Hey, it's a Bana!

Today I saw hippos! My friend’s parents recently came to Niger for a visit. Today they planned to do a boat ride and find hippos on the Niger River and invited some Peace Corps friends along. Hippos can be found along the Niger River as far south as Niamey. I’m not sure why they don’t hang out farther downstream. We didn’t have to travel far when one of the people on our boat spotted two hippos peaking their heads out of the water. When they saw the boat, they got suspicious and ducked under the water. Then, being very sneaky, one hippo at a time would poke his eyes and ears out of the water to check if we were still there. The men manning the boat had a few tricks to get the hippos to stick their heads out of the water. The hippos didn’t like when the boat engine was revved or when the men tapped the side of the boat. I snapped several pictures of the hippos from far away. But just when I let my guard down the bigger hippo swam about 10 feet from the boat and stuck his whole head out of the water. No picture but that was amazing. I don’t have my camera on me right now but soon I’ll add a hippo picture to the blog.

Hippo is “bana” (pronounced bong-a) in Zarma. They’re huge, violent, and are supposedly delicious. A volunteer living far north up the Niger River, where there are many, many hippos, once ate hippo meat that also fed the entire village.

This trip on the river to see hippos was a helpful reminder that I am in Africa! When I was on a boat in Niger's Park W, I saw six bathing elephants and a couple of baboons. Another time I was in a bus driving from the south towards Niamey and three giraffes ran across the road just like any old deer, or more Niger-appropriate, just like any old sheep. I wonder what the next animal will be!

Visiting the old "vill"

During the first week of September, I visited my old village. From December 17, 2008 to January 26, 2009 I lived in a village called Faria Beri, located about 120 km north of Niamey. After a kidnapping in January of European tourists on the Mali-Niger border, all the new volunteers on the roads north of Niamey were required to relocate. The Peace Corps director of Niger promised to let me visit Faria Beri after six months if no new kidnappings or terrorist activities occurred in Niger. Things have been quiet here (in relation to Al-Qaeda at least) and so I was granted permission to visit.

I wasn't sure if I could actually spend the night in my village. Apparently my counterpart (the guy I worked with in the community garden) moved closer to the road and my old hut is now the exoders' bachelor pad. For the first day I stayed with another volunteer who lives 5 km from Faria. We walked over to my village for the day. My counterpart asked me to come back and spend the night. So I roomed with his second wife for the next two days and hung out with my old friends. Most of Niger is fasting for Ramadan but despite this my counterpart and I took a walk to his farm and went to say hi to some people in a neighboring village. The millet in this area is much smaller than in my new area at the very southern tip of Niger because of drought and pest problems. Much of the millet I saw here had been ruined completely by caterpillars that eat the seeds in spirals up the millet head. When we went to the neighboring village, we happened to see the Agriculture Agent for the area and spent a long time talking to him.

It was overall a great trip and I was extremely thankful to my Peace Corps director for allowing me to visit (the only slight obstacle during the trip was that my old latrine had half collapsed and at times I was nervous it would collapse). When I left on January 26 for a doctor's appointment in Niamey, I thought I would be coming back the next day. Instead I was missing for a month and then the Peace Corps director of Agriculture came to my village without me to pack all my things. It was a miserable and traumatic time for the villagers and for me both. We were all extremely happy to see each other again.

My plan is to visit again in February at the end of Cold Season to help out with the garden harvest. When I lived there I spent hours every day in the community garden with the women's group and my counterpart and learned all kinds of things about gardening. But I left before any of the vegetables were ready to harvest. If I go back at the harvest, not only can I observe the harvest for the first time, I can eat tons of salads!

Ghana, Farming, Spirit Possessions

I have quite a few updates to make since my last blog article...two months ago! I did go to Ghana and sipped cold beverages by the water. It would have been much more ideal if the water wasn't full of discarded black bags that lapped the shore. Two of us walked into the water in Cape Coast but did not go farther than ankle-deep because a pair of shorts tangled around my foot and a wooden board hit my friend in the shin. Ghana is a surreal place for someone who just spent six months in the poorest country in the world. There is a tropical divide somewhere in the north of Benin/Togo/Ghana that separates "developed West Africa" from the rest. In the bus to Cotonou, Benin, I was shocked to see the forests of palm trees. Mango trees were everywhere, ripe with huge pink mangos. People didn't seem to know what to do with all their fruit. In Ghana, the highways were lined with stands selling huge watermelons every few meters. Another thing, Nigeriens love to point out to me (as a white person) that I'm an "anasara." The Ghanaian word for white person is "obruni" but I don't remember being called that once. Instead, street vendors will rip you off mercilessly and Rasta bros offer drum lessons and treat you as objects that they can handle without asking. I loved the weather in Ghana, the marked infrastructure (electricity, garbage collection, running water, and, evidently, functioning schools), seeing the ocean—no matter how dirty—and eating all kinds of new food. However, I also felt relieved that I would go back to Niger where I can speak a local language, where people respect me, and where strange men can't touch me.

