January 4, 2010

Hey, it’s 2010. Crazy. Even crazier, in a few days I will hit my six-month anniversary of arriving in Niger. Time has flown by at such a rapid pace I hardly noticed its passing. I am a fly suspended in amber. Things outside this golden desert change as they may, but my immediate surroundings and I lay untouched. Obviously the sun rises and sets often enough, but in Africa the cycle of the day seems completely divorced from time. After all, Nigeriens work continuously, without regard for such things as weekends. On Fridays everyone puts on his or her one special outfit to go and pray, but the routine continues without respite.

Even more disorienting, I have been trapped in a perpetual summer since I left. There may be snow in America, but it still feels very much like July, or perhaps August. Similarly, when I was in Argentina during the southern hemisphere’s winter months, I was convinced it was summertime in spite of the cold temperatures, rain, and snow. It took ages for it to sink in that “July = tank top weather” is not always correct.

I think, however, this chronologic disorder is due large in part to the fact I haven’t done much since I arrived. Now, wait. I can hear my parents both erupting with protests at this statement—listing all the brave things I’ve done since arrive, such as learning a language, getting peed on by babies, battling scorpions, eating grasshoppers, and learning how to “snot-rocket” the contents of my sinuses.

Yes, the scenery of my life has change a bit since leaving America, but my days spent chatting, cooking, and doing arts and crafts slip by without my notice. My new life is so unlike the one I left, in which one day held an eternity of tasks and I hammered every second into fruition. I used to try and figure out how to make the few minutes I would spend waiting for a bus productive. I am aware of the fact I am a chronic over-achiever, but as I’d hoped, Africa seems to be curing me of that. If I can run one errand or complete one task within daylight hours, it has been a very productive day. Everything in my schedule is subject to Allah’s will.

January 9, 2010

So, disruptions in the space-time continuum aside, things in Niger are good. I have been at my post for three weeks now, and I’m settling in quite well.

My landlord, Hama, and his family have essentially adopted me as their strange-looking and bizarre relative. Every morning, each member of the family (which is rather small by Nigerien standards) comes to ask me how I slept. Hama’s elderly mother, with whom I share a concession, also takes this opportunity to tell me to sweep my concession. I have also taken to eating meals with Hama’s aunt and cousin (my closest neighbor) almost every night. The aunt, Lamissi (Lam-e-see) has graciously taken over the job of mothering me since (she told me) my real mother is so far away. Aside from feeding me dinner every night, as part of this motherly duty Lamissi regularly:

1. Reminds me not to go too far or get lost when I go out into the village to see people.

· As a seasoned traveler, I find this especially endearing considering the village could easily fit inside the liberal arts section of the UW campus.

2. Discourages me from making trips into the bush with the other unmarried girls to collect firewood, berries, and other delicious treats.

· “What will you put on your feet to protect them from all the thorns?!,” she asks me in horror, “Will you tie a piece of cloth around them?” I, of course, have shoes, but in spite of the fact that most girls go barefoot…the thick leather soles of my very expensive American flip-flops seem inadequate for my delicate anasara feet.

3. Forbids me to climb trees.

· I would never…

4. Tells me I am not allow to learn how to make the woven palm mats, pound millet, or do any work that may cause my hands to become callused.

5. Explains regularly how fat I should be before returning to America, so that when I arrive everyone will be impressed. (She makes sound effect to portray the sound of me deplaning.)

6. Encourages me on an hourly basis to bring my cot inside to sleep on, rather than continuing to sleep on my mattress on my frigid concrete floor.

· While has been rather cold at night (getting down to the high 40s), Lamissi doesn’t see how I could possibly be warm enough sleeping inside my house…in flannel pants and a sweater…with a North Face sleeping bag (rated to 30 degrees)…on top of a foam pad…with the door closed.

7. Comes to check on me frequently whenever I should fall ill.

· I actually spent a day in bed due to a terrible cold I contracted. It wasn’t that bad, but I figured I might as well rest for a day to make a quicker recovery.

