Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Un petit sejour en brousse/ a little trip into the bush

Greetings everybody!

I hope all is well with you, and sorry that I've been a bit out of touch lately. I just got back from a short trip to some villages north and east of Niamey, where I visited some awesome Peace Corps friends and got a little taste of village life. I am writing this blog entry from home right now, but I'm eager to check my email and read the news to hear what is going on with the fires in San Diego, I hope things are better now, that must have been scary for Grandma Jeannine and Grandpa Charlie. If anyone feels like sending me news updates, or just writing a sentence about a current event in an email, I would love it! I try to check the news here, but nytimes.com and some others are slow to load, so any little news from the "outside world" would be much appreciated.

Although I sometimes miss the news and always miss ice, It was really great to get out of the city for a few days and see more of Niger. I left my house (well not my house but where I am currently crashing, in keeping with my nomadic lifestyle here in Niger) at 3:45 am last Thursday, took a cab to the bus depot, where most people had spent the night, and boarded the bus at 5 am to head to Birnin Konni, a crossroads-type town about 6 hrs east of Niamey and about 5 km from the NigerIAN border. There happened to be a Peace Corps volunteer (Jen) on the bus, and she was also headed to Konni, so we chilled together and she told me a bit more about the region. I was very surprised to see MESAS, Arizona/Utah style, large and small, peppering the dusty scrub brush landscape. The Mesas reminded me of a fun road trip I took with my dear friends Becky and Maria after graduation, so they made me happy. We were greeted by my friend Natalie, who is the volunteer sort of in charge of all of the other volunteers in her region. She was living in Spokane (Eastern Washington) before she joined Peace Corps, and she is a ton of fun. As the regional rep, Natalie spends a lot of time visiting other volunteers in their villages and making sure everything is going smoothly. This is great, because I got to tag along on her visits, and Jen, the volunteer I met on the bus, decided to come too, so we had a good little crew. We drove around in a Land Cruiser with an awesome dude named Moussa, who is the Peace Corps employee in the Konni region. He is very wise and funny and fun to talk to, and he makes great tea, with massive quantities of sugar of course.

We spent the first night in a Natural Resource Management volunteer's village, and we went to school with her to watch her teacher-counterpart introduce this really awesome environmental education worldwide initiative called the Globe program (I think if you google that, you will find the website). We also made a delicious tofu peanut cabbage dish with all local ingredients, and Jen and I invented a tasty side dish of fried eggplant! I practiced my meager Tamashek with a nice Tuareg lady who lived next door to the volunteer. We spent Friday night in Natalie's old village, where she visits regularly to work on projects. It was a harvest moon that night, which was gorgeous, and I had my first semi-successful experience carrying water on my head from the well to the house, I need to keep practicing, it is a serious workout! On Saturday, Moussa drove us back to the Peace Corps hostel in Konni where Natalie lives, and we dropped her off and headed north to visit yet another volunteer in the absolutely stunningly beautiful village of Kehehe (pronounced kuh HAY HAY!)…there are dunes and a lake and cool mud houses and egg-shaped grain shelters and Tuaregs everywhere, it is paradise! I was planning to only stay one night and then head back with the other volunteers to Konni, but I ended up staying for two nights so Kelly, the volunteer in Kehehe, could introduce me to her Tuareg pals and so I could set up contacts for a research visit for a couple weeks in January or February. Her friend Al Kossam made us a tasty Tuareg dish called Togala that is actually cooked in some kind of underground oven, it reminded me of stuffing because it was made from pieces of bread, the flavor was great and no one tried to make me eat cow intestines, so I was happy. Then we had tea and stretched out on the beach and chatted, overall a very pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Later we continued the eggplant theme with some baba ghanoush and tomatoes for dinner, and watched the stars and talked about places we want to visit in West Africa, one of my favorite subjects these days.

