zot in Niger bush camels

My training now has a definable end, though I am still not sure what day exactly I am going to go to my site. Anyway it will be after Thanksgiving and after Tabaski, which puts it at next Monday at the earliest but possibly even Tuesday or Wednesday. That leaves me with about eight language classes left and a small number of other sessions. I am getting pretty excited.

Today we had an activity that we didn’t have in Guinea called “GAD Olympics.” GAD stands for Gender and Development, or maybe Gender, AIDS and Development. Basically we had teams and ran an obstacle course while carrying buckets of water on our heads and then we made peanut butter and tea. It was fun and I think the stage enjoyed it.

Sunsets in the desert are unlike anything I have ever seen. Last night I just sat and watched the sun go down over the red sand. Niger has a reputation for being harsh and ugly, but actually it is very beautiful (at least what I have seen). There is the heat and the wind and the sand, and some nights there is the cold, but none of them are soft or mellow. When the wind comes it blows with a purpose. The sun pounds into the earth with meaning, and the sand is everywhere and varied and patient. The weather here is nothing if not passionate.

I heard from a couple of Guinea volunteers this last week, which was a great surprise. I would really like to do a trip through several countries, most of which have ex-Guinea volunteers that I could visit. I will probably try to do that sometime in the spring after I have had a chance to settle into my site and gotten some work done, but before the rains come. I am sort of hoping that I can pick some volunteers up as I pass through and we can continue on in a giant circle.

We have now been consolidated for a week, and have a few more days left until things unwind. I have been at the training site with all the stagiares for most of that time, and the volunteers that were helping with training left this morning.

What’s new to report? I have achieved some sort of peace with the uncertain state of my service in Niger. Its not like I have too much choice. I could end my service early, but that isn’t what I want to do and it doesn’t really make sense. Instead, I just have to recognize that I am going to put the effort into learning another language and then being accepted by my village and that it could be for naught if other security incidents happen. I figure the likelyhood of another thing happening in some near time frame are fairly high, so it wouldn’t surprise me to find myself pulled out at some point in the next several months.

I am enjoying the process though, which is probably what has kept me happy to be in Niger during the uncertainty of the past couple weeks. I did have a few sudden episodes of extreme emotion though, which caught me by surprise, mostly because I wasn’t terribly distraught most of the time and nothing particularly traumatic happened to me. But perhaps it just reminded me of being evacuated from Guinea, or perhaps it is just that I had to do so much questioning to find the inner desire to be a Peace Corps volunteer that every time my future as a volunteer becomes shaky I have to revisit that process and I am tired of doing that.

I am happy being in the Peace Corps and have learned to cope with many of the challenges, so at this point I am mostly just enjoying it. Still, I am impatient to finish training and go to my village. The plain truth is that I will learn my language much quicker at my village, and the sooner I can be there and begin integrating into the community the sooner I can leave behind the cooped up feeling of training and begin to do some real work. I am getting pretty bored. But it is fun, and since I only have a week left before I head to site (inshallah), it is no big deal.

One thing I do wish was different though is that there were more male volunteers. I don’t know why Niger is so heavily female, but the lack of male energy and the opportunity for male friends can be a little frustrating. There are two other guys (I think?) on my team (a team is just a group of volunteers that have been clustered relatively close to each other), but the few guys in the new stage are all Haussa speakers, which means they will not be going to a site near me.

So that’s it. I am just waiting. I have made friends with some volunteers, who on the whole are pretty awesome and accepting. Once I can get back to actually being a volunteer I think I will be quite happy.

I know Niger has a reputation as being one of the hardest Peace Corps posts, but so far my time here has been really good. I am already feeling much more at home than I ever did in Guinea, perhaps because the landscape is more like New Mexico, or perhaps because I have already adjusted some to living in West Africa and so now the transition doesn’t seem so scary. For whatever reason, I am feeling pretty positive.

So I’ve spent almost two weeks here now, and I have take a whole lot of language classes and even spent a few days in village with another volunteer. It appears that I will spend between a week or two more taking language classes and then I will go to my site.

And speaking of my site, I’ve been hearing all kinds of rumors about it, such as that my road floods every year, that it has lots of mango groves and gardens, that it is right on the river, and that there are sand dunes near by that can be hiked. In short, it seems pretty awesome.

There are some potentially negative things related to the last volunteer, but I think that will all be immaterial.

Anyway, again a short post. I will one day be all settled and be able to delve into things in more detail.