Hi everyone who is taking the time to read this! I hope things in your part of the world are going well. The days continue to pass here in Niger, faster and faster it seems, and overall I’m doing really well. The last few days have been extremely windy and when I walk through town the taste of sand gets in my mouth and in the late afternoon the dust makes sitting outside chatting with neighbors a bit less pleasant than usual. This should soon be ending though, as hot season is right around the corner; while the temperature will increase drastically, the wind and dust storms are going to diminish which is good news. Things in Mayahi are going well. This fall I helped to start student governments in some of the elementary schools in my town. Each school elected a president and this president then chose a prime minister and filled different cabinet posts (Ministry of Health, Ministry of the Environment, etc.) By far, this has been the project I have enjoyed working on the most during my time here. All of the schools’ students are being introduced to basic principles of democracy, and the students forming each school’s government are gaining self-confidence and problem-solving skills while starting to actively participate in the management of their schools. This is inspiring to see, as typically the system focuses on rote memorization (a remnant from French colonization) and students here are not encouraged to be creative or really think critically. I attended one of the ministerial meetings at one of the schools this past week, and I left feeling really content. The school director asked each minister to talk about what their area of focus is and what sort of work they would like to do. He took the time to listen to each minister and asked questions of clarification to those who seemed unsure of what sorts of work they were supposed to do. Towards the end of the meeting, many of the students were comfortable enough to stand up and ask the director questions about problems they foresaw in their upcoming work. (This is encouraging as the teacher-student dynamic here is much more based on fear and authority than in the States). He answered each question clearly and with patience.
Adamou, the baby at Hadiza’s house, is one and a half now and has been exerting more independence. Besides being weaned off of breast milk a few weeks ago, he’s also been deemed old enough to walk next door to explore the neighbor’s house. The other day I was sitting with Hadiza in the late afternoon as the sun was getting weaker and excited kids were running, shouting, playing in the streets as they were let out from school. While the twins rushed into the yard with notebooks, pens and big smiles, Adamou slowly tottered away from where Hadiza and I were sitting, towards the street. The look on Hadiza’s face was completely unbothered and I thought maybe she hadn’t noticed him, so I told her Adamou was going into the street, and she said he had started to do that now and it was fine. She usually just sends one of her older kids to the door to look and make sure he’s gone into a neighbor’s house, which he always has, and other than that she gives it no thought. I can’t help but think of missing children ads posted to telephone poles, the Amber Alert, stories of kidnappings in malls, etc. All of that is so far from what life here is like- here, three and four year old kids can spend a whole weekend day away from their house without causing their parents any worry. It always amused me in the beginning of my service when I would be at a neighbor’s house and, to make conversation, ask how and where their kids were. “Oh, somewhere in town” would be the response about a four year old. The thing is, while I worry that this attitude might seem irresponsible to those of you across the Atlantic, it really isn’t. Most of the risks that would make this behaviour irresponsible indeed in America- rapists, kidnappers, busy streets with traffic- don’t exist here. While there is some crime in larger cities, most of it is not violent and in smaller towns, there is virtually none. Also, there is so much more of a community feel here in my town than I’ve ever experienced in America- in big and small ways, people show that they care about the welfare of others. Thus when Adamou goes next door, Hadiza knows that her neighbour is there and for that reason, she doesn’t worry about him.
I hope this entry finds all of you doing well. Send me a letter so I can know what’s new with you.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
A month of fasting
Hi everyone ! I know this is terribly late, but I thought some of you might be interested in hearing about what life was like in my village during the month of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. As I may have mentioned to some of you, more than 95% of the population here in Niger identifies themself as Muslim. A month of fasting (not eating or drinking anything from sun-up until sun-down) is one of the five pillars of Islam so most Muslims perform this fast every year. (The other permits certain people to abstain from fasting, including women who are pregnant or breast-feeding, the sick, and the elderly. Children also do not take part in the fast until they reach a reasonable age. The Koran, to my understanding, does not dictate an age at which all observant Muslims must start to fast, but my neighbors told me that most kids will start to join in the fast when they are 12 or 13 or slightly older. However, if a child has a lot of « effort » they can ask permission from their parents to start when they are younger. So, even with these groups of people not taking part in the fast, the majority of the population is and this affects a wide range of things.
First of all, while throughout the rest of the year women can be found selling food on the street, during Ramadan street food was virtually non-existent. In fact, it WAS non-existent in Mayahi. In larger cities like Maradi and Niamey, street food can still be found (I assume the reason is that larger numbers of non-fasting people mean that the person selling food still has a market to sell to). Furthermore, because not eating or drinking anything for more than 12 hours is pretty difficult, the amount of work people do decreases. Obviously some work is still necessary (gathering firewood, washing clothes, preparing food for the evening meal) but a lot of the other work that isn’t necessary is put on hold until after the month is done. This applies primarily to work in office settings. Another thing I noticed was the amount of community support among those fasting. There is a much greater sense of community here than there is America, but I noticed that during the fast, this seemed to be even greater. In my neighborhood, people would briefly stop in after the sunset at other families’ houses to greet them on breaking the fast and often to give a serving of special food to the family. During the day, when they saw someone they knew on the street, people would not only ask about their health, their families’ health, etc. but would also ask how their « thirst » was. There is a lot of respect for the fast, even from those not fasting- non-fasting people typically don’t eat anything in public (on the street, in a bush taxi) because they know that everyone around them is extremely hungry and thirsty.
