Hello everybody,
I know it's been forever since I posted and I've actually been pre-writing blog posts to put up right now, but unfortunately they cannot be read on the computer I am working on right now. Suffice it to say that I am alive and well, and thank you for all your birthday wishes on Facebook.
-Thomas
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Any Given Sunday
As you can tell, my last blog posts are completely false on a particular point. While I did get back to Niamey, the server that I hooked up to was not connected to the internet. The sub-oceanic cable that was cut some time ago is still affecting Nigerien internet, which is being redirected through other cables, slowing down or stopping up the whole operation. The pool along with the milkshake and chicken caesar salad found therein were still heavenly.
The past week and a half have sped by, filled with more adventure and progress towards our new lives in the field. The number of untold stories piles up while I continue to lack internet access. Our stage has meshed very well and personalities have emerged as comfort levels have risen. Getting sick brings people together, as does shared hardship in general. A week ago I began to feel little beasts scurry about my intestines with an intensity akin to that of liquid hot magma. With powerful meds. it still takes about a week to completely get rid of them - that is amoebas. At the same time I was able to find out more about our new set of volunteer trainers and got to stay in Hamdallaye for one wacky Sunday - our one completely open day of the week.
The rainy season brings Niger its only rain of the year. It’s a bit hard to imagine Niger having problems with desertification when the streets flood multiple times per week. While my hut is doing fine with its cemented albeit holey walls, the mud wall around my concession loses significant mass with each rainfall and this Sunday the liquid level in my latrine rose alarmingly high. When the straw door to my concession fell apart due to the rain, I was admittedly frustrated. Then, after another disappointing lunch I decided to head to the road and find some more nutrition. I was accosted by the college students chilling in their summer pad and was invited to a wedding of one of their brothers within five minutes. Seeking back up, I stopped by a friend nearby who I found out had just had her cement latrine collapse after the morning rain, cutting one of her legs with falling concrete as she managed to only get her toes wet. This only hours after a tree fell on her and her concession-mate’s beds shortly after sunrise. After chatting about that and her trip plans for the end of service, we went to the wedding pre-reception by the marketplace. We were offered food and met the bride off surrounded by her entourage in a house. The wedding was to take place at 4:00. Right around four o’clock a bunch of people left and said that they would be back soon. A handful stuck around while others came back in twenty minutes and said that the wedding was done and that the couple had already headed off to Niamey, where they will live. Confusing, no? Guess what, a Nigerien groom often doesn’t ‘propose’ until two weeks prior to the wedding date! We all should be invited to a number of weddings, naming ceremonies and such similar events, that cultural norms should clear up in our minds. Explaining them to someone who hasn’t attended all our cross-culturally themed sessions might still be kind of difficult.
In other news, late last week we received our site announcements and earlier this week we were able to meet our future supervisors. Next week we will all spend a week going through a ‘live-in’ acclimation in our respective sites. After that only two weeks of training will remain. Wow.
Next time I hope my news will be more up to date, and a full-scale introduction to my site should be in order.
-Thomas
The past week and a half have sped by, filled with more adventure and progress towards our new lives in the field. The number of untold stories piles up while I continue to lack internet access. Our stage has meshed very well and personalities have emerged as comfort levels have risen. Getting sick brings people together, as does shared hardship in general. A week ago I began to feel little beasts scurry about my intestines with an intensity akin to that of liquid hot magma. With powerful meds. it still takes about a week to completely get rid of them - that is amoebas. At the same time I was able to find out more about our new set of volunteer trainers and got to stay in Hamdallaye for one wacky Sunday - our one completely open day of the week.
The rainy season brings Niger its only rain of the year. It’s a bit hard to imagine Niger having problems with desertification when the streets flood multiple times per week. While my hut is doing fine with its cemented albeit holey walls, the mud wall around my concession loses significant mass with each rainfall and this Sunday the liquid level in my latrine rose alarmingly high. When the straw door to my concession fell apart due to the rain, I was admittedly frustrated. Then, after another disappointing lunch I decided to head to the road and find some more nutrition. I was accosted by the college students chilling in their summer pad and was invited to a wedding of one of their brothers within five minutes. Seeking back up, I stopped by a friend nearby who I found out had just had her cement latrine collapse after the morning rain, cutting one of her legs with falling concrete as she managed to only get her toes wet. This only hours after a tree fell on her and her concession-mate’s beds shortly after sunrise. After chatting about that and her trip plans for the end of service, we went to the wedding pre-reception by the marketplace. We were offered food and met the bride off surrounded by her entourage in a house. The wedding was to take place at 4:00. Right around four o’clock a bunch of people left and said that they would be back soon. A handful stuck around while others came back in twenty minutes and said that the wedding was done and that the couple had already headed off to Niamey, where they will live. Confusing, no? Guess what, a Nigerien groom often doesn’t ‘propose’ until two weeks prior to the wedding date! We all should be invited to a number of weddings, naming ceremonies and such similar events, that cultural norms should clear up in our minds. Explaining them to someone who hasn’t attended all our cross-culturally themed sessions might still be kind of difficult.
