but on this magical day, I thought I might give you all an update about the goings on in africa and in my life. to start off with, as you may have guessed, it rained today! while the rains have been passing through the inland parts of senegal for a few weeks already, weather here in dakar (on a peninsula that juts out into the ocean, making it the westernmost point of continental africa) tends to be a bit different. while we’re saved from the scorching 120 degree heat, it’s a bit jarring to have seasons that lag 6 months behind cities only an hour away.

the important thing is that it rained! this was the first rain I’ve seen since leaving the states, minus that rainy-sandy thing I slept through in october and a brief drizzle while I was in paris. while this was a wonderful treat and a break to the sand, being a giant concrete and sand city, dakar tends to flood whenever it rains- we’re talking like monsoon flooding, streets filled with gross, smelly drainage water. so hopefully, the rest of the rains will hold off until july, when I go on vacation.

which reminds me, I’m going on vacation! for a while, I was thinking

along the lines of, “ oh, I just spent a forced, but nevertheless pleasant, three week jaunt in morocco, spain and france, I think that fulfills my vacation quota for the foreseeable future.” a few weeks ago, however, I found out that my crazy roommate dan from college was spending the summer doing research for his MPH in naples, italy. well, how often do you have a close friend living in italy while you’re slogging away through the sands of africa? not often. so I’m off to visit him in napoli and then I’ll be meeting mother dearest in lyon, france for what I can only guess will be repeated viewings of the new harry potter movie. the travelling should be fun, and the food absolutely delicious (I’m done with rice and fish here).

in other news, those of you who studiously read the new york times website will have noticed that senegal finally made a headline, the first time since last september. it wasn’t exactly great news. basically, the president of senegal is coming up for re-election, and like so many african politicians, was trying to push through some friendly constitutional changes beforehand (namely, making it easier to get elected and installing a vice-presidency, likely to be his son and heir).

well, the dakarois were a bit unsettled by that, so they took to the streets in some nonviolent protests that nevertheless got violent anyway. living on the extreme far side of the city, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary besides everyone listening to the radio and an usually large number of military helicopters going between the airport and the city center. in short, the president abandoned his legislation and things have quieted down considerably.

in case you’re interested, I’ll give you a recap of some of the more exciting things that I’ve gotten up to in the last few months. around the end of april, I took a week off of work to go out and see some of the rest of senegal, and stop by some of my pc friends’ posts. let us just say that travelling to a city 10 hours away by bush taxi over less-than perfect roads has its complications. but nonetheless, it was a fun trip and I made it back in one piece, and several of the photos in this post were from that trip.

in may, my 90 day travel visa was about to expire, so I had to take another trip and deliver some paperwork to tostan’s office in the gambia. for those of you unfamiliar with the geography of the area, the gambia is a small country centered around the gambia river and is surrounded almost entirely by senegal. but, the gambia was an english colony whereas senegal was a french colony, and so the countries remain separate to this day. anyway, I took an 8 hour trip for a quick 3-day jaunt to capital of banjul, on the coast (just long enough to renew my senegal visa).

the gambia was crazy! not crazy so much as surreal. as you might imagine, the culture and lifestyle of those in the gambia are essentially the same as in senegal. just the same, the local languages of the country are the same or similar to those in senegal, so everyone’s first language is completely unintelligible to the typical visitor. but whereas moderately educated people speak french in senegal, their counterparts in the gambia speak english! signs and posters are in english! suddenly I could walk through the market and bargain with someone without having to think about a first-person plural conjugation of an auxiliary verb with its associated past-participle. and apparently I’m not half bad at bargaining with people when I’m not stumbling over words and coming up with gems such as “a can which you hit and it makes a noise” when looking for a drum. suddenly I could understand overheard phone calls on a bus or conversations in passing. it was almost as if someone had taken the remote control and turned off the “french” setting for the entire country.

in the beginning of june, I went up to st. louis for a weekend, a coastal city in the north of senegal that plays host to an international jazz festival every year. with less jazz than you might expect, it’s fundamentally like WAIST, a reason for west african expats and volunteers to get together in one place and have a blast. after having spent time in a number of cities in senegal, I can never get over the contrast of exactly how expensive dakar really is. one of my friends told me that the cost of traveling from her remote village all the way to her regional capital, a few hours distant, is significantly less than the cost of taking a 10-minute taxi ride from one part of dakar to another. c’est la vie, je suppose.

closer to home, I’m finding dakar is suiting me well. it definitely took me some time to get settled and regain some sanity after the whole terrorist- evacuation- evaluation- “you’re fired-” vacation- relocation thing, but after getting over the hump, I’ve started feeling at home in dakar. I know the city, I have favorite restaurants and places to go, and I can navigate the chaos of african public transit better than I could ever figure out the mayhem of the new york city subway system. I’ve made friends and had friends leave, and recently a brand new batch of volunteers just started positions with tostan in dakar. it’s hard to believe that after what seems like such a short time, I’m suddenly one of the elder, experienced volunteers. oh how the tables have turned. how far I am from the expectations of last year.

there’s only one way to go from here my friends. onwards and upwards!

this first video was taken almost as soon as we landed in niger.  we got off the plane, waded (waited) through customs, got our bags onto the pc buses, and were ready to go. dan, shelby, and michael share some words of wisdom.

