The Eighth Letter Home By AJ

Author’s Note
Wilcommen,
It is January and toasty here. Ha. Ha. Ha. To all of you who have been skating around on ice for the past month! I hope you all survive it alright; be careful. Oh the memory of snow, I always remind myself, when its 90 degrees during cold season, of the reason I wouldn’t even have accepted an invitation to Peace Corps-Ukraine had they sent that to me instead of one to the hottest country in the world. Anyway this has been a busy last month before IST so I have broken the many things to say into chapters.

1. IST [January 25-Febuary 12]
First, an explanation of what IST is. IST is short for In Service Training. Like I had PST (Pre-Service Training) in the beginning in Hamdallaye, I will be going back there for more of the same. We will be getting more language and more technical training, also more security and medical classes, I think. I don’t think we’ll get more formal culture classes, but we’ve just had one 4-month-long intensive culture class so I wouldn’t think they are necessary anymore, really. I think having the training broken up into two periods is a really good idea; the admin knows how we get overwhelmed and new-info-jammed in the beginning. I know I shut down taking new information in by the last couple of weeks in PST and I know with all the adjusting I’ve done the last few months, I’ll be ready to retain so much more now.
We’ll be going back to Hamdallaye but we’ll be living up at site instead of down in the town with our PST families. Some of us will go down for dinner once or twice to visit our old host families. I’ll bring my family al kakis- a special cookie boiled in honey and made only in Zinder-ville. We’ll each have invited a ’counterpart’ to come for a few days near the end of training so that the person we’ll be working most closely with is on the same page as us, in terms of what PC is and what we do. I have asked my English teacher, Ali, to come. He’s really good and we plan to start an English club and I think we could work on other projects as well, but I haven‘t discovered those yet.
It’ll be great to see all our old training group mates and our old teachers from PST. I’ll be able to ask the teachers a lot more intelligent questions now. Some of us on Team Z (…Team Fat) have really taken to being bush cooks and cook big dinners for the rest of the team. Team Z isn’t as big as my training group (even after all the Early Terminations from the training group) but I thought it might be a fun way to say thank you to our chefs at site (who cook delicious meals for a giant group of stressed out, bottomless pit Americans and their training staff) if a group of us cooked dinner for them some night during IST. So that is one event I’ll ask to do during these 3 weeks. I’m very excited to be able to talk to all my training friends, to ask them about their Niger-life stories and project ideas. I’m still sad about the 1/3 of the group who wont be there; Hamdallaye is going to feel weird and maybe empty but hopefully, and probably, closer knit as well.

2. Job Description
Being a PCV is definitely unlike most jobs and a lot of people have a hard time understanding what we do exactly. I’ll try to explain relatively briefly here, but I plan to write a ‘describing things ad nauseam’ letter one of these days, in which the minutia of my days in Niger will be fully realized in script.
Peace Corps in different countries uses different set ups and has different job specializations. Some countries have an education volunteer teach full time in a school. Other programs want people with specific expertise to teach at a university or high school level or be a fully qualified health worker in a clinic. In Niger, we have 5 (soon to be merged to 4) broad categories of work: CYE ‘Community and Youth Education’, MCD ‘Municipal and Community Development’ (I think), Ag ‘Agriculture’ and NRM ‘Natural Resource Management’ and CHA -‘something Health something’. We are all assigned a sector but most of the time our work overlaps two or more of the sectors, and volunteers from all the sectors work together on projects from time to time (eg- my health murals (see later chapter) are education and health and MCDs and CYEs helped me do the project). Also, we each have a head of our sector in Niamey, called an APCD ‘Assistant Peace Corps Director’. These are Nigeriens who know our sector well and can speak English with us. My APCD is Bawa and I mentioned the MCD APCD, Oussman, in my last letter(Cokastic).
For the first few months our jobs literally consisted of sitting studying language, sitting to not overheat or go insane and sitting talking to coworkers and neighbors. It’s good for people who like to sit and do (seemingly) nothing, but hard for people who like accomplishment by American standards. All of that is a part of what I’ve already talked about as ’integration’. Now, however, we have begun to start formal projects like mural painting, English clubs, soccer tournaments et al. We are supposed to know our community, find out what they have and what they need and formulate projects that will address those needs. As in the states, the catchword in PC Niger is ‘sustainability’, though here it means that we have to try to figure out ways to make our projects not one-time things but things that can continue to function or happen without us and even after we leave. It’s basically the same model as the ‘community organizer’ model that Obama used in his campaign. Unfortunately, here we don’t get to know how we fared in bringing about Change by seeing voting percentages.


