August 2007 - GLOBE week

Greetings!

I'm writing as I am finally about to leave Niamey, after having been here for almost two weeks. I've gotten a lot done, like surviving giardia, being trained in environmental education modules along with my village school director, fending off multiple Nigerien suitors, bargaining my butt off for some souvenirs and translating for a group of visiting university students.

The week before I came to the big bad city was a busy one in Tamtala. We had a funeral and two baby naming ceremonies. It was my first funeral and -if any of you were doubting Niger's exponential population growth, hear me now- these were my 12th and 13th naming ceremonies.

A still picture of a funeral (if it was socially acceptable to photograph) wouldn't look too different from one of a baby naming ceremony at first glance. Women sit inside the concession, men sit outside. Put on your nice clothes. Don't forget your headscarf, and bring a bit of money to give to the hosts. After the formalities, there's food.

At the funeral we greeted the family on the death and blessed the dead woman, saying something about how Allah should give her a better setup in heaven than she had here. At the baby naming ceremonies we greeted the families on the births and blessed the babies, saying that Allah should let them be in this world. At funerals people speak quietly, at naming ceremonies I always develop a headache from the noise.

Funerals and naming ceremonies are big social events. People put off working in the fields and going to the market to attend. The first naming ceremony fell on market day, but I skipped the trip and instead donned my most restrictive complet-and-double-headscarf getup, headed over and chatted the morning away as another female Tamtalan received the name Musulmatou. Thursday I did the same while another male Tamtalan came to be called Mohammadu. "You won't call him Peter, or David, or Andrew?" I teased my friends as we sat under the blessedly overcast sky with our party favors, two hard candies and half a kola nut each. "There are 10 Mohammadus in Tamtala already. Won't you get confused?" And they laugh and try to pronounce the Anasara names, and ask my American name again ("Bariitani Agalonga," Maimouna says).

The funeral on Tuesday was a surprise, held mere hours after the old woman died. She was Leila's paternal grandmother. Leila has a clubbed foot and is one of my favorite kids. Her speech isn't very clear yet but she laughs a lot and runs pretty well despite her twisted foot. Her parents live in a village half a day's donkey cart ride away,and she is in the care of her maternal grandmother, a woman who speaks so softly to me I have to read her lips. When I learned her name I immediately sang the Clapton song to her (an American kid called Leila would be sick of this by age 5, but she loved it). She was one of the first kids in the village to be bold enough to climb onto my lap. I'm working with a friend's NGO in Niamey to correct it... more on that later, as it's been a little frustrating...

Bush Notes and Other Favors
Wednesday market is usually my time to meet up with fellow PCVs and speak English while people yell "Anasara! Come buy this! Hey, anasara, hey!" at us. Because I missed out on the experience this week, I sent my fellow anasaras what is known as a 'bush note' with my greetings to them.

A bush note is an informal letter, folded and unstamped, with the intended recipient's name written on the outside (if the route is simple and the person delivering your bushnote is illiterate, you can skip this step). You simply hand it off to someone going your friend's way and poof! It gets there. Insha'allah. It's quicker than regular mail, more reliable than text messages (sent through Celtel, anyway), and cheaper than anything. In Nigerien culture it's very common to ask someone to "fo" someone else, much as your friends would ask you to "say hi to so-and-so" for them (every time I go to Niamey, one or two villagers will think I'm going to America and will tell me to "fo" my family for them). A bush note is just a step above a "fo," and it's nice to have been here long enough to have friends deliver these for me on occasion.

I've come to depend on people doing favors for me, and it still feels like a precarious existence. I've spent my adult life trying to get away from asking people for favors, and now I'm faced with it being almost necessary, as my text messages don't get received and inter-village communication is essential to some of my projects. With bush note service I can stay in Tamtala and farm and attend naming ceremonies, and still get word to my counterpart inviting him for tree-planting day this week.

