawaii, or just stayed home, but instead they chose to explore West Africa—even if it is just for a short time, that is better than a great many others who never make it off their couches.

The most ironic thing about all of this PCE business is that volunteers begin their service from a place of absolute humility. When trainees first arrive in country, they repeat again and again how little they know and how eager they are to learn. As a new volunteer, you are constantly butting up against your own ignorance, inflexibility and shortcomings. In this new, strange land you must learn to talk, eat, poop, and interact in a whole new way. You are lost in this unfamiliar landscape. You become completely dependent on your host family and village. You get sick in ways you didn’t know you could. Basically, you become an infant again—naïve and vulnerable.

If we begin our service in such humility, how is it we end up hauling around elephant-sized egos? Why can’t we cultivate the same thoughtfulness we demonstrate in our work, in our interactions with others? When did our service become about bolstering our own self-image?

[1] I’ve discovered a cultural quirk that I LOVE but can’t quite turn into a whole story: at nightclubs, Senegalese people dance almost exclusively with their reflections on the mirror-lined walls, rather than with each other. As a result, when you enter a club, almost everyone on the dance floor is lined-up behind each other, facing the same direction, checking themselves out. [2] Credit to Nick Potter for this phrasing.

Blog post to come, but in the meantime I am going to entertain you with this really wonderful quote about humans and travel. I wanted to edit it to make it more gender-inclusive, but it got too complicated. Just keep in mind women do all these things too. The author Ryzard Kapuscinski, is talking about why Herodotus (a Greek born in 485 B.C.) was motivated to travel as he did throughout the Asia, Africa, and Europe (the entire known world), and report on it endlessly until finally writing his work, "Histories."

"What set man into motion? Made him act? Compelled him to undertake the hardships of travel, to subject himself to the hazards of one expedition after another? I think it was simply a curiosity about the world. The desire to be there, to see it at any cost, to experience it no matter what.

It is actually a seldom encountered passion. Man is by nature a sedentary creature from the moment he began cultivating the land and left behind the perilous and uncertain existence of a hunter or gatherer, he settled down happily, naturally, on his particular patch of earth and fenced himself off from others with a wall or a ditch, prepared to shed blood, even give his life to defend what was his. If he moved, it was only under duress, or war, or by the search for better work, or for professional reasons--because he was a sailor, an itinerant, merchant, leader of a caravan. But to traverse the world for years on end of his own free will, in order to know it, to plumb it, to understand it? And then, later, to put all his findings into words? Such people have always been uncommon.

Where did this passion of Herodotus's come from? perhaps from the question that arose in a child's mind, the one about where ships come from. Children playing in the sand at the edge of a bay can see a ship suddenly appear far way on the horizon line and grow larger and large as it sails toward them Where did it originate? Most children do not ask themselves this question. But one, making castles out of sand, suddenly might. Where did this ship come from? The line between the sky and sea, very, very far away, had always seemed the end of the world; could it be that there is another world beyond that line? and then another one beyond that? what kind of world might it be? the child starts to seek answers. Later, when she grows up, she may have the freedom to seek even more persistently.

The road itself offers some relief. Motion. Travel. Herodotus's book arose from travel; it is world literature's first great work of reportage. Its author has reportorial instincts , a journalistic eye and ear. He is indefatigable; he sails over the sea, traverses the steppe, ventures deep into the desert--we have his accounts of all this. He astonishes us with his relentlessness, never complains of exhaustion. Nothing discourages him, and not once does he say that he is afraid.

What propelled him, fearless and tireless as he was, to throw himself into this great adventure? I think that it was an optimistic faith, one that we people lost long ago; faith in the possibility and value of truly describing the world."

A friend of mine, Hailey, was editing a translation of a study conducted on consumption habits. In the section about snacking, she found the following gem:

"The Senegalese people are nibbling followers specially in the end of

the afternoon (37%). Men nibble such like women. Nibbling is

significantly more important in urban zone (47%) compared to semi

urban zone (38%) or rural zone (34%)."

July 9, 2011

There was a week in April when the majority of the staff at my organization left town for a two-day training. The evening before they departed, one of my co-workers, Adjia, asked me to take on some new duties in their absence. Specifically, she asked me to “écrire,” to write. The center logs every child who comes in the door of the center and what activities they do—both for themselves and for funders. So, someone has to sit at the door with a notebook and pen and “write.” The job also requires supervising the tiled courtyard where the kids play, shower, and do laundry. I had done it before, though never by myself. Nevertheless, I am ever eager to do anything that makes my job seem more like a job, so I cheerfully accepted.

I arrived at the center extra early the next morning to get set up. I found the notebook, a pen, a chair to sit in, positioned the table so I was right by the door, and waited… The best way I can describe what happened next is this: it was like watching a bomb that kept exploding—for four hours.

I’m sure you can easily imagine me flustered, hair askew, several children tucked under each arm while I tried to gain control of the situation; but, as a means of survival, my brain flooded itself with a hefty dosage of endorphins[1], leading me to sit demurely on my little blue chair, staring blankly into the chaos. I think the best thing I can say about that morning is no one was mortally injured that day, though few kids definitely cried. I almost cried, but I survived AND I learned something: there are essentially infinite ways 100+ young, parent-less boys can make trouble when sharing a small space.

Against my better judgment I’ve allowed myself to get roped into writing again and again. (It’s kind of everyone’s least favorite job.) I’m sure I am only able to cognize a fraction of what goes on in the courtyard and I’m also trying to make my blog entries shorter, so I’m only going to share my favorite memories from “writing.”

That fateful morning in April began like any other morning I am on writing duty: me sitting by the doorway with a notebook and pen. The center is calm, quiet—even tranquil. As the children arrive, I begin writing down the name, age, Koranic school of each talibe, as well as what they want to do at the center: take a bath, do laundry, see the nurse, or play. But, given that this notebook is clearly a spiny appendage of the evil Organization Monster, little boys want nothing to do with it. Thus I often have to resort to (gently) grabbing the shoulders or shirts of talibes who try to breeze by me, unnoticed. I can do the whole, “come here,” routine, but the boys usually meet to this sort of beckoning by doing the chicken dance from across the courtyard—literally sticking their thumbs in their armpits and resolutely flapping their elbows against their sides. (The gesture means, “I refuse” in Senegalese.)

Other times, swarms of talibes will come at once, encircling me and yelling their names/ages/schools over one another so that I can’t understand anything at all. The come up on all sides, including mounting and hiding underneath the large table I am writing, on to make sure I have no escape. I should also mention these kids only shower once a week (every eight-year-old’s dream) and so are absolutely filthy. Besides the dirt, they are usually covered in puss-filled cuts, boils, chicken pox, scabies, whitlow, and/or dried blood and are dripping mucus from their noses or eyes (due to conjunctivitis.) Given the proximity they frequently do things like cough directly into my open mouth or sneeze into my hair.

Meanwhile, as I flail wildly trying to write down all information of the new arrivals before they disappear into the courtyard, the talibes will inevitably get bored and start entertaining themselves by: reciting the Koran loudly; trying to ask me my name/age/etc.; trying to use the pen I am writing with to draw on any available surface (including, once, my cellphone); hitting each other; climbing under the table to pull on my skirt and/or leg hair; pinching me; grabbing me; slapping me (gently); or yelling loudly and indiscriminately. Perhaps the most frustrating thing in these swarm situations is, after I do write down the information of a talibe, he often refuses to go play in the courtyard but lingers at the table. When one does it, they all do it, creating an impenetrable talibe-wall between me and the doorway, making it that much harder to see kids as they come in or keep track of who I’ve already written down.

Once I manage to get (what I feel) is a reasonable percentage of the children logged in, I will stand up and shoo them into other activities. The courtyard is small, but somehow manages to contain a foosball table, a TV (usually blaring Senegalese music videos), a perpetually deflated soccer ball, puzzles and other games for the kids. If kids don’t have a game, they resort to wrestling with each other or yelling loudly into the open air. They can do their laundry, but this never take long, given they all only have one or two sets of clothes—though they manage to turn the whole place into a swamp. When they only have one set of clothes, they wear their birthday suits while their clothes drip dry. Yes, there is a lot of nudity. There is also a shower, a toilet and an infirmary for the kids.

One of my favorite recurring scenes happens whenever an older boy (maybe 15) brings in a flock of five- to eight-year-olds for their weekly shower. I once worked at a summer camp where I observed young boys are happy to go four weeks or more without bathing (if it had been permitted.) The little boys in Senegal are no different. So, the older ones are forced wrangle them into the shower six or seven at a time (it’s a big shower). Much like how I used to stuff all my clothes into a washing machine, close the door and hope for the best, the older talibe will fill the shower with children, throw in some soap, turn the water on, hold the door closed. Moments later the bathroom door will explode open and the newly showered kids will scatter, still dripping, as if they were escaping from a burning house.

Now add up everything I just described (the swarming, grabbing, coughing, wrestling, playing, loud music, yelling, impromptu soccer games, wet clothes on low-hanging lines, flocks of dripping-wet kids) and then multiply it by 100. This is what that first morning in April was like. There is also the whole issue of rationing soap to the kids, which I won’t get into except to say it leaves pretty much everyone (including me) dissatisfied.

In spite of how it sounds, I wouldn’t necessarily call the mornings I spend in the courtyard with the talibes bad—though I wouldn’t say they’re good either. It’s usually overwhelming and always exhausting, but it also feels like the most sincere/needed aid I’ve given in my Peace Corps service. I never experience the all-too-familiar, what’s-the-point despair to many PCVs have to battle on a monthly if not weekly basis. Because the point of my work is right there, coughing in my mouth, exploding from the shower, dripping snot as he waits to see the nurse.

As my language has improved, I’ve gotten to know the talibes (and as they’ve gotten to know me). They now know I won’t let them get away with the pinches, slaps, or the pulling of leg hair and for the most part have stopped trying. I’ve identified a couple of the older, more helpful talibes who I can always call on to help me ration soap or make sure I’ve recorded every name. The kids have started to recognize me outside the center too, which I love. Now, instead of rushing up to me to demand money, now rush up to me to shake my hand and ask where I’m going.

The talibe may seem tough as nails on the street, sticking their chin up as they demand “100 francs,” but when they get in the center it is painfully clear they are just children. They squeal with delight over a game. They cry when they are left out. They climb into my lap or put their arm around me before offering me some of the bread they are chewing on.

Sometimes I take it upon myself to organize a drawing activity for them, which is basically as chaotic as the courtyard scene, just add colored pencils into the mix and replace “rationing soap” with “rationing paper.” Some kids just scribble wildly, in what seems like an attempt to use as much paper as quickly as possible. Others will work quietly and thoughtfully all morning to complete self-portraits, pictures unidentifiable animals, or boats. But no matter what they draw, they double over in smiling embarrassment when I “ooh” or “ahh” at their work. One little boy just sits at the table, watching and insisting in a mouse-sized voice he can’t draw. Another will wait for other kids to abandon their work before presenting the drawing to me as his own. I suspect he is just hungry for any kind of praise.

Other favorite memories: A few weeks ago, as I was leaving the center, I felt one of the kids tugging on the back of my bag. I whipped around in annoyance, thinking he was trying to open the pocket. “Hamsatou!” he said, “You can’t go out on the street with your bag like this.” He was closing it for me. My heart melted.

Another time, as I was sitting by the door, recording names, and old woman came to the door begging for money. I tried to dismiss her with the usual may-Allah-pay-you handclasp, thinking to myself, “Lady, you came to the wrong place.” But before she could leave, one of the talibes gave me an I-would-expect-more-from-you, parental nod as he handed her 25 francs from a small pouch tied around his stomach. These kids are teaching me so much.

Like I said, this is the most rewarding work I’ve done in the Peace Corps, possibly in my life. I rarely feel a day at work is wasted, and if I ever do, the feeling vanishes when I think of those boys. I can’t say with any conviction I’m making their lives better, and certainly not in the way you could film or put on a resume, but if I’m changing their worlds at all—it’s worth it to me; because these boys certainly changing mine.

Also (knock on wood) I haven’t gotten conjunctivitis, yet.

[1] According to Wikipedia: endorphins are released to prevent nerve cells from releasing more pain signals, allowing animals to feel a sense of power and control over themselves and to persist with activity for an extended time, like writing down the names of talibes—I was that animal.

June 1, 2011

I feel strongly evening is my favorite time of day. I’ve always felt this way, even as a kid.

When I was little I remember waiting until the sun began to set to escape to the woods and fields that surrounded my childhood house. I would sprint across the grass with my conspicuously large yellow walkman hooked to my hip, buzzing between “I Can See Clearly Now” and “Dancing Outside the Fire,” (both which are the acme of inspirational ballads for a small child.) Sock-footed, I would dance around our front yard with my arms up in the air, as if to hurry the night in coming.

It was here I discovered sometimes, as the sun retreats from the sky, the day is reborn for a few brief moments. First the heat of the day softens, then the air cools and slows. But even as the breeze sharpens, the earth continues to radiate the day’s heat, upward, like a sigh—warm and fragrant. The sky floods with every possible shade of blue, then green, then gold, then purple. Light shines more tenderly, illuminating a richness in everything it touches, until the world becomes entirely saturated in twilight. The day shakes off its afternoon dust and is invigorated. Dusk becomes another dawn fresh with fresh possibility and magic. As a kid, it was evenings like these I experience with absolute confidence the knowledge that world is a good and happy place.

Not my back yard, but still a cute picture of my sister and me when we were little.

One such evening descended upon me a week or so ago, when I found myself in the high-walled garden of Zumba, a Saint-Louisian actor and musician famous around town. Zumba, himself was absent, but his shaded patio is always host to his band’s practice sessions, and thus the de facto meeting spot for the group of musicians I was sitting with. I had been invited to his house by Christina, a German volunteer I’d met at the NGO where I work. In spite of our short acquaintance, she’d asked me to come help write and perform a song for an independent film she is making about women in Senegal. I’ve been nursing my creative side recently, I happily accepted.

As evening broke, practice digressed into an impromptu recital of every Norah Jones song known to Ngam, the guitarist. The group hummed and clapped along, but, being the only one who really spoke English, the job of singing fell to me—something I don’t do especially well, but something I really enjoy doing. I was relaxed and the audience was so friendly I overcame any self-consciousness, and was able to really enjoy myself. In fact, you might even say I was belting…as much as one can belt Norah Jones. The heat of the day was giving way to a cool, salty breeze, which made the fuchsia bogenvelia tremble against the garden wall and the air come alive with the scent of soft earth and citrus trees. I looked out into the ebbing light, and was overcome with a sense of wonder—not only at the beauty around me but also the beautiful, unexpected way my life keeps unfolding. What a beautiful life I seem to have stumbled into…

The thing that most impressed me was how entirely unplanned that evening was. Unlike so many other chapters in my life, I had very little part in constructing this life in St. Louis. It grew up around me. Yes, I joined the Peace Corps expecting adventure, but I never set out with the slightest inclination I would move three times, be evacuated from my first post, move somewhere new, meet a bohemian German independent film maker and help her write a song at her friend’s house. The evacuation had all the agony of an end, none of the excitement of a beginning. Our forced departure seemed to violently truncate so many wonderful possibilities of adventures friendships that it felt like death—the death of the life I had lived for nearly two years. And recently, I’ve spent so much time sorting through that wreckage and lamenting the possibilities I’d left behind, imagine my surprise when I looked up to find a new life growing around me. But there I was, watching as the seams of reality quiver under the enormous joy I felt. Even if prompted, two years ago, I could never have imagined the scene before me.

But here I am, with my unexpected German filmmaker friend, and I’m so happy. My initial, rather uncomfortable adjustment to Senegal has passed. My days have fallen into an easy routine of work and leisurely spontaneity. In the mornings, I go to work. In the afternoons, I go to the beach, go to a friend’s house for lunch and conversation. I get ice cream and sit on a bench that overlooks the river. I go for long runs. I get artisanal cocktails and pizza with other volunteers at this cute French-run bar. I feel free and full enough that I don’t mind staying out late on weeknights, I don’t worry about money, and am able to laugh off the cultural differences that once might have ruined my day. Of course, I still have bad days. I am not immune to crankiness or fatigue. Worst of all, I am plagued with the very serious task of figuring out how best to spend my last 24 vacation days. But…I’m very happy and I didn’t even have to plan it.

All of you very sane, well-adjusted, Zen people out there are thinking, “Of course you can’t plan happiness, silly Bruce.” But I’m here to tell you my insane, mal-adjusted id/false self/mind (whatever you want to call it) will argue to the bitter end that all good things are planned. I know; it’s stupid. I get it (Bruce says placing especial, exasperated stress on the “I.”) In fact, I’m constantly espousing little tidbits about how unhealthy/impossible it is to try and control everything. BUT, the subconscious programming constantly running in background of my life says, “You can’t trust the world. Nothing good will happen unless you make it happen.”

I didn’t even notice this thought in my head until a book brought it to my attention. (Actually, there are lots of these really crazy little thoughts we don’t even know we are thinking, but still act on. For example, we might think, I don’t want to share the cake I’m going to eat the WHOLE THING or I don’t want to be the only one who can make so-and-so happy.) But these faults in our programming are eventually brought to our attention and after hearing something we know to be true, our hearts won’t let us forget it. So, I admit it. I am a control freak, constantly trying to bully joy into my life, to come when I say and to STAND STILL. But no matter how much energy I exert, the things that I imagine will make me happy never seem to line up. So I spend my time trying to will things into being, chasing hopeless dead ends, or lamenting what seem like lost chances at happiness.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t work for the things we want, I’m still pursuing a certain kind of career, lifestyle and relationships. But looking at all the unexpected turns my life has taken recently, I see that joy sneaks up on you when you least expect it, though it may be disguised in unfamiliar clothes. So, considering all the unexpected people/places/opportunities that are currently pouring joy into my life, I get the sense that perhaps it’s wiser to keep putting one foot in front of the other and just let things happen…because…let’s face it things happen anyway.

May 3, 2011

(I know I posted this briefly for a couple days last week and then took it down...so it's not really a new post. What happened was, I heard about Seyni's death the day after I posted this and didn't want people to miss either post, so I took it down to space things out a bit.)

Dear Friends,

I don’t know why I’ve waited so long to tell you this story. I think part of me felt silly for even believing it or acknowledging what was happening. Now, I almost wish this had been my very first blog post, so that you all could have experience the awe I have felt in watching everything fall into place as it has.

Hearing stories like this one after the fact make them somehow less magical. You might think, when telling this I’ve re-imagined the past to make it conform more neatly to what I was told would happen. Perhaps I stretched a few details or omitted a few inconvenient facts. Especially since, those of you who know me know I am quite the spiritual junky. I believe in fate, clairvoyance, and the like—actually no…I’m always trying to believe in fate, clairvoyance and the like, but I can never quite get there, because even more than I am a spiritual junky, I am a skeptic. As many wonderful stories as I’ve heard about magic in everyday life, I still question them. As many otherworldly things that have happened to me, I still feel like a crazy person for acknowledging them.

So, I’m going to tell you what happened. I’m going to be as truthful as is possible. And, I’m going to let you judge for yourselves.

Here’s what happened:

In April of 2009, a dear friend of mine went to a tarot card reader in Seattle. I’m not sure why she went, but when I saw her next, she was raving about him. Apparently, everything he had told her had been pretty spot-on. He’d even given her a whole play-by-play of what was happening in the next couple years. “You should go see him before you leave for Peace Corps!” she suggested. I always loved stuff like this, especially after such a glowing recommendation, so I decided the next time I was wandering around the Ave. I would go see him.

The “Ave.” is short for University Avenue, and is the main drag of UW’s college town. The whole ten-block stretch is pretty much brick-to-brick coffee shops, restaurants, and trendy boutiques. In spite of the sizable student population and all their parent’s money, a lot of these businesses have a hard time staying afloat. Shops are always coming and going, leaving the place in a constant state of evolution. Unbelievably, one of the few shops that stayed put during my entire tenure at the University of Washington is a store called “Gargoyles.” They sell (almost exclusively) gargoyle statuettes. As you might imagine, in spite of the ridiculous amount of time I’d spent on the Ave. I’d never gone in this particular store. Though, I’d taken every opportunity I could to comment about burgeoning, yet clandestine gargoyle statuette market. Naturally, this is where the tarot card reader worked.

So some bright afternoon I wandered in there and asked to have my tarot cards read. The woman behind the counter disappeared into the back of the shop, saying she’d have to see if “he felt like doing a reading.” No, he did not. “Come back tomorrow,” she said. Well, he’s certainly playing the part, I thought. Not the next day, but soon after I returned to the shop and asked, again, for a card reading. This time I was shown to a private corner of the store, amidst many a statuette, where a thin, middle-aged guy was type, type, typing away on his laptop. I guess you can’t expect mystics to always be mystical.

Anyway, we began the reading with a short interview. Many a skeptic have accused these “seers” of being nothing more than very observant fakes, deriving what seem like divine conclusions from minute details of a person’s appearance, conduct and speech. So I tried to hold the same posture and give the guy as little detail about my life as possible. I did tell him I was a student and that I was joining the Peace Corps. At that point I didn’t know where I was going yet, but I didn’t tell him I had requested Africa.

I can’t remember too clearly what he said about my past and present, but I do remember thinking it was right on. He said that the academic program I was in suited me and I was doing very well. He said I was happy and that life was going well, except for one dysfunctional relationship. (It was true, I was mid-falling out with a friend.) I asked him how to repair the relationship and he told me to just let it go.

After the past and present, he moved on to the future. This should be easy enough, I thought. He’ll tell me that Peace Corps will be hard at first, but I’ll get used to it, succeed, finish my two years and come back to the States and land my dream job. Nope. Here’s what he said: You will go to a very difficult country like Burkina Faso. He used the words impoverished and worn-torn. At first, you will really like it and do well, but after four months you will lose your footing and never really get it back. You will struggle a great deal with questions of inequity and suffer a lot. Finally, after a year and a half you will leave the first place and go to someplace new where you will find the work you will do for the rest of your life.

This shocked me—mostly because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, that Peace Corps would be the adventure of my life. So, let’s break it all down: I wouldn’t use the word “war-torn” to describe Niger, but it is impoverished and very similar to Burkina Faso. As for having a hard time, when I first got to Peace Corps, I was just as happy and at ease as ever. During my first few months in Gotheye, I would walk around the village with this amazing sense of “how lucky am I?” I was having such an amazing time, I decided a thousand times the tarot card reader must have been full of shit. What struggles? I thought. Sure I was adjusting and had bad days, but overall was very happy.

When we were consolidated in November 2009 and I was evacuated from Gotheye I reread the entry I made in my journal after visiting the tarot card reader. (I wrote it all down as a way to verify I didn’t change the details around in my head to make his prophecy seem truer.) I had forgotten he’d said I would like it at first and start to struggle only after the first few months, so I about lost it when I read the words (there in my own hand writing) “you will like it for the first four months, and then in NOVEMBER you will lose your footing and never get it back.”

At this point, I started telling more people about what was happening. And, those I told wisely counseled not to let his words become a self-fulfilling prophecy in which I was told I would be miserable, and so let myself be miserable. I was also determined to be happy and successful, so for my part, I did everything I could to make life in my second village work. I certainly did struggle with questions of inequality, but not in the oh-my-gosh-everyone-here-had-nothing-and-I-have-so-much way. I mean, that did cross my mind, but what I was essentially obsessed with during my time in Golle were two things: why did I get such a bad site; and how come everyone is doing better work than me? Whenever a friend did a successful project, it made me feel so inadequate. When I visited other friends’ sites, I would spend the entire visit silently tallying up the things they had that made their life easier than mine. This is not a new thing for me…in fact, I would say it is one of my fundamental character flaws. But before Niger, I had never had to face (with such the stabbing frequency and proximity) my inability to always be the best. So, yes I suffered and struggled with questions of inequity.

At the point in my service when I took the PCVL position and moved to Dosso, I wondered a couple of things. First, if this was my big move, how come the tarot card reader hadn’t told me I would move from my first village too? He’d only mentioned one move. Second, what life work would I find as the PCVL?

The same week I had been in country a year and a half, we were evacuated. Let me say that again, the SAME week I'd been in country a year and a half, we were evacuated. I was one of thirty or so who were lucky enough to continue our service and not return to the states.

This just blows my mind. This isn't like predicting "the Peace Corps will be hard," which is like saying "it will rain this winter in Seattle" or "Lindsay Lohan will return to rehab." It's not like leaving after a year and half is a common thing for a PCV. In fact, I would say it's extremely rare. My best guess is that more than 90% of volunteers who make it through their first year stay for the entire second year. No one leaves after a year and half, just six months before his COS date.

Just...consider it...

No, I haven’t found my life’s work in Senegal. And the other thing he told me, which apparently had not come true is that I would meet the love of my life here in Africa…but he said “in the next one to three years,” so I’ve still got until April of 2012…

That’s the story. Even after everything, I, myself, am still not sure what to make of it. Amidst the evacuation I was convinced that tarot card reader must have a direct line with fate, but now I've started doubting it again. I mean, yes, everything he said came true, but now I’ve been in Senegal TWO WHOLE MONTHS and STILL haven’t found my life’s work...but such is the human mind that it always tries to rationalize the unexplainable and remain in control.

April 26, 2011 Today I am writing to say good-bye to a dear friend who has passed away. Seyni Soumana, the program assistant/driver for the Dosso region died due to high blood pressure. I had mentioned him a many times before in this blog, but never felt like I did him justice. He was my best Nigerien friend, one of the biggest supports in my Peace Corps service, and the heart and soul of Team Dosso. Though he was a dear friend, I certainly don’t know him well enough to write about his life, so I will just tell you about the parts of Seyni I knew. Seyni was really tall. He always wore a pair of Nike sunglasses that make him look like Shaft. He had a huge scar up the side of his cheek to mark him as a member of the Songhai ethnic group. Basically, he would have looked like a total badass if it weren’t for the permanent smile stuck across his face. He’d worked for Peace Corps for more than 25 years when I was moved to the Dosso region, and when I was installed in Golle, he told me a million times “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” And he did. More than anyone else on the Peace Corps Niger staff, I felt like Seyni was there to support me. He would come at any hour of the night to retrieve a sick volunteer. He spent countless days and weeks sorting through “village drama,” like what happened with my drug-abusing landlord, just to allow volunteers to do their work. I can’t even begin to explain the relief a volunteer feels for knowing that just one person is really on her side and is really there to help her. No matter what happened, what trouble I got into, I knew Seyni was only a phone call away. Seyni was motivated in a way that few other Peace Corps staff members are, and that was that he truly believed in the mission of Peace Corps volunteers. “You guys is doing a really good thing for Niger,” he told me constantly. He also understood why we wanted to be Peace Corps volunteers—something most Nigeriens didn’t get. After all why would anyone want to leave the comfort and abundance of America to live in a mud hug? “I used to think you guys crazy for coming here to live in the bush with nothing, but one time in America I did camping and I see being away from cities is really doing a good thing for you,” he said. Perhaps most importantly, he loved the volunteers like his own children. And I think for most of us, he definitely became a father figure. He wasn’t well educated, but he was smart. This was evident to anyone who talked with him and after all self-learned English during his time with Peace Corps. He told me once, “If I finished high school, I’d be the president of Niger.” And, I don’t doubt it, because besides being absolutely adored by essentially everyone he encountered, Seyni knew how to get shit done. “What the fuck you still sleeping for?” he yelled at me as he was backing his jeep out of the Dosso hostel compound. This is how Seyni let’s you know he’s ready to start work and wants you to come with him. When I took the job as the PCVL in Dosso, I remarked many time how I felt like I’d become his assistant. I did a lot of other stuff, but most of the time I was with Seyni. He would give me a scrap of paper with some phone number on it and say, “Give this back to me on Thursday.” Or he would say, “Call so-and-so and let him know we’re coming to see him.” Other times he would rush me through to get in the car and do errands, only to discover he didn’t actually need my help, he only wanted company. Once, after a long day on the road, we were driving back to Dosso together, only to get stuck behind the victory procession of Nigerien wrestlers. The crowd took over the road and stopped for several minutes in every village between Birni and Dosso, thereby taking forever and making it impossible to pass. Seyni’s solution was to (at one of the villages) veer off the road and rip through several millet fields, cutting around behind the village back toward the main road, then racing the procession down the side of the road until he could cut ahead of them. He never actually slowed down for any of this, but when we made it back to the pavement he looked over at me with wild eyes and said something like, “That’s why they call me crazy driver.” I realized quickly after I started working with him it was better to just not look out the window when we were going somewhere. Another time, we had gone to Kiota together to drop of supplies for a new latrine and had visited the Cheikh there. The Cheikh is a religious figure, one of the most important in Africa. People travel from all around to meet with him, so I was just a little intimidated as I went to meet him. The meeting was short, but Seyni spent quite a bit of time whispering up at the Cheikh, who was seated on a plush sofa, while the rest of us sat on the ground. “What did you talk to the Cheikh about?” I asked Seyni on the drive home. “I asked him to pray for you guys,” he said. “Whenever I see him, I always ask him to pray for you, because you know, he is really powerful guy, the Cheikh. If he prays for you, it works. Unless…sometimes he forgets, but if he does it, it really works.” I loved the way he would fall over laughing at my friend Katy and me when he came into the hostel to find us with green cosmetic facemasks on. I love the way he loved American food, and the sound he made when I fed him raw cookie dough for the first time. I love that, after picking up a volunteer with a severe malaria and sitting with him all night while the volunteer hallucinated, the next morning he told the volunteer, “Man, I think this guy really going to die.” When we were evacuated, I watched Seyni’s heart break when I told him we were leaving. In the 72 hours following, before we left, he continued to give his job everything he had, though it was plain to everyone how upset he was. Peace Corps was his life and without it, not only was he without money, but seemingly without a purpose. Where else was he going to get a job where he would need to know slangy English, all the roads in Dosso, and how to drive like a madman. When I was leaving Dosso for the last time, all the volunteers piled on to the short white bus we always called the magic bus, but Seyni stopped me and said, “You come ride with me. I don’t want to be alone.” I was expecting the usually gabby Seyni, but mostly we just rode in comfortable silence. At one point Seyni, without taking his eyes off the road, said, “Hamsatou, I don’t know what I will do without you guys. I think I will die.” I was horrified to hear him talking like this, so I did my best to reassure him. The only thing that I could think of was the over-used, somewhat cheesy Zarma quip, Irkoy ga ni bana, God will pay you. And even though I felt like an idiot for using such basic words, it was all I could think of. Seyni relaxed in his seat and said, “You know, there is a God. That I know. I know it. Allah will provide.” I don’t think Seyni was forecasting anything when he said he thought he would die without us, but I don’t think anyone was surprised to hear he’d died of high-blood pressure. The man took everything on himself tried to be everything to everybody, and I’m sure the task of providing for his family without the Peace Corps paycheck was overwhelmingly stressful. The thing that makes me the saddest is that we can’t be together today to remember Seyni. I wish more than anything we could all curl up in the Dosso hostel tonight and tell stories about Seyni, share memories, laugh and cry. But the volunteers who knew and loved him are spread all over the world right now. So I invited you to join this group of facebook: Remembering Seyni, and we’ll do the best we can with what we’ve got. Seyni, Irkoy ma cabe cere.

April 16, 2011

Dear Friends,

I don’t know why I’ve waited so long to tell you this story. I think part of me was hoping it wouldn’t come true, and by ignoring it, it would go away. Part of me felt silly for even believing it, or acknowledging what was happening. Now, I almost wish this had been my very first blog post, so that you all could have experience the awe I have felt in watching everything fall into place as it has.

Hearing stories like this one after the fact make them somehow less magical. You might think, when telling this I’ve re-imagined the past to make it conform more neatly to what I was told would happen. Perhaps I stretched a few details or omitted a few inconvenient facts. Especially since, those of you who know me know I am quite the spiritual junky. I believe in fate, clairvoyance, and the like—actually no…I’m always trying to believe in fate, clairvoyance and the like, but I can never quite get there. Even more than I am a spiritual junky, I am a skeptic. As many wonderful stories as I’ve heard about magic in everyday life, I still question them. As many otherworldly things that have happened to me, I still feel like a crazy person for acknowledging them.

But, I’m going to tell you what happened, I’m going to be as honest as possible, and I’m going to let you judge for yourselves.

Here’s what happened:

In April of 2009, a dear friend of mine went to a tarot card reader in Seattle. I’m not sure why she went, but when I saw her next, she was raving about him. Apparently, everything he had told her had been pretty spot-on. He’d even given her a whole play-by-play of what was happening in the next couple years. “You should go see him before you leave for Peace Corps!” she suggested. I always loved stuff like this, especially after such a glowing recommendation, so I decided the next time I was wandering around the Ave. I would go see him.

The “Ave.” is short for University Avenue, and is the main drag of UW’s college town. The whole ten-block stretch is pretty much brick-to-brick coffee shops, restaurants, and trendy boutiques. In spite of the sizeable student population and all their parent’s money, a lot of these businesses have a hard time staying afloat. So, shops are always coming and going, leaving the place in a constant state of flux. Unbelievably, one of the few shops that stayed put during my entire tenure at the University of Washington is a store called “Gargoyles.” They sell (almost exclusively) gargoyle statuettes. As you might imagine, in spite of the ridiculous amount of time I’d spent on the Ave. I’d never gone in this particular store. Though, I’d taken every opportunity I could since I discovered the place to comment about burgeoning, yet clandestine gargoyle statuette market. Naturally, this is where the tarot card reader worked.

So some bright afternoon I wandered in there and asked to have my tarot cards read. The woman behind the counter disappeared into the back of the shop, saying she’d have to see if “he felt like doing a reading.” No, he did not. “Come back tomorrow,” she said. Well, he’s certainly playing the part, I thought. Not the next day, but soon after I returned to the shop and asked, again, for a card reading. This time I was shown to a private corner of the store, amidst many a statuette, where a thin, middle-aged guy was type, type, typing away on his laptop. I guess you can’t expect mystics to always be mystical.

Anyway, we began the reading with a short interview. Many a skeptic have accused these “seers” of being nothing more than very observant fakes, deriving what seem like divine conclusions from minute details of a person’s appearance, conduct and speech. So I tried to hold the same posture and give the guy as little detail about my life as possible. I did tell him I was a student and that I was joining the Peace Corps. At that point I didn’t know where I was going yet, but I didn’t tell him I had requested Africa. I can’t remember too clearly what he said about my past and present, but I do remember thinking it was completely right. He said that the program I was in suited me and I was doing very well. He said I was happy and that life was going well, except for one dysfunctional relationship. (It was true, I was mid-falling out with a friend.) I asked him how to repair the relationship and he told me to just let it go. “This friend is going to betray you,” he warned. “After this year you only see her once more, but at that point you will be on such different paths, your friendship will be over.” Still true, though I haven’t seen her.

After the past and present, he moved on to the future. This should be easy enough, I thought. He’ll tell me that Peace Corps will be hard at first, but I’ll get used to it, succeed, finish my two years and come back to the States and land my dream job. Nope. Here’s what he said: You will go to a very difficult country like Burkina Faso. He used the words impoverished and worn-torn. At first, you will really like it and do well, but after four months you will lose your footing and never really get it back. You will struggle a great deal with questions of inequity and suffer a lot. Finally, after a year and a half you will leave the first place and go to someplace new where you will find the work you will do for the rest of your life.

This shocked me—mostly because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear—that Peace Corps would be the adventure of my life. So, let’s break it all down: I wouldn’t use the word “war-torn” to describe Niger, but it is impoverished and very similar to Burkina Faso. As for having a hard time, when I first got to Peace Corps, I was just as happy and at ease as ever. During my first few months in Gotheye, I would walk around the village with this amazing sense of “how luck am I?” I was having such an amazing time, I decided a thousand times the tarot card reader must have been full of shit. What struggles? I thought. Sure I was adjusting and had bad days, but overall was very happy. When we were consolidated in November 2009 and I was evacuated from Gotheye I reread the entry I made in my journal after visiting the tarot card reader. (I wrote it all down as a way to verify I didn’t change the details around in my head to make his prophecy seem truer.) I had forgotten he’d said I would like it at first and start to struggle only after the first few months, so I about lost it when I read the words (there in my own hand writing) “you will like it for the first four months, and then in NOVEMBER you will lose your footing and never get it back.”

Everyone I told about this warned me not to let his words become a self-fulfilling prophecy in which I was told I would be miserable, and so let myself be miserable. I was also determined to be happy and successful, so for my part, I did everything I could to make life in my second village work. I certainly did struggle with questions of inequality, but not in the oh-my-gosh-everyone-here-had-nothing-and-I-have-so-much way. I mean, that did cross my mind, but what I was essentially obsessed with during my time in Golle were two things: why did I get such a bad site; and how come everyone is doing better work than me? Whenever a friend did a successful project, it made me feel so inadequate. When I visited other friends’ sites I always noted the things they had that made their life easier. This is not a new thing for me…in fact, I would say it is one of my fundamental character flaws. But before Niger, I had never had to face (with such the painful frequency and proximity) my inability to always be the best. So, yes I suffered and struggled with questions of inequity.

At the point in my service when I took the PCVL position and moved to Dosso, I wondered a couple of things. First, if this was my big move, how come the tarot card reader hadn’t told me I would move from my first village too? He’d only mentioned one move. Second, what life work would I find as the PCVL? The same week I had been in country a year and a half, we were evacuated. No, I haven’t found my life’s work in Senegal.

The only other thing he told me, which apparently had not come true is that I would meet the love of my life here in Africa…but he said “in the next one to three years,” so I’ve still got until April of 2012… That’s the story. Even after everything, I, myself, am still not sure what to make of it …mostly because I’ve been in Senegal two whole months and still haven’t found my life’s work. But such is the human mind that it always tries to rationalize the unexplainable and remain in control.

April 11th, 2011

So, before I begin this entry, let me just say that I am definitely more upbeat than the last time I wrote. I’ve had a really positive couple of weeks and am significantly less inclined to lie down on random sidewalks. Don’t worry.

Also, I know you’re all probably very interested in what I’m doing now, in Senegal. (I promise to write one of those entries soon) but lately I’ve felt compelled to write once more about Niger. As I’m sure I will for a long time, I’m still reflecting on my time there and how it changed me and I’ve reached some conclusions I want to share. Quick note: I talk about Niger in this entry as basically being empty and horrible…and I feel weird about that because the place is so full of wonderful, loving people, rich culture/traditions, and interesting places. But, in this instance when I say, “Niger” I am referring more to my 18 months there, my work, and the actual landscape, than the country as a whole/its people.

But let me first say:

St. Louis is simply irresistible. It’s comfortable year round; the streets are significantly cleaner than any others I’ve seen in Africa. The island on which I live thrives with cutesy restaurants, charming hotels, historical landmarks, and handicraft shops. Fresh produce is everywhere. There is a grocery store mere blocks from my house and a café with wireless and creampuffs. The beach is just a short stroll away. I mean, there are actual, goddamned horse-drawn buggies that haul tourists from one end of the island to the other. St. Louis is no South of France, but it is definitely easy to like.

Niger wasn’t. Niger was blistering hot, without apparent charm, dusty, dirty, and largely empty. The first year I was there, I spent as much time hating that country as I did loving it. The Sahel took on the persona of a difficult, quirky relative: often infuriating, sometimes disarming, but always someone you love to hate. During that first year, my calls home were infused with an it’s-so-horrible-it’s-funny sarcasm. I remember thinking too often, why would anyone ever come here? –a thought made more pronounced by sparse offers of loved ones to visit.

As much as I joked about it, a lot of the time I spent in Golle felt vaguely like serving a prison sentence. In spite of my adventures in my village, it was strangely painful to stay in there. I was always counting the days until I got to leave my site for the regional capital, cold soda, and other volunteers. Besides the lack of amenities in Golle, it became clear I would not be able to establish any meaningful collaboration with the mayor’s office. Other projects were slow to follow, and believe me, not having work is impossibly difficult for Americans—most of all me.

Of course, the painful stagnation that enveloped my first year of service disappeared when I took the new position in Dosso, but I was there for such a short time, living in Dosso is not what I will remember when I think back to Niger. I will remember myself, alone—lost in a flat, endless landscape.

When I left for Niger, I remember the excitement I felt at the prospect of spending two years in the desert—an intensely spiritual place (according to many important books I had read). So imagine my grave disappointment when I deplaned to discover the desert was nothing more than a red line butting up against a grey sky. I stuck up my nose at the stark horizon and spent my time day dreaming about the fullness of the Seattle skyline. I thought Niger was ugly and uninspiring. But, what slowly I realized over eighteen months was that one of Niger’s greatest treasures is its unapologetic sparseness. There is no luxury of abundance to soften the edge of reality, no noise to drown out a spiritual warzone: me.

Before Niger, I had always imagined personal transformation to be a fun, inspiring process…like stretching muscles. It’s slightly uncomfortable, but invigorating, gratifying and most of all, easy. What I got in Niger was no pleasant, bendy, oh-I-get-it-now experience. It was more like a deafening, terrorizing dissection of my life that I couldn’t stop any more than I could hold back the dust storms or the downpours: “Why am I not more productive? Why aren’t I better at this? Why aren’t I better at everything? Why can’t I change everything? Why did I make so many mistakes? I wasn’t I kinder, better, smarter, stronger? What am I doing wrong? Why isn’t everything easier? Why isn’t anything easy? How will I ever get through this?” And, many of the most painful questions I can’t even begin to articulate.

But, here’s the question: how did so much pain and apparent emptiness leave me so happy and full?

All of this to get you to read following quote, which (for me) best describes what Niger was. It comes from “The Prophet” a small book written by Kahlil Gibrin, given to me by my dear friend Nick.

“Joy is your sorrow unmasked. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain… When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again into your heart and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, ‘Joy is greater than sorrow,’ and others say, ‘Nay sorrow is the greater.’ But I say unto you they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep on your bed.”

The desert carved a hole in me that the love of my villagers, Peace Corps friends, and land rushed in and filled. The pain of Niger’s emptiness, the heat and the sand, polished me—made me better. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I would do over in a heartbeat.

