July and August...in Niger

I have been heading out to the neighboring Fulani village a lot recently. The Fulani are an ethnic group in Niger who normally live in small encampments out in the bush, far from a major road or town. They are semi-nomadic, herding sheep, goats, and cattle and selling milk and butter. There is a family out in the bush which I have befriended and I spend my time there just visiting with them and learning a bit of Fulfulde, their dialect. I recently began learning how to stitch the calabash covers which Fulani women make and sell. They use thin strands of palm fronds, some dyed red and black, and weave decorative designs to form a lid for the calabash which they use to store milk and grains.

Since it is rainy season I have been receiving eggs from my villagers on a regular basis which has been amazing. I have been making crepes, fried eggs, hard-boiled eggs, and omelets almost daily; a nice supplement to my limited Nigerien diet.

I began studying French not long ago and that’s been difficult but I’m slowly progressing. I have also begun teaching a couple villagers English so I tutor them every night after dinner. It’s amazing to think that there are grown adults who do not know how to read at all, even some who can’t read a digital clock. I guess for those who only farmed from the time they were children, it’s not so out of the ordinary.

The men are now out in the fields on a daily basis, usually from around 7am to 5pm, farming and weeding their fields. I have gone out on a couple of occasions, once to help thin the millet and once to actually farm. Both days I was out in the fields the entire day and I quickly realized how hard the work is, not to mention the extreme heat. I have such an appreciation for the effort that they have, especially during Ramadan when they are fasting the entire time that they are out in the fields. They planted two types of millet, one which is ready for harvest in three months and another which takes six months. The quick-harvest millet should be harvested very soon if the rains continue to be frequent. Once they begin to harvest, my villagers will be able to breathe easily again as they won’t have to worry about not having food from day to day.

I have been at the training site near the capital for the past couple of weeks helping to prepare the new group of education, health and decentralization trainees for life at post. It has been a lot of fun hanging out with this new group since they are so full of energy and ready to get out into the fields and work. It has been a refresher for me not only because I am eating amazing food on a daily basis (although the newbies probably think differently about the meals) but also because I have become really motivated again after hearing them get excited about post. It is also neat to see things from the flip side as I was in their shoes only one year ago. I can’t wait to head back to the bush and get some more projects under way.

I guess that about sums up my life for the past little while. Hope all is well back in the states and you all aren’t too sweaty and hot. Just remember no matter how hot you get, it’s just a little bit hotter and a whole lot sweatier out this way! Keep in touch.

Niger, kala suuru...

A few weeks ago I was greeting some villagers in their concession when I noticed a young mother holding a severely malnourished child. It was her son who is around 14 months old who has a severe form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. I counseled the mother on the importance and urgency of taking the child to the health center but in the meantime making oral rehydration solution to stop the child’s diarrhea and a healthy weaning porridge to give the child much needed nutrients.
After a couple of days the mother had made neither so I had a meeting with the family and decided that I would escort the mother and child to the health clinic. That morning, another villager had the woman and child get on the back of his bicycle and I rode mine the 11km to the health hut in a neighboring village. I went in to see the doctor along with the mother but as soon as he saw the child he said that there was nothing he could do for him, that the child needed to be referred to a larger health facility that worked specifically with malnourishment.
The next step was another family meeting where I explained to the parents and grandparents that if they did not take the child to the Dosso hospital immediately than he would surely die. They gathered enough money for the bush taxi ride and the mother, grandfather and child left the next day.
For Nigeriens who live out in the bush, a hospital is something completely foreign to them. They normally give birth in the village and get their medicine from a traditional healer.
A week after they had left for Dosso, I traveled there to check up on the child. The mother was still very nervous and wary about being at the hospital and said that her son had not recovered at all. This was not the case as her son had completely stopped throwing up and having diarrhea. The hospital staff provided medicine for the child, food for the family and a place to sleep, all free of charge. I was able to get a doctor to come and explain to the mother the importance of being at the hospital for the child’s sake, even if it took six months for the child to recover which is normally the recovery time for severely malnourished children. I basically told the mother that the child would most certainly die, and soon, if she did not stay at the hospital. I headed back to the village but promised to return in a week to check up on the child again.
Six days later I was hanging out in the village when someone told me that Rabi, the mother, had returned with her child. I was completely distraught and could not believe that after only 13 days they returned to the village when the doctor told them that they would need to stay for several months. Once again I had a family meeting where the grandfather told me that they tried but the baby wasn’t recovering so they ended up going to a traditional healer. They received a certain tree bark which they were supposed to pound into a powder, mix it with water and have the child drink it and bathe with it; this was supposed to cure the child’s malady.
So it goes in the village and in Niger, but I have to have patience and effort and continue to encourage the mother to make healthy porridges for the child; not the recommended solution but better than millet alone. All I can do is hope and pray for the best for Issufu, the poor little boy.

