Here is a picture of my new cat, whose name is ruckus:

She is pretty awesome. Her mom brought her into the hostel one day and left her there, so I brought her to the house I am staying at.

Speaking of which, I still don’t have a house. I can’t really complain, because my roommate is pretty awesome, but I still have all my stuff packed away and I’m living out of the closet. I would like to have a real house one day.

The second ruckus is this past weekend, during which it seemed like nearly every white person in Niger freaked out as a result of information that was released over two weeks ago (to the extent that AQIM might be planning retaliatory attacks after the French raid that happened at the end of July). They flew a whole bunch of aid workers out of the east and into Niamey, even borrowing planes from Chad to do it. But as of right now, according to the US embassy, there is no reason for them all to be reacting now any more than they should have been two weeks ago. I get the feeling that someone finally got around to reading the warden message two weeks later and they reacted in a CYA kind of way.

As volunteers tend to do, we gossiped a lot and acted superior because we didn’t think anything was going to happen and everyone was overreacting. Come to think of it, I should have made some bets. In short, it was a lot of ruckus over very nearly nothing. The Reuters article is in keeping with creating panic. To be honest I don’t think I’ll be able to read anything in the news about Africa again and think that it is anything more than management trying to make sure no one gets hurt on their watch. I know that is kind of their responsibility, but they get a little carried away sometimes. Its sort of like a farcical comedy.

So we said goodbye to a COSing stage, and that was sort of sad except that I didn’t really know them, but it was sad for some other people, and it was a hint of what we will likely be going through a year from now. I am having a ball living in the capital and working for this NGO. And when I read about things like the controversy over the mosque that is going up two blocks away from ground zero, it makes me wonder whether I really want to go back. So much posturing by politicians. Muslim does not equal terrorist people…

It is pouring rain here, and I am exceedingly happy to have found a rain jacket in a COSing volunteer’s stuff (thanks Mary!). You may have read the other Niger news about flooding, which is sort of just like a cruel joke on the heels of the food crisis. The mosquitoes are out of control ridiculous. I killed at least seven in the bathroom this morning, and all of them had my blood in them. Gross.