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

Believe it or not, I am still in the capital with medical problems. Nothing is threatening and it seems like we are just trying to mop up the pieces, but I am frustrated to not be back at site (its been almost a month!) and nearly all the other volunteers have left, so not a lot is happening.

I woke up this morning in a foul mood, one apparently shared by several other people at the hostel. There is some sort of identity shift that happens when I am with Americans versus in my village or en ville by myself. I suppose that transition is always a little weird, and even weirder when I am occupying the space between those two identities. The result is being unsettled and uneasy.

I remember having a moment of fear in village wondering if I was going to come to like Niger so much that I wouldn’t want to return, or that when I did return I wouldn’t like living in the states anymore. I think the readjustment process is going to kick my butt. Its sort of an irrational fear, but I do like my life and my friends and family in the states and don’t want to really give that up even if I come to love being in Niger so much that I also don’t want to go back.

Which is to say that you sort of develop two lives during your service, and each of them is you, but also different, and sometimes I wonder if I am going to finish and be stuck somewhere in the middle, not well suited for either.

Along those lines, a week ago I passed my one year mark as a volunteer, and that has me reflecting on the amazing fact that I have actually been a volunteer for a year. (Remember all the complaining about how I didn’t know how I was going to last that long? Now I am wondering where the time went.) It also has me feeling like I have done nothing of value, and while I know that I have the world’s best excuse, in that I was evacuated from my first country, I still wish I could look back and point to some successfully completed projects. Lesson leared: do things early while you can. There are several projects that I have ready to kick off when i get back to village, but now I am on med hold and seem to not be able to actually get back there.

Worse, even when I do get back events will be conspiring to make my time short. We have further trainings, arrivals of new volunteers, vacations, visits, and possible new jobs, all of which I am excited about and looking forward to, but which take away from the suddenly seemingly short amount of time I have left in my village (Though I might extend through August so I can finish my service with the stage I have joined). This duopoly or polyopoly of feeling seems to be a recurring theme for much of my life here.

To recap my medical issues, last Tuesday I left In Service Training (IST) early because I had a staph infection in my upper lip, and it had swollen rather dramatically. We began IV antibiotic treatments that day, and those continued for three days. At the end of that I was on oral antibiotics and will continue those until they have run their course. The infection was subsequently reduced with no problems (they may have crazy super bugs in Niger, but we also have crazy super drugs).

The complication came from one of the IVs, which for unknown reasons caused a lot of pain and swelling in my arm, such that my right arm has been rather immobile until a couple of days ago. To counter that I was eventually put on steroids, and to counter potential clotting and get things moving, have been on blood thinners for a couple of days. That will continue for a few more days and then barring anything else, I will be heading back home to village.

Have I really not written a substantial post since the middle of January? That seems like a very long time. Maybe I haven’t had a lot of report. I got over my dark time and have been increasingly excited about the remaining year and a half (er, year and a few months) I have left. IST has been a good chance to make friends with other volunteers, and since I don’t have my own stage in this country, being adopted by another stage is very nice. Volunteers are the biggest source of support in country and not having a support network is rough.

The training itself has been okay. In typical Peace Corps fashion, much of it seems spent on trying to make sessions interactive by having us come up with definitions for terms like “food security”. Unfortunately, we all know what food security is, have studied and read about it for not insignificant amounts of time, and are generally bored by spending an hour discussing a broad overview of food security. What we would like instead is an in depth look at what projects successfully helped with food security and how they can be best implemented in our sites. This is just an example, but it applies to nearly all of the other topics we have covered during IST as well.

Anyway, to sum up, that’s what has been going on for the past few weeks. We are in the final days of IST now, and I am actually in Niamey today because I have a staff infection on my face. I wish I had my camera so I could take a picture of how giant my upper lip is, but it is at the training site. Here is what happened:

Sunday I shaved. Not normally a dangerous activity, but this time it was. I spent Sunday night wondering why my lip hurt, and woke up Monday morning with what I thought was just a big pimple where my mustache was the day before. I popped it, and it was pretty gross, but I thought perhaps that was the end of it and the pain would go away. Instead my upper lip began to swell like crazy, and I spent all of yesterday trying to warm compress it and on antibiotics, increasing dosage as it refused to do anything. By last night my lip was ridiculous, and my nose had begun to hurt as well. This morning I woke up with more puss and a larger lip, and by this afternoon I was back in Niamey being injected with industrial strength antibiotics (and fainting from the IV).

The two thoughts in my head during this whole thing have been: “I hope they don’t have to cut me,” and “Will I look like a Simpson’s character for the rest of my life?” Anyway, I am not in bad spirits, just a little annoyed. These things always come at awkward times, but at least I look hilarious.

So, God willing, the swelling will be down by tonight, I will get another injection tomorrow morning, and be back at training tomorrow afternoon. The medical staff here are really nice and helpful. Anyway, its been fun. Hopefully its over and I will back to normal size tomorrow.

UPDATE: It is noon on Thursday and the swelling is down, though not nearly gone. My arm is in a lot of pain from the IVs, but otherwise I am doing well. The infection seems to be going away nicely. I will finish out treatment with amoxicillin for 8 days, and I should be able to leave the med unit tonight to spend time with volunteers at the hostel.

I am writing this from the American Rec Center, which is next to the embassy. It is my first time here, so I am slightly overwhelmed by the pool, the high speed wireless internet, and the prevelance of English being spoken all around me. In fact I am having trouble focusing on what I write because I can so easily understand what I am hearing at the other tables.

Its an interesting thing, the expat community. I don’t know much about it, but being a Peace Corps volunteer in village, sometimes you forget that there are actually a whole bunch of Americans living in the capital, and that some of them spend their weekends at places like the rec center, and what a different world it must be to be an expat.

So one week of IST is over, and things are going fairly well. We have had a great time in Niamey this weekend, mostly just hanging out and making food. We have a curfew for security reasons, so there isn’t a lot of going out. Today we head back to training and will watch the final game of the African Cup of Nations this evening.

Oh yeah, and I got my bag from Guinea! In it I had a statue, a mask, many clothes, my thermos, a few books, and random odds and ends. It was awesome to get stuff, even though its mostly stuff that I don’t really use. So now I have a trunk in Niamey that is full of clothes and random odds and ends, and we have moved our stuff into a back room of the hostel so that we have our own space (since Niamey is my regional capital, we don’t get a regional hostel, just the main hostel, which everyone uses, so we also get our own room in the back).

Anyway, just thought I would send you all an update from weird America in Niger places. There are some photos of me recently put up on facebook if you do that thing.

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.