It was awesome to visit these volunteers and see what their lives are like in their villages! I was so impressed with their language skills and their friendliness and their dedication to their work, and also of course their ability to live like the locals. It sounds cheesy, but I think everyone knows that it's not easy to leave the comforts of home and to be an outsider, so the fact that these volunteers carry water, wash their clothes, learn a local language, and become residents of these villages is pretty dang cool. I am kinda starting to think about doing Peace Corps after I'm done here, but we'll see…

The only hiccup in the rockin vacation began when Kelly and I boarded a bush taxi at 7 am and headed to Tabalak, a larger town a few kms north of Kehehe, to find the bus that would take me all the way to Niamey. Moussa had said that the bus I could take would leave from Agadez early in the morning and arrive in Tabalak by 9 or so, incha'allah. That phrase, if Allah wills it, is VERY VERY important to internalize if one (uh oh my English is getting crappier b/c of French, I am talking about myself here) is going to survive life in Niger as an impatient, fidgety American. Incha'allah does not mean that something will happen, it MIGHT happen if and only if Allah wills it, and on this sweltering morning, apparently one of the 2 buses coming from Agadez had to break down! Kelly and I waited until 2:30 pm for the non-broken bus to arrive in Tabalak.

Because Nigeriens are nice and always help a brother/sister out, the non-broken bus drove back to collect all of the passengers in the broken bus, and all 80 or so of them squished in one bus meant for 40 people. After some lively discussion with the bus agency manager in Tabalak, we convinced him that I was going to get on the full bus even if they had to strap me to the top, so when the bus came barreling through Tabalak stuffed to the gills, the agency manager shoved me in the door and slammed it, and there I was, plopped into the chauffeur/bus doorman dude's lap, with about 10 people laughing and greeting me in Hausa and Tamashek. I rode pretzel-style-squished between the driver and the stick shift and an Al Hadji (that technically means the dude has been to Mecca, but here it's kinda slang for a big pimpin, rich, usually fat dude). There was also a cute little Tuareg girl who ate an impressive amount of dates when someone bought them and passed them around, and a bunch of annoying young bus agency employees who kept raising their eyebrows suggestively at me, which I responded to by adjusting my veil and shrugging my shoulder at them, which in Niger means, "no thanks asshole." I rode this way for 4 hours until we deposited some passengers in Konni, still another 6 hrs from Niamey.

The disconcerting thing about riding in the front of the bus is not only the obvious concern that you will be the first person skyrocketed through the windshield in the case of an accident, but also the ability to see just how idiotic the bus driver is. I watched the driver barrel towards a limping goat, a toddler, semi-trucks, other huge buses, and donkey carts, blasting his horn to tell them to move along, and in the mean time talking on his cell phone, popping dates, joking and hitting his buddies, and cruising along at a fast clip. It was hard not to laugh at the irony of our bus teetering off the road in order to pass a huge semi-truck going 60 miles an hour with a fatalistic phrase painted on the back like "No one knows what tomorrow will bring." I am not quite used to these fatalist slogans that adorn all form of transportation here, but I have begun repeating incha'allah under my breath as I see my short life pass before my eyes on ridiculous bus journeys like this one.

I will spend the rest of this week in Niamey getting ready for my first real fieldwork stint, which I leave for on Saturday, again at 4 am. I am going wayyyy far east and north, and I will be living and traveling through small villages for a month. Yikes, I've got some stuff to get done, drop me a line and let me know what's cooking, I miss you all and please know that today as I was sweating and secretly freaking out about the crazy bus driver I was also thinking about home and good folks like you!

Xo
Mags

PHOTOS:

Chopping for the tofu peanut dish in the shade hangar outside of Piper's hut:




Moussa, major dude, presiding over his tea-making station:




More tea drinking by the lake with Kelly's friends in Kehehe, sorry it's kinda dark:




Kelly with her village's sign:




A Kehehe BABY and Mom!:




And this is a photo from last week, when I went to a baptism for a Malian Tuareg baby, here are some of the relatives and a nice missionary woman who took me to the baptism. They are all wearing the traditional Malian Tuareg garb, a sort of one-piece scarf that you wrap all around you. The Nigerien Tuareg women don't wear these, but these ladies lent me one, which I remained tangled up in the whole afternoon! It's harder than it looks to be graceful in these pretty outfits!


