El Kolta

Hey everyone,
what a big day for football!! Of all of the other football fans here (notre dame, oklahoma, and nebraska) mine was the only team with a victory yesterday! I cant believe those scores of the other sec games...its going to be a good season!! Did you see what we are ranked now, did we go up?? Kristy said that ND dropped to like 10 or something. What are the dawgs at by now?

My village is like the mayberry of Niger...I am really close to maradi, and my house is like 50 yards off of the THE main road in Niger, which is such a luxury considering lots of my friends are like 3 hour walks into the bush before they get to their villages...and even though its the major road, there are practically no cars on it because no one here can drive...anyway there is a school right next to my house, and i met the schoolteachers, apparently they sit outside a lot under the trees and talk a lot...theyre the most educated in the village, they speak hausa, french, and english!! I cant believe it. School starts here right after ramadon ends i think...ramadan is on saturday...That means we'll be getting to our posts right at the time where no one in the village is eating during the day, its supposedly when the people are the most cranky bc of that. We as volunteers obviously arent expected to fast, but they said it would be culturally sensitive of us to eat and drink inside during the day. Anyway, eve said her kids at school ask questions a lot about africa, i told her maybe once my language skills are up, i can do soemthing with the school and see if they want to do pen pals in america...eve said her kids would need a lot of help though, haha. I was thinking about part of my health projects doing like a health session once a week at the school, and incorporating health lessons, peace corsp gives us a lot of help with that. My first couple of months im sure will be spent trying to get up my language, and after that im going to start some projects i hope...I have 2 huge concessions...I'm going to try to do a garden, apparently the best season to garden is "cold season" (that phrase makes me laugh), so that is like november and december, so i think im going to try to do millet, tomatoes, onions, and cabbage. I want to do a community garden project so i might use one of my concessions for that. Oh yeah, i went to the health clinic and met the doctor lady there, i am going to probably start volunteering there when i get back to post.

Anyway, my village also has it own market, they have lots of food there and camels, goats, etc. Each night, all of the goats come home by my house from out in the bush where they have been grazing, and at least 300 goats walk right past...its funny. Also, when Chris (the pcv that introduced me to the ppl in my village and got me settled in for my first night, he speaks tons of hausa) and i were walking around the market, we walked out to this lake behind my village and following us were literally 200 kids....i dont think they had ever seen a white person before, much less two. Yesterday, i got settled into my house, and i was taking a break in the afternoon bc it was hot and was sitting outside reading under a tree, and like 30 kids kept coming into my concession, just to watch me!! No lie, they watched me read for like 45 minutes until they got bored...every time i turned a page, it sent them to whispering...when the sun moved and there was like a quartersized piece of sun on my mat, there were like yasmina, move!! the sun!! and picked up all of my stuff off of the mat, shook it, and put it under more shade.. they are too funny. Everyone in my village is just too nice, the come up and bless me constantly...WHen Chris and i were walking around, they come up speaking "hausa hausa hausa" and chris would translate for me, but the gist of what everyone was saying was " may allah bring you happiness, health, luck, blessings, love, joy, and to your family too, etc etc." Hausa people are the best!!

There is this family who is already "taking care of me". They pretty much built my house I think..The guy, Sama'ila is in charge of brining my water to me, he brings it for 2,000 CFA per month, or 4 dollars...SO WORTH IT!! water is a pain to pull here! I keep it in this cistern thing that is buried under ground about half way, and you would be amazed how cold the water keeps. The first night Chris and I were there, Sama'ila's family brought us over this millet drink called "koko" (sp?) which is so good!! its this millet drink that is strained, and then you add sugar, and it tastes just like hot baby food, which doesn't sound good, but you come live in Niger for a couple of months and your ideas of what is good food start to change.

I dont have the best cell phone service in my village, but if i put my phone up in this really tall tree in my concession a couple of bars magically appear...Chris said there is a way to bush-rig a cell phone tower in your concession and that is by rigging up a rake on the top of ones shade hangar so that is a definite project i can do in my first month when i dont know what anyone is saying to me! I am going to try to leave my phone on at night from 8 to 11 so you can call anytime then if you are trying to reach me...

Tommorrow we are heading back to Hamdallaye to train for 2 more weeks, then swearing in as volunteers on the 29th, then after that I will be out here for good in my village.