this next video was taken during one of our oxcart rides over language immersion. for all you oregon trail fans out there, yes, I made sure to capture us fording a river.

woops, my camera turned on accidentally when I was fidgeting with it in my hut. despite being unable to tell anything about what is happening, you get a few choice glances around my hut. this was taken sometime between language immersion and installation.

again, an accidental video capture. this was during the photo ops at swear-in at the ambassador’s house.

one of my many stops after evacuation was paris. here’s the fun-filled elevator ride up to the top of the eiffel tower.

again, the eiffel tower.  this time doing that lite-brite thing that is apparently so famous.

and now for a change of scenery. I took this in Dakar over the weekend just to give you an idea of what the city is like. I started out on one of the local “buses” and then took a walk around part of my neighborhood. it gets a bit bumpy towards the end, so consider taking some dramamine before watching.

which brings us to the end of your multimedia experience of various places and sites throughout the world. thanks for watching and I hope you join us again next time.

wait, wait, wait. what’s this all about? let’s rewind a bit. two weeks ago, I was sitting on a plane several miles above the african continent, en route from paris to dakar with a stopover in casablanca.  fatefully, my layover in casa happened to be in the exact same terminal at almost the exact same gate we’d flown out of after the transition conference.  after a month of searching high and low for short-term jobs back in africa, long enough to keep me busy until my as-yet unforeseen re-enrollment, I had only turned up two promising leads. one was for an internship working on malaria and child survival, and would be based out of an office in washington. scratch that one off the list. the other was a much more promising offer.

while sitting in the train station in madrid waiting with mason waiting for my train to paris, I got an email from molly melching, a name I had come across in my days of google and wikipedia searching.  I knew molly was an rpcv who had set up her own ngo in senegal a while back.  her organization, tostan, had grown over the years out of its base in dakar and was running some fairly well-regarded programs throughout west africa.  anyway, the email got my heart pumping right away- she thought they had a position that could use my skills right away, might be paid, and she just generally wanted to skype with me to see what we might be able to work out.  after weeks of near-silence from most organizations I had emailed, this was fantastic.

a week of parisian site-seeing later, and I still wasn’t sure of a position.  but I did know one thing… my readjustment allowance was running out, and paris isn’t exactly the cheapest city to

hang around in indefinitely.  I had to make a decision, stay in paris wasting my money, or go to dakar and risk finding a job or finding nothing.  well, I’d had enough of waiting for something to happen, so I was going to go and make something I happen. as my roommate dan (not niger dan; other dan) always says: go big or go home. I wasn’t going home. I booked a flight to dakar and a hotel room for 6 nights. after that, I would have to play it by ear.

after a fairly painful line at airport immigration at 1am, a short-lived moment of almost getting deported, and a mildly terrifying taxi ride through deserted, unlit streets by myself, I was in dakar.  I was back in africa. I had done it. I was ecstatic.  I had spent the last month saying all I wanted to do was get back to africa and help people. I couldn’t help but be overwhelmingly positive, despite the fact that I still didn’t have a job.  I felt like I was actually going to find something, make a difference here, somehow. on the plane, I helped my seatmate fill out his immigration form because he couldn’t read or write for himself. I just felt generally good about the decision I had made.

the next day, I went to the peace corps senegal bureau just to stop in, introduce myself, and see if they had any suggestions or advice for me.  I also got to meet some pcvs after a few long weeks in isolation, and use their fantastic wireless internet.  I headed over to the tostan office to get the lay of the land and see what my chances were.  that’s when I saw it, out of the window of the taxi. the ocean.  the beach. boats and fishermen and waves and cliffs and lighthouses. I was surprised and shocked. I didn’t know what to make of it. there was nothing anything like it in niger. it was all so tropical, so serene, so beautiful.  I remember thinking to myself, now that’s a sight you don’t see every day.

the meeting at tostan made my day. any hesitation they had had about hiring me in paris seemed to be gone the moment I stepped off the plane.  I guess they felt that if I had committed to flying to africa on a whim, I would be committed to their program. I had one more meeting set later in the week to get the final approval from molly, and I would have a job. finally!!!

now, this may sound like everything had gone perfectly according to plan. that’s not entirely accurate.  before moving to dakar, my plan went something like this: get a position for a month or so, then try and convince peace corps to enroll me in a healthcare training stage they had coming to senegal in the middle of march.  my friends were in senegal, now I was in senegal, and my potential volunteer job was in senegal. let me stay in senegal. the peace corps senegal country director seemed pretty open about the possibility but, as fate would have it, my peace corps placement officer called while I was standing in the lobby of the dakar bureau.  no, there is absolutely no way under any circumstances that we can put you in a program any earlier than may 23^rd. enrolling in senegal’s program was absolutely, 100% out of the question as far as peace corps headquarters in washington was concerned.  that left me with a few choices. I could volunteer with tostan until may or whenever my new assignment with peace corps would leave, but chances are it would be a program without any other niger pcvs. jam. also, tostan only offers stipends to volunteers who commit to staying for a full year, so my few months with tostan would be unpaid. double jam.

