all my letters home..#5,6and7

Email 7
Winter Holiday greetings to all,
Happy Hanukkah, Feliz Navidas, Salutations on the Solstice, Kwanza Greetings and Happy Festivus. Also happy Dictator Day, since this is Tanja’s first day as dictator of Niger.
I am in town for Christmas which we celebrate together as a team by baking cookies, secret santa-ing and doing what Team Fat* does best, gorging ourselves on giant feasts. (*have I explained that Team Zinder is nicknamed Team Fat because we all cook like kitchen gods and make big meals when we get together? Well there it is.)
This last month, the biggest adventure I had was my trip to Zermou. And it really was a big adventure. As I mentioned in my last email, Zermou is the town of my friend from my training group, Sarah Lyon-Hill. She inherited a ‘World Map Project’ from her closest neighbor, Jill, who COSed and returned home last month and couldn’t paint the map in time. A world map project is something that a lot of PCVs do if their towns lack maps in their schools. I probably wont paint a map in my town because we have maps at the middle school and I think the elementaries have some as well. I will be doing a mural at the health clinic hopefully next month with my friends from training. Since Jill’s village-Bankareto-, was so small and rather poor, I think that is why she decided to do this project.
A quick, precious, side story; Alex and Sean met me in Zinder the day before we headed out to Zermou and we had a chance to do some errands in town. We were grocery shopping and Alex found thyme (dried herbs are rare to find in Zinder, we have to buy them in Niamey and bring them out with us) but there was no price labeled. He inquired about the price and they wouldn’t give him a quote ‘because it was a new product and they hadn’t done the pricing on it yet’. That is the broken Niger logic for you. They would have sold it to him probably, but he didn’t feel like negotiating. Anyway, that was just far, far too beautifully set up for me to pass up remarking to their disgust, “well now we know, thyme is priceless in Niger”. True story 100%.
Alex, Sean and I left together the next morning for Zermou. The road to Zermou is all deep sand, like sand dunes deep sand, with a bit of road here and there that is harder-packed sand. As such , regular van bush taxis have trouble getting there and the bush taxis out to Zermou are all open back trucks, the shape of and a little larger than say a regular Ford-ish type truck in America. There are some bush taxis that go out there that are massive big trucks, like Ford on steroids, but not quite so disgusting as monster truck types. Zermou is closer to Zinder than Bande and almost straight north, like Bande is straight south, but the road makes Zermou as long a trip as Bande.
The way is pretty scenery, but I really enjoyed it more on the way back because on the way there my spine was being hacked in two, for half the way. How one rides this kind of bush taxi is: one climbs on top of a bunch of huge sacks of stuff, say rice, and tries to get a good spot. We had been told, but didn’t fully understand that the best spot, besides inside the cabin, is on top of the cabin. I thought I had gotten a cozy spot behind the cabin and Alex and Sean were, perhaps not without some inkling of concern, moved to the side of the truck, legs hanging off. That ride was good in the sense that it made me appreciate Sarah’s kokari -willpower or effort or general bad-assness- for living in such a bush village. It was not good in that we were in extreme discomfort or fear of falling off the whole time. I had my butt scooted further and further under a bar because of the crowding and slipperiness of the bags, hence my spine cracking comment. Eventually I just stood up and tried to duck the thorny tree branches occasionally whizzing by. That worked well and I was a lot more comfortable except that the trees did get me full on in the face once. We let off some people a little while later and then I got room to sit down facing forward and watching the scenery. Finally it felt like a great theme park adventure ride, for me at least. On the way back, like I said, we sat on top of our bags on top of the cabin and it was adventuresome and pleasant and as comfortable as a bush taxi ride in Niger ever is except for the few errant thorn branches. Eventually I will have pictures of this bush taxi and you will see that you would have never ever believed people actually ride in the way that they are piled up on top of the truck like they are unless I had told you that that‘s how it is.
