November 2009: Part I

Seriously, who could possibly resist this face? I may have mentioned this before, but I plan on hiding him in my suitcase and whisking him off to California with me after my service ;)

It's the beginning of November 2009 and the date that marks my being in Niger for 16 months (November 10th) is rapidly approaching. Sometimes I feel as though it was just yesterday that I arrived in Niger, wide-eyed and eager to find out just what it was that I had signed up for. And other times, I look back and I can feel just how far I’ve come and how much I have learned and grown in the past 16 months.

The last few months have been relatively uneventful and truly quite enjoyable for me. School has been on “summer vacation” since the end of June, so I have been using my time in village to connect with my friends and spend quality time with them. I know that with the start of the new school year, my schedule is going to be rather hectic (by Nigerien standards), so I wanted to take advantage of the time off from school activities to just hang out with my friends in my village.

Despite the lull in work activities, I still have some great stories to share! On to the good stuff…

Exceptional Service Award: Each year, Peace Corps volunteers and staff are asked to nominate volunteers that they feel have met the following criteria:

Volunteers are the heart of Peace Corps. Highly successful Volunteers clearly embody the three goals of Peace Corps by:

1. Working conscientiously and productively on sustainable activities and projects with their communities.
2. Integrating completely into their communities and Niger through acquiring solid language and cross cultural skills, including working professionally with Nigerien staff and colleagues.
3. Expressing the cultural, social, and development realities of Niger and Nigeriens to other Americans, including helping trainees and other Volunteers as they learn to work and live in Niger.

The most exceptional and successful Volunteers usually have the following characteristics:

1. Cultural integration in all aspects of their service - behavior, respect for Nigerien culture, sensitivity to Nigerien cultural norms, dress, etc.
2. Work ethic, skills, creativity, and patience to accomplish sustainable work in the field.
3. Professionalism - collaborator, work as a team member, willing to negotiate, provide honest and are open to feedback/dialogue.
4. Maturity and responsibility towards their commitments.
5. Peer support - willing to listen and support trainees and other Volunteers while modeling appropriate cultural integration and work ethics.
6. Flexibility - able to adjust to pace and approach of living and working in Niger.

There are approximately 120 volunteers serving in Niger at any given time and of those 120 volunteers, about 5-10 are given an award for “Exceptional Service.” On September 8th, I was informed that I had been nominated for and received an “Exceptional Service Award.” This means that my fellow volunteers and/or the staff here in Niger believe that I fit the above criteria and that they recognize the good work that I am doing here.

I try not to let recognition from others, whether it be from my family, friends, or within the Peace Corps, be the motivating factor in all that I am doing here. However, I must say that it feels AWESOME to have received this award and to think that my peers and my supervisors believe in and support the projects I am undertaking while in Niger.

Receiving this award not only reflects upon my efforts, but upon the efforts of everyone at home who has supported me through all the ups and downs, successes and failures, good times and bad. Without all of you, I wouldn’t have the strength and will to successfully complete my Peace Corps service and I am so very grateful to each and every one of you. I wish there was some way to repay you all, but for now please know how truly appreciative I am to have such amazing people in my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Book Project Update: As of today, the website says that we have raised $1407.00 towards the purchase of English textbooks for the middle/high school in my village! Looks like we are well on our way to reaching our goal of $3462.00.

For those of you who may not know about this project, here is a brief overview for you and instructions for donating if you are interesting in helping out:

One of the most difficult challenges facing the Nigerien education system is a lack of basic educational materials, such as textbooks and general school supplies. Because textbooks are not available to teachers or students, teachers must use valuable class time to copy lessons onto the blackboard for the students, resulting in long periods of downtime between lessons. This leads to a lack of discipline in the classroom and students frequently lose focus. The goal of this project is to provide the Complexe d’Enseingement Secondaire (CES) in my village, a combined middle and high school, with English textbooks and to establish sustainable methods for the care and usage of these books, thereby improving English language education for both current and future students.

This project was born out of an expressed need by the English department at the CES in my village. Upon beginning my work with the CES, it was brought to my attention repeatedly that one of the greatest problems facing the school, and the English department in particular, is a lack of proper education materials.