my other option was to sign up with tostan for a year, get paid, and stay in a reasonably close proximity to other niger pcvs.  I could choose between starting over brand new with peace corps, or starting over brand new with tostan.  at least with tostan, I’d have control over where I worked (instead of being randomly and secretly given an assignment by an email address in washington) and who I worked with. plus, tostan hadn’t put me through a “the-worst-thing-ever” conference. on the list of pros and cons, tostan was in the lead.

add into the mix of job choices and decisions a terrifically heartwarming reunion with my niger-turned-senegal pcv colleagues.  the weekend following my arrival was marked off as the pc senegal all-volunteer conference, for pcvs to meet-and-greet with ngos and learn what kinds of projects other volunteers are doing. also scheduled for the weekend was the west african invitational softball tournament (w.a.i.s.t.), for which a few hundred volunteers from senegal and around west africa were descending on dakar.  the niger evacuees had been given a reprieve from their weeks of language classes (yes, they have to go through training again) to attend.  a weekend full of fun in the sun, softball, beach volleyball, and good company cemented my desire to stay in senegal.  I might also add that the niger evacuee/cape verde combined softball team bowed out undefeated and leading the amateur division by the time monday rolled around.

as much fun as I had that weekend, it also forced me to come to terms with a bit of an identity crisis that I was hoping to put off for a few more weeks. being surrounded by hundreds of peace corps volunteers, my friends, still peace corps volunteers, and new friends, and strangers, all in the midst of their own personal brilliant peace corps experiences put my situation in a very stark contrast. I was no longer a pcv; I was an rpcv (returned pcv). If I took the year-long position with tostan, I would not be a pcv ever again. I wasn’t going to spend a year in senegal and then decide to rejoin peace corps. my stint with peace corps lasted three months, of 27 I had been expecting.  21 days elapsed between swear-in and cos.  I served in my village for 8 days.  my peace corps life, something I had been looking forward to for over a year, had suddenly dissolved before my eyes.  and now, here I was, back in africa, doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. what I had spent a month in europe trying to do. and I’m fine with that. but it doesn’t change the fact that I’ surrounded  by pcvs. my closest friends (both figuratively and geographically) are all pcvs. in my core, I still feel like a pcv.  peace corps isn’t a job, it’s a whole lifestyle.  I’m used to struggling to learn national languages, used to interacting more with villagers than americans, used to filtering my water, sleeping outside, brainstorming simple village projects, dealing with being isolated and culture shocked, going without running water or electricity or wireless internet. these are all thing that I’ve made part of who I am in africa, an identity that I’ve come to acknowledge and own for myself.  and now, that’s all for naught.  now I live in a major metropolitan capital, work in an office on my computer all day long, live in a house with refrigerators and wifi and laundry service.  for my friends, these are all still relevant to their lifestyle, if maybe in different degrees (sleeping outside, access to electricity, etc.).  but for me, as much as I might still identify as being a pcv, I have to acknowledge that, in fact, I’m no longer a peace corps volunteer. and that’s something I’m going to have to deal with. probably the hardest thing for me during w.a.i.s.t. was how to explain to people exactly who I was, what category I fell into. yes, I was a volunteer in niger. no, I’m not a pcv in senegal. but yes, I do work in senegal. but no, not with peace corps. yes, with an ngo; but no, not as a pcv. but yes, I’m an rpcv. in the end, I can’t help but feel like I traded 23 months of peace corps service for a consonant.  and it will be awhile before I can fully come to terms with that.

now, don’t take this to mean that I’m not happy with my new job.  I absolutely love my new position and there’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll be more productive, more effective, and have a much greater impact on people’s lives than if I was living in a cramped hut and working in a three-room health clinic.  but like any major life change, it’s going to take some time to get used to.

well, to start off with, I’ve added a new page to my blog, entitled “tostan.” you’ll find it at the top of the page, next to “about me,” “niger,” and other informational pages.  there, you can read up and get an idea of what kind of organization tostan is, its mission, and its programs.  (I’ve also added a page giving some background on senegal, so you can get an idea of what the country is like and how it’s different from niger.) basically, tostan works to empower communities to lead their own development initiatives through non-formal education.  instead of building a community garden, tostan teaches a community the skills it needs to manage funding and build the garden for itself.

tostan’s model begins with its community empowerment program, a 30-month series of classes and seminars broken down into four modules: the kobi 1, kobi 2, aawde 1, and aawde 2.  the kobi 1 module teaches the concepts of problem solving, human rights, and democracy.  the kobi 2 then applies problem solving and human rights to the issues of health, hygiene, and nutrition.  these two modules set the framework for a successful community project, and a starting point for learning the technical skills taught in the aawde programs. the aawde 1 begins the process of teaching literacy and basic mathematics for finances.  the aawde 2 moves forward with more specific technical project skills, income-generating projects, and microfinancing- giving villages a small capital investment and turning it into a major development initiative.

my job here at tostan is composed of a short-term and a long-term project.  the first is revising the kobi 2 module.  basically, the specific recommendations and guidelines from government ministries and the who for health, nutrition, and disease prevention change over time, and the kobi 2 is currently a few years out-of-date.  my immediate job is to revise the kobi 2 and bring it up-to-date, and possibly to add new or relevant information. pretty straightforward.

the long-term term project is way more in-depth and a lot more exciting.  let me begin by painting a picture for you. senegal has pretty high school enrollment (69% for primary schools according to wikipedia), partly due to government policies guaranteeing free primary school education to all students. but imagine that of these primary school students, less than half can read 9 words-per-minute, and more than a quarter are unable to read even 1 word-per-minute.  despite decades of school ministry reform, reading and comprehension levels have progressed little.  instead of attempting yet another system-based education reform, what if we tried addressing learning styles, informal education, and the ways in which children learn long before they ever step into a classroom.  by informing parents and community members how children learn from an early age, and how early learning stimuli radically improve learning later in childhood, we might be able to improve school education by changing the social norms about how children learn. that’s the goal of tostan’s brand new initiative for early childhood development, and I’m the dedicated volunteer assigned to see the project through.

