Inter-Service-Training and I Move in Monday!

In front of the refact.



Bawa, my new APCD. Tondi, the wonderful training manager. Sangare, my old APCD. Hauoa Grande, the wonderful PTA. And Mani, our language coordinator!



Today is Wednesday, March 25th. Yesterday was my mom’s birthday, and in two weeks we will have been in Niger for six months. Tomorrow is our last night here at Hamdallaye where we’ve been for our three-week IST (inter-service-training). By the time I post this online IST will be over and I will be packing for my installation in Kiota on Monday.

It’s good to be back together with the group I came here with in October. We were all apart for three months and have had surprisingly different experiences out in the bush. After this weekend it may be quite a while (maybe January ’10!) before we’re all together again. We are spread from Gotheye to Gaya and from Gaya to Zinder. That means within our group of 25 volunteers we are close to four of Niger’s seven bordering countries: Mali, Burkina-Faso, Benin and Nigeria. Algeria, Libya and Chad are the only three a little further away, and harder to get to.

Emily, Scott and Will (the other volunteers in my stage relocated because of the kidnappings) are now (mostly) happily settled into their new villages, all in the Dosso region. On Monday, when I join them, it means this whole nightmare of readjustment will finally be nearing its end and we will be looking forward to productivity again instead of just catching up to everyone else. By that I mean it hasn’t been easy living in limbo while our stage-mates have been integrating more and more into their first villages. IST has been largely a brainstorm for actual, do-able, mappable, PDM-able, fund-able project ideas. This is what is exciting about having spent three months at post: now you get to do stuff. But for the four of us that haven’t had that privilege, it is hard to watch everyone else here start planning what they can start right away. I’m sure in a few months, or less, I will also feel ready to start beginning projects in my new sector.

* * * * * * * * *

It’s Friday now, the 27th, and all the girls just packed up our room here at Tondo-bon (the top of the rock) listening to the Dixie Chicks, Frank Sinatra and, ladies and gentlemen, the Notorious B.I.G. My friend Jessie says it feels a little like high school graduation. We watch this room, filled with backpacks, strewn with clothing, piles of seeds for planting, books, dictionaries, project planning sheets and empty glass coca-cola bottles, begin to slowly be packed back into an empty white room with four bare mattresses and a sink. Outside we have taken down most of our mosquito nets, and the village of Hamdallaye is spread below us baking in the sun. Goats linger by the metal wire fence surrounding the training site, chewing any leaves left on the trees. To look around this same place I arrived on October 9th, (10th?) of last year—to look at the scattered outdoor showers, and small circular classroom huts with straw roofs, the refactoire with its wooden benches, hangar and metal chairs—all these things which felt so foreign not long ago; now they feel like some definition of comfort. This is our home away from post, a little slice of America. We had pizza for lunch today! (Albeit, there still managed to be chunks of bone in the ground beef that substituted pepperoni). The point is, it’s hard for this to be the end of us being the new kids. Unless the budget really changes with Obama, we won’t be together again back on this training site. We’re on our own. And we feel capable.

I would like to interject a special congratulations here to my sister Kate who has been ACCEPTED TO THE BU PROGRAM IN NIAMEY FOR THE FALL SEMESTER! Insha’allah (god willing) I will get to have her in this country for four months! Congrats, My love!

So without further ado, as I should probably hurry up and get back to the class I’m missing (even though it’s for Ag/NRMs and I’m a CYE) I would like to send my love to all of you! Wish me luck in my second first month at post! I won’t have internet for another month after Monday (but write to me at the Niamey address!) And please call! I hope you’re all doing well and know that I’m missing you everyday (but not too badly). I cannot wait to hear from you. I hope it smells like spring there. Much love, Annette.

Walking to the Office

Because sometimes this is what gets left out:

As you walk along the road in Niamey at noon, which you try so hard not to do because you know part way between the hostel and the bureau you will think, “maybe if I turn around now it will be faster to get back inside and try this again after dark,” but you wanted a meat sandwich, or some cfa for your phone, or a solani to put in the freezer for later, or, well, to check your e-mail; so you trek on with the sun like some massive bright weight on you. The sand is hot and sticks to your calves as it flicks up behind your flip-flops. It is only now and again that the wind positions itself just right to carry the smell, sitting stagnant in the gutter of a sewer system you are walking beside, right up to your nose, and let it remain there gently, tangibly, until a second breeze comes to push it away.

If you’ve forgotten your sunglasses, as is so often the case, you may get lost in thought for a moment pondering the potential damage the sun may actually have on your eyeballs. How tight can you squeeze them and still see without getting dizzy? This must be how a camera feels during over exposure: all these bright white objects really have other colors too, but it hurts too much to look.

And somewhere along the way you will decide now is your time to cross the street. You will have readied yourself for this and subconsciously already crossed the sewer so you are walking along the strip of sand between the gutter and the road. Some street light will have changed up ahead, and there is magically a break in traffic and enough time between motorcycles. You wait for the one man to bike past and quickly walk out in front of the man pulling the cart of sugarcane and the camel with the dala mats slung across its back. With a jump in your step, one hand holding up your pagne and the other one shielding the sun from outright blinding you, you make it to the sand strip which runs down the middle of the road between lanes.

Another light has changed so now cars and poporos and bikes and camels are flying by on either side of you, two deep each way. You drink dust and exhaust and walk along the strip kicking more dirty sand to stick to your sweaty ankles. You are tempted to cross several times, but hesitate because that motorcycle is going too fast with not enough space behind him. But eventually a gap presents itself and you make it to the other side where you find yourself walking through the uncomfortably deep sand that will last all the way to the bureau. You think you’re safe and in an area with some sort of rules like a sidewalk until you hear the honk directly behind you of some impatient car who has chosen this sand as his road. You trudge over to the side to let him pass before he runs you over, and then walk along in his tire tracks where the sand is packed a little harder.

As you pass the meat sandwich cage you find it’s too hot to want to eat. Instead you take out 1,000 cfa and make eye-contact with one of the boys selling phone cartes. “Zangu hinka,” you tell him, “celtel.” And you pocket the $2.00 card before you get to the corner where you have to cross but one more time to enter the gates of the bureau. And has it really been only ten, fifteen minutes?

The cool air in the guards hut kicks you back to life as you sign in. Bi go no, irkoy bere. There is shade, god is huge. Maybe you will check a lot of e-mails to buy some time before you walk back.