In other news, late last week we received our site announcements and earlier this week we were able to meet our future supervisors. Next week we will all spend a week going through a ‘live-in’ acclimation in our respective sites. After that only two weeks of training will remain. Wow.
Next time I hope my news will be more up to date, and a full-scale introduction to my site should be in order.
-Thomas
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Niamey!
This will be a short blog post written (hopefully) the evening before it can be read on my blog.
The referendum was fairly uneventful. After seeing military uniforms around Hamdallaye and ‘vote taxis’ departing and arriving, I still didn’t feel nervous. I just today found the complete results of the elections: something like 92% voted yes for the referendum, ‘approving’ President Tandja’s dissolution of parliament and the constitutional court as well as his decision to surpass the constitutional two-term limit for another three years of service. One of my formatrices (language teachers) said that she found all the foreign press attention regarding potential opposition violence funny, as Nigeriens wish to preserve peace more than anything else. More than anything else, I sensed that life for the average Nigerien town remains largely unaffected by national politics - Nigerien families are more autonomous than their counterparts throughout much of the world today.
Today we received our Niamey safety and security tour, a bus tour of much of the city, and experienced a grocery store and restaurant for the first time since we left the States. Our Chinese food was amazing and the fruit, A/C and candy bars made for quite the reverse cultural shock. Tomorrow (today) I plan to go back with much of the group to catch a bit of internet access and a swim at the American Recreation Center pool. Quite the treat of a weekend!
Cheers,
-Thomas
The referendum was fairly uneventful. After seeing military uniforms around Hamdallaye and ‘vote taxis’ departing and arriving, I still didn’t feel nervous. I just today found the complete results of the elections: something like 92% voted yes for the referendum, ‘approving’ President Tandja’s dissolution of parliament and the constitutional court as well as his decision to surpass the constitutional two-term limit for another three years of service. One of my formatrices (language teachers) said that she found all the foreign press attention regarding potential opposition violence funny, as Nigeriens wish to preserve peace more than anything else. More than anything else, I sensed that life for the average Nigerien town remains largely unaffected by national politics - Nigerien families are more autonomous than their counterparts throughout much of the world today.
Today we received our Niamey safety and security tour, a bus tour of much of the city, and experienced a grocery store and restaurant for the first time since we left the States. Our Chinese food was amazing and the fruit, A/C and candy bars made for quite the reverse cultural shock. Tomorrow (today) I plan to go back with much of the group to catch a bit of internet access and a swim at the American Recreation Center pool. Quite the treat of a weekend!
Cheers,
-Thomas
Monday, August 3, 2009
On the Eve of the Referendum
While I should be able to write you a more up-to-date blog post in a few days when we should be able to use the internet for the first time, I thought that it would be best recount the past couple weeks and spend the next post only on the goings-on of the referendum vote which is scheduled for tomorrow. In case you haven’t read much about it, I will do my best to fill you in on some details, especially the perspective you can’t get from the news website.
The last weekend of July we had our first chance to leave Hamdallaye, or Hamdy, to see a bit of Niger and real Peace Corps life. Like everything in Peace Corps, this weekend has a name and its abbreviation: Demystification and Demyst. We are called Demysters for the weekend. All thirty-two of us set out in groups of one, two or three to stay with PCV hosts serving in the two regions nearest Niamey - Dosso and Tillaberi. Since access to much of Tillaberi’s territory has been restricted for US citizens as a precautionary measures (you can read up on that at the State Dept.’s website) only seven of us ‘demisted’ in Tillaberi. I and two others ended up in Torodi with PCV who had been serving. Torodi is one of the few notable towns on the road from Niamey to Burkina Faso (or Burkina, as the locals say) and was a prime location to chill out by the vernal river, sample the delicious meat and honey. Our demystifier cooked us scrambled guinea fowl eggs for breakfast - may I say that guinea fowl meat and eggs beat out chicken any day - with cereal and powdered milk. After beans and rice for oh so many days, ‘twas like manna to our bellies. We spent much of our time reading, journaling, chatting and playing cards. We also were able to meet many of our demystifier’s friends in town, including the smith, who created personalized silver rings for all three of us. The R and R was well-timed as well, as we were becoming overwhelmed by the repetitive language lessons and endless medical, technical and cross-cultural sessions. More than anything, it made me truly begin to anticipate my arrival at site, and my life thereafter.
