Despite my dread at no longer being able to classify myself as being “in my early 20s,” my 24th birthday was great! The week started out on a bit of a sour note when I received a generic letter from the Fulbright Committee on my proposed research project to India. Though my ego was a [...]
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There used to be a ladder to success. It was the college→good job→marriage→house→family→cushy retirement. Sure, not everyone made it, there were a few broken rungs near the bottom but that was the guiding light to the good life and enough people made it that it seemed within reach. A few people questioned this ladder as [...]
When I was just beginning kindergarten, the leaders of the world came together in Rio de Janeiro for a groundbreaking Earth Summit that put the concept of sustainable development and biological diversity on the global political agenda. While I was chopping the hair off my sister’s Barbies in third grade, the United States whacked the [...]
On January 1st 2011 I found myself in a circle of women at a polygamous wedding, chatting feminism with the first wife as the new young bride entered the household covered in intricate henna designs. On January 26th, one day after my birthday, I stood alone at the famous Casablanca mosque, hiding my bright Nigerien [...]
I know what you’re thinking. It’s 2012 now, shouldn’t she be looking back on 2011? Well, I was and then I came across a blog post that I wrote last year on January 1st 2011 but due to the minor complication of a terrorist attack that forced me to evacuate my life, never published. So [...]
Yesterday I decided to take the grand leap of adulthood and finally get a credit card. I’ve held off for a good 23 years, partially to snub my nose at our culture of “buy now, pay later” and partially because I don’t actually spend that much money. Though I used to win the “you need [...]
Christopher Daugherty met a man on a bridge when he was five years old who helped him become the successful food entrepreneur that he is today. Because of that man, today Christopher gave me a call and offered to help me fulfill my dream of importing Moringa–a highly nutritious plant–from Niger as a means of [...]
After researching start-ups for three months in India, I was keen to work on my own start up once I returned back to America. One might say, overly keen, since I ended up being involved with 5 start-ups over the course of the summer. At first it was just Summer of Solutions, an intensive three [...]
In the aftermath of the Japanese disaster, politicians around the globe have been debating the necessity of including nuclear as part of the transition to a clean energy future. Unlike other leaders who have placed moratoriums on the licensing of new plants, American politicians have largely stuck by nuclear–a consensus that perhaps was aided bystorm [...]
One year ago today I got on a plane headed into what I thought would be misery. Google was full of flashing words like famine, and absolute poverty that conjured up images of those stick-armed children with bellies full of malnutrition and flies buzzing around small tears eking out encrusted eyes. Little did I know that [...]
Despite all of the fireworks, BBQs and parades to the contrary, this weekend I want to celebrate dependence. The America that existed on July 4, 1776 when our founding fathers declared independence from Great Britain is a far cry from the interconnected and interdependent society in which we currently reside. We know from the abundance of [...]
The tops of my thighs, the small of my back and the beginning of my chest are on fire. Somehow the afternoon spent outside next to a beautiful California palm tree in group discussions about race, community organizing and fundraising have burned me in a way nothing else this year has. Strangely, the seven months [...]
Five days ago I remember sitting nervously around a bowl of cherries at a fellow program leader’s kitchen table. Our conversation kept switching with the tense energy of those with much to say but too many thoughts to clearly express any of them. Have we figured out housing for everyone? How much money do we still [...]
Next weekend I’m heading down south to celebrate my sister’s graduation from college. Although the festivities are sure to be merry, they are slightly tempered by the fact that she will be joining my class, the ”class of the great recession,” and enter the labor force at a time when more than half of recent graduates have [...]
Attending my alma mater’s graduation this weekend provided me with the opportunity to perfect my two minute summarization of my first year out of college that went something like “West Africa-Niger-no, not Nigeria-small village-loved it-al-Qaeda kicked me out-no, really, we were evacuated after a terrorist attack-went to Morocco-didn’t know what to do with my life-attended [...]
I just got back from the E3 Challenge Awards, an award ceremony to inspire self-reliance among NGOs that work in the disability sector. My company, Start Up!, partnered with ARUNIM, a market aggregator of products made by mentally and physically disabled people in order to create the competition. The speeches made by many of the [...]
Somehow three and a half months have gone by and it is almost time for me to head back home, for the first time in almost a year. While life in India has given me plenty of blogging material, most of my initial thoughts have tended to end up discarded in half-finished drafts that I [...]