By providing the CES with English textbooks, teachers will be better equipped to teach the material and scores on the BEPC, a test that contains extensive English portions and must be passed in order to continue to the next phase of education, will improve. With very few Nigerien students passing this critical exam, access to textbooks will help to increase that number.

Should this project not be implemented, the CES will continue to struggle to properly educate its students, especially in the English language. Scores on examinations and the BEPC will continue to plummet resulting in fewer students continuing their education. Class time will continue to be wasted because in order to teach a class as a whole, a teacher must take the time to copy lessons onto the blackboard. Without these textbooks, students will continue to face the difficult task of trying to learn a second language without the proper materials.

Here are the steps to take to donate to my project:

1. Go to the Peace Corps website: http://www.peacecorps.gov/
2. Click on the Donate Now link on the left
3. Type my last name or the project number, 683 172, into the search box
4. Scroll down a little and you will see my project, which they have titled: English Textbooks
5. Enter in the amount you would like to donate, click donate, and then follow the directions for entering your information.

It’s as easy as that!

Rainy Season and Harvest Updates: After reporting such doom and gloom in my last blog entry, I thought I would give a brief update as to how the rainy season progressed. During the month of August, the rains picked up a bit and in my area the rains were enough to make a decent crop yield. The same cannot be said for most of Niger and unfortunately crop yields in general have been very low this year. While things in my area were not too bad, Niger as a whole faces a difficult year food shortages and hunger.

After the bulk of rainy season passed, we harvested the grains, peanuts, and veggies that were planted in my yard. I made peanut butter from the peanuts I grew and Mabel will enjoy nightly treats of the grains grown in my yard.

This is what my yard looked like before harvest…full of delicious foods.

These are all of the crops harvested from my yard: millet (long stalks), sorghum (redish grains), and peanuts (some are still on the plants and others have been picked). Everything is laid out to dry in the sun.

The bucket on the left is full of all the millet grown in my yard. The bowl in the middle is the sorghum. And the Nescafé can and jar are full of the peanut butter I made with my peanuts.

This is gourgi, a vegetable similar to a cucumber. I had a total of six plants and I could pick this many at least every other day. They were extremely fruitful.

Farming in my yard during the rainy season and reaping the benefits of my efforts in growing these crops has really encouraged me to continue to grow my own food whenever possible. I plan to garden during the cold season and will plant lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, and green peppers. I’m also having some seeds sent from the states and will try to see if I can get sweet corn and snow peas to grow here. I look forward to working in my garden each day and getting to eat all of the veggies that I cultivate. I hope that despite all of the distractions and the hustle and bustle of American life, I will continue to have the desire and effort it takes to garden once I am home again.

The Fall of an Empire: Ok, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but something did fall. I had gone into the capitol to celebrate the swearing-in of our newest group of volunteers in Niger. I was out of my village for about a week in order to take part in all the festivities and to finish up some work on project proposals.

One afternoon while in the capitol, I received a text from my best friend in my village. I had trouble understanding what it was that she was trying to say, but the gist of it was that something had fallen. What that something was, I had no idea, but I wasn’t interested in worrying about it at the time.

I went into my regional capitol before returning to my village and realized that I was going to be out of my village for a little longer than anticipated due to work needs. I called my Baba so that I could let him know that I was going to be gone a little longer and to make sure that everything was all set for him to continue taking care of Mabel. After talking logistics, my Baba tried to explain to me exactly what had fallen at my house, but again, I struggled to understand what he was trying to tell me and I told him to just leave it until I returned home. I later had the Peace Corps Program Assistant in my region call my Baba in order to find out exactly what had happened.

As it turned out, a massive storm had hit while I was away and an entire chunk of my concession wall had fallen. The back of my concession was now wide open and accessible to the public and any wandering sheep, cows, or goats looking for a little something to eat. Once he was given the go-ahead, my Baba sprang into action, swiped the grass mats used to provide Mabel with shade, and created a temporary wall for me. The temporary wall not only provided me with privacy and security, but it served to protect my precious crops from the furry, four-legged, scavengers roaming the roads.

