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.