Life…

Well, life’s been interesting recently. Mom just left a couple of weeks ago. It was a good visit. The loop was a great trip, if a bit too short. The good news is that, the way Peace Corps works, it may be to my advantage to leave from Accra rather than from Niamey when I head home, so I may get a chance to go back through the Loop a bit. I’ve set up a website, theloop.wikia.com, to help people get information on the places to go, or not, on the trip. Please, put any useful information there. I’ll get back to the trip in a second…

Having mom in my village was certainly neat; the villagers loved it and she got a first hand look at the insanity that is daily living here. She wore a complet and everything. It was awesome. We taught local women to bake bread and painted a mural on handwashing. Mostly, though, it was good to finally have someone from outside peace corps get a first hand look at what we’re dealing with, from the overall shittiness of the soil to the problems the culture throws in the way of development. Not that there weren’t good points, there were. We had a great time at the market, eating corn tuwo and sitting with the fabric lady. We also walked around and saw how well the millet was (or, at the time, wasn’t….) doing. Mom got to see how the trees were doing and eat delicious moringa crepes. It was a good time. Now that she’s left, however, it’s been incredibly frustrating. She had brought little gifts of soap for a few key women in my village, and tea for the men. Even while she was there the men were giving the tea away to people I didn’t want them to (but, hey, it was their tea to give away, right?) but then, after she left, I keep getting asked by men and women where their tea or soap is. I’ve made a big thing about not giving out gifts in my village for the past year and a half, and now I’m worried that all that’s been spoiled. Not mom’s fault – it makes sense to bring things to people that you’re going to meet and live with for a bit, host gifts etc. But the culture here is such that giving anything is a lesson in the benefits of becoming Scrooge. Plus, that she could come here has reopened the whole ‘take me to America’ can of worms. As in ‘hey, you’ll pay for me to go to America when you leave, right?’ And it’s not just as a joke, they really get annoyed when I say no. Finally, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m incredibly blunt – ‘No, I will not take you to America. Not only is it too expensive (I can’t even pay for the ticket, the government pays for mine) but once we get there you have no skills that will be useful. No, you can’t farm like you do here. No, you can’t herd like you do here. No, you can’t open a shago (small general goods store). We farm with tractors. We have feedlots. We have grocery stores bigger than the village (literally. You could fit a hamlet inside CostCo, easy). You would end up washing dishes or doing crappy manual labor somewhere. This would not be the American dream you see on TV. No, I will not take you to America’ Shikenan.

N.B. Take everything I say with several grains of salt. It’s probably not as depressing as I find it. I’m 3 months from COS and focused more on the next stage of my life than trying to wage Sisyphean battles against hunger, poverty, illiteracy, disease… Being here in Niger has taught me a LOT, albeit not what I had thought it would. I feel much more grounded in knowing what the problems are, and what the problems with the majority of the world’s solutions are. Knowing the actual solutions… um… not so much. It’s going to have to be a ground-up change adapted locally to individual situations and I just don’t know that any external force is going to be able to affect that. There are good programs out there, SIM’s agroforestry model among them, but even that model wouldn’t be adapted to a few hundred kilometers south. On the plus side, now that I know what the problems are, I’m even more motivated to try to solve them, pretty much guaranteeing that I’ll be involved in ag for years to come; yay for my education not entirely going to waste J

So, the future… hmmm… I’m of several minds on the matter:
1) Go to work in mainstream development
2) Go back to school for something along the lines of sustainable farming systems
3) Go off the beaten track and WWOOF and get into sustainable ag that way
4) Some otherwise nebulous future

Everything has its pros and cons…

In any case, I promised a bit more on the trip, so here you go

Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso): AMAZING!!! It’s a beautiful city with ice cream and cleaner streets, and my first taste of FanIce, which is so amazingly delicious I can’t describe it here. Think semifrozen cake batter, but better. We stayed at a lovely B&B – Karite Bleu – recommended to us by local PCVs while we waited for our visas to get processed and wandered around the artisanal centers.

Kumasi (Ghana): Not my favorite but a necessary stop to get a break after the horrendous drive from Ouaga. Met nice people who helped us out later on.