Now that the rains have ceased and the weather is beginning to dry out, I can begin to start the process of having my walls repaired. It will be a bit of a process as a government official from my village is responsible for the upkeep of my property and will have to be willing to pay for the work to be done. Then, I will have to find the best group of men to do the work for the least amount of money. Once the payment and labor are in place, we will have to find the materials to fix the walls – mud bricks and mud. Although having my walls repaired may take a while, when all is said and done, I will have a beautiful concession with plenty of privacy and security.

Meet Oscar…the Worm: It was a day like any other – I woke up to the sound of Mabel screaming at the top of her lungs, did my morning chores, and sat down to have a cup of hot cocoa and read. Suddenly, I notice an intense itching sensation on the side of my right foot, near my pinky toe. I begin to scratch – the kind of scratching that brings instant relief and feels so good – and notice that the bump that has swelled on my foot is a little unusual. It’s not the typical lump created by mosquito bites and the lump itself is sort of, well, lumpy. It’s a lumpy lump, if you will. Anyways, after some good scratching, the itching ceased, and I continued about my business.

A week or so went by and nothing much had changed. My lumpy lump was still there and continued to itch. Finally, I started to wonder if perhaps this lumpy lump wasn’t exactly normal. It was a resilient little lump and it didn’t seem to fade away like a standard insect bite. Despite my concern, I decided it must not be all that serious as it hadn’t grown and it wasn’t causing me any pain.

One night while at my “family’s” house for dinner, my lumpy lump started to itch like crazy and my itching antics attracted the attention of everyone in the family. I showed them my foot and my friend essentially cried out, “Holy cow, that’s a worm!” What followed was a great deal of horror stories about others who had had the worm and the process Nigerien doctors went through to kill them – namely, trying to track down the worm’s head and sticking a pin in it. As I’m sure most of you can imagine, I was starting to freak out a bit. I thought that the thing that had taken up residence in my foot was an actual worm and that I was going to have to have it removed. As it turned out, it wasn’t a real worm at all, it was simply a parasite called Cutaneous Larva Migrans.

Once I had a better idea of what was in my foot, I contacted the doctor and he said I would need to take some pills and use a cream in order to resolve the issue. He arranged to have one of my Peace Corps neighbors deliver the medications to me, but when they arrived, all I received was the cream. There had been a misunderstanding and I was going to have a wait another few days until the pills could be brought to me. Needless to say, I had to live with this little creature for a while and thus decided that it deserved a name. I named him Oscar and whenever I was asked about how my foot or the worm were doing, I would simply reply that Oscar was doing well.

So, I began using the cream immediately – I was to put it on the affected area twice a day. After about three applications of the cream, I began to notice that my lumpy lump had shifted its location. The little rascal was running from the cream! I started to put the cream on Oscar’s new location and within a few applications, he had shifted his location again.

By this point, I had had enough. I was fit to be tied and about ready to strangle Oscar when the pills finally arrived. I started taking the pills and try as he might to run from the cream, Oscar’s strength was zapped by the pills and he was no longer able to fight his impending death. After five days of pills and cream, Oscar finally succumbed to his ailments and could no longer call my foot his home. I think it’s pretty clear after 16 months in Niger that if there is something to be caught or contracted here, I am going to catch or contract it. So, stay tuned for the next adventure in the world of my health.

As a brief aside, I thought I would mention that the pills I was taking to rid my body of a parasite had the words “Jesus Lives” stamped very neatly into each pill. I’m not at all sure exactly where these pills were purchased, but that’s not exactly the thing one wishes to see written on their anti-parasitic medications. I was sufficiently creeped out!

Hitchhiking: One of my favorite ways to travel around my region and into the capitol is by hitchhiking. And, believe it or not, it is easily one of the safest ways to travel in Niger – the massive Greyhound-like buses tip over, bush taxis are so packed full of people, animals, and baggage that if an accident were to happen, no one would live to tell about it, and riding motorcycles is strictly prohibited (not too mention they’re the most dangerous form of Nigerien transportation). So, if I have somewhere to go, I grab my bag and head out to the road in front of my Baba’s house (the radio station next door to my house) and wait for private cars to pass in the direction I’d like to go.

This method of catching a ride isn’t available to most people. I have two things going for me that make it much easier to get picked up: I’m an American and I’m a woman. It’s probably the one and only time that being a woman in Niger is an advantage, so I have no guilt in playing the female card for this purpose.