I decided to take part in a couple days of the fast, not for religious reasons but because so many millions of the world’s people are Muslim and I thought it might be interesting to know on a really personal level what Ramadan is like. Enter my two days of fasting. On day one, I woke up before the sunrise and forced myself to eat a meal of sorts, just like everyone in the town was doing. Around mid-afternoon, after a few hours of not eating or drinking, I remember thinking « Wow, this isn’t THAT bad. » I was definitely thirsty but didn’t feel like I was dying of thirst and I wasn’t really that hungry. I broke fast with Hadiza and her family that night and cold water has really never tasted so good to me. The second day, however, was a lot worse. I layed in front of my fan basically all day without any energy and tried to read but mostly thought about how hungry and thirsty I was. That was the day I decided I had gotten the experience and therefore was going to go back to being able to eat and drink during the day. J
This is a good time to recount an adventure of mine. The Peace Corps provides us with a small cookstove and a tank of gas and this is how we do our cooking. (Yes ! No having to collect firewood and cook over an open fire like 99% of people in this country do). I noticed a few weeks before Ramadan started that my gas tank seemed to be getting low. (One judges this by the weight of the tank). I have to have my tank refilled in Maradi as gas isn’t sold in my town and I bring the tank out to my village on the « shuttle , » a Peace Corps car that we can use once a month. I’m sure you can see where this is going…The shuttle wasn’t until after Ramadan, so I didn’t really have a way to get the gas to Mayahi unless I wanted to try to put it on a bush taxi. When I write an entry on bush taxis I think you’ll see why that would be almost more trouble than it’s worth. So one day, as I turned on the stove to make some pasta for myself, the gas flame got smaller and smaller and then disappeared. My dilemma therefore was that I didn’t have an easy way to cook for myself, no one was selling food in the town, and because all my neighbors were fasting, I didn’t want to ask someone to put energy into making food for me when they were mostly lying around all day thinking about how hungry and thirsty they were. I ate things I had in the house, like granola bars, licorice and bread with jelly and thought about how one day when I was back in America, this would seem even more ridiculous than I already knew it was. One day I was so hungry that I decided to find anything that could be burned in my yard (I don’t know how to gather firewood from the bush) and try to boil water for pasta over an open fire. So I did just that. If the sun wasn’t beating down on me and I had s’more ingredients and my friends to chat with (although my friend Sarah was there- yay ! Mayahi cluster !), it would have been like a fun campfire I remember from summers in Wisconsin. I guess the bottom line is that I have a new-found respect for all of the women of this country (and so many others in the world) who stand in the sun and have smoke get into their eyes as they cook the family’s meal. So think about that the next time you put something in the microwave or, because it seems even more unreal, place an order for pizza to be delivered ! J
First of all, while throughout the rest of the year women can be found selling food on the street, during Ramadan street food was virtually non-existent. In fact, it WAS non-existent in Mayahi. In larger cities like Maradi and Niamey, street food can still be found (I assume the reason is that larger numbers of non-fasting people mean that the person selling food still has a market to sell to). Furthermore, because not eating or drinking anything for more than 12 hours is pretty difficult, the amount of work people do decreases. Obviously some work is still necessary (gathering firewood, washing clothes, preparing food for the evening meal) but a lot of the other work that isn’t necessary is put on hold until after the month is done. This applies primarily to work in office settings. Another thing I noticed was the amount of community support among those fasting. There is a much greater sense of community here than there is America, but I noticed that during the fast, this seemed to be even greater. In my neighborhood, people would briefly stop in after the sunset at other families’ houses to greet them on breaking the fast and often to give a serving of special food to the family. During the day, when they saw someone they knew on the street, people would not only ask about their health, their families’ health, etc. but would also ask how their « thirst » was. There is a lot of respect for the fast, even from those not fasting- non-fasting people typically don’t eat anything in public (on the street, in a bush taxi) because they know that everyone around them is extremely hungry and thirsty.
