January 19, 2007

Greetings from Maradi..Hope everything is going well at home! Things are going along here in Niger – I’ve been lucky enough to actually have work to do lately, and have been able to visit 2 of my closest friend’s here’s (Kristy and Mark) villages so that has been lots of fun.

I finally painted the world map…It looks good even if I say so myself. It is 4 feet tall and 8 feet wide, and the only place on the whole school where I could paint is this area that is in the middle schoolhouse about 20 feet off the ground…The only way I could paint is a few guys from my village pushed together about 8 schooldesks on top of each other, and I stood precariously on these painting…Needless to say, it was quite the spectacle…The painting part wasn’t too hard, it was actually tracing out the map that was hard…While I painted, Zita, my pup, sat under the schooldesks. Of course, at any give time, there were about 300 kids (seriously, I’m not kidding, I took pictures) watching me and running around the schoolyard tormenting Zita. Finally after she couldn’t take the temptation anymore, she would take off running after one kid, and every kid in the whole schoolyard would whoop and holler, it was pretty funny.

I also started my girls (actually young women’s) group!! I’m pretty excited, me and two of my favorite girls from the village went around and explained the club and told all the girls in the village when to come. The meeting was utter chaos at is calmest. Seriously. There ended up being 30 (!) girls coming, and every single kid in the whole entire village wanted to come too. I really wanted it to be something special for the girls, something they could be proud of and learn from, and didn’t want kids there. Well the kids didn’t listen. They crawled over my concessions walls like ants…I couldn’t make them go away fast enough. I decided for the next meeting, I’m going to get three teenage boys from my village to stand guard while we’re meeting, that should solve it, if that doesn’t work I’m going to get my chief of the village to come and make the kids go away. Anyway, for the first meeting we did hygiene and talked about all the ways to keep a clean house, wash hands, keep foods covered, burn trash, sweep your household, etc. I made all the girls nametags, they were really excited. One of the girls went and pulled a bucket of water from the well and i made a ton of Gatorade and gave out peanuts as a snack. They were so excited, so I’m glad there’s a lot of interest in this…Every day since then they’ve been asking when the next club meeting will be, so there is a lot of interest, hopefully they will go home and teach their families the stuff they are learning.

I went out to Zinder to celebrate a friend’s birthday last week, that was lots of fun…Also I got to go out to one of my FAVORITE people in Peace Corps village, Mark’s, he is simply fabulous, and he lives in a village called Mirriah. In Zinder, all the Education volunteers have formed girls soccer teams in their towns and they play each other, we went to the match of Mirriah vs. Zinder…He is about the funniest person I’ve met in my whole life and not afraid to say what is on his mind and I’m certain that you all would love him to death. I’m sure you’ve seen him in the pictures on webshots, he’s the redhead. I really can’t say enough good things about him. Some of my favorite people in the country are posted out in the Zinder region so hopefully I will make it out there a lot.

Also this week I spent in my friend Kristy’s village…She lives in a bush village called Birni Lalle (literally, city of the henna tattoo). We went around and met all of her villagers, she is working on an AIDS awareness skit with her school, and also she did a meeting with all of the women of her village and they decided that they want to do a literacy group and also a sewing class, so she has lots of work to do…It was fun seeing another person’s village, and it made me miss my village so that was nice. We walked up about 10 km to this city called Dakoro when I caught a bush taxi back down to Maradi, and that was an adventure to say the least. First of all, the road from Maradi to Dakoro is the worst in the country, and in a country like Niger, that is quite the statement. Its horrible, not paved, and with tons of potholes…and its cold and wind season, and there is constantly tons of dust whipped up in the air. So I get on the back of this open bed truck with a frame, that is tiny…about 30 others (literally, I’m not making this us) get on in the back and we make it to the road. Everyone is sitting on top of each other. This Fulani woman was sitting in my lap, with her baby in hers. I only got peed on twice the way down, which is a feat, seeing as there were like 15 babies on board. The guy next to me was wearing an Alan Jackson Tour tshirt, and here I am hanging on for dear life as we tear down this road. We stopped twice so everyone could get out and do the Muslim prayers. I finally got out the Harry Potter book I was reading, and had one of those “Where the hell am I and what am I doing” moments. I was so happy to get to Maradi to say the least.

I’m heading out to my village tomorrow, January 20, and should hopefully be out there until Valentine’s day. Hope you all are doing well!! Write me a letter if you get a chance I would love to hear from home ( : Again, my pictures from Niger are at: Webshots.com
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Thanks for reading! Love, Katie