April 2009 - Stories and Reflections

A Battle of Epic Proportions – One Woman and an Army of Ants: It was the end of another blistering hot day and I was finally getting home after an evening with my Nigerien family. I had no more than stuck the key into the lock on my front door when the phone rang. I got the door opened and answered my cell phone. It was my parents making their weekly phone call. I quickly dumped my things and was getting ready to go back outside to chat with my parents (it echoes really badly inside my square, cement house) when I spotted a big ol’ cockroach on my screen door. I quickly told my mama that I needed to kill the creature quickly and asked her to bear with me for a second. This nasty, prehistoric looking insect was not going down easy and I proceeded to jump about the house chasing the cockroach with a flip-flop as it ran all willy-nilly around my feet. Needless to say, there was some screaming, a lot of missed attempts at smashing the cockroach, and a lot of ridiculous giggling as I hopped about the house. But, after a few misses, I was finally able to squish the roach and properly dispose of it in the yard. With the cockroach problem solved for the night, I went out on my raised patio and chatted with my parents. I put the bug incident out of my mind, but I should have known that there was more to come – the cockroach at my door was surely a sign…

I finished chatting with my parents and by that time it was about 10pm and I was ready to bathe and go to sleep. I went through my usual nightly routine of getting everything ready so that all I had to do after bathing was turn off the lights and climb into my mosquito net. I went into my indoor bucket bath area and inspected and detected, looking for any unsavory creatures that needed squishing. I didn’t see any bugs, but I did notice that there was an odd pile of dirt built up just inside the drain hole from my indoor bucket bath area to the outside of my house. I looked at the pile of dirt for a moment and tried to decide why it was there. Perhaps Mabel was sniffing around the hole earlier that day and she snorted causing dirt to fly in the hole. Or perhaps the frogs that tend to take up residence in my bath area during the heat of the day were back and they brought the dirt in with them. Or maybe it was some sort of insect. I decided to go outside and see what I could see from that angle.

I walk outside and around the side of my house and see a sea of giant ants. These aren’t your average, everyday breed of ants that are almost microscopic in size. These are ants on steroids! They’re about an inch in length and there are at least three different types of ants within the colony: there are slightly smaller ones that are very light in color and tend to blend in with the sand; there are medium sized ones with huge black heads and clearly visible pincher-like things, red middles, and black rear ends; and then there are the ones that are at least an inch long with wings.

So, now I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either I brave a bath and disturb the ants with the run-off from my bucket bath and risk being covered with ants while stark naked. Or, I take some Rambo, the insecticide used in Niger, and Rambo the heck out of the little beasts, risking them overtaking my bath area in their desperation to escape the Rambo and the confusion of their death throws. I opt for the latter, grab my Rambo, and powder every ant hole I see. When finished, I go back inside to see what’s going to happen and sure enough, hundreds upon hundreds of ants start pouring into my bathroom. And of course, they’re running around all willy-nilly because they’re in the process of dying.

Those of you who know me, know that this just isn’t my idea of a good time. I don’t like bugs and no matter how small they might be or how well I have adjusted to life amongst the insects in Niger, they still give me the heeby-jeebies. So, I want you to picture this, it’s 10pm, most Nigeriens are sleeping, and there I am in my bath area with a flip-flop in one hand and a broom in the other. One woman against literally hundreds of enormous ants. I’m standing in the middle of my bathroom floor, smacking ants as thy get close, brushing them down off of the walls, and making sure that none of them get past me and make their way into the main room of my house. This epic battle lasted for an hour and forty minutes. For an hour and forty minutes I stood in that bathroom smacking ants and cleaning up the carcasses until finally they stopped pouring into my bathroom.

Needless to say, I was victorious and finally was able to take a nice, cool bucket bath in peace with only one stray ant trying to come in my bath area and disturb me. I finished bathing and got ready to hit the sack as it was half past midnight and I knew Mabel was not going to care how late I was up and would start braying like clockwork at 6:30am.

