zot in Niger bush camels

Well some things have changed for the better, especially with respect to food. Though we dont really have a marche here, it turns out there are a few little beautiques that sell various things. Some even sell onions, and the other day I walked past a guy that was carrying tomatoes and he gave me some (super nice!). Everything essential is here, like beans and rice, oil, little packets of cookies, and even powdered milk. I think there also might be a lot of moringa, which is a tree that you can make this stuff called copto from that is delicious.

But even better, there is a marche on the outskirts of Niamey that has anything I could want, including a gas station that sells patron type items like imitation pringles. It is also very easy for me to get there because my counterpart goes into Niamey on a regular basis. If I can go once or twice a week I can buy things like eggs and fruit and won’t have any trouble eating healthily. If I have to I can also take a taxi or a bus, which wouldn’t be as nice a ride but would still get me there just fine.

Also, I heard that the village had already collected money to give to the village chief (sorry, they are called chef du village) to pay for electricity, so at some point I will ask about that and see if I can’t speed that process along. It would be a good project and would make a difference in the pleasantness of people’s lives.

I’ve been thinking more about aid and development, and feeling increasingly like aid does nothing but encourage a bad situation. Much of the issue I think comes at looking at things from our eyes. We think that having electricity is terribly important, but for my villagers, it would be more like a luxury that won’t really change their lives much. They will get lights at night, and can watch TV, and can even heat their water for bathing, but no one will have money to make significant investments in anything that can use electricity. The best thing to come of it would be the nutritional value of having yogurt here once somewhat bought a refrigerator.

And so after a number of years, once the equipment wears out and something breaks, people just make the small changes to go back to how they were, and someone steals the money to fix it, and that’s that until the next donner comes along and fixes it. In short, there isn’t a ton of motivation because it doesn’t signicantly change much.

There is, of course, a lot of desire to make things better and more like the US, but that is largely because people’s perceptions of the US is based on rap videos. It is hard to emphasize how true this is. No one has seen anything except that. Occassionally you run into someone who has actually been to America and thinks it sucks there because you have to work your butt off and you are always alone. And they are right. Here you don’t work much and you hang out with your friends all day. During the harvesting season you do work like mad, its true, but then you have six months or more with not much needing to be done. And if you do have work to do, it isn’t like work in the states, its like a group of people getting together to build a wall, and so you are still hanging out and joking. And lets not forget that if you do manage to land a good job and work hard, you will have many many obligations to family and friends.

All of this is to say that I don’t know if we are approaching development from the right way. We assume that people want what we want, and if we ask them, they do. But do they want it because that’s what they see on TV? Do they want it if it means giving up certain other ways of life? What if my village is pretty smart and they know, as some have said, that trading wealth for leisure time may not be worth it? Then this is just a silly cycle of weirdness. In fact, the strangeness of our relationship to Guinea and Niger gets stranger to me all the time.

And while we are on that track, I have been reading the Nobel House series by James Clavell, and feeling lots of urges to go out and make my mark, which leaves me a little more than ambivalent about being here. But its also the first week and I am miles ahead of my first week in Guinea.

I will be in bed by 9:00. Whether that’s an indication of how tired I am or of how the friendly amoebas that I picked up in Niamey have been partying in my stomach I don’t know. First impressions of my village is that people are very friendly and happy to have me, and that there will be plenty of people to work with. Its a big change from my site in Guinea, which was a town with a university, periodic electricity, and an ‘internet cafe.’ My new site is a tiny village of 3,000 people with no electricity and indeed not even a marche. Faranah had multiple primary schools, colleges, and lycees, while my new site has only a college built of millet stalks and no lycee whatsoever. Students here still harbor the idea of studying and eventually going to America though, which seems very unlikely, but I guess you have to dream.

My house is a small mud brick building with two rooms and a lattice and mud roof. I also have a small courtyard fenced in by millet stocks, and soon (I hope) a shade hangar that I can sleep under.

