Hello all,
It was before leaving for vacation that I wrote last, finishing up a two-week agricultural training and heading into my third consecutive bout with amoebas and subsequent 10-day medicine regimens. Besides a few moments the first week of vacation (including a moment in the courtyard of Versailles, doubled over from cramps with a long line at the toilets), the trip was a great way to chance to change pace and see some friends, sites and graduate schools. I came back refreshed, clean (acne and heat rash gone) and healthy. Of course it didn’t take more than a week for things to go back to Nigerien normal. Thankfully though, my many weeks of stomach issues have fallen back into the shadows, ever-present but manageable.
I returned to village to the first two nights of real rain of the season. Most of my village had already planted a few weeks prior, one of the first rains of the season. Since the rains have kept coming, while certain villages nearby have received very little and have yet to plant their fields. Such is the nature of rainy season: heavy winds and dust alternates with overwhelming heat and humidity, in the same day. With each rain the town clears out for the fields, leaving the impression of a ghost town. This, as one might imagine, makes projects a little bit difficult to carry out. Even my English club, comprised of last-year secondary students preparing to take the test to get into high school or professional schools, has been non-existent the last couple weeks. Though they are the only students still attending classes (the school-year ended yesterday but other kids left a few weeks earlier) family or host-family (most students are from neighboring villages) fields are the priority. While this has been frustrating, I felt somewhat vindicated for all the meetings I’ve held where people don’t show up for an hour or at all, by a recent event at the primary school. The director, who had organized an end-of-the-year party for all primary and secondary teachers, was deserted by most of his teachers the day before the party: they had all returned to their city homes for vacation without even saying goodbye.
With vacation I hope to spend more time getting to know my fellow villagers, working up my Hausa skills, and farming. I went out a couple times recently, once to burn shrub grasses in my friend’s field, where we hope to split his plot of bean plants this summer. The other time was to plant my village chief’s plot: it was like a family reunion (except that all the extended family sees each other every day) in that all sorts of relatives came together to plant the chief‘s fields in his absence, digging holes and sowing beans and millets in lines five abreast, chatting all the way. I sowed beans, barefoot (easier to swipe to dirt back into the hole), getting into a pretty quick cadence after some practice. It seem odd, but it felt somewhat like a landmark in my service, farming in this pastoral society where a job means either a teacher, doctor, or vendor, is liking driving a car in America. My villagers keep telling me that farming is too hard for me, that it’s back-breaking and too rough for my “baby-like hands” - perhaps true - but I want to try and prove them wrong, even if only on a part-time basis. I’m actually more worried about the sun than the physicality of the work, more heat rash than sunburn, though sunscreen is sweated off rapidly my straw hat is quite effective.
I am off to the eastern part of Niger as almost all of the Niger’s volunteers gather for an project ideas-sharing conference this coming week. I wish you all a great start to summer.
-Thomas
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Pix of Dutsin Leila
A fulani boy on Dutsin Leila with the town in the distance
Seydou and Isiya near the top of the mesa
The eastern approach, it's steeper than it looks
Not so bad after all...or wait, maybe it is?
Hello everybody,
I will be heading off to Europe early tomorrow morning so I thought I’d try to squeeze in a couple thoughts before heading out the door.
Now is the time when many Niger volunteers get out of town to beat the heat.. Hot season is upon us and temperatures have regularly been reaching 110 or higher. We talk about how rough life is in Niger, but occasionally it feels so, well, normal, that I feel obliged to disagree. Part of it has to do with living in the Dogondoutchi department, which as I have mentioned in previous posts, is highly developed by Nigerien standards.