Cape Coast (Ghana): We got there right after Obama did, and it was packed with Obama goodies. Obamamania may have subsided in the States, but it certainly is still going full force there. We actually stayed here twice – coming and going from Green Turtle. Both times we stayed in the Mighty Victory. A great hotel, but they need to nuke their neighbors – an EXTREMELY loud church that had a wake going on one of the nights we were there. I was NOT happy. The city itself was a little empty – probably packed in slightly warmer times. We had a great tour of the castle and then indulged in Guinesses at the nearby restaurant watching the waves break on the beach. Later on we tried a bit more ‘native’ food – Chic Heb’s – run by Henrietta, an incredibly effusive warm woman with really good chicken. She even drove us back to the hotel when the area started looking too sketchy after dark. Near CC is Kakum National Park. They have a canopy walk. I chickened out after the second bridge (out of 7); even repeating the Bene Gesserit Mantra Against Fear (yes, I did. I really am that sad) couldn’t get me out on the third one. I had thought they’d be more… Wide? That the nets would be higher? Somehow I’d thought they’d feel sturdier. But, I’m a coward. At least I got two, right? The views were lovely and then we went on a neat nature walk with a guide telling us the native uses/myths about the various trees. Fun fun.

Green Turtle (Ghana): Situated on one of the worst roads I’ve ever been on, GT is paradise. Jesus loves cocktails. Had a great time vegetating with mom on the beach, drinking more STAR than I should have, and meeting a bunch of nice people. Mostly, though, it was just good to have some 100% down time with mom to shoot the breeze.

Accra (Ghana): we went back through Cape Coast and then headed further east to Accra, which was an ok city. The Christian mission type guesthouses were all full (and really unfriendly!!) and we ended up staying in what looked like a totally scary hotel but turned out to be really nice – Beverly Hills something. Plus we ate at the Orangerie – AMAZING! I had smoked salmon pasta. So delicious and western and clean and… It was a good stop.

Kpalime (Togo): After one night in Accra it was up to Ho in a crammed taxi, then from Ho to Kpalime in an incredibly sketchy taxi on an awful road eclipsed only by the one that’s on the way to Green Turtle. It was torture. But then we ended up at Chez Fanny, which is this beautiful hotel/restaurant in Kpalime run by a French/Togolaise couple. The food was to die for. Shrimp flambéed in whisky. Avocados everywhere. Local coffee (the owner was kind enough to sell me some…) From Kpalime we went on a nature hike and the guide drew a butterfly on my arm with local plant dyes (don’t worry, it washed off). The area is known for its butterflies and even though we went after peak season it was still lovely. Lots of cocoa and banana plantations and lovely GREEN everything. And avocados. Cheap. Bigger than my head for a quarter. Mom mocked me for hauling them around but they were soooo worth it. Yum. Kpalime also has a lovely artisanal center; I got a beautiful batik of a woman pouring water off her head. Yes, you can get batiks in Niamey, but nowhere near this quality and detail.

Lome (Togo): In Kpalime we decided to make a run for Niamey so that we could squeeze a full week in my village. Lome was interesting for a night, we stayed in a good hotel and walked on the beach (scary undertow!) and slept and ate fondue. Yum. Plus knowing Hausa helped me get a bus that was leaving later… not that that turned out to be much of a great bonus

The Bus: So, we picked this bus as it was supposed to be faster, skipping Cotonou and all. It was ~36 hours of hell. The road was awful, they tried to turn the music on to the threshold of pain. I’m not ashamed to admit that I used tears to get the music shut off. I’d already put up with that nonsense on the bus from Niamey to Ouaga, and that at least was a nice bus. This was a shitty bus. I wasn’t about to tolerate headache inducing music on a shitty bus. Nope. Then it stopped for 6 hours at Parakou, and they really couldn’t figure out why we didn’t want to get off the bus and sleep in the heavily lit, extremely noisy concrete floored sleeping area when the bus at least had cushions of some sort. And it was nice and quiet and dark… Africa… Then there was some sort of insane line of transport cars lined up for miles at the Benin-Niger border. Our driver and his helper got us navigated through that, but then wanted to make up time by leaving the Americans at the border to get the visas sorted and have us take a motorcycle to catch up. A universe of no. Tears again. Embarrassing but effective. They rushed us through and we were back on our (long) way, with pauses for prayer of course. Then, once we got to Niamey and were on our way to the hotel (Terminus. It’s lovely.) our stupid taxi driver tried to make us wait while he went and had a conversation with his friend, after I’d already explained how tired we were… ‘You Americans lack patience’. Yes, but that’s why our country works – we don’t put up with this nonsense. **sigh**