Before heading outside to climb in bed, I gave my house a quick once over with my flashlight to make sure the ants hadn’t infiltrated the rest of the house. I shone the light into the room that I keep my clothes and bathroom supplies in and to my utter disappointment, I see that the battle is not over. This time it’s not ants that are challenging me to a dual, it’s a centipede. Centipedes are nasty looking creatures, they’re fast, and their sting is immensely painful. So, of course, I’m freaked out and angry at the world for putting so many unpleasant beings in my home.

I grab my trusty bug-killing flip-flop and prepare for the second battle of the night. This little creepy-crawler puts up quite a fight and zips left and right along the base of the wall. I see an opening for a good whack and I nail him, but it was as if he didn’t feel a thing. He continues to dart left and right. Suddenly he sticks is head in a groove and luckily for me, he’s just like an ostrich. He thinks he’s safe, but to his surprise, I give him another solid whack. This time I know he felt it, but he’s still zipping around as if unfazed. By this point, I am pissed. I’ve given the little intruder two good whacks, but to no avail. I’m ready to end this fight once and for all, so I gather my courage and I give him one heck of a smack. This time I know he’s not going to bounce right back, but the job still isn’t complete. I quickly give him one more really strong smack and finally he’s still. I watch him for a moment, brush him across the floor, but it is finally done. I conquered the beast! But seriously, four whacks?!?! Are you kidding me? Who on Earth decided that I was fit to volunteer in Niger, West Africa where the bugs have mutated into intelligent, fighting machines?

I may have won this battle, but the war is surely not over. The ants will rise again, but I can guarantee you (and them) that they will fall again!

Hot Season Observations:

1. Ducks don’t like the heat – my friends, the two women I eat lunch with each day, have two ducks in their concession, a male and a female. With the temperature topping out at nearly 120°F or more daily and the sun beating down on Niger through a cloudless sky, the desert sand is so hot that it will literally burn your skin. One afternoon on a scorching hot day, I went over to my friends’ house for lunch and sat down to chat with the ladies. During a lull in the conversation, I began to watch the ducks as they walked from their tiny pool of water across the hot sand to the muddy patch of earth just outside my friends’ bathing area. The ducks journey consisted of about 20 yards across the sweltering sand and as I watched them embark on their daring excursion, braving the hot sand just to nibble on some fresh green algae near the bathing area, I was overcome by laughter. A duck’s webbed feet are not immune to extreme temperatures and these two ducks certainly felt the blistering heat beneath their feet. These are large ducks, bigger than any you will find on the lagoons in Alameda, and thus they have very large feet. What this amounts to is a great deal of surface area that must touch the red-hot sand. In order to safely reach their destination, the ducks began to do a “hot sand dance” and hopped, to the best of a duck’s ability, toward the smorgasbord of algae awaiting them. They looked like a couple of scuba divers, with flippers on their feet, trying to run across the beach. Their little duck butts wagged to and fro, ever more pronounced than usual. (If you’ve ever seen the stage performance of Mamma Mia, I’m sure you can picture the scuba divers running around with flippers on their feet.) Perhaps I am simply starved for entertainment, but I was nearly rolling with laughter at the sight of these silly ducks with their waggling behinds. My laughter in turn caused my friends to laugh as they often think I am slightly bizarre simply because our cultures are so different.

Maybe you had to be there in order to fully understand the comedy of the moment, but when you’re sitting in 120°F heat, sweating so profusely that you’re salting your food as the sweat drips from every pore in your body, you take whatever laughter you can get.

2. The maximum temperature I have seen recorded in my area this hot season is 130.5°F. That’s ridiculously hot by the way!

3. Sweating is a constant during hot season. I wake up in the morning and the simple act of rolling over to tell Mabel, “Just five more minutes,” (she starts hollering at about 6:30am) creates beads of sweat on my forehead. During the day, I keep a bandana with me at all times so that I can wipe the sweat away from time to time because I’m dripping on or in everything I touch. I come home at the end of a very hot and sweaty day to bathe and hit the sack, and I’m still sweating! I bathe with some cool water from my guula (a ceramic water container) and as soon as I stop dumping cool water over my body, I start to sweat. I get ready for bed, all the while dripping with sweat, and climb into my mosquito net. After about a half an hour of lying completely still and staring up at the stars or reading a book, the beads of sweat finally disappear. And then, a blissful night of limited sweating. However, some nights I sweat throughout the night as well. The moral here is this: during hot season, I sweat virtually 24 hours a day.