Thursday, October 18, 2007

Sankisserie 2007

(translation of the title: Sankara + Patisseries = the essence of the Burkina Faso vacation)

Hi all,

I just returned from a petit sjour/little trip to Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. My friend Alice (the other Niger Fulbrighter) and I went to explore the city and also to witness a momentous occasion in Burkina's history: the 20th anniversary of President Blaise Compaore's reign (I think that is the appropriate term), which is also the 20th anniversary of the beloved, Socialist ex-President Thomas Sankara's murder. We were lucky enough to attend a symposium about Sankara's legacy, watch a caravan of Sankara supporters (mostly idealistic hippy Socialist foreigners) who had begun their journey in Mexico drive through town, and watch a march to Sankara's grave. We also attended the parade for President Compaore; unfortunately the Pres. was at the airport for his own festivities, welcoming Brazilian President Lula to town for a film festival. I learned a lot from these events, and it was especially fun to talk to people about their impressions of the two leaders.

Here is a photo from one of the Sankara marches, as the crowd sang the Burkinabe national anthem:



And here is one from President Compaore's parade, some people wearing shirts with the President's face on them:



The other central element of our trip was eating lots of ice cream and tasty things we couldn't get in Niamey. Here is Alice with our two Tuareg friends, Muktab and Amoumin, they are from Niamey but they happened to be in town, eating some watermelon (the season just started, great news!). Watermelon is more pricey in Niamey b/c they import it from Burkina, but I am becoming friends with my neighborhood fruit dude, so I think I am getting a decent price.




We also went to an awesome artisanal center where I bought a djembe, which is a super cool drum, it has my name on it and a carving of a baobab tree! This instrument is called a Boni, it is kind of like a guitar, and it sounds beautiful when played correctly (aka not by me):



Finally, this is Alice and me on the bus on the way home from Ouga, it is 6 am and of course we are already sweating! We arrived back in Niamey at 5 pm, after numerous stops, custom checks, border crossings, and only ONE breakdown, yippee!

Ramadan Pics!

Hi All,

Before I post the Burkina photos, I just wanted to give you a quick glimse of the Ramadan festivities of last week.

This is me and Habsou's (my homestay mom) niece Mariane at Habsou's parents' house. Mariane's outfit is an example of typical party attire for a wealthy Nigerien family; look at the sequins and stuff, she looked great! My outfit, on the other hand, in kind of gauche for a party, that pagne/fabric is something that my homestay family would wear for household chores, not for a high holiday, but everyone was nice and said I looked good. Mariane is 17 years old and her husband is in his thirties. Some family members told me that Tuareg men usually get married in their early 30's, while Tuareg women usually get married in their late teens.



These people are Habsou's parents! The father (we call him Al Hadji, meaning he has been to Mecca) is wearing the traditional Tuareg turban, called a tigalmust in Tamashek.



And here are the young dudes in the family, just chilling in the yard, talking on their cell phones, some wearing boubous (the dude in the gold) . . . I think this is a good example of the relaxed, family-oriented lifestyle that I have been observing with my Tuareg family. At night, a bunch of these guys, who I guess are my homestay "cousins," come over and drink tea and smoke cigarettes and sit on the mats outside the house. They are helping me learn Tifnagh, the age-old Tuareg script that existed before a Roman (?) alphabet was adopted in the 1960's.



Finally, here's a photo of a neighbor trying to get the car keys out of the locked car . . . that was my bad!

Friday, October 12, 2007

Habsou and me



Although this isn't a great pic of me, Habsou looks lovely as usual so I wanted to post it. This was taken at a Peace Corps Gender and Development fundraiser several weeks ago. I did not have my luggage, so I am wearing a dress made by a Nigerien designer named Kady, who has shows in Europe and the US, my PC friend Natalie took me to see her and she gave me a great price b/c the dress was from last season, I am looking forward to her fashion show in November!

Barka de Salaa, or A La Fete Numu!