I decided to take part in a couple days of the fast, not for religious reasons but because so many millions of the world’s people are Muslim and I thought it might be interesting to know on a really personal level what Ramadan is like. Enter my two days of fasting. On day one, I woke up before the sunrise and forced myself to eat a meal of sorts, just like everyone in the town was doing. Around mid-afternoon, after a few hours of not eating or drinking, I remember thinking « Wow, this isn’t THAT bad. » I was definitely thirsty but didn’t feel like I was dying of thirst and I wasn’t really that hungry. I broke fast with Hadiza and her family that night and cold water has really never tasted so good to me. The second day, however, was a lot worse. I layed in front of my fan basically all day without any energy and tried to read but mostly thought about how hungry and thirsty I was. That was the day I decided I had gotten the experience and therefore was going to go back to being able to eat and drink during the day. J
This is a good time to recount an adventure of mine. The Peace Corps provides us with a small cookstove and a tank of gas and this is how we do our cooking. (Yes ! No having to collect firewood and cook over an open fire like 99% of people in this country do). I noticed a few weeks before Ramadan started that my gas tank seemed to be getting low. (One judges this by the weight of the tank). I have to have my tank refilled in Maradi as gas isn’t sold in my town and I bring the tank out to my village on the « shuttle , » a Peace Corps car that we can use once a month. I’m sure you can see where this is going…The shuttle wasn’t until after Ramadan, so I didn’t really have a way to get the gas to Mayahi unless I wanted to try to put it on a bush taxi. When I write an entry on bush taxis I think you’ll see why that would be almost more trouble than it’s worth. So one day, as I turned on the stove to make some pasta for myself, the gas flame got smaller and smaller and then disappeared. My dilemma therefore was that I didn’t have an easy way to cook for myself, no one was selling food in the town, and because all my neighbors were fasting, I didn’t want to ask someone to put energy into making food for me when they were mostly lying around all day thinking about how hungry and thirsty they were. I ate things I had in the house, like granola bars, licorice and bread with jelly and thought about how one day when I was back in America, this would seem even more ridiculous than I already knew it was. One day I was so hungry that I decided to find anything that could be burned in my yard (I don’t know how to gather firewood from the bush) and try to boil water for pasta over an open fire. So I did just that. If the sun wasn’t beating down on me and I had s’more ingredients and my friends to chat with (although my friend Sarah was there- yay ! Mayahi cluster !), it would have been like a fun campfire I remember from summers in Wisconsin. I guess the bottom line is that I have a new-found respect for all of the women of this country (and so many others in the world) who stand in the sun and have smoke get into their eyes as they cook the family’s meal. So think about that the next time you put something in the microwave or, because it seems even more unreal, place an order for pizza to be delivered ! J
Saturday, October 25, 2008
America, viewed from the Sahel
I’ve been thinking for quite sometime that I should write an entry about people’s perceptions here of
To start off, in my experience, wealth is the thing most often associated with America. In every conversation about America in which I’ve told someone that not everyone in America is rich, the person who I’m talking with has told me outright that that’s not true- everyone in America is rich. People here think that in America, there are nice cars and big houses, there are lots of jobs to be had (no unemployment), there is plenty of food. There’s lots of money- maybe more than we know what to do with. I tell people that this isn’t true, that in America there IS a lot of wealth, but there are also people who don’t have enough to eat, people who don’t have a place to live…there are people who are poor. I used to become slightly annoyed as the conversation went on, the person talked over me and my statements were continually ignored, after all, I’m the one who has lived in America, why won’t they listen to someone who has actually been to this place? Over the past few months though, I’ve started to think, who am I to argue with them? I can emphatically tell someone that poverty DOES exist in America, that not everyone is America is rich, but in the end, often that other person I’m speaking with really does have a point. There is indeed poverty, pain, and suffering in America. On the other hand, it’s really nothing like the kind here.
Most people in this country live in small villages without electricity. The houses have perhaps two or three rooms and are made of mud. Most villages don’t have running water. Women and young girls pull all the water the family needs daily from wells on the outskirts of town and carry the container on their heads while the sun beats down on them. Malnutrition is common, especially in children, because a variety of foods is not readily available. Millet in one form or another constitutes the majority of foods that people here eat,* most fruits and vegetables are only available in the markets for a couple months out of the year, and some people can’t afford them even when they are. Meat is expensive- most people only eat it during the year’s big holidays. Food security threatens the entire region. Because about 80% of
*Here’s a list of some common foods made from millet
- Tuwo : A main dish served with sauce as the evening meal. Women pound the millet until it is a powder and add it to boiling water. The result has a cream-of-wheat consistency.
- Hura : A drink that consists of millet added to water, milk and a bit of sugar.
- Konu : A drink, served warm, composed of millet and lots of sugar. People often drink this to break the fast during the month of Ramadan. (My vote for best millet-based food).
- Wayna : Small, fried balls of millet that are sold as a snack in the morning and late afternoon. Usually served with sauce.
- Tsalla : Larger fried balls of millet that are crispier than wayna. Usually sold as a breakfast food.
Secondly, another thing I find really interesting about people’s relationship here with America is just how frequently America is mentioned or thought about- quite a bit more than I anticipated. The family that I eat dinner with has a t.v. with channels from
Thirdly, I wanted to write a little bit about things people have said to me about American people in particular, not America as a country or the American government. Peace Corps has had a presence in Niger for 45 years and in this region specifically for many of those years. Many people here thus have had interactions with American Peace Corps volunteers. People at the Inspection have told me a few times about a volunteer they remember from when they were students. She was their English teacher at the high school here. Once, when I was talking about my friend Katie (who lives in a town close to me and often comes to Mayahi to do our radio show) the woman I eat supper with, Hadiza, told me that Tsahara (Katie) had so much niceness***, and that I did too, and that all of us did. When I asked her what she meant by « all of us » she said all of us Americans. I laughed, said thank you but told her that that wasn’t true, that in fact there are both nice people and mean people in America. She believed me on that count but said that all of us who are here in Niger have lots of niceness. Also, on countless occasions I have been told that Americans are much kinder and more generous than French people. People have told me that Americans will say hello to people on the street and ask them how they are, whereas French people just keep walking. I feel a bit guilty letting the conversation progress without saying something on the French people’s behalf, as someone who has been to France and has some knowledge of the difference between our cultures. Usually though when I try to explain that French people have “niceness” too, they just generally don’t show it outwardly like Americans and Africans, people won’t hear any of this…they just continue to tell me that Americans have more niceness.