Little did I know that Niger was falling apart in my absence. When I turned on my phone upon crossing the border from Benin, I received all kinds of frantic texts about the president dissolving the Parliament and several that just said "The Grand Marche is on fire." That is the shopping area in the center of town where thousands of established and shanty stores sell goods. With all the insanity, we were asked to leave Niamey and return to our villages; ideally the very night we had finished our 31 hour trip. I opted to leave the next day, you know, to save my sanity and all. I then visited several friends' villages and participated in a radio show about the difference between love relationships in Niger and the US. Finally, I returned to my village and almost immediately got the field that I had worked almost two months to get. For a week, I uprooted bushes and painstakingly weeded the plot. Then with incredible timing, right after I bought peanut seeds, the heavy rains came and a villager offered to plow my field for me with an ox plow. The next morning two women came to my field to help me plant the peanuts, plus hibiscus and sorghum that my village friends gave me. For about four hours we planted by digging holes in the loose ground with our feet, dropping in a pinch of seeds (only one peanut per peanut hole though), and covering the hole with the same foot. My two friends did a fast and flawless job. I was all over the place, zigzagging my lines. I'm self conscious that when the plants start to significantly grow, my lines will be incredibly crooked. But that doesn't matter now. The point is that I'm a farmer! What an incredible new chapter in my Peace Corps service. The political instability in the cities makes me nervous. I just hope that, like any other political problem in the history of Niger, it will blow over soon.

Then last week, I took a quick trip to the Konni region, the closest Hausa-phone area. One volunteer was hosting a possession ceremony in his dominantly animist village just outside of Konni ville. I was incredibly impressed by the start of the festivities. Two men played a calabash drum with claw-like drum sticks (drum claws?) and a fiddle made out of a gourd. The violin (called a "gourge") had a thick bow, like a bass bow, and the man played it in the crook of his arm. I hope to go to another one of the ceremonies soon and next time, I will try to buy one of these fiddles to take home. The musicians played for hours and only stopped once, ironically, to pray. Then the animist hosts brought out a big bag of clothes and asked three of the Peace Corps volunteers to dress up. There were cowry-shell vests and crowns and all kinds of beautiful skirts made of cloth and leather. During the actual possession, the possessed ones wore fabric that they held over their heads that I recognized as traditional Nigerien weaved cloth. In the Balleyara market, a fabric seller showed me this hand-woven fabric and explained that most households in the olden days only had one stretch of fabric. Everyone was naked until they needed to go out somewhere and would actually take the clothes from the current owners back. I asked the price of this fabric and the vendor just laughed and said there was no way that I could afford it. Imagine my surprise seeing the animists with several pieces of this fabric. I wonder how long they had owned this fabric. The actual possessions disappointed me. It felt staged for the benefit of the white tourists. In my own region and in smaller villages of Konni, there are daily animist events. I want to show up at a whim to one of these and see what the people do when no one's watching. It is still intriguing. But as of yet I'm not impressed.

Soon I'll head back to the bush to work on my small farm. Expect some tamed blog entries in the future. I plan to keep a low profile for a while.

Ghana- beaches, food, English, I'm there

In two days I have my first West African vacation! We’re towards the end of hot season in Niger. Instead of starting my field of peanuts and sorghum and the subsequent backbreaking labor that marks the beginning of rainy season, I felt it more appropriate to reward myself with a vacation. For two weeks I don’t have to crawl up a mango tree or sprawl out on a plastic mat to make the 130 degree weather feel like 110 degree weather. I will instead be in Ghana, intermittently sipping icy beverages on the beach and jumping into the ocean. Refreshed with the ocean air, sea salts, and delicious Ghanaian street food, I will return to my little haven at the southern tip of Niger to start my backbreaking labor of four months.

Ganji yo (Giraffes) in the Midst

Sometimes a broken down bus means that you get to see giraffes crossing the highway. Today I was on the way to Niamey from a friend’s house and the bus broke down about 20 km from my starting location. Another friend and I waited on the side of the road for about an hour and a half. It had been the most annoying stranded-on-the-side-of-the-highway experience so far because busses kept stopping for us, about five people would pile into two seats and there would be no more room for the two of us. This happened three times. Finally we scrambled onto one and headed to Niamey. I was drifting off to sleep about five minutes later when the bus began to slow down again. I thought, WHY MEEEE? and then I opened my eyes and saw that four full-grown giraffes had bounded across the highway in front of the bus. They began making their way into the bush on the other side of the road as we drove closer. They are huge! Well I guess most Americans have seen giraffes in zoos or maybe even in Calistoga. It was still cool to see them running around free. Free as a bush camel.

