zot in Niger bush camels

I am back in ville since Monday. In that time I have felt oddly productive. Yesterday I met with a youth group to talk about maybe holding some seminars, one for boys and one for girls, to cover a variety of topics but basically just give them a chance to hear some health things (for probably the millionth time), but also to think about what options are available to them and how they can achieve them. I suppose I envision it to be a little like those group counselling sessions in high school where they try and get you to think about your future, only I hope it is about (-1)*(1,000,000) times better (I figure they had negative value, so you have to multiply by -1 to be positive).

Bad math jokes aside… I also had a productive discussion with the general secretary of my commune in which he looked at my objectives and we talked about potential projects and he brought up the idea of funding for anything I might want to do. I am having trouble figuring that out, because nothing I want to do requires funding, but he was almost pushing me to find a way to need funding so that we could ask for it from ONGs. My cynical point of view kicked in at about that point, but I really don’t know what exactly he was driving at.

Today I went to a New Year’s Eve celebration in which we danced and ate food. It was a lot of fun until it came time to go home, and then it turned out that many of the boys were spending the night in that village and many of the girls wanted to go home, and there were a lot of rather forceful attempts to convince the girls to stay. I have trouble with that sort of thing anyway, but this being not the United States it was particularly difficult to be around. Still you can’t jump in and tell the boys they can’t do that, because some of the girls are egging the boys on and it clearly isn’t a cut and dried situation. Maybe I should have a gender relations discussion group.

I think I am getting a cat. One of my friends has a bunch of kittens and they are definitely old enough, so probably tomorrow I will go pick one out and start again. Male so that it pees on my clothes or female so that it gets pregnant?

I am reading “Lies Your Teacher Told You” or something like that, all about history and the heroification of our historic figures. It is interesting, if a little repetitive at times. There is so much I don’t know about american history. It makes me think a better way to teach would just be readings from a selected number of original documents.

So as a result I have been thinking about race a lot, and then walking home from the fete I was thinking about how I feel like the vast majority of aid is counterproductive and may even harm communities. It certainly doesn’t help them in a lasting sense (with the clearer exception of having water pumps where the community is in charge of repairing them). But anyway, I have never really been sure what the alternative is, but today it occurred to me that it is a little like Iraq: Europe and America spent centuries raping and pillaging Africa, and the resulting level of development is not what would have occurred otherwise. In a sense we are obligated to do something about it if nothing else then because we messed it up so bad for so long. And even if you don’t buy that, we are messing with people in Africa because there are enormous resources here. So yeah, I don’t know that aid the way it is now is at all helpful, but I also don’t think we can sit around and do nothing… What to do though? I know it is much easier to criticize than to think up a solution.

My feeling of the ineffectiveness of my work is a huge downer. I try to take the perspective that changing even a few people’s lives for the better makes it worthwhile, but actually I don’t know if by giving people some of my perspective I am making their lives qualitatively better, except if a some kids wear a condom and as a result don’t get AIDS. But that has been sensibilized into most kids skulls, so even if I was doing seminars on that it wouldn’t be adding to their knowledge. I have said this before, but the really valuable part of Peace Corps work, in my mind, is the cultural exchange aspect. People’s conception of the U.S. is so skewed, and our conception of Africa (as if it is one giant place all the same) is skewed as well. I feel like our stereotype of Africa would be soldiers sitting in a jeep with a ton of weapons. Niger’s stereotype of America would be a New York City in which every person drives a hummer and is a rap star. You can imagine all the problems this causes, on both ends.

Okay, sorry for the preaching. I am doing well, feeling good if not “satisfied.” Happy New Year!

There are only four of us in for Christmas so far. A few volunteers live in Niamey and there is one other coming in today, so it will be a total of eight or so for a Christmas dinner tomorrow. Last night was all the recuperating and morale building that I hoped. As volunteers tend to do, we mostly just sat around and discussed the frustrating things about being a volunteer, but there is a sense of cathartic release and a sense of being in it together, and that changes things. This morning I am sitting in the hostel looking forward to a day spent shopping (for dinner) and hanging out. There is Christmas coffee (Thanks Emily’s mom!), which I am drinking and enjoying and things are nice and cozy. We will probably watch a whole bunch of Christmas movies later, which I am less excited about and may skip out on, but the important thing is the feeling of contentedness that I have as I sit here drinking coffee and writing this post.

An aside, this is the first time I have drank a cup of coffee. I usually drink some Lipton tea with powdered milk and sugar, which is pretty tasty, but in Peace Corps I have been having cravings for coffee, which is odd since I never drank it. Maybe it has some kind of comfortable space association in my mind and that’s why I suddenly want coffee, but its strange. Anyway, its not bad. I don’t really like the taste in my mouth after drinking a cup, but the coffee itself (with plenty of milk and sugar, is pretty good).

I will probably be posting a few times over the next few days, since I have electricity and easy access to internet, but I wanted to get a Christmas Eve post out for all of you who are busy doing your own Christmas preparations. Happy Holidays.

Things are progressing. Yesterday I went to see a Taekwando class, which was a whole lot of talk and only a tiny bit of Taekwando. I was surprised that anybody wanted to take it, more than that there is such a class at all in this village of 3,000 people. I’ve also been to see the gardens of some of the scouts. I know where the recharge place is and what it is like. Each day my house and concession get a little more put together.

