Adventures in Niger

I will be a community health agent with the Peace Corps in Niger, Africa from July 2006 until October 2008. DISCLAIMER: Any views or opinions presented in this website are solely mine and do not represent those of the U.S. Peace Corps or Niger.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Greetings on Drinking Water

Hey everyone -

I am leaving tomorrow to go out for a month at my post! I am excited, but nervous because this is the hardest part of Peace Corps service. I went today and bought tons of stuff in Maradi for my new house. I am excited to decorate and meet all my villagers!! We are not supposed to leave our clusters for the 1st month, but this means that I can go to my friend Erin's market town once a week and meet with her and another PCV for shopping and dinner every Sunday...She also has electricity and showers so I know I will be making it there! haha. On October 31 is when I come back into Maradi to celebrate the first month at post.

The last week has been crazy. All of the PCV's all over the country came into Niamey for our swear-in week. We had a huge Gender and Development Auction, where PCV's auctioned off stuff and trips, food, etc. to raise money for gender and development projects...they raised over 3,000 dollars! On Thursday, they threw us the craziest party I think I have ever been to, and I went to UGA so that says a lot. For my mother's sake I will spare the details, but it was fun. Friday we swore in and it was beautiful! It was at the Ambassador to Niger's house that is on the Niger river. I took tons of pictures...Three of us gave speeches, in Hausa, Zarma, and French.

Right now we are in the middle of Ramadan...As for everything else in Niger, there are special greetings just for ramadan, "Barka da Sala" (greetings on the holiday) and my personal favorite, "Barka da Sha Ruwa" (Greetings on drinking water.) All the Nigeriens are fasting during the day, and not even drinking water...You cant imagine the endurance!! When we were still with out host families, I would sit with my host Mom at the end of the day and it would be just about dusk, and she would just be sitting there waiting for the prayer call to start, and the second they started calling it from the mosque, she just drank and drank and drank and drank. There are 5 prayer calls during the day, and the final one when the sun goes down...During Ramadan, it is especially long...I went down to the mosque with my host mom just to see what it was like and it was beautiful and so peaceful to watch the prayer and hundreds of them doing the same thing. All of the men sat in the front, and the women in a big group behind them...Being a woman, I had to cover my head, I didnt' participate, but just sat with the kids on the side watching...Let me tell you, the women were just tickled to death that I came down there. They would turn around in the middle of the prayer and giggle, and beckon me over to pray...They thought I was going to finally turn into a good little Muslim!

OK so millet is the Nigerien staple food that EVERYONE grows here...seriously, millet is like grass here...In America, people use it for birdseed, but here, it is all people have to live on. So i totally had a Forrest Gump moment with my host mother the other day, I was reading this little dialogue, and it mentioned this food named "fura" so I asked her what it was. She said it was a strained millet porridge. I got curious, and asked her to name all of the things one could make out of millet. So she said, there is "tuwo, fura, kunu, koko, hura, gari, etc. etc. " (millet porridge, millet drink, millet gruel, millet milk, etc.) and named about a million different things....So funny, all I could think of was that scene in Forrest Gump where Bubba Gump said, "shrimp scampi, shrimp gumbo, fried shrimp, etc."

In November, my team, Team Maradi will be doing a young girls fair in the hostel in Maradi...all of us bush volunteers are bringing in 2 girls from our villages that are not in school, and doing a fair where they will learn how to cook certain things, AIDS awareness, self esteem, etc etc. I am excited, now I just have to go out and find which girls I want to bring in. Also, at the end of Novermber, Peace Corps Niger has this awesome event called the AIDS Bike Ride, where like 30 volunteers and Nigeriens bike across the coutry from Maradi to the West and stop from village to village and teach AIDS awareness, do skits, ways to prevent AIDS, and it will end on Dec. 1st, World AIDS day. I can't participate this year because I am too new, but I'm definitely doing it next year. They are stopping in my village though!! Mine will be the last stop of the day so they will spend the night in my village, so that will be lots of fun.

My Hausa is getting a lot better recently!! This will no doubt be a hot commodity when i enter the American job market again, haha...When i was in the market today, about 5 people were shocked and told me that I "hear so much Hausa!!" All right, well I wont be coming in from the bush until Halloween, so until then you can send me an email at marpcvs@intnet.ne (with my name as the subject line) or send me a letter. Miss you all and hope you are enjoying cool weather in the States!! Hope the Dawgs will still be undefeated by then!!

Love Katie