March 26, 2011

Yesterday was Friday. I was walking home from work and afternoon errands, and a mere two blocks from my house I was so overcome by hunger, exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, and nostalgia that I seriously felt I could not take another step. My first impulse was to just sit down on the sidewalk, and, in a moment of deep self-indulgence, I really considered doing it. The concrete seemed so sunny and friendly. Why not just sit there and wait for some kind of solution to find me?

I didn’t sit. I kept walking, mostly because I knew that sitting on a sidewalk would in no way make me less hungry. Nevertheless, I am still a bit awestruck by such an intense feeling of I-can’t-go-on. Part of the problem is that I have started running again, and—out of shape as I am, all the exercise makes my legs feel like they are made of jelly. It was also a Friday, after a week of work at the Talibe center, where I split my time between tedious data entry and feeling deeply inadequate, mostly because of my lack of language. I am throwing myself into learning French and Wolof as best I can, but learning a language takes time and communication is difficult. That morning had been especially frustrating, as I had spent at least an hour watching my boss edit my beautiful, equation-driven Excel spreadsheets with hunt-and-peck typing and a hand calculator. Explaining Excel is hard in French.

The nostalgia is easy enough to understand. I miss Niger, and my friends. (I think about you all the time.) I miss being the pro, the old blood, the wizened sage.

The anxiety stems from a combination of boy-troubles and the fact that, with regular Internet access, I am able to spend several hours a day reading the news. Though there is a great deal of unrest in Northern Africa, things are stable in Senegal, minus a few some anti-government protests. I can’t pinpoint the one crisis that is making me so uneasy, but I’ve realized the single greatest psychological impact the Peace Corps has had on me is that I am constantly anticipating the next disaster: site closure, coup d’état, faulty latrine, crazy landlord, friends dying, evacuation. Things never stay settled for long. We live in a constant state of flux.

Here’s the thing, though: Really, my time in St. Louis is going very well. I don’t LOVE my life here, but, walking around the cute colonial streets, I feel like I really COULD. It’s beautiful, comfortable, and I feel like my work at the talibe center will eventually be very fulfilling. The fact is I’ve been flung back in time to September 2009, when I was first adjusting to my site in Niger. I barely spoke Zarma and really had no idea what I was doing. I constantly questioned my decision to join the Peace Corps, was agonized by the fact my days weren’t caulked full of clearly meaningful, gratifying, baby-saving work.

I’ve forgotten how my first months in Niger were peppered with debilitating frustration and doubt, as well as glorious little triumphs that filled me with such a light of joy and clarity. And now here I am, the new kid again, suffering the same extremes: landlady scolds me + so-and-so doesn’t understand what I’m saying = I have a bad morning and question why I’m even here; later, a cute, so-shy-he-can-barely-look-at me talibe does a Winnie the Pooh puzzle with me + I say something sassy in French = I feel like a million bucks and daydream about living in Africa for the rest of my life.

You’d think that things would be easier the second time around. I think that too, and I think that thinking is making it harder. In other words, as a Peace Corps savant, master-integrater and language learner I wonder: I’ve been here three whole weeks, why are things easy yet? Also, I need to remember I don’t even have the strong support network of volunteers I developed in Niger. I’m sure I will find good friends here too, but I’m just getting started. And until I get to a point where I am comfortable with the language and established in my post, I need to resist all urges to sprawl on the sidewalk and wait for the end to come.

March 5, 2011

Right now I am sitting in a third-floor, sunny apartment overlooking the Atlantic. It’s warm, but not hot; and while the apartment isn’t exactly clean, the view more than makes up for it. I’m in St. Louis (San Louie, in French) Senegal—not to be confused with St. Louis (Saint Louis, in English), MO. Even though I’m sure St. Louis, MO is very nice, I am more excited about things happening here in Senegal—this is my new post.

(It's ok if you're jealous)

First, let me tell you a little about the city I will be living in. St. Louis was the colonial capital until Senegal gained independence in 1960. It is located in Northwest Senegal, where the mouth of the Senegal River meets the ocean. The city itself splits its 200,000 residents between the mainland and an island, reachable by bridge. Several bird reserves and a bunch of postcard-worthy beaches also surround the city.

As for weather, St. Louis only has two seasons, the rainy season from June to October, characterized by heat, humidity and storms, and the dry season from November to May, characterized by cool ocean breeze and dust from the Harmatten winds. Basically, it’s great weather year-round, never experiencing the stifling heat of the Sahel.

I look out the window and I can see palm trees, in front of turquoise water and a beautiful sunset.

Also St. Louis

What about my job? I’m going to be working on the island with a Senegalese NGO called Enfance Claire. Enfance Claire’s mission is to provide services to “Talibes" (pronounced tal-EE-bays) Koranic students sent from the bush to study with a marabout (a Koranic authority). As part of their studies, the children are sent to the streets everyday to beg for food in order to learn humility. Unfortunately, often times the marabouts do not have enough money to feed their students at all and the children end up spending all their time on the street begging. In these cases, the children may stay with the teacher for years only learning to recite several Koranic verses, without understanding their meaning. The children rarely learn to actually read and write Arabic and, since they are not home helping their families farm, do not learn any practical skills. After three or four years of studying the Koran, the student may return home to attend public school, but more often they end up as adults without any skills or knowledge to maintain a livelihood.

In other cases, if the marabout is corrupt, he will send his students to beg, and then collect their earnings at the end of the day. Many students are beaten or punished for not bringing back a large enough sum, and so eventually run away. The Human Rights Watch estimated 90% of the homeless children in Dakar are former Talibes.

Talibe in Dakar

It is important to point out that not all marabouts are corrupt. What’s more, in recent years parents have started sending their children to Koranic school only on the weekends or holidays. This modernized system allows children to gain both a formal and religious education. Also, it ends the tradition of sending a child away from his or her family to study the Koran; this way a student still has the support and care of his or her family.

I think this is a very positive change. My language trainer, Sakhir, was former talibe and while he openly condemn the old practices and corrupt marabouts, he is sending is daughter to Koranic school everyday after school. (Girls enrolling in Koranic school is also a recent phenomenon.)

Nevertheless, the problem of marabouts abusing, exploiting and neglecting their students remains. In St. Louis (remember SAN Lou-EE, not SAINT Lou-IS), there are an estimated 30,000 homeless/begging children. So, as I said before, Enfance Claire works to provide these children with basic services. For example, their office doubles as a drop in center where the children can shower and play, but the organization also offers programs to provide counseling, enroll kids in public school, and to provide them with vocational and life skills training.

I’m not sure what my job will be exactly, but I have a meeting with the organization and my Peace Corps supervisor on Monday to figure that out. My best guess is that I will work to improve certain programs, while at the same time trying to provide some over all managerial support.

Housing is still up in the air too, but it’s look like I will have my own apartment. (This is very exciting news.)

In other news, the rest of training went well, largely because Hailey and I discovered a hotel with wireless and a pool mere minutes from our houses. I fell into a comfortable routine with my homestay family: breakfast, class, lunch, class, afternoon walk/run/internet time, dinner, bed. The cement-block house was very comfortable, even if the neighborhood—full or partially constructed homes—gave off a wild-west, ghost-town vibe. We chatted and joked a fair amount, but whenever the power was on, the mother (a widow and her four kids) were always squatted in front of their TV. Also, after having lived with five different families/neighborhoods in Niger, I just don’t have the let’s-be-really-good-friends energy I used to.

I must say, I’ve developed a much stronger dislike of MTV since coming to Senegal. Why does that have to be the one channel broadcasted around the world to represent America? It’s pretty embarrassing to be sitting with a conservative Muslim family while they watch a 17-year-old girl talk about her sex addiction. Granted, this is what the family chose to watch thereby sort of excusing the programming, but I was still embarrassed—especially since the family kept asking if I knew the people on the screen.

Besides MTV, the family’s familiarity with western culture made the homestay easier. In the evenings, I would sit around with the four kids and we would all do our homework together. My host mom was completely understood why I would want to spend entire afternoons swimming and using the Internet. And, I swear to Allah, the family slept in on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Funny how I never noticed my families not sleeping in in Niger, but such a small detail so Senegal makes it seem infinitely more like America. Also, unlike my families in Niger, this family was less timid about interacting with me, while at the same time still very respectful of my privacy. The mother would ask me questions about my life in America and Niger. The kids would correct my French grammar and play catch with me. (The kids here wear clothes and have toys!)

The food was amazing too! Sorry Niger, Senegal’s got you beat. Rather than just millet pate and sauce every night, the Senegalese eat a lot of fresh fish and vegetables on rice or couscous. They also make an amazing lemon, onion sauce with chicken and an equally amazing peanut sauce on rice. For breakfast, I would just eat a piece of a baguette with Nescafe, but would supplement that with a mid-morning snack of yogurt mixed with grain, which you could buy on the side of the road.

All in all this was one of the best homestays I’ve ever had. The only fly in the ointment was the minor difficult I had with the family’s toilet. Now…after having spent nearly two years in Africa, I can poop just about anywhere, which is to say, I have low toilet standards. So, as I expected, I was perfectly comfortable with the family’s Turkish toilet (see image). That wasn’t the problem. The problem was I kept accidentally dropping things in the toilet, and then being forced to fish them out.

Turkish Toilet

The first time it happened, I dropped a bar of soap in. I was trying to wash my hands and have the water go down the drain, but this is trickier than it sounds since there is no faucet. So, I had to pour the cup of water with one hand, while clutching the large bar of soap in the other. And, you know, soap is slippery.

I know what you’re thinking: what was so special about this bar of soap that I felt the need to rescue it from the six inches of poop water it rested in. The answer is: nothing. But…if I left it there, my family would surely discover the soap in short order. And I don’t think I would have survived the why-is-there-soap-down-the-toilet conversation. So, I stood there for a moment, gave a grim nod to the toilet and did what had to be done. I laughed about it later with Hailey, but mostly because I told her the story after she used the soap in question to wash her hands.

Funny as this incident is by itself, another bar of soap was down the toilet within a week. And then the cap to my water bottle… But the real winner was dropping my cell phone down the toilet. It fell out of my jeans pocket when I was taking a shower in the next stall over. This was much more traumatic than any of the previous incidents as there was clearly a turd (not mine) floating next to the phone (mine). But that phone cost me money, dammit! So I DID WHAT HAD TO BE DONE. After this, phone went through a very stringent decontamination regiment, involving water, q-tips and a lot of bleach…but I still hold the thing and inch or two away from my mouth when I talk.

Is this all an over-share? This is my life. Plus, Hailey and Sakhir thought it was hilarious.

Other than that, the only really exciting thing I’ve done is to participate in the West African Intramural Softball Tournament (WAIST). This is not just a Peace Corps thing, but rather a three-day event that brings expats, NGO workers, embassy staff, and PCVs from all over west Africa together.

Peace Corps volunteers seem to have a different idea of what the tournament should entail than the other participants…as in they play in costumes and not by the rules, so the tournament is organized to insolate the rest of the participates from Peace Corps as long as possible. Thus, in the beginning PCVs only playing other PCVs.

Since there were only eight of us, Niger Refugee couldn’t be it’s own team. This turned out to be a good thing in the end, because we were grouped with other volunteers from Cape Verde. The Capeverdians were all super cool (they brought capes). Together…we developed an unbeatable team chemistry that allowed us to win our division! Though, as I suggested above, the games weren’t really softball games at all. In our first match, we played a Peace Corps Senegal team dressed up as “Hot Cops.” There was a lot of thrusting. Also, they had at least 20 outfielders, and the hambugler kept stealing second base—I mean, actually picking up the base and running a way with it. Our team was accused of being too competitive, because for our first game we were all sober (at 8:30 am) and actually tried to win with the same effort you might see in a high school P.E. class. Though we did play one or two “too competitive” Peace Corps teams as well.

Note the "Hot Cop" on first

I score two runs.

Unfortunately, the Niger group couldn’t stay for the last day of games, because we had to return for language classes. This was also a blessing in disguise, as the rest of our team reported to use they were destroyed 31 to three by a bunch of really competitive high school students. Also…our team tried to play the game on three hours of sleep. No problem.

WAIST sounds like a big shitshow…and in a lot of ways it was. But it was also really amazing to see how much creativity PCVs put into their costumes, how much fun PCVs can have together, and to have the opportunity to get to know volunteers from other countries. For all the shenanigans, I had a lot of amazing conversations with other volunteers about the work they were doing, what life is like in their country, and the commonalities of our experience. All in all, it was a good time.

February 7, 2011

As soon as I arrived in Dakar, I immediately felt washed with relief. I’d traveled thousands of miles, was still several countries away from my Nigerien home, but somehow felt I was back on familiar ground. We deplaned directly onto the tarmac, but were forced to ride little, air-conditioned buses 50 yards to the airport entrance—same as Niamey and something I’d always found amusing. Same overwhelming heat. Same style of sign on top of the terminal announcing the airport’s name. At the door and though customs, I was blatantly cut and had to push to keep my spot in line. Yes. I am back in West Africa.

Getting to the Casablanca airport from Rabat is—in itself—another hilarious story. Somehow, in spite of the fact Peace Corps usually gets its volunteers to the airport tragically early, our car had departed nearly 40 minutes late from the hotel and we were under serious pressure to make our flight.

Team Senegal Leaving Morocco

The eight of us transferring to Senegal half-joked Sylvia would send us home for missing our flight. No one believed it, but after a week of her constantly reminding us we should consider our transfers purely speculative until she said so[1], I worried missing the flight might make things more annoyingly complicated.

We grew more and more tense as the drive continued. Sweaty hands gripped the velour seats as we peered into the darkness for helpful road signs. I asked for the time at increasingly shorter intervals. We strategized how to most efficiently maneuver through the airport. You know, the usual useless impatience…

The Moroccan chauffer, apparently, did not share our stress. After hitting then subsequently infuriating a Moroccan motorcyclist at the beginning of the drive (it was more of a tap really), he had continued at a vigilant, borderline inert pace. At a certain point in the drive, he took a turn so slowly my friend Hailey thought we had broken down. Since none of us spoke French, we debated at length how to ask the driver to go faster. Yeah…actually he spoke English too…

Our minivan pulled up to the airport curb approximately 15 minutes before check-in for our flight ended. In an attempt at stratigery, I was sent ahead to figure out where we were supposed to check-in while the rest of the team unloaded our inordinate amount of luggage. In the three minutes I spent running around the airport antechamber, I learned nothing. But, I did make it back to the doorway in time to see a flustered Minnie try and push her entire luggage cart (with baggage) through the mental detector. I apparently missed Shelby capsizing her cart when making a particularly sharp turn.

I’m not going to give you a play-by-play of the rest of our journey through the airport, but some of the highlights include:

- Eight Americans stampeding toward the check-in counter with their overburdened luggage carts. - Eight Americans having to unpack and repack overweight bags, thereby fully monopolizing the area in front of our (and at least three other) check-in counters. - A quick side trip to a completely different part of the airport to pay for our overweight baggage. - Going through customs in French, in spite of the fact none of us actually speak French. - A very stressful last push to make it to the gate in time. - Sitting on-board the plane for an hour, waiting to take off.

So now I’m here. In Senegal. Learning French. Living with my fifth Peace Corps host family.

Here’s the plan: The other seven Niger transferees and I are going to go through four weeks of language training while staying in a homestay family. We are spread across three different villages, based on the language we are learning. Hailey, a third-year volunteer, and I are staying in Thies (pronounced Chez). After two weeks of French, we’re going to switch to learning Wolof—the principal local language in Senegal. We have class everyday in the morning and study time in the afternoon.

Our language trainer, Sakhir, is a rockstar, though slightly goofy and uncoordinated such that he always looks like he is walking in sand. He has worked for the Peace Corps for the past ten years and so is a total pro at accommodating Western learning styles (which makes things easier for everyone.) I asked him the other day how to tell someone nicely you think they are lying. His reply was, “You say they are telling the truth.” (In Niger there were one or two culturally appropriate ways to softly call someone out. Apparently, it is not the same in Senegal.) He also almost fell of his chair laughing when I told him the story of how I fell in my latrine.

Anyway, after arriving, I talked with the country director, a retired CEO from the Pacific Northwest, about my new post in Senegal and what work I will do. He laid out about seven options—all partnerships with NGOs—for Hailey and me to pick from. We told him what we were most interested in and he disappeared back to Dakar to get more detailed job descriptions. Right now I’m waiting for those before deciding where I want to go. All I can say for now is I am likely to be in either Dakar or St. Louis, both of which are major cities and have beaches. I will have an apartment and an amazing (AMAZING) job. I’m not even exaggerating my excitement as a way to cope with leaving Niger. I am genuinely overwhelmed with excitement for my new position.

We are going to finish with training February 26th and start work at our new sites in early March. Inshallah. Really, inshallah. Until then, I’m in Thies.

And Thies is good. It’s actually a pretty hopping town. In a bit of synchronicity…or irony…the hippest nightclub in Thies is called “The Dosso,” which I’m sure has more going on in it the entire city in Niger. I haven’t been yet. Full report later.

So, I know it’s deeply unfair and unwise to compare Senegal to Niger, but such thoughts come unprompted. Let’s see if I can do it in one sentence: Senegal is more developed, more westernized, more ethnically diverse, more filled with tourists, more shaped liked a pac-man; less conservative, less Muslim, less friendly, less landlocked; smaller, richer, wetter, mosquito-ier, prettier, yet equally overrun with trash. Also, there are pigs here. DAMN! Two sentences.

So, minus the pigs, which are huge and scare me, life here is pretty plush compared to Niger. In fact, I estimate that Senegal is ten times more developed than Niger. Here’s how I know: The other day a kid on the street asked me for a thousand francs. In Niger, they never asked for more than a hundred. Yeah! Take that Social Science. I live by Bruce Science, though the United Nations Index of Development may beg to differ.

There's A Beach!

But seriously, it is plain to the Niger-adjusted eye that Senegal is doing well for itself. Even in small village shops have storefronts and houses are made of concrete. Diarrhea isn’t the number one killer of children here, as in Niger, but rather Malaria, which suggests villages have better access to clean water. There are grocery stores outside the capital. Wireless is everywhere. People have health insurance! Hailey’s homestay family has a computer. …and I haven’t even seen Dakar, which is the most developed part of the country. Also, I spent last Sunday laying on the beach under a palm tree and swimming in the Atlantic. Niger was all sand and no beach, if you know what I’m saying.

Obviously it’s not fair to compare Senegal to Niger based on the one city I’ve spent time in, Thies. I’m fairly certain the analogy “Thies is to Dosso, as the Senegalese bush is to the Nigerien bush” doesn’t hold, which is to say small villages in Senegal probably struggle just as much as those in Niger. But, the urban centers of Senegal are leagues ahead of what Niger has to offer.

I’ll give you more toilet anecdotes and homestay insights later. I'm trying to make more frequent, shorter blog posts, which is possible now that I have regular access to Internet...

[1] (and she never said so)

Inside my house in Golle.

The kids of my family digging a trench so my concession would drain...

This is Benin, actually.

One night of bed bugs...

(not my back)

Katies with Giraffes

My Family's House in Golle

Henna Disaster

Souleymane at Obama's Truckstop

VATs with Tondi

My Dosso Family

February 3, 2011 WARNING: This blog entry is a critique of various politics and processes within the Peace Corps and is therefore boring. It is also full of my opinions, which I find largely hazardous. Further, let me preface this entry by saying, I’m not trying to give Peace Corps bad press. I wrote this largely as catharsis. After everything I still think the Peace Corps is a good, valuable program. I love being a volunteer and would enthusiastically encourage others to apply. I also want to point out I was a bit (completely) emotional during this conference and so recognize I am less than objective when talking about it. Finally, I want to say, in spite of my frustration with the conference, every member of the transition conference staff was nothing but sympathetic, respectful, and honest (though artfully evasive) during our time together. No one behaved badly. But that doesn’t change the fact the conference was bad. Here’s why: Things move slowly out in the Peace Corps world. So, when trying to find new posts for evacuated volunteers, it takes time (like more than a few hours) for a country director to verify a post is ready or investigate potential sites. The transition conference I attended, however, gave country directors one weekday, eight work hours (plus a weekend, but nothing happens on the weekend in Peace Corps) to find posts for transfers. Volunteers were given four days to simultaneously close their service, see a Peace Corps shrink to process the evacuation, decide whether or not to proceed with Peace Corps, find out if they could proceed with Peace Corps, and come up with a number of contingency plans in case something or everything didn’t work out. (Please note: closing service is a long process involving medical exams, lots of paper work, career and readjustment sessions. The sessions alone normally last a week. The volunteer then has three months to make next-steps plans and prepare to readjust to America, which is widely acknowledged to be the hardest part of Peace Corps.) You may ask, why the rush? According to the Peace Corps, they didn’t have enough money to host a longer transition conference. But, here’s the thing: I understand the Peace Corps doesn’t have an unlimited budget and things are especially tricky right now under continuing resolution; but how can the Peace Corps expect its volunteers to remain committed to the institution and thus, to their work and thus, the very idea of Peace Corps, when the Peace Corps is seemingly apathetic towards its volunteers? Bottom line: The Peace Corps should have given ALL interested, medically-cleared volunteers at least some option to transfer to another country and finish his or her service. Even if it took time. Even if it cost money. What actually happened: The conference was rushed, making the process exponentially more stressful for volunteers and preventing country directors from being able to find direct transfer posts. Whenever and wherever possible volunteers were discouraged and disqualified from direct transferring. The process of granting direct transfers itself was painfully bureaucratic and not at all transparent. In spite of the enduring commitment displayed by the 98 Niger evacuees, the transition staff made it abundantly clear to us they would rather we just go home and start the 27 months over if we wanted to continue with Peace Corps. Finally, the Peace Corps wasted an absurd about of money lodging 98 volunteers, plus staff in a super fancy hotel while telling us they didn’t have enough money to host a longer conference. A longer conference would have made more transfers possible. Balls. So, now let’s back up and I will tell you how why I think all the things I think. But first… …What was the Transition Conference? The Transition Conference I attended in Morocco was lead by a team of Peace Corps savants from all over the world. They wrote out goals for the conference. I remember there were three of them… Several administrative whosits and whatsits officers came from D.C.; medical professionals from Morocco and already-evacuated Mauritania were there to take our blood and look at our poop. The proverbial feather in the team’s cap came all the way from southern Africa—we’ll call her Sylvia. Sylvia is a Peace Corps evacuee herself, and now the country director of Swaziland. She was very no-nonsense and likable, minus her overuse of dramatic pauses in presentations. She seems to have earned a name for herself as Peace Corps’ go-to, lead-a-transition-conference woman. Now I see she really earned a name for herself as the go-to, lead-a-transition-conference-for-cheaper-than-anyone-else-can woman. And of course, several staff members from Niger were there, including the country director, Valerie, and our beloved Tondi, the training manager. (Note: except the country director’s thumbs up or thumbs down, the Niger staff was completely excluded from the transfer process.) My experience: I was “lucky” and left Niger on the first group flight, arriving in Morocco Friday. My group spent Saturday and Sunday taking care of medical exams and taking our first deep breaths since receiving the call. I got to see the ocean. I don’t know what I would have done without those two days to reorient myself outside the vacuum of the evacuation. The other group got to the hotel late Monday. It was then we were told in few words the Peace Corps didn’t have enough money to give all those who wanted them direct transfers and most of us were going home. It was then I understood Sylvia’s talent as a transition conference leader. Not only did she come across as (dramatic pause) empathetic, she managed our expectations in the same way you could say that iceberg managed the Titanic. Nonchalant, but decisive. Despondent as I was then, I now see how strategic it was to sink all our transfer hopes. After convincing us we were already on our way out the door, she made transferring and staying a PCV seem like something we should be lips-on-the-ground grateful for. I think this manipulation of perception made most of us forget the obvious: we already were PCVs. Yeah, that was Monday evening. Tuesday we closed our services. Wednesday afternoon we heard what our options for continuing service were. Thursday we had to tell the transition team our preferences. That afternoon, we heard whether or not we could stay or if we didn’t make the cut, and had to go home. Saturday by eleven AM, we had to be out of the hotel. Please rearrange your life in four days, while at the same time processing a major life trauma and saying good-bye to your principal support network…no big deal. What was this like? It was like being caught in a blinding, hotel-shaped vortex, in which my power to plan beyond the next day, sometimes the hour, was zapped away. It was one of the worst experiences of my life…up there with falling off the chairlift in ski school. I imagine everyone, like me, felt a thousand things at once: panicked, traumatized, horrified, alone, overwhelmed by the crowd, aching with hope for a transfer, inconsolable, needing to be consoled, heartbroken, cranky, anxious to seize our last hours together, and unbelievably exhausted. And, underneath it all, there was this vague “hum” of competition over who would get what post. Especially, we wondered which training class would get preference for new posts. Do they want the new kids who still have two years of service ahead of them or the old kids who have more experience? The different training classes had all been in-country for different amounts of time: 18 months, six months, and three months, plus a handful of third-year volunteers. Those in country three months were only in their villages for eight days before being evacuated. Naturally we all had very different reactions to the evacuation, but the one common thread amongst all the training classes was the resounding desire to continue with our service. Upon arriving in Morocco, I am aware of only four or five volunteers who were certain they wanted to close their service. We loved it. We wanted to stay. What bothers me: Rather than the staff being heartened by this display of commitment to the Peace Corps program and goals, whenever and wherever possible volunteers were discouraged and disqualified from direct transferring. Worse, somehow they made it seem like an honor and a privilege to remain what we already were, Peace Corps Volunteers. No matter the reason, there were some low blows: One of my friends wasn’t medically cleared because of a skin rash that would heal within a couple weeks. Another friend was disqualified because her lab tests would take too long for a direct transfer…as in they wouldn’t be done in four days. Yet another friend was in America when we got evacuated and wasn’t even given the chance to talk about direct transferring. It was clear during the “counseling sessions” we were being mentally screened. We had to get a positive recommendation from our old country director, who I love, but who’d only been in country six months. (I don’t think that’s enough time to make a life-changing recommendation for all 98 Niger volunteers.) Finally, in spite of the fact we’d all successfully passed the yearlong application process, we had to interview with a placement officer, which felt a great deal like interviewing for a job we’d already gotten. Not to mention the process of declaring our transfer preferences for transfer posts was a hilariously nonsensical display of bureaucratic rigidity. Let me ‘splain: When a volunteer joins Peace Corps she is assigned a number, which indicates her assignment area. For example, she might be assigned as a NGO developer and given the code 145. In spite of her strong public health background and the fact her work in Niger had nothing to do with NGO development, this volunteer can only work at posts with the same code. Keep in mind the codes assigned to posts are often as arbitrary as codes assigned to volunteers. So, basically, Peace Corps assigns a volunteer a code that has little to do with her qualifications and then, based on that code, assigns a volunteer to a post with the same code, which has little to do with the actual work the post will require. We had to limit our transfer preferences to posts that matched our codes. Sylvia told us (in so many words) the fires of hell would rain down upon us if we dared request a post that didn’t match our code. For many volunteers, no matching posts were offered. An example of how little sense this made: At my new post in Dosso, the Peace Corps had all but approved me to partner with an orphanage as my primary assignment. I, however, was not eligible for a post in Rwanda working with an orphanage because the codes didn’t match. I understand the Peace Corps needs ways to organize its volunteers and the work they do, but this kind of inflexibility boarders on stupidity. (Another fun quirk: administratively, the Peace Corps doesn’t recognize Morocco part of Africa.) After all that, the procedure for selecting who would be offered direct transfers was not at all transparent. No exaggeration: we gave them a list of our preferences and the transition staff locked themselves in a room and emerged four hours later with a list of transfers. To frustrate us further, if a volunteer who’d been offered a post decided he didn’t want to transfer after all, his post wasn’t offered to another interested, eligible volunteer. The really painful thing is, as volunteers, the Peace Corps constantly reminds of the commitment we’ve made. Our country director even handed out actual wallet-sized cards with a list of Peace Corps’ expectations for volunteers. Things like: you’re expected to serve for the full two years, you’re on duty 24/7, you’re obliged to present the Peace Corps positively, you must stay in your village as much as possible (this isn’t a vacation). They also ask us to be flexible: flexible when applying, flexible about when you go, flexible about where you go, flexible about the work you will do, flexible when adapting to the new culture, flexible when getting posts, flexible when moving posts, flexible when moving posts again because you have a crazy landlord, flexible when falling in latrines, flexible when being evacuated. And the truth is, we don’t mind. In spite of everything, I still think Peace Corps is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. But…after being so flexible and committed for 18 months…then arriving in Morocco and hearing the Peace Corps was likely to cut my service 9 months short (for others 21 months short) with seemingly little consideration, I had to ask, isn’t the Peace Corps willing to be flexible and committed to its volunteers? Rather than going the it’s-easier-and-cheaper-to-send-everyone-home-route, shouldn’t they have worked to find posts for these obviously committed volunteers? Every volunteer knows readjusting is cited as the hardest part of a Peace Corps service; but being sent home early is more than just emotionally disruptive. Imagine having to rebuild a life for yourself, including finding a job, apartment, a city to live in, etc. while facing no-longer-deferred student loans, and with a smaller readjustment allowance than you’d expected. (Please note: the Peace Corps does give returned volunteers one month of free heath insurance.) My point is cutting our service short is a big deal—both emotionally and financially disruptive. This is no small thing. Regarding volunteer care: to be clear, I do think in general the Peace Corps does enough for its volunteers. And I don’t mean “enough” as in they go above and beyond, can’t do more. Rather, I mean to say they do enough to keep going—they keep us healthy and safe and offer some career help afterwards. (Sorry ABC news, but I felt safer in Niger than I do in Seattle.) But, looking at how much the Peace Corps asks of its volunteers, I think they should add to its list of minimum commitments finding a way (in times like these) for volunteers to complete their tenure. Basically, I think the Peace Corps is obligated to uphold their end of the deal: two years. Again, let me concede accommodating every volunteer may not always be possible, but the Peace Corps staff should make their best effort. And, in our case, I don’t think that happened. The mismanagement of the transition conference grew more evident as time passed. Most volunteers recognize pretty quickly how ridiculous it was for the Peace Corps to cite the budget as a reason we couldn’t transfer while lodging and feeding 98 volunteers plus staff in a 200-USD-per-night hotel. We got catered snacks in between sessions; including fresh squeezed orange juice and artsy cookies. There was a gym and a spa. I enjoyed the hot baths, but would have been just has happy take cold showers at another country’s training site if it meant more people getting posts. Sylvia talked a lot, but one thing she didn’t tell us is: it is actually possible to find everyone posts if you are willing to wait more than four days. Yes, there is a direct relationship between time waited and available posts. If we’d been able to stay somewhere cheaper, longer, directors in other countries could had more than a day to find more posts for transferring volunteers. After arriving in Senegal, I heard many Peace Corps countries were scrambling to find posts for us, but just needed another 48 hours or so. Even more upsetting, I learned one country director who was already taking some direct transfers said, if only she’d known there were more volunteers wanting spots she could have taken more. One of my good volunteer friends was evacuated from a Peace Corps country before, and was given a direct transfer to Niger to finish his service. He ended up extending, only to be evacuated again from Niger. BUT, at his original transition conference everyone who wanted to (and was medically cleared to) finish his or her service was given the opportunity to direct transfer. It took four weeks, but I think the time was worth it. I know plenty of now Returned PCVs who would have been willing to wait. Hearing how obtainable posts really were just makes me feel as though the Peace Corps sees its volunteers as completely disposable. “Don’t worry about these volunteers, we can get new ones.” During the conference, I kept brainstorming jokes about the Peace Corps giving us paper cuts or kicking us in the shins, just in case they were looking to add injury to insult. I still haven’t come up with a good one. In the Peace Corps defense: Volunteers are eligible to start over, and for the newer kids that’s not such a pain. Also, they did invent a whole new process from transferring evacuated volunteers just for us. I won’t go into the specifics (boring), but let me say this creativity and flexibility did give more volunteers the chance to transfer. Also, a member of the transition staff told me I had the right to be angry. (Thank you, I am.) Also, the admin lady was very flexible about giving us cash in lieu of a plane ticket. Also, one of the shrinks recognized we were moving too quickly. Thanks. Nevertheless, I still found the conference to be manipulative, damaging, and rife with nonsense. It was like the transition staff filled a room with Peace Corps volunteers, stood in front of us, then told us they weren’t sure who would be selected to become Peace Corps volunteers. (I thought about putting last clause in active voice, but the transition staff really made it seem like getting a transfer would be an act of God. Sylvia talked a great deal about stars aligning as a reason for us getting a transfer, so I left it in passive.) Even when considering assignment codes, medical screening, general likeability and astrology, it’s still completely unclear to me why a lucky 30-some volunteers were offered transfers and the other 60-some were sent home. They are all great volunteers. I know some dedicated, highly qualified PCVs who were sent home. I just hope the process of deciding was more sophisticated than pulling names out of hat, though I’m fairly certain it was less just. We’ll never know; we weren’t in that room. What is clear is the Peace Corps just jaded a large number of volunteers who at one point were willing to set their lives aside to serve. Full disclosure: At the end of the conference, Sylvia handed out evaluations as a way for us to give feedback. I definitely forgot to fill mine out.

January 24, 2011

What the hell just happened? I have no idea. What I last remember is sleeping in at my house in Dosso. I was laying in bed on the red sheets I just found. Did I mention I got a new position? Did I mention I’d moved? After nearly a year in my second village, Golle, I decided to apply for an RVL (Regional Volunteer Leader) position, which required me to relocate to the regional capital, Dosso. I took the position in October, but have been so busy I hadn’t even had a chance to write about it. I’d agonized about leaving my family, but nothing was happening there. As Paul Simon sang, nothing but the dead were dying back in my little town.

So I’d moved. I was busy. The change of pace proved to me how much I like to be busy. I reached a new level of confidence with the language. I could navigate any Nigerien market, find my way across any stretch of the Sahel. It was cold season, so the weather was amazing. I was considering extending for a third year. I was home.

Then, I got a text message one Saturday morning from a new volunteer asking, “Is it true two French nationals were abducted from a restaurant in Niamey last night?” Immediately I got to the nearest Internet source and confirmed it. Two young Frenchmen had been kidnapped from a restaurant in Niamey…and not just any restaurant, “Toulusain”—a place Peace Corps volunteers frequented enough to nickname it, “Eb’s.” I’ve been to Eb’s often enough. It is just like any other bar in Niamey (same menu, same beer), but its popularity comes from its proximity to the Peace Corps hostel. It’s a five-minute walk. A fellow volunteer was supposed to be at the bar that night, but his plans fell though.

When I heard this and other details from the kidnapping, I though it was all over. How could Peace Corps possibly continue to operate when AQIM was bold enough to run jobs in a city volunteers spent a lot of time in? But then nothing happened. Niamey volunteers were given a curfew of 8 PM to 6 AM and asked to check in every day, but none of the steps of our “Emergency Action Plan” were activated. We weren’t “consolidated” to regional capitals as happened with the attempted kidnapping last November. We were on “standfast,” in which volunteers are not permitted to travel, but that was due to the local elections taking place. The Peace Corps office was uncommunicative as ever, but they aren’t stupid about safety. I knew if there were a threat, they would be taking action. So, as the days passed and nothing happened, I convinced myself the office had some sort of information that made it clear AQIM was not responsible for the kidnapping. Perhaps it was personal; one of the men abducted was about to get married to a local and rumor is her family didn’t approve.

Four days later (a day before my departure for a much-anticipated vacation), I slept in late. I had trouble getting out of bed in the morning since it was so cold (70 degrees?). When I did get up, I had a leisurely cream-of-wheat breakfast as I ran through my day in my head: write emails, pack, post office, market, organize shuttles. I was just getting ready to head out the door to start work when my phone rang. It was Walter, the Peace Corps medical officer. He said, “Are you with me? I am going to read you a statement from Peace Corps Washington…” I don’t remember the wording, but the message as clear: You’re being evacuated. You are leaving.

I wish I could say in that moment I grasped what I was losing, but I my first thoughts were more along the lines of: What do I pack? *$^#$&! I don’t get to go on vacation now. Who’s going to tell Seyni? Who already knows?

The worst part was the office requested we not call anyone until they did, so they could read the official statement. Not being able to talk about it, I spent the next forty minutes “packing,” a.k.a carrying items from one room to another in blank distraction until I broke down and went over to my neighbor’s house, Rebekah…also a PCV. Rebekah had just got the call. We stood there on her porch yelling profanities to no one for a while before deciding we had to call Seyni.

Seyni you may remember from earlier blog posts is the soul of team Dosso. He is the “Program Assistant” or “Driver,” but what he basically does is drive around the Dosso region and fix things for us. He rebuilds our houses. He brings us medicine. He resolves village conflicts. He puts you in contact with so-and-so, who is just the right person for your project. He has worked for Peace Corps for twenty-five years and was a dear friend to essentially every volunteer in the region. He was now out of a job.

When Seyni showed up at our houses, he was bright and ready for the day. I guess I wasn’t supposed to be the one to tell him, but I did. “They said we are going,” I said in Zarma. He knew immediately what I meant. I can’t pretend I knew what it was like for him to hear this news, but I know he didn’t eat for three days after hearing the news and he could hardly look anyone in the eye.

Knowing how slowly things move in Peace Corps, I wandered off to go email my family, thinking I’d have at least a few days before I left Dosso. I got a text message at noon that Wednesday saying I would leave Dosso the next morning and leave the country early, early Friday morning. I had less than 48 hours to pack and say good-bye, so I packed and said good-bye.

There wasn’t time to return to my village one last time. I couldn’t get a message to my scholarship winner or to the school director. I had to settle with a rushed phone call to my old landlord who cursed the bandits and assured me Golle was totally safe. “Come back here,” he said. “We’ll protect you. There’s no need to leave.” In fact, that’s what all the Nigeriens were saying, “Please, please don’t leave our country.” I cleaned out (ransacked) my house and spent the night at the hostel with the other volunteers. I don’t know of a single volunteer that slept that night.

Thursday was a blur. As part of my new job, I was responsible for helping to organize the evacuation of my region, so I was literally on the phone the whole day. Some volunteers, who hadn’t been in their villages when we got the news, were getting dropped off to pack and come back Friday. Others were getting picked up. Those leaving their villages had to get to Niamey in time to close bank accounts. We started at 5:30 AM and somehow (only Allah knows how) four cars managed to travel to pick up 25 volunteers from all over the region, drop off seven, and still make it to Niamey by four PM. My mom and sister, who know what it means to travel in Niger, will attest to how remarkable that is. I should mention, however, in a classic Nigerien moment, two of the cars got stuck in several feet of mud only an hour after leaving Dosso. They still made it.

The next thing I knew it was Thursday night and I was weighing my bags on the basketball court at the Niamey hostel. My entire training class once sang the national anthem on that court. Around me and in the hostel were mountains and mountains of clothes, food, knickknacks, books and God knows what else. My netty pot is still in there somewhere. The place looked like a war zone. I just kept thinking, how can we have so much that we can leave so much behind?

Again, I didn’t sleep. Did I ever eat? I don’t remember.

And then it was time to go. Forty-five disoriented, heart-broken Americans with overweight bags in a third-world airport is hilarious, by the way.

I got through airport security, sat down in one of the chairs to wait to board, and completely lost it. I was sobbing uncontrollably into my carry-on for about forty minutes. The reality had sunk in. I was leaving. I wasn’t coming back. This day, the day I finished my service in Niger, was something I had looked forward to plenty so much, especially as a new volunteer. It will be so great, I had thought during my first week of training, to finish my service. But this was so different.

After eighteen months in Niger, everything had happened to me. I survived training, fell in my latrine, was sprayed by cow diarrhea, survived a coup d’etat, moved four times, found a snake in my house, got my neighbor to club the snake, watch a neighbor have a seizure, watch a neighbor have a baby, got sick, got better, made friends, lost friends, carried babies, carried water, carried on. Everything else happened, why not the things that didn’t? (That’s quote from my favorite short story Here We Aren’t, So Quickly by Jonathan Safran Foer.) That’s exactly how I feel about my service; I feel like EVERYTHING happened to me. So, why not the things that didn’t? Why didn’t I ever go see the hippos? Why couldn’t I take that last vacation? Why didn’t I get malaria? Why couldn’t I leave on my own terms? Why couldn’t I leave on my own terms?

We flew to Morocco and were checked into a hotel. In a hilariously unfunny moment, Peace Corps Morocco (after 72 hours with no sleep) sat us all down and started recounting the history and culture of the region.

A few days later, after the other 50-something began the “transition conference,” or what I called the-worst-thing-ever conference. No one really understood when we were leaving Niger that our service was actually ending. We were being sent home. Transfers were offered to a select few, and volunteers were encouraged to re-enroll (start their 27 months over), but for the most part we were told, “Peace Corps doesn’t have enough money to keep you here or accommodate you. Go home.” Of the 27 volunteers in my training class, only four were offered direct transfers to other countries. One volunteer had been on vacation in America at the time and wasn’t even offered the chance to continue with her service. There was no conversation about it, just, “Sorry. You’re done.”

I don’t want to over-dramatize what it means to not be able to finish your service. Obviously, worse things have happened in the world…worse things have happened in Peace Corps. But this is so hard. With no time or preparation we are told to say good-bye to the people who have become our family, leave our homes, travel back to a strange, cold land and find jobs. No, thank you. I had to say good-bye to some of the best people I've ever known, some of the closest friends I've ever had. I feel like we went through a war together. This is the second time in my life my heart has been broken. (The first was because of a boy and I only bring it up to prove I know what it feels like.) My heart is broken. I am suffering a major loss. I am grieving. I’m not going back…

Obviously, the Peace Corps made the right decision to evacuate Niger. AQIM has now taken credit for the kidnappings and the people taken could have just as easily been Peace Corps volunteers. We couldn’t stay. You know, I read in an article in the Economist AQIM has only about 125 members for the entire Sahel region. How could they cause all that disruption? Jerks.

I feel like someone died.