Thursday I attended the weekly meeting of the scouts leaders. It was a fun meeting, just seeing what they did and how they tried to make things happen. If I understand correctly, they were founded by the volunteer who was here before me, and they basically meet each Wednesday to do some charitable act, like clean the school or mosque. I am going to see if they want to paint a map on the wall of the primary school. We discussed a lot of things, and have an English class starting next week and a business group starting the week after. It will be similar to my business group in Guinea, which would have been pretty successful if I had had time to finish it, except that it will be with younger kids who do not have a university future to look forward to. It also means I can probably lend them a tiny amount of money to start small businesses over the summer. I haven’t quite developed how that is going to work but I am pretty excited about it.

Today I woke up and went running, which was wonderful and I didn’t get nearly the same amount of attention as I expected. Sometimes its really nice that there was a volunteer here before me because the people expect me to be a certain way and that makes it easier. It can also make it harder if I do things differently, but so far it has been positive.

I also spent a bunch of money to buy wood and put up a shade hanger in my concession with the help of some of the scouts. I am pretty happy with it and I spent the evening planning out the rest of the yard and a small garden space. I hope to find or at least order a wooden bedframe tomorrow so that I can set that up permanently, which will let me hang up my mosquito net outside and start sleeping outside without having to take everything back in each morning (now it will just be the mattress and sheets). It is a major thing to have done and I am very happy with it. My counterpart was supposed to make sure I got one, but he is less motivated than he was with the previous volunteer… I also hear that he came and took the last one down and kept all the stuff. Sweet.

Anyway, things are going swimmingly, especially for having only been at site a week and a half. Today there was a protest against the president because he refuses to leave office, and tomorrow I am meeting with the presidents of several women’s groups to talk about what kind of work they are doing and what kind of work they would like to do. I will take that and everything else and write it up into a kind of program because my mayor wants a program.

Starting to think of trips and things. Anyone from the states want to come down and do a tour of Ghana, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Mali and Niger? We can stay with Peace Corps volunteers nearly the entire time and if we time it right we will see Elephants and our costs would mostly be the buses and the very cheap visa (like $50). And the plane ticket of course . One advantage of having a Peace Corps diaspora is knowing an ex-Guinea volunteer in almost all of those countries.

Maybe I already wrote about having amoebas, I don’t remember. I took my medicine like a good volunteer but then I had some more that I had to take some other medicine to remove any cysts that the amoebas has created. That was the day that my problems got really bad. I spent the whole day laying in bed and reading, getting up once every hour to relieve the grumbling in my intestines.

That happened for two days, and then I was sent in to Niamey to make sure there was nothing really wrong with me. Of course the day I arrived in Niamey things began to feel better, so then I spent essentially two days in Niamey having negative test results and feeling healthy, which made me feel rather sheepish at being there, since I hadn’t even been at site a week yet.

But all that is behind me now. I have been putting effort into getting my house together. While in Niamey I grabbed an old mosquito net that had holes in it and today I used it to put screens over my windows and a ‘mosquito curtain’ over my door. I am hoping this does something to reduce the ridiculous number of mosquitos that currently live in my house (it already seems to be helping a lot, as I can write this not under my mosquito net. In fact the old mosquito net works way better than metal screens would have. Its more flexible and didn’t require asking somone to make door and window coverings, it costs nothing, and it doesn’t give the image of a patron house, which screen doors definitely do.

So my house is good. Work is also good. Today I went to the weekly meeting of a youth group here (the ‘scouts’) that was started by the previous volunteer (if I have understood correctly). Now I have never thought much of the scouts in the states, but these kids have really impressed me with how much thought they put into things. I suppose it is also nice to see a group of people that is still doing some work after a volunteer has left. A truly ‘sustainable’ thing (I must love quotes tonight, Sorry I will stop). I left the meeting pretty inspired and looking forward to all the things we are planning, which at the moment include English and business classes (eirily similar to my Guinea work, no?). Of course that is just the beginning, but I am excited by their excitement. I am also looking into creating a directory of groups and associations and other resources for my commune. That would be extremely helpful for me because I would know the names and contacts of the different groups in my area and what each of them were trying to do. It will also be a good way to see the other villages and to meet people. It could even be helpful for everyone else also (gasp!).

I’d just like to close with a little observation on the irony of The Economist having an issue all about the economic recovery while its job section includes only six listings or something…

And I’m feeling pretty good about law school again. With all the chaos I wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted, especially given the insane income/cost ratios. But then there was also an add for the Masters in Public Policy / International Development at Harvard that looked very exciting. I think I have zeroed in on the kind of work I want to do at this point, I just don’t know if I want to be more involved on the law side of things or the policy side.

In theory the work could be similar, but if I went to law school I would probably be more involved in Open Source and that whole aspect of things, which could still involve public policy in other countries. On the other hand a public policy degree or the like would not be as involved in Open Source, or at least not from a legal perspective… All of this is interesting and fun to think about, and I am glad I have time to think for a while still.

Assuming that nothing happens here… I don’t have a lot of faith for some reason. D’Irkoy go ba (If God is willing in Zarma!), the program will stay open for the rest of my service.

Short language lesson: “Mate ni kani” is good morning. “Hamburger” is maybe (I am so not lying). Also, to express surprise, you can say “wiza.” As in “I picked up my towel and, wiza, like 900 mosquitos attacked me!”

Oh yeah, and “Toh” means okay.