I had the great fortune to get involved with this project right as it was starting up. over the coming months, we’ll be writing the curriculum for the program and training everyone involved in the process. by next year we’ll be starting the pilot program in 30 villages, getting feedback and evaluating the project’s effectiveness, and by next summer we’ll be analyzing how well the project worked.  by september, the project will be scaled up to 300 villages, and (hopefully) eventually integrated as a fifth module into tostan’s core program.

like I said, I’m really excited about this program and its potential effectiveness and impact.  I’m not just working day-in, day-out in a rural village health clinic.  this project is going to be in at least 30 different villages throughout senegal, and up to 300 or more.  tostan is a great development organization with a strong international reputation for social change. this is a great professional opportunity for me.  the trade-off is that it’s not anything like the cultural experiences I’d have with peace corps.  I’m not living in a rural village with a host family, being the only english-speaker around, forced to integrate into my community if I want to function (or survive).  now, I’m working in an office with americans, europeans, senegalese, and other africans, speaking english and French, and working primarily on my computer.  I live in tostan’s volunteer house in dakar with 4 other people, all of whom speak english and none of whom are senegalese.  in niger, I picked up enough zarma to survive on my own in only two months of training.  here, I doubt I’ll learn anywhere near that much wolof in a year.

but that’s not to say that this is an entirely culturally lacking experience. it’s just a different type of cultural experience.  my french is certainly going to have to improve very quickly, as the majority of the work done in the office is conducted in french.  last week, I spent three days in training seminars for my project, all of which were conducted entirely in french.  part of my job revising the health module includes editing a 297-page document in french.  I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me.  add into the mix learning wolof, the major local language of the dakar region.  sitting with the other tostan volunteers in my first wolof class yesterday, I was having flashbacks to sitting under rachida’s shade hangar going over the present progressive tense for zarma.  I’m worried that with so many languages bouncing around my head, I’m not going to be able to remember much of anything.

and there you have it.  I’m alive and well, gainfully employed and happily occupied.  it’ll take me some time to get used to life in dakar, but I’m looking forward to it.  most of all, I’m just as glad to be back in africa. it certainly took some trying, but I managed to pull it off.  I think dan (niger dan, not roommate dan) put it best when he told me, “this sounds super awesome man. i’m so excited for you.”  I wholeheartedly agree.

[note: I added pictures to the “month of mayhem” series if you want to go back and check them out]

this is a post I’ve been avoiding writing for a while. I tried to give you all an idea of the course of events that has taken place in niger in my last post, but haven’t really discussed the M. Night Shamalan-worthy twists that my life has taken as a result.  I haven’t really been avoiding it completely, I did try starting it several times, but there’s a lot to say and I have no idea where to start.  so, rather than try and explain everything about one of the most turbulent months of my life in one go, I’ve decided to break it down into a few posts that may be a bit more coherent.  are we sitting comfortably? then let’s begin.

the weekend prior to installations, we had free time devoted to 1) celebrating new year’s dosso-style, and 2) buying all the junk that we were going to need for two years of living in the bush.  being one of the regional capitals of the country, dosso has a pretty substantial marketplace where you can find everything you need to survive in niger.  let’s take a moment and reflect on the wording of that sentence: “everything,” “need to survive,” and “niger.”  what would be considered a necessity to survive in the us is a very different metric from what’s needed to survive in niger.  for example, you cannot buy “aa” or “aaa” batteries, but you can buy boxes and boxes of matches.  you cannot buy meat that has not been sitting in the sun all day fresh from the slaughter, but you can buy cans of corned beef.  I’m not quite sure if those work as good analogies.  in any event, dosso is basically hit-or-miss when it comes to buying food and goods, so you have to make do with what you can find there.

and here’s what I found in dosso to help me survive the next two years.  one metal trunk, two bathing stools, a bathing bucket, a wash basin, a trashcan to use as a water reservoir, a set of three pots of various sizes, a few plates/bowls/cups/silverware/serving utensils (actually, one of each; I’m only cooking for one person), an authentic nigerien hand broom, clothesline, soap, and a bunch of other things that I’m realizing it’s pointless to go into detail about now.  kate was kind enough to also arrange for the purchase of my cot, my mattress, propane stove, and propane tank rental.  the one item I went overboard and splurged on was a good teflon skillet I bought in niamey. if I’m going to be cooking on it for 2 years, I better invest.