“Festival d’Anglais” – Lessons Learned: On May 1, 2009, I finished my first major project in Niger. I ran a month-long “English Festival” with the students at the college/lycée (C.E.S.) in my village, which is the equivalent of an American middle/high school. I did after-school tutoring with four different grade levels in English for one week each. The goal was to help prepare the students in Troisieme (freshmen equivalent) and Terminale (senior equivalent) for their examinations at the end of the year and to help supplement what the other two grade levels had been learning in class.

The project was by no means 100% successful and did not run as smoothly as I would have hoped, but it was an excellent learning experience and helped me to see how best to run a similar project the following school year. Despite many set-backs, there were equally as many things that made every bit of my preparation for and commitment to the project worth every minute:

During the first week of the project, I was able to get to know an amazing group of 11 Troisieme students. They were incredibly motivated students, worked extremely hard, and I could tell they yearned for the extra help with their English. They enjoyed the tutoring sessions so much that they asked the following week if they could have more classes with me. There excitement about the project was infectious and with this particular group, I know that I actually reached them and that the work I had done with them was worthwhile.

Through preparing for and running the “English Festival,” I was able to develop excellent relationships with my counterparts and other staff at the C.E.S. in Birni. My main counterparts are four English teachers, two men and two women. They are the most amazing teachers and have so much passion for what they do. Teachers, let alone good teachers, are hard to come by in Niger and I truly believe that my village is one of the luckiest villages as it has some incredible teachers for all subjects. My counterparts speak very good English and they are so grateful for any help I give them or their students. I feel that I have 100% of their support in anything that I do and they are willing to guide me every step of the way. Words don’t seem to do them justice, they are just the most amazing people and every single day that I leave the C.E.S., I reflect on just how lucky I am to be able to work with them.

There are many things about this project that I wish had gone better, but the lessons I learned from this first attempt are invaluable and will make me all the more successful in the year to come. I look forward to the next school year and all the doors that have opened to me as a result of this project.

Internalizing the Thinking of Others: I have now been living in Niger for 10 months and I can comfortably say that I have integrated into Nigerien culture – I speak both a local language and the national language, I follow Nigerien customs and cultural norms, and I have become a valued member of my community. With this level of integration comes a great deal less daily stress, I no longer fight intense bouts of homesickness, and I now feel as though I can turn to villagers when I need emotional support or guidance. It is because of this level of integration into Nigerien culture that I have become truly happy and content in Niger.

However, with this level of integration comes new struggles and a new consciousness. Niger is a Muslim country and there are very strict gender roles. Men are the bread-winners, they are the heads of the household, and they are treated with the utmost of respect. Women are stay-at-home mothers, they are the ones who run the household, and they are not meant to be seen or heard.

While many Nigerien women have begun to challenge this oppressive system, many people still cling to these rigid gender roles. No matter how successful a woman may be in her education or career, she is still treated as a second-class citizen and men remain the most highly praised and respected.

After finally finding my place within Nigerien culture and within my village, I find that I am now significantly more conscious of this gender divide. I have become aware of the fact that I have begun to internalize this thinking that women are less than men. In social situations with men, I often find myself sort of cowering away from them and I allow them to treat me as though I am not the educated, successful, intelligent, and capable woman that I am. I allow men to completely disregard me while standing in a queue and move ahead of me. I allow men to climb onto a bus or bush taxi ahead of me even though I have been standing there, waiting patiently for my turn to board. I allow men to ask personal questions and probe into my personal life without reprimanding them. Worst of all, I allow men to treat me as though I am not as worthy of their respect as any other man.

