Back in Zinder after a month in easy, breezy, beautiful, Matameye. Actually one of my friends just told me that tomorrow is officially day 100 in Nigerfor us new volunteers. Crazy.
A little advance warning: Since everything is still really new and shiny, this post, much like the last, is a bit all over the place. So, I’ll give you my half-hearted apologies. But really, that’s for you to deal with. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
That’s also sort of the nature of one’s first month at post. We’re all too new to the language(s) and culture and community to really delve into any serious projects, so we’re left to get our feet on the ground in our new homes, work on our language, meet the people in the town and those who we’ll be working with, and generally just get recalibrated to zamanduniya cikin Nijar (life in Niger). Let’s get it started.
I REALLY like Matameye. I still have no idea what the actual population of the town is, probably somewhere around 30,000, but its perfect. Not to big. Not too small. Its got everything I could want but still feels cozy and friendly. As I mentioned before, Matameye is on the main, paved road between Zinder and Kano, Nigeria (the main road is the only paved road in town, the rest are sand) and the town is set up basically in the armpit of the 90 degree hook in the road about a quarter mile from my house (as a note, I would’ve preferred to use a word other than “armpit” to describe my new hometown, but it fit really well. so just embrace it without the negative and stinky connotations that you might otherwise think of). Most of the little shops in town are spread along the main road and its pretty convenient living where I do, just off the main road, but sort of to the edge of the busy section of town where it’s a little quieter.
Overall, I feel like I’ve jumped into this town FAST. Walking along the main road people already know who I am and I can expect a pretty steady chanting of “Ina kwana Ismael” or “Sannu Ismael” or “Barka Ismael” or any of the other bazillion greetings that Hausas like to toss out at each other. Actually, its one of the things that is most exhausting about being here, beyond the obligatory and minimally required greetings which are incessant and lengthy, everyone wants to say hi and know where I’m from, what I’m doing, and where the volunteer before me went and how she’s doing (regardless of the fact that in truth I have little or no idea, and barely know her at all, though she seems very nice). Of course all of that is in French. Or when I feel brave (or willing to submit myself and whoever it is trying to talk to me to a little bit of frustration) I’ll speak to them in my very limited Hausa. (footnote- “Hausa” refers to the Hausa language, but it can also refer to the people who speak it, who are mostly spread between south-eastern Niger and northern Nigeria but can also be found all over western Africa. And I’m told there’s actually a pretty big Hausa population out in North Carolina for what it’s worth…).
The French is actually coming really well. I’m pretty comfortable with it and can almost always get my point across and understand there’s. I’m sure that as I speak it, it isn’t exactly the language of love it’s meant to be, but… maybe that will come. Hausa is a few steps behind. I’ve started taking some language classes at the alphabetization (a government organization which was started in order to turn Hausa into a written language) with a really nice guy who works there. But on the street, EVERYONE is pumped about my trying to speak with them in Hausa. A majority of people don’t really speak French so we’re left to try our banter in Hausa with nothing but my limited greetings and basic sentence structures, and their seemingly endless patience and eagerness to laugh at and support me through my mistakes. In the end it works well. And unless I’m tired, we all leave the exchange happily chuckling to ourselves.
I’ve spent a good chunk of this month taking time to explore the town. As I said, talking to every and anyone. During a “normal” day I get up somewhere between 6:30 and 7:15, make myself some coffee and read a book or study some Hausa for an hour or so. After that I venture out to the street and make the treck to the “College” (which is what they call their middle/high school). There, I’ve taken some time to chat with the teachers and to begin to introduce myself as the new Peace Corps volunteer who will be loitering around their school for the next couple years. The teachers are a good crew and there are a few in particular who I’m excited to start working with.
