Kokowa (Sarki-Fest 2K7 pt.2)

Alright I’m gonna separate out this one. Among the other activities going on in Kantche was the “kokowa”, or traditional wrestling. Please take a moment to appreciate my guns standing next to the Zinder team of wrestlers. Me and Gina decided to try and get into the stadium type area set aside for wrestling. I’ll say that getting in was the bulk of the adventure. Of course there was a line leading to the entry and everyone in theory had tickets, but also crowding around the entryway were hundreds of others pressing forward as hard as they could to get in. Blocking the door were a handful of gendarmes who periodically got fed up by the crowd pushing in on them. This led them to start cracking their switches and swinging their sticks, an ensuing frenzied retreat away from the door by the crowd followed almost immediately by everyone returning right back to where they started with the cycle repeating itself. It was amazing. It was basically a mosh pit and I found myself getting tossed, pushed, and shoved with each wave of retreat or attack at the center of the mayhem, laughing through all of it.

Anyways, somehow Gina managed to jump the line and get through, probably because she’s been here almost two years, speaks Hausa really well, and was able to sweet talk the guards. I was slightly less lucky. The madness of our trying to meet back up was best articulated by our exchange of text messages:

Gina: im just inside the door. they won’t let me out.
Me: im just outside the door. they won’t let me in.

Ultimately I managed to get through, ironically by giving up on the mob approach and going to the back of the line which proved to work surprisingly well. Once inside, the mayhem was a little more contained or maybe just more organized. At the center of the area was a ring with the wrestlers. The crowd wrapped around the ring ever pressing forward (again with gendarmes periodically charging around with sticks to push the crowd back). And then circling between the wrestlers at the center and the audience around them was a constant procession of wrestlers waiting their turn and griots or professional beggars who usually come around banging drums and demanding a contribution. Of course being white in such a setting is worse than just placing a bulls eye on your forehead at a shooting range. That could actually said for most of the days events. Take a look at the picture of the guy with the drum and imagine him standing in front of you asking for money while banging as hard as he can. Anyways, we didn’t end up staying that long. It was fun to watch but we were both exhausted from the heat and mayhem. After taking as much of it in as possible we took off, and after watching a quick turn of horse racing (where people were taking bets on the winners) we happily climbed into a couple bush taxis and returned to our respective villages. Amazing day, perhaps my favorite since getting here.

Sarki-Fest 2K7

OK. This is gonna be tough to explain but I’ll give it a shot. Kantche is the town right next door to Matameye, just 12km away. And although Matameye is bigger in size (we have about 45k people to Kantche’s 15k or so), in Kantche sits the Chef de Canton for the region. You are probably asking, what is a Chef de Canton? Well, I’m about to try and tell you. The Chef de Canton is basically the religious head-honcho and I think that’s the same thing as a Sarki. The list of Sarkis who have sat in Kantche traces back to the mid 1200’s and for reasons I don’t fully understand, the one in Kantche is a particularly huge deal. (NOTE: please take this entire explanation with an enormous grain of salt, that I’m really quite uncertain as to what exactly I’m talking about.)

Well, just before I arrived the old Sarki who had been in place for 50 years passed away and was replaced by a new Sarki who is just 25-years-old. In other words, the changing of Sarkis doesn’t happen very often and depending on who outlasts who, this could be the only time in my life that it does. So, all of that is leading up to say that the Sarki finally had his convocation party/fest/ceremony spanning the past week and culminating last Saturday. I went.

The population of Kantche probably tripled or quadrupled for this week. Kings from Nigeria and leaders from all over Niger were invited and came for the festivities. It was madness to see this sleepy town bursting with people. And it was a ton of fun. As my friend Gina said, “It feels like we’re at a fair”. She’s right. It did. Tons of demonstrations, people wearing amazing outfits, riding camels, racing horses, selling food, doing crazy stuff, and just generally being out and having a good time.

There’s a PG and a PG-13 version of the description I’m about to tell you. So if you want the 13 and over appropriate portion, you have to email me and I’ll let you know. To fill in some of the gaps, basically the day consisted of a huge procession of people riding beautifully decorated horses and camels. There were thousands of people lining the road and climbing on top of buildings and trees to watch the procession.