then came the tearful goodbyes.  monday saw the first of our protocol sessions (meet-and-greets with important people mostly for the sake of formality) and the newly-formed team dosso was split.  volunteers destined for the far east of the region headed out right away, while the rest of us bid them farewell.  it would be a month before we would see each other again, but we’d only be a phone call or a text message away- thanks to the nigerien version of verizon’s family-plan, which the peace corps bureau had just arranged for us to be enrolled in. now, calls and texts to other volunteers would come at no cost to us, a huge improvement over having to pay ungodly service charges and only calling each other when absolutely necessary.  little did we know this plan would come to play a crucial role in the events of the next week.

after watching the first land cruiser drive out of the dosso hostel, it was time to install michele.  michele had the fortune of being posted in a village pretty near to dosso proper, which also meant she had the misfortune of being the first person to be dropped off.  after meeting a few local gendarme sergeants, secretaries, and similar minor officials, we made for her village.  we unloaded her things, got everything set up nice and cozy in her spacious 2-room mud hut, and it was time for her to go meet her new village chief.  this was all a bit of a formality, as she had spent language immersion in her village and knew basically everything already.  (coincidentally, she spent more time in her village over the course of language immersion as a trainee than actually in her post as a volunteer.)  but in addition to meeting the chief (again), the meeting was also to set expectations and boundaries: what did the village expect of her, what did she expect of her village, how much privacy did she need, what did the community need to know about her and the work she was doing, and generally everything you need to know about someone who will be living in your midst for years to come.  in my humble opinion, the first official “village meeting” is a pivotal moment in a volunteer’s career.

phoebe, jeff, and I left michele to have her meeting (mediated by peace corps staff) independently, without the pressure of a bunch of other white people hanging around.  we wandered around the village, scoping out an enormous women’s garden that had been built by an non-governmental organization (ngo) a few years prior.  andrew was asleep in the land cruiser because kate had convinced him that taking 2 benadryl in the middle of the day would be a good idea.  then it came time to bid michele farewell.  we hugged, said “kala tonton” (until later), and drove off into the dusk of the evening.  after leaving dan in niamey over the weekend, she would be the second person from my language class to start her own adventure.

and then there were five of us left in the dosso hostel.  andrew, phoebe, and I were to be posted in villages along the same 3-hour stretch of dirt road, and thus qualified as being in the same cluster.  samantha and jacob would be at the far southern tip of dosso, conveniently accessed by a 6-hour drive along the same road; thus, we’d be sharing the drive for installations on wednesday.  5 people, 5 houses, in one car.  it was a bit tight.

my cluster would be having a shuttle coming to us the following friday, the 14^th, so we needn’t pack everything, we were told.  only the bare essentials.  phoebe did an amazing job of fitting everything she owned into a single metal trunk.  incredible. I managed to bring a smaller trunk and my suitcase, with the pick of the litter of clothes, snacks, supplies, and zarma study manuals.  I’d have to leave my stools, my cot, wash basin, and about half of everything I owned behind.  no big deal, I thought, I just need to make it will last the 10 days before the shuttle comes, wednesday to friday.  backpacking through new mexico, I’d had to survive much longer with far fewer supplies, so this wasn’t a huge problem.  no biggie.

wednesday morning’s sun rose. I had been up for a while, the call to prayer coming a bit before sunrise in the winter months.  it could have been the call to prayer that woke me, or the general combined excitement and anxiety and energy that had been building over the last few months.  the day that I had been looking forward to, and equally dreading for so long had come.  I was to be set on my own, and left to fend for myself.  I’d often thought about the moment the land cruiser finally drove away, what would my reaction be? overcome by sheer terror at the thought of being completely isolated for the next month? overwhelmed by the work I’d have before me, with no direction or guidance on how to accomplish it? invigorated by finally being able to set my own schedule, cook my own food, and do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it?

it was a moment I had been looking forward to since I decided to join the peace corps a year and a half before. I could finally say I was doing work and changing lives, no matter how small the change actually was.  it was a moment I had been dreading since I had found friends and family in my training class, knowing that the next two years would be spent in isolation with only brief, explosive flashes of time spent with my friends. a match, extinguished almost as soon as it’s lit.  I’d spent the 9 weeks of training finding comfort and support in the few americans going through the same troubles and trials that I was; the few people I could actually talk to without going through thousands of miles of telephone cables and receiver towers and intercontinental satellite computer servers.  now it would be up to me to start again, and this time find friends and comfort with the people of my village.  the people I had joined the peace corps to help.  the people I had joined the peace corps to learn the ways of the world from.  the people that would be my friends and family, my job and my joy and my frustrations and anxiety for the next two years.  it was time to embark upon the meat of my adventure.

bright and early, the car was packed and ready to go.  we piled in, stopped off to do some more protocol in two towns along the way, and we were bouncing pleasantly along the dirt road on the way to my site.  only one bag happened to be flung violently from the roof of the land cruiser as we bombed our way south; thankfully, it was only a bag of clothes, no harm done. maybe a little worse for the wear.  and before I knew it we were in bassi. [note: bassi = baltimore; you’ve cracked the code.] my village was the furthest north on the road, and as such I was the first to be dropped off.  a half dozen young men showed up instantly and helped us haul my luggage the ten feet from the road to my hut, and it was time for my village meeting.