Lamissi was very concerned when I told her I was sick. At first, she tried to convince me to go to the village doctor. (Third-world medical treatment? No, thank you.) When I told her Peace Corps would bring me medicine if I needed it, she started asking me every 20 minutes if I’d called them yet. In response, I told I was pretty sure I had a virus, and there wasn’t really any medicine that could help me beyond rest. She didn’t know what a virus was, but was apparently unconvinced the anasaras I worked for didn’t have a cure for the common cold. She also took the time to point out I probably caught this cold because I had been sleeping on my floor and also because I never ate enough. “Are you hungry now?” she asked me.

Lamissi may boarder on overprotective, but always concedes when I insist I am able to do something. Thus, for all that she doubts my durability, I am rarely irritated by her loving concern.

Speaking of irritation…in the entry I posted for Christmas I mentioned some of the differences I had discovered between my new post and my old. I was learning to get by with no electricity, limited transportation, and having to walk to the next town’s market for food. The remarks I made previously certainly hold true, but the biggest difference between my two posts is just beginning to emerge.

First let me say that I am unendingly pleased with my new post. Smaller communities certainly have numerous benefits to larger ones. For one, I am significantly less worried about instances of theft in this small town. Small town folks are known for much more protective of their volunteers. One PCV told me the villagers of her isolated post would not show a visiting NGO worker where she lived, and instead insisted he go to the chief of the village to get permission/make an appointment to talk to her. The village chief asked the NGO worker to write a letter of intent and return another day. In addition to have an entire village looking out for me, I have found it much easier to make friends and become involved with my villagers’ lives here. The problem is they are able to do the same with me.

In Gotheye, the clash between my Americanism and Nigerien culture arose from time to time, but it was always at moments when I expected it. For example, I expected to disagree with the gender roles in Niger, and to have to tell people when I needed to be alone, and to see goats every morning. The pre-service training more than adequately prepared me for life in Gotheye, and after a few weeks there I was able to exist in my own little sphere without too much cultural angst. At my new post, things are very different. While my new villagers are generally respectful of my privacy, from the moment I step out of my house I am constantly bombarded with salutations and invitations and questions, which often leave me bristled or frustrated. In a word, my new villagers are all up in my bidz-niz[1]. And, in contrast to my old post, it is my Americanism that seems to lie at the center of each cultural scuffle.

I think the best story to illustrate this new cultural education involves me and my house…

When I came back from Christmas in Dosso, as planned, some of my villagers had put in the concrete floor of my house. It wasn’t dry enough for me to move in yet, so, I had to stay a few more days in my landlord’s mother’s house, which she was so kindly letting me occupy while she slept at his house. I decided to take advantage of my house’s vacancy to make a few more minor improvements.

To be certain, my new house is very nice. It is on the edge of town. It has a cute little triangular window. Its thick walls insolate it enough so that during the day, it stays nice and cool. It is also rather…small. The entire construction is just one eight-by-sixteen-foot room. I didn’t mind the size downgrade from my two-room luxury apartment in Gotheye. I didn’t even mind that as I lay awake at night I could hear the steady crunch of termites slowly devouring my roof. There was, however, one thing about this new house that REALLY bothered me. It seemed the walls were put together rather quickly and never finished on the inside. Consequently, the mud and brick had hardened into an abrasive facade, full of crevasses and rough outcroppings. While the millions of crickets who had taken up residence in the walls found the construction more than adequate, I felt some improvements could be made.

Having been forewarned dozens of times home improvements were likely to suffer enormous delay (because we are in Niger), I decided to embrace that Can-Do American Spirit and see if I could fix up the walls myself. Rather than covering them up with fabric or trying to paint the mud, I decided the best thing would be to get more mud to fill in all the little cracks and smooth things out a bit.

I thought I may get in trouble for just digging a hole somewhere near the village, and the sand outside in my concession didn’t seem like the right thing. Then it struck me! Why not break off all the extra mud sticking out to fill in the other areas where it was missing? Not having any real tools beyond my pocketknife, I decided to sacrifice some of my kitchenware to the project. (Resourcefulness and thrift are both core, American values.)