Scattered throughout the crowd and the procession were an assortment of… characters. Among them were a troop of men who wore shorts instead of pants (pretty uncommon here) along with women’s wigs, and of course, brandishing long swords. One picture is of one of these guys approaching an innocent spectator who happens to stand out a little from everyone else at over 7ft tall. I also saw a guy come right up to me as he used a knife to drag the blade across his eyeball, and then swallowed needles and regurgitated them again. Yeah, it was amazing. I wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t been about a foot in front of my face.

Finally, the Sarki himself came through the procession surrounded by a band of musket carrying escorts who would intermittently fire blanks off into the air making the whole crowd jump. Of course the temperature was preposterously hot (I’m guessing up around 110) and as a result exhausting. But in short, it was amazing. Good times in Kantche.

Some Good News from Hamdallaye

If you remember, the last time I went in to Niamey I told you of some sad news about my host family in Hamdallaye, the training town. To remind you, just before the last time I went to visit them, the father of the family passed away from a heart attack, while praying at the mosque and the future of the family was uncertain and there was talk that they might need to split up, leave Hamdallaye and stay with different friends and family members. Well, when I was back in Niamey for swear-in I took a day to go out and visit them, a little nervous about how they were doing. And they’re doing really well. The family has pulled together with a couple other family members coming to stay with them and help out. And what made me most excited was that while they won’t be able to continue paying the rent of their old house, they recently bought some land right nearby and have started building a new one which they will own. I was unbelievably relieved to hear that. One picture is of me with the oldest brother, Mohammed and the two twins Husseina and Hassana who were my best friends in Hamdallaye. We are standing on their new piece of land and behind us you can see the bricks that will become their new house.

The kids all seem to be doing pretty well, though a couple of them still (understandably) seem in the process of recovering from the shock of losing their father. But again, I was thrilled to see the family again and to have a little time to troop around with the kids.

Of course I can’t resist putting in another picture of me with Rookaya. Maybe because she’s so beautiful, I just like trying to catch some of the spotlight for myself when I have the opportunity. She forgot me again when I first got there, which I didn’t take terribly personally whereas she isn’t even 2 yet, but after about 2 minutes she remembered me and agreed to pose for a few glamour shots.

To Niamey and Back

Yup this is the spacious luxury cabin of the truck we ride in for 14 hours to and from Niamey (actually this time just to, and then we had to bus it back and let the new kids take the PC truck). Good times you can imagine. I can't tell you how bad my butt hurts by the time we arrive, but imagine a really stiff bench, a car with horrific shocks and a road with about seven brazillian potholes in it. Or another activity to simulate the joy that is this ride is to spend the next 14 hours slapping yourself in you own butt with a broad board once every ten minutes or so. Basically, the first 7 hours aren't bad, but it starts to get rough on the latter half of that midpoint. Yay! Come visit!

The week in Niamey was great. A mix of play, important work, and play. In roughly that proportion. Great seeing people from out west and just generally getting pumped to get back out to Matameye (where I'm headed tomorrow, yay!). OK, gonna go for another picture if the internet gods decide to smile upon our connection... That's it for the moment.

Odds, Ends and (of course) Soccer

Every time I come in to Zinder and write another post about my girls soccer team I promise myself its gonna be the last one... So I’ll make it quick. Before, I wrote about one of the girls who is super awesome and played with the guys. Well, we had another game with a team from a nearby town and we won 1-0. In the process she scored an amazing goal (she blasted the ball into the upper corner of the net from far far away). All the girls played really well, but what made it particularly special for Nouria was that her father was in the crowd watching the game. Whether its cultural, a factor of generally having a lot of kids, or any of many another possible reasons, it is NOT common for a parent to come to his or her child’s extra-curricular school activities. Let alone a father coming to his girls soccer match. But he came and was treated to seeing his daughter score a brilliant goal. As he told me after the match, the moment she scored he sent a message to Nouria’s mom telling her the news.