The title to this post are two ways to say bon fete/ happy party day, the first in Hausa, the second in Tamashek.

The past two days in Niger have indeed been cause for celebration, because Thursday was Eid-al-Fitr, the last day of the month of Ramadan (I believe, it is the day after the moon disappears), which means Muslims are done with the month of fasting and are able to eat during the day. The month of Ramadan is a crucial element of Islamic faith (it is also one of the 5 pillars of Islam), and this entire week has been a reminder of the significance of this period. Wednesday was an insanely busy market day and there was tons of traffic in town, because everyone was shopping for fresh produce and meat for the feast the next day; prices skyrocketed and women in cabs decried the price of a pimtard/guinea fowl--5000 CFA or 10 bucks, when they usually go for 3000 CFA, c'est fou! In one particularly memorable cab ride of the day, I made friends with two very kind Hausa women, who said I was a nice American girl even though I don't speak Hausa, and then the other woman in the cab, a mother, had to hop out of the cab unexpectedly when her little toddler barfed on the seat, poor dude. Cab rides are certainly a highlight of the day, because the squished nature of the experience often elicits interesting conversations. The other day, I was given a Nigerien name (by consensus) by my cabmates: Fatimata. The Wouros were pleased because this is a good Tuareg name as well.

Right now I am using free internet at my friend's place, and unfortunately I don't have access to my Ramadan photos, but I will post them soon. For the party, I brought my housemate Sam, a British guy working for an HIV/AIDS NGO, to the Wouro's house, where we ate (of course), welcomed guests, asked questions about Tuareg culture, and drank goat's milk mixed with millet. Later, Habsou's niece Mariam and her husband Aboubacar offered to drive us around to other houses; we visited Aboubacar's old boss' house, where we had some a good discussion about democracy promotion in Africa; the old boss works in Sierra Leone on democratic development projects. When we decided to head out, we discovered that I had locked the car keys in the car, so all the neighbors emerged to help us extricate the keys from the ignition. About a half hour (and lots of laughing and photosnapping), someone managed to pull up one of the locks with a crowbar; as the Cameroonian adage goes, nothing ever works, but everything always works out! After feting with the Wouros, I went to a concert with the BU study abroad students, where I was lucky enough to watch kiri kiri for the first time! Kiri Kiri is (to the unaccustomed observer) an incredibly scandalous dance, but it seem to fit the festive mode; although I opted not to try it, I did join in when the band (composed of a jazz quartet of sorts, drummers, singers, etc) started yelling 'annassara, annassara, annassara,'(= white christian person) to the beat of the drums.

Today was another holiday day, and it was fun to see so many kids out in the street. My friend Rama and I tried to go the National Museum, but it was completely flooded with kids, which was a very happy sight to see. Everyone was wearing their Ramadan finest and clearly enjoying themselves. Eid is an excellent example of the huge importance of family and community in Nigerien society that I witness every day here. People here really seem to enjoy the company of their loved ones, and it is a wonderful feeling to be included in these celebrations.

It is almost 3 am here, so I think I will now take a brief nap...my friend Alice and I are leaving in about an hour and a half for the bus station, where we will take a bus that will arrive in Burkina Faso 12 hrs later (incha'allah/if G-d wills it)!

Although my family and American friends are not here, I did think of you all on the fete day, and I wish you a very happy and prosperous beginning to the new year (well not the traditional american new year, but you might as well take as many best wishes as you can get:))!

xo mags

Thursday, October 11, 2007

pictures in backwards order


Okay, so I can't figure out how to publish pictures in the right order, so I have posted a bunch, but now they're in backwards order. So if you want to read this as I intended, go down to "Finally a few pics" then read back up to here.


And then you can read this part:


And here is the History Department library where I have been reading dense Nigerien history books in French that my fav prof-buddy Malam Issa keeps loading on me. Today was a holiday called jour ferrier (something like that), which is the day after the crazy night in which Muslims finish reading the Koran (they start 10 days before today, and read the entire thing straight through), then they pray from midnight-4 a.m., then they eat and go to bed; clearly they need to have the day off after that business! Because it was a holiday, the library was closed and someone had to open it for me, but I didn't want to bother him to turn on the fans, so the library was INCREDIBLY HOT; you know that feeling when sweat is dripping off every part of your body?


