New Teammates and Familiar Troubles

We got four new teammates the other day, and I think I speak for all of us when we say we are pretty excited about them. They seem like great new additions. One of them is replacing me at my old village, so we will be heading out together to introduce her and get her situated.

I have been going through some abrupt shifts in what I thought my future looked like, and so I’m reevaluating what I want to do (yet again). To be honest not a lot has changed, I still probably want to go to law school and I still have plans for a great return to the states that includes a motorcycle and touring around.

But the bigger changes are internal. I feel as a wet towel that was being wrung out. Squeezing down into a dense hard mass, but still all twisted up. There is a cold clarity that makes me less concerned about the feelings of other people, and I wonder if that isn’t a good thing at the moment. I haven’t lost my enthusiasm for embracing emotions, for diving in headfirst, or that whole shpeal about experiencing emotions to the fullest, but you can bet the next time around (if there is…) I will be much more cautious. (Says I after only a few days. We all know that the feelings in the time shortly after a breakup are not the most reliable). Still, I am different for the moment. And my ideas about the importance of romance in my life have taken a dramatic turn towards, well, not being important at all.

Partly I just don’t have the space to deal. I am a guest at a volunteer’s house and don’t have my own space or even my own things, and there are a million people at the hostel right now because a stage is COSing (going home). So all of that will have to wait. I have up to this point refused to be largely affected by this whole turn of events, and my ability to clamp down on myself has sort of surprised me. But then again, that cold focus has been used in other parts of my life, perhaps just not yet in this arena.

On a related note, I’ve been noticing an increasing turn toward ambition in the last couple of years. Its an odd sort of thing. I think I have just been so internally focused that I have pursued external things as a means to an internal goal. But I am feeling both that I have some (hubris) of my internal stuff sorted out and that I have the urge to make my mark on the world. Its a little strange though, because I thought that was supposed to happen around age 24 or something, and I’m 30 now. 30 is a pretty cool age, to be honest. So anyway, much of my thoughts about the future are what kind of things I want to make happen in the world, which is different from what kinds of things will facilitate my inner soul searching, which is more of what it used to be like. The next decade is going to be awesome.

PS – Mois de Karem (Ramadan) starts today. Muslims can’t eat or drink anything from sun up to sun down. I wanted to join them this year but I don’t have a family anymore and you definitely need a support system to do that kind of thing. It remains to be seen how much it will affect the availability of food on the streets. It could be a (less for me than others) rough four weeks. Also, I kind of have to keep my drinking and eating under wraps, since its rude to partake in front of others. That means no more tea on my desk.

Welcome to Plan

I have started at PLAN Niger now. It took several days to get a computer up and running, but now I have one and I have hope that things will speed up at work. The project that I am working on is called Youth Economic Empowerment, and I am in charge of the Life Skills component. Life Skills is a set of trainings put together by Peace Corps several years ago aimed at equipping youth with skills to make good decisions about their lives. En fait, it includes sessions on communication, decision-making skills, relationship and gender issues, and HIV/AIDS. My job now is to plan and administer a training of trainers in these subjects, as well as create a program of sessions that the trainers will give to the groups of youth with which they are working. The life skills portion of the project is essentially mine to design as I see fit, so I get to decide which sessions we have time for, how the sessions should be modified to fit Niger, what order they should be taught in, etc…
Its an exciting post and I am looking forward to the next several months. I expect they will pass rather more quickly than I might like.

On the other hand, I still don’t have my own house. I am rooming with another volunteer, which is fine, but I have been there two weeks now and we both need out space. Progress on the housing seems particularly slow, which is frustrating because in the chaos of the summer I have not had my own house to myself for at least two months. I have generally been fine, but it is good to have your own space too and I am starting to get ancy.

I think that I will have skype on this computer, which should mean free talking with those of you who have skype in the evenings after work.

I also got Giardia from something in Niamey, or at leat I think it was Niamey. It is easily fixed, but I shouldn’t have waited two weeks to see if my body would exercise the demons on their own. Niamey itself is a big change. There are fruits and veggies and meat. There is in general electricity. I ride my bike, which in the insanity of the roads is a little crazy, but I am getting used to it. I am trying my best to save money so that I can go on some vacations, but it can be hard with volunteers coming in from their sites and wanting to go out to eat. I have had to limit myself on my purchases of sodas and fan milks (which are like an ice cream).

