Happy Halloween (Dated Oct. 30)

Hi everybody,
Happy eve of All Hallow’s Eve/Halloween. I’m back in Niamey after a couple more weeks in Larba Birno. While no earth-shattering events have taken place, I did get electricity installed in my house, which may as well count as earth shattering in my little world. I had bought the cable during my last trip to Niamey, not knowing what kind of cable or even how much of it I would need. A couple days later some guys from the village chief’s concession and down the street came over to hook it up. One had some outlets and light bulbs and fixtures, which I bought off him. They got straight to work walking across a few hut roofs, only to find out it wasn’t long enough for the house a few doors down, so they set to digging a trench across the road with a pick and spike. The one with the fixtures went about digging a hole in my house with a screwdriver, then using his teeth to peel the plastic off the wire to attach to the fixtures. I offered my scissors, nails and tape: the nails were driven into the clay/cement to keep the wire from falling down, the scissors replaced teeth and the tape tidied up parts of the cable where copper was disconnected or broken. While we had to hunt around for a few more meters of cable to finish the job, the bulk of the project took all of a half-hour with a half-dozen helpers and another dozen lookers-on. To call the whole operation a ‘jerry-rigging’ would be an understatement, it felt downright illegal - maybe it was the fact that I was hooking my line up to the chief’s across the street and paying for a chunk of his bill. On the other hand, such is the way of Niger…just reference my last blog post for a few more examples. Ironically I spent part of the operation helping some folks build a wall out of clay bricks and mud in the chief’s concession.
Classes have begun to pick up at the collège (middle school), and I have sat in on a couple different grades during different subjects. Needless to say, the differences between the American and Nigerien education system are striking. In American public schools, kids walk about in hallways and attend classes in air-conditioned classrooms with enough room for cabinets and desks and posters. Nigeriens sweat through classes and crowd three to a one-person bench. Yet at the same time, some American students, at least in the public schools I attended, were prone to giving teachers fits for talking in class, wearing inappropriate clothes, apathy and the like. In Niger, at least in Larba, students stand and recognize a teacher when he enters the room, wear uniforms (if they can afford them), and repeat answers memorized from the previous day’s lecture. All the same, American students stay motivated through a variety of classes and electives that suit their interests, after-school clubs, extra study help for those who need it, while Nigerien students have some of the lowest rates in the world in literacy, failure to make it into or past secondary school, and girls enrollment. As I may have mentioned in a previous blog, Niger has re-found itself in last place on the UN’s Human Development Index, education contributing a number of dismal figures to this composite study of societies across the globe. The reasons behind this poverty are multitudinous, many of which I may never fully understand. But once one understands that for a kid growing up in the bush, middle school may mean months separated from one’s family, learning languages and skills that most likely will never be applied in real life jobs, and association with mentors/ teachers who would rather be spending time at home in Niamey than in ‘the sticks.’ The somewhat supercilious attitude of the teachers, whose authoritative and somewhat distant teaching style has been a bit of a shock to the system, and has pushed me to create stronger and more productive relationships with my villagers, as it will be they who will sustain the projects I help to get off the ground. From the previous volunteers in Larba and other PCVs across the country, teachers rarely last more than a few years in a single town.
As I head out back out for the hot and humid month of November (yup, cold season won’t be here for a little while - they call it the ‘mini hot season’), I hope to learn more about what can improve the futures of the kids of Larba and neighboring towns; I counted students from 16 towns attending the CEG (collège), including Boulkagou, Touré, Chaptondé and Hanti Goura, estimated to be 40km away. In case I don’t get back into Niamey by Thanksgiving, Happy Turkey Day, ma y it be thankful day.