Tuareg proverb of the day: "C'est le ventre qui transfert la noblesse." = "Nobility is transferred through the stomach (of the woman, who gives birth)." = matrilineal society -- cool, huh!?


Tamashek phrase of the day: "Ma tisofa awazlu? Fel alim d'awazlu fel d'ebogow?" = Where do like to travel? Do you go by camel or horse? (Keep in mind that spelling is only kind of phonetical and the actual pronunciation is only possible if you have inhaled pounds of Sahara sand and can make those amazing raaarrhshshsssshsh sounds).


Hope you like the pics!
xoxo
Mags

And here's the teapot and mini cups that we drink the ymmy and super sweet tea out of.

tent


This is the traditional tent that everyone chills under and around at night.

Habsou


And here's Habsou, driving her Land Rover and wearing the scarf I gave her.


Wouros


And finally, I can introduce you to the Wouro family, although the cutest pics got deleted, but here are Ghaicha (the Gh is prounounced rrrR), age 13; Nourrodine (Nouri), age 10; and Mohammed (everyone calls him Bebe, age 6.

Finally, a few pics!


This may not be breaking news to any of you, but I am not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, and somehow I managed to delete all 200 some pictures that I snapped during my first few weeks here in Niger . . . BALLS! Well, incha'allah, I will recover them somehow, but more likely I will just take some new ones . . . as Habsou (my homestay mom) would say, c'est pas grave, I'll be here for a while so I can just take more. As a temporary fix, here is a fun pic I took today at the Ramadan Baazar in Niamey. There are vendors that come from all over West Africa for this big street fair, where the main item (obvi) is PAGNE, the beautiful fabric that varies in style and pattern from country to country. However there were several vendors from Benin (yay Ashley J!) who were selling a wide variety of potions and powders to cure every problem you could think of from hemroids to toothache to, well, just look at the pic! (You might have to click on it to see the little signs.)

Friday, October 5, 2007

Tailless Geckos and Pirogues of Pumpkins: a day in the life of Niamey

Salaam Aleikum tout le monde,

First, I am VERY sorry if this blog seems boring so far b/c there are no pictures, but I PROMISE i will get my act together and post some asap, I have been snapping some of my homestay family and also very covertly in town (it's not always ok to be whipping out the camer and shooting away downtown, so I have to be careful), so I'll get them onto computer asap.

I decided I should fill you all in on my impressions of Niamey so far, because I don't think I have really done that (apologies to any peeps that have already been to Niger, and also I must say that I haven't been here that long so I am no expert) . . . this capital city is unlike any capital I have ever been to, mostly because it feels as if a bunch of wide, open boulevards and colonial trees (you know, the white painted ones) were plopped onto a red, sandy Sahelian plateau.

Niamey is rather "chill" as African cities go; sure, there are the big bustling markets and intense cab drivers, but with the heat, and especially with Ramadan, you can see many people sprawled out on mats taking a break around 2 p.m. or so (I would too if I was fasting in 95 degree heat!). There is also the beautiful, reddish brown Niger River, which separates the Universitee Abdou Moumouni from the heart of the city . . . at any time of day you can see people bathing or washing clothes, riding on pirogues, transporting loads of produce, and so on. I watched the sunset from a kind of expatty hotel the other night and I will post a pic of that soon. Niamey is not huge, and it's not too hard to navigate, since there are good landmarks such as "chateaux"/water towers and stadiums which every "taximan" knows. Taxi riders are good for learning new greetings in Hausa and Zarma, and also for having funny discussions about marriage, democracy, etc.