And I was one of the lucky ones. Tomorrow, I am getting on a plane to finish my service in Peace Corps Senegal. Don’t ask me what work I will be doing, I really don’t know. Something about development. I stopped asking questions a while ago. I’m not going back to Niger.

The unlucky ones are making their way back to the states to start over. Some are traveling. Some are looking for jobs in Africa.

The really unlucky ones are still back in Niger…the Peace Corps staff, like Seyni, who are now out of work; George, the tailor who made 90% of his money working with Peace Corps volunteers; Omar who I bought all my jewelery from… At least as Americans, we have options. We always have options. Seyni will have to look for work as a driver, but with the Peace Corps pulling out so will many other NGOs. Where can he find work now that all the anasaras are leaving? What about Djibou our hostel guard? Or the ten members of the support staff at the training site who only had a regular income because of Peace Corps?

As complain-y as this entry is. I am feeling very positive about the next chapter of my life in Senegal. I mean, I'm scared out of my mind, but in a positive, upbeat way. There are many seasons to life, but change is better than no change. This is where I am supposed to be, and Allah will provide.

When my sister and mother came to visit Niger in July I asked them to collaborate to write a post for this blog. In part, this request was born from laziness (one less post for me to write!), but more so I was curious to see my life through fresh eyes. After a year and some months here, I've adjust to life in Niger. Things that once seemed outlandish and bizarre now fail to even catch my notice. Thus, I took advantage of this unique moment...

The following is what my sister wrote (with input from my mother) about our trip. I didn't edit it or (as of yet) even read it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am sure I will. (My sister is an amazing writer).

For your blog: First to address a rather glaring issue- the timing of this blog post. Here it is mid-December and I've just finished putting my thoughts down. Being a left-brained, organized, motivated person, it may come as a confusing surprise to many of you that it took me 4 months to write an account of visiting with my sister. Slowly but surely after my arrival back in Spokane, I began to realize I was seeing the world a little bit differently. I am much less worried about my housekeeping, returning phone calls (sorry, by the way...), working crazy hours, and generally having anxiety about anything that does not seem immediately life threatening. I have noticed that I feel much more relaxed about life, about my role in life, and my role in other people's lives. This is not to say that I've developed apathy towards life or my relationships, but rather a more persistent "What's the big deal?" mentality. I have no idea if this will stick, but what I am coming to realize now, months after returning home, that I did not realize while on my trip is the magnitude of what I experienced. During quiet and still moments of my day, with almost no exception my mind turns to my brief Africa-adventure. I think back to the smiles, the food, the dozens of marriage proposals, the look of astonishment on many faces at my behavior, my look of astonishment at the behavior of others. I believe it has taken me this long to write this account because, truthfully, I am not done gathering my own thoughts about it. When I describe my trip to my friends, I often feel at a loss for words. My fancy-pants left brain that so dutifully served me in the past isn't sure what to do with a culture so focused on right brain territory- the here and now. To describe my trip is, in many ways, to fracture it. How does one apply language to an experience so... well, experiential? At any rate, please understand the lengthy musing below in no way encompasses what it was like to briefly exist in Africa. I did my best to make it coherent but fully encourage all of you to go over there and try it out. I bet you'll like it. But before we dive into the recounting of the adventure that was Mom and Karin Visit Katie in Niger 2010, I'd like to ask you something. Do you know how to carry a bucket of water on your head? Have you ever filled a bucket to its very brim so that the only thing keeping it from overflowing is water tension, then bent down and heaved this bucket onto your crown for ease of carrying?

Or are you more likely to grasp the handle of said bucket with one or both hands, leaning way over to the side and using your hip joint to provide the momentum to shove the bucket forward? Does the very prospect of carrying a large bucket full of water leave you with an immediate assumption that you will be wearing most of the water before you get to your destination?

Maybe you're wondering why this is even an issue since, oh by the way, we have garden hoses now?

Then here's another question: Do you know how to wash your feet? If you use soap and water, you're on the right path, but how do you scrub? Do you sit or stand? Do you pour the water first and then lather on up or or you soap and pour at the same time?

These questions, and several hundred others, are things that I grappled with from the moment Mom and I landed at Niamey Airport in early July. Preparing for the trip, I was careful not to form any expectations. None. Zip. How does one even come to imagine how life will be for three weeks in Niger? This would be like imagining how life will be when we colonize Mars. It's a different world entirely. I nurtured this mindset, or lack of mindset, in the weeks before our trip- I focused on the 2 1/2 day trip to get from Spokane to Niamey. I thought about what I would pack. I thought about which medications to take. I thought about which legs of our journey we'd be asleep for. I thought about health insurance 'just in case'. Truly, my main concern was arriving at Katie's doorstep in one piece, then going from there.

Needless to say, diving into Africa headfirst without expectations on where, who, what, why, when, and how, is still setting yourself up for surprise. Everything I know about the way the world works, from gender roles, to thunderstorms, to the way you wash your feet, does not apply in Africa. My name didn't even apply in Africa- for three weeks, I trained my head to look up at the name "Wassila". Which begs another question- on a trip where the rules of the world do not apply, how does one blog about it? In the lines that follow, please forgive any confusing or erroneous messages. Please forgive the sheer magnitude of this report. And certainly please forgive any lack of thorough explanation- that's kind of how it goes. Our Arrival:

Mom and I landed without much ado, or rather no more ado than one can expect from traveling for 60+ hours straight. We were hungry, sleepy, cramping, and more than a little dazed. The Niamey airport is a small one, comprised of little more than a gate, baggage claim, and main lobby with customs. Oh, and it was really hot. Suddenly, we were in Niger.

The ride into Niamey was informative. Trash lined the streets and most travelers were pedestrians walking the dirt paths into the city in the early morning hours. We passed dozens of shacks made from tin, palm leaves, or mud. After a few days in Niger, this scenery became typical, but Katie and I had a conversation about the shock most Westerners feel during that first drive from the airport to the Peace Corps Hostel. The sheer level of poverty is almost inconceivable. Then you look down at your Western clothes, the camera in your hand, the shoes that cost you $30.00 and think to yourself, "What exactly do I have to complain about?"

Our time in Niamey was both jam-packed and totally relaxed. There is a saying I learned on my visit; "Americans have watches. Nigerians have time." We did a lot of different things- eating out, going to the market, visiting the Musee- but the way these things came about usually went like this:

"Let's go visit This Thing today!"

"That sounds great!"

"Oh wait, we can't. It's closed/we don't have transportation/it's too hot."

"Okay let's do something else!" Waiting is a sport in Niger. We would arrive at places with ten or fifteen minutes to spare, then wait for hours for the actual event. Things don't happen at a specific time. They happen when they happen. What time will the bus leave? Soon. When will our passports be ready? Soon. Everything is soon. As in, sooner or later. What's your hurry, Anasara? Do you have other places to be?

As I look back on the number of 'touristy' things we did, we really fit a lot in. But the real adventure was just being there. Walking around on African soil, talking to Africans, smelling African food, watching African lifestyle were all a sight to be had in themselves. As much of our time was, as Katie said, "Hurrying up so we can wait," we had a lot of time to observe how Nigerians live. Some highlights from our first week: Giraffes! Real, tall, funny-looking, vegetarian, giraffes. I can honestly say that never in my life, before deciding to go to Africa, did I think I'd go run around with a bunch of giraffes. Katie hired a driver to take her, Mom, and I out to a Giraffe preserve, where the last of the wild Nigerian giraffes live. We drove about an hour out of Niamey to a small, open structure with a little sign that said something like: "Giraffe preserve". We hired an official guide who directed out driver off the highway (and I don't mean onto another road) in search of a giraffe herd. Every now and then, he would order our driver to stop, then would get out of the car, climb a tree, and look around for tall giraffe necks peeking out of the landscape. He'd then get back in the car, point to this direction or that, and off we'd go, bumping over dirt mounds and swerving around bushes and trees. Sure enough, we found them. Upon our arrival, they were being herded away from the highway. There are no fences surrounding the preserve (not that a fence would exactly be effective... I mean, they are giraffes after all...) so in order to prevent these animals from being struck on the busy highway, a man on a small motorcycle spends his day chasing the herd away from the road. I would love this job. We got out of the car and walked up to the giraffes. They kept a watchful eye on the amount of distance between us and them, but mostly walked around eating tree leaves. Like many things you will read about in this blog, the experience was ineffable. We took pictures and gazed at the lanky, spotted creatures as they walked around the open savanna. They did not run from us, but simply kept their space, studying us with the same intent we studied them. It was magical. These creatures that are unlike any anywhere else in the world were tolerating our presence, giving us the sense for a brief moment that we were more than just white Americans- we belonged to something much greater than nationality. The air about them was prehistoric- they knew things we could never experience. They have wisdom untouchable by human minds.

The Musee-

The Musee is an entirely outdoor combination of natural history, cultural history, zoo, playground, and jungle gym (the only one I saw during our stay). We saw garments from the tribes of Niger, the Zarma, the Touareques, the Hausa, and the Beeri Beeri. All the garments had a specific style from the other tribes. The Touareques, the last of the Sahara Nomads, wear indigo garments, turbans that cover their face, and large swords. Every inch of skin is covered for both men and women- a Westerner like me wonders how they don't die of heat stroke. Katie reminds me, though, that in Niger you can get rid of bed bugs by putting your mattress in the afternoon sun. Here, sun is not for basking in. The sun is both a source of life and a threat to it- prolonged exposure is downright dangerous. Your skin heats so fast that you can feel it burn if it's not covered or lathered in sunscreen (something I had the pleasure of experiencing first hand).

After the garments, a Peace Corps Volunteer who works at the zoo showed us the animals. This was pretty heart-wrenching. The cages were only big enough for the animal to move in, they get very little attention by their caregivers and are often teased by the visiting children. As hard as this was for me, it is in keeping with the Nigerian approach to animals. They don't take pets, name their animals, and consider them possessions only. Still, we were graced with the presence of hippos, spotted and stripped hyenas (who, as it turns out, love a good shoulder scratching), chimps, baboons, red monkeys, and lions. The PCV petted many of them trying to give them some affection.

Once our tour was over, we went to the artisan center. At least 50 men were sitting in their small workspace, usually a small rug or two to sit on, with their wares laid out in front of them. These men live in this center, which is nothing more than a large shed with a tin roof. We ran to get inside as we were caught in a sudden downpour of rain. I put my right foot forward and it wasn't raining. By the time my left foot had its turn to hit the ground, it was. It rained so hard the drops pinched my skin and I was nearly soaked within seconds. The rain stayed at this intense pace for at least 30 minutes- Katie says this is a typical African rainstorm.

The artisans mean business. This was our first experience of being in a marketplace here in Niger and it was intense to say the least. Western manners have no place here. As you walk by, they are pressing their beautiful, intricate creations (handmade in that center) into your hand trying to get your attention and money. It becomes overwhelming when six of them are vying for your attention. They offered many works of art- earrings, bracelets, rings, animal statues, necklaces, purses, belts, shoes, and so on. The moment you admire something, it is being pushed at you to try on. Nothing in Niger really has a set price- you must bargain for everything. Katie has become quiet adept at this skill and indulged Mom and I as we tried to find a few things to buy. First, she asks how much and tries to look uninterested. Once they name a price, her eyebrows shoot up with a cry of "Habba?!" ("Really?!? Are you serious?") Then the debate is off in earnest, sometimes ending with her ushering us away to see if the merchant calls us back. Often, she'd accuse them of giving us "Anasara prices" ("Anasara" meaning "Outsiders", something we got very used to responding to.)

Katie's One Year Mark-

Mom and I were blessed and honored to be present with Katie and the rest of the PCV's in her group as they celebrated their one-year anniversary in Niger. Everyone went out to dinner and Mom and I got to see first hand the strength of character and resiliency it takes to live here. Everyone was very friendly and inviting- there was a communal sense of adventure and tolerance, as if to remind each other the world will turn out alright. The jokes were flying but underneath them laid a darker sense of reality- that the world doesn't always work the way we are used to, that buses do not always run on schedule (or run at all) and whether or not you feel you can depend on the external world pulling through, you can look inward and know that you can depend on yourself. This knowledge, this sense of, "Sure, it'll be okay," is few and far between in America where we rely on fear to guide us through our every day actions. Even a sense of running late, so worrisome to us, doesn't really exist here. There is no late. There is only now.

In the time we spent with Katie and her fellow PCV's, we saw their charm and charisma, their stoic courage, and their sense of wonder at the world. We laughed with them, listened to the songs they sing about being in the Peace Corps, chatted with them about their life here in Niger and, naturally, about their home in America.

Oh, and also, I still have a couple of their personally written raps stuck in my head. "I'm in Niger, and... There's lots of sand, and..."

Some highlights from our second week:

Getting to Katie's Village:

Our primary modes of transportation on this trip were buses and our own two feet. Bus tickets have your name written on them and the attendant calls names out for who can get on the bus when. On our first bus ride, we were lucky enough to be at the top of the list, so we were able to pick seats by the window. This was also a chance to practice pushing through crowds as Nigerians don't really do that whole Orderly Line thing. Instead, they all rush to the front and push each other out of the way. This happens most of the time for most things- Katie says that there is just so much need here that people have to shove to make sure they get the thing they're waiting for.

The bus was very old, as most cars here are. All the seats were packed, including the ones that fold down in the aisle. If a customer pays, they get on the bus (thus the saying, "An African bus is never full," and the joke, "How many Africans can you fit into a car? One more." I've seen cars here so full of people that you can't look in one window and see out the other. This also translates into piles of stuff tied to the roof of cars and buses, sometimes so tall that the vehicle falls over). It took the bus a while to get loaded as there was a lot of re-arranging of people and bags, yelling, and general havoc. I watched an older woman downright kick a girl out of her seat. The girl handed her infant to a stranger, the man sitting next to her, who held the child without a word as if it were perfectly natural that he should be trusted with someone else's baby. The bus began to drive out of the station well before everyone was situated. The drive was fine as it was good highway with not too many potholes. This was our first chance to see the Nigerian countryside. It was flat, in that way that makes you feel you can see forever, lots of green brush and millet growing, and every minute or so, a small group of houses. And everywhere, people- walking, standing, sitting, or biking, but people.

At one connection between buses, we sat for several hours waiting for another car to take us the next leg of our journey. We sat at the Tesume (the place where you wait to get a ride in a car) under a shade hanger on a log. We chatted a bit with some of the other people waiting for a ride. I watched two little boys doing laundry in a cut up canteen, both half-naked. They took turns scrubbing and rinsing before delicately laying out the clothes to dry on a log. I asked them (or rather, Katie did) if I could take their picture and they posed with a blank, awed stare that we Anasaras usually got from small children. Once I shot the photo, though, they grabbed my camera to see the image and erupted in squeals and giggles at seeing an image of themselves. I guess camera shyness exists everywhere.

Katie's Village-

There is no way I will be able to adequately describe this experience. It was like walking into a novel, a world described by the author where details exist that even the writer doesn't see. When we arrived, Katie showed us the return-home chores she has to do. We watched in confused amusement as she took a stick and banged it repeatedly against her ceiling to loosen all the termite damage to her roof. Pieces of her ceiling fell down around her and she promptly swept this up with a hand broom that is really no more than a handful of straw. She continued sweeping under her tonda (shade hanger) and tossed the collection over her wall, an interesting afterthought after so much effort.

Next, we had the task of collecting water. Remember, garden hoses don't exist here. There are two ways to get water in Katie's village- go to the well or pay for it at the pump. Katie only drinks and cooks with pump water as it is much cleaner, but bathing water, dish water, and buta water must all be collected from the well. We crossed the short walk from Katie's house to the large water well after Katie gave Mom strict instructions not to help because she is the Mom and should not be working lest Katie be shamed by the villagers. You can imagine how well this sat with my independent mother. Katie and I used a rubber bucket made out of old car tire called a logo that is attached to a rope to toss into the well. Then we both pulled the rope up in a rhythm, taking turns grabbing it with both hands and pulling it up over our heads (and you thought upright shoulder rows were a tough workout!). When we had the logo at the top of the well, we poured the water into large buckets and repeated the process until the buckets were full. Katie did give Mom a turn to see what it was like (and give my poor shoulders a rest!) We got a lot of attention at the well and everyone wanted to meet us and shake our hands. Zarma meetings are extensive and each person greets the other with a long list of scripted questions. Imagine what your life would be like if every person you see in your day stopped to ask how you, your family, your health, etc. has been. Once we had our buckets full, Katie and I each put a bucket on our heads to walk back to her house. In the same fashion that I'd giggle at someone who didn't know how to shovel snow, I got a lot of laughs for not having any idea how to carry a bucket on my head, although I have to brag that I had only minimal spillage walking back to Katie's house.

A quick rest later, we gathered our bearings and headed out our the proper skirts and head wraps to meet the villagers. Had we not made these rounds during the first day of our arrival, Katie would have had many people knocking on her door to shame her for not bringing us by. We didn't make it to everyone as Katie's village hosts about a thousand or so people, but met several important households including the village chief. He was an old man with grey hair who walked with a cane but seemed downright jovial. He asked us how everyone in America is doing (they generally perceive America as one giant village and don't really have a concept of the sheer magnitude of the country.) We said everyone is fine. I hope that was a truthful answer. Heading back to Katie's concession became a race against the sun as it began to grow dark. Growing dark is probably a northern and southern term, now that I think about it. When you're near the equator, the sun rises and falls very quickly, so it doesn't grow dark, it just is dark. The wives of Katie's concession were pounding millet, which is their main food staple and quite a process. The women use a long, think, smooth pole that is five or so feet tall and, lifting it in one hand, thrust it full force into a wooden bucket with a deep cavern and stable bottom. Then they lift it up and repeat. This creates a rhythmic drumming sound that adds to the magic of the evening (there is no magic about it at sunrise, however. You think you're alarm clock is a pain in the butt, wait until you are sound asleep and someone decides to pound millet 10 feet from your head.) Pounding millet takes up 90% of a woman's day. Our evening meal, prepared by the wives, was a delicious squash sauce over rice, fish, and millet. We sat on the ground with the women (the men having already been served) and ate with our right hand. The food was different- different in taste, smell, and texture (texture is largely affected by the amount of sand in everything). I enjoyed the fish and squash very much. Katie has learned to like much of the food there, but Mom and I struggled with the strange taste of the millet- yuck. It has the consistency of a flour gelatin and feels like wet cement in your mouth. I mostly tried to put a little bit in my mouth and swallow it without tasting it. No one ever gets to call my sister a picky eater. Ever. Mealtime conversation was minimal, a struggle for my polite mealtime mind that is used to talking straight through my food. I tried to make pleasing sounds as I ate to convey at least some appreciation for their efforts. I also tried not to feel terribly guilty for eating while all the children of the concession who struggle with being mal-nourished stood behind us and stared with a plain, unmasked hunger in their eyes. During the day, they stared at us. During dinner, they stared at the food. The next morning, we woke to the melodic sounds of chanting prayer and shortly thereafter the effective pounding of millet. We spent much of the morning playing with the 6 month old baby in Katie's concession, a joyful, alert, and downright squeezable boy. He entertained himself for a good 20 minutes playing with Mom's skirt. Katie is clearly fond of this ball of fun and often plays with him. His mom, however, has gotten in the habit of leaving Baby in Katie's tonda unattended. Katie believes the mom expects Katie to be doing the childcare- in Niger, a child begins caring for their younger siblings once they turn 7. It is not unusual to see a small child tied to the back of a slightly bigger child. An interesting piece of our second day in Katie's village was meeting a mentally handicap young girl who was maybe 10 years old. When someone develops these handicaps or developmental delays in Niger, they stay with their family for life. They are allowed to wander around and everyone kind of pitches in to take care of them. They wander around the village with few expectations of participating in the work of village life unless they become a danger to themselves or others at which point they are sent to jail. Really, though, a life spent playing and being fed is pretty good for someone with mental handicaps. We did more meet and greets around Katie's village. I was often asked if I am married, if I'd like to get married, and why I am not married already. Katie told them about my partner Dan and everyone decided to come to our wedding when (not if) we have one. They were also amused to find out that I am older but shorter than Katie. This amuses many Westerners too, so there's a piece of culture we share. Katie gave a lot of advice on hygiene and caring for infants, which was cool to hear. I learned a lot about the struggles kiddos face when growing up in village. Later, we went for a walk into the bush. We followed a dirt road made by donkey carts and foot traffic and were led quickly into a rolling field of green millet. Millet is planted in every free square foot of dirt outside the walls of the village concessions and the feeling of being very much so in the country comes upon you quickly as you enter the rows of green. There were no human structures other than the occasional grain hut made out of grass. The land felt at once untrodden and ancient. The farmers have lived there for hundreds of years, farming the same land, living in the same place. Yet even for all this history, the land has not changed. It has not seen social evolution, development, chemicals, smog, irrigation, tractors, mining, or even a solid building since most houses have to be remade every year or so as the mud melts in the rain. The land isn't the enemy of these people, it is not something to be conquered or taken advantage of. It is something to exist with as a team, something that provides when left just by itself. It needs no coaxing, no instruction, to grow the food that sustains the village. Odd to think that the land is doing what it is meant to do without the farmers telling it how. It was fun walking in the bush, waving at men hoeing the ground and women breaking up the soil for planting while their hampa'd babies snoozed on their backs. Getting each family enough food for the year seems to be the main task of most citizens of Niger. Not only is there a hot/dry and wet/cold season, there is a hungry season. This is where food stores are running out, food gets more expensive, and it is not yet time to harvest more food. Mom and I visited during hungry season, which Katie says is one of the reasons merchants are so pushy with getting tourists to buy things. In Katie's village, they stretch food out as far as possible, even to the point of 'recycling' dishes- if a dish is not fully eaten one night, the sauce is rinsed off and the grain is eaten at the next meal. This is trickier than the western "leftovers" idea since there is no refrigeration to keep food from spoiling. One of Katie's villagers told her that he needs to make sure his family of 7 has at least five 50 pounds bags of millet per month. The culture revolves around food in a big way- it demonstrates status, beauty is seen in large people who have a lot to eat, celebrations involve feasting, and a family's "savings account" is in food stores. This makes me wonder how having such an abundance of food has affected the West. We don't have to focus most of our time and energy on food so we can develop our culture and lives in other ways. On the other hand, our scope is so large that we don't have nearly the same kind of friendly, leisurely companionship or camaraderie that I felt in Niger. We feel entitled to what we want when we want it and curse what stands in our way to get it. We are angry at each other, in a big hurry, full of fear, and generally dissatisfied. We have all the material we could ever need plus a plethora of luxury, yet we strive for the simplicity found in belonging to a community. We want it all and we want everyone else to want it our way. How does this attitude really stand up next to a place like Niger? Some highlights from our third week: Our drive from Katie's village-

Now, I've had my share of car trouble in the past. I've called AAA at least a dozen times, been towed half as many, and generally feel comfortable negotiating how my vehicles are repaired. When the car arrived in Katie's village to take us back, our first sight of the driver was of him pouring water into the radiator. We all exchanged foreboding glances and Katie asked the driver if the car (a picture-perfect POS) would run. He assured Katie that it was fine and we piled in. Needless to say, another Western expectation of mine was challenged. We have this idea that if something exists, it should run right. If there are buses, they should come on time. If there are telephones, they should connect to other telephones. If there is a car waiting to drive you somewhere, it should... well, drive! Our ride was exciting, to say the least, as we flew down the dirt roads of rural Niger. Our driver stopped no less than 5 times in the 30 km distance to fill the over-heated radiator with water. It spurted up like a geyser as he filled it and I cannot imagine how he didn't burn himself on that water. He ran out of water, though, after the first stop and subsequent stops involved hoping the car made it to the next village. In order to do this, there was definitely a speed-to-engine ratio where we had to go fast enough to make it to the next village before the engine overheated but also not so fast that the engine overheated too quickly. It was about this time I began having the thought, "What do I know about what makes car engines explode?" Once we made it to a village, our driver asked whoever was around for water from the well. Again, we drew quite a crowd of people at each village who wanted to stare at the Anasaras, but now they also wanted to put in their two cents on how to keep the car running. Nigerians get around mainly by small motorcycles, buses, and old cars from the 1980's. While in America, we would send these vehicles off to that big junk yard in the sky, Nigerians have developed amazing mechanical skills and keep things running. While it took some doing, we made it back to Dosso in one piece. Making it to Benin-

Making it from Dosso to Benin took the better part of 2 days on and off of buses, a nice stay in a small motel in Malanville (just across the Niger/Benin border) and several doses of Dramamine. The roads are literal minefields of potholes, leaving the passengers hot, sweaty, and subject to the constant careening as the bus tires navigate the difference between road and absence of road. Between the sounds of the driver grinding gears and swerving even as the tires didn't seem to be touching the ground, conversation was nearly impossible. I spent most of the ride staring out the window and willing my body to keep enduring the heat, sweat, noise, and bumps of the bus ride. Katie, bless her heart, had the added task of maintaining composure next to a woman who was transporting on her lap a whole cow head and four cows feet. Looking out the window, it was hard not to notice how much more developed the world seemed just miles away from Niger. Buildings were made of cement, stores had storefronts, the cars are newer, they have trash cans on the street, and there were even outdoor stadiums for playing sports. Katie made the remark that even remote Benin is more developed than Niger's capital city, Niamey. Once in Natitingou, we found a place to stay. Our hotel, Hotel De Bourgonge, was another lovely, exotic African hotel with beautiful flowers blooming everywhere, tile floors, spacious patios, and beds with mosquito nets strung over them. The rooms had two beds, which we shared, and a bathroom with a sink and shower. We had our first shower in four days and settled in with a delicious dinner, air heavy with tropical perfume, and a feeling of quite and leisure. Kota Falls-

Our first day in Natitingou took us out to a water fall just outside of town. We walked a quarter of a mile down a rocky path into a picture my imagination couldn't create. There were two cascading waterfalls that fell into a pool surrounded by tall, smooth rock walls. There was a tiny rock bench, smoothed from so many bare feet trespassing it and everywhere you looked something green and lush was growing. The air seemed like pure oxygen that gave a euphoric high upon inhalation. We swam for nearly an hour in the warm water under the falls. We played, stood within the waterfall, and laughed and laughed. We ate a picnic lunch and resumed our swim until Katie off-handedly remarked, "Hey, guys, I think I see a snake in the water..." at which point we immediately evacuated and didn't look back. Park Pendjari-

The next morning, we woke up early to make our way to the nearby wild animal refuge park. Park Pendjari (pronounced pen jar ee) is a part of a trio of wildlife refuge parks that all connect with each other but in different countries. Together they make one big park, with part in Benin, part in Niger, and part in Burkina Faso. These parks are home to many animals that once dominated Africa, but after Europe showed up and people began to flood onto the continent, there was much less space for the animals to exists in and thus fewer animals are left. Our ride took us into the park at least 50 miles to the Hotel Pendjari where tourists can stay and have a better chance of seeing the wildlife. On the drive in, Mom spotted a large baboon sitting in a tree and getting some sun. It was incredible. I have seen baboons before, even up close, but never in the wild. It was as though this baboon was more real, more so a baboon than any other I've encountered. We made it to a waterhole that had a man-made lookout where you could observe the animals from a distance. There, we saw hippopotamus swimming, waterbuck, antelope, and large, black, stork-like birds with brightly colorful heads. The quiet of the place had a majesty about it as though this space was permitting you to witness it. Our guide, a gruff, uncouth man who spoke in hasty French, chain smoked, was missing several prominent teeth, but who proved to be a gold-mine of information on the park, the animals, and Benin, set up a bench on top of the Toyota Four-runner we were driving. The rest of the way, Katie, Mom and I took turns sitting on top of the car keeping a lookout for animals (as well as hanging on for dear life and ducking from tree branches as we whipped down the dirt road). It was using this system of lookouts who kicked the roof of the car when seeing an animal that we spotted more antelope, waterbuck, a mom hippo with her baby running for cover, and a family of warthogs. The park holds many other animals like lions and elephants, but given the wet, cool season, they were all well-hidden in the grass and trees. We did see work of the elephants who can push over a large tree and passed several palm trees that were fallen by elephants, split in the middle with brute force. The park itself is not fenced and several villages, centuries old, still live in it with the animals. We wondered aloud about the relations between the natives, the animals, and the park caretakers. Our guide informed us that the park was seriously underfunded, making it all the more incredible that it exists. On our way home, our guide took us briefly to a waterfall hidden behind a village. A small group of local boys guided us up the stream (literally, in the water and uphill) and while we swayed and slipped up the rocky stream bed, they were barefoot and solid in their stance. The waterfall we came upon was at least 60 feet high and fell out of a rock face concave around a pool of water. Once again, we felt the ancient energy of a place with more wisdom than any human could know. One of our guides informed us the water was over 100 feet deep. To demonstrate this, he climbed the rock face to the top of the waterfall, gave a brief wave, and leaped off the cliff to plunge into the water below. He arrived back at our shore unharmed, but Mom's eyebrows were raised in motherly skepticism. Parakou-

The next morning, we hurried to check out and make the 7:30 a.m. bus from Natitingou to Parakou. We made it to the station just in time, but ended up beating the bus there and waiting for a bit. While we enjoyed the morning, I watched two very young children, no older than two or three, a boy and a slightly older girl, walking around hand in hand, dressed in formal African cloth. The boy clearly felt it was his duty to attend to the girl and assisted her as she stepped over rocks and tree branches littering the ground. Once they walked very near me and the boy, looking with confidence into my eyes, flashed me a knowing, lopsided grin. The ride was what we had come to expect from buses in West Africa and everyone pushed and shoved to get on the bus first. Some sat in the aisle as the seats ran out and near me, a dad knelt on the ground with two small children. The children, while surely crammed and uncomfortable, did not complain once in the three hour trip. A little into the ride, a few Hadjas got into an argument over whether to have a certain window open. One Hadja wanted the hair blowing near her but not too much, thus kept opening this window. Several others wanted the window closed, saying the breeze was too strong for the children. They yelled at each other in French and told each other to shut up. The whole ordeal was like a tornado- fascinating to watch but not something you want to be in the middle of. We made it to Parakou around one. Our hotel, the Auberg, was in keeping with the exotic tropical theme. There were large shaded porches, flowers everywhere, and a small lawn, which struck me as impressive when I wondered about the last time I'd seen a lawn. We were able to meet up with a friend of Katie's who was in the Peace Corps in Parakou and he showed us an authentic Voodoo fetish market. This was like nothing I've ever seen. Each booth had piles of dried animals, whole and in parts. There were lizards, frogs, birds, snakes, squirrels, dog heads, hooves, skins, indistinguishable horns, all smelling distinctly dead. There were piles of bark, shells, seed pods, clay pots, and dried gourds. Katie's friend told us how prevalent voodoo culture is here. Parakou, one of the most diverse cities in West Africa, is the northern hub of Benin's voodoo culture. There is even a 2 week long celebration in the fall where Christians, Muslims, and outsiders are advised not to leave their house because anyone seen on the street who is not totally associated with voodoo is outright killed. As I fell asleep that night, my body reminding me of the jarring bus and car rides, my 20 + mosquito bites itching like mad, and the ceiling fan making a constant whirrrr, it occurred to me how we only had a few days left in Africa. The magic of the trip kept me in a trance and it seemed like the states had melted away. I felt uncomfortable physically, but my spirit was relaxing in a place where all one needs to worry about is where to sleep and what to eat. We made it to the bus station the next day around noon for our 2 p.m. bus back to Malanville. Katie and I bought some meat rolls from a nearby bakery and oranges (which, in their authentic form, have a bright green peel) and waited for our bus. Most bus stations, comprising of a large dirt lot, some benches, and a tonda, are pretty laissez-faire. The schedules are more estimations and buses tend to come when they come. Still, when 5 rolled around and there was still no bus, we were pretty antsy about our traveling situation. Each time we asked the staff about when the bus would arrive, they would simply say, "It's coming." Finally, around 6:30 we were on our way for the 6 hour ride to Malanville. Niamey Part Two-

Two days later, we pulled into the Peace Corps hostel in Niamey. After a refreshing and necessary shower and change of clothes, we decided to go out and see some of the markets. First, we went out for cloth. Most Africans, both men and women, wear tailored clothes made out of bright cloth with large block prints of everything from flowers to livestock to computers. The cloth mostly comes from Nigera, the Ivory Coast, and India. We started by going stand to stand to look at all the different prints, colors, and fabrics. It felt impossible to narrow down to a few picks when there were so many cloths to choose from. One shop we went in had easily 200 prints to display. Even looking at a cloth would grab the attention of the shop-keeper who would whisk it off the hanger and thrust it into your hands before you realized you'd admired it. Cries of "Anasara" rang in our ears as we tried to take in the market. One shopkeeper even started cutting a panya (about 3 yards) for me before I had decided to buy his fabric. Katie pointed this out to him in Zarma and he just replied, "I know she will buy, I know." He even tried to stuff it in Mom's purse before we finished bargaining. We also spent some time in a Touraregue market called Chateau Un. Here, artisans sell jewelry, baskets, leather goods, and so on. Everything was beautiful, handmade from old customs and styles. The only difficulty was the hoard of sellers that surrounded us, shoving their goods in our faces and demanding we follow them to their shop to buy their things. At first we could ignore them but every time we turned around, there were two more. They were very pushy, putting things in our hands and talking over one another in broken English. Then they followed us as we went from one stand to another so it became impossible to escape from them. I kept saying "No" but finally started ignoring them completely. Katie speculated that they were being such vultures because it was hungry season. This was hard to process. Here I am, an Anasara, with enough money to buy presents and these men are just trying to feed their families. It was a similar feeling at seeing the kids begging on the street. The level of human suffering here is such that my brain almost can't understand it. It leaves me with an intense feeling of guilt at being born where I was and having what I have. Katie gave us strict instructions not to hand out money to the beggars because it perpetuates an expectation that Anasaras give free money and thus a culture of dependency. While I understand the logic , there is something core within me that believes somehow I could be changing their lives. While I feel the apathy many Nigerians show, I cannot comprehend how we can have developed, first world countries and not have addressed this suffering. As part of exploring feminine beauty in Niger, I was fortunate that Katie found a way for me to visit a woman in Niamey who could put henna on my feet. I was excited to bring this piece of culture back with me to the States. Here, henna on your feet and hands is like getting a mani/pedi; it is such a part of presenting oneself well that the women who hosted us were confused that I didn't think henna on my hands would be presentable at work. The henna was in Chadyen style with swirls and flowers. Our hostess, Rahmatu, was a large woman who was very welcoming and talkative. She kept feeding Katie and telling us about her children (4 of 7 survived their childhood) and her life in Niger. She was amazing. She raised her children, farmed, and tried to help other woman. She talked about how isolated and alone women here can feel. Their husbands have freedom to leave, lead their lives, and pursue happiness, but women have to be homemakers. They have almost no power, which means the only way to solve their problems is to wait and hope things get better. Women become depressed easily since most problems don't go away. Rahmatu also asked if she could come to my (not yet happening) wedding and had us sing Happy Birthday to her. The henna was intricate and beautiful. The girl who did it was very patient as she drew on my feet and ankles. Behind her, her toddler sat and played with a pair of broken sunglasses tied to a string. We had discussed getting my niece Ava a present from Africa, but Katie points out that African kids play with trash. Kids find treasures in the litter that is everywhere and use their imaginations to make toys out of trash. Thus, Katie offered to find Ava a bag of trash to play with if we wanted authentic Nigerian toys... needless to say, we passed. And thus our trip came to a close. We spent our last evening waiting in the thick evening breeze, passing the time in the same fashion we had during most of the trip. When it came time for our midnight ride to the airport, I was surprised that I felt a deep sadness. I had been here only three weeks, and did not want to say goodbye to my little sister who, really, is not little in any way. I know her path is much longer than mine and travels to many more corners of the Earth as she explores who she is and what makes the world turn. There is also no evidence whatsoever that this will change. I don't want it do. She seems happiest when following her heart to places most people don't know they can dream about. But she is my sister and a part of my soul, leaving me both celebrating her choices and missing her presence. I love her like I love to live and I am proud to call her sister.

October 15, 2010

I only got to have one conversation with Stephanie Chance. It happened at the demyst party in Dosso, her second week of training. It wasn’t a particularly significant conversation; and, now I think of it, I’m not sure she would even remember my being at the party. Shy as I am sometimes, I hung back, participating only passively in the banter.

Nevertheless, I liked Stephanie immediately. First of all, she was tall, and I always feel a kinship with other tall ladies. As a female, every ½ inch over 5’9” either emboldens your personality or becomes a burden on your self-image. (Women are supposed to be petite, right?) Stephanie had clearly found the self-confidence needed to carry herself well. She was poised and happy. She seemed like fun too. She had been dancing, and so her hair—undone by her exuberance—floated around her head. Best of all, she had been wearing a cone-shaped party hat; only sassy, fun-loving ladies dare don cone-shaped party hats.

I had no idea this one mundane moment would later gather so much significance, and so did not take the time to remember it properly. What we talked about is foggy, but I know (among other things) we talked about dating. Peace Corps Niger is 80% female. Needless to say, such a small dating pool can breed intense competition among friends, and thus a tricky love life. I told her to focus on herself and her service, not boys, wishing I could take my own advice. She smiled. Dating trouble: the great unite-er of women.

I’m sure I talked to her several other times before she returned to Hamdallaye, perhaps while choosing the music or serving her pancakes. I may have even hugged her before she got on the bus back to Niamey. I know I saw her several other times, during site announcements and swear-in. But…I’m really not sure…the mind is so self-obsessed; details always fall through the cracks.

The point is, as this was my one clear memory of Stephanie, I would be a liar if I claimed she was my dear friend, or even more than an acquaintance. She may not have even been able to tell you my name. Our story is this: I met her several times and liked her. As such, I felt like a bit of a fraud when I found myself grieving so deeply at her passing. I tried to reel in my pain, since it seemed my grief (which poured fourth so liberally) could somehow cheapen that of her dearest friends who laughed and cried with her for decades.

I think this feeling is shared among many of my fellow volunteers.

No matter if we deny it, our pain is real…and I find myself asking why I should grieve so much for someone I knew so little. After casual deliberation, this is the conclusion I have come to: Stephanie and I were not friends (we never got the chance to develop a friendship), but we were members of the same family—a family of volunteers, united by common ambitions, then shipwrecked on the other side of the world.

In Niger, we are perpetual outsiders. As residents of our communities, we may make good friends with host country nationals, but as Americans, we will never be able to fully blend with the indigenous landscape. After a year here, I have come to see that Peace Corps volunteers working in the same country are citizens of a rare community, members of the same family, children of the same dreams. We are alone on this island called Niger, but we are alone together.

Stephanie was a part of my family, and no matter how estranged or unknown, we always mourn the death of family.

On a deeper level, (not to go all psychobabble on you all) it’s clear (in this mess) I am also grieving my own mortality. How could I not? I find so much of myself in her. She was: young, tall, sassy, educated, fun loving, a rare breed of person who is willing to live in a mud hut for two years, and…a lover of cone-shaped hats. This scares me. Death is scary. After all, what solace can we find in our own vitality when a healthy, vivacious 26-year-old can meet her end so unexpectedly?

I have often remarked to myself how much closer Death feels since coming to Niger. After having attended the funerals of so many villagers, often people who I know well, Death morphed from a nebulas possibility to a peril that lurks in the business of everyday. I can gauge the gravity of an illness simply by looking at a person. I can most often say if a newborn will survive its first weeks. I know the strange qualities a dead body possesses, how they are frighteningly familiar, yet somehow dulled and blurry around the edges.

Yet, even after having met death so many times in the past year, I see now that I still felt exempt from the many fates that befell my Nigerien friends. It seemed my American-ness could put of death. I am affluent. I am special. I have a team of doctors waiting for me in Niamey.

Obviously to some degree being rich does insolate a person from hazard. For example, the Peace Corps furnishes me with a treated mosquito net, an unending malaria prophylaxis, and enough bug spray for an elephant. Even then, if I did develop the symptoms of malaria, the Peace Corps has the drugs to treat me, cars to drive me to the clinic in Niamey, and even money enough to fly me back to America until I’m well…but in that critical moment…we will all face Death with helpless equality.

The funny thing is, throughout my 24 years on Earth, I have developed a pretty solid faith in the immortality of the soul; but this faith has brought me surprising little solace in the face of this tragedy. For me, Death has never been more tangible.

So, acknowledging how tender and short our tenure may be, the next leap of the mind seems painfully obvious… In light of what’s happened and my reaction to it, how can I not ask myself this question: Am I living a meaningful and fulfilling life? Also, what would I change? It reminds me of this poem:

If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.

Stephanie, I did not know you well, but I will think of you often and send you light and love across the many folds of the Universe. I hope you are well and at peace. May Allah ease the pain of those who love you so dearly. May Allah show us each other.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 8, 2010 – Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams is saddened to announce the death of Peace Corps volunteer Stephanie Chance in Niger. Stephanie was discovered in her home in Zinder. The exact cause of death remains unknown, but it appears at this time that it may have been from natural causes.

"This is a loss for our community. Peace Corps volunteers represent the best America has to offer – compassion, generosity of spirit and an enthusiasm for what is possible through cooperation. Stephanie’s sudden passing is terribly painful for the entire Peace Corps family," said Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams. "Our thoughts are with her family and friends."

Stephanie, 26, a native of Phoenix, Ariz., arrived in Niger for training in July 2010 and was sworn-in as a municipal development volunteer on Sept. 23, 2010. She had recently arrived at her site in Zinder and was busy getting to know the community to help the local officials better coordinate local government services and collaborative planning.

“My aspirations for my community are to assist them in identifying their needs, and helping them imagine the changes they would most benefit from,” Stephanie wrote in her July 2010 aspiration statement about her work with Peace Corps.

Before serving with Peace Corps, Stephanie was an experienced certified public accountant. Through Peace Corps service, Stephanie hoped to gain a more global perspective and a better understanding of other cultures. She held a B.S. in business administration and an M.A. in accounting from the University of Arizona.