Hey guys, I know it’s been a good while. I’ve been in my village for the better part of two months I think…it’s hard to keep track of time when you’re in the bush. I have been here for over a year now which is hard to believe! Just wanted to update you all on life in Niger…

I spend a few days in the village before heading down to Gaya for my 23rd birthday! Not the first birthday spent out of country but the first in Africa. At least I was able to spend it with some friends. Nothing crazy of course but I enjoyed myself. When you’ve been here for a while you really come to appreciate the blessings in your life, and another year is something to be grateful for.

Village life has had its ups and downs lately. I have recently spent time out of the school trying to finish up all of the painting before the school year begins. I was able to paint all of the windowsills as well as the doorframe. I also painted the exterior of all of the school windows (which are metal) as well as the door a royal blue so now it can be seen from a long way off. It looks great!

An NGO (non-governmental organization) sponsored by UNICEF and USAID came through my village recently to give out food aid to mothers with children aged 6-36 months. I was asked to be the liaison between the villagers and the NGO. The NGO was extremely unprepared for the distribution. Half of the volunteers were speaking to my village women in French, which of course they did not understand a bit. They had not separated the oil, sugar or flour into separate bags beforehand so it was not until after dark when they were actually ready to begin the distribution: one liter of palm oil, one kilo of sugar and 1/3 of a sack of an enriched corn/bean flour mixture per child. Somehow I was given the responsibility of holding the empty bags while they poured the oil into them. About 15 minutes in, a bag burst and an entire liter of oil spilled down my arm, shirt and pants all the way to my feet, but all I could do was grab another bag and keep on going. They rushed through the distribution and then left my village around 11pm, as soon as it was finished. The biggest problem was the fact that they never explained what the women were supposed to do with the food. In reality it was supposed to be used to make a nutritious weaning porridge for young children. The next day I had most of the women coming to ask me what to do with the flour since they had no clue that the flour, sugar and oil were to be used together to make a porridge. In effect, it was the children who suffered as the adults ate the sugar, oil and even flour. I did my best to teach my villagers to make a porridge but I saw many of them eating and feeding their kids the dry flour. It was a perfect example to me of how a potential life saving distribution of aid can be detrimental if the recipients are not educated in advance. “Kala suuru” or “have patience,” as they always say here.

On a positive note, I finally planted a rainy season garden and a few trees in my concession. I planted all sorts of vegetables including tomato, cucumber, basil, corn, hibiscus, beans, pumpkin and lima beans. I built a short fence around my garden in order to keep out goats, chickens and guinea fowls along with curious children. Most of the seeds have sprouted and are doing well. The eggplant that I planted last cold season has begun to bear fruit and I have already eaten a few!

Rainy season is going great and the millet and corn is growing taller and bigger everyday, which the villagers are very grateful for. It has been great for me too as the day after the rains are usually overcast and not hot and the nights are cool and comfortable. More to come very soon…take care, best wishes from Niger.

Happy 4th of July everyone! I’m back in the city again for a little while. I’ll get you guys up to date with life in Niger…

I was in the capital a couple of weeks ago and was able to go and see Niger play Benin in a World Cup qualifying match. It wasn’t a great game as Niger lost 2-0, but we all had a good time and were definitely supporting “our country”. We just recently went back to the training site for our Mid Service Training. We’re almost at a year which hard to believe! We shared past projects as well as future project ideas and discussed which projects worked or didn’t work and why. I think it was a productive time but it was also great to see all of the volunteers from my group together again.

The rains finally have begun. They were very spotty at first but now we are really coming into rainy season. My villagers are very thankful that they’ve begun but that also means that the real work has started. The men normally head out to the fields before 7am and usually don’t return home until 5pm. Six days a week they farm from morning to night. I plan on having a bean field so we’ll see how that goes. I guess I need to get out there and work up a good sweat. I also plan on having a rainy season garden in my concession. I will be planting cucumber, soy beans, lima beans, basil, tomatoes, eggplant and a few other vegetables. It will take some effort but hopefully I’ll be eating well come August.

I recently went and visited a volunteer whose village is right on the Niger River. We went out to see the elephants again who have not yet migrated into the deep forest. We took a pirogue up river and after a twenty-minute ride we found them on the bank on the Benin side of the river. There were thirteen in total, seven in the water playing and bathing, and six on land grazing. We were able to dock the pirogue on some rocks in the river since the water is so low. From the rocks we were only about 40-50 feet away from the elephants. What an amazing site to see! We sat there for over an hour and watched them roll around in the water, play fight, and graze. It was definitely one of the most excited things I have ever been able to witness. We headed back just as the sun was setting.