Anyways, aside from the College I’ve been visiting an array of other places including the Sous-Prefet, the Inspection, the centre de alphabetisation, or the bibliotheque. I couldn’t fully explain what those first two are, basically administrative education type places, the third I mentioned before, and the last, well, it’s the French word for library, or I hope it is, and if it isn’t then my French is perhaps even worse than I thought. So I do that until about 11:30 or noon when it has gotten hot. Well, actually that would be more true for the first couple weeks when it was “mini hot season” and it will certainly be true come March when it will be “no-joke hot season”. Mini hot season is basically the time when its stopped raining for the year but before it has cooled off much in the lead up to cold season. As I write this it has cooled off quite a bit, and it gets legitimately chilly during the nights (which I love).
Where was I? …so the mid day break tends to be about 3 or so hours. I’ve spent a lot of that time reading, studying Hausa/French, napping or hanging out with my new friends (who I’ll get to in just a sec). It’s nice having that break in the middle of the day. The afternoons I’ve been spending out in the town again visiting different families who I’ve started to become friends with, just exploring or sometimes going back to the school, and another stretch was occupied with a series of visits to the local electric company, Nigelec, because my electricity wasn’t working for the first week or so.
Yes, I have electricity, and yes I am quite grateful for it. Basically, us education volunteers, who tend to be placed in larger towns, have electricity, while those volunteers out in the bush doing agriculture or health stuff get to fend for themselves without the very welcome assistance of a fan. Really, lights are nice but not needed, and it’s having a fan that is a pretty big deal.
Friends: so basically I hang out with two different groups of people. One group of guys is all right around my age and are my neighbors. Here in Niger young or youngish guys all tend to hang out in what are called “fadas”. You’d think that they’re gangs because it tends to be groups of 5 to 10 guys just sitting around outside together, on a corner or along the road doing little or nothing. But the difference is that here in Niger everyone is super super friendly and if you ever come across a fada, they’ll all be pumped to have you come over and chat and will invite you to play cards and drink tea with them (a note on tea: in the past I have been fairly outspoken about my distaste for tea. And I stand by that. However, tea in Niger is NOTHING like tea in the US. Basically drinking tea is a whole activity and process, which I’ll explain later to those who care, but ultimately the drink itself is a super concentrated and super sweet tea that comes from China, and you drink tiny little bits of it which everyone passes around in little shot glasses. Its awesome.) Anyways, the fada I hang out with is called Harlem City (all fadas choose names which they sometimes write on the walls near where they hang out), so every time I hang out there I feel well connected to my New York amigos back home. They all got a kick out of it when I explained to them that Harlem wasn’t really a city... Anyways, all the Harlem City guys are awesome. About half speak French while the other half just speak Hausa (and sometimes Arabic). Each day they (or we when I join them) set up chairs along the edge of the road and spend hours just watching people walking by. Good times. People watching...
The other set of people I hang out with is a hardened crew of young hoodlums who live across the street from me in the massive family of something like 35 people (well its actually a bunch of related families who all live in the same large compound, but the point is its huge and there are a ton of them). Basically they’re a bunch of young boys all somewhere in the age range of 11-14 (too young to really be a fada as of yet, but I see it quickly approaching in their future). They’re great. We became friends after they busted into my concession and insisted on helping me clean up the disaster that was my jungle of a yard. Around 5pm every day they come over and work for 15-30 minutes until they get tired (I’ve been working with them also) and then we sit around and play cards (especially during Ramadan that was a welcome respite because they’re too young to be doing Azumi and thus are permitted to play cards… ooh, I guess I’ll mention that later…). They are hilarious and a lot of fun. Of course, since they’re younger they really speak very very little French (basically none at all). That leaves a lot of gaps in our communication which we tend to fill by laughing a lot and just not really ever being all that attached to whether or not your point gets across. Really, its gonna be these guys who will teach me Hausa and I’m already grateful for that. (I bought a soccer ball the other day and after working for a half hour or so we all played in my yard, it was great).
