all my letters home..#3 and 4

Letter 4
Dear folks,
So we aren’t allowed to blog about our status right now, but private email seems to be okay. Therefore, I’ll let you know about what is going on in Niger at the moment, at least as far as Americans are concerned. Last Saturday night I got back to Bande from a trip into Zinder only to be texted the next morning that I had to turn around because we were being ‘consolidated’. Consolidation means that we are all brought together in the country, for us in Niger that means we go to our regional capitols to the hostels. They use consolidation only if they are worried about safety in our villages throughout the country or if they want communication to be very easy or if they are strongly considering evacuation.
The reason they have consolidated us is that there was an attempted kidnapping of some american embassy workers in a region called Tauha. The kidnappers mistakenly got 2 Canadians who were able to talk themselves out of the situation when they realized the mistake -I don’t know many details. Tauha is north and very far west of Zinder and is close to the line that we haven’t been allowed to cross for a while (since before I got here). Normally when things like this happen, we are put on ‘stand-fast’ which means we aren’t allowed to travel out of our villages. They make us do that a lot, but evidently they haven’t consolidated in Niger for 3 or 4 years. This time, I heard, the kidnappers were specifically targeting Americans and had been asking about our locations. That is why our villages, which are usually much safer than the bigger cities (not that all of Niger isn’t pretty safe already-compared to, say, America), are possibly less safe at the moment. Usually even for kidnappings, Americans are not at risk as much as, for example, Germans because our government doesn’t pay ransoms and doesn’t allow families to. And if americans are killed (I heard and have decided to believe for comfort’s sake) the marines are sent in after the kidnappers. So I would like to know what is up with the change in kidnappers’ strategy and if it is really true.
Even after having my invitation to PC-Madagascar last year and then watching the blogs as the PCVs were consolidated, sent back to post, consolidated again and finally evacuated, I still can’t believe we will be sent back home. Niger has never been evacuated, but also Americans have never been threatened specifically before, that I hear. Nobody knows what will happen right now, and -I am voicing the frustration I read about and didn’t understand in the Madagascar blogs- it’s starting to get annoying. The group that is COSing (finishing up) had about 2 more weeks to go and were going to be able to spend Tabaski, the most important holiday in Niger, with their villages one last time. Now, we have heard they will probably start being sent home as soon as possible and wont be able to go back to their villages to say goodbye. We are really sad to see them go sooner than intended.
In Zinder, we are allowed to go out with buddies, so cabin fever is kept to a minimum so far-Connie, which is just south of Tauha, was being kept in quarantine and now we‘ve heard they will shut down the connie region and relocate the people there! But we all kind of want to go back to villages now cuz we feel like we‘ve just been here too long. We had a wonderful thankgiving here on Monday. We weren’t having turkey because it is expensive here and I complained a lot about that before. But when we finally started gorging ourselves, I ended up not really missing it much. We had apple and pumpkin pies, a roast, stuffing, chicken, green bean cassarole, banana bread, salad, mashed potatoes etc and I made a fruit salad and 2 loaves of honey bread which vanished before dinner even started. During dinner we went around and said something we are thankful for, which was thoughtful and humorous and sometimes a little teary for a few ppl. It was very interesting to have a moment of looking around and feeling like you can clearly see that this is your new family for 2 years and how well you feel like you can know them at that moment. nice and homey like thanksgiving should be. there were even 2 moms and an aunt randomly visiting who talked about how it’s nice for family in the states to know how we have this makeshift but strong family here. Then we all got drunk and danced till 3 in the morning.
Speaking of eating, I thought I would tell you about my culinary adventures so far. I heard from a friend that they eat fried locusts here and that they taste like potato chips so after I heard that, it was my mission to find and manage to eat a fried locust. I didn’t see them ever in my town but when I was in the market in Magaria, saw a big basket of locusts and said, yes I am going to do this now. So I told the guy I only wanted to buy a little bit because I just wanted to try the thing and he gave me a bug to try. I was quite a spectacle in the market, screwing up the courage to stick a bug in my mouth but I did it and I ate the whole thing. But I think it was not fried yet but only dried because it was kind of a yucky texture and it tasted like grass and not like a potato chip at all. So a properly fried locust, unfortunately, is still on my list of things to try in Niger. I also had kosai (fried bean flour batter) with honey a few times and it made me think of when I was a little kid eating chicken McNuggets with honey. We like to try to find substitutes for nostalgic American food here. I suppose when I get back to the states and miss Niger, I’ll go get morning star chicken nuggets with honey and pretend its Kosai.
One thing I saw made in training that I was so excited to try on my own was making bush cheese. For this you need dried milk, water and vinegar. If it doesn’t sound really amazing, you are unfortunately, for the most part, right. It tasted like those re-hydrated scrambled eggs that I ate in elementary school sometimes, only a bit less eggy. I’ve asked a lot of people here if they remember that and it seems to be just me who ever had re-hydrated scrambled eggs as a child. Anyway, when you need cheese, it’s an option. Powdered milk does make a really good alfredo sauce for pasta. I am getting to be a really good bush cook when it comes to creamy stuff.
A friend here, Sarah, and I were talking about the merits of various illnesses -having giardia (a bacteria we all come to know well) versus amoebas. When I had amoebas my stomach felt a lot more icky than when I’ve had various bacterias, and giardia gives you sulfur burps. So my miserly and lazy reaction was that giardia is infinitely better because you get to have a taste like you ate eggs that morning without having had to bother with buying and cooking them. So there you go, if you ever have to have stomach problems, try to get giardia and not amoebas.
Send me questions you want to know about Niger! Cheers, ~aj