*** There aren’t many adjectives in the Hausa language, so someone isn’t “nice,” rather they “have niceness”. Thus, my house has dirtiness, so I need to clean it, I have hunger, so I should eat something, this new fabric I’m thinking about buying has lots of prettiness.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Rainy season...again
Rainy season, which lasts approximately from June to late September, is in full swing right now. Now, a year after we landed in country, I’m often reminded of my first few months here in Niger as my move through my daily life. The greenness of the landscape, the millet growing gradually higher and higher in the fields, and having to take down my bed and move inside when a storm starts in the middle of the night, all these things sometimes remind me of being in Hamdallaye a year ago. I thought it was interesting that during the first rain of the season, when I hadn’t felt or smelled rain in six or seven months, my mind was brought back to last summer’s rains here in Niger, huge puddles, mud slipping into my flip-flops, and being cramped with Maeghan in our small (and really hot) hut, waiting for the storm to end, instead of being reminded of rains from all the spring and summer storms I’ve ever experienced in America.
So, like I said, I’ve hit the year mark in terms of my time here. Halfway done, in some ways it seems like I still have a huge amount of time left here, on the other hand I feel like I will be finishing my projects and saying goodbye to people in my town before I know it. I think it’s easy at this point to devote more and more of your time to thinking about the next step, about what I will be doing in the States when I get back, about how great it will be to have any kind of food I want at anytime of the day or how I won’t have to live in 105° heat. Every time I have those thoughts though, I try to remember that there are a lot of positive things present in my life right now that, for all its orderliness, its spotlessness, its plethora of choices, its wealth, I won’t experience in America. I know without a doubt that some day in the future, maybe often in the future, I’ll miss this place and this time, so I’ve been trying to appreciate each day here. Anyway, since I haven’t written here as often as I wish I had this past year, I decided to choose a few highlights from my life over the past year and describe them here. I’ll try to attach one to each blog entry I write in the near future. Here is the first one:
- In the fall, soon after I had finished training and was installed in my town, there was an afternoon that I was at Hadiza’s house (whose house I eat supper at every night), talking with her and some neighbor women who were over. Her kids were around also, but the older ones were coming and going between the street, the house and the yard. At this point I had a pretty small base of Hausa that consisted of vocabulary scattered across a few themes (food, household objects), basic needs statements (“I’m hungry,” “I’m really tired”), and words needed to construct questions. Hadiza’s youngest child, Adamou, is now about a year old but at this point was only a couple months old. I was holding him and all of a sudden felt pee on me-babies here don’t wear diapers- and so I laughed and handed him back to Hadiza. She gave me water to wash off the pee spot with, and then started saying something about Adamou. I heard his name and my name, and both America and marriage were mentioned. Having had women joke multiple times with me by this point about taking one of their kids to America with me* I logically decided that these pieces of evidence (Adamou, me, marriage, America) and her laugh meant that she was telling me that when Adamou is older, we should get married and then he could come to America with me. I laughed and tried to say that he was far too young, there was too much of a difference between our ages, I would have to wait for so long to marry him...finally she understood what I was struggling to say and then the expression on her face turned serious for a second, and then she laughed again and told me that what she had been saying was if I go back to America and get married, and if I have a baby, what will I do if he pees on me and there’s no one to hand him off to? Hmmm, a bit different than what I pieced together! Then I felt really creepy for assuming she was telling me I should marry her 2 month old son and take him to America.
* The conversation almost always goes as follows:
Me (to Hausa woman): Hello! How have you passed the day?
(to baby, as I approach it and it stares at me) Well hello there! How are you? How have you
passed the day?!
Hausa woman with baby (laughing and answering for baby): Just fine!
Me: That’s great.
Hausa woman with baby: Hey, you should take him with you to your town over there in America!
Me (holding out my arms to take baby): Ok, great, let’s go right now!
Hausa woman with baby laughs and pretends to take baby off of back.
Me: But does he know English? We only speak English there. There’s no Hausa and no French.
Hausa woman with baby (surprised): No Hausa? And not even French?
Me: Nope, only English. And it’s freezing there. And there’s no millet! What would he eat?
Hausa woman with baby: No millet! Allah is great! (“Oh my God!”) Well then he can’t go, he’ll stay here.
Me: Okay, no problem. See you later!
There is another story I was going to include but didn’t due to its embarrassing nature and the publicness of my blog, but if you ask me about it I’ll tell you. Anyway, I hope this entry finds you all well!