Easter Sunday: The day before the giraffe run-in I spent Easter with five friends from my new region. We wanted to dye eggs and hide them around my friend’s huge yard but couldn’t find any eggs. Or dye. Or places in the barren yard to hide the eggs. So instead we hung out all day singing along to Disney songs and then cooking chili (with macaroni! And Slim Jims!). After we were full and content we built a big bonfire in the middle of the yard and started to do a fire dance around it. The noise and screams of “ayayayayayay!” attracted the attention of the local boys who started climbing over the 8-foot walls to take a look. At one point a little girl walked into the yard and closed the corrugated iron door behind her. Little did she know that the door gets stuck and you have to push it open from the top. She got a little freaked out by the fire dance of six sparsely dressed white people and tried to open the door quietly to get out. The door wouldn’t open. She got more and more scared and banged on the door while looking at us with embarrassment and fright. The volunteer who owns the house went over to open the door for the girl, who was extremely grateful to zumbu (get out of there) as fast as she could. We ended the night with a freeze-dried pack of chocolate cheesecake and balloons.

One more thing, my bug situation has pretty much resolved itself (of course with my contributions and the help of the village women and chickens). The horrible ant situation from before my in-service training has cleared up almost entirely. There have also been no more spider problems. In all, my area is virtually bug free and I don’t even have mosquitoes like some other volunteers. However, in my region the rainy season is supposed to start at the end of this month. Then there is an “explosion.” Explosion of life. Explosion of green. Explosion of bugs. I’ll let you know if it’s all just hype. Boy I hope so.

I Live on a Mountain

I looked at my blog today and thought, what’s new to write? As if there was nothing to say! The last time I wrote, I hadn’t even moved into my new village. At the beginning of March the Assistant Program Country Director (APCD) of Agriculture took a bus up to my old village, packed up all my belongings, and moved them down to my regional capital, Dosso. I had to sort through my life and figure out from there what to bring to my new village. Wodin banda, after that, I took a break by eating lots of salad and watching the Departed and episodes of Dexter. The next day I was moved onto my mountain. The villagers gave me a happy welcome and looked on curiously as they saw how much stuff one white girl needs to survive.

For a few days I entertained myself by unpacking and making my house a home before running off to IST. In Niamey I bought a Tuareg leather-framed mirror and some pretty fabric. I nailed the mirror to my adobe brick walls and I sewed curtains for my two windows (not one but two!!!) and my door (which is the perfect height).

Bug story: It was either my first or second night in the village that the women crowded into my hut to see how I set everything up. All of a sudden a huge bug sprinted across the floor, over my friend Helima’s foot and under the bed. I freaked out, thinking that it was a scorpion, and tried to run out of the house. There were too many people at the doorway so I settled for cowering in the corner. The bug turned out to be a chariot spider. They are so big that scorpions hitch rides on their backs. It’s gross. Just nasty. Anyway, Helima smashed him and picked him up with her bare hands to convince me that they aren’t poisonous, just big. That taught me that bugs really do exist in Niger so I might want to be more careful. The next morning, a friend came to pay me a visit and I was talking to her with my back turned to my house. All of a sudden she looked past me and said in Zarma, “hmm, I believe there are many ants coming out of your walls.” I turned around and as if it was a nightmare, I saw a literal river of ants, huge red ants, pouring out of my hut walls. For the next three hours, I commissioned women, children and chickens to help me kill the ants. And for hours, rivers of these things just kept coming. I’m gone for three weeks for IST and my biggest fear is that the ants have conquered my hut as an above-ground annex to their colony.

The Treasure Map

My supervisor approached me today with a file of the previous volunteer who lived in my new village. She was a health volunteer from 2003 to 2005 and luckily for me she was extremely thorough. Is thorough the right way to describe her? Looking through the fat file of incredibly detailed quarterly reports and project proposals, I came across a folded map written on poster-size butcher paper. My jaw dropped when I saw that this was no ordinary map of the village. The girl had written down every man, woman and child’s first and last name, the location of their houses, walking paths and motor paths to other villages in the area with their distances in kilometers, and even the placement of mango trees and cows. I had this urge to hug the map and dance around. It was better than finding a treasure map. Armed with this map, I had just skipped months of memorizing names and places. On the second day of my visit to the village, I had taken an extensive tour with some of the women and a parade of little kids, but my own scribbled and frantic map was completely amateur next to this beautiful work of art. So for the past two hours I have been copying the map onto a regular-sized piece of paper to bring to village with me.

