Adjusting

Hi everybody,
Happy 2010 to you all from Lido, Niger. Yesterday marks my one month anniversary in my new village of Peace Corps service. For a quick introduction, Lido is in the Dosso region, department of Dogondoutchi, within 20 km of the Nigerian border. It is marginally smaller than Larba Birno, at an estimated 4000 inhabitants, and has only one middle school and primary school (while Larba also had a Franco-Arabic primary). It has yet to receive electricity although some neighboring villages have it and the power lines pass by on the main road less than 1km out of town. Villagers say it is due to arrive this year (I’m writing off battery from a recent visit to Dosso). On the other hand, Lido is more connected than Larba, being situated at a crossroads and near to Nigeria. This location offers the perks of a relatively large market, oranges from Nigeria, sugarcane from a town nearby, occasional carbonated beverages from Nigeria with ice off of bush taxis from Dosso about 60km away. Despite not having electricity, Lido folks have a much more vibrant night scene: someone has been carting a generator and TV to various points around town to show videos, followed by a train of food vendors (peanut ‘brittle’, sugarcane, oranges, ‘medicines', even fried chicken - expensive though) and groups of card players with their innumerable gas lanterns. Over break I noticed some university students and teachers back in town - something a bit higher class than I expected from Larba’s progeny. The educational imparity is corroborated by the higher success rate at the middle-school levels. This also has proven a boon to my existence in this Hausa-speaking region. The number of young people and adults who can speak a ‘decent’ amount of French is noticeably higher than Larba, though pitifully low in comparison to the Francophone Africa average. Also, merchants and other notable village personalities tend to travel and thus speak some Zarma - Niger’s Zarma-speaking region begins about 30km to the west of Lido.

The holidays were as well spent here as I could have expected. Christmas fell a week exactly after my installation in Lido. We were allowed to gather with much of the rest of Dosso region in Dosso for Christmas Eve and the day itself. The days were relaxing: Christmas movies; a delicious potluck with rabbit stew, squash pie, mashed potatoes and stuffing; a night out on the town; board games… While we all missed our homes in America, especially those of us who were spending our first Christmas in Niger, we did a good job of innovating fun from not much material - including snowflake decorations from scrap paper. For New Year’s Eve I met with two of my PCV neighbors on what happened to be one of their birthdays. We took a look around the Guéchémé market, one of my favorites - in one afternoon we saw a snake charmer with a jet-black cobra and a man with three scorpions on his face (both were selling medicines) while seeing people carve calabash bowls and others sell hand-made meringue-like candies. We made a mad punch with both 7up and Sprite (due to its proximity to Nigeria, Pepsi products are available) and fruit juice also sent from that magical land of milk and honey to the south.

Since the new year I have been busy starting an English club for the upper levels of the CEG and picking a counterpart for when I can begin starting real projects after Inter-Service Training - due to start in less than a week. But above all I have been trying to get healthy/not get sick again and been failing miserably. Since the week before my departure for Lido until now I have been tested nearly ten times and received prescription meds more than a half-dozen times. While sometimes I have felt misdiagnosed, other times I felt overmedication had rendered them ineffective. While almost everything has been tied up to the gastrointestinal system, there have been other ailments as well. My most recent misadventure had me expelling (excuse the adjectives) bilious, acid-green liquid out of both ends simultaneously, followed by a mucus the color of river water: I was ‘Mr. D’-ing everything, even when I drank only water, out of my system. Although I was able to make it to Dosso for the second time in a few days after my system accepted oral rehydration salts, for a moment I didn’t believe I could make it out.

While so much adventure is sure exciting, I am much more interested in the next three weeks where I plan on ‘chillin with my peeps’ from stage and picking up as much Hausa as I can manage. Needless to say, my Hausa learning has left much to be desired these past couple weeks.

Talk to you soon,
Thomas