So, like I said, I’ve hit the year mark in terms of my time here. Halfway done, in some ways it seems like I still have a huge amount of time left here, on the other hand I feel like I will be finishing my projects and saying goodbye to people in my town before I know it. I think it’s easy at this point to devote more and more of your time to thinking about the next step, about what I will be doing in the States when I get back, about how great it will be to have any kind of food I want at anytime of the day or how I won’t have to live in 105° heat. Every time I have those thoughts though, I try to remember that there are a lot of positive things present in my life right now that, for all its orderliness, its spotlessness, its plethora of choices, its wealth, I won’t experience in America. I know without a doubt that some day in the future, maybe often in the future, I’ll miss this place and this time, so I’ve been trying to appreciate each day here. Anyway, since I haven’t written here as often as I wish I had this past year, I decided to choose a few highlights from my life over the past year and describe them here. I’ll try to attach one to each blog entry I write in the near future. Here is the first one:
- In the fall, soon after I had finished training and was installed in my town, there was an afternoon that I was at Hadiza’s house (whose house I eat supper at every night), talking with her and some neighbor women who were over. Her kids were around also, but the older ones were coming and going between the street, the house and the yard. At this point I had a pretty small base of Hausa that consisted of vocabulary scattered across a few themes (food, household objects), basic needs statements (“I’m hungry,” “I’m really tired”), and words needed to construct questions. Hadiza’s youngest child, Adamou, is now about a year old but at this point was only a couple months old. I was holding him and all of a sudden felt pee on me-babies here don’t wear diapers- and so I laughed and handed him back to Hadiza. She gave me water to wash off the pee spot with, and then started saying something about Adamou. I heard his name and my name, and both America and marriage were mentioned. Having had women joke multiple times with me by this point about taking one of their kids to America with me* I logically decided that these pieces of evidence (Adamou, me, marriage, America) and her laugh meant that she was telling me that when Adamou is older, we should get married and then he could come to America with me. I laughed and tried to say that he was far too young, there was too much of a difference between our ages, I would have to wait for so long to marry him...finally she understood what I was struggling to say and then the expression on her face turned serious for a second, and then she laughed again and told me that what she had been saying was if I go back to America and get married, and if I have a baby, what will I do if he pees on me and there’s no one to hand him off to? Hmmm, a bit different than what I pieced together! Then I felt really creepy for assuming she was telling me I should marry her 2 month old son and take him to America.
* The conversation almost always goes as follows:
Me (to Hausa woman): Hello! How have you passed the day?
(to baby, as I approach it and it stares at me) Well hello there! How are you? How have you
passed the day?!
Hausa woman with baby (laughing and answering for baby): Just fine!
Me: That’s great.
Hausa woman with baby: Hey, you should take him with you to your town over there in America!
Me (holding out my arms to take baby): Ok, great, let’s go right now!
Hausa woman with baby laughs and pretends to take baby off of back.
Me: But does he know English? We only speak English there. There’s no Hausa and no French.
Hausa woman with baby (surprised): No Hausa? And not even French?
Me: Nope, only English. And it’s freezing there. And there’s no millet! What would he eat?
Hausa woman with baby: No millet! Allah is great! (“Oh my God!”) Well then he can’t go, he’ll stay here.
Me: Okay, no problem. See you later!
There is another story I was going to include but didn’t due to its embarrassing nature and the publicness of my blog, but if you ask me about it I’ll tell you. Anyway, I hope this entry finds you all well!
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Vacation!
I thought I would wait to post this entry until I had some pictures to accompany it, but I realized that that might take awhile. So, here's a little update on the vacation I took a few weeks ago.
I met Pat in Paris and we stayed there for a week. I had wrapped up the projects I was working on in my town and was really ready for a vacation, and to see Pat, whom I hadn't seen since last July. I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear me say that it was amazing! The weather was beautiful, the city itself is beautiful, and it was so great to see Pat and of course to try to convince him that Parisians aren't the most unfriendly people in the world. We stayed at a hotel in the Latin Quarter, close to where I stayed when I studied abroad while at Olaf, so it was really great to feel fairly comfortable in the neighborhood and to know generally where things were located.
We took a day trip to Versailles which was a lot more beautiful in May than in January, when I saw it for the first time. The gardens are beautiful and we spent the afternoon walking around in them. Other sites visited: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's tomb, Notre Dame and the Musee D'Orsay.
I spent a fair amount of time talking about how cold I was and receiving semi-annoyed (ok, maybe just confused) looks from Pat and talking about how many things they had in the grocery stores. I also tried to readjust to Western culture and, while it was a great vacation overall, there were definitely reasons I was glad to come back to Niger. At the top of the list is Nigeriens' friendliness. It felt odd to receive strange looks from Parisians when I greeted them with "Bonjour, ca va?" when we walked into a store. And it felt nice, after Pat and I landed in Niamey, to get into a cab and ask the cab driver how he was, how his family was, and how work was going...and to be asked all those things in return.
Pat stayed for two weeks and handled the heat, the cultural differences and even being sick with bacteria (he got the true Peace Corps experience) really well. He was continually blessed by both strangers and people I know, in taxi cabs, at the Inspection, and in my neighborhood when I would tell them he had just come from America to see me and to see Niger. The family that I eat supper with (and everyone else in the neighborhood) was so excited to meet him and told me to tell him that guests are blessings from God.
Stay tuned for pictures from France and from Pat's trip here...