When we arrived in Zermou, we randomly met a guy who is a friend of Sarah’s and he (of course) knew right away where we wanted to go and took us to her house. Her house is much smaller than mine and made of mud brick, but it is so adorably and comfortably decorated, I am immensely jealous of her interior design skills. She has a dog, Lela, that she also inherited from Jill. Lela is sweet and has wonky legs. Jill rescued her as a puppy in the Zermou taxi station in Zinder from kids who were beating her. After resting a bit we went out and met the people Sarah works with; her mayor, the lady at the radio station, etc. and we went to her market to buy some things for dinner. I saw prepared crickets in the market so a bought the smallest amount that I could and ate one. Lela’s dog got the rest of them. I am pretty sure I told you about my cricket in Magaria that wasn’t cooked and that I would be on the lookout for a proper cricket to give them a fair shake, since Cindy told me they are pretty good. Well I really should learn to think the opposite of everything Cindy says. This one also tasted like grass and felt like cricket just saltier and a little easier to eat; so I wont be trying them anymore. We walked over to Jill’s old town that evening to see the map space and to mark out the grid. The walk is about 20 or 30 minutes and some of it in deep sand is hard but good exercise and fun to do with friends. A few days before we got there, a big river had formed next to Zermou because they had released a dam several miles away. There wasn’t any way to cross it except to wade through almost up to the knees with all the villagers around laughing at the americans walking through nasty, cold water.
Saturday, we got up and, after breakfast, walked over to Bankareto to draw the map with chalk and start painting. We brought lunch and listened to Sean and Sarah’s Ipods and didn’t leave until the late afternoon. They discovered that I hate Simon and Garfunkle and made me listen to a whole album. We got about halfway done that day. When we got back, the others were talking about Sarah’s ‘rock’ which I had obliviously never heard them talking of before. So, spontaneously, we decided to trek out there and see it. It was a huge outcropping of granite the size of a hill jutting up from the sand. It was really pretty and we were there for most of the sunset. The others were lamenting not bringing their cameras and I jokingly suggested we go back for them and spend the night out here to take pictures of the dawn. They took to that idea though and thought we should do it the next day, though it’s really cold at night now and I thought I would freeze. We ended up not doing it the next night because of an interruption, but we are talking about making another trip out there when Niger warms up a bit(I can‘t believe I can say that and be serious!). It was really pretty out in the middle of the desert, on top of a huge rock, looking at the setting sun, and I think it would be great fun if we get to do it.
The next day, before we trekked back out to the map, we heard the little baby goats right outside Sarahs house making exceptionally unusual noises. When we went out, we saw this baby goat jabbing another baby goat while making the silliest noise we have yet heard in Niger. It was reminiscent of a mom doing that ‘coochy coochy coo’ thing and wiggling her nose in a baby’s face, -except for a very strong element of random absurdness. We watched this happen for five minutes or so and took a video of it which will one day be on you tube and I will send y‘all the link. We think it should go viral and become the next ‘hamster eating popcorn’, it is that bizarre and hilarious.
Finally, we made it to the map and spent most of the day finishing it, complete with sea monster in the south pacific and baby dragon in the heavens. Sarah only has to glaze and label all (or most..) of the countries. The PCVs we talked to seemed surprised that we got our project done so fast. We have kokari, what can I say? We were visited that day by Jill’s other dog, Leo, who was acting spastic and then, to poor Sarah’s horror, followed us all the way to Sarah’s house, terrorizing the geese and goats of Zermou all the way. Sarah kept telling all the villagers she passed that it was not her dog. Finally, this crazy wild dog was jumping up onto the very high wall to sarah’s concession and would have come in if we weren’t yelling it back to the other side each time he jumped up. So Sarah and Sean decided to walk Leo back to Bankareto while Alex and I cooked. When they got back we had banana pancakes and popcorn and watched my new Star Trek dvd (thanks josh!) because we were too exhausted to go up to the rock.
We left the next morning and spent Monday night in Zinder. It was a thoroughly fulfilling trip. I really felt like I was an actual PCV for the first time. I don’t know what it was, actually doing work, seeing another PCV doing her stuff in her own town, adventuring out on the crazy bush taxi, maybe just the magic of Zermou.
The only sad part of the trip was talking a lot about the changes that had happened during and since the last time we saw each other, consolidation. We are very sad about loosing the new training group to Madagascar and the COSers, who are such great people and who left this month. I have lost 3 of 4 of the most promising counterparts (Nigeriens who do our projects with us) in my town this month, they all left for work elsewhere. Also, a lot of our training group (one third has now gone home) has elected to take interrupted service which was offered to us due to the security scare. We have very conflicted feelings about their decisions, but ultimately are sad to see them go and wish them well. We are really worried about not getting a new CYE/MCD group in July, though it isn’t likely that we wouldn’t get one if we are still here. The specter of evacuation is still hanging over a lot of us, although we are all doing better, feeling more confident that things have calmed down and that we‘ll be staying. We had a visit from Peace Corps to assure us all individually about us staying and about plans to start augmenting the program again and to talk over the specifics of the security thing(for example, evidently Americans weren‘t being specifically targeted as was thought). Now, after having this quintessential Peace Corps experience, I really don’t want a repeat of November. We have such a good team and we have so much to do as individuals and as a team. It feels like Niger is a bit swiss cheesy, not empty but full of holes. Madam Country Director, Mary Abrams, please send Zinder some great new teammates!