haoua, one of the peace corps program directors, spoke rapid-fire zarma for about ten minutes, of which I only actually understood a smattering.  I had written down a few notes to myself to go over with the villagers during the meeting. things like, please don’t be offended if I don’t drink your millet porridge because it contains bacteria which will cause an unpleasant pathogenesis in my gastrointestinal tract.  which I roughly translated into zarma as, sometimes I can’t eat food, because my stomach doesn’t have strength.  in any event, haoua snatched up my notebook the instant I took it out, glanced over it, and fired off a few more volleys of zarma into the crowd.  she had breezed through thoughts that I had taken months to painstakingly piece together in anticipation of my first words to my villagers.  I was taken a bit by surprise, and left a bit off-balance.  after all was said and done, wiza (to my surprise), haoua looks at me and asks if there’s anything I wanted to add.  keep in mind this was after not having understood the last 15 minutes of conversation in zarma.  I didn’t know what to say.  I rattled off something about not knowing much zarma, and that everyone would have to be patient with me and that I would learn slowly. I was here to learn from them just they would learn about me.  I reiterated that they’d have to have patience, and once again, that my zarma was really not very good.  I apologized in advance and thanked everyone.  or at least that’s what I remember, but is probably a very dressed up version of the choppy sentences I managed to string together.  what I do remember was that haoua looked at me when I was done, a bit surprised, and told me that it was pretty good, that I had made a pretty nice speech.  it’s always nice to receive a bit of positive encouragement.

I hugged phoebe, I hugged andrew, I hugged jacob and samantha, and then they were in the car and off towards the horizon.  I was finally on my own.  I decided that I was really going to enjoy bassi.

so I had my first project of my new life in bassi.  I found my host father, the maigarie (chief) of the village and told him: my buka is dirty; there are lots of creepy-crawlies.  I believe that’s the rough translation.  anyway, he quickly fashioned for me what I have come to refer to as my gigantic spider clubbing stick: essentially, it was a piece of millet stalk with an old t-shirt shred tied around one end. perfect.  I would spend the rest of the afternoon wiping the ceiling and walls down and squashing as many bugs as I could.  except for one.  almost as soon as I had started, a rather gigantic and choleric-looking spider jumped off the wall and glared at me, looking fairly unimpressed by the situation.  this spider was large enough that I doubted if my gigantic-spider-clubbing-stick would actually be able to club this gigantic spider to death.  so, I decided to let him live.  I named him bruce, after a volunteer who told me to man up and just kill the spiders with a broom already. he would be my roommate, and always seemed to be in a bad mood when I ran into him.  (also, I have found that more terrifying than having a gigantic spider roommate is realizing that you don’t know where your gigantic spider roommate is. he could be right behind you at this very moment.)

so, my first day in village was spent cleaning, organizing, and setting up my new home.  my villagers were fantastically polite and left me alone in the peace and privacy of my concession, something very few volunteers have the luxury of.  late in the day, I went for a windi-windi down the main road in town, greeting everyone I met and just being as outgoing and friendly as I could be.  I just wanted to get people used to seeing me around town, and myself used to getting out of my cozy concession.

the next day jess, my nearest peace corps neighbor in a town 10km away came by to visit and officially welcome me to the cluster.  she also brought delicious snacks and food to cook lunch.  this is when we realized there was a bit of a problem with the stove.  there was a fairly large hole in the hose that ran from the propane tank to the back of the stove. this was not good, considering that my roof and, well, the entire rest of my village was built with dry, flammable materials.  with a bit of tape from the medical kit, we patched up the hole and had a most delicious meal.  I walked her out to the road while we waited for a bush taxi to come by which could take her back to her village.  this of course was seen by everyone in the village, who naturally assumed that I was courting her.  after this, every morning that I went to greet my villagers would be met with questions about where my friend was, and if she was coming back.  I generally responded by telling people that she was a citizen of the next village over, and that she would be staying there and not coming back.  that seemed to get the message across.

well, later that evening I decided to cook some pasta for dinner.  a nice meal with tomato sauce, and then I could use the extra macaroni to make tuna salad the next day for lunch.  well, about three-quarters of the way through cooking my pasta, I ran into a bit of a jam.  with a woosh and a flicker, the entire surface of my stove caught fire (briefly) before spreading to the leaking hole in the back of the hose.  the propane had ignited.  there followed a stream of expletives as I rushed to turn the gas valve off on the tank.  but by this time the medical tape, unfortunately not flame-retardant, had also caught fire and remained lit even with the gas turned off.  I grabbed my water bottle, topped it off with filtered water for whatever reason, and dumped all of it on the stove and table, extinguishing the flames.

crisis averted.  but it did leave me with a problem.  I would have to wait on a new hose to use my stove, and the new hose wouldn’t be coming until the shuttle showed up a week later.  I would be living off bread, tuna, peanut butter, beef jerky, and whatever dried, cooked, or cookless snacks I had brought with me for the next week.  I also would become a big fan of a nigerien snack called kuli-kuli, basically baked peanut extract after you mash up peanut butter and remove the oil part of it.  in my mind, it was very high in protein.  one of my friends would later tell me that it was actually very high in dirt and bacteria.  now you may be asking yourself, phil, why couldn’t you just eat with your host family? well, I did on occasion.  for the first several days, my family would politely and courteously bring me meals of pounded millet with an okra sauce, a typical nigerien dish. as far as I know, I had never really eaten okra in the us, so I didn’t know what to expect.  but this is a dish which volunteers have not-so-affectionately come to refer to as “snot sauce.”  it’s green, it’s slimy, and generally difficult to swallow.  I think my family also included a fair bit more dirt than the recipe called for.  anyway, I would eat as much as I possibly could to make sure I didn’t offend anybody; I mean, I didn’t love the snot sauce, but I would much rather drink a litre of it than come off as unappreciative my first week in village.  but after three days of okra, I told my family, don’t worry, I’ll cook for myself now.  besides, I could always find a decent meal at my counterpart’s house across the road.