In recent weeks, Stephanie had made significant progress in learning the local language of Hausa. In September, she completed nearly three months of intensive pre-service training in the village of Hamdallaye, Niger. She was fond of her host family and enjoyed talking with them in her newly acquired Hausa. Stephanie was an active leader among her training group. She organized basketball games and coached local youth in the sport. She was known by Peace Corps training staff for her smile and willingness to help others. She cared about the people of Niger and found ways to contribute, including participating in the annual tree planting to celebrate Nigerien Independence Day and promote conservation.

Currently, there are 75 Peace Corps volunteers in Niger. The first group of volunteers arrived in Niger in 1962. More than 3,000 Americans have worked as Peace Corps volunteers in Niger on a variety of projects focused on health, education, agriculture, natural resource management and community development.

More information at: http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1621

September 12, 2010

Yesh. It’s been a while. Sorry. Here’s what you missed. In June I visited Zinder for a three-day all volunteer conference, which included “prom” and “open mic night,” at which I convinced my training class to perform “Season of Sun,” a parody of the Broadway classic “Seasons of Love.” (Lyrics available upon request.)

In July my mother and sister came to Niger to visit. I’ll let their account of the trip speak for itself (they may or may not have promised to write a little blurb for the blog…), but I will say through all the delays, lost baggage, mosquitoes, heat, mystery rashes, squat toilets, potholed-bus rides, snakes, marriage proposals and breakdowns (both mechanical and emotional) they were both total troopers.

My Mom and Sister Waiting for a Car to my Village

(we only waited three or four hours)

I’m not really sure what happened in August, but it’s September now…almost October…

As for village life, you haven’t missed much…and by much, I mean anything at all. Rainy season is the MOST BORING SEASON for an anasara in Niger. Besides the nice weather, rainy season is totally lame. All my villagers are busy subsisting, a.k.a. working in the fields. Consequently, the actual village is abandon during the day, leaving me the choice of going to the fields or entertaining myself.

Other reasons why rainy season is lame: With the storms, the chances of your house/latrine/shade hanger collapsing increase by a million percent. Roof leaks are as inevitable as they are destructive. Also there are infinitely more bugs (one of which I pulled out of my nose the other day…Lord only knows how long that’s been up there). So, except for the additional element of excitement a downpour can bring to traveling in an open-back truck with things like your laptop and ipod, rainy season = my second least favorite of Niger’s three seasons. (Hot season is my least favorite and cold season—my third least favorite.)

I managed to keep myself busy, in spite of the rain by reading smutty novels and painting maps for the local primary school. See pictures…

I also seized this rare moment of downtime to reflect on my service in Niger—I’ve been here a year after all. I ask myself, why did I come here? Was it for the food or the weather? Oh yes, to help the women and children of Niger! (In my opinion, most men can help themselves. And they do…usually to more tea.) But the women and children…that’s where the real development potential is! (I’m narrating this paragraph sarcastically in my head, but I really believe that last sentence.) Anyway, it’s true. At least part of the reason I joined the Peace Corps was to help out the global community. Since coming here…I have definitely gained some insight on this subject and so I decided to write a whole blog entry re: the women and children of Niger.

The Women of Niger

Not a day goes by I don’t thank Allah I wasn’t born a Nigerien woman. I’m a tough, sassy lady, but I honestly don’t think I could hack it. Before I describe the average Nigerien woman’s day for you, I would like to highlight the different manifestations of her lower social status.

My Sister with Her New Friends

First of all, (and most concerning in my mind because it keeps things from getting better) girls are often skipped over when it comes to enrolling kids in school. Mariama, one of the women I live with, was the only child in her family not to attend school—she is also the only girl. This is a pretty common story.

Other disadvantages: Unless women are old or widowed they generally are not allowed to go to the market. (This may sound like a small thing, but going to market is a big deal. It’s the only time entire communities are brought together and able to social on a regular basis. Thus it serves as the venue for a lot of political and social discourse.) Young, married women also aren’t allowed to go to parties or other community events, unless they have their husbands’ permission. Actually, aside from going to the well, the fields, and occasionally the town’s shop—women are expected to be home all the time. It is considered disreputable for a woman to wander about town chatting with people/visiting her friends. Usually, only very educated or unmarried women work outside of the home. This means that, unless a woman finds a way to earn her own money by selling things, her husband controls all of the family finances. In general, women are 100% dependent on their fathers and husbands—who are legally allowed to beat them, as long as it’s not in the face. If a woman should ask for a divorce, the man automatically gets custody of the children. (Divorce is possible for a woman, though more difficult for women than men to arrange.) The smaller things bother me more, for example, women eat only after their husbands and kids are fed, and usually a less-delicious version of the meal, aren’t allowed to interact with men outside their family, can’t shake hands with men (even as working professionals), are expected to stay at home, have babies, take care of the children, cook, and serve their husbands. And Nigerien men wonder why I won’t marry them…

My Sister and Me in my Village, Pulling Water at the Well

Young marriage is another huge problem for women in Niger. The law says no one under the age of 18 can be married, but in the rural villages it’s very common for 15-year-olds (often younger) to be married to men three times their age. Besides the whole creepster element of this kind of arrangement, it can pose serious health risks to the girl if she should become pregnant (which she almost certainly will). While adolescent girls do menstruate, their bodies are not strong enough to support a pregnancy. Thus these young girls often develop obstetric fistula, which (according to Wikipedia) is: “a severe medical condition in which a fistula (hole) develops between either the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina after severe or failed childbirth. The fistula usually develops when a prolonged labor presses the unborn child so tightly in the birth canal that blood flow is cut off to the surrounding tissues, which necrotise and eventually rot away. The resulting disorders typically include incontinence, severe infections and ulcerations of the vaginal tract, and often paralysis caused by nerve damage. Sufferers from this disorder are usually also subject to severe social stigma due to odor, perceptions of un-cleanliness, a mistaken assumption of venereal disease and, in some cases, the inability to have children.” I know—so gross. Even worse, people do not generally understand the cause of the fistula (early marriage) and usually blame the girls for their condition. She is most often divorced, forced to move back in with her parents, never married again, and more or less shunned.

Women Going to the Well

The condition is most often correctable with surgery, and there are centers in Niger that will perform the operation for free if the woman is able to travel there. But most women to not know about these centers or that their condition is fixable. Money can present another barrier. More often than seeking help, the woman is shut away.

As for older women who can sustain a pregnancy, they still face a gambit of other medical risks that women in developed countries usually don’t worry about. First of all, most women give birth at home, in their mud huts over a plastic tarp. It’s very dangerous, and Niger has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. Most villages do have a mid-wife, but these old women are rarely formally trained, and most often just show up to cut the umbilical cord. Also, women have very little control over how many kids they do have. First of all, it is not possible for a man to rape his wife, which is to say that a woman legally cannot say no to her husband. The pill is available at the clinic in my village (so I assume most places), but it is not really socially acceptable for women to take it (and trust me, everyone in the village will know that you are, no matter how you try to hide it.) Plus, as kids serve as a kind of status symbol in Niger, the way parking spaces in your garage do in America—the more you have the better you are doing. Thus, a lot of women do want to have a lot of kids. But, I swear, most first-time mothers I talk to are terrified to give birth, and fear is not something any Nigerien normally expresses.

Nigerien women are also at high risk for contracting HIV and other STDs. During cold season, most men travel to the coast to find work. While they do bring back money and presents, they also often bring back venereal disease. Like birth control, condoms have a social stigma attached to them. And, if you are using them, the whole village will know—mostly because there is no waste disposal system, trash just lies around until the kids play with it or it decomposes. Consequently, most men refuse to wear them…and women do not have the right/ability to insist upon it.

I know, this is all very depressing, and I don’t have much to say to brighten the entry. One thing that is clear, however, is I make myself more miserable than the women thinking about how miserable Nigerien women are. They still laugh and have fun, and I really don’t think they comprehend what a disadvantage they have…

So, what do women do all day? It changes for each season, but here is a rough, average schedule:

Early Morning: Wake up at dawn. Begin pounding millet for the day. Sweep concession. Wake children. Go to the well to carry water for the day. (For an average family, this may entail five or six trips.) Prepare breakfast. Serve children/men. Eat breakfast.

Mid-Morning: Pound more millet. During rainy season, go to work in the fields. During cold season, go to cultivate the garden. Weave mats for sale. Collect ingredients for sauce. Do laundry.

Mid-Day: Prepare lunch. Weave mats. Rest.

Afternoon: Separate the millet from the chaff. Go to the well, again. Sweep the concession. Feed livestock.

Late Afternoon: Pound millet for dinner. Buy ingredients for dinner’s sauce. Begin cooking dinner.

Evening: Serve dinner to kids and husband. Bathe kids. Set up beds. Put children to bed.

Late Evening: Go to sleep.

Men do work very hard during planting season, but most days they get to rest all afternoon/evening. Also, during cold and hot seasons, the men that don’t go on exodus mostly just sit around and drink tea.

Ramadan just made things worse for the ladies. A lot of men postponed projects and just rested through the afternoon, but women can’t deviate from their schedule. In spite of heat and exhaustion, women were still out pounding millet and carrying water. Also, something that can make fasting more difficult for women is the fact they are almost always either breastfeeding or pregnant. Of course, according to the Koran, women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are excused from fasting; it’s not healthy for the mother and certainly not good for the baby. But if the women do not fast during the month of Ramadan, they have to make up the time at a later point. This is an okay idea in theory, but think about the fact that Nigerien women are on average pregnant once a year. This means that if I woman followed the rules and didn’t fast while pregnant or breastfeeding, but the time she was done birthing children she may have as many as ten months of Ramadan debt to make up. Plus, who wants to be the only one fasting?

Men Going to the Mosque in my Village

Fati and Her Baby, Braham

So, the women fast in spite of the impacts it will have on their and their children’s health. Like I said, Nigerien women are some of the toughest on Earth. Nevertheless, I could see how Ramadan worn on the women of my village. At one point one of the women I live with, Mariama, almost collapsed while pounding millet. (I guess maybe you have to see it to understand how physically demanding pound is, but I can only do it for two or three minutes before my arms ach. Nigerien women do it for hours and hours everyday.) Anyway, I was talking to Mariama one day during Ramadan and she started to get really loopy and incoherent. Then, realizing she needed to rest, she started to walk back to her house, but stumbled and nearly fell. It was just another, normal day, but she had tried to do too much without resting. Though it wasn’t serious and Mariama was fine after resting some, seeing her stumble scared me. It was a kind of proof of how hard these ladies push themselves.

Fati, Pounding Millet

The Children of Niger

One element of rural African life I’m reasonably confident holds constant throughout the continent is kids. Wherever you go, whatever you do, there will be a small mob of children shadowing your every step. They stare. They ask questions. They giggle. They yell. They harass. They try to sell things. They throw things. They ask for money. It’s easy enough to understand what causes this phenomenon. First of all, as a stranger and a Caucasian, I am somewhat of a spectacle—that’s understood. Secondly, there are A LOT of effing kids in Africa—especially in Niger, which has the highest birth rate in the world! On average, every woman gives birth to 7.68 children in her life. Also consider: 49.6% of the population is under the age of 14. (Thank you CIA World Fact Book.)

Now, let me preface the follow rant by saying I believe all Allah’s (and God’s) children are beautiful, priceless gifts from Heaven. To be clear, I am pro-the existence of children. That being said, I also think the Nigerien children are little terrorists. No, I don’t mean that they use violence to achieve political aims (nor am I making some sly reference to AQIM). By terrorists, I mean they (sometimes) strike hot, electric, gut-wrenching panic and fear into the hearts of Peace Corps volunteers—not to mention debilitating frustration and unholy anger.

Actually, in my village, the kids are pretty good. They say funny things and make me laugh. They help me carry things. Perhaps most importantly, they are sufficiently afraid of me, and thus I am able to scare them off if the situation calls for it. Though…they do throw rocks and a few nights ago a mob of them woke me up by screaming in my ear… (Warning: do not wake a sleeping Katie).

The Kids in my Village Fixing my Concession so it Will Drain

Other places, the kids are much, much worse. They are impressively loud at all the wrong times of day. Kids will follow you, regardless of where you are going or how much you try to deter them. They are the ones who yell “anasara” the loudest and the most frequently. They mock you and laugh at you. Worst of all, they are oblivious to most social cues, and thus will continue to torment you until you are not so subtly mean to them. (Which, in spite of previous experience, most of us are reluctant to do.) Other volunteers have reported kids stealing from them, throwing stones, bugs, and dead lizards, making heroic efforts to violate the volunteer’s privacy, and even ripping up a volunteer’s garden for no apparent reason.

This kind of treatment is very dehumanizing, and can bring out the worst in a volunteer. For example, a fellow volunteer told me a story about an especially bad experience. One morning, my volunteer friend was having a slow morning and trying to enjoy some quiet time, but the kids kept climbing over the high walls of her concession. In spite of her obvious agitation, they kept peeking over the walls to yell at her, giggling when she told them to go away, throwing things, and yelling insults. She told them to go away. She tried laughing with them, then yelling at them, and finally chasing them with a stick, but they just laughed and kept coming back…until FINALLY, my dear friend totally lost it. She exited her concession, stick in hand, and proceeded unfurl upon these children a mixture of the most profane Hausa and English one could imagine. Her irate verbiage only barely eclipsed her spasms of anger and very clear intent to injure. Now, one would hope under such duress, the kids would have enough respect to show the appropriate amount of fear and run away, but once more they just laughed. This display was so infuriating to my friend that she began to yell louder and swing at the kids with her stick. In laymen speak, she totally lost her shit. Finally, the commotion forced mourners from nearby funeral to come break up the scene…not exactly the brightest moment in my friend’s service.

It actually doesn’t sound so bad as I type it up, but trust me kids know how to bring you down to their level. What is most unfortunate is that since kids are always disciplined with violence, they usually don’t recognize/understand/respect other forms of punishment, like American-favorite time out. This puts volunteers in a bit of a bind when it comes to establishing ourselves as authority figures—unless you are prepared to hit a kid (which most of us are not) they are unlikely to mind you.

In the face of all this frustration, poor behavior and violence, some volunteers rescind on their I-will-never-hit-a-child pledge. (Though I should mention I only know one volunteer who actually hit kids, and I think she did it just once.) Others develop extra-tough skin and divine patience. An even smaller minority may make it though their two years of service and still profess a love for kids—namely, my friend Sara. But I think most of us just walk away from this experience with a lot less sympathy for and a little bit more terrified awe of Nigerien children. Years from now when we see those just-75-cents-a-day-will-buy-this-kid-with-flies-in-his-eyes-shoes commercials, we will think to ourselves, I knew that kid, and he was an asshole.

For those who do suffer breakdowns and lose their patience, please do not judge. I consider myself a pretty dedicated pacifist: I don’t like violent movies, I am anti-war, I don’t kill bugs, I do not intend to ever hit my own children, and don’t like it when other people hit theirs…but even I have been driven to full-on, detailed fantasies about how great it would be to smack a kid with my flip-flop. (Sometimes I don’t even feel guilty after such mental digressions.) I don’t ruminate over these temporary shifts in my disposition. Mostly, I just write it off as a consequence of watching Nigerien parents constantly beat or threaten to beat their kids.

Now, like I said, I am pro-children existing. In general, I like kids. And when you look at the conditions these kids grow up in you begin to see what causes all this outrageous behavior. As I mentioned before, they’ve been hit by the parents their whole lives. It is the same in schools. Though many teachers, administrators and government officials denounce it, corporal punishment essentially ubiquitous in Nigerien public schools. Does violence make them more aggressive and unruly? Perhaps. I’ve seen toddlers chase each other with machetes. What’s more, Nigerien children have a very unstructured childhood, especially compared to children in the West. From day one, American babies face an onslaught of stimulation and structure. This is not the case in Niger. Let me ‘splain:

The old adage, “it takes a village to raise a child,” makes most of us picture an African village. But (ironically) in Niger, it feels more like: “it takes a village to neglect a child.” Besides the times when kids are working in the fields or going to school (however infrequently), they are pretty much on their own. They are safe in the confines of the village (no one lets the kids do anything too dangerous or stupid), but they are only minimally supervised—certainly nothing up to snuff with American baby-sitting standards.

Nigerien babies are carried on their mother’s backs while she works, or left to sit around the concession, supervised by older kids (and by older, I mean like seven). When they stop breastfeeding they will follow their mothers when she ventures somewhere as far as the fields, but otherwise are left to entertain themselves. Nigerien mothers obviously love and value their children. They are cared for, but considering the mothers’ schedules, it makes sense that kids are pretty much left to their own devices. until they are old enough to start working and caring for younger kids themselves. One of my friends once commented, “In Niger, there is hardly any time from when a kid is carried on someone’s back to the time when she is expected to carry someone on her back.”

The treatment of Nigerien children is rough, but witnessing it has also made me realize Americans are WAY over protective of their kids. We don’t realize how durable children really are. We baby proof everything, demarcate boundaries for our children to play it, and have millions of safety regulations for anything involving kids. Parenting books regarding child safety are infinite. Kids are constantly supervised, not allowed certain toys, and rushed to the doctor at the slightest hint of an illness. I read an article in a magazine my dad sent me recently shunning the children’s classic Good Night Moon for depicting a fireplace without a protective gate. Yikes.

In constrast…Everyday, I see Nigerien woman do things to their kids that make me think, if this were America that mother would be scolded or reported to social services. For example, mothers often pick their children up by the arm, let their toddlers chew on mirror shards, or leave a baby within ten feet of a cookfire. Kids also fall off of a lot of things here. For example, napping babies off of beds. There are no cribs in my village. (Now also seems like a good time to mention Nigerien children don’t have toys, except the ones they construct for themselves out of trash.)

Obviously, this difference in the way children are treated stems from a divergent view of what children are. American children are prodigies. They have personalities and interests, which are cultivated throughout year and years of education. They are little adults, given responsibility and choices. They are urged from day one to reach their fullest potential. They are little name-bearers, groomed to carry a family tradition into the next generation. In Niger, children are not entitled to fun or even school. Kids are little workers. Girls, especially, almost never get to just play. I’ve had families tell me point blank the reason they have so many kids is to help work. They also serve as a bit of a status symbol—the more you have the wealthier and more stable your family. “If a family has a baby each year, you know they are happy and doing well for themselves,” a woman in my village told me.

I blame neither American nor Nigerien mothers for these two extremes. It’s the culture you live in. An American mother of two once told me, “From the moment you get pregnant all you hear about (in America) are the endless ways you can screw up your kid.” So…we try to mitigate every possible risk.

In Niger, the mother is only raising her kids the way she was raised. The kids may be a bit malnourished, bruised, or ill, but mom’s doing the best she can and most often just trying to get through the day. In rural villages women don’t have the time/resources to be sure her child is always supervise, and therefore not exposed to unnecessary risks. (I met a kid in Gotheye, whose brother, while playing, accidentally pushed him into his mother’s cook fire, giving the child third-degree burns from his hips to his ankles.) Everyone in Niger bears scars from previous, serious injuries. Besides physical threats, women don’t often know about simple sanitation practices could prevent diarrheal disease, which is the number one killer of children in third-world countries.

Unfortunately, it seems to be a self-defeating cycle. An article in X issue of The Economist, publicized new research that shows countries with lighter disease burdens tend to have a higher average IQ. While correlation does not imply causation, it makes sense children who are constantly fighting off various diseases do not develop as quickly or as fully—especially when you hear that 75% of a toddler’s energy goes to maintaining brain function. It was a really interesting article…you should check it out.

In the end, my point is this: Kids may be little assholes from time to time, but when you understand what they are up against, it’s hard not to have sympathy. Not only that, but supporting them seems to be a huge key to development. (Don’t even get me started on middle-school-aged girls going to school and how much that will better her life and the life of her children.) So…I guess I’m back to feeling bad when I see those just-75-cents-a-day-will-buy-this-kid-with-flies-on-her-face-shoes commercials.

Mariama and Her Nephew

Hey Team,

Bad news...I wasn't going to say anything about this until I had the time to write a whole post, but then everyone keeps asking me about him, so I have to tell you....that...Gatsby...has...died...

Here's what happened: I came home after putting my mother and sister on the plane to find my dear little kitty dead in my house. He'd been there for a while, so I'm not going to lie, it was pretty gross...smelly...

My host family was absolutely wonderful and cleaned up everything for me while I stood outside, not looking. They even scrubbed and swept the floor, then instructed me to light my candles to help with the smell. They also told me they had been giving him food regularly but one day, shortly after my mother and sister's visit to my village, he stopping coming out of the house (he could get in and out through a window). They said they think he ate something bad (e.g. a poisoned lizard).

They did their best to comfort me, telling me I could get another, better cat. But I think I'm done with pets in Africa. Only Allah knows how long I will be staying here or if I'll be moving around more. Gatsby and I shared a special bond, short-lived as it was...

It's sad...but as one of my favorite Pop, Uruguayan musicians sings, nada se pierde, todo se transforma. "Nothing is lost, only transformed."

So, in few weeks, a new training class will arrive in Niger and begin their training. I remember it was this time last year I was back in America, preparing to come. And, I started madly searching the Internet to read other volunteers' blogs, trying to learn everything I could. With that in mind, I've decided to post a few words of wisdom for those of you who might be preparing to come (the rest of you can just ignore this):

1. Don't worry about language. You will have plenty of time to learn what you need to know during training. I came in not know a word of Zarma, and having never studied French, and I did fine.

2. If your looking to get more specific advice about packing, etc. check out the facebook group (Peace Corps Niger July 2010) your peers have started. My fellow PCVs and I posted a list of things you may want or not want to bring. You are also more than welcome to send me a message on facebook. For privacy reasons, I don't want to give out my email here or to tell you my full name, but I am a member of the facebook group. I have my head in a bucket in my profile picture.

3. Seriously feel free to send me or any of the other volunteers questions you have. We are all super excited for you to come and really enjoy helping you make the transition into your new life.

4. Don't bring a lot of clothes. You can buy used clothes and Nigerien clothes here. Bring snacks instead. SERIOUSLY BRING SNACKS. Pre-service training is hard because you are living with a homestay family and don't cook for yourself. It is during this period I experienced my most intense food cravings.

5. Enjoy your time in the States before you leave. Don't bother trying to do a bunch of research before you get here. It's better to come in without a ton of expectations. They will teach you everything you need to know during training.

6. Bring one or two outfits that will make you feel really American. Trust me, after months of being hot and sweaty all the time, you will relish the chance to get cleaned up.

7. Remember that training is nothing like your actual service. Some people really hate training and love being in their village. I loved both. So just remember to have patience and if you are having a hard time, really try to stick it out until you've been in your village for a few months to be sure you are getting a real taste of what the Peace Corps is.

8. Remember to be very polite, patient, and kind with yourself when learning new things.

9. Have your parents/your friends send you a package two weeks before you leave, it will get there during the first two weeks of your training, when you most need a pick-me-up.

10. Keep in mind that the first two weeks of training were the longest two in my entire Peace Corps Service.

That's the basics... again, check out the facebook group and feel free to contact any of us for advice! Enjoy your time with your family and have a safe trip over!

Be well,

Katie

June 8, 2010

Well folks, it’s been a busy month since my return from Spain and third move. Work is starting to pick up, and I’ve been so busy I had to cut back on my napping by nearly 30%. More importantly, I have begun to feel deeply happy with my life here. The truth is, since last November when I was moved from Gotheye, I haven’t really managed to get my footing until now.

Looking over my past entries, I realize it may seem like I haven’t had more than a handful of bad days since leaving the United States. Unfortunately, this constant optimism is all a product of what I call my cheerleader syndrome: I refuse to label anything in my life as a problem until it is in the past, leading me to overlook, not mention, ignore, repress, minimize, reframe, euphonize, or flat out deny all the less-fun details of my life.

Over the past months, moving sites has presented me with lots of challenges. More recently, my housing situation and the closing of the mayor’s office (until they hold elections next March) brought my frustrations with my site to an almost intolerable level. I haven’t had any true I-want-to-go-back-to-America-drink-mochas-and-forget-Africa-exists moments, but I have had a lot of hard days—days during which I have felt completely useless. And, feelings of uselessness are like kryptonite to my ego; they absolutely undo me.

But things are looking up! Not only am I healthy and busy with work, I also have managed to renounce all my site-envy—a terrible affliction that caused me to sigh longingly whenever I heard about all the great projects my peers were doing. It also caused me to lie awake many nights questioning the wisdom of the Peace Corps staff in placing me in my current village. (When I moved, my boss told me in so many words, this was the only site available for my sector and language group.) Amidst the whole housing fiasco, it even occurred to me to lobby for a site change—something that should not be done lightly. I’m not going to go into detail about my site complaints, mostly because they are complex and not fun for me to write about. Let me just say that in general, as a Masters International student, I don’t feel like my current village offers enough technical development work, which I spent a year training for in Seattle.

That feeling I’m not using all my skills/training hasn’t changed, but I realized recently I am satisfied with my site. I know everyone in the community and have carved out a little niche in its daily activities. More importantly, I love the people and want to help them anyway I can. I may not be able to conduct award-winning research while here, but (for now) it really feels like home.

On the other hand, I’ve also notice my sudden upswing coincides perfectly with the beginning of rainy season and the end of 110+ degree weather…perhaps these things are related… Anyway, enough of all my psychobabble, let me tell you about what I’ve been doing.

History Lessons and Global Youth Service Week

I mentioned in my last entry I was awarded funding for my first project, a tree-planting at my village’s primary school. I’d had the idea of planting trees at the school for a while, ever since the director told me he was interested in forestry. When I heard money was available for Global Youth Service week, I was able to slap together a proposal in time to get a chunk of the money. (The whole project only required about six USD, which is funny to me, because the proposal I wrote was three pages long…two dollars a page I guess.)

I planned the whole thing out, got the director’s promise of cooperation, and (after a disproportionate amount of trouble) was able to arrange the transport of 30 seedlings from Dosso to my village.

The day of the planting, I arrived at the school to discover the students mid-lesson. I offered to wait in the schoolyard for the session to finish, but the primary school director who was teaching the class (also my French tutor) graciously offered to let me sit in on the rest of the lesson. After directing me to a chair in the back of the room, he resumed his lecture about the history of Niger.

The lesson was in French, so I didn’t immediately understand what they were talking about. But, (as a credit to the director’s language instruction) I was able to pick out the words, “l’esclavage et le travail forcé” (slavery and forced labor). Uh, oh… I know how this story goes…

To help the children understand the topic, the director frequently translated a phrase or two into Zarma. Needless to say, the word “anasara” came up often enough.

I, of course, was the only white person in a 37-kilometer radius. The kids, incredulous at what they were hearing, began whipping around in their seats too look at me. “Hamsatou did WHAT?!” I imagined them asking themselves. And, as the lecture continued they kept sneaking glances as if they might catch me trying to load up one of their classmates and cart him away. The director himself, aware of what was causing the disruption, kept looking at me too.

Thoroughly embarrassed and uncomfortable, I attempted clarify the situation. Yes, I am white. No, I did not participate in the decades of human trafficking that befell West Africa. I wanted to explain to the kids this was all a long time ago and (in my mind) morally indefensible. Instead, my mouth just flapped open and closed a couple times.

The worst part: I was there for the tree planting! After the lesson finished, I marched the kids outside and told them to start digging holes. I almost died when the director brought me a chair to oversee (forgive my diction) the project and did not allow me to help.

Honestly, I’m sure the kids forgot their history lesson amidst the excitement and chaos that accompanies any break from routine. More importantly, the tree planting was successful. As of four days ago, all thirty trees were still alive…

Home Life

It’s all good news: I have moved into my new house AND have a latrine AND have a shade hanger. I am living with the guy who sells tea and coffee, his two wives, and their eight children (almost all of which are between the ages of three and seven). Needless to say, the place is a bit noisy. BUT, for the first time, I really feel like I am a part of a family. We eat every meal together (which means I am eating millet porridge and sauce three meals a day). I am also becoming good friends with both of the landlord’s wives. Best of all, I don’t have to deal with Hama’s mother any more, who (among other offenses) once made me drink a bowl of soapy water to cure my stomach ache.

Speaking of Hama, things have been slightly awkward since I moved out. I didn’t realize how intense small town politics could be. Turns out the almost the entire town has taken sides in the feud. Most people, after hearing I had moved out, wanted every dirty detail of what happened. No matter how diplomatic I tried to be, the conversation inevitable devolved into, “Hama is a bad person” or “Hama has ruined his name.” A few others have scolded me for not behaving better while living there, as if the entire situation was my fault. My strategy has been to minimize the drama and downplay the trouble I had while living there. I’ve even visited Hama and his mother a couple times to make it clear I wasn’t holding a grudge. (One of my friends in the village told me everyone was really shocked I did this. “A Zarma would never have gone back there,” she told me.)

Anyway, I am happy with my new house, and am so much a part of the family, I’ve even become a bit of a baby-sitter.

Projects

Work is good. In fact, for the first time I really feel like I’m actually doing work. This was surprising because, after joining Peace Corps, I had begun to feel like a bit of a grown infant. What I mean to say is, upon my arrival in Niger, I was asked to relearn everything I thought I knew. As a PCV in a country like Niger—one that is so different from the United States—you essentially have to start from scratch. I had to learn to eat, poop, talk, dress, bathe, launder, socialize, cook and maintain my personal hygiene all over again. I have been so stunted in my ability to communicate, function, and just exist for so long, I was very surprised to discover I am actually capable of doing real work here.

My big moment of success came when I was able to organize and conduct two separate meetings for my villagers. (I held two meetings one for the men and one for the women in the community because women won’t talk openly when men are around.) I wanted to discuss what they think the needs, challenges, and resources of the community are. I got the support of the village chief, got permission to use the community center, told people when and where it was, AND PEOPLE ACTUALLY CAME. A lot of people actually came. What’s more, I was able to conduct the meeting IN ZARMA. Granted, my counterpart had to re-explain a few points, but I still left feeling very empowered.

At the meetings, the number-one concern my villagers expressed was the need for a new clinic. As I mentioned, the clinic my villagers are using now is rather small. It’s really just an extra room in the community center. Thus, there is no place for a person to rest if they fall seriously ill or need to give birth, unless they take the seven-kilometer trip to the next village via donkey cart.

Near the primary school there is a half-finished building, which was supposed to be made into a new clinic, but the contractor either stole or lost (I’m not clear on this point) the money to finish the project. So, it’s been sitting there for at least half a decade, not being use. Well, that’s a lie. In an ironic twist, my villagers have been using the structure as a pubic toilet, rather than using the actual latrines built by an NGO (which are mere yards away). There was a very exciting week, during which time I thought I would be able to find funding to finish the clinic for my villages before the Nigerien government refused to grant me permission to fix it. I was, however, more than welcome to build a completely new clinic, if I felt so inclined.

Besides the meeting and the tree planting, I’ve also organized a demonstration to show women how to build more fuel-efficient cookstoves out of mud, started an English club to help the middle school students practice their language over the summer, found two girls to apply for the Young Girls’ Scholarship, and have plans for many other in the works. I also got the chance to go to Zinder for a three-day, All-Volunteer Conference, where I got to see my peers showcase the projects they’ve done. It was very inspiring.

The only other thing worth mentioning is, with the beginning of the rain, hungry season is now in full swing. The harvest from last year is dwindling and my villagers have only just started planting. It will be at least a few months before they will be able to harvest again. The effects of this annual food shortage are noticeable in my village, but not as clearly as it is for my peers out east. I have seen the kids in my concession plead with their mothers for more food (even after meals). I have watched the kids fight over the food they do get. I have noticed the two women in my concession skipping meals, or barely eating at dinner. (In spite of all this, they still insist on including me in at least two meals a day, so I have started buying groceries to keep from being a burden.)

But like I said, comparatively, this isn’t that bad. Another member of my training class told me everyday someone in her village dies. I’m pretty sure this is not all straight up starvation, but rather just sick people being made sicker by malnutrition.

The country director rightly warned me to keep an eye on my friends and myself during this time of year. “Watching others struggle to feed themselves, while you receive a generous monthly allowance is probably the hardest part of your service,” she advised.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to April! Well, now it’s May…oops. The other day while watching a Christmas episode of “30 Rock” I though for a moment it was still December. All this to say: the months are flying by.

I apologize there is so much blog all at once, and that it's been almost two months since my last post, but that's just how it happened. Also, just to warn you, I express a lot of opinions in my entry about Spain. Please, refer to the disclaimer if you are offended by them.

Before I launch into various commentaries of village life and descriptions of my bodily functions, let me tell you a bit about my vacation….

April 14, 2010

Spaindelirious.

Spain is a magical land full of beautiful people, delicious treats, and acceptable weather. From the beginning, (for those who don’t already know) I may or may not have arrived two whole days early to Niamey, thinking my flight was on a Monday, not a Wednesday. I would have gotten all the way to the airport Monday night (which would have been a real tragedy considering my flight left at two a.m.), if it were not for my dear friend Susannah. Susannah (who was graciously letting me visit her in Spain) pointed out to me mere hours before I would have departed for the airport my flight was not for another two days.

TAPAS!

I felt very silly; especially since there is so much ado these days about PCVs coming to Niamey in wake of the security situation. My father, however, reminded me of the time he confused the dates of an event causing my entire family to show up to a destination two weeks early while vacationing in Italy. “It’s in your genes,” he counseled.

Once I did actually depart for the trip, I was both excited and nervous. Travel to and from Niger can be very complicated and things seem to go wrong more often than not. (Hence my panicked call to the Royal Air Moroc office in Niamey four hours before my flight to confirm I had a ticket. This was after the website told me “our records show no reservation under that name.”)

A third-world airport was also a new experience. From the time I entered the building until I was seated on the plane, various agents checked my passport five times (Once at the door of the airport, once when I checked in, once at customs, once at the security checkpoint, and once more at the door to the airplane.) Also, I would like to note my flight was accommodating an entire Nigerien athletic team of some kind, most of which (I’m guessing) had never flown before and clearly did not understand the concept of “assigned seating.”

Here is my flight plan: Niamey to Ouagadougou, Ouagadougou to Casablanca, Casablanca to Madrid, Madrid to Santander. I left the hostel at eleven thirty p.m. on Wednesday and arrived around 8 p.m. the next day. Below is a list of things I found shocking and/or exciting:

1. The airplane food – exciting, delicious and free!

2. The advertisement for vacation spots in Morocco – Shocking and painful that I was not assigned to Peace Corps Morocco.

3. How green Casablanca is!! – exciting.

4. The actual stores in the Casablanca airport – exciting and shocking.

5. The STARBUCKS in the Madrid airport – just exciting.

6. The temperature and precipitation that greeted me in Santander, Spain – EXCITING, but also shocking.

7. My friend Susannah surprise meeting me at the airport – just exciting, not shocking.

8. The Spanish couple making out in front of us on the bus from the airport – just shocking, not exciting.

First of all, for those who don’t know, I met Susannah Rama (as I like to call her) while studying abroad in Argentina three years ago. She was the school chum of Sarah, another girl in my abroad program who still lives in Argentina. Susannah and I immediately bonded over boy troubles and a mutual love for grammar. Susannah is also the one who taught me I can wear whatever I want, including crazy vintage clothes. Susannah currently lives in Spain teaching English with a Spanish government teaching fellowship or something. (Feel free to correct any biographical or grammatical errors Ms. Rama.) Anyway, she invited me to Spain on an all-cheese-expenses-paid vacation. How could I say no?

So what did we do for a whole ten days in the first world? I recall we did some sightseeing (in between meals), but for me, even going to a supermarket was exciting, exotic, and new. I saw a lighthouse, went to a small town left from medieval times, visited a castle, took a bus to the Basque country, saw the Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry, met Susannah’s Spanish friends, heard her choir practice, was interviewed by her English class, went shopping, played with a pony, and ATE A LOT. It was great…

Guggenheim in Bilbao

The question everyone asks now is some derivative of: how did it feel to be back in the first world?

Peace Corps Niger volunteers spend a lot of time discussing the first world. Especially, we talk about our rumored “inability to function normally” upon returning home. There are stories of returned volunteers being hassled by customs (because of their suspicious/dirty appearance), freezing in 70-degree weather, accidentally greeting African-Americans in Zarma or Hausa, and even breaking into tears when presented with variety of a first-world grocery store. I recognized reestablishing myself in the first world would have its difficulties, but upon hearing these stories, I discounted much of it as mere banter.

Then I went to Spain…While I did not break down crying in a grocery store, it was harder than I expected it to be. There was nothing specifically wrong. In fact, I had an amazing time eating good food and enjoying good company. Nonetheless, I was anxious for a lot of the trip. I kept waiting for something to go really wrong…

Of course, all the anxiety I felt could be a side effect of my malarial prophylaxis, Mefloquine, which according to Wikipedia, “may have severe and permanent adverse side effects such as severe depression, anxiety, paranoia, aggression, nightmares, insomnia, seizures, birth defects, peripheral motor-sensory neuropathy, vestibular (balance) damage and central nervous system problems.” Since starting Mefloquine, I’ve definitely had moments of anxiety and several “Mefloquine Dreams”—vivid, often-violent nightmares—but before Spain I hadn’t thought the drug was getting the better of me. Now, at my brother’s suggestion, I’m keeping better track of potential side effects to decide if I want to switch to a different drug; but I’m not convinced that’s what caused me to be so nervous in Spain.

Anyway…

On top of this unfounded anxiety, in Spain I was confronted by all the third-world quirks I hadn’t even realized I’d gotten used to. Most of the time it was trivial things, like the thickness of an apple peel (African apples have really tough skins), or that Spaniards understood the concept of waiting in a line. But other times it was bigger.

I was taken by the amount of beauty everywhere in Spain. Not only the people, but every building, every street, every bus stop, everything seemed ornate and intentional. This especially struck me while I was trotting along the stone floors of the brand-new Madrid airport. Just observing details like the clever way speakers were hung from the ceiling or the care with which the mall-worthy stores had been laid out, it was clear people had put an enormous amount of money and energy into creating this space.

Examining that speaker in the Madrid airport sadly ignited in me a bit of frustration towards the first world. I found myself wondering how much more it had cost make it so fancy…not that I’m against visually appealing construction, but it all seemed excessive.

Here was my thought process: We all feel bad about the situation in Africa. I mean, who doesn’t feel a little guilty when we see the just-75-cents-a-day-will-buy-this-kid-with-flies-in-her-eyes-shoes commercials. In fact, when it comes to having third-world sympathy, the members of the first world (especially Europe and the States) seem to be caught in perpetual back-pat-athon. We care so, so much! Haven’t you seen the commercials? Nonetheless, I firmly believe that—more than anything else—the places we focus our time and energy reveals our priorities in life. Talk is cheap.

We first-worldlings have an abundance of time, energy and money. Before you stop me and tell me how busy you are, consider how much of your day you spend actually subsisting. None of us spend 12 hours a day growing our own food or building our own houses. We have the luxury of deciding how we want to spend our time. We get to pick our jobs, afterall. And what do we invest all this time and money in? In engineering fancy speakers, airplanes, putting humans on the moon, shampoo that will make your hair grow, and even the traits of our offspring. If we want something to work, by God, it will happen. So, what does that say about decades of failed development policies?

Next, the way people treated food was a big point of interest for me. In restaurants, I was acutely aware of how diverse the menu was, as well as how much food people left on their plates. I witnessed this casual sense of abundance even more clearly one morning when were eating croissants. Susannah, having finished, brushed the last eighth of her croissant into the trash so she could wash her dish. I had been eyeing it, but held in the annoying “are-you-going-to-eat-that?” query. I figured she would eat it eventually, or offer it to me if she didn’t want it. I honestly never thought she would just throw it away. Nigeriens never throw away even the tiniest morsel of food unless it is actually rotten. If you don’t want it, there is always some hungry kid that will relish whatever you have.

Now, let’s pause here. I’m not trying to poo-poo Susannah for reckless wastefulness. I’m sure anyone else in the room would have even thought it strange if she had offered me a scrap of such miniscule proportions. I’m also sure a year ago I would have similarly disposed of the croissant... I wasted a ton of food in the States. Finally, I’m sure that had there been a malnourished Nigerien child next door, Susannah would never have dreamed of denying the child her leftovers. In fact, being the warm, loving person she is, Susannah would probably even cook the child meals on a regular basis.

I really don’t want to become the woman who starts all her conversations with, “Do you realize in Africa, people don’t even have (insert first-world convenience here)?” I don’t think guilt is a productive or pleasant state-of-mind. I would much rather people feel excited by or engaged in third-world development than have them feeling guilty about it. In my mind, it’s guilt that makes us hand beggars a few coins on the street and interested compassion that inspires us search out ways to genuinely them. The point is simply this: after living in Africa for nearly a year now, I just have a different (clearer?) perspective on life. Especially, I have a deeper sense of the luxuries I enjoyed at home and what they cost.

My last day in Spain, I even had a moment of grieving this loss of ignorance. I was sitting at lunch with Susannah and two of her gorgeous, extremely well-dressed Spanish friends. We were in a nice café, enjoying a slow lunch and good weather. (Side note: I will never forget the complete lack of recognition and bafflement that shone in these ladies’ eyes when Susannah told them I live in a mud hut.) Anyway, while these girls were chatting away about something in Spanish, I allowed myself to wonder (as I had frequently over the past ten days), what would my villagers think of all this? This café? This food? The weather? The sidewalks? All the shops? The way people were dressed? And, in that moment I realized, this was how it is going to be for the rest of my life. The struggling masses of Africa are no longer faceless or hypothetical. They are my neighbors and my friends, and no matter where I end up, I will never forget them.

April 24th, 2010

Village Life

After all the cheese, juice, hot showers and cool weather, I was nervous to return to my village. What if I got back and just couldn’t stand all the bugs, sand, heat and poop? While I knew I wasn’t going to call it quits, I wasn’t expecting it to be an easy adjustment either. To my surprise, upon returning to my site, I felt immediately (immediately) at ease. All the anxiety that had been swelling in my chest since I arrived in Spain evaporated. I am vaguely concerned by the fact that I feel so much more at ease in a mud hut in the middle of the Sahel than in a nice restaurant in Spain…but I will wait to deal with that potential panic attack until I’m on the plane back to America.

