zot in guinea… oops! in niger the straight and narrow path of cultural diplomacy

I forget where I left off with the actual writing, but I will try to update a bit about the last week or so. January was a hard month from me motivationally. I am coming up on my one year of service, and feeling like it isn’t nearly as challenging as it was, but also isn’t accomplishing much. That combined with the difficulties of making a new community my home while not knowing a language and not knowing how stable the Niger Peace Corps program will be, had me really questioning my motivation. Plus, there is just something about giving up everything in Guinea and coming here to start all over that makes it difficult to want to stay.

But I think I am coming out of that, and looking forward to a couple of projects as soon as this IST (in service training) is over. This will be my second one, courtesy of having transferred. They are fun for a little while but I suspect I will be longing to get back to my village after a few days. Still, its good because I get to meet an entire stage of volunteers and its always good to know more volunteers when you don’t really have your own group.

So the road between my mayor’s office and my house is flooded and has been since December. I wade across it on my way there and back, which hasn’t really caused me too much concern, despite the animal waste and stagnancy of the water, but the other day as I was walking I saw a flat, brown-colored worm swiming through the water. It was about three inches long. A leetch? I have no idea, but now I am probably going to get tested for schisto and hook worms just because I figure it is likely that I have something from that water. Also, I think by the time I return the water will have receeded and won’t be an issue until next year, when I should have a bike.

My cat has been catching mice, so hopefully she will do fine without me there, and other than that I don’t know that I have a lot to report. My scouts group got their uniforms, and were so excited that we all cleaned the mosque and they made me wear one. Its hard to refuse when it means so much to them, and I tried hard not to let my disdain for things like uniforms and team spirit show. I wonder where I got that from? I was never much of a fan of ’school spirit’, but I don’t really know why I affected that attitude.

My region is down to only six volunteers, so this weekend we took over the backroom that used to belong to our team and made it our own. It is pretty sweet, and for the first time I have a place at the hostel in Niamey where I feel like I can just hang out without being around other people. Right now the hostel is full of the stage coming in for IST, and their excitement at seeing each other is making me remember our IST in Guinea and how good it felt to come in from site.

I want a voice recorder so that I can do some voice journaling or something, and maybe a small cheap digital camera that I can take with me for unexpected photo opportunities. I will have to talk to some people about that, maybe there is a way to get it brought over or something.

Its 3:30 in the morning. I have woken to my cat foaming at the mouth, something she started doing on an off about thirty-six hours ago. I can’t be sure it is rabies. The foaming at the mouth is the only thing I know about it, but the doctor tells me that if it is she’ll be dead within the week and if so then I need to come in to Niamey. In Niger I seem to be making up for the rarity of medical issues I had in Guinea.

Rabies has a sort of almost mythical status, perhaps most due to the movie “28 Days Later,” but also various other scenes from our media. I imagine that I will walk into the house one day to find my tiny kitten transformed into a quivering beast of rage, that she will snarl at me and then lunge for my throat. Reality is likely to be less dramatic, but still worrisome, since I have been in contact with her saliva and have been scratched.

Yet now she is happily busy playing with a piece of string. Is this sort of weird occassional frothing at the mouth rabies, or (as I first thought) some reaction to a poisonous toad or spider? It isn’t likely to be a poison at this point because it is reoccurring rather than diminishing over time. I don’t know enough and I don’t have access to information. It is unnerving to have to trust completely to a doctor, as they must have had to do before the days of internet.

It is a bit of a macabre scene, at 3:33 AM, sitting on my woven cot with my headlight on, watching my cat as I type, and wondering if I will soon find myself in the medical unit in Niamey getting rabies shots. I recall rumors of a window in which shots need to be received in order for them to be effective. Surely it isn’t forty-eight hours? It must not be, or the doctor would have been more concerned when I spoke to him on the phone. There, now she is drinking water, and my mom told me to watch out for her avoiding water, so maybe there is nothing to worry about after all. This cycle of doubt and surety about her affliction leaves me waiting, knowing that something rather disturbing could be taking place, but not yet reacting on that level because I don’t know for sure. I wonder how many tragedies end still suspended in that sort of doubt?

Here is a picture of her foaming mouth, though by the time I post it the outcome will be known. She doesn’t seem to be otherwise much affected, aside from sometimes rubbing her jaw on the floor as if it itches or is numb, or maybe she just doesn’t like the feeling of the sticky foam clinging to her fur. There was no animal that I know of that could have bitten her, though I also hear (through the internet via my mom) that it can take 10-14 days to manifest, which would have been before I actually got her.

It is a powerless situation, filled with interminable waiting and an impatience to get it over with, one way or the other. And it ties in rather nicely with my see-sawing feelings about my service at this point, one year in, and whether I can engage effectively in my community in Niger or whether my time is better spent in other pursuits. That see-saw of doubt about my service has always been with me, though the reasons have changed along the way.

Anyway, we should know by my birthday.

I will probably cave soon and start taking my ipod to the charging guy. I know I was talking about trying to ration my various batteries, but I have started exercising a little every day, and I like to listen to music when I exercise, so that is adding to the drain. Plus I forgot that I can charge my ipod by plugging in directly to a socket because I have one of those adapters, so I don’t have to use my computer. And I am not really worried about anything being stolen, so it seems like a good idea. Then also I can conserve my computer battery for when I am ready to write a post, and I won’t be siphoning off energy to recharge peripherals at the same time, so I might get several posts written without losing all my charge. All that is likely to become moot in a couple of weeks when IST starts and I will have electricity more or less constantly.

Birthday plans include going to another volunteer’s site on the day of my birthday to see their market and make cake. Several other volunteers are coming also. Then the day after some of us will head to my site, where we will kill some chickens and eat food with some of my friends from the village. It should be lots of fun. The week after that I head to IST, so there isn’t much time left in my village before it will be IST and then my one year of service mark will be up, and that seems like a big milestone for me.

There are a lot of things bubbling under the surface, but nothing really new to report since my last writing. This morning I was listening to the BBC describe an art exhibit in which the artist has done a little pencil drawing of each service person who has died in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was very sad, there are over 5,000 now. I don’t think I used to be a very patriotic person, and I would still hesitate to say I am patriotic in the sense of believing that the U.S. has the right to be the biggest and baddest country, but I am increasingly feeling more invested in the United States as a community; My community and a community that I want to contribute to making better. It is interesting to me that it took me living in a foreign country to discover that. And it isn’t about missing things that we have in the states, its about being apart from family and friends and being aware of how important they are. Friends here are also important, and people are wonderfully open, but no matter how long I am here, I will always be an anasara (stranger and white person, which is what I get called walking down the street). Of course my reaction to the BBC piece could be part of the more intense emotions that have accompanied Peace Corps in general. It is funny how emotions can be affected so much by a geographical setting or a cultural position.