I will move to my new village this weekend. Then I will have one week to soak up as much info about the village that I can in time for “in-service training” next week. IST is a month-long training in Niamey to improve language skills and agricultural knowledge. I am expected to bring information about my new village to IST with ideas for potential projects and a list of activities I have already started. For the past two months, the other volunteers have been integrating into their communities, making friends, learning the language, and investigating the needs of their respective villages. For me, I have a week. This is not to say that I have it so much harder than the rest, it just means that I have to work fast during this next week to understand the needs of the village before I go to Niamey.

If all else fails, I can simply brandish my treasure map and blow everybodys' minds.

A New New Life in Niger

Maybe you’ve noticed that I have a change of address on the right side of the blog. So much has happened since I last wrote. At that time everything was up in the air and I didn’t know what to say. Now I have a better idea of my future in Niger so I can actually reflect and write it down. Some of you may have heard, though it is unlikely, that there were two incidences of kidnappings in Niger in the past couple months. Two Canadians were abducted near Niamey in December and last month four European tourists were taken at the border of Mali and Niger. The road where the latter disappeared leads directly to my market town. This caused great concern for my Peace Corps superiors who were worried that a white girl crossing the highway every day with a watering can might be an easy target for a passing kidnapper. It turns out that a faction of Al Quaeda based in Northern Africa has taken responsibility for both kidnappings. It may be useful to read this short BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7897484.stm. There is another article about terrorism in general in the Sahara that might be useful: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4749357.stm. So with this threat looming in the north of the country, the Peace Corps administration decided to move me to the top of a mesa 300 km south of my old village. The most devastating thing about the situation is that I can’t even go back to my old village to say goodbye or pack. My boss is driving up to my village to tell them what’s up and then throwing all my stuff in the car to have me pick and sort through in my new home. I just can’t wait for it all to settle. For the past month I have lived with a backpack’s worth of clothes and supplies hoping each day that I would be allowed back. Today I had a meeting with the top boss of Peace Corps Niger who assured me that if the situation stabilizes, I will be allowed to go back in a few months and visit my old village. In all honesty, I do love my new village and the people and even all the little children who are deathly afraid of me (Seriously all the little boys run screaming from me with terror in their eyes and tears and snot running down their faces). I guess the overarching lesson from this situation has been that my external environment is a reflection of my inner state of life. It doesn’t matter which village I’m in or what region I’m in, I can still be happy. I just replaced camels for palm trees and gardens for rocky mesa paths. Several other volunteers are in my same position of moving and seem to have similar tumultuous but positive experiences. In a way I’m glad this happened. Anything to help me grow.

One Month Anniversary

Hello everyone! I'm in Niamey, the capital after spending a full, uninterupted month in my village (not counting the times I went to nearby villages on market days). So what is it like "en brusse" as in out-in-the-middle-of-no-where Africa? Surprisingly comfortable. For anyone planning a visit to see me (and I'm expecting at least ONE of you to come see me! haha) I would say you need to spend at least one month in Niger to have an enjoyable experience. The first two weeks you will be sweating uncontrollably and will be in shock at the rough, dry terrain, loud domesticated livestock, and the truly inconvenient living conditions (i.e. having a hole as your toilet, a plastic bucket as your shower, flashlights as your electricity, and rickity bush taxis as your transportation). But these are the first two weeks. When this life style becomes the norm, you begin to notice the beauty of the people, their colorful culture and fashion, the Lion King-esque landscape, the big orange sun, the clear Milky Way, and soon the prayer call at the mosque at 5 am each morning will be music to your ears.

For people living with all the conveniences of "modern life" in America, it may seem to be impossible to live in a country like Niger. However, having lived here for almost exactly four months, I can say that people here are incredibly happy and bright. I myself can't stop smiling in my village. When little kids eyes light up when they see me walking back from the garden and say to one another "Fatiya ka!" (Fatiya came home!), I feel satisfied. When the women at the community garden teach me Zarma greetings and insist that I "hear" Zarma perfectly even through my protests, I'm satisfied. When my neighbor and work counterpart returns from the market with a bag of fried wheat dough, Fari Masa, or a stick of sugar cane, Arece, for me, I'm satisfied. There are some days after three hours in the garden and drawing my 100th bucket of water from the well that I think, "today is the day I'm going to pass out, isn't it?" But then those are also the days that I come back home and a friend has bought some Cincenas (friend bean balls, sooooooo good) for us to share. There are other days that I feel completely unproductive and upset with myself that I hadn't done more. Then I step out of my house and have an hour long, uninterupted conversation, albeit broken, in Zarma.

The people in my village often muse of how "sweet" America must be. And it is. I miss the US a lot and in a way I'm sorry to miss these historic times. However, America will be there for me in two years, most likely stronger and more satisfactory than when I left it, and Niger is where I want to be and where I need to be right now. I tell the people who want to go to the US that actually, it is Niger that's sweet for me.