We stayed at the Terminus a couple of nights to get sorted and settled and rested, then it was onto the bus again out to Maradi and a week in the village.

A good trip.

So, life in the village now:

Gardening: our community garden is caput – people stole everything the second it got ripe so the owners stopped watering. I still have my little garden; it’s full of eggplant and, now that I dumped Miracle grow and other fertilizers on it, I think the tomatoes may start producing. I also am now up to 15 moringa trees. Yum.

Murals: The total’s up to three now – nutrition, conjunctivitis, and now hand-washing. I’m waiting for World Vision to finish the pump skirt so I can put another one on it on not feeding your infant dirty water – milk only until they’re 6 months. Yes, that means no hura, either, in case you were wondering…

Water: I’ve got some hope for the pumps ever getting fixed/installed. Last week WV came through and started cementing the area around the pump – a sure sign of progress.

The Women: the two women’s groups are going strong – they’re much better organized and motivated than the men. I taught the women’s leader of my village how to bake bread – she says she’ll give a demo later. I hope so. It’s an easy income generating activity.

The rest of it: well, it’s Ramadan, which means no food or drink from dawn until dusk, which in turn means that everyone is asleep and really cranky. I’m not doing it this year (I did one day and was dead sick) and so that’s an issue for the village. For all that this is supposed to be cultural ‘exchange’ they’re convinced that, having seen their wonderful religion/culture I’ll want to adopt it myself. Oh. Hell. No. So, I get this long conversation frequently on why I’m not a muslim and how there’s no way I’ll cover my head in America. I’ve explained that I have every intention of wearing shorts and tank tops and talking to boys and not living with my parents and driving a car and… they’re horrified. It’s great fun. I feel like I was too polite the first year and a half. Now I’m telling the truth and it’s very liberating. Here’s real American culture – I don’t have to listen to you just because you are male. In fact, it decreases the likelihood of me listening to you. Bwa ha ha ha. Having mom come, again, really helped – a married woman traveling by herself on her own money, and explaining that dad is not, in fact, the ‘mai gida’ (owner of the house) but that they share it jointly. A couple of my fellow volunteers are all ‘we should respect their culture and outlook’ – my response: ‘if we respect it too much we run the risk of this being it for them – there will be no progress here if nothing changes.’ Harsh. Cruel. True.

It helps, too, that I talked with an NGO worker whose NGO used to work in my village 10 years ago. They ran into the same problems I do and eventually quit working there – the villagers were only interested in using the NGO cars as transport into Maradi, not in the health work they were doing at the time. The NGO also works with trees and agro forestry - ten years later there are maybe 10 of the trees they planted still growing. I asked the villagers why they didn’t have the trees any more. ‘They died.’ And it didn’t occur to them to replant them without being paid to do so. And yet, Peace Corps felt this was a good village to post a volunteer in. **sigh** I gave the NGO worker my women’s leader’s number – she at least has the kokari to get things done. The men… even Issaka, my host dad… I’ve lost all hope for them. They’ve been ruined by the culture of NGO handouts. There’s no drive to improve the village themselves – the NGO/Government/Allah will fix it, or bring it, or do whatever it is needs to be done. There is no ownership concept because so much has been given to them in the past. Honestly, I think that most aid programs need to be pulled, with only programs that don’t give money, rely on villager motivation, and generally are sustainable, should be let back in. Yes, villages will suffer, but at some point, it is no longer the west’s water to support these people.