3. Project: Bande
In time for IST, I’ve been thinking a lot about what projects I want to try in Bande so that I can talk these things over with my friends and trainers in Hamdallaye. I wasn’t sure in the beginning about how the town would like murals or art clubs or the artsy-er types of projects I could do -I didn’t seem to get a lot of bites right away. But slowly, especially after my APCD talked to his old school buddy who happens to be my mayor, people have started to mention more and more ideas that I could do here. An art club, a mural at the middle school, maps at the elementary schools. My neighbors expressed interest in learning how to sew, so if I can find a women’s club, I’ll try to set up a sewing clinic. I really want to try to have a girls group make corn husk dolls or rag dolls which I used to make as a kid in the states. I saw a girl here once with a Barbie and looking at it was like seeing an anachronism. Kids just don’t have toys here; so what if some group of people could exercise some creativity and make money and put more cheap (affordable) toys into the community?
I have one idea that I can’t shake but I also can’t figure out. I really want the people in Bande to be able to make their own books. Some could do it, especially if I gave some training on how to write stories or what kind of books there are. But even those who could don’t have the means to make them. I could teach them how to hand bind books, but will they hand write every page? Especially if they are doing multiples of one book, that seems ridiculous -medieval, if you will. Will they buy a computer and a printer and type up their book? Most of the women here don’t even know what a computer is -they are fascinated by my digital camera. Most of the men have never laid hands on a computer, and even my super-intendant who is one of the more educated people in the village and just bought a computer wants me to teach him how to use it --my friend Sean has typing lessons with his mayor on the office‘s new computer. Most people can’t afford this sort of thing anyway and it would take years, I think, for their investment to make returns. Also the closest place to get computer supplies like ink and paper would be Zinder, but you might have to go to Niamey even, I‘m not sure. There are so many problems, I can’t figure out how Bande and computer generated books could be compatible. So then I think, well, I’m living in the 18th Century, why not make a printing press? But I’m not sure the effort of making a complicated machine like that with so many little bits is really worth it. I could as easily do a book campaign and beg and plead with my villagers to buy imported books. They are available, but in a country where kids run around half clothed and half the weight they should be, it’s hard to get parents to make more investment in reading. Also, I don’t want to make a cute, quaint little printing press because, even though it’s not the 21st century in Niger, it is in the rest of the world; and if Niger is ever going to join the global community it’s going to have to pull a China and dive head long into tech investment and education. Antiquated technology, if marginally beneficial, is at best a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.
I do want to bring textbooks to Bande, and that will be an interesting project that I can pin the success or failure of on my villagers. I will find out at IST what organizations I can look to for book buying funds, but even if I do find some money, my community will have to come up with a significant amount themselves. I’m thinking of fundraising ideas; one thing volunteers do is to plant a school garden, have kids help tend it and then sell the produce to benefit the school. There are a lot of potential problems with this as well, but it’s one that I think I’ll try if I can get people interested in it.
Although computers do seem anachronistic here, technology is filtering in. People have phones now that have internet on them -like is finally common in the states, and has been the norm in Europe and Asia for years. Regular cell phones are so quotidian now that everyone and their 3rd wives have them. Some people are getting computers. So I want to get a group of girls to come to Zinder and have an internet tutorial with me at some point so that when technology hits Niger and they get access to it in one form or other, they can take advantage of the opportunity. I also think it might be a way to really open their eyes to education, the world outside their village and possibilities for their lives in general. Projects that get girls outside the village are encouraged by PC because many of the girls (I assume this is true for Bande, tho I haven’t taken my own official survey) have never left their village or at least have never been to the regional capital -if the family is doing anything outside of their town and sending some but not all of its members, the girls are always the last to be chosen for the trip.
So these are some of the ideas I’ll be running by people and working out the kinks of over IST. If you have any brilliant brainstorms or a clearer, head-not-in-the-trenches perspective, do enlighten me.