Doing dishes at my house.

Guh! This one was like 4" long.

One thing that really helped ease me back into my village was Gatsby…my new boyfriend, and by boyfriend, I mean cat. I really like having a kitty to come home to. Not only does he provide me with hours of entertainment and something to cuddle with, he’s also become an expert bug/lizard catcher. He is, however, a bit clingy. He follows me EVERYWHERE, including when I go to use the latrine. (Once, while I was mid-squat, he trotted in and dug himself a little hole to do the same. My friend Katy LOVED this story and said, “I wish there was some way you could have taken a picture of that without it being gross.”)

Aside from the occasional lizard, I’ve been feeding him kuli-kuli, which is baked peanut meal with the oil drained out. It looks a lot like cat food and is high in protein, so it seems to be working well. Gatsby also really loves Kraft macaroni and cheese, which my father has been sending me at regular intervals.

My villagers are a little weirded out by the whole pet thing. They understand the concept of keeping animals (many even have cats). But the fact that I’ve named my kitty, let him sleep on my bed and give him lots of food and kisses is clearly BAB (bizarre anasara behavior). Even the idea of petting a cat is foreign to them. When my neighbor saw me petting Gatsby, she asked by I was doing it. Many neighbors have even started calling me the cat-keeper and cat-mother.

Gatsby, who sleeps at least 20 hours a day, also has helped me overcome a lot of the guilt I feel for not being more productive…which leads us to…

Gatsby "settling in." This was take about ten minutes after we arrived in my village.

Work.

Before I left for Spain, I was still “working” at the mayors office, which is to say I would stop by there to chat with people and write birth certificates. Upon my return, however, I learned the military junta currently governing the Niger dismissed all the mayors. This might sound terrible and undemocratic, but it’s really a good, kind thing. This last group of mayors was elected five years ago and supposed to have finished with their mandate in December; but with all the Tanja drama and postponing of elections, they were forced to continue working. It seemed to me most mayors were really ready to be done, but until the junta released them, they had a legal obligation to continue working. Soon enough, the government will organize another round of elections, but until that time mayoral staff is supposed to tend to the day-to-day needs of their commune without a mayor.

For many communes, this isn’t a problem—they have the staff and resources to carry on. In my case, however, the mayor’s office is even more abandoned than it was before. For a while, Seyni the Etat-Civil would sit in front of the building for a few hours in the morning, but not actually do any work. As the weeks passed, however, he eventually just stopped showing up. (Before you judge, it’s important to note Seyni hasn’t been paid for eight months.) Thus, any project I want to do with the mayor’s office is completely on hold.

The Peace Corps staff in Niamey is vaguely concerned about the productivity of the entire Municipal and Community Development Sector, considering our main point of contact within host communities is gone. Personally, I’m daring to hope the next mayor will be a super-motivated individual, who wants nothing more than to help a Peace Corps volunteer plan projects. In the end, it’s impossible to know how (and how long) this change will affect my ability to carry out sector-specific projects…but as they say in Zarma, boorey kulu si bey kala irkoy—no one but Allah knows.

I’ve have had a couple more conversations with the NGO planning to replace the village’s garden fence, and they seem excited to include me in their work. Also, I did manage the tree planting with the elementary school, and I have lots of ideas for projects I would like to do with the schools. Since the school year is almost done, however, I’m planning on holding off on those until next October. In the meantime, I’m focusing on projects in other sectors: agriculture, health and education.

Helping babies.

Upon her request, I spent a couple afternoons helping the doctor in my village weigh and vaccinate babies. (She’s not an actual M.D., but besides the village’s two midwives she is the only healthcare professional in the area. Also, in a previous blog post, I called her Zeelah, but her name is actually Zougou (ZOO-goo).)

I was a little nervous the day Zougou sent a villager to my house to retrieve me. I had promised her I would help her with some work, but I am not a trained health professional. I was afraid I may be getting in over my head. Thank Allah, Zougou did not ask me to give any shots. Instead she had me fill out vaccination records the mothers had, and later, she taught me how to weigh the babies. She also had me write several birth certificates for new mothers, which I am a pro at, after working at the mayor’s office.

The one-room clinic in my village is a pretty stressful place on days when Zougou is working. There is no waiting room, so all the mothers crowd into the tiny space to get out of the sun. There is also no filing cabinet, so medical records are just spread over Zougou’s desk, forcing me to have to shuffle through the mess to retrieve a record every time a new person showed up.

On top of all the chatter, the babies (of course) bawl uncontrollably upon receiving a shot. Also, Zougou isn’t exactly gentle… The pregnant mothers, in contrast, don’t even flinch when they get their tetanus and vitamin shots. (As I mentioned before, crying is not a thing adults do here.)

I was impressed to learn vaccinations are free. And if the child is registered with the state and is under the age of five, his or her mother only has to pay 100 FCFA (about 22 U.S. cents) for any other medicine, such as antibiotics. (Registered with the state = has a birth certificate.) If not mother may have to pay up to few dollars for medicine, which can be prohibitively expensive. Even when the mothers didn’t have actual money, Zougou was determined to treat them. I saw her accept everything from soap to mangoes as payment. Of course, Zougou can’t give the state mangoes. She accepts the mangoes as payment and then passes her own money on to the government. (She seems like a hard ass but is actually very compassionate.)

The first morning I went to help her, I was a little annoyed with Zougou. She kept disappearing for long periods of time, leaving me alone in the clinic. I was tired and kept worrying a mother would show up and demand I give her baby a vaccination or something, but Zougou always came back before a new crowd of “customers” arrived. It wasn’t until later I realized Zougou disappeared because she was going out into the village to remind mothers to come get their shots.

“A government agent will come at the end of the day and take back all the supplies we don’t use,” she explained to me.

The second time I came in to help, I was surprised to learn the babies also find the scale terrifying. It is an old, rickety thing, so it’s difficult to weigh babies quickly. While I am madly trying to force the sand-logged counter weight into place, the baby wails at his or her mother in horror—not only because there is a scary anasara making crazy faces, but also because the moms aren’t allowed to touch their babies while they are being weighed. It almost heartbreaking to see the child, who is sure his mom is abandoning him for good, reach his chubby little arms forward to grab her.

Zougou then instructed me to record the weight and age of the baby on an NGO-donated medical record. The forms were pretty fancy, and even had a graph allowing you to plot the babies’ age and weight. As chubby as they may have looked every single one of the babies I weighed that day were below the “average weight line” and most were below the “malnourished line.” At first I thought I was measuring things wrong, but no. Some of the babies had even lost weight since their visit a month ago. Who has ever heard of a baby losing weight?

Haoua.

Another way I’ve been filling my time is with Haoua (HOW-ah). Haoua is a thirteen-year-old girl who showed up at my house mere hours after I first moved in and asked me to tutor her in English. (After a few successful lessons, I thought about creating an entire English club for the youth in my village; but as I said, the school year is almost over so I’m going to hold off until next year.)

Student in Niger grow up speaking Zarma, Hausa, Fufulde, Tamajeq, or some combination of native languages in the home. From the moment they enter kindergarten, however, teachers instruct almost entirely in French. This is problematic because (obviously) the children do not speak French and therefore have essentially no idea what the teacher is saying. I realized just how little French the primary school children speak after I started taking French lessons. Granted, a big anasara greeting them with a weird accent might diminish the students’ understanding, but every time I try to talk to a kid I French, they reply only with blank (terrified) stares. By middle school (Haoua’s age) the students usually have a reasonable grasp on French. They can’t really converse in the language, but they can read, write, and understand it when spoken.

It is also in middle school children start learning English. The biggest problem with learning English is most (but not all) Nigerien English teachers don’t actually speak English. (Peace Corps education volunteers used to fill this position, but in the late nineties, the government decided this it was taking jobs away from Nigeriens.) Thus, as Haoua read me a short story in her textbook at our first lesson, I was surprised to discover she had no idea what any of the words she was reading meant.

“Don’t you stop and discuss what the stories mean?” I asked her in Zarma.

“No,” she replied, “our teacher just has us read aloud.”

This constitutes their entire English lesson. Haoua, who at age thirteen has taken two years of English, didn’t even understand basic greetings. So, it wasn’t long before I told her to stop bringing her way-too-advanced textbook and started from scratch. We play games, draw pictures, and look at books of America. Haoua especially loves it when we use American beauty magazines as the basis for a lesson. Though I have a hard time explaining what bird-shaped purses or Paris Hilton mermaids are. After looking though an Elle magazine my sister had sent, Haoua informed me, “America has a lot of stuff.” I just shrugged.

Haoua learns at an incredible pace. I can tell she practices the things I teach her at home, because whenever we review she always has the previous lesson down pat. She is so eager to learn I often have to send her home because I am too tired or unprepared for a lesson. For a while, she was showing up at my house every afternoon. Other times she would go an entire week without coming. I asked her about this one day and she told me she is often too busy with chores to be able to get away. Also, I learned her parents live in another town outside of my village, so on the weekends she has to walk all the way home.

My village boasts the only middle school in the area. To be able to go to school, Haoua stays with her older sister, whose husband is from our village. This situation is really lucky for Haoua, since if she didn’t have family friends to stay with, middle school wouldn’t be an option. Other children walk up to ten kilometers to and from school every day, but many children live too far away to be able to walk. Haoua will face this challenge if she continues on after middle school, as the nearest high school is much farther away.

I’m also good friend with Haoua’s older sister, Oumou (OUH-moo). One day when she came to visit me, I realized Oumou, who is a little older than me, was completely illiterate. This surprised me, since Haoua seemed so dedicated to studying.

“Didn’t your parents send you to school?” I asked Oumou.

“I would have liked to study, but there wasn’t a primary school in our village when I was of age,” she told me. “Haoua’s class was only the second class to enroll. I wouldn’t have been able to come to middle school either,” she continued. “Before I married Abdou, our family didn’t have any contacts here.”

This conversation bummed me out, but also gave me the idea of organizing an adult literacy class for my villagers.

In spite of all the obstacles, Haoua seems pretty determined to be in school. Luckily, Peace Corps Niger’s Gender and Development program offers a scholarship for middle-school-aged girls. Since the program is almost entirely funded by returned Peace Corps Niger volunteers, there are a limited number of scholarships available, but I’m hopeful for Haoua. A scholarship winner will receive her own set of textbooks (rather than having to share with three other students), a backpack, other school supplies (Haoua didn’t even have a pen), and money to pay a tutor. What’s more, as long as a scholarship winner continues to pass her classes, she will continue to receive the money until she reaches high school.

I know merely “passing classes” doesn’t mean much and certainly wouldn’t win you a scholarship in America. In Niger, however, it is something to reward, especially considering the language barriers the students face. A lot of students don’t pass. The attrition rate in primary and middle schools is appalling, and if a student fails to pass a grade twice, they are not allowed to reenroll.

Why, you may ask, is girls’ education so important that they would be singled out? Why not offer the scholarship to all students? The answer is this: “Girls reap enormous benefits from post-primary education, including skills that translate into employment and empowerment. In addition, there is a correlation between education beyond primary school and having healthier families and lower fertility rates. Yet despite the multiple benefits of secondary education, four out of every five girls in Africa go without it.” (http://www.unicef.org/girlseducation/index_bigpicture.html)

Researchers have actually discovered all kinds of wonderful correlations between girls’ education and development. People have theorized this relationship is gender specific because an educated man will leave his village in search of economic opportunity. Women, in contrast, tend to stick around. Anyone who has read the incredibly popular Three Cups of Tea or Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson (if you haven’t read it, you need to), is familiar with the adage: “If you educate a boy you educate an individual. If you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

There are hundreds and hundreds of studies linking girls’ education to development. To see just a few of these studies check out: http://www.womendeliver.org/knowledge-center/facts-figures/girls-education/. On a personal level, I am really able to see the effects of a middle school education in my village. The mothers who have gone to school really do have fewer, healthier kids (who are in turn also going to school). I’m not sure how to describe it, but the middle school graduates are just more aware of the world as adults. Many of these women also have figured out how to earn their own money. While they are still supported by their husbands, these women have gained a kind of independence in having their own spending money (which they usually used to by medicine and such for their children). If there ever were a silver bullet for international development, I deeply believe it is girls’ education.

Now, before I descend from my soapbox, I would like to offer you the opportunity to donate to Peace Corps Niger’s Young Girl Scholarship Program. I understand that you are not an anasara vending machine, and (as we talked about in the Spain stuff) I don’t want you to give money out of guilt. My hope is that after hearing how effective girls’ education is as a development tool you are EXCITED and INSPIRED and would like to help.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to donate online—you have to mail in a form. But, before you get all I-can’t-be-bothered-to-print-a-form-and-write-a-check on me, recall all the obstacles these young girls have to overcome. I think you can handle filling out one form. Here are the steps:

1. Go to this link: http://www.friendsofniger.org/aboutfon/joinfon.html.

2. Print the document.

3. Fill out your personal information.

4. In the next section of the form, you have to “become a member.” But the money you send in for membership fees goes toward programs.

5. In the next section of the form, to support the Young Girls’ Scholarship program, check the third item on the list that reads: “I want to support FON's Young Girls' Scholarship Program activities.”

6. Write a check to “Friends of Niger.”

7. Send check and form to: P. O. Box 5823, Washington, D. C. 20016-9998

8. Feel good about yourself.

May 1, 2010

Hama, Hama, Hama!

When I got back from Spain, I was delighted to see my landlord had replaced the rickety fence around the concession with a beautiful mud wall, adding to my privacy. He even constructed it in such a way that passersby could no longer see me making use of my latrine. As if I needed more reason to feel warm and fuzzy about my site, all my villagers were especially welcoming and excited to see me back. I can see my villagers have started to accept my presence more as well. I’ve been surprised recently by how many people know my name, and how many personal conversations I’ve been included in.

I was even more pumped by the fact that I completed my first real project. As part of global youth service week, I had organized a tree planting with the primary school director. I wrote the proposal, got the funding, and before I new it I was standing in front of the all the primary school students, telling them about the importance of planting trees. Things were finally starting to fall into place.

So, what call all this mean? –It’s about time for something to go wrong again…

I swear, I’m not being pessimistic so much as paying heed to the law of the land. In the face of disappointment, we Americans often cite the old maxim, “nothing lasts forever.” (Brett Dennen even wrote a song about it.) In Africa, however, I think the phrase is better revised to say, “nothing lasts for very long and definitely not as long as you need it to.” (This isn’t just about my latrine incident either…) I’ve only managed to maintain my health for a month or two at a time before I’m sure to contract another case of severe diarrhea. I’ve watched in frustration as termites have steadily devoured the support beams of my shade hanger. I sweat out water almost as fast as I can drink it. Food sours overnight. Mud houses are washed away by seasonal rains and constantly having to be rebuilt. Plans rarely go accordingly. Politicians rise and fall almost as fast as the governing systems they conceive. NGO projects arrive and fail at an astounding rate. The Sahara is slowly creeping southward. People even live closer to death, easily falling victim to illness or injury.

There are of course things that never seem to change, like the temperature or practice of farming millet. But the save the few exceptions, things, ideas, and people decay at such a rate to throw the entire population of Niger into a state of constant flux and uncertainty.

Thus, when I noticed how I was finally feeling settled, I figured it couldn’t be long before some issue would come up. Sure enough I wasn’t in village for more than two weeks before Hama, my landlord, decided he’d had enough and wanted his house back.

Previously, I’ve sympathized with Hama’s situation. He is an ambitious guy—constantly working on something project to fix up his house or land (also he told me he wants to buy a motorcycle, a major status symbol.) He was always willing to help me when I asked him. (For example, he was more than happy to club the snake I found sleeping in my house when I returned from Spain.) In the feud between him and the mayor, it really did seem like he was getting ripped off. Not to mention, his wife unceremoniously packed up her house and son, and moved back in with her parents. Finally, as I am an American, it seemed only fair that he should be paid the rent in a timely manner (in spite of the fact most teachers and other civil servants are not asked to pay rent in smaller communities.)

However, something has changed since the last time Hama threw a fit over the rent: the current military junta released all the local mayors from their mandate. As I mentioned, currently, my commune has no mayor. Since the mayor has officially completed his service, Seyni the Etat-Civil is in charge of things like paying my rent until (whoever??) organizes another local election. Seyni has no beef with Hama, has no reason to withhold payment and create problems for himself. Thus, I believe him 100% when he says the commune simply does not have the money to pay my rent. Soon enough, the commune will hold elections, elect a new mayor, at which time the mayoral staff will be able to collect taxes and finally pay my rent. It may be a few months, but HAMA WILL GET HIS MONEY. (It’s worth noting the last time the entire mayoral staff promised he would get his money, he did.)

Seyni (the Etat-Civil) and Seyni (the Peace Corps Program Assistant and Driver) have explained the situation to Hama numerous times in Zarma so simple, even I understood. Hama, unfortunately, just isn’t the brightest crayon in the box, and can’t seem to understand…anything. He is instead convinced everyone in the village is a liar, trying to take advantage of him, and he will not get his money (or motorcycle.)

He explained these facts to me at length, upon numerous occasions. I told him, “Hama, obviously everyone can’t be lying about this. If the entire village is telling you you will get your money, can’t you just have a little patience??”

Nope. He cannot. His behavior has been so unreasonable and frustratingly illogical that I have diagnosed him as being, what the medical world terms, “Crazy Pants.” Seriously (she waves her arms in frustration) this is why people need to go to school, so at the least they can understand simple logic.

It has been suggested by several highly reputable community members Hama is abusing drugs. This makes a lot of sense to me. Besides his paranoid, illogical mindset, there have been a few times when I have wondered if Hama was drunk when he was talking to me. But, I have no real evidence or conviction this is the case. I will never know for sure, and for now I am satisfied just thinking he is crazy pants and slow.

So, I’m moving. Blerg! I hate moving. But Seyni the Etat-Civil found a very nice, newly constructed house in a great location. It is essentially the same size as the house I am living it, and has a smaller yard, but like I said, great location (out-of-town a bit, but still centrally located, not too far from a well and a big shady tree). I also really liked the people. I met the new landlord, who declared upon introductions I could live in his house for five years and he wouldn’t care if they paid him rent. His two wives immediately fed me and made me feel right at home. There are however, a rather daunting number of small children in the concession, which may be an issue for privacy.

When am I moving? As soon as Allah wills it. I told the Peace Corps Bureau I am not willing to move into the new house until the latrine and shade hanger are finished. The memory of my temporary latrine is still all-too-vivid. The first go-round was kind of funny to me, but I’ve had my fill of pooping in clay pots for weeks at a time. Unfortunately, Hama told me today I can’t stay in his house while I wait. So I may be stuck at the Dosso Hostel while I wait, which I’m not thrilled about, but there are worse alternatives…I’ve experienced them.

At this point, I am looking forward to the move. I will be relieved to be free from Hama’s daily lectures and paranoia. Also, (I haven’t really had the chance to elaborate on it but,) if you think Hama’s bad, you should see his mom, whom I share a concession with. Let’s just say I got scolded a lot.

Things have been set into motion, and with the full support of the Niamey Bureau I’m sure I will be back in business in no time. Allah will it that this be my last Peace Corps move…

May 8, 2010

And now my monthly complaint about weather:

No Joke.

Hot season is by far my least favorite season, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. There’s only been two times I really almost cried about the heat. As evidenced by the picture below, hottest I’ve seen it is 117 degrees Fahrenheit. It doesn’t even matter to me how hot it gets during the day, as long as it cools off at night. During the day, I can just lay on my concrete floor fanning myself. At night, falling asleep while sweating—or worse waking up sweating—is just completely intolerable.

Not only have I developed a full-body heat rash, but most mornings I wake up feeling hung over. No, I haven’t been sneaking wine coolers while in my village. There have been several nights when I’m pretty sure I never stopped sweating. And, since I have not yet developed the ability to drink water while sleeping, I get dehydrated. No matter how much water I drink, entire days go by without me needing to pee.

The mornings I wake up sweating are the worst. I hate looking at the thermometer my dad sent at eight a.m. and knowing I’m not going to be able to stop sweating for the rest of the day. Because hot mornings follow hot nights, I’m usually deprived of sleep and suffering from a heat rash outbreak at this point. Thus, these are the times (if I weren’t so dehydrated) I would probably cry about how effing hot it is. BUT, thank Allah, this has only happened two are three times…I was expecting months and months of this kind of weather.

Even though it wasn’t as bad as I expected, I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to the year’s first rain. Not only does this signify the end of my least favorite season, it also marks the completion of my first year in Niger. What’s more, the rains transform the dry, sparse Sahel into…well, not a paradise, but it’s much greener… It’s a feeling I would compare to the beginning of summer in the United States…

For weeks I kept my eyes turned toward the east, waiting for the east-to-west wind that signals the arrival of a storm. A couple of times we had what my villagers call the “Mango Rains,” which are very light, brief showers. (Mangoes are by far the best part of hot season. I eat several mangoes a day in village. Mangoes, mangoes, mangoes!)

Rain!

When the first storm finally did come, I was on the phone with my sister and was so excited I had to end the conversation early. I then sat and watched front approach for almost two hours. When the rain finally did start to fall, I did what any normal anasara would do—I ran out and danced in it. In ten minutes, the storm dropped the temperature 20 degrees. It was pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me. I learned later, hot season may linger for another few weeks, but I’m optimistic that the worst of it is over…

March 11, 2010

Dear First-World Inhabitants,

Thank you so much for all the positive feedback regarding the I-fell-in-my-latrine-leading-to-new-insight-into-the-nature-of-forgivness story. I was surprised how many people told me they read it/enjoyed it, leading them to examine and subsequently forgive various people and television networks in their life.

There is one person who apparently has not found the time to flip open his laptop, update his twitter, check my ramblings, and find new forgiveness…Hama…my landlord. Yeah, he’s still pretty upset about that ol’ bag of rice. (Seyni the PA/driver for Peace Corps confirmed the entire feud started because the mayor wouldn’t sell Hama some subsidized rice. The mayor wanted to save the cheaper rice for especially poor families. Hama took it personally, and BAM! Feud.)

Two days before I left to come into Dosso, Hama showed up at my house to tell me he had not received the past three months rent and if he did not get it in the next three days, he was going to make the mayor find me a new house. I let the Seyni the Peace Corps driver know, and convinced Hama to wait to throw me out until I got back from Dosso (since I was convinced Seyni would be able to sort everything out before then, and I wouldn’t have to move.) Hama agreed, but showed up the next day to inform me he didn’t even want the money, he just wanted his house back.

This is my house...

For me, this whole situation is a “jam bambata” (an enormous darn). First of all, I really don’t want to move. I don’t like moving. Secondly, preparing a new house will not be a quick thing. Can we all recall how long it took to get my latrine squared away? Thirdly, (and perhaps the most painful aspect of this whole conflict) every time Hama decides he is upset about not getting paid, he spends at least 45 minutes lecturing me about the situation. I’m not sure why, but this always makes me extremely uncomfortable. Part of it may be because he is speaking ill of my boss. Part of it may be that he keeps saying the same things over and over again. The last time he came to talk about the situation, he smacked the six-year-old-girl I was looking at pictures with and told her to go away. (I REALLY don’t like it when people hurt each other.) I guess, mostly, it just brings out a very negative, angry side of Hama, and makes me feel very insecure in my village. No one wants to think about being homeless.

After coming into Dosso and talking to Seyni, the PA, I feel much better about the situation. Seyni says he talked to the mayor and there aren’t any other houses in the community available for rent, thus, I have two options. First, he could have a big meeting with everyone in my village (the mayor, Hama, the chef of the village, the mayor staff, and me), and arrange for Hama to receive a year’s rent in advance. Option two, the mayor has offered to build me a new house. (Keep in mind he was the one responsible for the construction of my faulty latrine. Pause for reaction.) Yes, option one, please.

Allah willing, the situation will work out. I trust Seyni to arrange for me to stay in my current house. As he pointed out, it is in a great location, with good neighbors, and it has a brand-spanking-new latrine. It’s a good place for me.

The Bustling Mayor's Office

Next topic… the coup d’état…

I AM STILL ALIVE. I HAVE NOT BEEN SWEPT UP IN A SURGE OF REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE. Whew.

Here’s what it was like for me…Around one o’clock (has anyone ever paused to notice how silly the word o’clock is?) I arrived home after attending a meeting about community cereal/grain banks to discover the following text message on my phone: All PCVs standfasted (we aren’t allowed to leave our village) until further notice due to military action in Niamey. I just shrugged it off and went about my day.

That evening, I was playing my guitar in my yard when Hama’s mother appeared. After greeting me she scowled and stabbed the air with her finger to draw my attention to our neighbor’s radio. I’ve gotten pretty good at tuning out the grating static and Hausa songs, so I hadn’t even notice the marching band music that had been playing.

“Do you hear this music?” she asked me. “This music means there’s been a coup.”

I was very surprised to hear the French word “coup” come out of her mouth, since this old woman doesn’t even know what “merci” means. My second thought was, she can’t possibly know there’s been a coup just because that music is playing. Then it occurred to me, this woman is perhaps sixty years old, which means she’s been around for all five of the coups in the past 50 years. She may not speak French, but she probably does know what music they play on the radio when a dictator’s been overthrown.

Upset by the realization of what was happening a mere 120 km away, I texted my dear friend Will: MY NEIGHBOR SAYS THERE’S BEEN A COUP! Will, in his reply, asked me what else “military action in Niamey” could possibly mean.

After confirming there had in fact been a coup. I decided to walk around my neighborhood to see how people were reacting, but after leaving my yard, not a thing seemed out of place. A bunch of my neighbors were standing around shaking their heads at the situation. Just as, another night, they might stand around and shake their head at so-and-so who fought with his wife or at the price of millet in the market.

For obvious reason, I am not supposed to comment on Nigerien politics to host country nationals. Peace Corps is an apolitical organization that will not withdraw from a country, as other aid organizations might, on the basis of a country’s democratic policies. My villagers could see that I was a little shaken by the whole thing, and one of them asked something along the lines of, “This happens all the time, why are you so worried about it?” I told them this never happens in the United States, leaders always stepped down when they are supposed to. The group blinked at me skeptically, clearly thinking I was making up outrageous stories again…like the time I told them little animals live in their water and make them sick, or that gnawing on sugarcane all day will make their teeth turn black. Crazy old Hamsatou…always good for a laugh.

And that was it. A couple of times I heard teachers or mayoral staff refer to the situation as a cause for uncertainty if X official would come out to visit or if Y meeting would happen.

The most alarming part of the whole situation was the speed at which people in America found out about it. Before going to bed that evening I had calculated it would take two or three days for Tanja’s retirement to appear in first-world news: one day until people would find out about it, one day for them to write the story, and then to print it…if it was ever printed at all—the greater world does not seem to concerned with the political happenings of this landlocked, unpopulated, even-the-chickens-look-poor country.

But no…mere hours later, I was awoken by a call from my father’s ladyfriend, Terry. “YOURDADHEARDTHEIR’SBEENACOUPINNIGER!AREYOUSAFEFROMTHERIOTINGMOBSANDCANNONFIRE?” she asked me. And of course, I received a slew of very concerned emails and facebook comments.

Everything is fine. The average Nigerien is apathetic to politics and way too busy surviving to care who is in power (my opinion). The central government has almost no presence in their day-to-day lives. Also, I’m pretty sure there aren’t enough guns in the country to have any real fighting. Peace Corps has been in Niger for almost 50 years, for all five of the past coups, and has never had to evacuate. We were release from the stand-fast order after a few days, and the whole thing honestly has not at all affected me. The kidnappings last November were much more stressful, scary, threatening, etc. But now I get to say I survived a third-world coup d’état.

Spider in my house eating an entire cricket.

So…what else have I been up to?

I’ve started taking French lessons. The director of the primary school said he could teach me everything in three months, and has generously been tutoring me for an hour almost six nights a week. (I’m a little concerned because someone told me, in spite of the fact he already has two wives, he would like to marry me.) The lessons are going very well. The whole idea of studying makes me feel like I’m being productive. I REALLY enjoy learning new languages, though the difference between American and Nigerien teaching styles is painfully obvious.

Seydou, the director, writes sentences on the board and has me read them over and over. When I try and string the words together to forge my own comments and questions, he blinks in confusion and then asks me to repeat the phrase he’s written on the board again. Anytime I lower my eyes to take notes he sighs with exasperation, “Hamsatou! Hamsatou! Regarde!” He also spend a lot of time trying to explain things to me in English, which leads to grammatical treasures like, “This word wants you are saying when you feel very, very fine, when there is a lot, a lot of happy.” (Please note, Microsoft Word has no qualms with that sentence.)

My big, amazing project idea—to fix the fence around the community garden—has had some interesting developments. A community garden is a can be a wonderful impetus for development. First of all, women are usually the gardeners, so building a garden helps them to develop agricultural skills. It also helps the women to generate income, because they often sell their produce. Which in turn, helps the village’s market develop, as there are more products for sale. Also, a community garden affects the overall health of the village, because it introduces some variety to their diet.

A fence, however, is key. Without a good fence, animals and children will come through and eat everything. My village has a garden with TWELVE wells and a HUGE mango grove, but unfortunately the NGO-provided fence fell over some year ago and no one has fixed it. THUS, I had the brilliant idea of organizing the community to FIX the FENCE. If I do one thing in the next two year (I told myself), I’m going to fix that fence!

So after much conversation with various village authorities, I met with the man in charge of the garden, Hassan. Hassan listened to my proposal and told me he loved the idea. He also invited me to a meeting next week, when the NGO planning to replace the fence and buy the town a motorized water pump would be in town. So…my work here is done…

Other news:

I have gone almost four weeks without getting severe diarrhea!!

I adopted a kitten, which I have named “Gatsby.” I’m going to think of a Nigerien name for him too, because I want my villagers to be able to say his name. Maybe Habibou. I get two names, after all, why shouldn’t he…

When I go back to village, I am going to start work with the director of the middle school to start English tutoring sessions. I’m super excited…

And FINALLY, I am going to Spain in a few weeks! It is a last minute trip, but everything just fell into place. My friend Susannah, who I met while studying abroad in Argentina, is living in Santander, Spain, teaching English. She invited me to come visit during her April break. When I found cheap-ish ticket, I said to myself, “Hamsatou, ni ma koy.” Also my dad wrote me an all caps email in red font reminding me to carpe diem. So, I’m going! I leave in three weeks!!

I’ve woken up every morning since I bought the ticket thinking about the various foods I will eat when I get there. Here are some highlights: cheese, apples, cheese, coffee, yogurt, cake.

So, that is all for now. I will try and update you upon my return from Spain. Be well, everyone!

Irkoy ma cabe cere, may Allah show us each other,

Katie,

Tour of My House

Me, after I took the braids out.

Here are some fun photos from IST that I took with my AMAZING WATERPROOF, SANDPROOF, KATIE-PROOF CAMERA!!

My Friend Nicholas, a Refugee Volunteer from Guinea

Learning to make earthen cookstoves...

My Training Class, MCD/CYE 2009

Celebratory, closing dinner, at which at least six of us got horrible food poisoning...

Let's see how many I can put up before the Internet craps out...there are more on facebook...

January 26th, 2010

General Activities…

January was an eventful month. Inter-Service Training (IST) was rapidly approaching, so I was trying to get to know my community at super-speed. The normal, non-refugee volunteer spends three whole months in his post before going to IST in Hamdallaye, at which one learns the “how to” of projects. However, due to the timing of consolidation and the time it took to get my new post ready, I only spent five weeks in village before IST.

Thus, I dedicated a great deal of time to running around talking to people, while simultaneously getting settled into my new home. The mayor’s office at my new post is much less active than at my old, so I only go there twice a week and usually don’t stay more than a couple hours. When I do make to the office (which lies on the edge of town) Seyni (SAY-nee), the Etat-Civil, and I are usually the only ones there. On one of my first visits, I asked Seyni if there was anything small/easy I could help him with in the office. I wanted to get to know the place, without taking on too much responsibility. Birth certificates, was his response. He invited me to come write birth certificates.

Because of Niger’s underdevelopment, public officials must handwrite all public records and subsequent copies. Thus, when someone announces a birth, marriage, or death, the mayor’s staff must write out three copies of the certificate: one to be sent to Niamey, one to stay at the mayor’s, and a copy for the declarer. Unfortunately, life often outpaces bureaucracy, creating a looming backlog of unwritten certificates.

My first day of helping, Seyni handed me a 12” by 16” book of blank birth acts and gave me a brief tutorial. The documents are all in French, which I don’t actually speak; nevertheless, Seyni assured me it didn’t matter if I made mistakes. After just the first few copies, my hand began to cramp, so I flipped ahead to see the rest of the book—99% of the entries were for illiterate farmers. In the entire book, one or two fathers identified themselves as “shopkeepers,” and no more than six had completed elementary school. In the whole book, there was only one birth act on which identified the mother to be literate.

It takes me about ten minutes to write the three copies for each act (plus some hand stretching breaks), so I estimate I write about ten certificates for each morning I spend at the mayor’s. After a couple weeks of (what I thought was) very diligent effort, I had worked my way through most of the book. Even though my book had been waiting to be filled out since 2006, I began to worry I would soon write myself out of a job. Concerned, I asked Seyni, “What do you do when you aren’t writing birth acts?” Seyni, who spends every weekday from seven a.m. to one p.m. copying these certificates, was clearly confused by my words. I rephrased the question, “What other work do you do when the birth certificates are finished?” He paused for a moment, sorting his way though my awkward Zarma. “It never finishes,” he replied. Seyni then drew my attention to the table in the back of the room, struggling to support at least ten more books of the commune’s birth acts, all waiting to be filled out.

I later observed Seyni doing a lot of work in addition to the birth certificates. I watched him organize the taxes for the entire commune, which is no small task. Also, as he is the only member of the mayor’s staff that comes to work, he must address all requests, inquiries and complaints that passersby may bring.

Though it’s much less exciting than the mayor’s office at Gotheye, I enjoy the time I spend with Seyni. For one, I really feel like I am helping him out, even if it is in a small, small way. Also, the quiet hours I spend writing birth certificates breaks up the (often overwhelming) rest of my day.

Besides going to the mayor’s, I’ve been all over town, getting to know the community. Here are some highlights: I visited the (destroyed/abandoned) community garden; drew a “resource map” of the entire village; taught a woman in my village to make friendship bracelets; learned to weave traditional Zarma mats out of palm leaves; journeyed to the next village’s market; spent a few afternoons at the clinic, watching the doctor give shots; attended nearly ten naming ceremonies, a wedding and two funerals; I sat in on a geography class at the primary school; learned to play “Blackbird” on my guitar; AND participated in no less than ONE MILLION get-to-know-you discussions with my villagers.

My 14-year-old neighbor started a particularly interesting conversation one evening when she randomly asked me (and I quote) “if I had ever seen God.” Considering rural, African villagers rarely engage in abstract, theological discussions, I decided she must have asked the question literately. (Surprisingly) This question caught me a bit off guard. First, I wasn’t completely sure I understood her. Second, I don’t know why she thought being an anasara might privilege me to witness the divine. Finally, I didn’t want to step on any pious, Muslim toes. After a considering all this for a moment, I told her the truth: I saw divinity everywhere—in her and in me. Staring back at me with wide eyes, she clicked her tongue in the back of her throat and said, “Irkoy beeri”—God is great.

I had another memorable conversation the first time I went to see the doctor in my village, Zilah (ZEE-lah). I showed up right as the she was closing up for the afternoon, so the small, one-room clinic was empty. Though I hadn’t been there before, the doctor knew exactly who I was and immediately began interrogating me. The conversation went something like this:

“Why haven’t you come to see me yet? Nadira (the old volunteer) used to come and see me everyday. Your skirt is too old, and it is dirty. Why hasn’t your boyfriend bought you a new one? Where is your boyfriend? Are you married? I will buy you a new skirt when I go to Dosso. How long have you been here? Do you pray? Do you pray the Muslim way? Come with me to the mosque now and I will teach you how to pray correctly.”

Zilah delivered this whole speech in less than 15 seconds, without pause. I managed to slip in a few monosyllabic responses, but was more or less steamrolled by this outpouring. In the end, Zilah turned out to be great company, if a bit preoccupied with finding me a boyfriend…

February 15, 2010

Toilet Issues

Before I left for America, I read something in the pre-departure materials warning parents not to be too concerned when their children tell “war stories” over the phone. War stories…tales of incredible illness, ridiculous infrastructure troubles, or getting sprayed by cow diarrhea. (Parents are also told not to contact the Peace Corps unless they go three months without hearing from their children.) Anyway…I wasn’t even going to bring up my toilet issues (war story)…because I figure everyone listening from home doesn’t need monthly updates on my digestive system…which actually cuts out a great deal of “blog content,” since here so much of my life revolves around my stomach. But, the following was too wonderful of a story to not share. Thus, let me issue a WARNING: This next bit is about poop.

It all started when I learned I would get a new post…

After the attempted kidnappings, it became clear many volunteers would not be able to return to their posts. However, (for obvious reasons) Peace Corps didn’t want team refugee endlessly languishing about the Niamey hostel. So, the Bureau worked to prepare new sites as quickly as possible; and thus, when I arrived at my new site, it was not 100% ready. The house was clean and empty, but had no floor. There was no shade hanger—critical for hot season. And, I didn’t have a latrine.

I didn’t want to spend any more time in the hostel, so I assured my boss, Ousman, I would be comfortable staying in a nearby house, until the mayor (who, as my supervisor, is responsible for all my housing issues) could oversee repairs on my house. Also, agreed to stay with only a temporary latrine. In less technical jargon, a “temporary latrine” is a big clay pot buried in the ground. What a glamorous life I do lead…

The clay pot worked out pretty well in the beginning—really, it was just like a latrine. What’s more, construction on my new latrine seemed to be moving at an encouraging pace. While I was in Dosso for Christmas, the mayor had hired a couple kids to dig the hole and to make the cement cover. Now it just need to be put together and a wall for privacy.

Before I go any further, I have to give you a little background on family matters in my village. The village chief, the mayor, and my landlord, Hama, are all a part of the same family. Unfortunately, some time ago, Hama and the mayor had a bit of a falling out and are now engaged in a full-on feud. I’m not to clear about how it started…something about someone not selling someone rice. Regardless of who’s to blame, this feud puts me in a bit of an awkward situation. First of all, the mayor doesn’t really like to come over to my house/deal with housing issues, because Hama is in charge of the property. And (of course) Hama is always looking for opportunities to point out what a terrible person the mayor is. Thus, when Hama showed me the hole and the concrete slab the mayor had built for me, he pointed to them emphatically, insisting the work was cuta; which (as best as I can translate) means “piece of shit.”

Considering Hama is (perhaps) not the most objective judge of the mayor’s character, I brushed off this review as a consequence of the feud. Yes, the hole was not especially deep and it did seem a bit half-assed…but I wanted a place to poop, and didn’t have a lot of options. (Of course my villagers throughout this whole ordeal, kept insisting to me I go and poop in the field behind the village like a normal person.)

Again, with the hole dug, and the concrete laid, all I needed was for the latrine to be assembled and a wall for privacy. But, as I waited for these final steps to be completed, days became weeks and my little pot got very full. Soon I was going to unusual measures to avoid what Peace Corps types call “splash back.” I grew more and more aggressive about reminding the mayor to finish the work, but each time I called he always promised the work would be done “tomorrow.” Mid-January, I was fed up and ready to pay Hama to do the work for me, but the same morning I told Hama to do it, a representative of the mayor’s office showed up with a millet-stalk mat for a wall.

So there it was—my latrine! It had a hole, and a wall, and a cement cover for me to stand on. The only thing missing now was a door—an actual avenue through which to enter this miraculous depository. The guy from the mayor’s office had done a great job setting up the millet-stalk wall; it was very private. The only trouble was he had not cut a door through the straw, so I could look at the latrine all I wanted, but couldn’t actually use it.

Hama said he would cut the hole for me, but Monday he was gone. Tuesday he forgot. The next day was Wednesday, which is the market day for the next town over. Then Thursday is the market day for Vela, and he had to go and sell a cow. These are legitimate excuses, but it meant waiting nearly another week for a new latrine. Friday, Hama cut an entryway to the latrine, but he did it in a way so that everyone passing by on the street would be able to see me in there. Thrilled to have access to my new toilet, I was happy to hang an old piece of cloth as a door—giving me all the necessary privacy. Though, the project didn’t seem quite finished to me.

Two whole days passed, during which time I was able to use my latrine without trouble. THEN! ON THE THIRD DAY! I was midway through my morning routine when Hama showed up. He was fuming with anger as he told me to pack my things, because that day I was moving out. I was pretty alarmed. I didn’t want to move. I liked my new house and neighbors. More importantly, I had only gotten to use my new latrine twice, and was not excited at the prospect of reliving the past month’s construction issues. Unsure what to do, I called up the regional representative (a PCV who works as a liaison between volunteers and the office), and told him the situation. He immediately contacted my mayor, the village chief, Hama, and the Dosso program assistant (Seyni ), while assuring me I would not have to move.

Everything worked out. I didn’t have to move. The details are still foggy, but I later learned what had happened: The mayor had gone to the village chief and told him he wanted me to move, because he didn’t like me living in Hama’s house. The village chief had then called Hama to come and discuss the matter with the mayor, which led to a big fight, which led to Hama telling me to move out. To further complicate the matter, the mayor hasn’t actually paid Hama any of the rent he owes on my house, giving Hama a legitimate reason for asking me to move.

Of course within ten minutes of the big fight at the village chief’s house, the whole village knew about it and wanted the inside scoop. So, I spent the whole day trying to avoid the conflict and answer questions diplomatically, while at the same time keeping a close eye on my house to be sure Hama didn’t move me out. I also endured a forty-minute lecture from Hama, enlightening me about his merits as a landlord. (Hama is a wonderful landlord.) By the end of the day I was really exhausted.