I met Pat in Paris and we stayed there for a week. I had wrapped up the projects I was working on in my town and was really ready for a vacation, and to see Pat, whom I hadn't seen since last July. I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear me say that it was amazing! The weather was beautiful, the city itself is beautiful, and it was so great to see Pat and of course to try to convince him that Parisians aren't the most unfriendly people in the world. We stayed at a hotel in the Latin Quarter, close to where I stayed when I studied abroad while at Olaf, so it was really great to feel fairly comfortable in the neighborhood and to know generally where things were located.
We took a day trip to Versailles which was a lot more beautiful in May than in January, when I saw it for the first time. The gardens are beautiful and we spent the afternoon walking around in them. Other sites visited: the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's tomb, Notre Dame and the Musee D'Orsay.
I spent a fair amount of time talking about how cold I was and receiving semi-annoyed (ok, maybe just confused) looks from Pat and talking about how many things they had in the grocery stores. I also tried to readjust to Western culture and, while it was a great vacation overall, there were definitely reasons I was glad to come back to Niger. At the top of the list is Nigeriens' friendliness. It felt odd to receive strange looks from Parisians when I greeted them with "Bonjour, ca va?" when we walked into a store. And it felt nice, after Pat and I landed in Niamey, to get into a cab and ask the cab driver how he was, how his family was, and how work was going...and to be asked all those things in return.
Pat stayed for two weeks and handled the heat, the cultural differences and even being sick with bacteria (he got the true Peace Corps experience) really well. He was continually blessed by both strangers and people I know, in taxi cabs, at the Inspection, and in my neighborhood when I would tell them he had just come from America to see me and to see Niger. The family that I eat supper with (and everyone else in the neighborhood) was so excited to meet him and told me to tell him that guests are blessings from God.
Stay tuned for pictures from France and from Pat's trip here...
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
A Brief Overview of My Relationship With Nigerien Children
Hi everyone! I hope all is well in America. I thought I would write a little bit about kids here, mostly because I think certain things will make you laugh.
Among other things (parking lots! insanely big grocery stores! pizza delivery!) I think one of the things I'll have trouble getting used to when I am back in the States is the relative sparsity of children. Families here, for a variety of reasons (tradition, high infant mortality rate, number of children needed to help harvest, the absence of any kind of social welfare programs and parents' reliance on adult children in old age) have, on average, many more children than families in America. Yes people, I have only one brother-it's only the two of us! "And who else?" "No, that's it, just the two of us." This is usually followed by a kind-hearted laugh, sometimes by a look of bewilderment. "Why would your parents only have two children?" "Things in America are different. Most people have only two or three kids...some couples don't even have children!" In my experience here, most people know that in Europe and America we have far fewer children per family. This is sort of chuckled at i.e. "how funny, our countries are so different!" However, the fact that some couples don't have children, CHOOSE not to have children, is not understood at all. For most people here, the purpose of marriage is children, people get married in order to start a family. There is a Hausa proverb that says "A marriage without children is a friendship." Though I think in America most people believe that friendship within a marriage is a very positive, healthy thing, this proverb calling a marriage without children a friendship means "friendship" in a derogatory sense- i.e. only a friendship, not a real marriage.
Speaking of marriage, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to marry someone that you don't really know, someone that you didn't date, someone you don't share memories with. In America we think it's crazy when people get engaged shortly after meeting- we worry that the two people don't know each other well enough to know that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Here though, most people getting married don't really know each other. Especially in small villages, marriages are arranged by the two families, not by the young man and woman. (Though I should say that in my town, because it isn't a small village, young people definitely do date).
But back to kids here- I'll break them into a few categories depending on their reaction to me.
1. Uncontainable curiosity- Composed primarily of kids in my town who don't know my name or why I am here, this group of children sees me sort of as an attraction at the zoo. Really, I'm not kidding. Kids from this group usually scream "Nasara! Narasa!" ("White person!" White person!"), often while surrounding me in a pack. As someone who tries to avoid attention at all costs, I am usually embarrassed and try to walk at a faster pace to get wherever I am going, or ask them how they are, how their family is, how their health is, how school is going, in the hopes that my mystery will wear off with each subsequent mundane question I ask (and I won't be worth staring at or following). Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Recently, if the kids are being ridiculously loud yelling "Nasara!" or just will not stop following me, I've tried a new tactic of turning around, looking at them with a stern look, and all of a sudden stepping forward at them like I'm going to chase them. The kids scream and run away and adults in the street all laugh. It also really makes me laugh.
2. The second group of kids I'll talk about don't get excited to see me, and they don't yell at me or chase me. Instead, they seem to just be very bewildered and confused by my presence, like they aren't sure if their eyes are working correctly. These kids look up from their play in the street and squint their eyes or tilt their heads at me. "What the heck is that? What's wrong with its skin?" They don't seem to have an opinion of me one way or the other, they are neither excited nor disappointed to see me- I get the feeling that they see me, have a bunch of questions running through their heads, know that they could never formulate them or receive answers, and accept their confusion as yet another thing they will never understand.