I have been told that Niamey is very different from the rural parts of Niger, which does not surprise me given my preconceptions of what life might be like for people living in the "most underdeveloped" country in the world. Although you can try to ignore signs of poverty if you put blinders on, these signs are fairly evident: children sniffing glue, clearly malnourished toddlers, kids picking through garbage, and the list goes on. However, this by no means is a sad place. I'm not trying to oversimplify things, but it does seem to me that family is very important here and that people make do with what they have, and above all, stand by their family and loved ones, which I think is wonderful and powerful. I have certainly seen this realized with my homestay family here . . . last night my homestay mom and I went to visit her parents; we walked over there (just down the street) at about 9:30 p.m. (it was a nice night with stars and a little moon), stayed for a half hour, then walked back, and it is these types of visits and interactions that make Nigerien culture pretty darn cool. My homestay family spends so much time together, and with tons of family/guests over, it is unbelievable!!

This is getting long, but I just wanted to give a laundry list of the things I have seen in the last 24 hours: many tailless geckos, huge boats (pirogues) stuffed with Cinderella-liked GINORMOUS pumpkins (you make sauce with them), whole wheat bread at the best boulangerie in town! Three camels strolling down the street, a bustling Ramadan bazaar, a random kid peering in my concession just to say hi, and when I was in a taxi, we hit two gendarmes on a moto, they were not very pleased but they were fine, we weren't going too fast. Oh, and when I was buying a chocolate bar yesterday, a french/lebanese not sure which guy told me I was fat, and then my homestay mom told me I had lost weight since arriving, hmm, people love to talk about that stuff here.

Ok, time to walk to the franco/nigerien cultural center, I am going to try to read this crazy long book on the Tuaregs in French in preparation for an interview with a major dude Tuareg historian. Bon weekend!

xoxo
Mags

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Tuksay T-ilay! (the heat is here)

Howdy all,

Yes, the heat is definitely here but I think I am getting used to it . . . this morning I woke up and I hadn't sweated as much as usual so I didn't even take a shower, although I probably should have (that might be a tmi).

First of all, there may be typos in this post because im still getting re-used to the french keyboard, sorry. Guess what, my luggage came yipeeee so that is a big improvement!

Things are definitely looking up and the rollercoaster that I described continues to roll but that is really ok because this is a good learning experience and I should feel lucky because Niamey must be one of the only cities in the world where (in one taxi ride) you can see an emaciated camel, bats, a flock of guinea fowl, and a donkey captained by a 12 year old all struggling for their space on the city streets. Ramadan is a very interesting time for many reasons, but one of them is the speed and intensity with which people zip around the city as they head home around 630 pm to break the fast (drink and eat for the first time since sunrise, about 13 hrs before). I've started wearing a wrap around my hair bc altho I don't think anyone expects me to, practically all of the women cover their head in some way or another, so I decided I should get in line. Right now I only have my hot pink fulaar (head wrap scarfy thing) from Cameroon, which is a bit intense with my glasses. ive also been enjoying good lebanese food lately (i just had a falafel sandwich for lunch), and last night i even had some goat meat and salad with my family and i didnt get sick; the family slaughtered a goat in celebration of the dad returning home (he had been away on business). i also like this funny niger lait/yogurt milk product. Today my homestay mom and the kids dropped me at tamashek class on their way to school and they sang pretty songs in tamashek and french the whole way, it was so fun. the only funky thing at the moment is my lack of personal space but hey, cest l'Afrique so i really need to get used to it.

Sorry i cant write more right now, i have to go back to my tamashek language course; this is my 4th day of a 5 day intensive Tamashek "stage" hosted by the peace corps for volunteers (they have been very nice to let me join them and i am learning a lot but have a lot of trouble with allllaaaahhhrraaass which is the response to every greeting, means ca va/good).

i promise to write more in my next post about my impressions of niger and also now i have my camera stuff so i will also post some PICTURES!!!

email me and let me know what youre up to!
xoxo
mags

ps another source of comfort has been the knowledge that so many of my friends are also off experiencing new and different things, so i just wanted to say kudos to all of them for toughing it out and getting settled and adjusted to life in a new place, especially my friend Emily Durham, who told me in an email about her recent experience at a communal bathing house in south korea, sound like quite the trip!