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