Hope yall are doing well!! I miss yall a latte, you can email me here (marpcvs@intnet.ne) or better yet write a real letter. Love and miss you lots,
Katie

(oh yeah and if you email to this address, put my name in caps as the subject line and it will be sorted to me accordingly, thanks!! Also, if you send pics via attachments, send it to my gmail address, bc this one can't recieve pics...I will probably have much more frequent access to this email address though)

FOOD

I just wanted to add a short post, bc a lot of people have wrote what is good to send, and that is food!! I will probably have my villages market as my main source of food, and for every meal here in Niger, it is some kind of combination of tomato paste, peanut oil, leaves (yeah, leaves), peanut butter, and onion. What variety!!! so anything you could send to help me fix food would be great...Im nervous i am heading out to my site this week and will be cooking for myself for the first time, i dont know what Im going to do!! haha. Peace Corps provides a stove top gas stove. So say a little prayer for me this week!!

~any kind of packaged meat is as good as gold here, like tuna, chicken, spam (go on and laugh) etc
~Also good are dried fruits and dried meats
~anything you can just add water to, like grits packets or those flavored oatmeal packets
~spices or anything you can add to food to make it taste good
~soup packets you just add water to
~candies
~Crystal light



Today we went to the national hospital in Niamey and they gave us a presentation on fistula, something that affects lots of young mothers in the 3rd world...it is quite sad, i saw it on oprah sometime this year, she did a program on it down in kenya i think. but anyway, we got to meet about 100 women who were in town for the next few weeks to get the operation, and learned about what we could do out in our villages to prevent it from happening. tomorrow we are headed out to our sites!! apparently since it is rainy season, a lot of the roads out east are flooded so we should get there, as the nigeriens say ``Inshallah'' (godwilling)

Hope everyone has a great week!! love Katie

Katie goes to El Kolta, Niger

Hello!! well i found out i am going to Maradi!! i found out just a little bit about my village...Its called El Kolta, its off of the main east west road that goes throughout the whole of Niger, there are 2500 people that live there (which is quite large for a health volunteers village) Also, i will most likely have a disponsaire in my village to work in and also a school. I am only 25 km from the city of Maradi, which is the 2nd biggest city in Niger...This is good bc it means i can get into Maradi easily and without a 6 or 7 hour bush taxi ride which some people have to do...I head out to my village for live in on Wednesday!! i cant wait...some of my favoritist people in my training group are heading to Maradi as well...Maradi is about 9 or 10 hours east of Niamey and where we are training, see if you can find it on a map. I cant wait to get out there and actually see the village. Oh anddddddd the best part is; my friend erin and i have been talking about the whole time that if we were posted anywhere near each other, we were going to split a camel between the two of us. that way it would be half the price and also we could take turns taking care of it, etc. well guess what!! Erins only 35 km away....were so getting one!! They are about 400,000 CFA, or about 200 dollars, so that would only be about 100 dollars apiece...thats just a steal hehe...now we just need a name. any suggestions??? and im getting a kitten named fausto, haha.

Here is my address for the next two years:

Katie Prescott, PCV
BP 226
Maradi, Niger
West Africa

Mail is better than Chistmas here ( : So start sending mail to this account rather than the old one. Maradi was hit the hardest by the famine last year, so hopefully this year will be much better...as a result; there are a lot of NGOs like UNICEF, CARE, Doctors without borders, etc so i may get a chance to work with them potentially.

Oh and i got a phone!! its nicer even than my one in the States ironically...its free for me if you call, but make sure you get a phone card before calling. Without a calling card, rates may be as much as $15 connection fee in addition to the $7 a minute (depending on carriers)....so calling cards are great! and you can get them for as low as 9 cents a minute.
Cell number:011 227 96139615
The only thing is, it might be hard for me to keep it charged, so if you cant get through, send a text maybe and next time is it charged i can text you back to call.

So i saw that the dawgs killed South Carolina!!! yeah! Oh yeah and i guess i should give a bush taxi update. Last week we took one, like 10 volunteers; the rest africans, in a bus prob meant for 12 ...wanna know how many people they crammed in there??? 25!! and that is with goats on top!! ok on the way back to Hamdallaye yesterday, its like a 40 minute ride, we broke down 4 times. and in Niamey today, the taxi we rode had no brakes...so he just used the emergency brakes...every 50 feet. its just so ridiculous its funny.

Oh and this is funny too, the women here are fabulous...they love nothing more to joke with you and gossip and mess around....so anyway, one of my fellow trainees told me; '''Katie, last night at dinner, my host mom told me that you have a boyfriend and you go for long walks at night together.'' What?? totally made up...so we realized that our host moms just pair all of the trainees up and gossip...so that night at dinner i was messing with them and asked who my boyfriend is because i would like to know. anyway, i figured to play their game and told them my boyfriend was my friend here, Mark, aka Mustafa. well they about died with that...they were convinced mustapha had bought my cell phone so he could keep tabs on me...then i told them i had two more boyfriends, both Nigerien teachers up at Peace Corps that they knew, and they just lost it....its so fun to mess with people here, because they dish it out all the time.

