oh, niamey

Today, I traverse through a typical open-air market ducking away from the persistent vendors who associate my skin color with money. I just want to get what I need and leave. Today just the basics: rice, maca, tomato paste cans, garlic, maybe some onions if I get a good price, they are expensive this time of year. Do I want your cheap watch? No. The Barack Obama Flip-flops? Tempting but not for that price… And no I dont want to take your child to America with me. The afternoon heat is suffocating as I rush to get my errands done so I can go to the pool. I hail a taxi and make it to Niger’s little piece of America. The American school Rec center only 1 mil cfa to swim and watch TV. In the A.C. I buy a milkshake and an overpriced chicken Cesar salad or cheeseburger. Here I can through my Nigerianane acquired modesty to the wind and jump carefree into the chlorinated water.

Ay go ga ma kani kan ay ka neo

As I walk through the African bush on the way to begin my first month in village all I can think is “wow… good call on doing this in the middle of the day” and “I sure hope this is the right way…the river is still to my right so this must be right....” I arrived in my village after the 18K walk from Gotheye without mishap and eager to begin work…that is after I take a rest. Upon waking from my nap I left my house for my afternoon “windi windi” (walk from concession to concession) my neighbor, Fati, informed me that her daughter died the day before. Shock mixed with quick remembrances of protocol for nigerien funerals swept over me as I responded with the phrase “Fonda tilas” (greetings on what must be). The 2nd time I was “touched” with death in 24 hours. The night before while crossing the river on the ferry a man fell off and drowned. The ferry stopped and circled around for about 30 min but eventually gave up and we all went on our way minus one man. Death is common everywhere, a fact of life, but here it is accepted differently. I must begin to accept it in the same way.

On a less morbid note, approximately a week into my stay in village I was laying in bed reading, thinking, “my village sure is loud tonight what is going on? But being too lazy to actually go and see what the ruckus was about I continued to read. About an hour into these “unknown” festivities a knock at my door. Come see the video and “fire”(electricity). “What?” “Come see”. “Ok, i'm coming”. Ah ha! Someone brought a TV. and generator from Gotheye…all the noise makes sense now. The village was extremely excited so I stay outside to watch the video, which I find out, consists of various DVD’s. The first one? A new usher video…wow, this is something I never expected having to watch scantly clad women dancing while my Muslim villagers watch and ask me “is this what all of America is like”. No, no it is not. So I continue to watch various “videos” under the Nigerian night sky until I could take no more of such modernity mixed with stale West African cigarette smoke. I went to bed, praying the generator and TV would disappear soon. They did, much to the dismay of my villagers but the delight of myself.

Throughout my month, I went to quite a few baby naming ceremonies. Aka. elaborate celebrations where said baby receives a name 8 days after birth. Villagers come and give money, eat sub-par West African candy and sit and sit and sit. Then we eat and sit some more, most of this time I spend sitting and eating things that are handed to me while only understanding 50% of what is being said.

I carry water on my head every morning the first few weeks were spent with wet clothes. But now I can successfully make it to my door with little to no spillage, a personal victory. I love walking along the river around sunset. The women and children are bathing, washing clothes and dishes. And as I look at my town a top a mesa the light is a perfect soft orange glow. Beautiful. I then walk through the rice fields, swat mosquitoes and look at the various birds, wishing for the first time in my life that I were the bird watching type.

