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
Monday, January 18, 2010
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
Friday, November 27, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving/My crazy life these past two weeks
Before you take another dig into those mashed potatoes and another whack at that turkey, here’s a little diversion to liven up another one of oh-so-nail-biting Lion’s Thanksgiving Day games and to take the edge of the tryptophene effect. Hold onto your seats, because if you don’t like rollercoasters you might want to let the turkey sit a little while longer.
The tenor of the Peace Corps rumor mill in any country never is one to lighten one’s heart - frequent stories of volunteers leaving for family reasons, folks getting flown around the continent for what Americans would consider routine dental care, and the always juicy geographically-doomed lovers. But as of late the tune has changed so rapidly and frequently that over a three-minute span last night I was asked by volunteers from three different regions if my cluster (sub-region) was being shipped off to a certain ironic isle off the coast of southern Africa (Ironic in the sense that it handed Niger ‘refugees’ from political instability less than 12 months ago and now a set of yet-to-be sworn-in volunteers are headed to that same country to re-open the program). I still must refer you to the travel warden page of the US Embassy in Niamey to tell you what started this whole hullabaloo.
Before we get any further in the story, let you take back to the moment it all began. It was an early Sunday afternoon, lazy as lazy can be, and I was approaching my weekly call with my parents. All of the sudden I was packing my backpack to head off to my sub-regional (cluster) capital: the security breach mentioned in the warden’s message (see my last post) had incurred the security measure that brings people to centrally-located houses to stay until the threat lessens (sorry for the vague language, but in case it happens again I shouldn’t reveal more). From what I remembered from training, this could only last a few nights as all Niger’s houses (called hostels) did not have adequate capacity for extended stays. After finding a car, playing cat-and-mouse on the phone with my parents and my PCV neighbor - also searching for a difficult-to-find midday ride down my dirt road - I ended up in said town with a change of clothes, my laptop and toiletries.
By midweek we were starting to go stir crazy. Running off of adrenaline and the rumor-mill, with and occasional dose of fact, the four of us were getting low on clean clothes, beer, food and patience. Luckily, one of our number belonged to the stage of volunteers whose close-of-service date (COS) was now being moved up to the soonest date possible. This meant for her tickets to reverse, grad apps to write, paperwork in Niamey to fill out, etc. A special car was sent out for us in the morning, by midday the COSer had said her goodbyes and taken her valuables out of her house in village, by early afternoon we were in Niamey, having gotten there twice as fast as any of us had ever remembered…I remember wondering if the tires could grip any harder onto the gravel and banging my head on a metal bar at every washout.
Fast-forward another five or six days, past an amazing Thanksgiving potluck which made many sick - myself violently so - daily doses of rumor and fact, new volunteers piling into town every day, and ever-mounting stress, and we arrive at ‘judgement day’. I guess I call it that in retrospect, as I assumed that on this eve of our potential re-departure for villages, that only those in the Tahoua/Konni region would be addressed in the Country Director’s lifting of precautionary restrictions. Unfortunately, in a stroke of Microsoft Word, the villages of mine and three other PCVs were gone in Peace Corps terms, our whole cluster shut down indefinitely, hostel included. A few other high-profile posts were also removed, the current training stage was erased, and my stagemates from one of the eastern regions began proposing a mass exodus out of this place. To make matters worse, two further security issues arose over the weekend and last night (I’m now writing on Friday) near the Mali border (look it up on BBC). With dozens of us in town, we could not help but to play off of each others pessimism about the weeks and months to come.