Then, as evening fell, I paid a visit to my latrine to dispose of a piece of refuse. I paused to reflect on how long it had taken to be completed and how happy it made me, just to have a private place to poop. Gazing (admiringly) at the latrine, I notice the cement had begun to crack. My heart sank. It had been such a struggle to get this latrine built. Was it falling apart already? Perhaps Hama was right (not just begrudged) in calling it cuta. I toed the crack, deciding if I should say anything to Seyni, the program assistant, who was due to visit my site in the next week. But, in an instant, the cement gave way and I fell in.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I fell into my latrine.

So, let’s keep this all in perspective. Yes, I fell into a pit of my own feces, which is the worst thing that can happen to anyone ever. BUT, on the bright side, I had only used it twice, and thus escaped WITHOUT GETTING ANY POOP ON ME. Also luckily, the hole wasn’t especially deep, so I was able to climb (bolt, leap, launch myself) right out. I did, however, scrape my arms pretty badly, and was bleeding. I held it together long enough to text the regional representative about what had happened and to bandage my arm, but then I sat down on my floor and bawled with complete abandon. I sobbed out of shock and self-pity for about ten minutes, until an exhausted yawn of acceptance rose up from my chest and it all just stopped.

The next morning all my villagers (who notice every time I get a paper cut) were very alarmed to see my scraped arm. Each one would ask what happened. I would tell them. Then he or she would insist on coming to see the wrecked latrine. But, rather than laughing at me as I expected, each one consistently pointed out how lucky I had been. I hadn’t drowned in my own feces. I did not get stuck in the hole. I didn’t even get hurt that badly. (There was one girl who started calling me her “latrine friend” in Zarma, but I don’t really get that joke.)

The Seyni (the program assistant) showed up a couple days later and within the span of a few hours had: talked to the village chief, the mayor, and my landlord; located all the necessary materials, including a new block of cement; settled the question of the unpaid rent; and gotten my landlord to dig me a new latrine. (When it was finished, several grown men in the village jumped up and down on top of the new piece of concrete to demonstrate its strength.) Basically, he settled four weeks of trouble in one afternoon.

(Side note: That day, as the men put the finishing touches on my latrine, one of the men had a seizure in my yard. This was perhaps the scariest moment of my Peace Corps career. Having been trained in first aid and possessing a knowledge of first-world medicine, I felt obligated to do something, but was frozen by doubt. In America, I would have probably called for an ambulance or at least been relatively sure the man had received medical care for his condition. Standing in the middle of the desert, the only thing I was sure of was how far away a hospital was and how inaccessible medical care is.)

Now, in the days before IST, I seemed to be on the homestretch with this whole latrine business. Yet, in the days following Seyni’s rescue, I grew more and more angry with the mayor and my landlord. How silly were they for, after all these years, not giving in on some feud over rice? Here’s the story I told myself: I could not be certain, but was am fairly confident if my mayor and landlord weren’t still clinging to this tiff that occurred years ago I would have been built a proper toilet. Rather than hiring someone the mayor might have done the work himself, or at least come to see it, rather than avoiding my (Hama’s) house. Hama might have been more willing to help the mayor, rather than just pointing out what a poor job he did. They might have even built the latrine together while singing Cat Stevens songs. Without doubt, I wouldn’t have spent a whole day wondering whether or not I would be forced to move. What could they be fighting about that is SO important, so injurious they couldn’t forgive each other after all these years, I asked myself.

Just then…all the grudges I have gnawing on for years flashed before me…

Whenever I have a hard time working up the maturity to forgive someone, I always remember a story I heard once about a couple living in South Africa during all the radicalized, apartheid violence. I do not recall the details, but this couple lost their son to a particularly brutal and tragic murder. When the police caught the perpetrator, the parents shocked the world when they refused to press charges. “Another execution will not bring peace to South Africa,” they said, “only forgiveness will.” And they forgive the man.

So if two people, living in a veritable war zone, can forgive the brutal murder of their child, surely I can forgive so-and-so for breaking up with me, or you-know-who for lying to me that one time. Really, we are all doing out best to be happy, bumping into each other from time to time. So I ask you now, consider: from whom in your life you are withholding forgiveness? Anger is like an acid, it eventually destroys the container. (I read that on a billboard once.) Better let go, lest an unsuspecting bystander fall into a latrine because of your grudge.

February 16th, 2010

The following is a quote written on the blackboard in Hamdallaye, the Peace Corps Niger Training site. I liked it a lot, and thought you all might as well.

“The magic of travel is that you leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity, but as you travel, the world in all its richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent; you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in space and time. You return a different person.

Many people don’t want to be travelers. They would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other people’s lives while never really leaving their own. They try to bring their world with them wherever they go, or try to recreate the world they left. They do not want to risk the security of their own understanding and see how small and limited their experiences really are. If we don’t offer ourselves to the world, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t life to the horizon; we don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

Travel, no matter how humble, will etch new elements into your character. You will know the cutting moments of life where fear meets adventure and loneliness meets exhilaration. You will know what it means to push forward when you want to turn back. And when you have tragedies or great changes in your life, you will understand that there are a thousand—a million way to live and that your life, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind.”

February 17th, 2010

The following is an email my friend and fellow Evans School student sent me. As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, I think she gave me some really solid advice in response to my panicked I-don’t-know-how-to-save-all-of-Africa-all-by-myself email:

Katie,

You should not do too much. Calm down. :) You have two years in which to do things. Many will fail. Some will look promising. At least one will be a big success. Take your time to select/work on a project that you enjoy and brings value to the people you are working with. Enthusiasm will take you far, but will not make a project, especially if the people you are serving do not want it/do not take ownership of it. Be patient, and foster your relationships. Don't forget to have fun and enjoy your life. Life is amazing right now. It won’t get any better...strange as it may seem living in a mud hut with no running water or electricity.

Take a deep breath...and relax. You will be great.

I heart you!

Mary

January 4, 2010

Hey, it’s 2010. Crazy. Even crazier, in a few days I will hit my six-month anniversary of arriving in Niger. Time has flown by at such a rapid pace I hardly noticed its passing. I am a fly suspended in amber. Things outside this golden desert change as they may, but my immediate surroundings and I lay untouched. Obviously the sun rises and sets often enough, but in Africa the cycle of the day seems completely divorced from time. After all, Nigeriens work continuously, without regard for such things as weekends. On Fridays everyone puts on his or her one special outfit to go and pray, but the routine continues without respite.

Even more disorienting, I have been trapped in a perpetual summer since I left. There may be snow in America, but it still feels very much like July, or perhaps August. Similarly, when I was in Argentina during the southern hemisphere’s winter months, I was convinced it was summertime in spite of the cold temperatures, rain, and snow. It took ages for it to sink in that “July = tank top weather” is not always correct.

I think, however, this chronologic disorder is due large in part to the fact I haven’t done much since I arrived. Now, wait. I can hear my parents both erupting with protests at this statement—listing all the brave things I’ve done since arrive, such as learning a language, getting peed on by babies, battling scorpions, eating grasshoppers, and learning how to “snot-rocket” the contents of my sinuses.

Yes, the scenery of my life has change a bit since leaving America, but my days spent chatting, cooking, and doing arts and crafts slip by without my notice. My new life is so unlike the one I left, in which one day held an eternity of tasks and I hammered every second into fruition. I used to try and figure out how to make the few minutes I would spend waiting for a bus productive. I am aware of the fact I am a chronic over-achiever, but as I’d hoped, Africa seems to be curing me of that. If I can run one errand or complete one task within daylight hours, it has been a very productive day. Everything in my schedule is subject to Allah’s will.

January 9, 2010

So, disruptions in the space-time continuum aside, things in Niger are good. I have been at my post for three weeks now, and I’m settling in quite well.

My landlord, Hama, and his family have essentially adopted me as their strange-looking and bizarre relative. Every morning, each member of the family (which is rather small by Nigerien standards) comes to ask me how I slept. Hama’s elderly mother, with whom I share a concession, also takes this opportunity to tell me to sweep my concession. I have also taken to eating meals with Hama’s aunt and cousin (my closest neighbor) almost every night. The aunt, Lamissi (Lam-e-see) has graciously taken over the job of mothering me since (she told me) my real mother is so far away. Aside from feeding me dinner every night, as part of this motherly duty Lamissi regularly:

1. Reminds me not to go too far or get lost when I go out into the village to see people.

· As a seasoned traveler, I find this especially endearing considering the village could easily fit inside the liberal arts section of the UW campus.

2. Discourages me from making trips into the bush with the other unmarried girls to collect firewood, berries, and other delicious treats.

· “What will you put on your feet to protect them from all the thorns?!,” she asks me in horror, “Will you tie a piece of cloth around them?” I, of course, have shoes, but in spite of the fact that most girls go barefoot…the thick leather soles of my very expensive American flip-flops seem inadequate for my delicate anasara feet.

3. Forbids me to climb trees.

· I would never…

4. Tells me I am not allow to learn how to make the woven palm mats, pound millet, or do any work that may cause my hands to become callused.

5. Explains regularly how fat I should be before returning to America, so that when I arrive everyone will be impressed. (She makes sound effect to portray the sound of me deplaning.)

6. Encourages me on an hourly basis to bring my cot inside to sleep on, rather than continuing to sleep on my mattress on my frigid concrete floor.

· While has been rather cold at night (getting down to the high 40s), Lamissi doesn’t see how I could possibly be warm enough sleeping inside my house…in flannel pants and a sweater…with a North Face sleeping bag (rated to 30 degrees)…on top of a foam pad…with the door closed.

7. Comes to check on me frequently whenever I should fall ill.

· I actually spent a day in bed due to a terrible cold I contracted. It wasn’t that bad, but I figured I might as well rest for a day to make a quicker recovery.

Lamissi was very concerned when I told her I was sick. At first, she tried to convince me to go to the village doctor. (Third-world medical treatment? No, thank you.) When I told her Peace Corps would bring me medicine if I needed it, she started asking me every 20 minutes if I’d called them yet. In response, I told I was pretty sure I had a virus, and there wasn’t really any medicine that could help me beyond rest. She didn’t know what a virus was, but was apparently unconvinced the anasaras I worked for didn’t have a cure for the common cold. She also took the time to point out I probably caught this cold because I had been sleeping on my floor and also because I never ate enough. “Are you hungry now?” she asked me.

Lamissi may boarder on overprotective, but always concedes when I insist I am able to do something. Thus, for all that she doubts my durability, I am rarely irritated by her loving concern.

Speaking of irritation…in the entry I posted for Christmas I mentioned some of the differences I had discovered between my new post and my old. I was learning to get by with no electricity, limited transportation, and having to walk to the next town’s market for food. The remarks I made previously certainly hold true, but the biggest difference between my two posts is just beginning to emerge.

First let me say that I am unendingly pleased with my new post. Smaller communities certainly have numerous benefits to larger ones. For one, I am significantly less worried about instances of theft in this small town. Small town folks are known for much more protective of their volunteers. One PCV told me the villagers of her isolated post would not show a visiting NGO worker where she lived, and instead insisted he go to the chief of the village to get permission/make an appointment to talk to her. The village chief asked the NGO worker to write a letter of intent and return another day. In addition to have an entire village looking out for me, I have found it much easier to make friends and become involved with my villagers’ lives here. The problem is they are able to do the same with me.

In Gotheye, the clash between my Americanism and Nigerien culture arose from time to time, but it was always at moments when I expected it. For example, I expected to disagree with the gender roles in Niger, and to have to tell people when I needed to be alone, and to see goats every morning. The pre-service training more than adequately prepared me for life in Gotheye, and after a few weeks there I was able to exist in my own little sphere without too much cultural angst. At my new post, things are very different. While my new villagers are generally respectful of my privacy, from the moment I step out of my house I am constantly bombarded with salutations and invitations and questions, which often leave me bristled or frustrated. In a word, my new villagers are all up in my bidz-niz[1]. And, in contrast to my old post, it is my Americanism that seems to lie at the center of each cultural scuffle.

I think the best story to illustrate this new cultural education involves me and my house…

When I came back from Christmas in Dosso, as planned, some of my villagers had put in the concrete floor of my house. It wasn’t dry enough for me to move in yet, so, I had to stay a few more days in my landlord’s mother’s house, which she was so kindly letting me occupy while she slept at his house. I decided to take advantage of my house’s vacancy to make a few more minor improvements.

To be certain, my new house is very nice. It is on the edge of town. It has a cute little triangular window. Its thick walls insolate it enough so that during the day, it stays nice and cool. It is also rather…small. The entire construction is just one eight-by-sixteen-foot room. I didn’t mind the size downgrade from my two-room luxury apartment in Gotheye. I didn’t even mind that as I lay awake at night I could hear the steady crunch of termites slowly devouring my roof. There was, however, one thing about this new house that REALLY bothered me. It seemed the walls were put together rather quickly and never finished on the inside. Consequently, the mud and brick had hardened into an abrasive facade, full of crevasses and rough outcroppings. While the millions of crickets who had taken up residence in the walls found the construction more than adequate, I felt some improvements could be made.

Having been forewarned dozens of times home improvements were likely to suffer enormous delay (because we are in Niger), I decided to embrace that Can-Do American Spirit and see if I could fix up the walls myself. Rather than covering them up with fabric or trying to paint the mud, I decided the best thing would be to get more mud to fill in all the little cracks and smooth things out a bit.

I thought I may get in trouble for just digging a hole somewhere near the village, and the sand outside in my concession didn’t seem like the right thing. Then it struck me! Why not break off all the extra mud sticking out to fill in the other areas where it was missing? Not having any real tools beyond my pocketknife, I decided to sacrifice some of my kitchenware to the project. (Resourcefulness and thrift are both core, American values.)

After all this thoughtful planning, I woke early the next morning to start, thinking the project might take a few hours. And so I began, fork in hand, hammering away at walls. (Yes, I was using a fork.) Soon, dirt was flying everywhere. The air was thick with dust, eventually settling to cover the floor and me. When I would knock off enough material, I would pound the chunks into dirt and then add water, making a nice, smooth mud-putty, which I would then carefully smooth over choice cracks.

In spite of my enthusiasm, the work wasn’t going as easily as I would have hoped. My hand was scraped and bruised from all the pounding and my nose was glued shut with dust-boogers. Moreover, I soon saw I would not have enough putty to fill in every crack/make the walls as smooth as I would like. Nevertheless, looking at my work, I had to admit the result was a considerable upgrade from what the walls had been before. And so I went, faithfully chipping away at my walls, pounding, sweeping, adding water, and deciding which cracks to fill. I felt quite industrious at the end of the day—even if I barely finished filling in half of the walls. Nevertheless, I had come this far and was committed to the project.

The second day was much like the first. I kept up the same rigorous pace and (of course) had many curious neighbors stop by to see what on earth I was doing. They would stand in the doorway, stunned into silence by the mess I was making, especially since household repairs are the men’s responsibility. Thus, most of my visitors were high skeptical that I would be able to complete the task at hand. In spite of this, I got a few of them to concede the walls did look better after I had patched them. Toward the end of the second day, I was determined to finish and started working at an accelerated pace. Just as I was pushing my last batch of mud into the final cracks, my landlord, Hama, arrived from his two-day stay at the neighboring village.

When he came into my house, Hama gaped with an open mouth at the floor, walls, and anasara—all covered in mud. Then he informed me of the following: He wasn’t angry with me for trying to fix things up, but was hurt I hadn’t asked him to fix the walls for me. Fixing the walls myself made him feel like I had little faith in him as a landlord. He told me he was responsible for the property and my comfort, and while he appreciated my work, I was overstepping my license as a tenet. Finally, he said he still valued me as a person and neighbor and hoped we could continue to have a warm, honest relationship. Or at least, that’s what he would have said if he spoke English, had grown up in Montana, attended UW, and had a therapist for a sister. Nigerien culture is much more direct than that. It is also narrated with a language that does not allow a speaker to wrestle with shades of meaning and make subtle distinctions, such as the difference between words like angry/upset or like/love/want. So, what Hama really told me was something like, “What are you doing?! I never said you could do this. This is not good. You are not good! I swear to Allah, I am angry! Put down your bucket! Go wash your hands!”

I had expected Hama to give my work a half-interested nod or laugh at me, but I never thought he would be angry. In truth, it hadn’t even occurred to me my landlord might be bothered by my little project, so I hadn’t even thought to ask his permission. After all, it was my house, the changes I was making were minor, and his mother hadn’t stopped me when she first saw what I was doing.

What I didn’t realize was by fixing the walls myself, I ignored the layers of protocol that dictate all interactions in Niger. A person must ask permission from the proper authorities to do ANYTHING. In retrospect I see I was even insulting Hama by taking on the work myself, and not allowing him to fulfill his landlordly duties. I could have gotten angry at Hama for his reaction, or sulked, or decided I didn’t like him anymore, but standing there, covered in mud, it was painfully clear to me I was the one at fault. I should have asked, but just like the mayor in Gotheye said after discovering I had moved in without allowing him to officially install me, “Americans don’t ask, they just go.”

Hama’s response to my cultural insensitivity also surprised me and lay in stark contrast to American culture. I expected him to harbor a grudge for weeks or leave me to take care of myself (as I so obviously didn’t want his help), but instead Hama repaid my mistake by offering to extract in dirt from a nearby field, haul water to mix it into mud, and then spend a day (properly) covering ALL OF THE WALLS, making them smooth as drywall. What a gentleman.

Another example of how my American attitude doesn’t translate into Zarma:

One unremarkable morning, I finished my little routine and headed out to work. Nothing in particular had happened to ruin my morning, but as I began the trek through the village, from my house to the mayor’s office I felt my patience and good humor evaporating under the morning sun. As per usual, each one of my villagers wanted to greet me, and ask me at least seven questions about where I was going and what I was wearing. AND THEN, my landlord stopped me to have a long, fruitless conversation about the fact the mayor still hadn’t paid him for my rent (more on that later). He kept talking and talking, explaining the situation several times, all of which left me wanting to ask, “And what do you want me to do about it?” By the time I reached the final stretch to the mayor’s office I was so preoccupied and grumpy I didn’t want to talk to anyone. So, I passed a young man without greeting him.

Walking around campus as a student at UW I would often pretend not to see people I knew or not stop to say hello, lest I be delayed to class. I was also on the receiving end of many greeting avoidances. But that kind of self-centered rush doesn’t fly here. Nigeriens always have time to say hello.

Since I didn’t recognize this guy and I was cranky, I figured it wasn’t a big deal if I didn’t stop to chat. As I walked by him, I pretended to look at something on the distant, left horizon, making it seem like I just didn’t see him. Of course, he immediately called me out on the non-greeting.

“HEY! You didn’t greet me, Anasara, come here!” he yelled at me.

I recognized I had been busted, and trotted over to say hi.

“You didn’t greet me,” He informed me. “You walked right by my house and didn’t even ask how I slept.”

“Oh,” I said, “In America, we don’t always say hi to everyone we see. So, sometimes I forget to greet people here.”

He gave me a stern look, unmoved by my excuse, and said, “This is Niger not America. A person must always greet everyone they see here.”

He forgave me, but immediately sucked me into a conversation. He wanted to know what I was doing in the village, where I was going, why I was wearing a head wrap, what kind of work I was doing at the mayor’s, where my house was, if I would take him to America, if I recognized the name of his village…and the list goes on. At this point, it was hot, it was windy, I was tired and just wanted to go sit in the mayor’s office (which is always cool and abandon) and fill out birth certificates in peace. Thus, as soon as I could, I told the man I was on my way to work, and had to leave “right now.” “Right now” doesn’t exactly translate into Zarma or Nigerien culture, so even as I turned to go the man kept talking.

I have two goals when talking to my villagers. The first is to be as kind and patient as possible. The second is to always be honest. Though lying would make a lot of situations a lot less painful (for example, telling them I don’t have x item, rather than explaining why I have it and won’t give it to them), I don’t want dishonesty to become a reflex. Thus, rather than making up a reason to leave, I told this young man the truth. Translated into Zarma I said something like, “I’m sorry. Today I am not feeling happy and do not have patience. I want to go to work now. We should chat later.” The man seemed very alarmed (but not mad) at this and immediately excused me from the conversation.

Luckily for me, the only person who ever comes to the mayor’s office is Seyni (SAY-nee), the Etat-Civil, and he is not a big chatterbox. So I was able to spend the next two hours silently writing birth certificates in the cool sanctuary of the mayor’s office. That respite from the village, combined with a delicious lunch and nap eased my mood, and by the afternoon I was chipper as ever.

Walking around to greet people that afternoon, I ran into that young man again. (As it turns out he is the son of one of my neighbors.) After greeting each other thoroughly, he looked at me very gravely and asked me if I “te dama,” which translates as regained my health. I had only ever heard this saying used in the context of health issues. Confused, I told him I wasn’t sick. He then reminded me of what I had said that morning, and realized he was equating my impatience with an illness, and (judging by the look on his face) a severe one at that.

I told him I was very well and had definitely “regained my health.” Walking away, I couldn’t help but smile at the idea a Nigerien would think of impatience as an illness. After a moment though, I realized this was more or less accurate. With all the delays and uncertainty in this country, impatience could be lethal.

[1] For those born before 1975, “bidz-nez” is a vernacular term related to the conventional term “business.” It is used to describe one’s everyday affairs/personal life and does not necessarily relate to commerce or employment.

December 22, 2009

I’ve only been in my new site for a week, but it’s everything I could have ever wanted from a rural, African village and more. It comes fully stocked with an array of poultry and livestock. The inhabitants are welcoming and excited to host. I have wonderful neighbors who have all but adopted me. The village chief comes and greets me every morning. I’ve been offered more food than I could ever eat. Not to mention, the kids are even generally well behaved. (A herd of at least twenty children follow my every step, but when I turn around and stare them down with my “crazy anasara eye,” they disburse. I made on little girl cry, just by looking at her.)

This new post, to be sure, is far more “bush” than my old one. Gotheye (my old post) had more than 7,000 people living, while my new village barely reaches 1,000. With the larger population came a number of luxuries I never fully appreciated before. First, electricity. Electricity vastly improves one’s quality of life. Consider the following: electric fans, cell phone charging, lights (being able to see which bugs are in your house at night), refrigeration, cold water, dairy products, cold soda, unlimited laptop time (including my weekly movie night).

Second, commerce… In Gotheye I could get just about anything I need any day of the week. There was always some kind of produce for sale, and I could buy dinner from street vendors every night. Gotheye’s weekly market was huge, taking up an area of roughly four football fields. My new town…has a market…at which…things are sold…but beyond fried dough and old nails, there isn’t much there. The whole affair could easily fit inside my father’s living room—which I admit is a big living room, but the comparison holds. When it’s not market day, there is essentially nothing for sale. I couldn’t even buy phone credit until I walked the four kilometers to the neighboring town’s market. Some women sell things (like fried dough) out of the houses, but this new post has only two real shops—which are usually closed.

Third, transportation. I now have a bike! But my regional capital is 37 kilometers away, so I’m not bold enough to try and bike there yet. Cars do go from my town into the big city, but they only leave on certain days, early in the morning. Otherwise, only motorcycles are available, which I’m not allowed to ride. (After seeing some accidents here, I think that’s a good rule. Thank you Peace Corps.)

Forth…a functioning mayors office? Similar to Gotheye, at my new post I am supposed to work with the mayor’s to develop the municipality. However, after my first visit to the mayor’s office here, I can see there is going to be very little similar about my work. Yes, it’s true the staff at the Gotheye office spent a great deal of time making coffee and playing solitaire. But they came to work! There were (two) computers and a broken photocopier and functional chairs and desks and a filing cabinet and tables and electricity and people. My new mayor’s office has a much more…abandon feel to it. Now, this is no one’s fault. The new commune I am working for just doesn’t have the money to pay office staff—so many positions are unfilled and the work goes undone. Needless to say, however, the kinds of projects I was envisioning have changed a great deal.

Fifth, a large social scene—not that I expect to go out dancing a lot, but in a month or so, I expect I will know everyone in my village. They all already know me. The tricky part about living in a small village is collectively they all vividly remember the past volunteers. Really, they just remember one volunteer, Nadia. Nadia was an agriculture volunteer who was here years and years ago, but my villagers still confuse me with her. Even after establishing the fact I am in fact a different person, everyone gets really confused when I deviate from the path Nadia beat. They want to know if I’m going to plant peanuts and a garden. They want to know why I don’t go running every morning, why I don’t wear pants, why my boyfriend hasn’t come to visit, why I don’t have a cat, why I don’t ride my bike to Dosso, why I don’t know how to make the millet porridge they eat every night—all because Nadia knew it or did it or said it. Of course the next volunteer will have to deal with an endless stream of questions about Hamsatou (me). It’s just the nature of the beast.

But, even without all the luxury (as I said before) I couldn’t be happier with my new post. My days are always busy and filled with laughter. My days in Gotheye were always busy, but with such a big town, there was no way I would ever get to know everyone. Here, I feel like I am really becoming a part of something. Here are some of my favorite things about my new post:

1. The little neighbor kid who does a face plant before eating a mouthful of dirt.

2. The chorus of donkeys that howl like dogs every morning.

3. They mayor’s eight-year-old kid who has taken it upon himself to be my personal tour guide.

4. My huge, super fancy shade hanger.

5. The fact that I am always invited to someone’s house for dinner.

6. The fact that my villagers love my guitar, and love to hear me play it.

7. The old woman who scares the children away from my concession every time they try and spy on me.

8. The water pump less than 100 yards from my house (I get to carry my own water now).

9. The plethora of shrubbery and trees.

10. The ten old women who insist I call them, “Mom.”

Even better, my villagers give me all sorts of treats as I wander from house to house to chat.

The extra three months of language practice I got while in Gotheye have made it noticeable easier to communicate. I have only been accused of not speaking Zarma once or twice and am able to understand what’s going on around me. One thing I have discovered in my discussions is that most people have no idea why I am here. They remember Nadia vividly, but when I ask if they remember the work she did…things get foggy. “Oh yes, she planted a garden,” is a response I get a lot. Consequently, I’ve devoted a lot of conversation to self-promotion. I make lots of awkward, long-winded speeches try to emphasize I have come to work for the village, but I will need their help to accomplish anything. People nod faithfully and tell me they understand, but the next day I will hear them tell their friends I’ve come to learn Zarma or plant a garden.

At the very least, the next two years will be interesting.

Right now I am sitting in the Dosso hostel, listening to Christmas music and eating cookie for lunch. Considering it’s about 100 degrees out, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas. Nevertheless, it seems some holiday spirit has even managed to reach the desert. After leaving my phone in a cab, the driver brought it back to me rather than selling it. It sounds small, but for Niger it was pretty remarkable. So…I wish you all a happy Soliti-Christma-Hana-Kwanzaka. May your days be as jolly as a well fed eight-year-old and as bright as the African sun.

If you didn't already know:

On Saturday, November 14, heavily armed individuals attempted to kidnap American Embassy employees in Tahoua. The Embassy once again strongly urges U.S. citizens to exercise caution and remain vigilant. The Embassy restrictions on the travel of U.S. Government employees and official visitors have been amended to prohibit official travel outside of Niamey until further notice.

So it figures that as I got around to posting pictures of my house, I would be asked to move sites for security reasons. I thought I would put these up anyway.

And these are some shots of millet for sale at the market/ the boats people take to market.

November 14, 2009

Ramatou’s Baby

So, it’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to sit down and write—more than a month, but wow, it seems like that poop shower was just yesterday…time is really flying. I posted my last blog entry the end of October, when I was in Niamey for my first team meeting. During this visit, I also had the chance to gorge myself on pizza, milkshakes, and Internet time. For those who don’t already know, the American Recreation Center just got wireless, which (when it’s working) is fast enough to allow me to Skype people and EVEN video chat. I swam, I napped, I snacked, I did laundry. There was also a Halloween party for volunteers. I was really excited at the prospect of costumes, but, in true Katie form, I ended up going to bed early and slept through it. Then, before I knew it, I was back in village.

A few days before my trip to Niamey, my neighbor, Ramatou, gave birth to her first child. Ramatou works at the local school with her husband, and is one of my favorite people in the village. She’s a very pretty, petite, seemingly quiet woman, but underneath all that class she is wonderfully sassy. Like most schoolteachers in Niger, she and her husband were forced to move to find work, so they live away from the rest of their family. Like me, they are renting a mud house from my new adoptive father, Cemogo.

Ramatou is unlike a lot of Nigeriens in that she is very educated, speaks perfect French and a little English. I’m not clear about what her father does for work, but I know he went to school in Germany. As a consequence of this privileged upbringing, Ramatou developed a unique perspective on life in Niger. For example, she told me that she does not support polygamy and that she would never let her husband become her boss. (Did I ever mention that men are legally able to have up to four wives in Niger?) Ramatou was also the first person in my concession to invite me to dinner and really make an effort to make me feel welcome. She’s absolutely fantastic. Her only flaw is—for some unknown reason—she likes to inform me when I am perspiring. I’m not sure why she feels compelled to report this fact to me, but sure enough, every time she sees me it’s: “Greetings Hamsatou, how was your sleep? (pause) You are sweating.” But, Ramatou wins back all lost “cool points” for putting up with being two-and-a-half-weeks overdue during a month of 110-degree heat in a land where there is no AC.

Watching Ramatou haul her big pregnant belly around made me realize giving birth in a rural, third-world village is not something I ever want to do. While there is a maternity ward at the loktoro kwaara (doctor’s hut), my village does not have a lot of emergency care available should something go wrong. Really, Ramatou was lucky even to have the maternity ward available considering more than 70% of Nigerien women give birth at home. I was impressed to learn most women here continue to pound millet, scrub pots, sweep, etc. through the early stages of labor. Not only does this distract the women from the discomfort, but they claim it also helps the labor progress. In the final stages of delivery, a woman will go into her hut and give birth while squatting or standing up. This position actually makes for an easier delivery considering a woman’s anatomy. And, to top it all off, Nigerien women make every effort not to cry out or show the pain she is feeling during delivery. No one cries here, except children and anasara volunteers.

Ramatou ended up going into labor in the middle of the night, so I missed all the action. Thanks be to Allah, there were no difficulties with her pregnancy and a healthy baby boy was brought into the world. I went to visit her at the maternity ward the next day. The room where she had given birth had a floor, a window and two beds, but was really not much more than the mud house I live in. Ramatou looked worn out, but relieved not to be pregnant anymore. The baby, who would receive his name five days later during a “showing ceremony,” was in the arms of another older woman who was spooning broth into his mouth. I learned during PST feeding a baby anything but breast milk during the first months (or something) of life is bad, so red flags shot up the minute I saw the baby eating broth.

Misinformation, superstition, and unhealthy traditions are an unfortunate part of pregnancy and childcare in Niger. For example, many women believe that breast milk isn’t as good for their babies as formula or regular food. As a consequence, mothers sometimes give their children water instead of milk, which—of course—is rarely clean. Many Nigeriens also believe that the first breast milk a woman produces after giving birth contains bad juju, so often a mother won’t feed her baby the colostrum—breast milk that contains vital antibodies. Then, remember one in four Nigerien children die before they turn five.

I wanted to ask Ramatou why she wasn’t nursing the baby, but something stopped me. I think I didn’t want to seem like a know-it-all anasara—especially because I know so little about pregnancy. Peace Corps staff emphasized many times during our training that we, as Americans, have a large body of knowledge in so many subjects where we do not consider ourselves to be informed. In other words, a lot of the time, we don’t recognize the basic knowledge we hold as valuable because everyone we know, knows it too. For example, unless I got an MBA, I would not feel competent enough to educate people about business strategy. But, after going to public high school and even just having a job in the U.S. I really do have more business knowledge than a lot of business owners here. Now, I’m not saying that I could do a better job selling camels than a Tuareg camel herder; but I do understand the concepts of supply and demand, cost, markup, revenue, and profit whereas they may not. (Less than 20% of Nigeriens are even literate.) The same goes for basic healthcare. I’m not a doctor, but I do know it is not a good idea to let a newborn baby drink Niger River water. Unfortunately, many mothers here do not know that. Ramatou, because of her economic means, represents a special case…and I think that may be why I hesitated to correct her childcare practices. I figured she knows what she was doing. Perhaps I should have said something, but either way, her child is still in good health.

I was in Niamey when Ramatou and her husband hosted the baby-naming/showing ceremony, but since women give birth rather often here, I have already been to quite a few. Here’s how it happens. The family slaughters either a goat or a sheep to make a fancy stew. Everyone shows up in the morning and give their congratulations to the parents. Most people bring soap or money as a gift. All the men sit outside, drink tea, and eat dates. All the women sit inside with the baby and gossip, while preparing biblical amounts of rice for lunch (or koranical amounts, I guess). At some point the maribou, a Muslim holy man, arrives to bless and name the baby. In the old days, the maribou would actually pick the name, but nowadays the father usually makes a “suggestion.” Then everyone eats lunch. In my personal experience lunch is usually a big shitshow. Either there isn’t enough, or people fight over the leftovers. All the women bicker about the cooking of the rice and the most strategic way to serve it. In my opinion, these ceremonies are actually kind of intense. The women are always fired up and yelling over one another. And, when it comes to the cooking, I have seen women get violent with each other more than once. Before the party is over, everyone gets a plastic bag of punch to take home (WARNING: THIS PUNCH IS MADE WITH RIVER WATER). All in all—it’s a fun day.

I was really sad to have missed Ramatou’s baby’s ceremony, especially since it was her first child, but Allah did not will me to be there. When I got back, she (among others) was upset with me, but I won her back over with some fancy soap and a bib I bought for Ousman—her baby had a name now. She’s doing great as a new mom too. Granted, she does have a hired nurse to help her out, but I wouldn’t feel ready to raise a child even with an army of Mary Poppinses.

My Own, Personal Magic Potion

The first week I was back from Niamey, I was very busy with visiting all my friends, etc. It was also that week another volunteer’s parents came to visit, so the entire cluster of volunteers got together at the hostel in my village to cook dinner. Her parents were having a surprisingly pleasant visit, in spite of the 110-degree heat and squat toilets. To celebrate their arrival, the volunteer’s village had a big party and killed a sheep. Her father’s short stay in my town (they just spent one night at the hostel) caused quite a stir. For at least three days afterwards, my villagers kept asking me who the anasara bambata (enormous white person) was. Keeping in mind Nigeriens equate largeness with both wealth and importance, it’s no wonder everyone was so excited by the visit of this obviously very important gentleman.

After her parents left, I began to get back into my routine; I was tragically behind on visiting people, so that was my first priority. One of the people I was most eager to see was my new friend, Haoua (How-wa). (I realize that I’ve mentioned many Haouas and Ramatous before. I will do my best to make it clear whom I am referring to, but Nigeriens generally recycle the same 30 names[1] for boys and 30 more for girls[2].) Anyway, this particular Haoua is the younger sister of my adoptive father. She lives in another house, not far from mine, with her husband, Hassan. When I first wandered in to her concession (yard), I actually had no idea she was “related” to me. I was just exploring a new part of town and saw friendly-looking group of people. Haoua, however, recognized me immediately and was disappointed I didn’t know who she was. I launched into my usual routine about how I have a terrible memory and have trouble remembering peoples’ names, especially Nigerien names—because they are so strange. I then asked if I could sit and chat. At this, Haoua forgave me, and set about the business of trying to get me to eat something.

Haoua’s husband Hassan was also delighted by my visit and started chatting me up. As a young solider, Hassan had traveled all over Niger. He knew all about the rebels up north, and the bandits out west. He had also spent time in Nigeria and Ghana, and so spoke some (very broken) English.

There was another gentleman, Moussa, sitting with the group who was excited I had come to chat. I had seen him around town and got the sense from the way Haoua and Hassan talked to him, he was the annoying friend, who isn’t actually your friend, always talks, and never leaves. True to his nature, Moussa cut off my conversation with Hassan to inform me he had an anasara friend. I must not have given him enough of a reaction, because he immediately got up to retrieve photographic evidence of this friendship. When he came back he handed two or three pictures to me to inspect. I was surprised to see the photos were of a Christian priest baptizing Moussa in the Niger River—especially considering that Niger is 99% Muslim. I asked Moussa how long he had been a Christian, but he didn’t answer in apparent confusion. I explained to him the priest had baptized him to wash away all his sins, something most devout Christians do as a kind of rite of passage. Moussa shook his head and said that the priest in the photo had just wanted to give him a bath (as a gesture of friendship?). I didn’t see the need to clarify the matter as I’m sure both the priest and Moussa were perfectly happy believing their version of what happened. I, however, took a moment to appreciate how this incident contributed to the bizarreness of anasaras in the eyes of my villagers.

Haoua, who was obviously irritated Moussa was hogging the anasara’s attention, started telling me about Hassan’s work. I was little skeptical when she told me he worked as a doctor, since I hadn’t seen him around the loktoro kwaara. I asked where he studied medicine, and it became obvious I was missing some key point in the conversation. To help me understand, Hassan said he would show me, then led me into the extra house next door to their house. Inside it was dark and the air was thick with incense, but I could still see there were two rooms. The first was empty except for a couple mats on the dirt floor. The back room, however, was overwhelmed with a collection of bottles and strange skins, hats, and robes hanging on the walls. Seeing this, I understood—Hassan was a traditional healer, or “black doctor” in Zarma.

Hassan started unwrapping various pouches and showing me what was inside. Each powder he showed me was completely undistinguishable from the next in my eyes, but he assured me they all had different purposes. This one is for a headache, the next for stomach issues, the next to aid conception, or to help a person who had be possessed by a ganji (evil spirit). I was mesmerized by the scene in front of me, but Hassan drew my attention seven cockleshells in his hand. He told me, with these shells, he could read Allah’s will. He then began to demonstrate for me by tossing the shells into the sand and interpreting their placement. After a few throws, he asked his wife, Haoua, to take over.

I was a little skeptical of my future, according to Hassan and Haoua. During Hassan’s first throw he had predicted things that were not exactly radical. For example, he told me I would get a call from America and that one of my Peace Corps friends would get sick—both of which happen fairly often for a PCV. Hassan also predicted I would teach him English, which seemed an interesting thing for Allah to will.

Haoua’s spent more time with me, but her predictions were much more vague. She told me I should sacrifice sugar and dates by giving them to children around town. If I did this, she told me, I would ma kaani gumo gumo, which literally translates as “feel happy a lot.” In the midst of many other predictions, the shells also revealed to Haoua that Allah willed me to participate in another ceremony in order to feel even happier. She explained the ceremony to me and asked if I would be willing come back the next day to do it.

As I mentioned mere paragraphs ago, Niger is officially 99% Muslim. There are, however, certain areas of the country where some continue to practice the same animist ceremonies as their ancestors. My village is in one of these areas. Of course, all remnants of traditional culture exist only under the guise of having a Koranic origin. Since more than 80% of Nigeriens are illiterate, very few people have ever actually read the Koran. Consequently a great deal of “Muslimism” in this country isn’t actually Muslim, but rather tradition, superstition, or rumor. Some do recognize animist traditions as blasphemy, creating tension between various members of the community. For this reason, I was a little apprehensive to participate in the ceremony. I didn’t want to align myself with a controversial group or have my villagers label me as anti-Muslim. I was even more apprehensive when Haoua instructed me not to tell anyone about the ceremony. It is your secret, she told me. (She didn’t say anything about blog posts.)

But how could I pass up such an experience? How many times in my life was I going to have the chance to participate in a traditional African ceremony? After hearing what the ceremony entailed, I decided it seemed private enough and I agreed. Not to mention Haoua promised participating would endow me with strength, make everyone like me, and make all my dreams come true. How can you turn down an offer like that?

An afternoon later that week, I walked back to Haoua’s with a bucket with a lid and small coins as an offering—things she had told me I would need. When I arrived only Hassan and Haoua were home. They brought me into the hut where Hassan works and told me to sit with my bucket in front of me. Hassan and Haoua sat too, so that the three of us formed a triangle. Hassan began by pouring a few liters of river water into my bucket while chanting “in the name of Allah” in Arabic, bismilla. He then added pinches and dashes of four or five different colored powders, while chanting something in Songhai. He finished the potion by spraying a generous amount of cheap perfume.

When the potion was ready, both Hassan and Haoua chanted for two or three minutes while making several synchronized gestures. I tried to follow along, but really had no idea what was happening. Haoua, then, instructed me to place the pointer finger of my right hand on the rim of the bucket, and they both did the same. There was more chanting, then Hassan turned to me and told me to tell the bucket what I wanted. I was so flustered, I couldn’t thing of anything to say. I hadn’t understood I was actually going to have to do something for the ceremony. Plus, I had no idea how to explain all my hopes and dreams in Zarma.

Luckily, Hassan gave me the okay to do this step in English—so I wasn’t limited by my Zarma vocabulary and didn’t have to censor myself . I leaned forward and told my magic potion exactly what I wanted out of life. And what did I ask for? I guess that’s between me and Allah. When I was done, Hassan said a few more words conclude the ceremony, then put the lid on my bucket. He and Haoua were both beaming at me. I got the sense they were both excited I had agree to participate, actually shown up, and that the ceremony had been such a success. I gave Hassan a 500 CFA as a gift, while thanking him profusely for taking the time to make all my dreams come true. Then, Haoua led me outside and instructed me to go home and bathe in the potion.

And I did.

The experience was totally unreal to me. The whole time I kept thinking, I chose such a strange life, how lucky am I? I found out later that I was suppose to repeat the process four times, but I only managed to go back once more before all parties forgot the undertaking. So my dreams will at least half come true.

The Rest of My Life in Village

Besides going to naming ceremonies and brewing magic potions, I have been continuing with my little routine.

Work at the mayor’s office is still not really work at all. I am teaching the Etat-Civil how to use Excel and learning an impressive vocabulary of swear words thanks to Ramatou the secretary at the mayor’s (not the same Ramatou as my neighbor who gave birth or my homestay mother). One morning at the mayor’s, I had a young, educated gentleman approach me and asked me all about Peace Corps and what I wanted to do for the next two years. After I got done explaining why I had been sent to work her, he asked if I would want to help create a library in my village. I love the idea of acting as a support to project villagers already want, rather than coming up with projects and trying to get them involved. Thus, I was really excited this man had sought me out to tell me about this idea. I wanted to help and perhaps I will have the chance. However I still won’t begin doing projects until February. And even when I do start, building a library would be an enormous undertaking. This thought made me hesitant to commit to anything. I told him I would help him as much as I could, if Allah agreed. A few days later, I found out this guy was wrong when he told me there was no library nearby. My village already has a library—so my work here is done.