Again, I’ve been here probably too long and have become too jaded and negative. There are programs and people that work. My village just isn’t inclined to be one of them. The women have hope but until they’re fully free of male domination there won’t be enough freedom for them to progress. Right now my host mothers aren’t even allowed to go to the market – and these are full grown women who, in the west, would be in charge of all the marketing and running of the household. But, because of Islam and a culture of shame and patriarchy, they can’t do the simplest tasks without risking Issaka’s stern disapproval. It’s not a pretty picture. And yet there’s still smiling and laughter and good times to be had. Drinking tea or playing around. It’s not all bad. It’s just, now that I’m looking more to the future, it’s certainly far from good.

Kende Ne Waongo

Mom and I are now in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. It's AMAZING. So incredibly green. And friendly. And my phone works, so I'm happy. Volunteers are super helpful here and we've found some great places to stay. The ride here was a bit nuts - they played music videos at volumes well beyond the threshold of pain teh entire trip (starting before 6am) ]
Just a quick update
Hi all
M

Maradi Bound

Greetings all
For those of you with my number I'm in Maradi for a while - feel free to call or email or... I should get it. Our valiant RR, Rakia, had to head home for a bit, so I'm sub-RRing. So far, so good, despite crazy politics, power outages, and just general Niger-ness. I'm using the time wisely - reading trashy novels, watching movies, and trying to sort out life after peace corps. I figure 6 months should be enough time to get something organized. As it is, I'm totally idea-less. Tempted to buck responsibility some more and try WWOOFing around the world - they have sites in Slovenia!! (I miss real soil)

So, just a heads up, more as it happens
M

Life on Planet Earth...

... because I haven't figured out how to get to Vulcan yet.

Yup, you guessed it. I've been spending time obsessing about Star Trek, primarily because I can't even watch the trailers out here - the connection's too slow. So, instead, I drive myself insane with J.J. Abrams' edit of WIRED, which is AMAZING. I love it. Plus, I get to try to explain puzzles to my villagers. I think they get it; they may just smile and nod and write it off as another example of Malika being a bit nuts. Still, gotta love hidden puzzles!

Life in the village continues...

IT'S PLANTING TIME!!! We planted once, and that was fun. I'm trying to promote an agroforestry approach, using acacias from SIM. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we're now well into rainy season, we haven't had enough rain and our first planting died. This is, obviously, not a good thing, as it's already hunger season, meaning food is scarce/expensive, and that replanted seed we can't eat. Also, the delayed planting means a delayed harvest. Not good.

MURALS: Well, finished two now, the anti-conjunctivitis one first and lately a nutrition mural (yes, I realize that step 1 is getting enough to eat, but I want them to start thinking that tuwo (millet/sorghum grain mush) isn't enough from a vitamin/mineral/protein standpoint. So I now have a care-bear baby on my wall.

THE PUMP: Well, there's been some progress on the organizational side - Barkatou and I went to a (horrendously boring repetitious) World Vision training on how a pump committee should be organized. I need to add the caveat that to us it was boring, for the villagers it was a good thing. Being raised as a Western person, you're inculcated with a sense of how business should be run - roles of committee members aren't things that take days to delineate, they just 'are'. **sigh** So, while each member of each committee from each village stood up and explained, almost verbatim, the duties of their particular role, we played dots after listening to it the first time 'round. Still, it's encouraging that they've gotten them organized. Of course, I still have a big blue plastic borehole and no pump...

GARDENING: I, too, have had to replant. I don't know what's going on, but suspect ants, caterpillars, and bunnies! (j/k. Zara will get it if she reads this, the rest of you go watch Buffy) are undermining my attempts to secure a pretty green garden. Drat them all. The moringas are doing very well, though. I regularly enjoy bush florentine crepes - just sautee the leaves with onions, garlic, and add some laughing cow. I also add bouillon to the crepe batter because I've lived here too long.

WOMEN'S GROUP: Well, now that Sa'a, my women's leader, is now the leader of a group of groups in different villages, she's rarely there, and possible thoughts of teaching bread baking and mango jamming but there's still hope to get it done before I leave. Also, they now say they want a new grinding machine; apparently the 2 we already have are not enough and they want to start making peanut butter and other goodies. Fair enough, and yay, really, but this is something that should have been brought up ages ago, so I could maybe get it done before I left, NOT during the beginning of rainy season when no one has money and no one can build anything because it's rainy and they're all out in the fields anyhow... Poor timing, but I'm working the numbers up for the next vol if they choose to do it. Or, who knows, if the job situation doesn't look any better by the time September rolls around, maybe I'll stay and do it. Could be fun :)

Hadjia House: The gutters are up, the water flows into the barrel, all is right with the world. Just in time for Ghanima to have her kittens (she looks like a balloon, any day now).