After all this thoughtful planning, I woke early the next morning to start, thinking the project might take a few hours. And so I began, fork in hand, hammering away at walls. (Yes, I was using a fork.) Soon, dirt was flying everywhere. The air was thick with dust, eventually settling to cover the floor and me. When I would knock off enough material, I would pound the chunks into dirt and then add water, making a nice, smooth mud-putty, which I would then carefully smooth over choice cracks.

In spite of my enthusiasm, the work wasn’t going as easily as I would have hoped. My hand was scraped and bruised from all the pounding and my nose was glued shut with dust-boogers. Moreover, I soon saw I would not have enough putty to fill in every crack/make the walls as smooth as I would like. Nevertheless, looking at my work, I had to admit the result was a considerable upgrade from what the walls had been before. And so I went, faithfully chipping away at my walls, pounding, sweeping, adding water, and deciding which cracks to fill. I felt quite industrious at the end of the day—even if I barely finished filling in half of the walls. Nevertheless, I had come this far and was committed to the project.

The second day was much like the first. I kept up the same rigorous pace and (of course) had many curious neighbors stop by to see what on earth I was doing. They would stand in the doorway, stunned into silence by the mess I was making, especially since household repairs are the men’s responsibility. Thus, most of my visitors were high skeptical that I would be able to complete the task at hand. In spite of this, I got a few of them to concede the walls did look better after I had patched them. Toward the end of the second day, I was determined to finish and started working at an accelerated pace. Just as I was pushing my last batch of mud into the final cracks, my landlord, Hama, arrived from his two-day stay at the neighboring village.

When he came into my house, Hama gaped with an open mouth at the floor, walls, and anasara—all covered in mud. Then he informed me of the following: He wasn’t angry with me for trying to fix things up, but was hurt I hadn’t asked him to fix the walls for me. Fixing the walls myself made him feel like I had little faith in him as a landlord. He told me he was responsible for the property and my comfort, and while he appreciated my work, I was overstepping my license as a tenet. Finally, he said he still valued me as a person and neighbor and hoped we could continue to have a warm, honest relationship. Or at least, that’s what he would have said if he spoke English, had grown up in Montana, attended UW, and had a therapist for a sister. Nigerien culture is much more direct than that. It is also narrated with a language that does not allow a speaker to wrestle with shades of meaning and make subtle distinctions, such as the difference between words like angry/upset or like/love/want. So, what Hama really told me was something like, “What are you doing?! I never said you could do this. This is not good. You are not good! I swear to Allah, I am angry! Put down your bucket! Go wash your hands!”

I had expected Hama to give my work a half-interested nod or laugh at me, but I never thought he would be angry. In truth, it hadn’t even occurred to me my landlord might be bothered by my little project, so I hadn’t even thought to ask his permission. After all, it was my house, the changes I was making were minor, and his mother hadn’t stopped me when she first saw what I was doing.

What I didn’t realize was by fixing the walls myself, I ignored the layers of protocol that dictate all interactions in Niger. A person must ask permission from the proper authorities to do ANYTHING. In retrospect I see I was even insulting Hama by taking on the work myself, and not allowing him to fulfill his landlordly duties. I could have gotten angry at Hama for his reaction, or sulked, or decided I didn’t like him anymore, but standing there, covered in mud, it was painfully clear to me I was the one at fault. I should have asked, but just like the mayor in Gotheye said after discovering I had moved in without allowing him to officially install me, “Americans don’t ask, they just go.”

Hama’s response to my cultural insensitivity also surprised me and lay in stark contrast to American culture. I expected him to harbor a grudge for weeks or leave me to take care of myself (as I so obviously didn’t want his help), but instead Hama repaid my mistake by offering to extract in dirt from a nearby field, haul water to mix it into mud, and then spend a day (properly) covering ALL OF THE WALLS, making them smooth as drywall. What a gentleman.