so I was settling into village life fairly well.  it was always a challenge for me to make myself leave my concession and go out and meet and talk to people, but it was a task that I’d set myself.  I’d review some zarma vocab and then say, phil, go out and talk to people for an hour and use at least three of those words.  I’d come back 15 minutes later having used two words incorrectly. but it was a learning experience, and I was prepared to give it time.

one day, I met a young man, a bit younger than me, on the road.  we spoke for a little while, and I took a liking to him.  after a while, he said his goodbyes and that he had to go to the fields.  okay, I thought, recognizing that it was cold season but not really questioning why he would have to go to the fields while nothing was growing and there was no work to do. most men spent their days drinking tea and talking.  anyway, I continued on my windi-windi of the village, and eventually I ran into this same kid on the outskirts of town.  with the help of his friend (brother?) they were loading a huge sack of chaff and manure onto an old bicycle. they were struggling with balancing the bike, so I leant a hand and helped them maneuver the sack.  after, I made to leave, but they called me back and told me to come with them.  alright, I thought, I’m not doing anything else right now.  we pushed the bike through the sand, through the fields for about half an hour, until we came to a rather unremarkable plot of land a good distance from anything else.  the guys started digging holes in a line, roughly with the spacing I’d expect a millet field to have.  I was perplexed.  after several attempts of explanation, I think they were preparing the field.  by adding chaff and manure to the holes in the dry season, they were improving the soil and would grow bigger, better millet when the rains finally came.  at least that’s what I think they were saying.  in the end, that was one of my favorite days in bassi.  I didn’t know what I was doing, but they wanted me there and I enjoyed helping in whatever way I could.  it was a great feeling when they told me to come along merely for the sake of coming with them.  that day I learned the word for “to accompany.”

one morning, I got a call from michele, a call which I discussed in an earlier blog post.  despite the uncertain connotations of the call and the implications of the events, life wasn’t really dramatically altered.  I shrugged my shoulders, wondered what peace corps would say, texted a few other volunteers, but mostly I was excited to go to work.  it was my first day to actually work in the clinic, as my major (nurse/doctor/general healthcare worker) had been out of town for several days.  I spent the morning sitting in the corner and listening to amadou interview patients in zarma or fulfulde (the language of the fulani people, which I don’t understand a word of) and trying desperately to catch bits and pieces of symptoms, patient histories, diagnosis, and treatment.  when all the patients had been seen and treated, I was done for the day.  it was still before lunchtime, and it would be the only day I worked in the clinic.

I mentioned earlier that having free phone usage between volunteers was to play an important part in the way things developed after the events in niamey friday night.  simply put, no one knew exactly what had happened, but there were a lot of ideas floating around, and the text messages were pouring in.  first it was that two frenchmen were kidnapped in niamey. then, maybe it wasn’t aqim, because the car was from benin. maybe it was targeted at these particular frenchmen.  peace corps issued a notice late in the day restricting travel in the city, but it didn’t really have an impact for the majority of us out in the bush.  we were already on standfast for the weekend due the approaching elections the following week, so there was no scaling up of security.  I thought peace corps’ reaction was a bit on the light side, and I was waiting for them to issue more information.  after a few days, nothing new would come out, and I started feeling like, alright, I guess this wasn’t as big a deal as it would seem.  I was sitting having tea with my major and the school director when I heard the news over the french radio broadcast that evening: two frenchmen were kidnapped and killed from an establishment in the city.  my major sat up at the news, clicked his tongue, and shook his head. what was the world coming to these days.  then we went on drinking our tea in peace for the rest of the evening.

there would be plenty of speculation over the next few days, but very little actual news.  we were told to check-in with our program directors on mondays and fridays now, instead of just mondays.  more restricted hours in niamey. but nothing new; business as usual. I was getting more comfortable walking around town and starting short, awkwardly abrupt conversations with people, and generally having fun and getting laughed at by the village kids.  I was getting used to carrying buckets of water on my head from the water pump, and people were still very curious as to why I- a man- would be carrying water. get a girl to do it for you, they said.  I would pause, collect my thoughts and vocabulary, and explain that in america, men can carry water too.  men and women both carry water.  they’d smile and nod, as if they totally understood why before they even asked.  it was just a way to start a conversation. I was grateful.

by wednesday, I was really looking forward to the weekend.  I would be getting the rest of my stuff on friday, and hopefully I was going to try and get to phoebe’s village (or near enough) to buy things at market. I was getting the replacement hose for my stove, so I could finally start cooking.  I was running desperately low on snackfood, which I had stockpiled for 2 months during training. gone in a week. I also discovered that I love “gari”- ground casaba mixed with water, oil, sardines, and spices. conveniently, it didn’t need to be cooked, and had  become my go-to lunch food.  well, there I was wednesday morning, I had just finished reading Gulliver’s Travels and was mixing myself some powdered milk when my phone rang.  it was walter, peace corps’ medical officer.