The streets of New Delhi hum with a constant buzz of activity; auto rickshaws whiz between trucks and cars while food vendors yell out to potential customers. While there are few purchasable items that cannot be found in India’s capital city, one thing is noticeably absent: the presence of women. One explanation is that there [...]
In between loud cheers as we watched India crush Pakistan in cricket, two of my Indian friends began talking business. Not business in the general sense but rather their businesses. Both of them were my age and both of them had already started two businesses. While they are both exceptional people–and about to go to [...]
It wasn’t until my sandal-clad toes were covered in a thick brown mud and my voice was tired from responding to greetings from all of the adorably dirty street children that I realized why I suddenly felt so lighthearted: I was home. My new “home” happens to be Asia’s largest slum. Somehow I had managed [...]
“What your profession?” The small Indian man twisted his upper body to eye me curiously as I gripped the little auto-rickshaw seat tighter–I wished he would keep his eyes on the maze of trucks, cars and other rickshaws that were weaving in and out of our lane with Nintendo-like ease. I could explain to him [...]
It was too green. The cows were too fat, the children too clean, the roads too well-paved. I turned to Mariah, my bus buddy on for the two hours from the airport in Casablanca to Rabat, the capital of Morocco. “Are we really still in Africa?” “I’m not really sure of anything anymore,” she wearily [...]
I’m regularly shocked, once a month to be precise, when I step out of the shower in our lovely Peace Corps Hostel and catch a glance of myself in the mirror. It’s not so much that I’m surprised by my horrible farmers tan or the large number of freckles that the sun has bestowed upon [...]
There is a Nigerien soldier who would like to consider himself my boyfriend. As often as I tell him that I have a boyfriend in America, even at one point showing him a picture of a friend of mine who makes a rather impressive fake boyfriend, he persists. His methods of persistence are, of course, [...]
I was walking down the street, calling out my usual Hausa greetings when suddenly a man greeted me in perfect English. That stopped me short. In a country where less than half of the men and less than a third of the women have even attended primary school, foreign language skills are a rarity. Most [...]
Last week, after a slightly chilly night, I opened my door and immediately bursting out laughing. Judging from the fluffy parkas, woolen hats and layered clothes of my neighbors, one could only surmise that I live in a small mountainous village, perhaps somewhere in northern Russia. But no, this is Niger; the streets were full [...]
If you were to come to Safo and ask my villagers to describe me, they would probably tell you that I am small, loud, pale, like to dance and, most importantly, that I like to shah wooyia “drink pain.” I have come to understand this to be a key characteristic of mine as my villagers [...]
Holidays in general are often stressful. Celebrating a holiday in a country where the the culture, religion and traditions are completely foreign and everyone is constantly watching you is completely overwhemling. Needless to say, my first major Nigerien holiday wasn’t exactly perfect. Here, in a fun, chronological order, is a list of my Tabaski mistakes. [...]
I think I just made cottage cheese. Either that, or I’ve been in Niger for so long that I don’t know what cheese looks like and I just ate rotten milk. On the upside, I’m already having some intestinal issues so even if I do manage to give myself food poisoning I’ll still be going [...]
Thanksgiving tends to entail quite a bit of overeating. Often, even within the Peace Corps Niger community the phrase can be heard: “You better finish that. There’s starving children in Africa, you know.” Somehow, when we were within the Westernized safety of the Peace Corps training village such an utterance seemed deliciously ironic. But, now [...]
There are sunflowers growing in my front yard. Yesterday morning I discovered them; after taking my daily bucket bath I went to pour my waste water on what I assumed to be a row of sandy soil when I found that my gray water was cascading down on a line of tiny green seedlings. I [...]
So there I was, pulling frantically at my mosquito net, squinting against the sand that the storm was blowing into my face, attempting to undo the knot and pull my bed into the relative safety of my hut before the rain rendered everything soggy. My hair, freshly braided, was still hidden under my headscarf. I [...]
In case I somehow missed you on my mass email list. Let me know if you want to be added! I promise that I’ll only send an email every couple months. It’s not like I have a lot of internet access… Dear friends and family, Hello from Niger! It’s been almost four months since I [...]