It was also very good to see Sarah so happy and at home in her town. It’s due I’m sure largely to her warm personality and hard work but she chalked it up to the genius of the MCD director. (She and Sean are MCD- municipal and community development and Alex and I are CYE-community and youth education). The MCD director is Oussman and he is a fun guy. Like all Nigeriens, no matter how well they can speak English, they have the funniest expressions. My favorite of Oussman’s is his coinage “coke-astic”. He says this because he hates Fanta (who can blame him?) and prefers coke, therefore, he cannot say fanta-stic, because Fanta is not fantastic, so he says cokastic.
Well I’ll leave you with that little nugget of silliness. Next time I write, in sha allah, I’ll be heading off to IST-in service training-(finally!).
Fare thee well, ~aj

Email 6

Dear folks,
I have just swung up to my friend Sarah L-H’s town, Zermou, for the weekend as 3 of us from my training group came to help her with a world map painting project that she inherited from her neighbor PCV who returned home this month and couldn’t finish before she left. I got time to shoot off an update for all of you because I am staying the night in Zinder- it’s a long trip that I could do in one day but feel much better splitting it up. Just wait till you see the picture of the bush taxi that we took to and from Zermou to Zinder, it‘s ridiculous and you wont believe I rode for 2 hours on it. Anyway, I will write up an thorough report on the trip for the Christmas letter, because it was such a good weekend and deserves pages in it’s recounting. PS what I would like from *everybody* for Christmas is an update on your lives/ America/ penguins, whatever you want to talk about. I’m serious, it sucks having 3ish hours of internet a month and loosing track of everyone’s lives back home. Send it email, snail mail, carrier pigeon, pterodactyl, whatever floats your boat.
Two days after Thanksgiving in America, we had Tabaski here in Niger. Tabaski is a Muslim holiday that celebrates the Old Testament Story of Abrahim and Issac. On Saturday, I got up and sat with some neighbors who took me to see the horse and camel races. I am really sad to say that I forgot my camera, but maybe one of my friends will have taken pictures of their town’s celebrations. I went to my Sarki’s house (the chief of the district) to bring a small gift of cookies and I had lunch with his daughters and took pictures of the whole family which I want to give to them as Christmas presents.
After that I cooked dates and brought them over to my neighbors. I watched them carve up the entrails of a goat that had been slaughtered that morning and people sent their kids around with platters of boiled pieces of meat to all the neighbors and I munched on un-identified goat morsels the whole day. The next morning I sat and watched my neighbor carve up the rest of the goat. They had told me that they would be eating the head that morning, and thankfully I missed that part. I saw some various male member of the family salting hides in a hut and I took a pic of him. Maybe that will make it onto the blog eventually. I watched the daughters cooking the meet and when it was done they gave me some pieces that I took back to my house and made some, maybe, pasta dish with. Watching a goat being carved was definitely a new experience that thoroughly weirded me out and enthralled me. I always wondered how the bowls were handled. Well in Niger, they pick them up, slice them open with the same knife used for everything else, scrape out (most of) the poop and cut them into little pieces which go, along with everything else, into the pot! I choose to believe that I consumed no goat poop this Tabaski, even if that’s a fairytale.
I knew before I came that one of the biggest (time-wise) parts of being a PCV is reading more than you ever have before in your life. I am a really slow reader and so finishing the 14 books that I have read since the plane touched down here is a real accomplishment for me. So I thought, since it’s nearly the end of the year and I probably wont finish another book before my Christmas trip to Zinder, I’d celebrate by including a book report in this email on what I have been spending large portions of my time on here.