3. The third group of kids are my favorite- kids in my neighborhood. They are usually excited to see me, sometimes run up to me smiling and ask me how I am, but because they see me all the time and are used to me they don't do things like try to touch my hair (like a kid from the first group once did) or stare at me like I'm an animal at the zoo. They know that I have a name besides "white person" and they use it. A few of the kids in my neighborhood I really like come over and we play cards or read books in my house. Notably, the five year old twins (one boy, one girl) of the family I eat with every night are definitely part of this group. Housseina, the girl, is cute and slightly mischievous, is always making funny faces, likes to dance and basically likes attention in general. "Salamatou, look over here!" "Hey, I know how to count, here I go!" Hassan, the boy, is more reserved and serious and has such a big heart. I feel like he has a really good understanding, at his five years in the world, of how his actions affect other people. He also really likes my headlamp. Whenever I am at their house at night eating supper he tries to come up with some reason to ask to use my headlamp...he thinks it's really neat to have it on his head and I think he is so cute wearing it that I basically let him use it whenever he asks. Hassan was over last week when my dad called and greeted him on the phone. It was really cute as Hassan kept saying "Ina wuni? Ina wuni?" ("How are you?") and I could hear my dad saying "Well hello there, how are you?" (In English). I had to explain to Hassan that he was answering his question, he was doing well.
4. The last group of children, a small minority of the kid population (maybe less than 5%), are those who see me coming down the street or entering their family's yard and experience pure terror. This has happened maybe 3 or 4 times since I've been here. There is a little girl whose family lives down the street; her name is Leila and she's probably about 4 years old. For some reason, she is terrified of me and literally starts to cry and cling to her mom whenever I come. The other day however, I was eating a lemu (a frozen, sugary popsicle-like thing) and I had finished half of it when I walked over to her and asked her if she liked lemus. Would she like the rest of mine? Her crying intensified because I was standing so close to her but after a few seconds she looked up at me, tears in her eyes, hand clinging to her mom's knees, and cautiously took the lemu from me. We'll see if that was the first step towards reconciliation.
Among other things (parking lots! insanely big grocery stores! pizza delivery!) I think one of the things I'll have trouble getting used to when I am back in the States is the relative sparsity of children. Families here, for a variety of reasons (tradition, high infant mortality rate, number of children needed to help harvest, the absence of any kind of social welfare programs and parents' reliance on adult children in old age) have, on average, many more children than families in America. Yes people, I have only one brother-it's only the two of us! "And who else?" "No, that's it, just the two of us." This is usually followed by a kind-hearted laugh, sometimes by a look of bewilderment. "Why would your parents only have two children?" "Things in America are different. Most people have only two or three kids...some couples don't even have children!" In my experience here, most people know that in Europe and America we have far fewer children per family. This is sort of chuckled at i.e. "how funny, our countries are so different!" However, the fact that some couples don't have children, CHOOSE not to have children, is not understood at all. For most people here, the purpose of marriage is children, people get married in order to start a family. There is a Hausa proverb that says "A marriage without children is a friendship." Though I think in America most people believe that friendship within a marriage is a very positive, healthy thing, this proverb calling a marriage without children a friendship means "friendship" in a derogatory sense- i.e. only a friendship, not a real marriage.
Speaking of marriage, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to marry someone that you don't really know, someone that you didn't date, someone you don't share memories with. In America we think it's crazy when people get engaged shortly after meeting- we worry that the two people don't know each other well enough to know that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Here though, most people getting married don't really know each other. Especially in small villages, marriages are arranged by the two families, not by the young man and woman. (Though I should say that in my town, because it isn't a small village, young people definitely do date).
But back to kids here- I'll break them into a few categories depending on their reaction to me.
1. Uncontainable curiosity- Composed primarily of kids in my town who don't know my name or why I am here, this group of children sees me sort of as an attraction at the zoo. Really, I'm not kidding. Kids from this group usually scream "Nasara! Narasa!" ("White person!" White person!"), often while surrounding me in a pack. As someone who tries to avoid attention at all costs, I am usually embarrassed and try to walk at a faster pace to get wherever I am going, or ask them how they are, how their family is, how their health is, how school is going, in the hopes that my mystery will wear off with each subsequent mundane question I ask (and I won't be worth staring at or following). Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Recently, if the kids are being ridiculously loud yelling "Nasara!" or just will not stop following me, I've tried a new tactic of turning around, looking at them with a stern look, and all of a sudden stepping forward at them like I'm going to chase them. The kids scream and run away and adults in the street all laugh. It also really makes me laugh.
2. The second group of kids I'll talk about don't get excited to see me, and they don't yell at me or chase me. Instead, they seem to just be very bewildered and confused by my presence, like they aren't sure if their eyes are working correctly. These kids look up from their play in the street and squint their eyes or tilt their heads at me. "What the heck is that? What's wrong with its skin?" They don't seem to have an opinion of me one way or the other, they are neither excited nor disappointed to see me- I get the feeling that they see me, have a bunch of questions running through their heads, know that they could never formulate them or receive answers, and accept their confusion as yet another thing they will never understand.