I shucked peanuts for four hours today. I can’t remember the last time I spent so much time on something so simple. I also can’t remember the last time I lived in a country that shuts down between the zahi or “hot” hours between 12 and 4 pm so perhaps there is some method to [...]
It was about one a.m. on a Friday night when I lay awake, staring intently at the small piece of my roof that was making its way down my wall and onto my thinly cemented floor. Outside the wind slammed my tin door open, shut and then open again as rain pounded against the ground, [...]
Finding answers to life’s daily questions never used to be a problem. As a former I-phone owner and a firm believer in Google, all of my ponderings could usually be solved in the split second it takes the google search engine to crawl the web. Now, however, I live in Niger, a landlocked country where [...]
As the sun began to set and the heat finally reached a bearable level, Ashley and I walked down into the village to say goodbye to our host family. For the past week we’d been living up at the Peace Corps training site–a small slice of America with electricity, running water, English and wide variety [...]
I almost didn’t sign it. I read through the Peace Corps oath, almost laughing at the military-like language of “defending the U.S. constitution” and then stopped smiling almost as soon as I’d started. I was not in a smiling mood. I haven’t slept much in the past two days. For what should be an exciting [...]
The other day we played Spades, a card game, instead of holding our French class. Our professor was sick and all of us were exhausted from the heat so cards seemed like a nice alternative to the intricacies of French verbs. I went “nil” which in Spades, means that I couldn’t get any points—quite a [...]
For as long as I can remember, the beginning of September has signified a flurry of activity; new classes to prepare for, back-to-school clothing sales to blow summer wages on and a last attempt at a family vacation before the hustle and bustle of elementary/middle/high school or college tear the five of us apart. There [...]
9/3/2010 “Do you know what you’re actually going to be doing yet?” I read in the letter from one of my closest friends. It’s a valid question bu one that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully answer. Oh sure, there’s easy replies for the relatives and my mother’s friends who inquire at [...]
8/28/10 The four of us sleep in one room, side by side on our thin mattresses, our mosquito nets collectively forming a yellow cloud that hovers over our sweating bodies. At four A.M., we’re unwilling roused from our slumber by the high-pitched cajoling of a young boy yelling “Fwanke da MI-ya.” He’s selling the Nigerien [...]
8/14/2010 We weren’t supposed to be here, sitting around in our athletic shorts and t-shirts, alternately playing volleyball and eating pizza prepared by the Peace Corps chefs. Many of us had been looking forward to this weekend since we’d first arrived; it was supposed to be the weekend we would visit the village where we [...]
8/15/10 A happy consequence of having nothing scheduled to do for three days has been that I’ve been able to read a lot. One of the most interesting things I’ve read has been a book by a former Peace Corps Country Director, John Bullington, recounting vignettes of PC Niger Volunteers from 2000-2006. I’ve been fascinated [...]
After a month of essentially no communication with the outside world, I now have a cell phone and more regular access to email. It was very exciting to receive my first call, it felt so strange to be talking to my mom in California who had just woken up while I was sitting inside my [...]
We’ve now officially been here a month and decided to celebrate by going into Niamey, the capital city, for the day. We’d spent the past month hearing about the infamous American Recreational Center where there is free wifi, creamy chocolate milkshakes, cheeseburgers and even a pool! After a cramped bus ride, a pit stop at [...]
8/3/10 I spent the past two days huddled over a toilet, praying that I’d be able to make the pathetically short journey between my new porcelain throne and my infirmary bed. Ashley, my hutmate, and I got sick at almost exactly the same time. I had barely seen her off onto the Peace Corps RV [...]
1. Peanut M & M’s Don’t Melt! I only half-believed the packing list that said peanut M & M’s are the only kind of chocolate that can survive the Nigerien heat but its true, none of them melted! After a few days of rice and millet they tasted AMAZING, even though I accidentally burst open [...]
7/16/2010 The Peace Corps welcome packet described Niger as “one of the hottest, poorest and dustiest countries in the world” but one that we would quickly come to love. In the mere week I’ve been here the description seems to be accurate. When its 110 degrees and the wind keeps blowing sand into my hair/mouth/food [...]
I really should be in bed in right now. It sort of feels like Christmas eve, the night before the day where you really, really hope that you will get everything you want, neatly packaged with a red satin ribbon. But the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) is a little different. We already know [...]
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