This same gentleman—a schoolteacher—also asked me to teach him and some of his colleagues English (as so many Nigeriens do). This guy was different though; he was clearly very educated and spoke pretty good English already. So, I told him that if he got a group together, and picked a meeting time, I would come and facilitate a conversation. Nothing has started yet, but I think an English club would be a great non-project to occupy me until February. My new friend (who’s name I can’t remember) also promised to help me with my Zarma, so all in all, I was very glad to have met him.

I’ve actually met a lot of interesting, helpful people while just sitting around the mayor’s. There are tons of NGO workers, village chiefs, businessmen, commune council members, farmers, travelers, and just straight up big shots rolling through. I even met a reporter for the UN, but he disappeared before we got the chance to talk. Another morning, mid-nose pick, a young blonde woman came in the door of my “office.”

Like all Nigeriens, I am now a shameless nose-picker. Even though I do it in front of my villagers without restraint, I was rather embarrassed to have this stylish young woman see me with my finger up my nose. Also, after I spend more a week in my village, I am no longer able to interact normally with non-villagers—I find it overwhelming. City folk/my American peers do not tolerate certain behaviors that are normal in the bush, nose-picking being one of them, not washing my hair or blaming my flakiness on Allah’s will are others. ANYWAY, in light of all this, I was very flustered at the arrival of this new visitor and was unable to interact normally. I hid in my book. In spite of my awkwardness, my supervisor insisted I accompany Claude (from Lichtenstein, but working for German aid) as she visited one of the women’s groups the German government was funding.

Claude’s chauffer drove the two of use, plus Claude’s translator, to a field outside of town. As we approached, I recognized several of the women waiting as members of the main women’s group in town, and was delighted they remembered me. There were only four of five members there. Claude seemed disappointed by the turn out, but her translator assured her more people would show up. She was also a bit disheartened that there didn’t seem to be much growing in the fields, but her translator explained to her we were in between growing seasons. This was all an overly optimistic translation of the situation. One of the women had told me there were actually sweet potatoes growing in the field in front of us, but no one was working because it was too hot. Even so, I didn’t correct the translator.

Claude sat down to ask the women’s group some questions about their work, while her translator relayed everything back and forth between Zarma and French. I could understand most of the Zarma, but only a little of the French, so I asked Claude (who speaks English) for the Reader’s Digest version after everything was done. She told me she was just trying to see if the group had adopted any of the innovative farming practices the German funding had paid to teach these women—of course they hadn’t. I’m not sure why third-world farmers are so unwilling to change habits, but during the meeting I did hear a woman say they didn’t make compost as they had been taught because it was too hard. While walking back to the car, Claude told me the German government had done the math and (even excluding the funding the group was given as an expense) the women lose money every year on their cold season garden. It is a negative investment. Considering that all ten of the women’s group in my village plant a cold season garden and that it is their principal motivation for them to form a group, this was a little upsetting. I wonder if all of the groups are losing money…or if they even know it.

Claude and her driver took me back to the mayor’s office, but before she continued on her way to the next big town she asked for my phone number. I think she had picked up on the optimism of her translator, because she told me that she would be working in the area for a while and would love the help of someone who spoke the local language. I also think she might just be looking for a friend nearby. I haven’t heard anything yet, but of course would love to have the ear of a major aid source.

Other than that, I really have not done much besides sit around and chat with people. After two months in my village I have a whole laundry list of things I would like to do, but for some reason, nothing gets done in this country. I would like to: build a Dutch oven, plant a garden, visit all ten of the women’s groups, teach other members of the mayor’s staff to use Excel, get to know the people at the local NGO/help out with some of their projects, visit the schools, learn where on the river women go to wash clothes, buy a clay jug, and find someone to be my counterpart for the next two years. Unfortunately, I need someone’s help to do a lot of these things, so (as I said) nothing gets done. Surprisingly, I also feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I seem to have made too many friends and am constantly apologizing for not visiting so-and-so often enough. I have also adopted a pretty intense regiment of hot yoga and arts and crafts…

Buying bananas is the most exciting part of my week...

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[1] Hassan, Hama, Jzbrilla, Moussa, Mahamadou, Neuhou, Hamani, Issa, Ousman, Amadou, Abdoulay, Moustafa, Adrisa, Moktar, Salisoum, Shaibou, Harou, Kabiro, Hadaire, Abdou + Something else, Sofiani, Rafidi, Jafar, Kassam, Rolli, Souleman, Seydou, Boubacar, Aysaka, Abraham, Mahman, Mumadi

[2] Hamsatou, Ramatou, Haoua, Jamilla, Mariama, Zuera, Oumu, Hasia, Raikia, Zainabou, Fatouma, Biba, Saharatou, Sadie, Amina, Halima, Shaima, Haijeria, Samseyia, Salamatou, Rashida, Maimouna, Adama, Kalima, Fouzia, Aishatou, Sameria, Nafisa, Wasia, Sharifia, Huhray

September 22, 2009

Sunday was the end of Ramadan, thank hallelujah. So far Ramadan is my one of my least favorite parts of Niger, second only to when flies fly up my skirt and I have to fish them out.

It’s not that I’m not super interested in learning about Islam or scared religious traditions that challenge people to contemplate their relationship with the Divine. That’s all great; just don’t come between me and my food. Those of you who know me, know well that when I’m hungry I am no longer capable of acting like a real person, but rather turn into a kind of volcano person, one which might erupt at any moment. Now imagine that person in a new culture, learning a new language, under the African sun, and lots of sand…

Let me be clear I didn’t actually fast during Ramadan—not even once. What did happen was, all of a sudden I was unable to buy food until after the evening prayer call at 7:10 pm. More annoying was that I couldn’t eat or drink in public. If I did ingest even my own saliva during daylight hours, I was immediately harangued by a flock of Nigeriens wanting to know why I wasn’t fasting, why I didn’t care about Allah, and why did not want to go to heaven. This invariably led to a long explanation about the fact that I am not a Muslim (or a Christian), and that if I went all day without drinking water I would turn into a human raisin. In addition to my crankiness, everyone else was cranky too. They also stayed in their houses all day and slept. Anyway, that’s all over for at least a year. We’ve returned to the usual routine of overly cheerful Nigeriens always trying to get me to eat everything all the time.

I must say, however, my villagers sent Ramadan out in style, but before I can tell you about the shitshow that was two days ago, I have to tell you about my first days at post.

So I arrived on Tuesday, and was “installed” (Peace Corps lingo) by a Nigerien PC staff member (Haoua), an American PC staff member (Janelle), and a veteran volunteer (Mary). Installation consisted of these three ladies taking me around to all the local authorities and introducing me. I also had meetings with the staff at the Mayor’s office and with the families in my concession. (I don’t know if I ever told you this, but a concession is just a house or group of houses that are walled in and share a common area.) During these meetings Haoua (How-wa) did her best to explain the depth of my ignorance, the gaps between our two cultures, and the things I might do that Nigeriens will find rude, or just bizarre. For example, she explained that I am under a bit of stress in this new place, and that someday I might spontaneously burst into tears—something that an adult would never do here, it’s too shameful. Or, I might make friends with a drug dealer, prostitute, or drunk—not because I am any of those things, but rather because I have no idea who is who. (I would like to take a moment to add that Haoua speaks English very well and has developed an extensive vocabulary of English swear words, which she would casually drop in as she translated for me.)

Haoua also explained to the mayor’s staff that joking too much about marrying me could constitute a kind of harassment in my home country. Then she asked everyone to have patience with me and help out whenever they could (it was at this moment that the mayor announced that he would be my adoptive father here, and the S.G. (my supervisor) would be my new mom.)

The meeting with the family was equally successful, and as a result I have enjoyed quite a bit of privacy. However, as I make friends outside of my concession that is slowly changing. These days I’ve been getting a visitor each hour that wants to sit and chat and see my house and eat my food. I would love to show everyone the same degree of hospitality the Nigeriens have shown me, but if I let one person in my house, give them anything but warm water, or let them stay for too long, I feel I will be soon hosting the entire community of 7,000 people.

It was strange to watch the installation car leave that morning. I was relatively calm, but was still staring down 31 days of forced integration and isolation. I’m not allowed to leave my village for one month, and not allowed to leave my region for three. It is rough, but necessary. The success of all my work as a volunteer depends on my ability to get to know and generate social capital within this community. As such, our training staff rightly emphasized the need for us to leave our houses as much as possible and I-N-T-E-G-R-A-T-E.

That first day, I gave myself permission to stay inside my house and get set up, but starting the next day I have tried to stay out of my house for at least eight hours a day. Here’s a rough sketch of what I do with my life: I get up at six-thirty, eat breakfast etc. Then at eight I go and sit with the ladies in my concession for an hour to chat. By nine I am at the mayor’s office, where I stay until one in the afternoon. I then go home, eat lunch, and wait out the afternoon heat. I try to go back out by three, but if it’s too hot I’ll stay in until four or four-thirty. I then go out and chat with anyone-and-everyone until sunset, when I go home, eat, bathe, and go to bed. This, my original schedule, has turned out to be perhaps more than I can handle, so I’ve decided to make Saturday a half day and do whatever I want on Sundays.

Work at the mayor’s office isn’t…work. I don’t know how to do anything and I can’t start any of my own projects for another three months, so as a result I pretty much just sit around, and greet people who come by, and chat with the office staff. I also offered to redraw a map of the town for the S.G., which was in near shreds. Somehow I managed to make that mini-project last two mornings. Various people in the office have promised to show me how to collect market taxes and write marriage, death, and birth certificates. The S.G. is my supervisor, but clearly has no idea what to do with me. I spend a lot of time sitting in his office, trying to understand his mixed Zarma/French, while he chats with each passersby and shamelessly picks his nose.

My afternoons have been much more interesting. The Zarma word for walking around without destination is “windi-windi”—pronounced, as you would imagine, windy-windy. Fakaray, means have a long chat, but in my case includes staring off into space awkwardly, while trying to make conversation. And this is what I every afternoon. I go windi-windi and fakaray. It was difficult for me, at first, to just walk into people’s concessions and ask to sit down, but I quickly resigned myself to being completely awkward for the next two years. (As one volunteer put it, “Even if you adhere to every social norm and courtesy there is, your villagers will still think you are weird as shit, so you might as well be bold.”) The chats have been going well, and I can feel myself making progress with my language. Here is a list of things I have been trying to talk about:

1. Why I am here in Niger, in this concession harassing you to converse with me. Or, in other words, my work.

2. What kind of work the people here do/ how they earn income.

3. What people feel their biggest needs are, in terms of infrastructure, etc.

4. How I should dress/ what I should say for the various ceremonies and traditions.

5. Life as a woman in Niger, including polygamy and spousal abuse.

Here is a list of things my villagers like to talk to me about:

1. Where my husband and children are.

2. Where my boyfriend is.

3. Why I’m not married.

4. Why I don’t have a boyfriend.

5. Why I don’t want to marry various villagers’ brothers, sons, and husbands. (There is no such thing as an unavailable man in Niger.)

6. When I will get married.

7. If they can come to my wedding in America.

8. When/how I will gain enough weight to get a husband.

9. Which of their children I will take to America with me.

10. How ugly their kids are (I’m not making this up).

They also like asking me for things—everything from candy to medicine to feminine hygiene products to good old money. This is always a little frustrating, as I am not a vending machine, and dispensing consumer goods is not my goal in life. However, I am an anasara, and therefore assumed to have a great deal of money. And, comparatively, I do have boatloads of money. Also consider all the other anasaras who have come before me (NGO workers and such), many of which have acted very much like free vending machines, handing out money, mosquito nets, medicine, etc. In a lot of ways, the anasara image has been built up to be a less-fun Santa Clause. You might sense my vague disapproval here…but now is not the moment to delve into my thoughts on aid policy… Let’s save that for later.

Really, I would very much like to help meet these people’s basic needs—especially when a mother shows me her sick child and asks for medicine. These situations feel both unfair and urgent to me. But, given that neither I, nor Peace Corps, is in the position to start footing the bill for all of Niger’s basic needs, it would be unwise to help even one person in such a direct way as handing over money or medicine. If I gave anything of the kind, word would get out and there would soon be a line at my front door… How exactly do I plan on helping these people? This is another big topic we might want to save for later.

Anyway, I’m getting better at holding a conversation. Though at times I do feel a bit like a circus attraction. For example, I feel very much like a freak show when mothers insist that I wait while they go get their children so the kids can see a white person. I also feel this way when people tell children that if they touch me they will die, inevitably leading to a great deal of shrieking and tears. Also, from time to time, even without help from others, children spontaneously burst into tears upon my arrival; or when people refer to me not as their new friend (the Anasara) but as “their Anasara;” or anytime, when talking with someone, I attract an audience of children that would do the cast of High School Musical proud…

In spite of the difficulties, I’ve met some really good people while walking around, which brings me to the last day of Ramadan. A few days before, I had made friends with an ice saleswoman and her younger brother, Adama and Saydou. The day before the big party Adama, who I should add is an extremely large and animated woman, insisted that I come to her house the next morning to partake in the “fete.” When I showed up, dressed head to toe in my Nigerien party gear, I was immediately shuffled into a room and given a pot of rice, a whole roast pigeon, fish, punch, and a bowl of water. Adama hovered over me, while chanting the too familiar mantra that my homestay mom in Bartcawal first introduced me to: “nwa, nwa, nwa!” (eat, eat, eat!).

Then Saydou showed up and announced that I had to come to see his house and meet his mother. This invitation concerned me somewhat as most young men here are all too eager to become engaged, especially to rich anasara ladies. My hosts did not even register my hesitation as I whisked away to Saydou’s mother’s house. (Yes, like all unmarried, Nigerien men, Saydou lives with his mother.) At his house, I saw a repeat performance of the scene at Adama’s, and was given a doggy bag for my leftovers…another whole pigeon.

Next began what I can only conceptualize as Saydou’s Ramadan, party gauntlet. Saydou took me from friend to friend, house to house, from roasted pigeon to roasted pigeon without pause (save one half hour break where he went to pray) for the next five hours. At first I was very eager to meet all these new people, and having Saydou with me took the awkward edge off. He even introduced me to the Chef de Canton’s representative (I’m not really sure what that means, but he had a couch, watched soap operas in Zarma, and his wife gave me actual fruit juice, so I wasn’t going to complain.) At another house, one of Saydou’s friend’s wives took my hand and would not let go until she introduced me to every woman in a 100-yard radius. (Another circus animal moment.) And at every house, Saydou coached me through every one of the 15 New Year’s greetings. It was exhausting, but all PCVs must sacrifice in the name of Integration.

Three and half hours in, it was hot and I was ready to wrap things up. I felt bad for taking up so much of Saydou’s day. Certainly this young man would rather be sitting in the shade, drinking tea with his friends than showing a culturally illiterate stranger around. I had a few more friends that I wanted to say hello to before going home to wait out the heat, but I gave Saydou an out, and said if he wanted to go, I could get home. But Saydou said (from what I could gather) since his house was in the same direction I was going he would come with me. So I dropped in on my two friends and then walked with Saydou toward his house (and mine).

At this point I was really ready to peel off my sweaty clothes and fan myself for the rest of the afternoon, but along the way he kept asking to stop in to drink just one glass of tea, or eat just one pigeon. As this continued, I tried to be more and more assertive about the fact that I was tired and just wanted to go home. Saydou’s coaching was becoming patronizing and annoying… but he had spent the whole day with me, so I thought the least I could do is meet a couple more of his friends. An hour later, my volcanic side was starting to bubble up—I was losing my patience. So I resolved the minute Saydou led me to a part of town I recognized, I would throw social courtesy into the wind and take my leave. At one point I thought Saydou was showing me the way back to the main road, but it was actually just the way into another friend’s concession. I think he could tell I was getting frustrated because each visit became more and more rushed. Around 5 p.m., still in uncharted territory, I flat out refused to go into another concession. Saydou didn’t seem offended by the resolved it had taken me quite some time to muster and took me to the road with remarkable speed.

Then the most remarkable thing happened. Saydou asked me what time tomorrow he should come by. I get claustrophobic pretty easily in relationships, so I immediately decided I didn’t want to see him the next day. I can’t even remember the vague, exhausted half-answer I gave him, but he showed up the next day around ten a.m. Turns out a young, Nigerien guy doesn’t have anything better to do than show a culturally illiterate stranger around.

Since then, Saydou has turned into a kind of barnacle friend, and even tried to come with me to a women’s group meeting. When I asked him why he would want to come to a women’s group meeting he told me to have patience, which I don’t understand, but know is a Nigerien’s response to almost everything. I admit I have avoiding Saydou like a clingy boyfriend for the past few days…but he seems to have calmed down.

All in all the end of Ramadan was a good day, and I am very grateful to Saydou for taking me around. That evening I even got to see some traditional dancing and made friends with a young schoolteacher who told me in broken English, “I want to make friends with you, but only slow, slow,” which sounded great after my day with Saydou. This schoolteacher (who turned out to be my neighbor) also told me, in adorably rusty English, that he had seen me around and could see the effort I was making to get to know people. He gave me a number of other, very sincere compliments regarding my cultural I-N-T-E-G-R-A-T-I-O-N, which made the whole day—the whole week, in spite of it’s frustrations, completely worth it.

September 24, 2009

I would like to take a moment to describe to you all how I look these days, and how I smell:

They call late-September to October mini-hot season. But since rainy season isn’t over, it’s still pretty humid. As a result, I am sweating ALL THE TIME. Thank Allah this is a Muslim country, and thus it is accepted (or expected) that I cover my hair, which I feel obligated to wash it at most once every two weeks (Author’s note: the rate of hair washing has decreased significantly since this was written). Surprisingly, clean hair is much harder to deal with here. At least when it’s plastered with sweat and sand, it stays in place. Regardless, I have only the vaguest idea of what my hair looks like these days, as I decided a mirror would do me more harm than good.

Now, combined with the dust, these extreme environmental conditions have caused my face to put on a display of pimples that outshine even the worst cases of junior-high acne. Not to mention that all of my clothes (my bras especially) never seem to dry out and have developed a strange, barnyard musk that follows me everywhere. I wash everything as often as I can, but keep in mind that I am using water from the river—a river that animals and people do use for every purpose under the sun. My sheets are the worst, because I spend all night sweating on them, and then have to bring them inside during the day…right now, though, they are be sanitized by the afternoon sun. I wish I could do the same with my bras, but public displays of undergarments are not tolerated.

In contrast to my clothes, my feet are chronically dry. Trying to keep my feet from cracking has become one of my favorite pastimes. When I bathe, I scrub, scrub, scrub until they feel clean. Most of the time, when I make it back to my house and look at them under a light, they are still almost black from the day’s wanderings, but they FEEL clean. On nights when it’s not absurdly hot, I douse my feet in lotion, then put socks on to keep the moisture in. (I feel very fancy whenever I do this.) All of this work has been only marginally helpful. My toes and heels are now peeling and as rough as a foreign affairs interview for Sarah Palin.

My skin in general has begun to do other strange things. I have bites and bumps and bruises, which I have no idea about their origin. I also have enough mosquito bites on my legs and feet that it now resembles a rash. I am thrilled to make it to nine a.m. without breaking a sweat. Deodorant seems to have lost all its power. And as a special treat, the other day I looked in my belly button for the first time since I got here—inside, was enough dirt to grow something (plus a mosquito bite).

When I was in America, I used to have dreams about winning a lifetime’s supply of candy or Brad Pitt showing up at my door and confessing his undying love. Lately I’ve been dreaming that I am clean (like showered AND wearing clean clothes) or I dream that I am in a Safeway and am allowed to buy WHATEVER I want.

Of course there are other bodily quirks and habits that have developed since coming here—quirks that I would be much too embarrassed to tell toilet-paper-toting, first world inhabitants about.

I’m not complaining—or, I am. I’m not sure. More like, I’m just marveling at how my standards of hygiene (which were questionable even before I joined the Peace Corps) are slowing melting away entirely.

October 7, 2009

The savvy observer might note that it’s been a while since my last entry…almost two full weeks. Please attribute this lapse in documentation to the severe case of what I self-diagnosed as MRD, Mystery River Disease, which I contracted during my second week at post. This mysterious fever led me to spend 11 days lying on a mat on my floor sweating. Now, I wasn’t really that sick—that’s where the mystery of Mystery River Disease comes in. Every evening I would get a mild to moderate fever, but by morning it would be gone, and gone all day. Sometimes I would get a headache or feel a little woozy, but I was not suffering from any other severe or alarming symptoms.

Well—that’s not true. I was very alarmed on day two of the fever to notice I had developed a full-body rash. This discovery spurred me to spend the afternoon reading about Dengue Fever, which is transported by mosquitoes and distinguished by the rash it causes. As perfect as it would be for the same fate to befall me that may-or-may-not have overtaken my best friend Emily (she’s a PCV in Belize and was awaiting the official Dengue blood test when I last checked my email), I decided that Dengue Fever was unlikely and that I probably just had a heat rash. Have a heat rash—I still have it…all over my arms, legs, neck, face, stomach, and back—I assume since I haven’t actually seem my back for three months.

Anyway, back to the MRD. As I said, I didn’t really feel THAT sick; but, if I tried to go on with business as usual, my fever that evening would get noticeably higher. So, after trying to ignore the MRD (curse my American upbringing and the Protestant Work Ethic it has endowed me with!), I spent the next days trying to rest. For more than a week I did nothing but lay on my mat sweating for eight hours a day, not from fever, but because I’m in Africa. There were some other PCVs in town who did a remarkable job taking care of me, and even made me a big, fancy birthday dinner (pizza, chocolate cake, and ranch dressing—my three favorite foods). Luckily, MRD does not affect one’s appetite.

I’m not going to lie—I was really frustrated to tears with the situation. I wasn’t well enough to go out, but didn’t feel sick enough to stay in. I felt like I was cheating at my first month at post. I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE INTEGRATING, DAMMIT! More frustrating was that the MRD wouldn’t go away. Eleven days is a long time to have a fever. Of course, I called the Peace Corps doctor who agreed that my symptoms were not severe enough to merit a trip to Niamey, but he did put me on Cipro. Either from the Cipro, or just time passing, I am now happily fever-free.

Now, I’ve explained the mystery of MRD, and the disease part is more or less obvious. “R” is for the river water I accidentally drank at a baby-naming ceremony, as it was disguised as punch. I find the fact that I ingested the murky sludge that fills the Niger River horrifying. Frankly, I feel I got everything I deserved for drinking some of the Niger River—in fact, I probably got off easy. I haven’t started growing another limb nor has all my hair fallen out. Also, I managed to escape the incident without hosting Guardia, amoebas, or bacteria in my digestive track (all of which cause explosive diarrhea and other fun symptoms like sulfur burps).

But, I’m better now. Fully recovered. And, the good news is that, amidst all the doctoring I was doing to myself, I discovered I can almost always take the temperature of my house with my medical thermometer. Right now at 8:30 PM, for example, it is a brisk 94.5 ºF. My bout with MRD also afforded me the opportunity to pop all those pimples I was telling you about before. The whole experience was nearly as exciting as the 45 minutes I spent last night chasing a two-and-a-half-inch scorpion around my house with a big stick. (More on that later.) Anyway, I’m back in business now, ready for my final week at post before I make my voyage to Niamey to refill my dwindling stocks of oatmeal and mayonnaise.

October 9, 2009

Walking home from the post office today, it occurred to me I’ve done a rather poor job of conveying the texture and content my life here. You know my schedule and that it’s hot, but I haven’t even begun to recant for you, what my life here is really like, how I feel, and how I feel myself changing. The problem is that what makes life here so remarkable is a long tally of little things, which alone are unremarkable. Together, though, these things create a whole other world—the third word, I guess.

An example of Niger’s eccentricity: There is a model of chair here that is very popular. Perhaps its popularity arises from the simplicity of its design: string wound around a mental frame from front to back. The problem is this very popular model of chair makes absolutely no allowance for the geography of the human backside and the strings run parallel with a very a tender longitude of human anatomy. The fact that people are still making and buying this kind of chair after having sat in it is baffling to me. Yet, every time I show up for a chat, I am faithfully ushered to the family’s one chair—anasara privilege—and made to sit. It’s still a novelty to be shown such respect, but every time I recline in one of the chairs I described above, I smile to myself at the hilarity of the chair’s design—smile and try to sit sideways.

Another example: trash. First of all let me say that there is a lot of it here—everywhere. There are acres of plastic bags on the outskirts of Niamey, and the same covers the streets of my village. From what I can tell, besides gravity, there is no formal trash collection system here. (Appreciate your local government/private trash collection company here.) When I got to Niger, the endless mountains of rouge waste were a pretty chocking landscape for a lady, such as myself, who digs through trash in America to pull out the recyclables.

I once had a global environmental politics professor lecture on what she termed the “Flush Phenomenon.” She told us that (many) Americans suffer from the misconception that our toilets are magical entities, with the power to whisk their cargo off to other worlds, very different from our own and never to return. We think the same thing about our trash. When we are done with it, it goes in the garbage, we take it to the curb, and then those sanitation workers—magicians really—make it disappear forever.

I was 19 when I took this class (SO long ago), but I remember thinking, yes, there are fools out there who think that way, aren’t there…shame on them. I, on the other hand, was no Flush Phenomenon fool. I knew our world was overrun with trash; it was in our landfills, our forests, our oceans, etc. Sometimes, I even saw it on the street, escaping from an overused dumpster. In spite of all this awareness, I was still surprised, even embarrassed, when I came home the other afternoon to find the neighborhood children playing with bits of things that I had thrown away. Of course, by thrown away, I mean I had put a bag of trash on the big pile outside our concession. (I’m still deciding whether it’s worse to burn it or toss it. Your thoughts/insights are welcome.) Anyway, it was an entirely foreign experience to see my trash again. It was awkward—kind of like bumping into an old boyfriend you thought had decided to move to Siberia. “Oh, I didn’t think I would see you here…” I had THROWN IT AWAY, put it in the bag, taken it to the curb. But here it was, my trash, staring me in the face. It had refused to be vanquished to the world of trash-gone-by, in fact it all hung around all week until someone burned the whole pile last night. So, I guess I too am a sufferer of the Flush Phenomenon…

One more example—it’s about the heat again, apologies—I can’t remember what it was like for the sun to be a pleasant sensation. When the sun comes out in Seattle, everyone sets their work aside, joins hands, and dances together in the sunshine. Maybe not, but we certainly do covet its sporadic visits to our city. Here, from the moment the sun crawls over the horizon, it is causing me pain. Sometimes, if I stay too late at the mayor’s office, I will debate if lunch and a nap is worth the 200 yard walk home. I make wild detours just to walk in the shade. I swear, even the sunlight shooting through space and then reflecting off the moon makes me sweat. I am completely mystified to recall the mornings in Seattle that I would wait for the bus to class and stand 15 yards away from the bus stop just to be in the sun.

And we eat with our hands, and I learned to shoo chickens, and everyone says “hi” to me, and some kid called me the “big anasara,” and every third person is wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt, and I get to see all the dirt that comes out of my clothes when I do laundry, and the sunrise prayer call always wakes me up, and they sell everything (including peanut butter) in small plastic bags, and there are little lizards all over my house, and I get excited about ice—clearly, I’m not in Seattle anymore.

In truth, I’m not even sure I’ve taken notice of all this world’s little quirks and marvels, let alone found the time and talent to articulate them. Luckily, I am going to be here a while.

October 11, 2009

So…one of my biggest preoccupations here at post is pinpointing the moment that I become a real PCV. By Real PCV I mean a woman of the villagers—a lady who not only talks the talk, but also understands village life and is a part of it. I want to appreciate their jokes, and be able to joke back. I want to show them the depth of my commitment and gratitude. I want to sweat and bleed along side the people in my town. (I would say I want to cry with them also, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person over the age of 10 who cries here.) Most of all, I want to cast off the role of an outsider and become a villager myself. I want them to see me as one of them. This is what a Real PCV looks like to me: sweating, bleeding, and crying, but surrounded by a village of support—a new home. This is what integrating is all about.

Of course there will always be some distance between a PCV and her community. For example, no matter how hard I try I may never master Zarma and, contrary to what a neighbor told me, no amount of kopto (Niger’s version of salad) will turn my skin black. Yet, our inability as volunteers to shed our American heritage and transform ourselves into natives is another part of our charge as PCVs—we are out in the heat and sand to help, but also to show the world a little bit of America.

The trouble with this balancing act (blending in and staying American) is that it makes it somewhat difficult to know when a volunteer has reached his or her fullest integration potential. I, myself, have witnessed a great deal of discussion in the Peace Corps community, both in America and in Niger, regarding what constitutes a Real PCV. Many subscribe to the idea that contracting a severe illness and surviving is enough to don the title. Still, others believe the illness must be of a digestive nature, and severe enough to cause a premature deposit of you-know-what in your pants, or skirt as it were. (I’m not making this up; most Peace Corps countries have at least some chapter, formal or otherwise, of the Shit Your Pants Club.)

I am lucky enough to have survived both these delightful experiences, but still feel that I have not attained true PCV-hood. Wandering around my village over the past several weeks there have been moments when I thought I might have finally come into my own. The MRD was one of those moments, getting frustrated to tears over language was another, my epic battle with the scorpion yet another. Also, last week, much to the amusement of the ladies I was chatting with, I had a baby pee all over my lap. In the moment was a little put off, but as I scrubbed the urine from my skirt, I couldn’t help but re-imagine the whole scene as a kind of baptism and I reborn a Real PCV. I thought that that was my moment of crossing over…that was until yesterday.

As I mentioned, in my village wanderings, I am always looking for chances to prove that I am not just another anasara—this is why I hold babies and make jokes and eat whatever is offered (unless of course I think it will make me sick, Dad.) As an upshot of this search, last Saturday I was overjoyed to accept an invitation from a large, old lady (my favorite demographic here) to come and see her fields out in the bush. I was elated. They will see me in action out in those fields and then they’ll KNOW I’m for real…she thought to herself.

The sun’s rays of death oblige people leave for the fields pretty early—the time that I usually go to work (“work”) in the mayor’s office. Thus, it wasn’t until yesterday, filled with exuberance, I got up at an especially early hour to go out to the fields. I ate a hearty breakfast, put on my grubbiest clothes and lots of sunscreen, filled my water bottle to the brim. When I got to my friend’s house, she had other work to do, so she said that I should go out the fields with her younger relations and she would come later.

What came next was what I had been looking forward to most, all week—the trip out to the bush…on a donkey cart. When my ride pulled up, I was a little disappointed to see it was pulled by two calves and not a donkey, but I will take what I can get in terms of integration opportunities. And what an opportunity it was! They will see me on this donkey—cow cart, riding through the village out to the fields, and then they’ll KNOW I’m for real.

As we got ready to depart, three young people started loading the cart with field tools: the driver, a twenty-something guy; another boy of about ten years; and a young woman a few years younger than me. Unfortunately, hers was the only name that I understood, Aishatou. So the two gentlemen shall remain anonymous for the rest of this tale.

When they were ready, I was direct by the driver to get on the cart. Anasara privilege dictated that I have the best seat, in front, right next to the driver. I could hardly contain my jubilance as we departed. I was seriously grinning like a kid next in line for a ride on the Matterhorn at Disneyland.

It wasn’t twenty seconds into the ride that the cow I was sitting behind pooped. The combination of the volume of poop, the length and swing of the cow’s tail, the cart velocity, and the headwind made me a little concerned. Surprisingly, I really didn’t want to get cow poop on me. But, after a moment, it became clear the cow had finished, leading me to think, Oh, that’s good we got that out of the way. At least I know that it probably won’t do that again for a while. I then settled into the ride and began trying to advertise my village-life adventure by waving at everyone we passed.

Maybe two minutes later I realized this cow, which I sat mere feet behind, had a rather severe case of diarrhea. Again, given the above variables of speed and cow tail, I was pretty concerned about the probability of a poop shower. Luckily, poop shower conditions never seemed to fully coalesce, and I survived the trip unscathed.

When we arrived at the fields, I was eager to prove myself as a volunteer via bean harvest. I grabbed my bucket and immediately set about the business of making it look like I was working as hard as everyone else. I harvested enthusiastically, thinking of all those good years of training I had undergone in Montana, picking huckleberries. I thought of how hard it would be to do this everyday, and how much harder it would be to depend on this kind of work for survival. I thought about all the beans I was going to pick and how great it would be when my bucket was full. Then I thought about orange juice for a while. Once I started to run out of steam, I let myself look at my watch to see if it was time for a break. Apparently my enthusiasm had lasted me about twenty minutes. I had no idea how long they expected me to work out there, but the whole hunching-over-while-picking-beans-in-the-burning-sun was already old.

An hour in, I took a break to drink water and reapply sunscreen. Aishatou, who didn’t seem the least bit worn out, asked me how much I had picked and was incredulous that my bucket was still not full. The thing was, I wasn’t sure how long they were going to keep me out there. I had brought snacks and was prepared to stay as long as they did. But really, there was no way I could have found my way through the millet fields, back to town on my own. Thus, I was really trying to pace myself.

In the end, I managed to pick one AND A QUARTER buckets of beans in two hours, at which time Aishatou, somewhat alarmed at my fatigue, told the driver they should probably take me back. I was still committed to the bean picking effort, not wanting to come back without a good harvest. (Damn that Protestant Work Ethic.) But Aishatou assured me that we had more than enough beans and that she was also tired.

I would like to take a moment to note Aishatou and the ten-year-old boy had spend the whole morning laboring alongside me, while the driver had devoted this time to napping in the shade. I know that beans are a women/children crop here, but this still seemed a little unfair to me. When I asked him why he wasn’t working he told me he was taking care of the animals. I couldn’t actually understand most of his answer, but was frustrated by it all the same.

Anyway, we assumed the same seating arrangement for the journey home, but now Aishatou and the younger boy were sitting on top of two huge bags of green beans. About two minutes into the ride home, it occurred to me I should have moved seats, so as to avoid fecal assault. Unfortunately, it was about two minutes and three seconds into the ride that the afore mentioned poop shower conditions (headwind, volume of discharge, length AND swoosh of cow tail, etc.) converged, and I was…you know there isn’t really a verb for what happened...I guess maybe spattered... from head to toe. Now, not to worry, the scene was certainly nothing worthy of an Austin Powers movie. Nonetheless, after this experience, I would contend any amount of cow diarrhea is too much, with which to be spattered.

The driver saw what was happening, stopped, and suggested I move seats. Aishatou, without missing a beat, grabbed the ten-year-old’s hat off his head, and began wiping the poop off my face. The kid didn’t really like that… At first, they just frowned in shock. I think they were afraid of the castigation that would ensue if they brought the anasara back, covered in poop. But as I smiled and assured them it was no problem, they began to chuckle until they were overtaken with fits of laughter—a big boost to my self-esteem.

When I got back to my friend’s house, she surprised to see me back so soon, but didn’t seem to notice my change in appearance. I, who was acutely aware of what I was wearing, excused myself as soon as possible, but not before she could give me an entire ten-gallon bucket of green beans. I tried to explain that I was just one person, and there was no way I could eat so many beans on my own. My friend, however, was insistent, and I—eager to bathe—did not fight her for long.

I then marched home (doling out handfuls of green beans along the way), showered, did laundry, and gave the rest of the beans to the family in my concession for everyone to share. All in all, it was a good day. I was glad to get out of town for a little while, and my family really seemed to appreciate the beans.

But, I still wonder to myself, am I Real PCV now? Did this cow’s digestive issues somehow bring me closer to my fullest integration potential? I really don’t know. BUT, one clear perk to all this is that, now, I can counter any conversational point with “I was sprayed with diarrhea by a cow in Africa.” I feel that this fully compensates the emotional distress I suffered as a consequence of the poop shower.

September 13, 2009

About a week ago I said good-bye to my homestay family in Bartcawal and moved up to the training site in Hamdallaye. I was surprised at how difficult it was to say good-bye to them. The morning I left, they all helped me carry my things to the road and waited for the Peace Corps car with me. My homestay mom even came out to wait. My language skills are still too limited to express the depth of my gratitude, so we all just stood there saying, “I am thankful for everything,” back and forth. Also, people don't really hug here, so all I could do was wave vigorously.

The hardest person for me to say good-bye to was Abdoulai. Over the past nine weeks he went from being utterly terrified to me, to throwing his arms around my knees and grinning, every time I came home. He would always try and climb on my lap, or get a piece of whatever I was eating. He also came to standing outside my hut and yelling his version of my name, “Atou,” to try and get me to play with him. The moment that I knew I was totally done for came one night when I was holding him on my lap, wearing a new, traditional head wrap. Abdoulai leaned back into my chest and looked up, then pointed at my headscarf and said, “a boori,” which translates as “it’s good.” His mom and sister freaked out when it happened, because this was Abdoulai's first time using the most common phrase in the Zarma language. My heart melted right then and there.

I will get to visit my family again when I go back to Hamdallaye in three months for more training, but I can’t imagine how much bigger Abdoulai will be by then. Even after returning from my week at site live-in, he seemed to have gotten bigger. No matter how bad of a day I may have had, getting a hug from him always made me feel better. And, to be honest, the kids in my new concession just aren’t as cute. That’s how it goes I guess; everything is always changing. With that in mind, don’t be surprised if I show up to America in two years with a newly adopted son.

The week after I left Bartcawal was outrageously busy (which is why we stayed at site and not in village). Monday we had regular classes. Tuesday we drove into Niamey for administrative sessions and a special you’re-actually-real-volunteers-now BBQ. Wednesday we went back to Niamey mid-day for an all-evening fund-raising event for Gender and Development (GAD). GAD is actually a pretty special thing, specific to Peace Corps Niger. Some volunteers have taken it upon themselves to help raise money for certain Peace Corps projects—the ones supporting Gender and Development… Anyway, every year they host an auction, talent show, and dinner to earn money and invite a huge portion of the NGO/Volunteer community in Niger.

At the auction I may or may not have spent the equivalent of $20 to win a bag of peanut M&Ms, jelly bellys, and pudding. They were all delicious. My training class also made quite a splash during the talent show. We actually dominated the bill with award-winning performances, including: a Frank Sinatra acoustic solo, a rap about Niger, an series of animal impressions, and an interpretive dance of our nine weeks of training to the Lion King Theme. I laughed so hard my checks were streamed with tears and began to ache. The best part was that the whole thing took place at the American Recreation Center, which has a pool. So for a few hours, I actually felt completely clean. It was a strange sensation.

The next day, Thursday, was our big day: Swear-In. We got up early and did a run through of the ceremony logistics—officially our last session of Pre-Service Training. After breakfast, we were taken to Niamey once more. We were allowed to run wild until 3 PM, at which point we donned our traditional Nigerien outfits, and were driven to the America Ambassador’s residence for the ceremony. I must say, she has some nice digs. Showing up at the gate of her house you might not guess it, but a paradise lies just beyond the metal detectors. She (or whoever is willing to take the job) is given a huge house with a pool, an amazing garden, a view of the Niger River, tennis courts, and a horse that wanders around the yard.

For those who don’t know, I was elected by my peers to give a speech in Zarma. I practiced quite a bit beforehand, and felt ready when the time came. Luckily too, there weren’t as many attendees as I imagined. As I walked to the podium, I took a deep breath. But, before I could begin I was swarmed by four or five Nigeriens setting up TV cameras and a guy sticking a tape recorder in my face. Yikes!

Even after all the tour guiding, project presenting, and interviewing I’ve done, giving this speech was hard for me. But, as I said in the speech (the full transcript is below), the hardest things are what make you grow the most. It was over before I knew it. Everyone seemed to think it went well, but I didn’t believe them until today, when I watched the video. I don’t seem even a fraction as nervous as I was. I actually seem somewhat composed… And the best part is that you all have no idea if I made any mistakes…because it’s in Zarma! The video is (probably) available on facebook. I say probably because there are still 43 minutes left of upload time, and I'm hungry.

After my speech, Shuruq delivered an excellent addressed in Hausa, and Alice did the same in French. Then the Peace Corps Country Director’s turn came. She alternated between French and English so that everyone could understand. The U.S. Ambassador did the same in her speech. Then finally the Nigerien Foreign Minister spoke, which was all French, but I could pick up her references to JFK's vision of Peace Corps. All three of the speakers reminded us of the courage and character a person must have to undertake such an adventure as Peace Corps Niger. Of course, like all weddings, human-interest stories, and insurance commercials—the speeches made me cry. To conclude the ceremony we took the official Peace Corps oath in French and English.

So now, I am an O-F-F-I-C-I-A-L PCV! I was surprised by the amount of relief I felt driving back to Hamdallaye for our last meal together, like maybe the hardest part is over? But then remembering the trials the next few months will hold, I think that can’t possibly be true.

Friday was a recovery day, during which we all accessed our PC bank accounts for the first time. I'm rich! To support our cushy lives as volunteers, we get paid about $2/day. I was thinking about it though, and I really think I could get by on a dollar a day, 450 CFA.

Saturday morning there were some tears as everyone departed for their respective regions. Since I am in the Tilliberri region, I am spared the grueling 11-hour trip out east, stuffed in a land cruiser with ten other volunteers and all their belongings. I slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, and then was driven the 35 km to Niamey. As a special Tilliberri-region perk we were able to attend a potluck at the Ambassador’s house, in commemoration of the end of her three-year service in Niger. All I have to say is: free food, drinks, access to her pool, Oreos, and ice cream. Ice cream. OREOS! My body went into a state of self-defense and convinced my mind it was necessary to take in as many calories as possible to save up for later. I didn’t know I could eat two helpings of lunch, four helpings of dessert, two sodas, and an ice cream cone, in a three-hour period.

So far today I have eaten breakfast, checked my email, watched TV, eaten lunch, watched TV, and written this. It’s now almost 5:30 PM. This is the first time I’ve been able to be lazy since before I left the States. It feels amazing. Also, I have to tell you that both the cab driver who took me to breakfast this morning and my waiter at the restaurant recognized my from my televised Zarma-address.