Letter home 3.

The Dear Audrey Column
These questions date from before swear-in when I was living in Hamdallye, but for some of them I’ll apply to Bande, my post, as well.
Gaye S
How far is your village from the capitol?
Hamdy, our training site for Pre-Service Training and again for In-Service Training, was about 2 hours by bush taxi or bus and about an hour by PC vehicle away from Niamey the capitol. My town Bande is in Zinder Reagion. Its about an hour-hour and a half away from the capitol of the region and former capitol of Niger, Zinder(ville). Zinder to Niamey is a grueling 13-17 hour bus ride. On our way here for ‘live-in’ the bus driver was some mad speedster and all the PCVs were impressed with our evidently record time of 12 hours 20 mins. I will be avoiding trips to Niamey.

How long will you stay/ will you get reassigned regularly?
Bande is my town until I leave. I could get reassigned to Zinder(ville) in a year (or 2 years if I were to extend) if I request and am granted that, but so far I like Bande, and altho it’s only been a month, I can see enough work here to keep me happy for 2 years.

Is Zarma a tribe or a language?
Zarma is both a tribe and a language. Niger has many different ethnic groups; without looking up in my culture manual, I think there are at least 7 or 8. The majority ethnic group is Hausa which has a large population in Nigeria as well. The next biggest is Zarma. Hausas and Zarmas live exclusively in the south in the Sahel region because their traditional culture is a farming one --Hausas in the east mostly and Zarmas in the west. In Agadez, which is the large sahara region in the north, the Tuaregs live, mostly in the western area where the Air Mountains are. They are hearders as are the Foulans who are scattered around and there are many in Zinder and around my town. I love the foulani style of make-up, scarification, hair and dress. Its really really exotic, and they all ride camels which I cant stop staring at. Someday I’ll get some pics to y’all but for now google-pics it.

Does PC provide you with fiber?
I think I have seen Metamucil or something in the med cabinets, but my parents sent me some yummy chewable tablets that I’m trying not to eat like candy (lower standards folks, lower standards) lest I have the opposite problem of Mr. D.

Ilene G
Did you fly to Niamey directly from the US?
No. Most flights go through Paris as did ours. My flight was Philly (for orientation) to Paris to Niamey. The flights were awful and I got a fever.

Is Niamey a modern city?
Let me put it this way. There are sit down toilets, lovely grass in front of the bank and good pain au chocolats. But Niamey is the last capitol in Africa to allow herding through its streets and I’ve seen people riding donkey cartes while motorcycles are zipping by, I’ve tried not to see dudes using the restroom on the median, and even the PC vehicle I’m riding in has decided the faster root will be through oncoming traffic on the other side of the raised median.

Is Hamdallye a village or a city?
Hamdallye was a village of about 5-700 people I think? I’m not the best with numbers, but I think that’s right. Bande is about 3 times its size at about 1500. Also regarding numbers, officials here don’t even know quite frankly, not everyone registers properly. That becomes a problem when they want to send their kid to school whom they hadn’t gotten a birth certificate for.