The other day in our regional capital some of the volunteers got together for a duck feast! One of the volunteers bought four ducks of which three we killed, myself getting to do the honors for one of them. We split up tasks and I was part of the grilling team. We ended up oven roasting one, frying one and grilling one which we ate with mashed sweet potatoes and brown rice. It was an amazing feast and all three ducks tasted great of course I was partial to the grilled one! We’re talking about having a pig roast next!

The new group of volunteers are about to arrive in country and I was chosen to be one of the volunteers who train the newbies. I’m really excited about being to help them out as well as see things from the flip side after being here for nearly a year. We get to go to the airport to pick them up and see all of their frightened faces so it will be fun. I can still remember how overwhelmed I was stepping foot on Nigerien soil for the first time. There are 48 trainees coming in so we will have our work cut out for us but it will be a great time!

I guess that’s about all to report for now. The dreads are doing well, locking up slowly but surely. I’ll let y’all know if anything else crazy or exciting comes up soon. Take care and keep in touch. Zatara

Do a rain dance!

What’s up guys, just got back from the bush and will soon be heading to our Mid Service Training. Pretty crazy. I can’t believe I’m in my 11th month in country! Time sure does fly- it seems like the days go by slowly but the weeks are gone just like that. A quick update on my life in Niger…

I was in the capital a couple of weeks ago for “Pangaea,” a music and dance festival put on by a few of the volunteers. This is the second year of the event and it turned out better than anyone had hoped it would. I was volunteering as a photographer which I was definitely excited about. The cultural exchange through music and dance was amazing- learning more about Nigerien music (traditional, rap, reggae, etc) and teaching locals about the origins of music from the states. My favorite part of the week were the daily “jam sessions” where a few guys would get together with a couple of guitars, djembe drums and some local instruments and just sing and jam out! There was a great turn out for the event, especially at the nightly concerts which were packed. We all had a good time.

Back in the village things have been great. It took my villagers a little while to get used to my dreadlocks but are fine with it now. They do offer to shave my head any time I would be willing but they know that’s not going to happen any time soon!

The first volunteer in my village, from ’99-’01, got in touch with me and came back to visit along with his wife and another volunteer who all served in Niger at the same time. It was a great reunion, all of the villagers were so excited to see Jason whom they hadn’t seen in seven years. It was also really cool being able to talk to him about the village and how things have changed in the time he’s been gone.

I have continued to work on the school maps, finishing up the map of Niger recently (now there is a world map, map of Africa and map of Niger). They all turned out great and the kids love them. I can’t wait to begin teaching geography lessons in the fall. I’ll also begin to teach weekly health lessons to the school children. We finally got a mason to come out to the school and in two days he along with many of the village men repaired the classroom’s roof, repaved one of the walls, and cemented the classroom floor. The classroom looks really good now and will look even better once I finish painting the walls white. Hopefully more kids will be encouraged to attend school now that it is so fresh and so clean!

Since the mason was in town working on the classroom, I had him come by and cement the interior walls of my hut. After having the sacks of cement sitting in my hut for three months waiting for the work to get done, I was so glad to finally get it taken care of. I plan on painting a mural on my wall, still deciding what to paint- maybe a beach scene.

Since school ended this week, I held a relay race for the primary school children and gave out prizes to the winners. We had a 100 yard dash, a potato sack race and a wheelbarrow race! It was so funny watching these kids do the latter two as they had never done those types of races before- they were hilarious! The kids all had such a great time- it was heartwarming to see the kids smiling, laughing and enjoying themselves. Among the prizes were t-shirts, notebooks, pencils and scratch-n-sniff stickers.

I’m currently working on getting funds to build a pulley system for each of the two wells in my villages. This will greatly reduce the risk of women falling into the well and will make pulling water much easier for them. I also plan on starting a major tree planting project in my village (around 300) with trees including mango, papaya and many local varieties of trees.

Guess that’s about it for now. Things are well and I feel very blessed here. God willing the rains will come soon, say a prayer because we certainly need the rain. Take care and please keep in touch. Much love, James.

Niger is hot as Sahel!