Tomorrow I will make one last shopping trip for house-wares before I leave for my post. I pretty much just get dropped off and am left to my own devices for three months. I plan on writing out a schedule so that I don’t drive myself insane with constant activity. After the first month, I am allow to travel and after three months, it’s back to Hamdallaye for In-Service Training and a reunion with my training class. BUT, no matter how you look at it, describe it, fill it, or rationalize it, the first three months at post are almost always the hardest. Guh! I will report back mid-October when I get to come in to Niamey, and let you all know how it’s going.

Here is a copy of the speech I made for swear in. There are a few phrases that didn’t translate into English well, so parts may seem a bit awkward. Also, Zarma doesn’t have complicated sentence structure, as a result the translation isn’t 100% faithful…because I love clause-heavy writing.

Zarma Version

Peace Corps ma ga, ay go ga aran kulu. Fonda kayan. Ay go ga saabu aran se nda suro kan aran go ga dan ga iri hangan.

Ay hamburu kayna kan Peace Corps ne ay se kan ay go ga ka Niger ga te jiri hinka, zama ay si Niger bey gumo gumo. Cimi-cimi ay si bey nankan hare Niger go Africa ra kala kan ay na ndyunya karto gune. Amma, ba kan ay na karto gune ay man ma kaani. Ay di kan Niger ga moru Amerik gumo-gumo. Woodin banda mo, Niger ga fayanka nda Amerik gumo-gumo. Kan ay go ga sola ga ka, ay sobay ga foongu sandey kan go ga ay batu Niger ra jiri hinka wo kan ay ga ba ga te.

Amma za kan iri ka Niger, iri di kan sandey din manti sandeyan no koyne. Kayna-kanya Niger nwarey sintin ga kanu iri se. Iri ga hin ga dan Niger bankarey. Iri stagere jerey sintin ga waani Niger nwarey hinayan. Yadinga stagairey kan si waani Niger nwarey hineyan hima ga mey haw.

Habu yegga wo kan iri te Niger ra, boorey kulu na iri kubayni gumo-gumo. Iri coro taagey Bartcawal nda Hamdalley ra na iri ga gumo-gumo ga iri sandey bonza. i ga ba iri ma zada. Woodin se iri go ga Niger boorey kulu saabu gumo-gumo. Ay go ga ay Bartcawal almeyalo saabu gumo gumo kan i n’ay gaayi nda bine fo, i n’ay sambu sanda ingey ize. Bine kaani bambata no iri se hunkuna kan iri go ga sintin ga goy aran Niger laabo ra. Iri Niger laabu ra, zama hunkuna iri kulu wone ne.

Hunkuna iri na cere margu neyo ga iri stajo banyanno buco te, nda iri jiri hinka kan iri ga te Niger ra koyne. Ay go ga ci ay caley se i ma fongu kan handey kan go ga ka ga taabandi gumo-gumo, zama i ra no iri ga sintin ga te goyteri cim-cimyan. Si ka Kulsi. Yardin no ndunya.

Amerik ra iri ga ne nda boro man taabi a si du. No pain, no gain. Amma, nda boro ga ba cabeyan hanno ni ma du ga goro Niger ra boro ma koy Niger booreydo. Wa foongu kan nda boro si ga ma kaani, Niger boorey caabeyan hinza go no kan iri si dirgan a bada, kala suru, kala suuru, kala suuru.

English Version

I am here today, speaking on behalf of Peace Corps, blessings on your arrival. Thank you all for your patience during our ceremony.

When Peace Corps first told me that I was to serve two years in Niger, in truth, I was a little scared. I didn’t know very much about Niger. To be completely honest, I wasn’t exactly sure where Niger was in Africa. But after I looked at a map, I was still uneasy. I saw that Niger was very far from America, isolated, and difficult to travel to. What’s more, I knew that Niger would be very different from my home. As I prepared to come, the thought most prominent in my mind was that the next two years would be hard for me—it would be a challenge.

But, upon our arrival we discovered that many of the challenges we feared were not so large. We have learned to love the food, and how to wear Nigerien clothing. Some of us have even learned how to prepare Nigerien food. Those of us who don’t learn how to cook will have to learn how to fast.

The nine weeks we have spent in Niger, everyone has shown us an incredible amount of hospitality. Our new friends in Bartcawal and Hamdallaye have helped us overcome many of the challenges we faced. They wanted us to succeed, and for that we are deeply thankful. I want to add that I am especially grateful to my family in Bartcawal for loving me with one heart, and taking me in as their own daughter. Today, we our hearts feel huge as we begin our work in your country—our country—because today we are also Nigerien.

We have come here today to celebrate the end of our training, and the beginning of our two years of service. I want to warn my colleagues that in the months that come, we will all suffer a great deal as we begin to build a life for ourselves in Niger. There is no doubt. This is how the world is.

In America we say that if a person doesn’t suffer, he or she doesn’t get it. No pain, no gain. But, as one might expect, the best advice for living in Niger comes from the Nigeriens. Therefore, if you are struggling, remember the Nigerien's three favorite pieces of advice: Have patience, have patience, and have patience.

August 31st, 2009

Here are a few pictures from a "fashion show that our training class did. Our homestay families lent us all their formal garb so that we could learn about appropriate dress...and look silly.

Below: The Bartcawal crew. We like to joke that we are all unoffically Chad's (a.k.a. Hassane Ide) four wives, and as you can see from the picture, we are a very becoming family.

I'm the one in the yellow.

August 29, 2009

This morning I am in Niamey before returning to Hamdalleye for my last two weeks of training. I came in last night after staying four days at “site,” the place where I will be living for the next two years! In all honesty I couldn’t be more pleased with my placement. The town is very nice, clean, (for now) very green, full of interesting people, and host to several NGOs. It’s big enough that I can buy whatever I might need, especially on market days. In fact, my new home boasts a population that is significantly larger than my hometown, Plains, Montana. I am still debating which is more developed. Also, the people at the mayor’s office where I will be working are incredible nice. I am really looking forward to getting to know them and working with them.

The mayor himself already asked me to be his computer and English tutor, and the Secretariet General (my direct supervisor) is fun in a slightly eccentric way. He talks to himself a lot. One of the big events of my live-in was when the mayor and the S.G. took me to a commune counsel meeting. (A commune in Niger is basically the equivalent of a county in the U.S.) Starting at eight in the morning they loaded me up into a pickup and then drove me (and five other counsel members) out to a nearby town. At the meeting the mayor introduced me as the commune’s new Peace Corps volunteer. The meeting was conducted in French and Zarma, so I had a hard time understanding it—all six hours… That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I sat in an unlit, breeze-less classroom, full of flies and listened to 30 people animatedly debate various subject in two languages that I can barely understand for six hours. My personal goal for myself was to not fall asleep in front of my new colleagues, and you will be proud to know I was at least 87 % successful in fulfilling this goal. Six hours. No breaks. No lunch (because it’s Ramadan and everyone is fasting anyway). At one point the S.G. tried to get me to go buy some water for myself, but I just sat out under a tree and napped. One of the other volunteers had warned me beforehand that, “Nigerien meetings are crazy,” but I had no idea. There was also a lot of yelling… A lot.

On my way to site we had to drop off several other volunteers, so unfortunately by the time I made it to my town it was already dark. The volunteer who was supposed to stay with me my first night in village thought it would be better to wait until it was light to move it, so I spent the first night at a Peace Corps hostel. I was so tired, I was glad to be able to just make a bed up for myself and sleep without worrying about getting settled.

I moved in the next morning and I LOVE MY HOUSE!! It’s tiny, but still much larger than I need. The front room is smaller, but big enough for me to fit a table with a stove and my water filter, a trunk with my food and a mat for me to sit on. (I would like to take a moment to note that as I am writing this I am deliriously tired and just tried to spell mat, m-a-t-t. I apologize for any other strange errors or typos that might be in this post.) The back room of my house is huge—but very much like a cave. I don’t have electricity, so the its almost always dark and mysterious. I think that (in spite of its size) it will just be an oversized closet.

Then there is the magic of my tanda. A tanda is a shade hanger in front of a house and is key to both privacy and comfort. If a person doesn’t have a shade hanger you are forced to nap inside you sweltering house, and everyone can see in your door, or just walk into your house. We were all warned before live-in that all things in Niger move slower than one would think humanly possible, and we should be prepared to show up to tanda-less houses. Sure enough, when I came my house was sans tanda. I was a little disappointed, but accepted that I may be just a little uncomfortable for the next four days.

Later in the morning, after I had moved in, my host PCV took me to the mayor’s office to introduce me to my new boss and co-workers. The mayor and S.G. were surprised and upset to learn that I had already moved into my house and had not waited for them to install me there. “That is just like Americans. They always just go, and never ask,” the S.G. remarked in French to the mayor. I felt bad. I didn’t know that they had wanted to be there when I moved in, but it ended up working out in my favor because it became the mayor and S.G.’s mission to build me a tanda.

I spent the rest of the day speeding around the market in the commune’s pickup, buying tanda supplies. Then the next day, IN ONE DAY, my tanda was built. Amazing. As it was happening, I kept trying to talk my expectations down, not allowing myself to believe the thing would actually get built. And its Ramadan! During Ramadan, everyone is usually so wiped from not eating or drinking that things move even slower than slower-than-humanly-possible. Also, everyone is 74% crankier. I wanted to buy a cold water guy who spent the whole day laboring to build me my tanda, but he wouldn’t have accepted it. So now I have a magical, build-in-one-day-which-says-something-about-the-productivity-of-the-mayor’s-office tanda.

I took pictures of my house for you all to see, but I left them back at the hostel. So, I can’t upload them…maybe in another six weeks.

I spend the rest of the four days setting up my house, sweeping, figuring out how to get water, and getting to know the ladies in my concession. I REALLY like my neighbors. I haven’t figured out who is who yet, but let me tell you I am living with some sassy ladies. One of them is super intense and would burst into my house unannounced, but I think we’re going to be good friends. She brought me dinner one night, gave me eggs, and even brought me a block of ice. She was taken aback to learn that I didn’t have electricity, and insisted that before I return to my house I buy a cooler so that I can keep ice.

The water situation is something else in my town. There are more than 7,000 people and one pump. One pump, no wells. There is also the river right nearby, but it’s not exactly clean. I think that water is going to end up being one of my biggest expenses and already find myself recycling my water in ways that I would never dream of in the States. Water to boil pasta turns into tea water. Rinse water turns into dishwater, etc, etc. Since I don’t have running water, the water that I buy sits in big jug in my house, and let me tell you I have never been more aware of how much I was drinking or washing with.

I told my APCD (the guy in the Peace Corps who is in charge of me) that I was interested in water projects, and I think that that may have had something to do with my placement here. The good news is that when I get set up I can buy river water for washing and showering, but until then I am paying warnaka for one bido—which is outrageous!!

So what’s the plan for the rest of my two years? I can tell you how the next two months will go. I am returning to Hamdalleye for two and a half weeks of training. Allah willing, September 10th I will swear in as a real volunteer and then be “installed” at my site. The first month in village I have to stay at my site—I’m not allowed to travel. Luckily I am the center of a cluster of volunteers, so I still may get visitors from time to time. After the first month, I am allowed to travel, but I can’t start “work” for another two months. Basically I have three months to get a handle on the language and get to know my village. Then I will return to Hamdalleye for three weeks in In-Service Training.

I find “getting to know everyone in my village” pretty intimidating considering its size. My new town is very different from where I’m living now. Instead of open concessions, with low walls and people everywhere, the concessions at my site have high walls and have huge metal doors. As I mentioned, with the fast, most people spend the day sleeping, so it’s hard to find energetic playmates. Though, I’ve been told that it’s perfectly acceptable for me to just knock on any door and say, “Hey, I’m a Peace Corps volunteer. Let’s talk, and you can feed me.” Things will also get easier when Ramadan ends and people aren’t sleeping all day long. Either way, I’m definitely not in Bartcawal any more.

As for Internets, it appears to be working. I am actually using wireless right now at the one café in Niamey where all foreigners and ex-pats get their ice cream, pizza, and air conditioning. I’m going to try and upload some photos too. Hopefully, I will be able to come back here next Sunday, but, as magically as it appeared, the Internet may die again…and it could be another six weeks before I post.

I love you all! And hope that things are going well state-side!

July 29th, 2009

Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to my first official blog post! As of today I have officially been in Niger for three weeks. I am writing now from the Peace Corps training site in Hamdalleye, a small village about 30 km outside of Niamey. I won’t actually be able to post this for another two weeks, so reading it now, you may be a bit behind the times…or, I am behind the times…either way, more has happened since I wrote this. (Author’s note: it’s now August 12 and I still haven’t had the chance to post this. I’m going to Niamey this Sunday and if God wills it I will get the chance to use the Internets. I apologize for the untimely delivery of all this blogging. Read it slowly. It might be a while before I can post more.)

My Arrival

So, from the beginning… Philadelphia was uneventful. I met my training class and had a very brief training on safety. We also went over our itinerary, and the “how to”/ “in case of” of getting to Africa. I ate nothing but pizza and ice cream for three days…

I arrived in Niger without any trouble. The flight from Philadelphia to Paris was really long, and I couldn’t sleep; so by the time we were flying from Paris to Niamey I was delirious with exhaustion and too tired to get nervous. I must admit though, I was a bit worried/skeptical to see how the landscape changed as we approached our destination. For the last half hour of our flight, I couldn’t pick out a single sign of human life in the orange sea of sand below.

The heavy afternoon heat immediately overwhelmed me as we deplaned, and since it’s rainy season, it very was also very humid. My first experience in Niger was being driven the 50 yards from the plane to the airport in an air-conditioned bus. I’m not sure why this was necessary since ours was the only plane at the airport and there was only one gate... Anyway, collecting baggage was no trouble (except for those whose luggage had been misplaced by Air France), and we were met by a mob of current Peace Corps Volunteers and staff, who cheered for us as we exited the airport.

From the airport we were driven to the Peace Corps training site (called Tondibon) in Hamdalleye (Hahm-duh-lie), or as many have come to call it, “mini-America,” complete with flush toilets and a volleyball court. We were all so drained from the trip that they pretty much let us go straight to bed, but the around midnight I awoke to howling winds, announcing the arrival of a storm. After fumbling to shove my mattress and mosquito net inside, I became aware of the fact that my teeth crunched with sand and my hair was plastered with grit to the point that I could make it stand on end. Welcome to Niger.

The Weather

Since that first night there have at least a few more that have been interrupted by rain. The first time it rained after I moved into Bartcawal (Bar-cha-wall), my homestay dad was kind enough to wake me up before I got drenched. Now, every night before I go to bed I assess the humidity, cloud cover, and wind to guess if I’ll make it through the night without making the mad dash inside. No matter how bad it looks I always end up staying outside until it actually starts raining. It’s a real tragedy to miscalculate and spend a sweaty night inside your hut for no reason.

There are many theories aiming to predict the weather patterns here. For example, if the wind comes from the Northeast it will rain, or if you can see the stars as you go to sleep it won’t. I’ve also been told to listen to the animals, which are supposed to get especially restless before a storm. All of these theories, however, haven’t proven themselves; the wind blows from all directions before a storm, which can cloud the sky over in minutes, and the animals make noise all the time. The other night I was staring down a 180-degree panorama of lightning, but still made my bed outside. (That time I made it through the whole night without a drop, another similar night I made it until around 11:45 before waking up to a sand blizzard.) My family hasn’t been much help in getting a feel for weather patterns either. Whenever I ask any of them if they think it will rain I get one of two responses: “I really don’t know” and “if Allah wills it.” Really, I’m thrilled to have such an exciting sleeping routine. When hot season comes around in February I am going to be sorely missing the desert thunderstorms.

My Homestay Family

Throughout the day I read, study, converse, etc. on a small woven mat in my host family’s concession. The concession is very nice, shady, and far enough out of town to afford me a great deal of privacy. One of my fellow Bartcawal volunteers has his hut right in the middle of the bush taxi stand. He told me it’s rare if ten minutes pass without someone poking their head over his wall and to check on him, or invite him to come and work in the fields. My family only shares a concession with one other family, who is very nice. The mother is a schoolteacher. I was surprised to learn that she and I not only shared a name, Hamsatou (my Nigerien nickname), but are also the same age. Needless to say she and I have experienced a very different 22 years.

My homestay family is great. The father, Jzbrilla, is the local authority on the Koran (a marabou). He is basically a mullah who teaches Koranic studies, but he isn’t officially ordained. After farming all day, my father oversees the eldest two boys’ (Soumalia who is 18 and Yoga who is 12) practice of Arabic. I was impressed to find out that the boys could read and write in Arabic, but thus far, know no French. (I should mention that since it’s rainy season right now so the whole family is very busy keeping their millet fields in good order. During the rest of the year men hold the same rigorous schedule, but replace farming with drinking tea.)

The most I’ve interacted with my father is when my class did a cross-cultural session on Islam. Since he is a marabou, I thought it would be good to ask him about Islam and how to pray, etc. He got so excited at my question that he did a full demo for me. He got half way through and then decided I should be taking notes, so he sat me down and explained it all again, but this time he paused every other sentence to be sure I was writing. Of course everything he was saying was in either Zarma or Arabic, so I could barely understand, let alone take notes. Nevertheless, he and Soumalia insisted I write everything down and became exasperated with me when I would stop. I was glad to have a real conversation with my homestay dad. As a consequence, however, I have a whole page of absolutely incomprehensible (even to the most adept linguists) phonetic renditions of Arabic and Zarma.

Yoga and Soumalia are brothers, but could not be more different. Even though he’s younger Yoga is a lot more confident in himself and didn’t even skip a beat when I asked him (as a joke) if he had a girlfriend. Soumaila, on the other hand got really embarrassed when I asked him the same question. Yoga is almost entirely preoccupied with asserting his masculinity, and is always trying to act tough. Soumaila is much more relaxed, plays with the younger children, and even helps carry water from the well—a task that is usually reserved for women. Every night for the first two weeks, these two boys would drag themselves back from the fields and ask to look at the photo album Karin gave me as a departure gift. I thought they would get bored with it, but they and all the neighborhood kids seem to be endlessly entertained by it. Their favorite game is to flip through the book and point me out in each picture (even the ones I’m not in).

I had a really hard time explaining hang gliding, rock climbing, and snow. But as my language skills improved I think they finally got the generally idea. They love the picture of me holding the chainsaw, and everyone asks if my senior prom date is my husband. My two brothers were also very excited to hear that my father was a farmer like them. Soumaila always stares at the picture of Dad and Nicholas in the field, but is baffled by the fact that we choose to grow trees, which you can’t eat and are dirt-cheap here.

My homestay mom, Ramatou, has her own plot of peanuts, which I believe she is planning to sell after the harvest? Ramatou is really in charge of the whole circus, and runs a tight ship. She’s a great mother, as shown by how much her children seem to love her. I tell Ramatou where I am going everyday, and if I deviate from my plan by the time I get home, she already knows where I’ve been and asks me about my detour. She is a woman in constant motion. If she isn’t pulling water from the well, she’s sweeping, or bathing Abdoulai (the baby), or working in the fields, or pounding millet, or sifting millet, or cooking millet, or scrubbing something. I told her yesterday that she was always working, and she just smiled then shrugged…

Most of our interactions consist of Ramatou telling me that, even though I’ve eaten four cups of rice, I am in fact not full. Moreover, she tells me I had better eat more so that I can gain weight and get a husband. (The whole village was shocked to find out that at the ripe old age of 22 I was not thinking of getting married or having children. They are kind enough, however, to constantly suggesting possible husbands.)

Then there is my name-twin sister, Hamsatou. She holds more responsibility than the average ten-year-old as she is in charge of the goats and takes them out to graze everyday. Hamsa is a complete sweetheart, and patiently listens to me as I attempt to talk in Zarma, then faithfully replies “Ay man faham”—I don’t understand. Finally, there is Abdoulai—the baby (he’s two and chubby). Once I asked each of my siblings what they had done that day, after listing their chores, the kids reported that Abdoulai’s job is to stay home and eat. This is true. They kid is always eating something, weather it is leftovers, lutu (kind of like cake), a grasshopper, his shoes, his shirt, or anything he can find on the ground. Most everything in our concession, at one time or another, has been in Abdoulai’s mouth.

The kid used to burst into tears whenever I would get to close to him, but I’m winning him over slowly. Lately he’s been especially friendly, but I think that may have something to do with the fact that I brought him candy back from Niamey. His favorite toys include a plastic bag tied to a string, which he drags around everywhere and a shard of mirror, which he chews on, then bursts into a fit of laughter upon seeing his own reflection.

The family has more, older children who live and work in Niamey, but I’m not sure how many or what their names are.

Life with my homestay family is pretty relaxed. I see them mostly in the evenings after a day full of language, medical, and technical training. I get home between 4 and 6 pm and will sit out on my mat until dinner at 8, receiving more language training from my homestay siblings. As I mentioned above I am not yet learning French. I will later, but for now I am learning Zarma. It’s a pretty fun language that is related to Arabic and has less than 1,000 words. I thought at first that this would make things easier on me, but with so few relations, each word takes on double and even triple meanings. For example, “haw” means wind, cow, or to tie, depending on how you say it. “Bi” means black, shade and yesterday. And there are other words, with less harmless homophones…

My Living Situation

So, where am I living exactly? I live in a 10-foot-in-diameter mud hut with a six by ten concession around the front door. The concession is small enough that I don’t do too much in there, except sleep and hide from children. The town I live in is 11 km from the Peace Corps training site, so twice a week, four other volunteers and I bike in to Hamdalleye. At first, I was nervous about biking on such deteriorated roads. I remember having a conversation with Sara C. (there are three “Sara”s and three “Katie”s in my training class so I have to be specific) debating which side of the road would be the best to ride on. She thought with traffic, as we do in the USA. I was arguing to ride against traffic, since most cars have to drive slowly over the crater-sized potholes and this way we could see them coming. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter which side you ride on because cars, truck, buses, and bush taxis all drive on whichever side of the road seems to have the fewest obstructions. Some of the time they just drive down the middle of the road for no apparent reason. Anyway, I think I’ve got it down now. The first days I was wobbly, nervous and slow, now I can ride my bike at top speed while gawking at camels, waving at everyone I pass, shouting greetings, and navigating the lunar-like terrain. As a special bonus, most mornings we get to watch the sunrise over the desert.

Hamdalleye is the big city compared to Bartcawal. Not only do they have electricity, but some of my fellow volunteers are living it up with spoons, actual dinner tables, and television. In Bartcawal, the people not as accustom to hosting PCV (Peace Corps Volunteers) as in Hamdy, which has been home to something like 40 training classes over the past 20 years. In fact, we are only the second group of PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) to live here in Batcawal. As a result, everyone is eager to interact with us and help us practice our language. After a villager greets me, I am routinely quizzed on my vocabulary as I walk to and from school. It was really exhausting at first, but I’m glad to be in Bartcawal, even without electricity and running water.

As a side note, I find it funny that I took so many hot showers in the days before I left America. It was my way of saying good-bye to my old life. I remember staring up into the steam and thinking, say good-bye to such luxury as heated showers. After coming to Africa, I have discovered there is an abundance of everything hot. Now I long for just one cold shower.

What is it like in Bartcawal? Sweaty, but really very nice. Everywhere we go, we are greeted profusely. I can’t walk more than ten feet outside of my concession without someone calling my name and waving me to come over and chat. The children are in total awe of us, and for the first few weeks would actively tried to herd all the Anasaras together (literally Anasara means something like “colonizer,” but it’s what the Nigeriens call anyone who is not Nigerien). Thus, any time I went anywhere in Bartcawal, fifteen kids would jump up and down and get really excited and start pointing me around corners until finally we would come to another group of fifteen kids and an another Anasara. The now 30 children would then jump up and down and marvel at their handy work. Two Ansaras in one place! It was great, however, if I was lost and looking for another trainee. Also, when going home I just ask a kid to take me to my house.

Anasara. This is my second new name. Not really, but everyone yells it at me all the time. Or at least they do before they learn my real name. Everywhere I go…Anasara! Anasara! Anasara! I always know when one of the other volunteers is coming to visit before they even get close, because off in the distance…ANASARA! I have come to conceptualize this phenomenon as something like a motion-detection alarm system that detects the movement non-Nigeriens. I was annoyed and even a little offended by this in the beginning, but now have come to just shake it off. I remind people that my name is Hamsatou, not Anasara, and most are happy to adjust. Or, sometimes, when people are talking about me in front of me like I’m not there, I will add in something like, “Yeah, the Anasara doesn’t understand anything.” This is usually hilarious to them.

Class in Bartcawal is the following: four metal chairs under a tree in the middle of town, with a chalkboard leaning against the tree, and a goat off to the side announcing every twenty seconds that he does in fact exist and would like some recognition. There is usually a herd of cattle meandering through, a woman yelling to another woman about everything she did that day, some other women pounding millet, and about 30 children staring at the Anasaras in not-so-silent awe. (I’m not sure why, but the children really find us unendingly entertaining. They are happy to sit and stare at us for hours while we do absolutely nothing. There is one little girl who sat and watched me clean my whole hut and sweep my concession without seeming the slightest bit bored.) My fellow volunteers and I are usually slumped over in the metal chairs, fanning ourselves, and complaining about the flies. And, whenever possible in our study of Zarma, we make references to all the things we would eat if we could. (Interestingly, hamburger in Zarma means “maybe,” though it’s really pronounced hambagar) This is what I spend 15 hours each week doing.

My language trainer is a Nigerien named Abass. During class he is pretty good at ignoring the scene around us, but is also very good at making children be quiet. He is pretty quiet himself, young, not married, and speaks excellent English. Abass is very interested to learn about life in America, and is always asking us questions. He thought it was really strange that my family all live in the same town, but in different houses…Also three weeks into PST it came out that his favorite musician is Michael Bolton.

How I am in general.

In general, I am very well. I surprised myself at how easily I made the transition into this lifestyle. It helps that Nigeriens are the nicest, most helpful, and generous people in the world. Moreover, I have already survived my first bout of violent and quick-onset diarrhea. (It was nothing fancy like amoebas, just some good old-fashioned bacteria.) I am enjoying getting to know my training class, and am progressing slowly, but surely with my language.

In week (or actually when I post this) I will have a cell phone. I’m not going to post my number for obvious reasons, but email me if you would like it. (I would love to hear about life on the home front!) I’ve heard that the best way to get a hold of me is with Skype (a computer program you can download and makes calls with) BUT if you have slow Internets then you may want to invest in a calling card (Mom). That’s really all I got for now, I will post more when I get the chance!! I LOVE YOU ALL!

-Katie

August 7, 2009

Looking back over the weeks, I see that we’ve done a lot since our arrival. The second weekend here we were given a break from classes to go on a demystification field trip and see life as a real PCV. My team also lost by a mere half point in the Gender and Development Olympics, which consisted of a water-on-head-with-fake-baby-on-back relay, a peanut butter making competition (we hand-pounded the peanuts), and a tea-making competition. There have also been countless games of cards, catch phrase, and volleyball. Tomorrow, we will go on our first official tour of Niamey, after which, we will be allowed to go to Niamey any Sunday.

As I mentioned before, Tuesdays and Fridays are core days when we have all our classes at the Peace Corps training site and usually get some kind of injection. So far I’ve learned how to make a malaria slide, how to cook for myself in the bush, which modes of transportation I can trust, and how decipher the many kinds of diarrhea. (Side note: Niger boasts more cases of severe diarrhea per year than any other Peace Corps country. In 2008, there were 175 cases per each 100 volunteers, making Niger by far the most-you-know-what country in the Peace Corps.)

On core days, we all become worshippers of a thing called “Pause.” Pause is a half hour break between session, which is nice, but the really amazing thing is the snack we get every Pause: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, candied peanuts, cookies hot chocolate, tea, coffee, popcorn, and honest-to-God slushies; and by honest-to-God slushies, I mean semi-frozen hibiscus juice, which tastes remarkably like bubblegum. If a session goes over its allotted time, everyone begins to shifting uneasily in their seats, craning their necks to see if the Pause snack has already been set out. If we actually witness the container of juice go by (which I have to mention is dripping with condensation because it’s so amazingly cold) we erupt into storm of physical and verbal protests, begging to be let free to partake in the very short lifespan of frozen liquid.

If a session finishes before Pause is served, all the trainees start to hover by the door to the dining hall. Everyone tries to act like it’s no big thing, but once it’s clear that Pause it on its way, we all half-run like kindergarteners to line up first. Lunch is equally delicious. Sometimes we even get pizza, which isn’t actually pizza, but is still the most amazing thing I’ve tasted. (Recall what the Cervantes once wrote: “Hunger is the best sauce.”) It’s on core days that I’ve discovered how much I can actually fit in my stomach. I am usually stuffed on the bike ride home and can barely peddle myself the 11 km home.

It’s not that I don’t love the food that my homestay mom fixes for me. I actually have discovered that I enjoy an especially fancy and diverse menu compared to many of my friends who eat millet and okra sauce (we have another name for it) twice a day, everyday. For lunch and dinner I have usually eat one of the following dishes: rice and sauce, rice and beans, spaghetti, rice and spaghetti, rice and onions, rice with tonka (a pepper topping), or rice. It’s always delicious, but honestly I would do terrible things for a hamburger or ice cream. I also plowed through my stash of candy and drink mix like there was no tomorrow. And, I’m not the only one. I’ve noticed that recently almost all of trainee conversations center on food…either coming in or going out.

Many people asked me prior to my departure what kind of work I would be doing in Niger, and I told them all I had no idea. This is still true, since so much of what I will be doing depends on my site placement; however, I do have a clearer picture than I did before, so I will elaborate as much as I can…

I am here with a group of 32 trainees. Sixteen of us are MCDs (Municipal and Community Developers) and the other 16 are CYE (Community and Youth Education). As an MCD I will be placed in a medium-sized village, and as a Zarmaphone I will be placed in either the Tillaberri or Douso regions. Zarmaland (these two regions) is much more liberal than the Hausa-speaking eastern communities. Nevertheless, I plan on wearing full-length skirts and covering my head until I am settled enough in my village to know what’s what. I’m no floozy. I will get my site announcement in about one week, and shortly after that will go and stay at my site for five or six days by myself to get a feel for everything.

Where I am placed will greatly dictate the kind of work I will be doing. For example, if I am placed closer to Niamey, I may work with International NGOs on various projects. The second weekend here I got to go and visit a real, live PCV (you might as well get used to the acronyms now). This endeavor is known in PC lingo as Demystification, or Demyst. Anyway, my Demyster, Mary, introduced me to another veteran MCD about to COS (Close of Service). This MCD and other MCDs I’ve met have done a lot of work with their local mayors office, have mapped their communes, filled out birth certificates, helped train auxiliary municipal agents, helped fund computer labs, libraries, and sewing trainings centers, AND ran student government programs. For the first three months at site, I am not allowed (nor would I want to) plan projects, but what I do plan will depends entirely on where I am and what is needed.

The whole idea of a decentralized government is very new to Niger. In fact, the first municipal elections were held in 2004. The next set of elections were scheduled for this year, but have been postponed. As part of the decentralization, each commune (a commune is essentially the equivalent of an American county) elected their own government, which consists of a mayor, vice-mayor, tax officer, general secretary, and commune counsel. At least ten percent of the counsel members are supposed to be women. Each commune had to write a PDC (stands for something in French), which lays out a five-year plan of development for each commune. This document will be useful for any MCD PCV, since it contains a needs assessment and goals for development.

Of course, this is all, “en principe” as they say in French; which is to say theory and reality sometimes have nothing to do with each other. While in theory each commune would have all of these municipal agents and planning, reality presents quiet a few challenges. For example, many of the municipal agents are not literate; other communes cannot fill every position. Since few of the positions are paid well, many agents spend the majority of their time looking for paid trainings. The list goes on… Regardless, I am very excited to get to post and get to know my community.

Things I’ve Learned in Niger:

1. You can get sunburned in the shade.

2. You can get sunburned if you wear anything less than SPF 50.

3. You can get sunburned if you don’t reapply sunscreen every 20 minutes.

4. Bedbugs are real and they will eat you alive if you aren’t careful.

5. Most cars can carry twice their mass in passengers and three times their mass in cargo piled on top of the vehicle.

6. Five cows on top of a VW van is too many.

7. Refrigeration is the most amazing thing ever invented, after flypaper.

8. Nigerian women give birth while squatting and often continue working until the contractions are unbearable. Nevertheless, women rarely cry out during delivery, as it is a sign of weakness.

9. The rice here provides you will your daily value of iron (as it contains a reasonable portion of sand and small rocks).

10. How to aim when pooping.

11. It costs a man three camels to get married.

12. While polygamy is permitted, a Muslim man can only wed as many wives as he can love and provide for equally.

13. Mohammed says you can only provide for and love four wives equally.

14. One out of four Nigerien children will die before the age of five, most frequently due to diarrheal disease.

15. You can’t take things too seriously here. If you do you are done. Laugh at yourself or be laughed at.

August 12, 2009

Today I am wearing wool socks and a sweater. This new attire is my response to the sub-arctic front that swept into Niger this morning, bringing with it a truly impressive amount of precipitation. Only a few days ago, as I was sweating into my pot of rice, I scolded myself for being so foolish as to pack wool socks when going to Africa. Today, however, I scolded myself for only brining one pair. It’s chilly.

I admit that my sense of temperature may be skewed, considering—as I was shivering the other morning—someone told me it was 80 degrees out. Nevertheless, I am surprised and somewhat mystified by this sudden, new sensation that has over taken me today. As a personal record, it’s noon and I haven’t yet broken a sweat.

I realize, reading over what I have written, that I may seem mildly obsessed with the weather here; but for this, I am unapologetic. A storm is often the most exciting point in my day, and not just because I am sans TV and starved for stimulation. I find Niger’s weather unendingly entertaining and remarkable because it is.

Each storm is preceded by several, suspenseful days of growing heat and humidity. Every day, as we sit in class fanning ourselves, someone will inevitably remark about the heat. We will then evaluate that day’s temperature, humidity, and cloud cover in comparison to the days before, and then with the weather back home. The “heat” conversation will eventually end with one of us announcing, “I hope it rains tonight, or even better, this afternoon.” We all nod in agreement and then go back to fanning. This some form of the conversation manifests approximately every 20 minutes.

A storm brings more than reprieve from the sun. If it rains during the day, class is canceled, abridged, or not taken seriously. Also, sometimes it’s nice to have the excuse to sit in your hut and do nothing. If it rains at night, we often witness a spectacular show of lightning; matched by thunder so loud it makes the earth grumble with vibrations. I also have come to love the adrenaline rush that comes when I awake to find a storm only minutes away, and thus have to go to the bathroom, take down my mosquito net, move my bed in, seal my hut before getting soaked or unintentionally exfoliated. Since the horizon lays flat and unobstructed, a person can watch a storm grow from a cloud on the horizon to an overwhelming velvet curtain that can hide the African sun from the desert.

What’s more, each storm that comes has its own, distinct personality. The storm this morning, for example, seemed no-nonsense and rushed. It was a wall charging toward us, not even bothering with the usual prelude of distant lightning. There was barely 10 minutes from the time I realized it was going to rain until I was sprinting for cover with a curtain of water on my heels. Other storms are more aloof. They spend hours flirting, but never actually materialize. Some storms come steadily and without wind. Others move painfully slowly.

I must say, though, two nights ago marked the scariest storm I have experienced thus far. Here’s what happened: I was uncomfortably warm and humid, even at 10:30 pm. Though there were heavy clouds on the horizon, it had rained the night before and so I was convinced it would not rain again tonight. I lay in my bed hot and miserable, as I realized I was sweating enough to turn my dusty sheets into muddy sheet… I woke up two hours later to gusty winds. Determined not to spend another night sleeping inside if it was not absolutely necessary, I pledged to stay outside until I felt actual raindrops. As the wind got progressively more aggressive I started lying sideways on my bed with my feet hanging outside the mosquito net. This way I could have my shoes on and therefore spend every possible second outside, where it had actually begun to cool down. When the wind grew strong enough to untie my mosquito net, I conceded defeat and moved inside, but left the door open slightly so that at least I would get some adequate ventilation. I tried to go back to sleep, but the wind and thunder were so loud, I only catnapped for another hour. Around two a.m. the wind got bad enough that I realized I was going to have to close my door. Right as I was pulling it closed the wind reached a ferocious strength, and when I lay back down I sincerely wondered what I would do if my thatched roof were to blow off my hut. That’s when things got bad.

So, take a moment to recall the demonic “wall of sand” you always see during desert-adventure and other planet Si-Fi films. In these movies, it’s always extremely tense as the protagonist rushes toward shelter—her only chance of survival. Your stomach tightens. Your fingers grip a pillow in sympathetic stress. You think, she must make or she will die and the movie will end unfairly and evil will prevail. Well, in my little hut the night of that storm, I’m pretty sure I experienced the equivalent of stopping in font of the W.O.S., sitting down, and then holding up an umbrella to protect you.

Sand exploded into my hut, which I discovered at certain wind speeds is more than adequately ventilated. Furious, I jumped up to throw a piece of cloth over all my clothes, books, etc, then began madly brushing my sheets clean. I finished just in time for another assault from the desert, spraying sand all over my bed again. This time I covered my work with my top sheet as I brushed, to protect it. I lay down, and then came yet another shower of sand. At this point I just pulled the sheet over my head to keep the sand out of my eyes, and waited. Soon enough, the clouds burst and rain started pounding on my walls, settling the dust outside, thereby giving me a chance to settle myself. I cleared my bed one last time and lay down to sleep. At this point it was around four in the morning and I had only really slept for about two hours.

Just as I was dozing off, I felt a drop of water fall squarely between my eyes. My roof was leaking. Great. Rather than trying to move my mattress out of harm’s way, I just flipped around and let my feet get wet instead. Near 4:30 a.m. I finally fell back asleep in my still-sandy sheets.

Through that night was reminiscent of various “harsh interrogation techniques,” I survived the next day, but I was cranky. Several houses, walls, and trees throughout town did not fare well either, but there was no serious damage.

The morale of all this weather talk is: I like the rain. I’m from Seattle, after all. Yet, in the wake all this excitement, I am continually reminding myself of greater purpose of all this rain. For many, a year’s sustenance depends on the amount of rain that falls from June to September Remember, it does not rain outside of rainy season, and so if enough rain doesn’t come during this small three- to four-month window, there is no second chance or back up irrigation. The harvest may be inadequate. Wells and rivers may go dry. It is a critical time in the cycle of the seasons. I’m sorry to report that, in spite of the numerous storms I have experienced, the rainfall has been very modest this year. Many people have expressed concern about the size of this year’s harvest. So, please think wet thoughts for Niger.

August 16, 2009

After that last post, Niger seems to be trying to prove a point to me. Currently I am pinned into my hut, unable to go to Niamey to post this, because it’s raining SO hard. I still have an hour before the bus is supposed to come, so maybe it will work out…maybe not.

So here’s the news that is the news: (1) I found out where I’m going to live for the next two years; (2) I talked to my dad on the phone last night and he gave me the answer to “15 down” on the crossword I’ve been working on for two weeks (Russian Auto = Lida). Thanks Pops. If any one know the “Black like me actor, James ____” or “Don of Cocoon” that would be very helpful. My friend Susannah sent me this crossword as a way to pass the time; little did she know it is ungodly hard. I’m coming down the homestretch though.

Yes and SITE ANNOUNCEMENTS! I KNOW WHERE I AM GOING TO LIVE FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS! But for reasons of national security I cannot reveal the name of the town on this website. (I’m not making this up). Instead I will give you the unspecific specifics.

First, I am in the Tillaberi region, about 85 from Niamey, which is equal to two or three hours of travel. I will be living in a mud house, with two whole rooms (such luxury I am not sure what do with). I will have my own smaller, concession, but I will also be situated inside another family’s larger concession. I will not have electricity or running water, or access to the Internet. I will be by the river, and have to take a ferry to get to Niamey. I know it sounds cool, but judging how the infrastructure in this country normally functions, I have a feeling the boat crossing may become the bane of my existence. The area is supposedly pretty liberal, and there are even small clusters of animists in the area, which means I might get the chance to watch drumming ceremonies, etc.

What will I be doing? I still don’t really know much, except that I am suppose to help the mayor’s office. Do I have neighbors? Yes, I am the center of a cluster of volunteers. Am I happy? I couldn’t be happier. Everything is wonderful.

For those of you who want to know the name of the town, ask my sister. She knows. But, it is simply unwise for me to post where I will be living on the World Wide Web… Please note that this means I will have a new mailing address, available for my friends to see on facebook and available for my family via my mother and sister.

Tomorrow I will meet the mayor I will be working with, and the week after that I will go and live at my site by myself for a whole week. I will move in for good after I swear in as a volunteer, mid-September.

Allah willing, I will be able to post these 11 pages of text to my blog today and you will know everything I am doing and how happy I am. Then you will have lots more questions, which I didn’t answer. And you should send them to me! Because I am not sure what I have said thus far, or what you all will want to know.

ALSO HERE’S THE DEAL WITH MY PHONE. I can’t ever call you ever. Well I can, but for one minute of talking time, it costs me about two U.S. dollars—this is equivalent to an entire day’s living allowance. I can text the U.S. for only slightly less money. I would, however, love to chat with all of you, so call me if you can.

If you do call and I don’t answer it may seem as though it didn’t go through because I am too lazy to set up my voicemail. Also, if I don’t answer, please try again in 5 or 10 minutes, as probably just missed the call.

August 22, 2009

So Allah was not willing and has not been willing to let me use the Internets since I got here. Please note that this lapse in connection is the longest I have ever, ever gone with out checking my email and I am starting to manifest physical signs of agony.

Tomorrow I will stop off in Niamey to shop for my weeklong trial run at site, “Site Live In.” After shopping I will be taken to my site to live for one week. Basically I am going to be dropped off and given the chance to scope out the town and see what is what. It’s a big step in this whole process and I am very excited to finally see the place where I will be for the next two years!