Emails, Letters, Packages!

So here’s the deal with sending me stuff: you are welcome and encouraged to do so! My mailing address is on my facebook page and also available through any of my family members. I really, really love receiving letters. It makes my day. Please send me letters! Even emails are great!

Packages are a little trickier. They can be expensive for you, and are also expensive for me since the post office here charges you to pick up packages. The post office in Niamey also opens all packages, and sometimes the postal workers help themselves to the contents. So far they seem to really like my cliff bars… If you are sending me anything valuable it’s a good idea to put it in a Tampon box. 

I don’t need anything. If you would like to send a package, things I enjoy receiving include:

Newspaper articles; Pictures; Any and all dried fruits; Peanut M&Ms; Candy (but no chocolate bars please, they melt); Protein/Nutrient Bars; Construction Paper/Pens/Markers/Blow up balls/Card games/Puzzles and anything else you think kids between 2-11 yrs and I might enjoy doing together; Soft Toilet Paper; Music; Crossword Puzzles/Sudoku; Books… an AC unit.

But in all seriousness, letters are great and make my day. If you want to include interesting news articles with your letters that would also make me very happy, I very much miss the New York Times. Also please send me pictures! I love looking at them and the Nigerien kids love them even more.

 

Gidan Haoua Siddo

Haoua Siddo

My uwa, host mother, is Haoua Siddo and she is one incredible woman. Her age is unclear. In the States I would guess given her wrinkles and decaying teeth that she is well past 60. Given that the life expectancy for the average Nigerian is around 51, and knowing now first hand how hard the sun hits your skin, my guess is she’s actually somewhere in her mid or late 40’s.

Haoua works in the market selling hura, the traditional millet and milk drink that I unfortunately cannot drink (something about possibly contracting TB from the unpasteurized milk…). She is divorced and has three grown children, two of whom I have met. Two of her granddaughters, Hadija (19) and Sharifa (11), live with her and help her with household and market chores.

The hard work accomplished by women in Niger on a daily basis constantly amazes me. I can’t tell you what time they start or finish because work has always started before I wake up and continues past my bedtime. I never see them rest.

Sharifa, my 11-year-old kanwa, is the most astonishing to me. Now before I continue I want to make perfectly clear that most days, Sharifa drives me crazy. She is a bossy brat who bullies a lot of the other kids and does not know how to share. Sharifa loves to climb all over me when I feel most exhausted and mocks my slow and broken Hausa when I feel most discouraged. Still, she is an incredible girl.

 

Rakia, our neighbor, and Sharifa

Awake before the sun goes up, Sharifa starts her day by cleaning the house. Next she goes to fetch water from the pump two blocks away. She carries several gallons back home before going to the market to help sell breakfast. Most of the day she’s either at the market selling food, running around town delivering food, or at home pounding millet to make more food. None of these tasks are easy. Being 11 years old and doing them in 115ºF weather does not make them any easier.

I hear Haoua yell at Sharifa all the time: to fetch more water, to clean more dishes… the list is endless. I’ve also seen Haoua hit Sharifa several times (corporal punishment is very widely used in Niger to discipline children). Despite all of this, Sharifa is always up for a dance party, seldom complains about any of the work she has to do, and never loses the smile on her face...except when yelling at other kids who want to take my attention away from her.

Sharifa has never been to school, does not know her exact age, and will probably be married with children before she is twenty. This is true of the majority of girls and women in Niger.

 

Meeting the Chef du Canton

On our second full day in Niger, I had the privilege of meeting the Chef du Canton. This is the Chief of the village I am staying in and the surrounding smaller hamlets. Every village has an elected mayor (marie) and a mayor’s office that works directly with the district, regional, and national government. The Chef position is (I think) more symbolic than anything else. While the Chef himself informed us that the position is a democratically elected one, he also explained he was eligible to run because his family was one of past Chefs. His duty is to listen to disputes within the area and resolve them as best he can.

Meeting the Chef du Canton was a pretty surreal experience and so far one of my favorites since arriving in Niger. All the trainees sat on mats in front of the Chef, who sat in a chair, with an aide on each side and a guard behind him. The scene was both splendid and incredibly intimidating. The guard was carrying a sword and dressed in traditional Tuareg attire completely covering his whole body. The only parts of his body not covered by clothing were the eyes-- which were hidden behind aviator sunglasses. It was awesome.

The Chef and his aides spoken French fluently and in addition to welcoming us to the village and offering their assistance with anything they could, told us a little bit about themselves. One of the Chef’s aides told us he had studied in the U.S., in the former USSR, and also mentioned he had just gotten back from a trip to Spain!