4. Barka da Sabowar Shekara -Happy New Year!
For New Years I spent a lovely, laid-back day and night in Matamey. We hung out with Ashley and Kira’s best friend in that town. When Cindy came we had lunch and watched House episodes. We built a bonfire and had smores with the Nigeriens and tried to teach them the English words for graham cracker, marshmellow and smore, but they just kept calling everything chocolate. After the Nigeriens left we broke out the booze and made good mixed drinks. After we rang in the new year, we fell asleep watching House.
By the next morning I knew I had some sort of gastro-intestinal illness so instead of going back to Bande I swung up to Zinder to get tested and get my meds. I had amoebas -starting out the new year in good Peace Corps style! There I happily found my friend Kat’s package waiting for me which was a lovely early birthday surprise and made being sick a lot better!

5. A Kitten Called Waka
My RR (Regional Representitive- the liaison between a region’s PCVs and the Niamey admin) had a cat who had kittens. I expressed reserved interest in taking one of them and ended up with Waka. The name means ‘song’ in Hausa and is sadly apropos; it turns out she’s got Wagnarian opera lungs in her. I named her that because several years ago I should have been able to name my cat at home who was instead named Bunkey the Funky Monkey (or Monkey for short). I wanted to name her Sonata but my mom said she’d just say Snotty all the time and hijacked my naming rights. Waka is the closest I could get in Hausa to ‘Sonata’. So here I am on the other side of the planet where mom can’t pull a Tanja (=‘president’ of Niger), getting my way finally.
Waka is, shall I say, an adventurous kitten. I’m hoping she grows out of this spirit. She’s also taught me the literal meaning of “curiosity killed the cat”. I’ll cut to the chase. One morning I went to visit the bathroom and I noticed that my cat wasn’t coming through the drain hole from the other room, to greet me like she normally did. And then I heard meowing and I though, man how’d she get over my wall to the outside of my concession? So I peeked out my door and called to her but no response. Then I had a thought that I assumed too disgusting and unlikely to be true, but I went back into the latrine room to be sure and there again I heard the dreaded meowing. Yes, it was coming from the bottom of my latrine.
I got my flashlight and a basket hanger with a long rope and stuck these things and my arms up to the elbows into to 6inch hole that I ‘use’. happily, the latrine is new so there was solidish space at the edges of the pit. But my stupid cat wouldn’t grab a hold of the basket hanger. I was resigning myself to periodic essays at rescue in this manner for the next couple of days until my cat died down there*, when the guys who are working on the walls of my concession came(*I‘m sorry if that sounds callous, your reading this in a country where pets routinely get surgeries and I am writing from a country where parents can‘t get surgeries for their kids or themselves). I said in my broken Hausa ‘um can you help me? My cat is there. Theres a cat there’ pointing at the latrine hole. The guy was taken a back and somewhat amused. In the end, they had to hack away the cement sealing, lift up the heavy cement top of the latrine and, after several other options were exhausted, stick a ladder and climb down to grab my wayward kitten. I immediately stuck her in a bath and soaped her up. She got bathed in so much hand sanitizer, yuck. The dude wanted the equivalent of 2 bucks for that, but I gave him 3 because, really, he climbed down into a latrine to fetch a kitten, -he deserved time and a half for that. Sense then, we’ve been on a leash at all times, because we cannot be trusted to stay out of a latrine. I’ve thought about calling her Wuya which is Hausa for difficulty or hardship, but she’s still got those operatic pipes, so Waka it is.

6. Birthday in the Bush
I have passed yet another milestone in my service -my first birthday in the bush. It was a great birthday due entirely to my lovely friends who helped me celebrate; Sean and Sarah, who were part of the Zermou story, and Cindy all came to help with my mural project (see Chapter 7) and Ashle, who lives in magaria- where I bike to and from sometimes, also came up for just the day, and finally Miss Kat back at home sent me birthday candles in the serendipitously received package.
This was no ordinary birthday, it was a three cake birthday! The first cake was an astounding chocolate cake that Sarah made from scratch at the hostel and brought from Zinder. Seriously, Betty Crocker’s got nothing on this cake. Cindy put Kat’s candles on in the form of “2-?” because I wouldn’t say at first what birthday it was(I cant believe im turning into that person who wont own up to her age..!). We ate the cake early so it wouldn’t go stale and Sean justified our transgression by calling the whole weekend my partial birth distortion. I liked that because im a sucker for a pun. The second cake we commissioned my land lady’s daughter Soyeba to make a giant version of these little deep-fried sweet biscuit cake things that are called biscuti. When she brought it, we stuck a candle in, sang the song and took a picture with her. The third was a delic chocolate cake that Ashle brought from Magaria where they sell fancy things like packaged food.
My friends made me a birthday breakfast which I cant describe. But breakfast foods (especially of the eggy variety) are my favorite and almost every morning that I am in Zinder, I make scrambled eggs. My favorite restaurants back home were almost all breakfast/brunch places. So my egg scramble was a perfect treat even though it sounds ordinary.
Later, Sean and Sarah wanted to go out to Bande’s garden way out in the countryside, much to Ashle‘s and Cindy‘s chagrin. Here ‘way out’ is defined by about 2k or a mile and ‘garden’ is defined by a seasonal series of ponds, a grove of trees and some garden-like areas sprinkled about. It was a nice place to have a picnic. A guy working in the garden gave us a bunch of lemons and at one point a dude with a big gun walked by. He stopped to let us take pictures and pretended to get the gun ready to fire, which made me nervous! We sat and talked and played trivia contest and bop, marry, kill.
When we got back to bande, we were exhausted, so I decided we wouldn’t finish the mural that day and I finished it myself the next day. We had planned to grill shish kabobs that night, using my landlady’s wood that she had just dumped in my yard (for explanation on why I would not feel at all bad about using my landlady’s wood see chapter 8), but none of us had enough effort or hunger to go back to the market. So the barbeque has been postponed until Zinder and we tarried away the rest of the evening playing games and chatting.