Friday, December 12, 2008

In a few hours I will be an official Peace Corps volunteer. I will "swear-in" in front of my teachers, new friends, old volunteers and Nigerian governmental officials. In both English and French I will commit to a two year service to the United States and Niger. It is extremely unreal that this is occurring. I feel like it was just a little while ago I was going into my interview in Athens all idealistic and dreaming of change.
For the past two months I have been living with a fantastic host family I ate all my meals with them, spoke small small zarma with them and became the anasara daughter who they constantly laughed at. When I had to leave a few days ago to move to the training site for the last week I felt tears come to my eyes, which I had to quickly choke back because it is not acceptable to show emotion openly here. The realization that I once again will be moving to another village in a few days is exciting and scary at the same time. The utter bewilderment of moving to a village in west africa without being able to speak the language cannot be explained though words. And yet in the two months I spent in my CBT site I made good friends whom I will miss tremendously. I cannot even imagine the friendships I will make during my two years here. I had an amazing last few days in the site. Tabaski was on Monday and Tuesday which meant that all of Niger was celebrating. I woke up fairly early in the morning expecting the festivities to start early only to be informed by the women at the tessam (truck stop area in which i buy breakfast) that the mass prayer will not be until 10 am and then the mass killing of sheep and goats will commence. I was not sure what my reaction was going to be upon watching many animals be sacrificed in the name of Allah but I was sure I wanted to find out. So I made sure to walk outside after the prayer when the whole town was moving to do the community kill, which starts the day. The entire village was out with kids running around asking me if i was going to take pictures of the event. They were all very instant that I document it well and share with people at home. For an American who has always been very removed from where meat comes from this was quite the opposite approach. But I was determined to witness the killing of the animals I would inevitably be eating later. I found the first few goat to be slaughtered did not affect me much, perhaps I was caught up in the "this is just the way it is" approach of the village. However, as the number increased and 10 goats were lying at my feet shaking with their throats cut I could not help but miss the distance americans take from their food. The rest of the day consisted of me walking around talking with everyone and trying to avoid eating all the many parts of a goat. I ended up consuming a throat, tongue and intestines but was able to avoid the balls. On Tuesday the "good" parts were consumed so I was much more willing and able to eat 'normal' goat meat. I ate more meat on Tuesday than I have in probably a year. In fact the eating did not stop until I left the village on Wednesday morning. I went to bed around 10:30 after being exhausted by the crazy two days, only to be woken up by my host sister around 11 insisting that I eat macca(pasta) right now. Now the idea of eating pasta in this country would normally really appeal to me because it never happens in the village bc its too expensive. But at 11 at night my last night in the village I was not too excited about it. I told her she was a crazy person and that I was trying to sleep. Which she responded to with a simple "no I’m not" and kept insisting I crawl out of my mosquito net to eat saying that my older host brother who brought the maca home wanted me to eat it. Who knows if that was actually true or not but i did eventually get out of bed to eat pasta. When I got up the next morning I was teasing her about it and then asked her if she ate some and she said shortly after waking me up she went to bed because it was late and wasn’t very hungry. I will miss her. Until next time, Ramatou.

My name is Ramatou and ay ga ba farkay

Greetings from Niger! It is the beginning of week 6 in Niger and so much has happened it is hard to describe. My stage has 25 other members from all over the United States. I am currently living in a village between Niamey and Hamdallaye. I sleep under the stars (which sparkle and are so bright here!) in a mosquito net and it has begun to be cold enough to wear sweat pants at night! “stageing” in philly went well but was really short…Charles DeGualle airport was aggravatating as always but service on air france is amazing (the food is so much better). Upon arriving in Niamey we were greeted by Tondi (the training director) and a bunch of current volunteers we will be working with during training. Then we had dinner and all went to bed fairly early. The 3rd day after two hours of language class (I’m learning Zarma or Djerma if you are French) we moved in with our host families. I am living in a village 11 K from the training site so I bike in on Tuesday and Friday of each week. The rest of the time I have class in my village. We are the first volunteers to live in this village so they are happy to have us. We are constantly surrounded by children and being asked questions that I have recently just begun to understand. My host family is great I have a sister that is my age and not married which is really unusual for this culture. She knows French and some English so we speak in all languages. Overall I really love Niger I live in a mud hut and have many “pet” baby goats and sheep. I found out that I am going to be placed about 25K north of Gotheye and 110 K Northwest of Niamey for the next two years and I’m right on the river which is amazing! I will be doing work like environmental education, hanging out with villagers, and working with trees like morengia and gum Arabic. I have heard great things about my village. I have already started thinking of amazing West African adventures Mali, Burkino Faso, Ghana, Togo, Morroco(to see Taryn!) etc. I miss everyone and hope everyone is well. Contact my dad if you want my new address. Love everyone! Thanks for the comments keep them coming!

General Info

I am leaving on October 7 for 2+ years to work as an Agro-Forestry Ext. Agent (more on what exactly that means will come later). While I am away you can send letters and care packages (please do!) just make sure you write Air mail and Par Avion or they may never get to me. Mail will typically take 2-6 weeks to arrive so don’t worry if you don’t hear back from me right away. It is also a good idea to number letters and packages if you plan on sending multiple letters so I know if one is missing.
My address in Niger (for at least the first 3 months):
Carrie Miller
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 10537
Niamey, Niger