Now, with most of the PCV populace out of town, begins the long and drawn out search for a new village. It looks certain I will remain an volunteer, and an education volunteer as well, but it also looks likely that I will move to a new region, learn a new language, have new neighbors and a new set of working conditions. It may seem hard to take, but it is a chance at a do-over: to begin the integration process anew, drawing upon Larba and all its challenges and blessings. I hope this time to find a host family instead of falling back on the chief, to work harder to find friends my own age, to engage the movers and shakers of my town consistently and expectantly, to explore the new options on the NGO-front and work with my PCV neighbors (who won’t be COSers any time soon). Things are looking up, and even if PC Niger is living on borrowed time, I plan on making the most of every minute of it…even if those minutes may not come until January (or maybe February, considering my Inter-service training is slated for most of January) for Niger’s PCV refugees. For now I might play the tourist around Niamey a bit, hopefully find a good connection at the right time to get loads of photos up, work on the hostel and maybe even consolidate my French and English blogs into a whole new look (I might switch to Wordpress, but don’t tell Blogspot!), because “Along the Sirba” just doesn’t quite cut it anymore.
The tenor of the Peace Corps rumor mill in any country never is one to lighten one’s heart - frequent stories of volunteers leaving for family reasons, folks getting flown around the continent for what Americans would consider routine dental care, and the always juicy geographically-doomed lovers. But as of late the tune has changed so rapidly and frequently that over a three-minute span last night I was asked by volunteers from three different regions if my cluster (sub-region) was being shipped off to a certain ironic isle off the coast of southern Africa (Ironic in the sense that it handed Niger ‘refugees’ from political instability less than 12 months ago and now a set of yet-to-be sworn-in volunteers are headed to that same country to re-open the program). I still must refer you to the travel warden page of the US Embassy in Niamey to tell you what started this whole hullabaloo.
Before we get any further in the story, let you take back to the moment it all began. It was an early Sunday afternoon, lazy as lazy can be, and I was approaching my weekly call with my parents. All of the sudden I was packing my backpack to head off to my sub-regional (cluster) capital: the security breach mentioned in the warden’s message (see my last post) had incurred the security measure that brings people to centrally-located houses to stay until the threat lessens (sorry for the vague language, but in case it happens again I shouldn’t reveal more). From what I remembered from training, this could only last a few nights as all Niger’s houses (called hostels) did not have adequate capacity for extended stays. After finding a car, playing cat-and-mouse on the phone with my parents and my PCV neighbor - also searching for a difficult-to-find midday ride down my dirt road - I ended up in said town with a change of clothes, my laptop and toiletries.
By midweek we were starting to go stir crazy. Running off of adrenaline and the rumor-mill, with and occasional dose of fact, the four of us were getting low on clean clothes, beer, food and patience. Luckily, one of our number belonged to the stage of volunteers whose close-of-service date (COS) was now being moved up to the soonest date possible. This meant for her tickets to reverse, grad apps to write, paperwork in Niamey to fill out, etc. A special car was sent out for us in the morning, by midday the COSer had said her goodbyes and taken her valuables out of her house in village, by early afternoon we were in Niamey, having gotten there twice as fast as any of us had ever remembered…I remember wondering if the tires could grip any harder onto the gravel and banging my head on a metal bar at every washout.
Fast-forward another five or six days, past an amazing Thanksgiving potluck which made many sick - myself violently so - daily doses of rumor and fact, new volunteers piling into town every day, and ever-mounting stress, and we arrive at ‘judgement day’. I guess I call it that in retrospect, as I assumed that on this eve of our potential re-departure for villages, that only those in the Tahoua/Konni region would be addressed in the Country Director’s lifting of precautionary restrictions. Unfortunately, in a stroke of Microsoft Word, the villages of mine and three other PCVs were gone in Peace Corps terms, our whole cluster shut down indefinitely, hostel included. A few other high-profile posts were also removed, the current training stage was erased, and my stagemates from one of the eastern regions began proposing a mass exodus out of this place. To make matters worse, two further security issues arose over the weekend and last night (I’m now writing on Friday) near the Mali border (look it up on BBC). With dozens of us in town, we could not help but to play off of each others pessimism about the weeks and months to come.