I’ve just read Nicholas Kristof’s book, called Half the Sky, quite popular among our PCVs these days, in which he recounts stories of women’s development across the globe. As I read the gruesome, aggravating, yet ultimately uplifting stories of empowered women and valiant aid efforts, I started wondering why Niger seems so docile in comparison. Here’s what I came up with based on experiences in Lido:
-Medical clinics exist, women talk to men, even outside the family (not always true in other parts of Niger), not much history of tribal violence - low population density and low access to guns from neighboring countries
-Death persistent in hot season but seems confined to elderly
-Decent amount of fruits and vegetables in season
-Both sexes contribute to harvest, although women’s chores continue year-round while most men only farm only in the rainy season
-Not a lot of alcohol or prostitution, and only in the cities
-Roads passable, cars breakdown but not too frequently or gravely, kids rent bikes from school, relatively dense population so that kids don’t have to come from more than 15k to school
-Don’t hear stories of rape, infant mortality, maternal mortality (being a guy, I would probably see and hear less of these stories), some elderly go to Dosso for treatment
Upon closer examination, however, I’ve observed a number of recent events that brought me back closer to reality - Niger may be the poorest country in the world by the UN’s standards, but the poverty is often anticlimactic and softened by strong community ties. Plus, unlike Ivory Coast’s civil unrest or Ethiopia’s famine, Niger has never known times or had places of immense growth from which they have descended into poverty. The uranium boom in the 70’s and 80’s is the closest they got here, and the effects did not issue far beyond Niamey. However the signs of poverty and distress are not far if you look for them. Here are some recent examples I have experienced:
-Steps it took to find blackboard for our recent agricultural methods workshop - primary director-no, schools don’t have enough; hausa literacy program - it’s shut down here go to Bayawa (6k away); asked the president of community action committee - sure, we’ll get it from Bayawa (never did); 3e (last year of middle school) students study group - sure, but for one day; finally the teacher rented a motorcycle taxi to his town of Tolouwa (11k away) and back, carrying the blackboard on his head.
-Walking around town I was asked if I had seen the possession dance, confused I asked the person if he was referring to the witch doctor in the neighboring town of Fada. He said no, this is hot season and that means it is the time of the year for genies to bring the rain…curious what it looked like. I’ll get more chances later, the region is known for its Animism.
-A couple months ago I saw that witch doctor try to heal a kid with what I assume was polio, kind bizarre experience with her spit into his face, rubbing sand into his hair and causing his mother (who was holding him up) to cry by accusing her to be the source of his illness, this was all accompanied by a lot of screaming and an intent crowd gathered around.
-I visited a beautiful mesa called Dutsin Leila - I’ll try to attach pix - that, the story goes, will blow up if the neighboring village if its citizens try to dig into it, apparently because the phantoms inside the hill don’t want their riches stolen. As my ever-rational friend pointed out, this story was probably invented to make up for the fact that the contents of the mound were worthless, as they would have long been extracted if there was anything valuable inside.
-I was telling this same friend that I hadn’t been able to take my early afternoon nap for weeks because it was too hot to get comfortable (absolutely sopping wet with sweat in a matter of seconds indoors and not enough shade outdoors). He thought I was purposely not sleeping to avoid meningitis. Seeing me puzzled by that explanation, he explained that people said meningitis attacks people if they fall asleep at noon. I said no, that the hot season is a time when people are hungry and weak, making them more susceptible to such a virus/bacteria.
-I saw my primary director cut from motorcycle across a swath of his hand - I’ve seen a few other such incidents left untreated. Being a sensible chap he went to the clinic in town and they dumped what must a ton of iodine on it (apparently this is a pan-regional treatment as I heard a story of Westerners in Mali having the same treatment for a motorcycle fall), turning it black and itchy, though warding off infection.
-After working towards getting a new water tower to replace the unreliable existing one, it broke again. It’s been off for 10 days now. This means that 4,000 or more citizens and as more livestock are using three open wells, as opposed to these three wells and nine taps spread throughout town.
-Women who participated in the agricultural workshop rave about the chance to learn such techniques, they said they had never participated in any training of any kind up till now.
-A man who was able to get into the men’s section of the workshop before it filled up signed up his wife in the thoughts that she would get millet and fertilizer that he would use for his own fields. Luckily we had already established that the women were going to get vegetable seeds instead - he threatened to pull her and the fee paid out of the workshop. She and a bunch of others didn’t show up, but enough did to make it a fruitful experience.