I am of course an amazing oddity, even though I am not the first Peace Corps volunteer in this village and in fact there have also been three JICA volunteers here (Japan’s Peace Corps counterpart, the third one got here three days ago). But for having been here only one day I feel like the real only problem is that kids are a pain in the ass and people are so enthusiastic that it leaves me exhausted. It will take me some days to get my house set up right, but once all of that is taken care of, I am looking forward to sitting around and chatting which will hopefully help with my language problem.

I met with my mayor and the staff of the commune (like a county) today. I will have an office there and basically I think free range to do whatever I want. One thing I noticed was the brand new computer they have, but complete lack of electricity. There are however power lines going by across the road, so I am wondering what it would take to get power to the mayor’s office. I am sure the computer was some kind of aid gift, and I am laughing at who gave it to a commune with no power, but anyway. There also potential projects with some of the students in the village. I think it will be good. The JICA volunteer is here to do some basic things like help build improved stoves (mud stoves), and so maybe we will team up some.

As far as how I am doing, I am back on the emotional rollercoaster (did I ever get off?), though this time I was expecting it and it somehow doesn’t seem so bad. I am already having good times here, while I feel like it took me a while to have good times in Faranah. The loss of so many volunteers continues to take a toll on morale, but we won’t really know how big a toll it will be until after a couple more weeks. Regardless I am not allowed to leave my site until new years, so I am hoping to come in for that and find morale somehow boosted.

Food. Food here is a bad situation. Since there is no marche, the only real nonstarch items I have access to are garlic (which I can buy in Niamey and keeps well), tomato paste, and powdered milk. The closest market is basically on the outskirts of Niamey, so I will have to head there at least once every couple of weeks or so. Oh yeah, there is also a lot of sugar cane. Anyway, I can’t believe that that is all, so I am halfway expecting to find some trove of bananas or something, but I don’t really think I will. Oh yeah, there is also bread every other day… So if you want to send a package, think dried fruits and jerky and the like. Protein powder (lost the last bit in Guinea) and nutritional yeast might also be good.

And if you are wondering, I am not talking exactly about where my site is because of security concerns. I am not really close to any of the recent happenings, and that’s what is important. As I’ve mentioned we are losing a lot of volunteers, but staff is talking about maybe putting a new cluster of volunteers in villages surrounding mine, which would make me feel much less isolated.

My site installation was postponed till tomorrow. I just found out another volunteer is taking interrupted service. Not just any volunteer, but one that was close to me and that I was friends with. So that leaves only a couple of volunteers that are at all close, and even less that I envision being good friends with. I’ve already mentioned that my support group is disappearing, but it seems like each day brings a new loss.

And what is the point of staying if the program is going to slowly bleed away? I don’t hold much hope that things will actually calm down. If anything they will get worse. By now I’ve said goodbye to so many people that the whole thing is starting to feel like an exercise in futility. Anyway, there isn’t a lot I can do about it, and I am hoping that once I get to village it won’t seem like such a tragedy. But I can say that if all of this happens again I am going to be a huge mess. All volunteers have been offered the option to take interrupted service, but I am not ready to give up on the idea of actually having a community again. Not yet. We will see.

The new stage is transferring to Madagascar, and part of me wishes I was going with them, but I have very little desire to start over for a third time. If everything goes well here I will be able to stay for the duration of my service and be happy. But if not its going to be rough.

And at some point it seems silly to keep a program open that is losing half or more of its volunteers and that can barely operate. What will it take for Washington to pull the plug? Its scary to have a major decision like that in the hands of people who aren’t intimately involved in the situation.

I am trying to maintain optimism, but everyone that is here is leaving, and in the face of that there isn’t much of a sense of brotherhood so much as a sense of loss. Hopefully when I come back from my village this will have blown over and we will be ready to renew bonds and form a community.

Tomorrow I’m off to site I hope.