Thanks for reading!! lots of love, Katie

GIRAFFES!! (sunday, sept. 3)

ok just so everyone knows even though i couldnt come to the game yesterday it was the best day of my life!! we got to see the giraffes!!! we had originally been told that there wasnt enough money in the budget for a guide to take us out to see the wild giraffes (the last in west africa) so i was sooooooooo bummed bc i had looked forward to that all week...my teacher Souleyman said at best, keep your eyes peeled you might see them off of the main road leading back from dosso to hamdallaye our training village...wouldnt you know that i was in the last seat on the bus, having have my eyes glued to the bush out the windows looking for the giraffes, AND I SAW THEM!! I yelled giraffes, everyone just freaked out, and the driver slammed on the brakes, we piled out of the bus. They are just amazing and majestic and beautiful and breathtaking!!! there were easily 30 girraffes, about 200 yard from the road; they were all just walking. we slowly walked out there to them and all just milled around amidst them taking pictures and thanking God for such an opportunity. it was just go beautiful you could cry. they werent even scared of us!! i got some of the best pictures, i was as close as 30 feet to the closest one. you just cant imagine!! it was just the best most wonderful thing. you would think giraffes would run from us but they really didnt!! they did stare at us; im sure they were thinking what are these white people doing out here?? haha. i got the greatest pictures.

oh and guess what????? I WAS ON THE RADIO IN NIGER!! heheheh...it was so awesome...we all prepared a little health related sensabilisation and read it out loud in our language ( for me hausa) and will air tonight..so im pretty much famous. haha just kidding. Oh yeah, and my sensabilisation was for what to do if your kid has diahrea, so I said how to do the oral rehydration solution of water, salt, and sugar....pretty much i talked about diahrea on national radio, it was great. My hausa is coming!! Everyone here is so nice....

the day before yesterday we saw a "snake charmer" in the market in dosso....he removed this snakes fangs and there was a big group of people surrounding him that were like in awe (course they didnt know his fangs were removed) So anyway, this guy was selling medicine traditional, that apparently you could use if you were bitten by a snake or a scorpion....all a scam really, im sure it was just like dirt and some salt or something.......anyway i got pics of this mamoth snake!!

Things are going good here...I am getting excited to get out to my village and start doing work...It all depends on my village and the facilities available, but I think I will be doing stuff a lot with the kids and teaching cooking classes for feeding the kids with malnutrition and also hygeine and disease prevention...I am anxious to get out there an see what I will be working with. as i said, i will be going to konni, maradi, or zinder....most likely maradi bc they need a lot of health volunteers out there...maradi was the hardest hit in the famine in niger last year. That will be pretty intense if I go there...from what I've seen, there is food here...but its all bland no nutrition whatsoever food, so its no wonder the kdis are malnourished..its really the exception if the kid doesn't have a belly swollen with malnutrition...its sad to say I've gotten used to seeing kids like that, you would think that that's something you would never get used to.

We also visited a hospital yesterday in Dosso...being here makes you realize all the stuff you ever took for granted in the states, for me it has been food...I've never wanted some decent kind of food so much ever...and also health facilities..There are so few doctors and clean facilities.


oh yeah my little host brother mamansani is home from the hospital!! he is just precious, when i got home, he got up and ran over to me and just jumped in my arms laughing and chattering away...he is just too freaking cute!! my host mother said he talked about me all week long at the hospital. I want to steal this child so badly.


i saw that the dawgs pulled through with a victory !!! yayayya...i saw the highlights of the game today in niamey at the rec center on espn. gary and shelly, i even saw yall in the crowd!! haha just kidding...Ok thanks for reading! love and miss you all!! pray that i get a great village this friday when i find out.
Love lots,
Katie

Save a horse, ride a camel (Friday Sept 1)

Since I wrote last, there's been a lot of stuff that has happened. Last Sunday, we had the day off from training, so me and abut 8 people went into Niamey to go use internet and go to the American Rec Center (by the way, the best place on Earth). So our only option to get from Hamdallaye to Niger (about 30 km) was public transportation, by either bush taxi or bus. We caught a bus for 250 CFA, or about 50 cents. Souleyman, my health training teacher happened to be on the same bus. Well anyway, this bus is like 100 years old, there's about a million people packed on it (we were standing), its about 500 degrees outside, and I didn't eat breakfast that day bc it was these greasy donut things that I just couldn't stomach. Needless to say, I passed out!! It was bad news, but thank God I passed out into Souleyman's arms and was with my friends!! Learned my lesson, never take African public transportation on an empty stomach.

