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