So things are going well and work is, as of today, exciting and fun. I hope everyone is doing well back in the US.

Photos From The Benin Trip

Here are some photos from Eric’s trip here in Niger and our trip to Benin. Flickr seems to limit photos to 200, so I will have to look into a different hosting source for photos soon. In the meantime, enjoy:

Eric as we hiked in the hills around my village:
Eric in the desert

Landscape a kilometer or two outside my village:
Desert by my village

Dust storms:
dust storm in NY

On the beach in Benin:
Bigger than my head

Never eat anything bigger than your head:
That is no small drink

A Montage

Much has happened since my last post. Eric came to visit, and we spent several days in various Nigerien villages, seeing the life of Peace Corps volunteers and, too a lesser extent, of Nigeriens. Then we headed to Benin for a week of cheap millet beer, cheaper sodabi (distilled palm wine, which tastes like death and will in fact kill you) and a few days at the beach. The undertow was fear instilling, and we got up to our waistes before we decided we liked life more than being stupid.

Benin is full of crazy stories, like villages held at gunpoint by mercenaires from Nigeria, men dressed in haystacks that run around killing people in the night, stolen penises, and burnings as a punishment for theivery. Then there’s all those Peace Corps related issues, which if you don’t know about I’m not going to tell you here. I wonder if the biggest trait shared by Peace Corps volunteers is the ability to stick through adversity? Anyway, fortunately we avoided all of those things and were able to visit museums, python temples and sacred forests without any trouble (none of which were particularly awe inspiring). Did you know that Voodoo started in Benin? And there was huge slave trade as well. We did buy fresh pineapples and avacodoes and dried coconut, all of which was delicious. Benin is very green and lovely. We also benefited from the help of some awesome Benin volunteers (thanks guys!). But then we ran out of money and energy and decided to come back home.

I probably wasn’t the best host, dealing with some other things that are happening and just generally feeling kind of low, but in an soft undefined way. I don’t really know what is going on, but as usual things will cycle back one way or another.

Okay, next up, I have bed bugs. I spent two nights in my village and am covered in giant red itchy bites that I only get at night. I am glad I am moving, but first I have to show three new volunteers my village without getting them bit, and I have to warn the new volunteer so s/he doesn’t get them too quickly. When I move I am going to hang everything in the sun and hopefully not bring any bugs with me, but of course they will probably follow. They are nefarious.

Also, I start work for PLAN tomorrow. I will only work a couple of days before returning to my site for demyst (in which I show new volunteers my life and ‘demystify’ them). Then when I get back next week the real work begins. They haven’t found a house for me yet so I will be living with a fellow volunteer who also works there for a few weeks. Things promise to be good. Then there is the possibility that I will be going to Senegal in August for a week long conference, which would be awesome but I am trying not to hope too much for because it isn’t set yet.

That’ll do for now. I also highlighted my hair in a fit of ridiculousness, so now I resemble some unknown amalgamation of The Backstreet Boys and NSync. I will upload a picture at some point.

After a Long Hiatus

My site got hacked and so things were down for a while, but hopefully we’re back up and running. I haven’t written anything because, truly, the month of June is insane. I finished up my youth conferences in early June, and since then have been to a four-day conference for all volunteers in Niger and met my friend Eric who is visiting from the states. We have been wandering around Niger for a bit, but in a few days will take off for Benin and other countries for a couple of weeks. Its great to have him here seeing things (and just cause I miss him), but I hope it has been as interesting and exciting for him as for me. Unfortunately, security issues have closed two countries to Peace Corps volunteer travel and significantly restricted parts of others, and so we don’t have a lot of choice in where to go and what to do. We are investigating other options.

I am starting work with PLAN in about a month, and am very excited and in the process of moving into the capital (well, once they find a house for me). Everything is going really well, and I haven’t had much of a chance to write posts, but I should be able to again in the next few days and then more regularly after that.

Kalla Tonton (Until next time)

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