What transportation and living quarters do you have?
Bush taxis! Bush taxis are private vehicles that go from village to village. We also have a PC shuttle once a month on a day and to locations of our choosing. I have a bike from PC which I am using to go into Magaria once a week (40k round trip). Magaria is my market town and is a pretty big city for Niger. There, I can buy luxuries like canned tuna, a soccer ball, a cooking pot and rat poison. I also get the luxury of talking to my PC friends in *English*!
My accommodations are very nice for PC and for Niger. Sarcasm aside, it is probably bigger than anything I will live in for the next 30 years. There are three rooms in back which I’m not currently using, nor do I need to use really. There is one long room in front and then a front porch. It is all concrete with a metal roof and a drop ceiling-very unusual for Bande. My bed is outside under the porch because it’s been hot till recently and the dudes haven’t come to install my *ceiling fans!* yet. I have a mat -soon to buy another, two chairs, a book shelf, buckets for washing cloths or carrying water, two tables for kitchen stuff, a table top gas stove and a trunk. I also have a Karhe which is a big, ceramic vessel for storing water and keeping it really cool. I filter my water with my big water filter, even tho my supervisor in Bande looked practically hurt when I told him that I did that, because Bande- no country bumpkin town- filters its water! I have a pump in the yard and until recently I had corn growing all over my yard. My land lady and I harvested a few days ago, finally. I planted my own garden my first week here so I hope I start seeing sprouts soon. There is a latrine across the yard and a separate room for bucket baths, but I don’t use it because I take mine in a big plastic basin in my house. I always feel like I have a very modest amount of things, filling up only a trunk and a bookshelf and the furniture filling only about 15x7 feet, but everyone who comes over seems super curious about what the American has in her house. It’s something that’s hard to get used to even if I get it intellectually.

Kat M
Do you like it so far/ what have you been doing?
I do like it so far and I have not been doing all that much. I go out and walk about town, buy tomatoes and onions in the market, greet, greet, greet, sit in my house and read a book or the Hausa manual or I sit with a neighbors family, I cook and sweep and various other tiny activities that wouldn’t even be worth mentioning in America. I go to the school now and I’ve taught beginning English a few periods and I am becoming the towns official portrait artist since the fateful day I took out my sketchbook and drew some girls visiting my house. I guess it was inevitable that I would fine my own strange way to ‘integrate’-one portrait at a time.

How is learning Hausa?
Hausa akwai wuya! It’s hard! But since sitting with this neighbor family I have slowly gotten fewer “she doesn’t hear Hausa”’s and more “She hears Hausa small small! She’s learning!”’s.
Hausa is weird too. It has no adjectives, things just have Somethingness. Josh is not tall, he has tallness. I am not white, I am a ‘whiteperson’.
Also, like any language, there are very odd quirks of grammar and expressions. For example, you can say Niger has more heat than snow, but you cant say Niger has less mud than sand-you have to say it does not have more mud than sand or it has more sand than mud. Also, when I was in hamdalli the guard at the Peace Corps training site would say “see you a lot later” in response to our “see you later” (in Hausa) and I was so affronted for the longest time; he said it with such friendliness but he didn’t want to see me sooner than later? Then a friend explained to me, it’s supposed to mean something like “may we live a long time to see each other much later”. So I walk around confused most of the time, but I’m learning.


Seen any weird bugs yet?
Oh dear me. Better not to ask.
I will say tho that the very generous and neighborly spiders who live in my house have graciously decorated my porch just in time for Halloween. I was going to take the cobwebs down but then I thought it was festive, and a reminder of what time of year it is in American terms. Its hard to believe that it’s October because the days are as long here as in July and the leaves are not red and orange and its not cold! I did take down the spiders’ decorations in my house because I just thought that was going overboard.
Also apropos of bugs; this is the first place I have ever seen people literally have ants in their pants. And did you know that when you turn on the light at night grasshoppers become kamakazies? This is true; I have reenacted Pearl Harbor several times with them. I have heard that people fry them and eat them. I want to try this-one of my friends said it tasted like chips!

How are your fellow PCVs? Do you get to work together or are you somewhat separated while living with your host families?
During training, I saw the other PCTs everyday for class and hanging out. I wouldn’t call it “work”. It was like high school. You go to see your friends, you try to screw around in class as much as possible, you spend the time in the evening that you should be studying hanging out with friends instead and you cram for the tests. At post we all live in separate towns. We see sub region people every week and region teammates every month. We can work on projects together; for example, in Zinder a lot of people come in and do radio shows that are written by us to help get out some message or other. I’ll sit in on one whenever they do that next. Or for example, a sub region friend who has done journalism for several years and I are thinking about talking to the teachers about doing a journalism club together or something of that nature.