hi walter, how are you.  how nice, I thought. he was calling to check in on me after my first week, make sure I was happy and healthy. very quickly I became aware that this was not the reason for the phone call. he told me he had a notice to read to me from peace corps headquarters in washington.   over the next ten minutes I was told that peace corps niger was being shut down and all volunteers were being evacuated due to the security concerns in the region. I was to pack up all the belongings that I could fit into two 20kg suitcases- the same instructions I’d had when I was packing in the hotel in october- right away.  I’d get a call or text message later in the day telling me when I’d be picked up from my village within the next 24 hours. my stay in bassi was over almost before it had begun.  when I hung up the phone, I noticed the time. I had been in my village exactly 1 week and fifteen minutes.

my first gut reaction was: I guess the other shoe just dropped. I had been waiting since saturday for peace corps to say something, close a region or consolidate posts like they had done the previous november when us embassy officials were almost kidnapped. so this wasn’t completely out of the blue.  over the last few days I had thought once or twice, what if they evacuate us? no, they wouldn’t do that. but actually hearing the news was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. shit just got real.  I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I noticed that I had been pacing my concession for the last half an hour. I grabbed my camera and went out to start taking pictures of my village. if I only had twenty-four hours, I wanted at least some way to remember what bassi was like.

I wandered around looking for the major or the school teacher, someone who spoke well enough french that I could explain what was happening and not have my zarma be misunderstood or misinterpreted. I hadn’t quite gotten to the chapter on evacuation vocabulary yet. but, because of the elections the day before, both the major and the teachers had travelled back to their home villages the day before. I wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye or thank you.

I explained to most host dad that two french people had died in niamey.  they were killed. this wasn’t good. peace corps washington said that niger was finished. I had to leave. a car was coming, and I would go with it, and I wouldn’t be coming back.  naturally, he thought I was off my rocker.  he wanted me to call someone at peace corps who spoke zarma and could explain the situation to him.  I called seyni, the dosso program assistant and general go-to guy. seyni quickly explained the situation and hung up the phone. I looked to the maigarie for his response; “jam” I said, not knowing what else I could say. “tali kul si,” he replied. no problem at all.  at first I was a little taken aback by his answer. it’s not a problem that the volunteer you were supposed to have for two years is leaving after a week? that you’re losing two years’ worth of rent that you were expecting? but his response was not, I don’t care. his response was that it wasn’t a problem.  if allah wills it, then thanks be to god.  of course he was upset by the news but, in typical nigerien fashion, he wasn’t going to get worked up by something that was out of his hands.

I had everything packed pretty quickly.  I mean, I only had brought a suitcase, a backpack, and cooking supplies with me. the shuttle would never come to bring me the rest of my furnishings or the hose for my stove.  I wouldn’t need the cooking supplies (although I did bring my teflon skillet), and all my clothes were still packed in my suitcase. I had everything ready to go in about fifteen minutes.  I gave away everything I wasn’t bringing with me, and pretty soon my hut was as empty as it had been a week before (minus a few dozen spiders).  I couldn’t help thinking, what mark had I left on this village? I wanted to come to africa and help people and change lives. all I actually did was act like a weird white person for a week. in the lives of these nigeriens, I would just be the american who arrived out of nowhere one day, and vanished just as fast.  an anomaly in the routine of their daily lives, a ripple in the tide of years they had spent in their village. would I be forgotten? no, I don’t think so. but I know that I’ll never forget my 8 days in bassi.

when I say we were off in a flash, it was literally a flash.  I don’t think I ever drove that fast anywhere in Niger, let alone on my dirt road.  my road had the notorious reputation of being one of the worst roads volunteers are posted on, and got worse the farther south you went. most bush taxis wouldn’t drive faster than 25mph, at risk of tearing their car limb from limb.  this land cruiser was headed on a six-hour trip to the southern tip of the country, at probably around 60mph. the 50-pound suitcases stacked next to me were perpetually airborne throughout the trip.

but there was a reason we were driving so fast.  there were 32 volunteers in the dosso region, all of whom had to be picked up and driven to niamey in a 36-hour block of time.  after leaving dosso-proper, my car had looped west and south to pick me up, then several hours further south to pick up andrew, phoebe, jacob, samantha, and several other volunteers, then looped east and north back through dosso-proper, before making  a bee-line for niamey. when we pulled up to the bank to close our accounts, I had been in the car for around 9 hours. then followed several hours of paperwork at the peace corps bureau before we finally rejoined our colleagues in the hostel.  a furious night of packing and unpacking and repacking, trying to consolidate clothes and mementos with snacks and supplies that we’d need at our next post.  we were picked up and driven in convoy-formation with a police escort for our 4am flight to morocco. I had gotten about an hour’s sleep, and people who had been in niamey since the day before hadn’t gotten much more for the last two nights.  we were dead on our feet when we crossed the tarmac and climbed the steps up to our plane.  almost poetically, sunrise broke as we took off and we had our last look at niger.  it was friday, january 14^th. the day the dosso shuttle had been scheduled for.