So, after the match I grabbed my bike and stopped by her house. This picture is of her with her two parents, still beaming from the game. On the front of her jersey she had written the name of Cameroonian forward Samuel Eto’o, her favorite soccer player. Anyways, I’m so so proud of all of them but this picture in particular makes me want to smile. If the connection is working well, I’ll try and toss up another picture with some of the others.

Since I’m sure that everyone has a remarkably skewed idea of what it is I do here, I’m gonna take a moment to try and right that misrepresentation. I’ve been spending a lot of time finally getting the latest copy of a local journal printed. Of course that doesn’t come easy. In the last month, both of our computers have had serious problems, we’ve changed editors, I’ve had to go back and forth to Zinder twice to get it printed, and the other volunteer who had been doing this before me finished his service and is now sitting back in the U.S. So it’s been hectic.

I’m also starting to look into ways of applying for grants for one of the two local high schools, the Franco-Arab (they learn French and Arabic instead of French and English like most others). The school has just been promised a piece of land by the town and an NGO has promised to help build classrooms, but as of yet they do not have any latrines or any source of water at the new site. So I’ve been trying to figure out which grant organizations in country might be a good match and to do some of the preliminary research for how to get that done. A while back I described how I’ve taken over a similar grant type project at the other high school from the volunteer before me. Well, even though that project has continued to be a nightmare, I’m trying to do it all again with this new project with the Franco-Arab. The bottom line is that the resources are badly needed. Matameye is a very quickly growing town, and right now the schools are simply way overloaded and getting more so.

Note to my Mom (and maybe a few others): So as I mention that I can basically here the click of my mom’s mouse and the tap tap tap of the keyboard as she starts writing me an email asking how she can help out. I’ll say this… Hold on. Bringing money in from America is a complicated process. It’s not as easy as sending a check in the mail. With these grants available I want to explore those options as thoroughly as possible. And finally this would be a pretty expensive project, so thank you everyone for the enthusiasm, there will likely be a day when I do make a request, but that day has not yet come.

Work at the high school has been frustrating. I’ve been wanting to get rolling working with the English teachers to help them as much as possible, but strikes by the teachers have consumed 10 of the last 15 school days. I don’t want and can’t get into Nigerien politics, but I sympathize with both sides of the government v. teacher dispute. It’s just so sad seeing the frustrated students who walk up to an hour to come to school each day (or even more sometimes) just to hear there aren’t classes. I don’t know whose fault it is, and really, I’m not sure it’s anyone’s, but more than anyone it’s the students paying the price.

I’m bouncing a number of other project ideas around in my head, and as my language skills, French and to a lesser extent Hausa, fall into place I’m looking forward to trying to get some of them rolling. In no particular order they are: helping set up some sort of computer literacy classes at the local library (I once mentioned that they got new computers by a miracle of… oh wait, I’m not religious), traveling out into the bush to do sensibilisations promoting girls ed, helping set up a small cooperative for out of school girls to learn some money-making skills, and setting up a girls group for students at the high school who come from the surrounding small towns (because they often start behind the level of the local students). Maybe I’ll do all of those things, maybe I’ll do none of them. Only time will tell.

Otherwise, things are good. Matameye friends are great. I’m heading to Niamey for a week starting this Sunday to welcome the Freshmen at their swear-in ceremony. I’ll write more about that later. But I’ll actually be in the big city for a bit with technology (ie. internet) somewhat accessible. So write me. It makes me happy. I hope everyone is well.

NOTE ON MY NAME: ISMAEL. I don’t know why I feel like I want to clarify this but I do. I guess probably because the sound of my real name grows more and more bizarre to me every passing day. When I say it to someone I can’t help but think to myself, “my god, what a weird name” something most of you have all probably been saying for years. I thank my sort of hippie parents…

Anyways, my name is pronounced “Iss-my-ell” “Iss” as in “hISS” like a snake. “my” as in “MY”, I suppose that one is pretty self explanatory. And “ell” as in “hELLo” my name is Ismael. My name IS NOT IsHmael (please note the H). That is the name of a large talking ape in a crappy book by the same name. Seriously, that book is not awesome. Don’t bother reading it. OK… Done with my rant.