-Cold season was the time for weddings, people coming in rich from the fall’s harvest. Hot season is the time for death. For the past few weeks, in my village alone, about every other day I hear about another passing, occasionally two in the same day. One such death was an excruciating story to listen to. I heard it the same day that I had visited the health clinic (which has neither a morgue nor a maternity ward, although it’s asked for both) and happened upon a women lying in fetal position, her emaciated body evidently not able to support her weight - I didn’t even bother to ask what she had. The story was of a woman from Goubawa (6k away) who had what sounds like obstructed labor, common among narrow-hipped women throughout Africa, she was taken by ox-cart to Lido’s clinic and gave birth on the road in the middle of the day. After all that effort the baby died upon arrival in Lido…it’s hard to believe any baby could survive this heat.
-It took me 7.5 hours to take a bush taxi into Niamey from Lido (190 km, just under 120 miles) last market day. Within a meter of departure the side door had fallen off. It took an hour and a half of tooling around to get the engine started again. We traveled the next 19 kilometers in an hour and a half, including one stop of 20 minutes to tie on new luggage - avg. of 12 km/h or 7 mph. Never getting much above what I guessed to be 30 mph on the main highway (of course there was no speedometer, rearview mirror, speaker, a/c, but that’s always the case) as we would rim out every time we careened to the right, the whole chassis seemed ready to burst like the Blues Brothers car at the end of the chase scene. My water bottle was broken and our grumpy driver would share his water with anyone. When I asked to switch to a new car in Dosso he said that he wouldn’t transfer the money to the new driver, he’d spent it all on fixing his car - I didn’t have enough cash to pay for the whole thing, so I waited it out.
-I saw a concert the other day while here in Niamey. While it started over two hours late and was attended by a typically sparse and unenthusiastic Nigerien crowd, a drum and dance troupe from Burkina Faso and a woman Nigerien rapper highlighted an eventful, though not fully-appreciated night. To be expected when it is sponsored by the likes of the US Embassy and some big international projects. What I didn’t expect to see, however, was a young kid mimic cutting himself with the sharp side of a knife, while squealing incessantly in the most inhuman voice. He was accompanied by an adult who would demonstrate the blade’s sharpness by cutting a stick, then handing the kid the knife. The background noise/music for this was a group of old men croaking out a bunch of typical Nigerien folksongs.
So there you have it, Niger is poor, but it its own unique way…not always so bad, but sometimes downright aggravating (just like the heat rash covering my upper body). I’ve gone on far long enough. So cheerio, and here’s hoping I don’t experience too much reverse cultural shock in Europe
-Thomas
I will be heading off to Europe early tomorrow morning so I thought I’d try to squeeze in a couple thoughts before heading out the door.
Now is the time when many Niger volunteers get out of town to beat the heat.. Hot season is upon us and temperatures have regularly been reaching 110 or higher. We talk about how rough life is in Niger, but occasionally it feels so, well, normal, that I feel obliged to disagree. Part of it has to do with living in the Dogondoutchi department, which as I have mentioned in previous posts, is highly developed by Nigerien standards.
I’ve just read Nicholas Kristof’s book, called Half the Sky, quite popular among our PCVs these days, in which he recounts stories of women’s development across the globe. As I read the gruesome, aggravating, yet ultimately uplifting stories of empowered women and valiant aid efforts, I started wondering why Niger seems so docile in comparison. Here’s what I came up with based on experiences in Lido:
-Medical clinics exist, women talk to men, even outside the family (not always true in other parts of Niger), not much history of tribal violence - low population density and low access to guns from neighboring countries
-Death persistent in hot season but seems confined to elderly
-Decent amount of fruits and vegetables in season
-Both sexes contribute to harvest, although women’s chores continue year-round while most men only farm only in the rainy season
-Not a lot of alcohol or prostitution, and only in the cities
-Roads passable, cars breakdown but not too frequently or gravely, kids rent bikes from school, relatively dense population so that kids don’t have to come from more than 15k to school
-Don’t hear stories of rape, infant mortality, maternal mortality (being a guy, I would probably see and hear less of these stories), some elderly go to Dosso for treatment
Upon closer examination, however, I’ve observed a number of recent events that brought me back closer to reality - Niger may be the poorest country in the world by the UN’s standards, but the poverty is often anticlimactic and softened by strong community ties. Plus, unlike Ivory Coast’s civil unrest or Ethiopia’s famine, Niger has never known times or had places of immense growth from which they have descended into poverty. The uranium boom in the 70’s and 80’s is the closest they got here, and the effects did not issue far beyond Niamey. However the signs of poverty and distress are not far if you look for them. Here are some recent examples I have experienced:
-Steps it took to find blackboard for our recent agricultural methods workshop - primary director-no, schools don’t have enough; hausa literacy program - it’s shut down here go to Bayawa (6k away); asked the president of community action committee - sure, we’ll get it from Bayawa (never did); 3e (last year of middle school) students study group - sure, but for one day; finally the teacher rented a motorcycle taxi to his town of Tolouwa (11k away) and back, carrying the blackboard on his head.
