So what makes Niger 'Niger' ?

Hi everybody,

It’s hard to believe it’s almost October and I’m sweating more than ever before! At least the days are getting a little shorter. I’m writing this blog entry on the last bits of battery left on my laptop in my village, Larba Birno, as I wait for my villagers to hook my house up to the village chief’s electricity across the street (when I don’t know, but I will be in Niamey after my first month is completed). I’m sure if I said they’ll ‘wire up my house’ you’d conjure up images of workers coming in digging trenches or putting up poles to carry the wires (plur.) across or under the street, installing a power meter, outlets, light fixtures, etc. I can’t say what the operation will look like, but it should be a whole lot more interesting than that. Which brings me to the topic I’d like to address in my few minutes here: ways in which Nigeriens and modernity interact that might befuddle, bemuse or bug your average American (I want to note them now before they become all to commonplace).

- One of my stagemates out east in Hausaland noted that during live-in her villagers were charging cellphones with car batteries (as their village has no electricity).

- Peanut butter is made on the spot and sold in used cans of tomato paste (only tomato paste, as that is one of the few canned things you can rely on in smaller towns) - although currently in Larba there are different types of peanuts along with peanut powder and peanut bricks (that look like dog food) but no peanut butter…Go figure…Motor oil/gas is sold in old gin bottles (but I’ve never seen those same gin bottles full of gin). Sweet peanuts are also sold in these same bottles.

-Despite the waste in ditches along side of major roads, Nigeriens throw little away that can be used. Many types of food come without packaging, but if there is any it is a small black or clear plastic baggie. These baggies hold everything from ice and cold water to fried millet cakes or cassava flour - anything that can go in these bags does, even if it doesn’t need it (like pre-wrapped tea bags).

-When I go out into my concession to burn my trash the omnipresent neighbors’ kids invariably tell me they want nearly every piece of it. I wonder what they want to do with old plastic applesauce cups, but I’m sure they’ve found some use…plastic from old sandal thongs can be used to soften the entry of a nail into brittle clay walls, old wire can be attached to a radio antenna to get a better signal, anything can be a toy!

-Transportation is always an adventure, and it is amazing to see cars that would have been sitting years in a US junkyard toting two or three times their intended capacity in, along and on top of the vehicle (on my slower dirt road bush taxis often have three young men ride standing up leaning on luggage stacking high above the van). Time is not of the essence - on one ride from Hamdy to Niamey (30k) on the ‘commuter bus’, the ride took a whopping two hours and change. No traffic, no break downs, and even the detours were not that bad…no, the driver stopped sometimes less than 100m from a previous to let one person from the middle of the bus off, at some of the larger stops the bus would turn off and both the front and rear of the school bus (style) would be loaded.

-One of the more elderly people in my town has a collection of photos from the last PCVs in Larba during the 1990’s. In one dated 1995 people are drinking tea using the same styles of tea sets and plastic cups sold throughout Niger to this today. Even the funky color schemes seem not to have changed - apparently they all come from a single factory in Niamey.

-While cell phones have come to Niger, even a tower in your town doesn’t mean that you can get through. Nonetheless, it is a recent tech. advance that has taken the country by storm: people often stop to answer phone calls while giving speeches during meetings - sometimes without leaving the premises. Teens will walk around blasting their music/ring tones/even videos as if it was a portable speaker. Cells are not unlike TV’s and radios, where it doesn’t matter if no one is listening to it, keep it blasting at full volume into the night!

-As you might imagine, all of this technology is imported…In a visit to the grocery store you might find one to five percent of products sold are from Niger (probably closer to one); much processed food comes from the EU, batteries and many other technological goods are from China, many cookies found on roadside stands are from India and Indonesia. And most everything seems to be imported directly by the seller - rarely does any local distributor find his name on a label.

-In terms of vocab, all such imported products, from buckets to shovels to electricity are taken from English, Hausa or French (sometimes interchangeably)…Yet I have counted at least four ways to say in the Zarma/Songhai of Larba Birno to say “in the bush” and a different description for millet at nearly every stage of maturation and in every form in which it is eaten.

Sorry, this post has gone on waaay to long,
Thomas

Some pics from Pre-Service Training

Hi all,

Here is sampling of my first few months Niger in pictures. I hope you enjoy them. We swore-in two days ago and are waiting to be installed in our respective villages....

Some of my host kids holding my umbrella after a rain. In a matter of hours the water in that okra patch behind them was gone. Flash flooding, is FLASH flooding in Niger....

During Demyst weekend in Torodi (halfway between Niamey and Burkina) a streambed that I shot on our walk through town, not realizing that...The next day, and morning's rainfall later it would look like this.