This is something I would never allow to happen in the U.S. I am certainly not the most independent or strong woman, but I am confident in who I am and I believe that I deserve to be treated with respect. I try not to allow anyone to walk all over me and I will not be made to do anything I don’t want to do. I am proud of my accomplishments and I am proud of the woman I have become. That being said, I would never allow anyone, especially a man, to treat me with disrespect and to make what I have accomplished in my lifetime insignificant.

As I have become conscious of this internalization of a sexist system in Niger, I find that I view myself much differently than I used to when living in the U.S. My self-esteem and my pride in my accomplishments is no longer what it used to be. Sometimes I question whether I ever was the person I used to see myself as. I have started to simply accept the way I am treated by Nigerien men, thinking that I must deserve it. I know this thinking is not only unhealthy, but unrealistic as well, but when you live within a system that pounds this kind of thinking into you every moment of every day, you begin to believe it.

Part of the reason that I can’t combat this thinking as successfully in Niger as I would be able to in the U.S. is the language barrier. I simply do not have the vocabulary to shame a man who treats me poorly or acts inappropriately towards me. In the states, I would call a man out for mistreating me and I would make him feel like the scum of the Earth. I would stand up for myself and use my words to make sure there is no question about how I feel about the situation. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the language skills and the ability to think as quickly on my feet in a second or third language to make my feelings known.

Being conscious of this internalization is both detrimental and beneficial to me. Unfortunately, I am conscious of the way I am feeling and it can sometimes get me down. But, knowing what is causing me to feel the way I do gives me the opportunity to consciously try and change my thinking and to try to keep this system from stripping me of my pride and self-confidence.

Only in Niger…:

Only in Niger would you be in the middle of teaching an English lesson when the class is disrupted by a young goat walking into the classroom and making a great deal of racket.

Only in Niger would a child be squatting on the side of the road relieving himself in one form or the other and trying desperately to get you to say hello in response to his incessant “fofos.” (Maybe I’m just crazy, but I’m not all that interested in greeting a child who is squatting on the side of the road.)

Only in Niger would you be willing to plunge your hand into a communal bowl of food with four children who don’t use soap when washing their hands.

Only in Niger would you continue eating from a bowl that a baby chick just walk through and pecked around a bit.

Only in Niger would you sleep outside, under the stars, just 15ft. away from a pooping, braying, donkey.

Only in Niger would you be trying to give an English lesson with nearly 20 guinea fowl outside the window squawking obnoxiously.

Only in Niger would you be cooking at home with friends, using a can of Off! bug spray to roll out your home-made tortillas.

Only in Niger would your feet get so dirty that you can no longer distinguish between tan lines and dirt lines.

Only in Niger would you come home to hundreds of giant ants in your bathroom and then proceed to spend an hour and forty minutes trying to kill them so that you can take a bucket bath.

Only in Niger would you arrive at your house at about 9:30pm to find a scorpion waiting to greet you as you open the door.

Only in Niger are you able to buy a complete meal made from naturally grown and harvested goods for $1.50.

Only in Niger would you witness a chugging contest for a two-year-old little boy. No, he wasn’t chugging alcohol, this is a Muslim country and alcohol is frowned upon for people of all ages. But, he was chugging a cup of coco (a millet drink) to a chorus of children and adults alike chanting, “Wey, wey! Wey, wey!” And upon successfully drinking all of the cup’s contents, he threw his arms in the air and yelled, “Gagner!” (which means to win in French). It was absolutely precious!

Just Because It’s Funny…: I just don’t think it’s fair that none of you get to see just how ridiculous my hair is on a daily basis. So, once again, here’s a little taste of how things are going on the hair-growth front:

My first set of cornrows in Niger!

Lookin' vraiment Nigerien!

And then, I took the braids out...

I was going for a sort of Don King/Side-Show Bob look.

How'd I do?

The morning after braid removal.

I look like a troll doll...

...and to think this took no preparation at all.

The portrait of beauty!

Despite how crazy my hair may be, it is finally growing out and I can honestly say that I am finally starting to feel feminine again. I know that my femininity and my identity as a woman should not be wrapped up in my hair, but for me it is – in my world, long hair is the epitome of femininity. And slowly but surely, my hair, and thus my femininity, is returning!