Hey guys, I just got out of the bush for a while so I wanted to let you all know what’s been going on in the village for the last couple of months. Well, I successfully made it through hot season- some of those days I wasn’t sure if I could handle the heat but I pulled through thanks to a little patience and some cold water from a clay water pot I bought. I keep it in the corner of my hut and it keeps the water surprisingly cool. The temperature some days was almost unbearable- 110°F inside my hut and hovering around 130°F outside in the sun in the afternoon. All I could do was sit in the shade and sweat as I daydreamed of a swimming pool.
Our first rains arrived in the village close to two weeks ago and we were all grateful for it, especially the villagers. The rains came about three weeks later this year than last so villagers were beginning to get anxious. The rainy season has definitely begun though- we have had three or four heavy rains, allowing my villagers to plant their millet. I went out with one of my villagers and his children to plant one morning which was pretty neat. A few men walked lines up and down the fields with their hoe, digging holes about every three feet or so. A group of us walked behind them barefooted, dropping a pinch of millet seed and fertilizer in each hold and covering up each hole by pushing the loose dirt over with our feet. After a couple hours I figured out a routine that went pretty quick- drop the seed, cover, walk two steps, repeat. The men will begin heading to the fields daily to work them- resting is over for the next six months.
I have a cat now, not sure if everyone knew about that. His name is Damien and he’s still a kitten. A friend came up with the name because this kitten was feral when we picked it up from another volunteer. It’s definitely calmed down now and is nice to have around the place. It has begun hunting the lizards that frequent my place and lately I haven’t seen any rat poop around so that’s another plus. The only downside is that the cat is active at night and is definitely wound up by the time I set my bed up and am ready for sleep. Whether Damien is running laps around my bed, sleeping not next to me but on my head, or wrestling with bush cats in the middle of the night, he definitely keeps me busy.
My concession just got remodeled which I’m definitely relieved about. My hut’s thatched roof was in dire need of repair before the rains arrived but that didn’t get done until just the other day. It was quite a night inside my leaky hut when the first rains came through- I had quite a bit of water rushing into my place but luckily nothing was damaged. I arranged a “bogu”, or community work where the men came over and all worked on my roof together. They tore down my old one, beat all of the dust off of the frame and wrapped it with new hay and brush to make it water proof. With the help of a couple villagers I also tore down my old shade hanger and put up a bigger, stronger and better one in the corner of my yard so that the main area of my yard can now be used for a rainy season garden. I just bought two chairs and a table to go under my shade hanger so I am really living the good life now!
I’ve been working on my school project for the last month or so and it is coming along very well. I finally received funding for a classroom renovation project for the primary school in my village along with a world map project. So far I have repainted all of the blackboards, repainted the teachers’ desk and chairs, and begun repainting the classroom walls. With the help of a couple other volunteers who came and stayed at my place for a few days, we painted a huge world map on one of the school walls. It took a good while but looks great! I just finished a large map of Africa on another wall that also turned out really well. Now, I just have to paint the map of Niger and then I will begin teaching world geography lessons, in the local language, to the students. I will then finish painting the walls and hopefully have enough paint leftover for the students’ desks. We will also re-cement the floor of the classroom and repair the holes in the roof. I also bought all new school supplies for the classroom and students which they were all very excited about. The headmaster of the school and I plan on going home to home and speak to the parents about the importance of their children, especially girls, attending school in hopes of increasing enrollment for the next school year.
I have also been playing soccer with the school kids every afternoon and they get a kick out of it! I just recently finished a soccer net for one of the goals at the school yard field. I learned how to make rope out of weaving old plastic bags together. I made several ropes and then weaved them together into a “net” for the goal. I’ll continue to make ropes until I have enough rope for the second net. Now we just need grass for the field…don’t think that will be happening though!
Well I guess that’s about all for now. Hope this brings you guys up to date on my life here in Niger. Take care and keep in touch. Much love, James

Adventures in Niger

Just wanted to let you all know about my latest adventures in Niger. A couple of weeks ago I went to visit a villager in the bush. We took an hour bush walk to this village near the river which is known for its bird sanctuary. The birds migrate during the dry season looking for water in the seasonal lakes beside the Niger River. We were able to take a pirogue (dug out canoe) ride at sunset on one of the lakes and saw thousands of birds on the water. After getting near them, the entire flock took off in what seemed like a cloud, it was incredible!

Last week I went to see another volunteer at her village which is on the bank of the Niger River. In the evening we took a pirogue ride on the river and went on foot into the national park with one of the guides. Elephants! We turned a corner and saw five elephants grazing on the other side of a canal. After watching them for a bit, we headed further into the bush on a path beside one of the canals searching for another heard of elephants. After about a twenty minute walk, we spotted some elephant dung, kept walking and found a herd of eighteen elephants on the opposite bank of the canal! They were amazing to watch. One of the best things about it was the fact that we were able to see them grazing in their natural environment. We were only about twenty feet away from the herd and they were not at all worried by our presence. We sat on the edge of the river and watched them for some time, grazing at the water's edge and reaching up with their trunks to reach the foliage in the trees. At sunset we left the elephants and rode around a bit more on the river before heading back to the village. It was an unforgettable day in Niger. Hopefully next time I will be able to spend longer in the bush and see a variety of animals- there are supposed to be baboons and a wide variety of birds. A few people have also come across lion dung so we'll see how it goes. All is well in Niger and hot season is here. Much love, Jah Bless