Young MC

OK, that’s a pretty tasteless title for this post and I apologize, but I couldn’t resist. Actually what’s happening in this picture is the Muslim holiday of Maloudie (I don’t think I’m anywhere close to spelling that correctly) which marks the birth of the prophet Mohamed. For the week following his birthday the different Koranic schools in town marked the holiday by having all night recitations of the Koran (starting at around 8pm and going until 3 in the morning and sometimes right up until the 5:30am morning prayer). Kids of all ages gather at the Koranic schools and take turns reciting the passages they have spent the last few months memorizing. However, reciting a passage of the Koran isn’t like reciting a passage from the Bible. Passages are recited in a style somewhere between chanting and singing either individually or in small groups but definitely with a bit of singing and a bit of yelling in the mix. I really want to make another inappropriate hip hop reference but with the title I already feel like one was more than enough. The girl in this picture was one of the young ones who did it and was adorable.

Hilarious Like Me

So, whereas we haven’t been on the same continent now for nearly a year, you’ve probably forgotten just how funny I am. Well, fear not, here in Niger no one has forgotten and I’m regarded as a veritable Chris Rock. In fact I’m pretty sure Chris would open up a show for ME if he ever comes out to perform in Matameye.

Here’s a little sample of my material usually represented in dialogue format. Of course you have to imagine that this is all said in my broken Hausa. So to get the real sense of my pinpoint timing and delivery you’ve gotta drop in a whole bunch of grammatical errors, stammers, and misplaced words.

Me: Good morning Malam.
Nigerien Man (NM): Good morning Ismael. See this girl here, do you like her?
Me: Like her? Well, she seems nice I suppose and pretty good at selling kola nuts, but I don’t really know her.
NM: I’ll give her to you. You should get married.
Me: Oh, thank you, but I’m not ready to get married, I’m still a young kid. (uproarious laughter).
NM: YOUNG?!?! How old are you? You have a beard (beards here mean you’re old, and for the record I don’t have a beard I just may not have shaved for 3 days).
Me: I’m 25.
NM: 25!!!! Well that’s old enough. You should get married. Here we get married at 18.
Me: Yeah, we usually get married later.
NM: When are you getting married then?
Me: Well, when I’m done working here I want to go back to school, and maybe then when I’m finished and have found a good job I’ll look for a wife. I’m not in a rush (more laughter).
NM: Seriously though, you’re not gonna wait until you’re 30 are you? Then you’ll be old. There’s lots of girls here. You should get married here in Niger. We’ll find you a pretty one.
Me: I know, there’s lots of pretty girls, but for us Americans we tend to marry girls who are the same age as us and almost all girls who are my age are already married.
NM: Really?!?! (incredulous laughter)
Me: Yeah, I had a girlfriend recently who was a year older than me. (more disbelieving laughter)
NM: I know a girl who just got divorced and you can marry her. Or my friend’s daughter is 22 and not married yet, how about her.
Me: (realizing I’ve been outfoxed) Well, I have a girlfriend at home who I think I’m gonna marry.
NM: That’s OK you can have one here and one there, and when you go home you can take her with you back to America.
Me: It doesn’t work like that for us. We only have one wife and that’s it.
NM: (laughter) ONE WIFE! That’s it?!?! REALLY?!?! OK Ismael, well you should find a girl here but if you can’t then at least let us know when you get married back home.
Me: I definitely will Malam. I’ll keep you posted.

This is Grade A comedy here in Niger. I hope the jokes translated well back to the states… My partner is always changing whether it’s a woman, old El Hadji, young kid, or young girl, with only slight alterations to the dialogue. I’ve had this conversation easily 100 times since coming here.

I’ll end this post hoping my sarcasm hasn’t put anyone off… But this curiosity and questioning about my marriage plans are a constant presence in my experience here for better or worse. And to be clear, no, I haven’t accepted any of these proposals…. but there’s still over a year left…

Girls Fair

OK, first off, sorry. It’s been a while. Mostly that’s a sorry to my grandma because I’m pretty sure it’s her more than anyone else who logs on and checks it every morning hoping for updates. So, I’m sorry grandma, it’s been a busy stretch. And a lot has happened…

A couple weeks back some of my friends organized an awesome project which I had the immense pleasure of taking part in and helping out with. They organized a girls’ fair/camp and asked each of us in the region to find a couple girls on the brink of marriage or just married to bring in to Zinder and participate.

With only a little trouble I found my two girls. One, Jamilla a daughter in the massive family I like to hang out with, and after a last second cancellation I invited Jamilla’s neighbor who had always seemed cool to me, Rakia. Let me just say that when I invited Rakia to go with us to Zinder I’ve never felt more like Bob Barker in my life. She just stood there in disbelief saying “I’m going to Zinder! I’m going to Zinder!” It was her first time heading into the city. So that was awesome.

Also awesome, were them. They’re both wonderful girls, about 16 years old and on the brink of marriage (within the next couple months). So now you know that the girls I brought were awesome and the fair/camp thing was awesome. But what did we actually do that was so awesome? Aaaahhhh…. J’arrive.

So, the intention of this project was to give girls an education on a number of young wife, young family, young baby health issues. Over the span of five days the training topics included food groups and nutrition (for new wives who will be preparing the family’s meals), breast feeding tips and baby’s health (which included a skit featuring me as a young mother inept at breast feeding), birth spacing and contraception, as well as the classic STDs and methods protection. But it also went further and discussed personal advocacy for women, and taught the young women some different skills to help them with some small scale income generation such as making tofu (no, its not just for crunchy liberals in Maine and NYC, its also really cheap and nutritious for those who can’t afford meat), making biscuits, and doing henna drawings. We also had some other fun activities mixed in like watching movies, going to the big Zinder market, and my favorite, the big dance party we had at the end (words can’t describe…).

The girls loved basically all of it. And I loved basically all of it. I haven’t started yet, but I’m looking into doing a similar activity centered in Matameye and am really really excited about seeing if I can recreate the magic that my friends put together.

So, the pictures are of Rakia (with me, herself, and wearing my hat), Jamilla (making cookies and doing henna), and Haoua (the wonderful daughter of the Zinder hostel guard, just being her wonderful self).

NOTE: Since coming back Rakia, Jamilla, and I tried doing the biscuits with… maybe a dash of success and a heap of problems. I think we’ll try it again, but… Sometimes things don’t go as planned. It would be cool to get their families (and more precisely the women in their families’) a little extra income coming in, but I’m not sure if this particular strategy is gonna prove viable. We’ll see…

SECOND NOTE: Take a look at the picture of Rakia close up. A) She is beautiful. But B) You’ll notice the scars on her face. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that up to this point, but scarification is an old tradition here in Niger both for the men and the women. For the men it tends to say something about your tribe or where you’re from whereas for the women it’s really just ornamental. Rakia has the “R” between her eyebrows, which is very common (the first letter of one’s name) as well as the two horizontal lines on her cheeks. If you look closely at Jamilla you can see that to the side of her eye (near her temple) she has three small lines running horizontally. One week after a baby is born, there is a small gathering/prayer for the newborn. The traditional barber comes and shaves the baby’s head as part of the proceedings and also, if the parents want it, he will give the young child the scars they will than carry for the rest of their life.