My 14 books read in Niger:
1. Half the Sky, Kristof and Wudunn. This is about women and developing nations. It was really written more for people like you, sitting at home in america, to inspire you to travel abroad to these countries or at least support any of various organizations which help women economically, medically or educationally. Thus, it was a little frustrating to read as a PCV sitting in a region that was mentioned specifically in this book and not getting as many ideas or as much actionable knowledge as I was hoping for. That said, it is a great book which I will recommend to people, along with another good book about African development ‘Africa Doesn’t Matter’ by Giles Bolton, for years to come (particularly in the holiday season). And I’ll especially make a little nudge toward checking out those many good organizations mentioned in Half the Sky during your holiday tax write-off, check writing sessions.
2. The Silmarillion, by Tolkien- had started years ago but brought it so that I could finally finish it and I did!
3. V for Vandetta, Persepolis and PersepolisII. These are 3 graphic novels, the first 2 of which have been made into movies. I haven’t seen Persepolis yet (anybody good with pirating- wanna send me a copy?). These are really great books, if you want to read a graphic novel.
4. And Then There Were None, and Mystery on the Blue Train, Agatha Christie. This keeps my PBS Masterpiece Mystery cravings subdued, but not totally quenched. Oh PBS.
5. 3 books that are too bad to be named, but count none-the-less because they are books with pages, every last one of which I read.
6.Lost in a Good Book, Jasper Fforde. This is number 3 or 4 in a series, and I shouldn’t judge it when I havent read the series in the proper order, but it wasn’t quite my cup of tea. A good romp, but not as satisfying as some of these other books. The heroin is a literary detective who jumps in and out of books and sorts out all sorts of messes, literary and earthly. This one made me think I need to find a copy of Great Expectations so that I can meet Ms. Havisham for myself, which is something, considering I’ve never been inclined to read a Dickens book before.
7. Northanger Abbey (with Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon), Jane Austen. I think the Great Tragedy of my life is that the greatest character I have ever met belongs to an unfinished novel. Maybe someday a genius will channel Jane Austen and finish the Watsons so I can read all of Emma Watson’s story and not be left hanging at a few fleeting mentions of Mr. Howard and my heroin in a precarious financial situation. It makes me wish I could go exploring in Fforde’s ‘well of lost plots‘.
8. Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond. This is a popular history book that won the Pulitzer prize. I don’t really understand what it takes to win a Pulitzer, since this, tho an interesting book, wasn’t earth shattering and was poorly and repetitively written. It’s definitely worth a skim tho; the ideas are all interesting-the first time you read them, anyway, and if you don’t mind Diamond not fleshing out some claims.
9. West with the Night, Beryl Markham. I heard this was an interesting book (on NPR? That’s a safe assumption considering NPR was my source of 90% of my knowledge until I came here). But I can’t help thinking that I wouldn’t have liked this lady. I was telling someone that I had started this book and they mentioned that there was another bio written called ‘east with the dawn’ or something like that. Supposedly, it gives a completely different picture than the one Beryl paints, which is romantic and adventurous and no one connected to her has any personality flaws. It seems like an interesting contrast to read the two together, I might pick up the other sometime. Even though this book was a bit trite at times it was really fun to read, like “Half the Sky”, while on the same continent as the setting of the book.

letter 5
Update wed 25 nov
Yesterday we got word that consolidation is lifted and we can go back to our villages starting today. I am going out tomorrow on our sub-region shuttle. We have new rules to follow regarding travel which will make work harder in some respects, but they are manageable. We are all glad it’s over and are trying to get back into the village living mindset after a week and a half of american time. But today we got a text that the new training group which was going to be sworn in and installed in January is now cancelled and the PCTs are being given the choice of Early Termination or relocating to Madagascar! (which most of you will know was my original country invitation, ironically). We don’t feel like this is over at all now. More consolidation, more up in the air-ness and roller coaster emotions and more lack of information. That’s what I think I’ll be dealing with this month. ‘In Sha Allah’ I’m wrong and will enjoy a super boring, uneventful December.
At any rate and in the spirit of the season, truly, I am thankful I have such a great team that is so good at supporting one another through this, because none of the teams are having as easy a time with this as mine in Zinder. I am grateful that I had a wonderful and memorable thanksgiving (early), and a week of hanging out with these people (and we didn’t end up killing each other-30 people in 1 small house!). I am grateful that for now it looks like I will have a chance to fill out my service here. I’m grateful to all of you back home who have shared encouragement with me. Happy thanksgiving and eat lots of turkey for me. I’ll be back online just before Christmas.
Yours truly,
~aj