Now, with most of the PCV populace out of town, begins the long and drawn out search for a new village. It looks certain I will remain an volunteer, and an education volunteer as well, but it also looks likely that I will move to a new region, learn a new language, have new neighbors and a new set of working conditions. It may seem hard to take, but it is a chance at a do-over: to begin the integration process anew, drawing upon Larba and all its challenges and blessings. I hope this time to find a host family instead of falling back on the chief, to work harder to find friends my own age, to engage the movers and shakers of my town consistently and expectantly, to explore the new options on the NGO-front and work with my PCV neighbors (who won’t be COSers any time soon). Things are looking up, and even if PC Niger is living on borrowed time, I plan on making the most of every minute of it…even if those minutes may not come until January (or maybe February, considering my Inter-service training is slated for most of January) for Niger’s PCV refugees. For now I might play the tourist around Niamey a bit, hopefully find a good connection at the right time to get loads of photos up, work on the hostel and maybe even consolidate my French and English blogs into a whole new look (I might switch to Wordpress, but don’t tell Blogspot!), because “Along the Sirba” just doesn’t quite cut it anymore.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Countdown to T-day
Thanksgiving approaches, but here in Niamey we will celebrate it on Sunday. I may have mentioned that I didn't expect to spend Thanksgiving in Niamey. However, circumstances have changed (which I am not permitted to disclose at this time). As I will be in Niamey for the next little while here I hope to write a more complete posting once my future plans find a solid footing...for the time being I can only direct you to my superiors at the dept. of state: http://niamey.usembassy.gov/niger/warden_messages.html
Take care and talk to you soon,
Thomas
p.s. Look out for facebook photos and possibly on google picasa soon
Take care and talk to you soon,
Thomas
p.s. Look out for facebook photos and possibly on google picasa soon
Sunday, November 1, 2009
A few more pics
Hello everyone,
I have a blog post ready to go, right as I'm about to head back out to village from a Niamey Halloween. Unfortunately, it is not in the right format for this computer and yesterday I was unable to connect on my own computer. Here are a few pics to keep you busy...
-Thomas
Folks gathered at the central mosque for the end of Ramadan (my chief is in front at far right)
Our stage seated at the swearing-in ceremony at the Ambassador's residence
The Grand Mosque of Niamey, as seen from the road
PC personnel gathered at the Gotheye mayor's office for the installation of two PCV's in this commune (one of which is me).
I have a blog post ready to go, right as I'm about to head back out to village from a Niamey Halloween. Unfortunately, it is not in the right format for this computer and yesterday I was unable to connect on my own computer. Here are a few pics to keep you busy...
-Thomas
Folks gathered at the central mosque for the end of Ramadan (my chief is in front at far right)
Our stage seated at the swearing-in ceremony at the Ambassador's residence
The Grand Mosque of Niamey, as seen from the road
PC personnel gathered at the Gotheye mayor's office for the installation of two PCV's in this commune (one of which is me).Monday, October 19, 2009
A few more pics
I've been back in Niamey for the weekend and have to head back out today as the legislative elections get underway tomorrow. Here's a few pics from this past month, enjoy.
-Thomas
Sunset over the Sirba as it begins to dry up and leave these cool cliffs behind.
No touching up here- that's really how humid it is right now...don't worry hot and dry season is right around the corner.
At the primary school with the director and some of his kids.
Bathers, laundry washers and fishers using the Sirba for all it's worth. That line of sticks in the river act as a sort of cage for catching fish.
On a rocky (clay) outcropping overlooking my bend in the Sirba.
Sunsetting and shepherd boys holding up their beating sticks off to the right in a sign of defiance
Team Tillaberi for the CYE/MCD Stage of 2009-2011. Yay! We made it to swear-in!
-Thomas
Sunset over the Sirba as it begins to dry up and leave these cool cliffs behind.
No touching up here- that's really how humid it is right now...don't worry hot and dry season is right around the corner.
At the primary school with the director and some of his kids.
Bathers, laundry washers and fishers using the Sirba for all it's worth. That line of sticks in the river act as a sort of cage for catching fish.
On a rocky (clay) outcropping overlooking my bend in the Sirba.
Sunsetting and shepherd boys holding up their beating sticks off to the right in a sign of defiance
Team Tillaberi for the CYE/MCD Stage of 2009-2011. Yay! We made it to swear-in!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)