3. The third group of kids are my favorite- kids in my neighborhood. They are usually excited to see me, sometimes run up to me smiling and ask me how I am, but because they see me all the time and are used to me they don't do things like try to touch my hair (like a kid from the first group once did) or stare at me like I'm an animal at the zoo. They know that I have a name besides "white person" and they use it. A few of the kids in my neighborhood I really like come over and we play cards or read books in my house. Notably, the five year old twins (one boy, one girl) of the family I eat with every night are definitely part of this group. Housseina, the girl, is cute and slightly mischievous, is always making funny faces, likes to dance and basically likes attention in general. "Salamatou, look over here!" "Hey, I know how to count, here I go!" Hassan, the boy, is more reserved and serious and has such a big heart. I feel like he has a really good understanding, at his five years in the world, of how his actions affect other people. He also really likes my headlamp. Whenever I am at their house at night eating supper he tries to come up with some reason to ask to use my headlamp...he thinks it's really neat to have it on his head and I think he is so cute wearing it that I basically let him use it whenever he asks. Hassan was over last week when my dad called and greeted him on the phone. It was really cute as Hassan kept saying "Ina wuni? Ina wuni?" ("How are you?") and I could hear my dad saying "Well hello there, how are you?" (In English). I had to explain to Hassan that he was answering his question, he was doing well.
4. The last group of children, a small minority of the kid population (maybe less than 5%), are those who see me coming down the street or entering their family's yard and experience pure terror. This has happened maybe 3 or 4 times since I've been here. There is a little girl whose family lives down the street; her name is Leila and she's probably about 4 years old. For some reason, she is terrified of me and literally starts to cry and cling to her mom whenever I come. The other day however, I was eating a lemu (a frozen, sugary popsicle-like thing) and I had finished half of it when I walked over to her and asked her if she liked lemus. Would she like the rest of mine? Her crying intensified because I was standing so close to her but after a few seconds she looked up at me, tears in her eyes, hand clinging to her mom's knees, and cautiously took the lemu from me. We'll see if that was the first step towards reconciliation.
Rising Temperature and Mango Rains
To all of you in the northern part of the States (which my parents informed me has just received another blanket of snow - after it had all melted away), who perhaps miss summer days at the beach or pool and the feel of the sun on your face, I thought I would tell you a little bit about the heat here so that perhaps you could live vicariously through me. There are three distinct seasons here in Niger, hot season (March through May), rainy season (late May through October) and cold season (November through February). Hot season is (obviously) when temperatures are the highest. On my fancy compact digital alarm clock which I brought with me from the States (and now never use) there is a thermometer giving temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. At the hottest part of the day, when the thermometer is inside my house, it reads 94 or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Outside though the temperature has been 103 or 104 in the shade. That is SO hot, you might think...and you would be right. During the hottest part of the day I just sit inside my house and read or entertain little kids who come over. If I ever happen to be in town during this part of the day, I always feel like I'm walking through a ghost town- the streets are deserted. Everyone is eating lunch, resting at their houses, even perhaps napping. But the interesting thing is that while it has indeed been hot, it hasn't been unbearable by any means. It's really amazing how well your body can adjust to different climates. I think back to late last July and the intense wave of heat I felt when we exited the plane at the airport and how I immediately started sweating- and now, it's much hotter than it was then and yet it's really not that bothersome or something I think about all the time.
Last week I was inside my house making French toast for a snack in the mid-afternoon and I heard lots of commotion outside- it sounded like a bunch of kids screaming. I figured it was some kids heading back to school from the afternoon break (noon to three) who were being wild. When I went outside though, I felt small drops of rain on my face and all of a sudden, bigger and bigger drops started coming and there was lots of yelling from excited kids as well as from adults who were trying to get everything that needed to be protected inside their houses. I hadn't felt rain since last fall and so I stood there for a minute as the smell brought back all kinds of memories of spring back home. Interestingly though, it also brought memories of Niger, though I've been here for less than a year. It made me think of living with my roommate Maeghan during training and waking up in the middle of the night to the rain and having to take down our mosquito nets and drowsily set them back up inside our hut. One of my friends here told me that these occasional, sparse rains during hot season are called, in French, "les pluies de mangue," or "mango rains," (Mangos are abundant during hot season- it's basically the only fruit we can get right now). The name made me smile for some reason.
Last week I was inside my house making French toast for a snack in the mid-afternoon and I heard lots of commotion outside- it sounded like a bunch of kids screaming. I figured it was some kids heading back to school from the afternoon break (noon to three) who were being wild. When I went outside though, I felt small drops of rain on my face and all of a sudden, bigger and bigger drops started coming and there was lots of yelling from excited kids as well as from adults who were trying to get everything that needed to be protected inside their houses. I hadn't felt rain since last fall and so I stood there for a minute as the smell brought back all kinds of memories of spring back home. Interestingly though, it also brought memories of Niger, though I've been here for less than a year. It made me think of living with my roommate Maeghan during training and waking up in the middle of the night to the rain and having to take down our mosquito nets and drowsily set them back up inside our hut. One of my friends here told me that these occasional, sparse rains during hot season are called, in French, "les pluies de mangue," or "mango rains," (Mangos are abundant during hot season- it's basically the only fruit we can get right now). The name made me smile for some reason.
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