Anyway, we make it into Niamey ok, and went to the Rec Center. It is most fabulous. They have a swimming pool!! we must have swam for like 6 hours...and tv and air conditioning!! It was a huge treat....best part, they even had american food. I had a cheeseburger, chocolate milkshake, french fries, AND sweet tea. I think I'm pretty much going to go into Niamey for the Rec Center for every Sunday for the rest of training. Well we had another fiasco on the way back to Hamdallaye, but at least this time I didn't pass out!! We had to take a bush taxi back in, and for those of you who dont know, bush taxis are pretty much how everyone gets around in Africa...THey can be a station wagon or a van, and they have to be at least 20 to 30 years old, probably the doors dont even close and they tie the doors shut, and there is not limit to how many people will fit in there...Imagine with the heat and 20 sweaty people in the back of a van!! Its not a rare sight AT ALL!! And 9 times out of ten, there are like 2 goats tied on top...Basically they're no fun, but what can you do but laugh?? So anyway, there were eight of us, and we somehow comandeered our own station wagon, but it was definitely 4 in the middle row an 4 in the back, all with no air conditioning and the hot sun...Dont worry I got pictures, they are hysterical.

Im sad because my little host brother Mamansani is still in the hospital in Niamey!! Kids get sick here so much. I hope he comes home soon...appanently, from my broken hausa, I have deciphered that at least he is better, according to the rest of the family.

This is a funny story, So in Hamdallaye where we live, there is like a section of town where the richer people live (meaning they have electricity), and theres a few PC trainees with those families....And we're split up with families according to what language we speak...SO basically I live in the back of town in what is definitely the poorest, so we've termed it the Hausa ghetto!! There are like 8 of us back there in the ghetto, so we stick together. This week, we had this really good good dinner (by good, i mean there was cheese!!! yum) up at site, and they asked us to do like a poem, or song, or anything in the language that we are learning...so me and the rest of the hausa ghetto (represent) translated the words of "ghetto superstar" into Hausa and performed it in our most thug clothes that we brought to Niger...It basically brought down the house...I took some funny pictures.

We are all getting anxious to know where we will be placed in country!! I can't wait to find out where my village will be for the next 2 years and who in PC that I will be around. We find out our site placement on Friday Sept. 8, and then we do this thing called "live in" where we go live in our future village for a week and start buying everything and making sure the hut, etc. is ok, then we go back to hamdallaye for one final week of training...So that will be from Sept. 13 - 18...I'm excited to go meet my village!!

Ok so I will also be getting my cell phone, probably around the week of the 18th - 25, so be on the lookout for the number and see if you can maybe get a calling card i would love to get calls!! Ive been decorating my hut, and its finally feeling homey...I bought this really pretty tapestry like thing in Niamey of girraffes in the sunlight and mesas, and between that and my big UGA flag, my hut is looking good!! I could use some decorating tips ( :

I can't believe that tomorrow is the first football game and I wont be there!!!!!!!!! Please send me details of tailgates and the game!! I hope you all that can go or watch have a blast...Me and my fellow football fan Kristy (Notre Dame) are going to wave our flags proudly tomorrow...we're also going to teach everyone the fight songs hehe...

So now I am in Dosso, all of us health trainees have come down here for a little field trip...unfortunately we are not seeing the giraffes this weekend, like I thought, apparently there wasn't money in the budget. today we went to a health clinic (gidan likita) to observe and see some volunteers work. We saw some baby weighings, some sensabilizations on hygeine, and a cooking class for the mothers of malnourished children on good nutritious food to feed their babies. It was great. I am so excited about my work here, I definitely see it as it will be gratifying...Its fun to meet the other volunteers, and see them speak this language that I am struggling so bad with, speak it perfectly!! SO i have faith that the language will come...We also met today the most powerful religious leader in Niger!! It was so cool, we were really lucky to meet him...He is the sheik, and i think there are only 3 of them in Niger...Apparently on the major muslim holiday of Mohamed's birthday, people come from alllllllll over west africa to come meet and be blessed by him. He was the coolest nicest guy, and he offered us blessings on a long life and a lot of money!!

I miss you all a lot!! Send letters if you get a chance, i want to know about your exciting american lives ( : Thanks for reading!! Hopefully next post I will have my new address and where I live!!!

Lots of Love!!!!!!!!!
Katie

Ps Niger is just getting more beautiful every day...It is just beautiful in about a million ways, i can't wait for yall to see pics