Life is good. We ARE Cylons. Star Trek needs to be on DVD now. That is all.

Future???

So, greetings all
I've been in town for about a week, what I call my vacation from the village though I'm actually running around a lot here like a headless chicken. Huzaah for work! It's hot season, so, beyond my murals, there's not a lot of work going on in the village at the moment; it's just too darn hot. At the moment I'm enjoying the Guest House's lovely A/C and higherspeed internet. Trying to figure out the rest of my life - no pressure. Torn between loving ag and wanting something that will give me psychological payback faster than the decade it can take to produce a good seed line, which will then take another decade to get to the people who need it most, at which point it's no longer relevant... and yes, I'm prone to hyperbole. So, breeding plants and living abroad that way, or ag econ, which is less hands on and concrete, but instead gives you real numbers you can actually get your hands on... Decisions. So no bloody idea. What I'd really like to do is run away to Slovenia or somewhere in that area, down into the old Ottoman empire, as far south as Turkey, get a rambling old house, renovate it and turn it into a production center - gardens, fruit trees, etc. Of course, though, I'd have highspeed internet and all the modern amenities installed so that I could do outstanding analysis by contract. Yes, I've been reading Under the Tuscan Sun, Blackberry Wine and others. A woman can dream, yah? Fresh fruit, fresh air, WATER, GREEN. Just a few requirements. **sigh** Of course, I want to work on African issues... For all that I'd rather live in Slovenia they don't seem to have any problems with ag (I still remember that deliciously dark soil every time I look at the fields around here...) So, retirement only. I'm 27. Why the heck am I thinking about retirement??! Granted, a few grey hairs here and there...

What I've liked most about living here in Niger is not, surprisingly, the weather (jk) but the opportunity to farm and get my hands dirty. I like my gardens, my tree nursery, and planning my field (I'm going for an agroforestry/regeneration of really crappy marginal farmland approach. I'm planning on planting rows of acacias (nitrogen fixing, fast growing, good firewood and nutritious seeds) 10m apart, with 2 rows of zogala (VERY nutritious leaves) in between those, and planting the ground around with cowpeas. I'm doing this, insha'allah, in two new fields - my old field is too close to the site of the new pump, where they're planning on expanding the village eventually, so there's no real point in planting field trees there. I'm hoping that the next volunteer will continue to take care of the little plots in my host family's fields, so that people can get the idea and expand and eventually reclaim this crappy marginal soil. That's the plan. Of course, said plan requires rain for it to work... It has rained once... we're still in hot season. I'd hold my breath but that might make me sweat even more. Ick.

Hugs from Niger to anyone still reading this ramble.

A semi-massive update

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take a way.
-Antoine de Saint Exupery Wind, Sand, and Stars

And on that note, I ditch the thought of trying to catch up the last few months of journal. Here's a summary of what's been going on:

Garden Project: The gardens looked great. The gardeners put in a lot of money (they have to buy water from the well women) and effort and we had a good crop of vegetables. Unfortunately, the rest of them couldn't seem to keep their hands off of the veggies. Every time a cabbage or tomato or carrot was ripe and ready to harvest, it was gone the next day. I suspect children, but the gardeners say it's probably the adults, too. With the garden being so close to the well, and thus so far from the town, it can't be policed efficiently. The gardeners were very disappointed. We're going to try again once World Vision finishes working on our pump, which is closer to the village and thus we can have people guard it effectively. Apparently the same thing happened over ten years ago when an NGO came through and tried to start a school garden - all the veggies disappeared. It's really frustrating to see peoples' hard work be destroyed so casually. My mai gari and host family assure me that if they find the people they'll take them to the sarki in Chadakori and have them fined/punished. It is, to me, so ridiculous that they would steal from the garden - they KNEW it was a trial garden - I told them that if it went really well I'd start trying to get a big garden project funded. Now, they get nothing. Frustrating.