-Walking around town I was asked if I had seen the possession dance, confused I asked the person if he was referring to the witch doctor in the neighboring town of Fada. He said no, this is hot season and that means it is the time of the year for genies to bring the rain…curious what it looked like. I’ll get more chances later, the region is known for its Animism.
-A couple months ago I saw that witch doctor try to heal a kid with what I assume was polio, kind bizarre experience with her spit into his face, rubbing sand into his hair and causing his mother (who was holding him up) to cry by accusing her to be the source of his illness, this was all accompanied by a lot of screaming and an intent crowd gathered around.
-I visited a beautiful mesa called Dutsin Leila - I’ll try to attach pix - that, the story goes, will blow up if the neighboring village if its citizens try to dig into it, apparently because the phantoms inside the hill don’t want their riches stolen. As my ever-rational friend pointed out, this story was probably invented to make up for the fact that the contents of the mound were worthless, as they would have long been extracted if there was anything valuable inside.
-I was telling this same friend that I hadn’t been able to take my early afternoon nap for weeks because it was too hot to get comfortable (absolutely sopping wet with sweat in a matter of seconds indoors and not enough shade outdoors). He thought I was purposely not sleeping to avoid meningitis. Seeing me puzzled by that explanation, he explained that people said meningitis attacks people if they fall asleep at noon. I said no, that the hot season is a time when people are hungry and weak, making them more susceptible to such a virus/bacteria.
-I saw my primary director cut from motorcycle across a swath of his hand - I’ve seen a few other such incidents left untreated. Being a sensible chap he went to the clinic in town and they dumped what must a ton of iodine on it (apparently this is a pan-regional treatment as I heard a story of Westerners in Mali having the same treatment for a motorcycle fall), turning it black and itchy, though warding off infection.
-After working towards getting a new water tower to replace the unreliable existing one, it broke again. It’s been off for 10 days now. This means that 4,000 or more citizens and as more livestock are using three open wells, as opposed to these three wells and nine taps spread throughout town.
-Women who participated in the agricultural workshop rave about the chance to learn such techniques, they said they had never participated in any training of any kind up till now.
-A man who was able to get into the men’s section of the workshop before it filled up signed up his wife in the thoughts that she would get millet and fertilizer that he would use for his own fields. Luckily we had already established that the women were going to get vegetable seeds instead - he threatened to pull her and the fee paid out of the workshop. She and a bunch of others didn’t show up, but enough did to make it a fruitful experience.
-Cold season was the time for weddings, people coming in rich from the fall’s harvest. Hot season is the time for death. For the past few weeks, in my village alone, about every other day I hear about another passing, occasionally two in the same day. One such death was an excruciating story to listen to. I heard it the same day that I had visited the health clinic (which has neither a morgue nor a maternity ward, although it’s asked for both) and happened upon a women lying in fetal position, her emaciated body evidently not able to support her weight - I didn’t even bother to ask what she had. The story was of a woman from Goubawa (6k away) who had what sounds like obstructed labor, common among narrow-hipped women throughout Africa, she was taken by ox-cart to Lido’s clinic and gave birth on the road in the middle of the day. After all that effort the baby died upon arrival in Lido…it’s hard to believe any baby could survive this heat.