When the Chef remarked how interesting it was that the US does not have chefs or a monarchy, his aid remarked in French: “America is a mosaic of immigrants”. I realize this is a ridiculously broad statement and you could analyze this a million different ways. When I first heard it though, I it made me think a lot about my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and the mission of the Peace Corps to not only train men and women in developing countries meet basic needs, but also encourage cross-cultural exchange. I am really proud to be working for the Peace Corps and hope to further all three facets of this mission.

Peace Corps Training

Technically, I’m not a Peace Corps Volunteer. Incha Allah, I will be sworn in and officially become a PCV on December 30^th. For now I am a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT). During these first nine weeks I’m learning how to become a successful volunteer through sessions on language, culture, personal health, safety and security, and technical skills.

There are a total of 42 of us PCTs, all training to become Community Health Agents (CHA) or Forestry, Agriculture and Resource Management (FARM) volunteers. The first two nights in Niger we all stayed on the training site, which looks a lot like the site of a summer camp in the US. There’s a cafeteria, an infirmary, and a volleyball court. There are also several buildings that could hold beds if you wanted, but here in Niger we sleep outside :-)

After two days at Camp Peace Corps, we were introduced to our host families and moved into our Community Based Training (CBT) sites. Most of the trainees (myself included) are learning Hausa, so we all live in the same village. Trainees learning Zarma live in several surrounding villages. 

Peace Corps Training is intensive. On a typical day, my family’s rooster wakes me up around 6 AM, and I’m under my bed net by 10 PM.

Language classes begin at 8 AM and are generally conducted at my house. Every week, Ashley (another fellow trainee) and I have a different language instructor. All the language instructors are young Nigeriens hired by the Peace Corps to train us in either Hausa or Zarma. These instructors are some of the most intelligent and patient people I have ever met. Language lessons generally go from 8 AM to noon, with a half hour break in between. After our hour-long lunch break we generally go back for another two and a half hours of language, followed by another half hour break. The last session of the day is typically a cultural or technical session. So far we’ve covered topics that range from the role of Islam in Niger to the importance of Moringa Trees in both agriculture and health.

Once or twice a week we have “core” days. On core days all the training sessions are conducted on the Peace Corps Training site. These days are less language intensive. Peace Corps Niger staff instructs the entire group on safety & security, health, and culture in Niger. Core days are a nice break because they allow a little bit of a break from the intensive village life—we eat lunch with utensils instead of hands and sit at tables instead of on mats, and the food is more geared toward American tastes... the break is much appreciated.

By 6 PM everyone is generally exhausted. After watering my garden plots (my transplanted tomato and lettuce plants died pretty quickly, but I’m holding out for my green pepper and eggplant seeds) it’s back home for dinner with my host family. Shelly (roommate and fellow trainee) and I generally hang out with our younger sisters after dinner on the tabarma (mat) for a couple hours.

We laugh a lot, sometimes we talk a broken mix of French/Hausa/English, sometimes we dance, and sometimes I try to study more Hausa… Most of the time we lay and stare at the stars, and this is definitely my favorite part of the day.

Arrival in Niger!

On October 22^nd I arrived in Niger along with 42 other Peace Corps Trainees. The trip was pretty long. We left Philadelphia on October 21^st en route to JFK (why our bus driver decided to go through Manhattan via 39^th St. on a Thursday afternoon is beyond me). Both flights (JFK-Paris; Paris-Niamey) were pretty uneventful, and I slept through almost everything… surprise, surprise!

This is the ground about a block from my house.

My initial impressions of Niger as a country were formed while still on the plane. I was not lucky enough to get a window seat, but the personal TVs were showing live images of the ground from the camera on the plane’s tail. Mini, the fellow trainee sitting next to me, accurately remarked:  “It looks like Mars!” 

Niger is very rural, and most of the country is desert. I saw this from the plane, and have continued to observe since. The ground here resembles the images of dry skin in a Neutrogena commercial: very dry and cracked.

My first thoughts as I stepped off the plane: HOT, HOT, HOT. In case you were wondering, it’s really hot in Niger. October and November are mini-hot season, so the days get as hot as 119ºF!

Our group got through baggage and security smoothly. Outside the airport we were met by Peace Corps Niger staff and taken in PC vans to the training site a little bit outside Niamey, the capital. Had I not been sitting next to a current PCV in the van I would have never known it was Niamey we were driving through. I saw mostly thatch huts, dirt roads, goats, and lots of trash.

It's quite overwhelming to see the poverty that exists in Niger. I'm here as a Community Health volunteer but when I walk through the streets I wonder, is it useful to stock up the medicine cabinet of a health hut when the roads that lead you to the hut are all dirt and filled with trash? Should a mother's first priority be buying her children bednets or breakfast? There is certainly a lot of work and learning for me to do here...