Dad
Where were you at 1 pm on July 18th?
My daily planner entry for that day reads: “3 mins of yogurt makes an entire hot boring day scrumptious. Today we sat on goat poop under a thorny tree and watched kids beat each other up and swim in the nasty ‘lake’. I’m gonna see about helping with dinner now {written later:] ßthat was fun.” So that means at 1 I was probably finishing up lunch or laundry and walking down to the “lake” or visiting friends before walking down there.

Other notes:
Dear folks,
Well if I am sending this I probably have not solved world hunger or found a cure for AIDS but I have at last made it through my first month at post and then some. It has been overall pretty positive, if at times hard. I had set two small integration goals for myself, one was being invited to tea with a group of dudes and the other was to be invited to dinner with my neighbor family. I have more or less completed both with a week to go. Men here sit around on mats under trees and drink tea at all hours of the day, but I was worried at first because I didn’t see any teapots anywhere. Then slowly after harvest started winding down I saw one teapot and then two and now I’m seeing quite a few and several dudes called me over once to drink tea with them; goal 1, check. As for the family dinner, I knew I had been invited to come help cook, but I thought also we would eat dinner together because they had been asking me a lot if I ate ‘tuwo’ and I always responded yes. But then after I had finished helping my friend, I walked out to where I had left my stuff and one of the little girls said “kay see you tomorrow” and so I wasn’t sure about my invitation anymore and I left. But then we made popcorn at my house and they fed me a slimey but good boiled bean dough thing called dan wake. So I am counting this as being invited to dinner.
One thing I will say about Niger is that it has an awful lot of Hankuri. ‘Sai hankuri is one of the first expressions that I learned here and it means ‘have patience’. This place is awash with patience. If Niger could bottle its hankuri and export it, this would be the richest country in the world instead of the poorest. Sometimes it’s just too hot to be anything but patient and sometimes there is so much to be impatient about you’d go crazy if you weren’t practicing massive amounts of hankuri. But sometimes I am impressed by the hankuri I see daily. It’s a double edged sward tho, because it leads to another much used Nigerien expression that we heard the first day, ‘en principe’. ‘En principe’ school should be free here and there shouldn’t be schools made out of falling down grass thatch. ‘En principe’ school was supposed to start a week ago; ‘if god wills it‘, it will start tomorrow. ‘En principe’ this is a democratically elected government. But Nigeriens have so much hankuri that when things don’t go according to plan, nothing happens. A lot of times when I talk to Nigeriens, their hankuri starts taking on a defeatist and apathetic tinge. I think this is another hurdle to get over -figuring out how much of that is just a lack of inspiration which I can try to change in a small way and how much is legitimately based in tough facts. For now tho, I am a bit frustrated and trying to try on this hankuri for size.
Here are a few stories, randomly assorted, that I find funny. At the end of training, we were riding in the PC vehicle and I was listening to a conversation that Shuruq a PCV friend and Tondi our training director were having in English French and Hausa. Shuruq is very personable and outgoing and Tondi is a legend among us PCVs- I‘ve never sensed a shred of his personality that I couldn‘t admire. Shuruq asked Tondi, if he could be anywhere in the world where would he be and Tondi replied “Los Angeles, because it’s cool there”.
A few weeks ago, there was a lot of haze in the air. Now I know that it was the end of the rains and there’s just dust in the air for a few days, but at that time, I was wondering if perhaps the farmers were burning the fields or something. I was sitting with my neighbor family and wanted to ask them about it with my limited vocabulary. I couldn’t say “why is the sky all hazy like that? Are the farmers burning the fields?” but I thought I could say “Why is there dust/dirt in the sky?”. Unfortunately the word for dirt is also the word for ground and I guess a Hausa wouldn’t ask my question that way. I think this because I know that to them I said “Why is there ground in the sky?” because they laughed their asses off for minutes about my question. “Why is there ground in the sky? She says! Why is there ground in the sky!”. Well I speak small small Hausa after all, so I joined in the humor and laughed too.
Last week we had a few days of ‘stand-fast’ where we have to be in our villages and couldn’t leave because there *might* be protests in the regional capitols. I’ll be back again for Halloween. Thanks for all the letters I’ve been getting, and its fine to email now as long as you don’t need a reply for 2 or 3 weeks.
~aj