7. The Sistine Chapel of Bande
As I mentioned, murals are going to be a big thing for me here. And the health clinic is going to be my Sistine Chapel. It might even take the 2 years I’m here (isn’t that how long Mich took?). We started with 2. I promise to have pics on my blog soon, if I haven’t done so already. They are pretty good. I designed them myself, but the idea behind the ‘variety of foods’ panel I got from the mural I did way back during Demyst with Terri. One is about eating lots of different kinds of food and the caption says in hausa “Varied food gives health and strength”. The other is about washing after you leave the bathroom or you kid leaves the bathroom and it’s captions say “we wash our hands after leaving the bathroom” and “we wash our children when they’ve finished with the bathroom”.
My friends came in to help me for four days, -strategically timed to coincide with my birth day. It was a lot of fun to show them my life here in Bande, though when my villagers told them they speak better Hausa than me I felt territorial, even though it’s true. We cooked almost as good food as we do in zinder, and played trivia contest and boggle (thanks mom for that!). Trivia contest is a game my friend Cindy made up and Sean coined the name. It’s what we play when we don’t want to play a full game of Trivial Pursuit, but asking questions sounds fun. The ‘Question Master’ asks the questions and the first person to shout out the right answer wins a point. The only problem is that the Question Master gets divine authority in choosing questions and doling out points and this week Sean was severely, tho he contests unknowingly, biased in Cindy’s favor. So I stopped liking trivia contest and I think Sarah was a bit miffed too.
Once when we were in the daily market and once when we were on the road, a guy with a traditional guitar and crazy eyes serenaded us. He made up songs on the spot about us. “Here’s Uma. She’s living with Fati and we’re really glad she’s here. Here’s Hadiza. She’s working with Fati also. Give me money now.” We got a bit on video and it will be my mission to upload that onto my blog in the next 3 weeks. He broke out into a lounge singer-esque banter between verses even. It was ridiculous and amazing. Wow I live in Niger.
On Sunday evening, we decided to take my Niger style tea set out to a tree near my house and make Shaye, or ‘Chai’ or really strong tea with a ton of sugar in it. We couldn’t do it right for the first batch so some guys from the middle school came over and helped us. They poor the tea back and forth between cups and build up this amazing amount of foam. Then they pour the foam into a shot glass and put a little tea in that and each person takes turns drinking. They usually do 3 brews with a batch of tea and a whole cup of sugar between the 3 batches. This was what I was hunting for in the first month because it’s a good way to get to know a group of guys. But it was harvest time when I first got here and even now my friends who visited say there aren’t as many guys hanging out drinking tea here as in their villes. Besides having fun, being Hausa with my american friends, I wanted to advertise that I do do Chai so that when I’m walking around, maybe guys will invite me over to tea more often.
While we were working on the murals, we didn’t always have work for everyone at once so those feeling ill could sit out or take pictures and those who preferred to play with the kids could do that. Cindy went off and taught my kids duck duck goose. And then she sat them down and used my mural drawings to do little lectures on the health topic that each picture shows. This was in Hausa mind you. Why cant I have Hausa like my friends? Cindy was amazing, I couldn’t believe how she got them to pay attention and answer her questions about washing hands and eating a variety of food. It was perfect Peace Corps. I got video of that too, so once again, have patience and I’ll get it up on my blog somehow or other.
I got the two murals done the day that my friends left and took pics. It’s funny that my friends told me, when I was complaining about the mob of kids crowding our work, that the amount of kids following anasaras around is directly proportional to the amount of anasaras, and they were right. Everyday while we worked we had crush level crowds, but when I was finishing up the mural, there were only a few well behaved kids reading the words that I was writing and trying to guess what the whole phrase would be before I wrote it. It was a nice calm denouement to the project. In the next few months I will do more murals, one is designed already and the others I have to talk to the health workers about but the whole wall, if I have my say, will be covered in pictorial hygiene messages.