Throughout the past year, I have caught many free rides and have met many different people. It’s actually a really cool way to meet new people – people I would never have met otherwise – and it sparks some very interesting conversations. I met a couple of young men around my age who are teachers and had an amazing conversation with them about the differences between Niger and America during the 30 minutes it took to get to my regional capitol. I met a couple men who were traveling into the capitol of Niger from Diffa, the easternmost region in Niger, and talked to them about my work, about the Peace Corps, and about learning two languages while here. I met a friend of my Baba’s who is a driver for a local NGO who brought me from my house straight to the door of the Peace Corps hostel in the capitol (this never happens). One of the last rides I caught from my regional capitol to my village was a brand new Jeep that still had new car smell! The guys must have thought I was sick, or crazy, because I just kept inhaling over and over trying to soak up that new car smell. New car smell beats the heck out of dirty, run-down, full of sweaty, stinky people and animals smell!

While most of my rides are safe, uneventful, and pleasant, there are some times when I “get what I paid for.” Since I’m not paying for the ride monetarily, there are times when I pay for it in uncomfortable or annoying conversation. I’d say at least 50% of the time, I end up having to have the “are you married?” and “you should marry a Nigerien!” conversations. But, while these conversations annoy me to no end, as I have gotten more adept at speaking Zarma, I have now learned to enjoy making up stories and lying when asked about my marital status. Some days, I have a fiancé in the U.S. Other days, I have a boyfriend in another region of Niger. And, if I happen to be really quick on my feet, I have a husband that lives with me in my village. Depending on which story I give, I am typically still asked for my phone number, so my latest strategy is to put my phone on silent, lie through my teeth, and tell them I simply don’t have a cell phone because they’re too expensive. The longer I’m here, the craftier I get, and I’ve finally learned how to play the game. (This is where I wish I could insert an evil laugh!)

L’Année Scolaire: It is finally that time of year again when students return to school and resume their studies. The schools year was expected to start on October 5th, but as per usual in Niger, things didn’t happen exactly as planned. The Nigerien government decided to completely alter the scheduling for secondary schools.

In previous years, secondary schools had classes Monday through Friday from the hours of 8:30am to 12:30pm and then again from 3:30pm to 6:30pm. This schedule made it easier for young girls to attend school and accomplish all of their daily chores at home. It was also beneficial to teachers whose families did not live in the village they taught in. It allowed them to return home on the weekends to spend time with their families.

This year, classes are to be held Monday through Saturday from 7:30am until 1:30pm. The government’s thinking in making this change was that it would allow students more time to study their lessons at home as well as completing their daily chores. While this change is better for the students, it puts greater strain on the teachers. Teachers who teach outside of their home village can only return home for a portion of each weekend. Because the classroom hours have been severely cut from previous years, teachers are struggling to figure out how to fit all the necessary curriculum into fewer class hours.

As with most things in Niger, this change was left until the last minute and schools found themselves at the start of the school year without a clear idea of how this change was supposed to be implemented. That being said, the start of the school year was postponed a week and even though classes are now in session, it will take more time for students, teachers, and staff alike to adjust to the change and get into the swing of things.

Despite all of the chaos at the start of the year, the CES (middle/high school) in my village has an excellent staff and will once again be an amazing group of people for me to work with. Three of my counterparts from last year are teaching English at the CES again and we have a couple new English teachers as well. We have already started collaborating for this school year and I am excited for all the great work we are going to do together in the coming months.
I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to work with such amazing people – people who are motivated and care about the work they are doing. The same cannot be said for other schools in other villages. Every time I go to the CES and chat with my counterparts I walk away thinking, “How did I get so lucky?” I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this before, but I definitely believe I was given the best post in Niger!

Bella Has a Baby Brother!: I would like to introduce all of you to the newest member of my animal kingdom here in Niger. This is Lincoln:

Lincoln was born at approximately 1:30pm on Wednesday, October 21, 2009. He joins his sister, Bella, along with Jacco and John Henry in the menagerie I have created in my village. Lincoln is a strapping young lad with striking coloring and was up on his feet within no time.