And that’s a nice segue way… Soccer: Soccer is already a big part of my life here. I’ve started playing in pick-up soccer games a couple times a week at the field (if a field of dirt can really be called a field) which are pretty formal and really fun and I’ve become a bit of a spectacle out there (I’ll give a hint, I hold my own and do respectably well, but the number of kids who cheer for me when I play most likely has a great deal more to do with my skin tone than anything else… they just basically get a kick out of seeing the white person, or anasara, run around and play soccer). And on the other end of things, about once a week I go to watch professional European soccer games down the road from me (actually as I write this I’m missing a great game with Real Madrid. The guy who runs the place is one of the few in town who has satellite TV, or really any TV at all for that matter, so everyone pays 100 CFA (about 20 cents if you do the conversion to US cash) and depending on the importance of the match, somewhere over 80 and sometimes more than 100 people crowd into a big open room to scream continuously for about 2 hours until the game is over. It’s pretty awesome actually. I sort of love it.
Azumi/Karem/Ramadan: So as a quick note, I did the last week of Azumi, or Ramadan. Basically as I suggested before, that includes fasting and not drinking from sun up until sun down, and it’s hard. You’ve gotta get up at 4:30 in the morning, quickly pound as much food and water as possible before 5:15am when the sun has officially risen, and then not eat OR DRINK (and mind you this is Niger so its hot) until about 6:15pm. The first half of the days weren’t so bad, but boy those last few hours were devastating. I’m glad I tried it. It gave me a great deal of street cred around town, and all joking aside I know a lot of people really a) got a kick out of the anasara trying it, but also b) really appreciated that I gave it a shot. Of course the Azumi conversation is nearly inevitably followed up with the “when are you going to start praying” conversation, or if not that then the “do you have a wife/do you want one/when are you getting married” conversation, two topics which I then attempt to hedge away from as quickly and as artfully as possible. Islam is a definite part of people’s lives here (though the range of adherence to the religion certainly is on a bit of a spectrum). But it’s definitely something I’m finding interesting and excited to continue learning about.
So, that’s most (or at least a chunk) of it. Other things… The other volunteers in “Team Z” (Team Zinder) are great. I’ve seen a few of the others since Matameye is the center of a cluster within the Zinder region and some of them come in on Fridays for our market day. It’s been nice seeing people who speak my language every once in a while though to be honest I’m pumped enough and feeling good enough with my friends here, that I certainly don’t feel like I need or even crave it like one might expect (though maybe after some of the newness and initial enthusiasm of my arrival wears off that will change).
As for projects, I’m going to leave that for later. Right now I have lots of ideas and some other things which are already beginning to take form, but finding project ideas is not going to be tough… I guess the one I’ll momentarily mention, is that after coming back from Zinder (following this weekend) we’re gonna re-start the girls soccer league for College students. The volunteer before me started the league, so I’m gonna keep the team alive. It should be pretty fun… More on that later.
So to conclude, everyone talks about how hard the first month is, and how it’s sometimes boring and often frustrating. I’ve loved it. And for that I’m tipping my cap to Matameye and the awesome people here who have welcomed me since my arrival. I’m yet to be bored and always feel like there’s more I could be doing. The biggest obstacle is really the exhaustion that results from the heat and the constant attention of being a fairly obvious non-local in turn coupled with the language barrier. But even when it’s tiring, it is all exciting. Right now I’m just really happy to be here.
PS Geez... Sorry, that again was LONG. I promise next post will be no more than half this one. Though I think I said the same thing last time, so that says something about my credibility.
PPS So, I had a sweet picture of the scorpion I found in my house on day 3 of this first month. That guy was not small. He was right where everyone tells you to look out for them, hidden amid my shoes which I’d left laying on the floor. I just by chance decided to kick them aside with my bare foot and then saw him scramble out from behind it and into a corner. They aren’t deadly here in southern Niger, but they will allegedly give you the worst week of your life if they sting you… Yeah so that messed with my comfort zone flow early on, but its fine now. Oh, and I accidentally deleted a whole bunch of pictures off my camera including that one. So if you don’t believe me about the scorpion, I suppose I only have myself to blame. I went and took a picture of the stain that it left on the ground outside my house where I smooshed it with a shovel, but it’s really not the same