Something that our demystifier mentioned in passing stuck with me in the following form: “In Niger, nothing ever works like new.” He was talking about a flashlight, but he could have meant many other things, including human bodies. As we were told, a number of us fell sick after Demyst. While I had Mr. D before and after demyst for about six days or so, it was fairly controllable. For others though, medications had caused up to two weeks of constipation. Still others had to swallow a cornucopia of pills for amoebas and bacteria having the opposite effect on the bowels. While this may not seem the most appropriate topic for the blog, you have to understand it has been my primary topic of conversation for the past few days as seven or eight of us spent quality time at the infirmary this weekend.
My lot was different in that I experienced fevers every afternoon and early morning from Friday afternoon till Sunday morning. Combined with continued stomach problems, everything seemed manageable but uncomfortable. At rock bottom I was left on Saturday afternoon with 102.9 temperature that had risen a degree and a half in just under an hour without a clear idea of what I had or even what medicine I should be taking. After an appraisal of the symptoms it was clear a malaria test was more than due. Fortunately, the fever broke yesterday and I feel much better. At the same time, the malaria slide completed under much supervision couldn’t be read. I doubt many of us could imagine what beatings our bodies would take before Niger, but camaraderie has its benefits…including those who can make light out of any situation.
- Thomas
The last weekend of July we had our first chance to leave Hamdallaye, or Hamdy, to see a bit of Niger and real Peace Corps life. Like everything in Peace Corps, this weekend has a name and its abbreviation: Demystification and Demyst. We are called Demysters for the weekend. All thirty-two of us set out in groups of one, two or three to stay with PCV hosts serving in the two regions nearest Niamey - Dosso and Tillaberi. Since access to much of Tillaberi’s territory has been restricted for US citizens as a precautionary measures (you can read up on that at the State Dept.’s website) only seven of us ‘demisted’ in Tillaberi. I and two others ended up in Torodi with PCV who had been serving. Torodi is one of the few notable towns on the road from Niamey to Burkina Faso (or Burkina, as the locals say) and was a prime location to chill out by the vernal river, sample the delicious meat and honey. Our demystifier cooked us scrambled guinea fowl eggs for breakfast - may I say that guinea fowl meat and eggs beat out chicken any day - with cereal and powdered milk. After beans and rice for oh so many days, ‘twas like manna to our bellies. We spent much of our time reading, journaling, chatting and playing cards. We also were able to meet many of our demystifier’s friends in town, including the smith, who created personalized silver rings for all three of us. The R and R was well-timed as well, as we were becoming overwhelmed by the repetitive language lessons and endless medical, technical and cross-cultural sessions. More than anything, it made me truly begin to anticipate my arrival at site, and my life thereafter.
Something that our demystifier mentioned in passing stuck with me in the following form: “In Niger, nothing ever works like new.” He was talking about a flashlight, but he could have meant many other things, including human bodies. As we were told, a number of us fell sick after Demyst. While I had Mr. D before and after demyst for about six days or so, it was fairly controllable. For others though, medications had caused up to two weeks of constipation. Still others had to swallow a cornucopia of pills for amoebas and bacteria having the opposite effect on the bowels. While this may not seem the most appropriate topic for the blog, you have to understand it has been my primary topic of conversation for the past few days as seven or eight of us spent quality time at the infirmary this weekend.
My lot was different in that I experienced fevers every afternoon and early morning from Friday afternoon till Sunday morning. Combined with continued stomach problems, everything seemed manageable but uncomfortable. At rock bottom I was left on Saturday afternoon with 102.9 temperature that had risen a degree and a half in just under an hour without a clear idea of what I had or even what medicine I should be taking. After an appraisal of the symptoms it was clear a malaria test was more than due. Fortunately, the fever broke yesterday and I feel much better. At the same time, the malaria slide completed under much supervision couldn’t be read. I doubt many of us could imagine what beatings our bodies would take before Niger, but camaraderie has its benefits…including those who can make light out of any situation.
- Thomas
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