Another example of how my American attitude doesn’t translate into Zarma:

One unremarkable morning, I finished my little routine and headed out to work. Nothing in particular had happened to ruin my morning, but as I began the trek through the village, from my house to the mayor’s office I felt my patience and good humor evaporating under the morning sun. As per usual, each one of my villagers wanted to greet me, and ask me at least seven questions about where I was going and what I was wearing. AND THEN, my landlord stopped me to have a long, fruitless conversation about the fact the mayor still hadn’t paid him for my rent (more on that later). He kept talking and talking, explaining the situation several times, all of which left me wanting to ask, “And what do you want me to do about it?” By the time I reached the final stretch to the mayor’s office I was so preoccupied and grumpy I didn’t want to talk to anyone. So, I passed a young man without greeting him.

Walking around campus as a student at UW I would often pretend not to see people I knew or not stop to say hello, lest I be delayed to class. I was also on the receiving end of many greeting avoidances. But that kind of self-centered rush doesn’t fly here. Nigeriens always have time to say hello.

Since I didn’t recognize this guy and I was cranky, I figured it wasn’t a big deal if I didn’t stop to chat. As I walked by him, I pretended to look at something on the distant, left horizon, making it seem like I just didn’t see him. Of course, he immediately called me out on the non-greeting.

“HEY! You didn’t greet me, Anasara, come here!” he yelled at me.

I recognized I had been busted, and trotted over to say hi.

“You didn’t greet me,” He informed me. “You walked right by my house and didn’t even ask how I slept.”

“Oh,” I said, “In America, we don’t always say hi to everyone we see. So, sometimes I forget to greet people here.”

He gave me a stern look, unmoved by my excuse, and said, “This is Niger not America. A person must always greet everyone they see here.”

He forgave me, but immediately sucked me into a conversation. He wanted to know what I was doing in the village, where I was going, why I was wearing a head wrap, what kind of work I was doing at the mayor’s, where my house was, if I would take him to America, if I recognized the name of his village…and the list goes on. At this point, it was hot, it was windy, I was tired and just wanted to go sit in the mayor’s office (which is always cool and abandon) and fill out birth certificates in peace. Thus, as soon as I could, I told the man I was on my way to work, and had to leave “right now.” “Right now” doesn’t exactly translate into Zarma or Nigerien culture, so even as I turned to go the man kept talking.

I have two goals when talking to my villagers. The first is to be as kind and patient as possible. The second is to always be honest. Though lying would make a lot of situations a lot less painful (for example, telling them I don’t have x item, rather than explaining why I have it and won’t give it to them), I don’t want dishonesty to become a reflex. Thus, rather than making up a reason to leave, I told this young man the truth. Translated into Zarma I said something like, “I’m sorry. Today I am not feeling happy and do not have patience. I want to go to work now. We should chat later.” The man seemed very alarmed (but not mad) at this and immediately excused me from the conversation.

Luckily for me, the only person who ever comes to the mayor’s office is Seyni (SAY-nee), the Etat-Civil, and he is not a big chatterbox. So I was able to spend the next two hours silently writing birth certificates in the cool sanctuary of the mayor’s office. That respite from the village, combined with a delicious lunch and nap eased my mood, and by the afternoon I was chipper as ever.

Walking around to greet people that afternoon, I ran into that young man again. (As it turns out he is the son of one of my neighbors.) After greeting each other thoroughly, he looked at me very gravely and asked me if I “te dama,” which translates as regained my health. I had only ever heard this saying used in the context of health issues. Confused, I told him I wasn’t sick. He then reminded me of what I had said that morning, and realized he was equating my impatience with an illness, and (judging by the look on his face) a severe one at that.

I told him I was very well and had definitely “regained my health.” Walking away, I couldn’t help but smile at the idea a Nigerien would think of impatience as an illness. After a moment though, I realized this was more or less accurate. With all the delays and uncertainty in this country, impatience could be lethal.

[1] For those born before 1975, “bidz-nez” is a vernacular term related to the conventional term “business.” It is used to describe one’s everyday affairs/personal life and does not necessarily relate to commerce or employment.