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)