-It took me 7.5 hours to take a bush taxi into Niamey from Lido (190 km, just under 120 miles) last market day. Within a meter of departure the side door had fallen off. It took an hour and a half of tooling around to get the engine started again. We traveled the next 19 kilometers in an hour and a half, including one stop of 20 minutes to tie on new luggage - avg. of 12 km/h or 7 mph. Never getting much above what I guessed to be 30 mph on the main highway (of course there was no speedometer, rearview mirror, speaker, a/c, but that’s always the case) as we would rim out every time we careened to the right, the whole chassis seemed ready to burst like the Blues Brothers car at the end of the chase scene. My water bottle was broken and our grumpy driver would share his water with anyone. When I asked to switch to a new car in Dosso he said that he wouldn’t transfer the money to the new driver, he’d spent it all on fixing his car - I didn’t have enough cash to pay for the whole thing, so I waited it out.
-I saw a concert the other day while here in Niamey. While it started over two hours late and was attended by a typically sparse and unenthusiastic Nigerien crowd, a drum and dance troupe from Burkina Faso and a woman Nigerien rapper highlighted an eventful, though not fully-appreciated night. To be expected when it is sponsored by the likes of the US Embassy and some big international projects. What I didn’t expect to see, however, was a young kid mimic cutting himself with the sharp side of a knife, while squealing incessantly in the most inhuman voice. He was accompanied by an adult who would demonstrate the blade’s sharpness by cutting a stick, then handing the kid the knife. The background noise/music for this was a group of old men croaking out a bunch of typical Nigerien folksongs.
So there you have it, Niger is poor, but it its own unique way…not always so bad, but sometimes downright aggravating (just like the heat rash covering my upper body). I’ve gone on far long enough. So cheerio, and here’s hoping I don’t experience too much reverse cultural shock in Europe
-Thomas
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Working it
Hey everybody,
I know it's been some time since I wrote a meaningful and somewhat lengthy blog post, and I can't promise anything here. Suffice it to say that Niger is not always the languishing, laggardly country were nothing gets accomplished in less than thrice the time it takes in the developed world. After a few weeks in my new village that you already heard about (please pardon those overly descriptive explanations of GI issues), I headed of to In-service training. I returned to village after a few weeks to find a newly elected chief - the previous one had died in the fall. Within seconds of first seeing him I found myself wrapped in a giant bear hug. For a country where crying or displaying affection are virtually never displayed, even in private, this signaled that something was different. Sure enough, within days the chief was organizing meetings with civil servants of the village (teachers, doctor's office director) and chiefs of surrounding villages, both unprecedented in Lido. He has been a veritable quote machine (it helps that he knows French and Zarma as my Hausa is coming along ever so slowly), telling me about the importance of documenting activity in a nealy paperless society (though the bureaucracy can't get enough of it) and of incorporating women and elderly into development work. Though he still maintains his post as a primary school director not far from Lido, while he is in town he has motivated me to plunge into the work of a PC volunteer.
In the past weeks, my counterpart (a village resident that PCVs must pick to help them carry out projects) and I have gathered artisans from around the village to organize an apprenticeship program to begin in the fall. On their behalf I traveled to Dogondoutchi, the capital of Lido's department (sub-region), over a few hours both ways to establish a budget with the Director of a vocational school there who will teach some of the artisans teaching methods. I was also able to observe a fellow volunteer's English club. Next week 14 artisans are set to go through the training session, enabling those who have attended minimal school to transfer their skills to a younger generation. I was also able to find some funding on a recent trip Niamey to minimize the cost of their attendance. While improving the content and solidifying the attendance rate (smaller yet more motivated) of Lido's English Club, a neighboring volunteer and I were able to conduct a successful letter exchange with her English Club. The third project ongoing is a sanition committee, or four of them actually, one for each neighborhood (or quartier). A week ago we had our first village clean-up day, people swept up millet chaff, manure and other waste onto carts and carted them out to fields to use as fertilizer. In one part of town a brigade of girls lined the street from wall to wall, sweeping the street in a line, bent over and hips locked in sway as they chanted in unison with the drums of the town criers. It was quite a sight. Much work was completed that morning and much is left done. But it has been a good start to real PCV life.