A fitting sight that I caught on my way to class in Hamdy. A man remaking a wall, with his hands. Manual labor is so persuasive in this country that you can find people making mud bricks and laying them on the street in downtown Niamey...oh yeah, and that wheelbarrow is about the extent of the construction equipment at any worksite.

My concession in Larba...that is our 'mainstreet' in the foreground. Although dirt, it is the only thoroughfare and the only street in the main part of town that could 'safely' hold a car.

A rain/dust/windstorm making its way to Hamdy.

A very typical sight for a Hamdallaye morning...this counts as a bush taxi. And so, it seems, do all other vehicles not sporting an NGO logo or construction trucks.

Cousins of my host family in Hamdallaye. They LOVE matching outfits.

Our whole group after the fashion show.

Our group meeting together at the training site during the first hour of PST, just off the bus from the airport.
Jesse (al-hajji), Alice and Liz during our fashion show, in which we wore clothes from our host families.

My first morning in Larba Birno during Live-in week, this scene reminded me of something from the Lord of the Rings films.

Teaching the Macarena to Hamdallaye kids during a training session.

Picture perfect sunset my first evening in Larba...no touching up, it was really that amazing. Of course the bugs that water produces are slightly less amazing.

- See you all in about a month's time, or until the next time I get internet access

A Taste of Reality

Before I begin this post, I would like to note my new mailing address at post. I should be posting it (along with some photos, hopefully) on Facebook soon. If anyone of you should be interested in sending over some goodies, make sure to put in a checklist of the box’s contents as some things can ‘disappear’ during customs.
Thomas Leonard, PCV
Corps de la Paix
Gothèye, Niger
West Africa
You may be wondering why there is no PO Box or address. It is because the six or seven PCVs in the Gothèye cluster are the only people to pick up their mail at this post office! I am posted about 24 km from Gothèye city. I also have changed my cell number from my original to (011227) 96 12 61 44.
My training group has about a week of training left before Swear-in, and I expect it to be a very busy few days. Thus, I am taking this time to share about our live-in experience completed last week and to preview the near future.
Sunday before last all thirty-one of left to the far reaches of Niger to visit our future posts for the week. My region, Tillaberi, surrounds Niamey, so our travel to site lasted all of one afternoon. That morning, the six Tillaberians in our stage met up with our Regional Representative (a PCV) and some other PCVs to buy the essentials for the week: cot, mat, table, pots, stove (and gas tank), buckets, cord, food and utensils. After lunch we split up into two cars and headed to our sites.
I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say we all had our share of adventures. Some trainees had unfinished houses, unusable latrines or missing ovens. I didn’t lack anything to essential. Still, I felt like I was at Boy Scout Summer Camp except there was no car to whisk me away, no trading post or swimmable water, and ‘wilderness survival’ actually meant survival. While education and municipality volunteers are often considered ‘spoiled’ compared to other Nigerien PCVs, there are some bush CYE (education) posts. Mine, which did not include a high school, school inspection, municipal government or a paved road, is included in the latter category. CYEs often follow directly after a previous CYE, while I was ‘opening’ a new post. While I have reliable cell phone service and the potential for electricity, my town of 7,000 (chef de village estimate) does not carry much economic or cultural clout. Whereas the training town of Hamdallaye is marginally smaller in size, it has a paved road lined with merchants and relatively constant motor traffic flow. Larba Birno, my site town, has a handful merchants in huts hidden seemingly at random along the main dirt road and in the ‘alleys’ winding throughout town. The sporadic (a few times per hour) traffic rarely stops on its way to the gold-mining operation in Samira 72 km west, hence the lack of imported goods.
On the flip side, Larba Birno had natural beauty not found elsewhere. The seasonal Sirba river whooshed by the south of town, cutting crevasses into the clay and feeding a multitude of trees and shrubs nearby. Additionally, the townspeople had a uniquely positive view of Americans, having welcomed in succession four previous volunteers in Agriculture and Nat. Resource Development (I believe) somewhere between a few years to twenty-some years ago (a point of contention between village elders!). At any rate, the immediate warmth with which I was received differed exceptionally from the awkwardness experienced by many of my stagemates. While at times I felt that certain villagers were trying to exploit their kindness for their own advantage, I greatly appreciated the opportunity to be shown about town like a dignitary. The slow pace of life around Larba seemed to suit me well as well, although I did feel more than a bit cut off from ‘real life’ - despite the fact that this will be my reality for two years. I also learned more Zarma than in I had in the weeks previous combined, although the little French I spoke acted as a mental popsicle.
I will return to Larba sometime around September 12. For the first month I will be staying exclusively in village with an exceptional market excursion to the next town over. That said, do not expect any new blogs for some time. Even when/if I do get electricity, Niamey is the closest internet, and that will be off-limits for my first three months - except for official business like regional team meetings.

Until next time,
Thomas