8. The Big Move
When I return to Bande after IST, I’ll be moving. My mayor told me earlier this month that the land lady’s son is coming back from Saudi Arabia and she’s kicking me out. She’s not really supposed to do that because there was supposed to be an agreement made between her and the mayor that the rent would be for 2 years. But this is niger, and even if the agreement was ever made, it still means nothing. This is a nice house and I knew that whatever one they found for me wouldn’t be as new and nice as this. But there are a few drawbacks to this house which made me nervous but willing to move-not that I really had any say in it anyway.
So last night the shit hit the fan. I was sitting outside my house having shaye with Dasa my little high school age friend when the workers at my house told me they had to go into my house to figure out what kind of paint to put on the walls. I said ‘okay but you know that you cant paint until after I move which will be after a month’. Then they started getting really agitated saying ‘oh no there’s a problem there’s a problem’. The Saudi Arabia son is coming back in a week and they have to get the house ready! I said they would all just have to wait, there’s nothing I can do. But they had other ideas and hightailed it off to my mayor’s house who is in charge of my housing. Then they came back and told me that the mayor would come in the morning (before I left for Zinder) which I assumed meant he was coming to move me out to… I didn’t know where. I called my RR who called the Zinder driver who called my APCD who called my mayor and long story short, I was informed that I would indeed be moving completely out of that house and into a storage area where they keep grain that next moring (today as I type). I was hopping mad but after a bad night of sleep, and after my mayor seemed honestly apologetic enough for me and was one time this morning I cooled off. We got my stuff moved on ox carts and I got onto the bush taxi only a little after when I had planned. It was better that I got my things moved this way than leaving everything in the house because they would have just cut the lock off and moved my things without me there. Wow I live in Niger.
I am (was) next to a house that plays movies till midnight every night on loudspeakers. There is also a mosque close by and no shade trees in the yard. I also feel like I didn’t get to know my neighbors as I should because in the beginning I wasn’t very comfortable in Hausa and a lot of people only speak Hausa. I just got to see the new house and it’s pretty close to this one, but I think there is no mosque or movie house near by. It is mud brick rather than cement that I have now. But that might actually be a plus- I’ve heard that mud is cooler than cement, but im not sure. They are building a wall right now and were talking about a big shade hanger, tho I only need a small one because there is a big tree in the yard and another big tree right outside the concession wall. There is also enough space for a garden which I want to plant asap. It is a lot smaller than my current house, but I really wanted a smaller house frankly, because I don’t use the two big back rooms I have right now and I don’t like all that wasted space. And now I will be able to meet all my neighbors properly and get on their good sides so they can keep away the kids and the creepy guys from Nigeria. Maybe I’ll even gain a host family, although I still don’t really want to eat Hausa food every night.
There is not a spigot in the yard so I will have to have water brought or carry it myself. It is not very far to the nearest well though, 40 second walk. I didn’t notice any power lines going to the house, and that is the only thing that worries me. I have become very attached to my electricity here even though my light switches and outlets keep breaking. I don’t want to go somewhere everyday to have my cell phone charged and I want to have a fan when hot season rolls around. It’ll be like waiting for my report card, waiting to find out all the last details of my new house. I feel a lot better now, tho, that I’ve seen it, even if unfinished.

Epilogue: Sai An Jima- So Long For Now
Well that is it. Next time I write, there will be Parisian quality chocolate croissant digesting in my stomach. Once again, feedback is more than welcome, it is anticipated beyond imagination. It’s really helpful for me to know what you like to hear about and what is just me jabbering on. It is my job to talk about my life and Niger culture to americans, and beyond that, questions and comments are -always- highlights to my day. Cheers, ~AJ