See you next time,
Thomas
I know it's been some time since I wrote a meaningful and somewhat lengthy blog post, and I can't promise anything here. Suffice it to say that Niger is not always the languishing, laggardly country were nothing gets accomplished in less than thrice the time it takes in the developed world. After a few weeks in my new village that you already heard about (please pardon those overly descriptive explanations of GI issues), I headed of to In-service training. I returned to village after a few weeks to find a newly elected chief - the previous one had died in the fall. Within seconds of first seeing him I found myself wrapped in a giant bear hug. For a country where crying or displaying affection are virtually never displayed, even in private, this signaled that something was different. Sure enough, within days the chief was organizing meetings with civil servants of the village (teachers, doctor's office director) and chiefs of surrounding villages, both unprecedented in Lido. He has been a veritable quote machine (it helps that he knows French and Zarma as my Hausa is coming along ever so slowly), telling me about the importance of documenting activity in a nealy paperless society (though the bureaucracy can't get enough of it) and of incorporating women and elderly into development work. Though he still maintains his post as a primary school director not far from Lido, while he is in town he has motivated me to plunge into the work of a PC volunteer.
In the past weeks, my counterpart (a village resident that PCVs must pick to help them carry out projects) and I have gathered artisans from around the village to organize an apprenticeship program to begin in the fall. On their behalf I traveled to Dogondoutchi, the capital of Lido's department (sub-region), over a few hours both ways to establish a budget with the Director of a vocational school there who will teach some of the artisans teaching methods. I was also able to observe a fellow volunteer's English club. Next week 14 artisans are set to go through the training session, enabling those who have attended minimal school to transfer their skills to a younger generation. I was also able to find some funding on a recent trip Niamey to minimize the cost of their attendance. While improving the content and solidifying the attendance rate (smaller yet more motivated) of Lido's English Club, a neighboring volunteer and I were able to conduct a successful letter exchange with her English Club. The third project ongoing is a sanition committee, or four of them actually, one for each neighborhood (or quartier). A week ago we had our first village clean-up day, people swept up millet chaff, manure and other waste onto carts and carted them out to fields to use as fertilizer. In one part of town a brigade of girls lined the street from wall to wall, sweeping the street in a line, bent over and hips locked in sway as they chanted in unison with the drums of the town criers. It was quite a sight. Much work was completed that morning and much is left done. But it has been a good start to real PCV life.
See you next time,
Thomas
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
In-service Training
Hello all,
I am just about ready to head back into village after a mostly healthy and fun In-service Training. It was a great time to grow closer together as a stage and to have a good time playing volleyball, mafia and other kinds of games...All that stuff that was such fun for us may not be that interesting for you trying to learn about Niger. It was like a little America for three weeks. We're all full of new ideas for projects, here's hoping something gets done.
-Thomas
I am just about ready to head back into village after a mostly healthy and fun In-service Training. It was a great time to grow closer together as a stage and to have a good time playing volleyball, mafia and other kinds of games...All that stuff that was such fun for us may not be that interesting for you trying to learn about Niger. It was like a little America for three weeks. We're all full of new ideas for projects, here's hoping something gets done.
-Thomas
Monday, January 18, 2010
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
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
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Article in the Dexter Leader
An article of mine was published in the Dexter Leader a couple weeks ago. Here is a link to it:
http://www.heritage.com/articles/2009/11/25/dexter_leader/news/doc4b0ccdbe8ac7b169760598.txt
As you can see I have changed the title of my blog but not the site. It is nearly official that I will be heading out to Lido, Niger next week. Unfortunately, the amenities available in this village may preclude frequent postings, but I will do my best. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
-Thomas
http://www.heritage.com/articles/2009/11/25/dexter_leader/news/doc4b0ccdbe8ac7b169760598.txt
As you can see I have changed the title of my blog but not the site. It is nearly official that I will be heading out to Lido, Niger next week. Unfortunately, the amenities available in this village may preclude frequent postings, but I will do my best. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
-Thomas
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)