Tree Nursery: Hopefully better fated than the garden, whose space we're now using. I'm hoping that the larger number of people participating will increase the psychological buy in and thus reduce the thefts. Plus, black plastic bags with trees are a bit bigger than tomatoes, and thus harder to conceal theft. The set up is as follows: for 250F they get 15 black plastic bags and seeds of kuka (baobab) or zogala (moringa). A lot of them are also going to use bedi (neem) or dan tahoua (Acacia colei) seeds which they can get in the village from trees we already have. I've invested the initial 6000 to get the project off the ground. Once that's paid back any further profit will go towards upkeep of the fund and the tree nursery area. The villagers can see a profit of 1250F, minus whatever they pay for water, which should be much less than for the garden as the trees are smaller and don't require as much water as vegetables. Trees sell for 100F in my village market and they're a rarity - hard to bring from Maradi. The seller when he had them always seemed to sell out. Also, the nearby bigger market doesn't have a tree seller - they definitely have a market to sell the trees. Personally, I'm hoping they'll keep at least a few of the trees to plant in their fields and around their houses. Any tree around here is a good thing - they reduce the wind and runoff. But even if they're used as purely profit, profit is something my village could use. So, yay. Here's hoping.

Pump: World Vision came out and put in the pipes for our new pump. The water was approximately 75 meters down, the well itself I believe goes to 100m. Just a bit deep, yes? Getting the work done was a lot of fun to watch - they made holes for the drilling mud and spent several days drilling and getting the piping in. Now we're waiting for them to do tests on the water and come back and put in the hand pump. That's been a couple of months, but they've put the one in at the village up the road, so I suspect we should see ours before I COS, which is good.

Womens' Groups: The two womens' groups I've helped start have taken off. I checked in with both of them recently. The one in the nearby hamlet has about 50 women and they're borrowing and paying back almost the entire fund every week. I'm really impressed. The one in my town is going a bit more slowly - the pay in is half as much as the hamlet, and because it's larger, around 100 women, there are more squabbles over who gets what when. But, they're both going and people are using them to pay for bikis or to make food to sell at market. It's really neat that they're continuing all by themselves. Plus, it's a great source of change for when the bank gives me ridiculously large bills - I try to explain that I live in the bush, and sometimes they get that I can't do anything with a 5000F bill (~$10) in a village where 100F is a lot of money.

Hadjia House: I finally got my ridiculously expensive shade hangar installed this past week before coming in for team meeting. It's tall and lovely and there will be no more evil termites and stuff falling on my head and leaking water and. It's great! Next step - cementing the floor so it'll be even for me to sleep on - I hate my cot and I sleep on the floor on mattresses on a mat. I've also got all the fabric on the ceiling so no more mud/termite dirt falling on me, and I don't have to look at the spiders I know are up there. Yay. My garden died before producing anything of use - hot season came really early this year, and much stronger than it did last year. I should have planted it before I went on vacation in December, but oh well, hindsight 20/20 and all that. It's now serving as a place for my own personal tree nursery of acacias for my field this coming rainy season. I have a. tolurosa and a. colei from SIM, a great NGO that I like a lot. They work sustainably for ag development. At the moment the tree nursery people really wanted bedi with a smattering of the others - I'm hoping that when they see how awesome the acacias are they'll want to plant them for the next round. They provide firewood and windbreaks and nutritious seed and they fix nitrogen. Yay.

Life in general: Pretty good. I think I've figured out what I want to do after service. I'm interested in looking into the effects that current agricultural policies in the developed world (i.e. US/EU Farm Policy) have on the agricultural sector (i.e. over 75% of the people) in the developing world. I'd like to focus on the Sahelian area, but not really sure yet. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up studying underwater basket weaving. or extend service to go teach in China. Anything could happen. We could be Cylons.

:)
M


P.S. Current book read count since 22 January = 31 If anyone reads Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, could you send it? It looks VERY fun.

Quickie

So just updated the Dragons in Niger blog, if anyone's interested.
:)
M