Aside from bush notes, it's nice to be able to ask Maimouna to pick me up 100 cfa worth of onions when she goes to the market, especially because she gets more and better onions for 100 cfa than I do. And in return, I'll bring her a mango from Niamey, because they're no longer in the bush markets.

The biggest favors are intra-PC, transcontinental deliveries of risky-to-mail stuff, like when my friend will be bringing my nice camera back from the States this fall. Wahoo!


"Hiney Mashin"
The first part of this visit to Niamey was spent - as mentioned - down with giardia. But the reason I'd actually come was for training for the GLOBE program, an environmental education project organized by PCVs so we and our village schoolteachers can teach environmental ed modules on a weekly basis during the coming school year. Seeing as though this was a career option I've been kicking around, I've been happy to be a part of it. Two Niamey PCVs put on the training and did an awesome job, especially considering the language barrier - everything had to be translated at least once.

I'm also well on my way to writing a grant to get a millet grinder (also known as a "hiney mashin" in Zarma, there being no real Zarma word for "machine") for Tamtala. I'm still working on the budget and other details, but it should be finished and up for bureau approval in the next couple of months.

Way back in early April, I was first approached by my neighbor Fati (to the north), whose pounding wakes me up in the morning before dawn and lulls me to sleep at night. She, and many after her, made a compelling case for wanting a grinder. One day I went over to say hello, which involves commenting on whatever a person is up to - like pounding millet.

"Fonda goy," I say. ("Greetings on your work.")
"N'goyya," she replies, and we greet back and forth on health, kids, etc.
"You are pounding," I say, already a master of the West African habit of Stating the Obvious.
"Yes," she says. "Women pound millet all day. We are tired."
I nod. I'm thoughtful and sympathetic, but my Zarma is worthless at this point.
"Look," she says. She shows me her hands, callused all over from a lifetime of manual labor, and points to the hard lump at the base of each thumb. "From pounding," she explains earnestly.

I half-mock-gasp and show her my privileged, moisturized palms and run my fingertips over the lumps.
"You should not pound or your hands will be made like this," she says.
I absorb this.
"We suffer from this work and our bodies hurt," she says. "You should bring us a millet machine."

I was a little taken aback at being asked for something so quickly, but I've chalked it up to a combination of cultural differences (this is a culture of asking for favors, after all), and the possibility that she didn't want to miss the opportunity to ask the white lady for something that would be useful while I was still here. It is pretty novel to have an American come sit in your village for two years, after all, so I wouldn't be surprised if she doubted it.

Dozens of women have approached me separately over the intervening four months to ask about a millet grinder. I finally held a meeting to see if it was what they wanted the most: more than another well, more than a sign pointing the way to Tamtala, more than cold-season work for the men. Indeed, the millet grinder won out. While cold-season work for the men is next on my list and is one of the projects I'm researching this week, I'm committed to this grinder. I held a women's meeting in Tamtala on Tuesday saying that I was writing the proposal and asking for input, and I was met with applause. Applause! My goodness.

It's no wonder a millet grinder is seen as the solution to every woman's problems: pounding millet is actually often inefficient, taking more energy than is replaced by the resulting meal. Women who are days away from giving birth continue to do it, girls as young as seven and eight are kept home from school to help, sick children don't get taken to the doctor because the rest of the family needs to eat that night. A woman's time and energy are at a premium, and a grinder could save some of both.

Hence, the proposal-writing. Stay tuned to this blog for updates and information about how you can donate to the project. How exciting!

What with all my millet-grinder research, I've spent a bit of time pounding millet myself. This has resulted in a marked increase in my arm muscles' endurance. I can now not only pound millet, but I can put my full-to-the-brim bucket of water on my head alone instead of having some tiny wiry girl help me do it. Phew (and it only took six months)!

All the pounding leads to cooking, of course, and I've gotten to taste all variety of sauces available in the village. At first I was a little worried that my PCV friends were all eating with their villagers while mine remained a little wary of the fact that I didn't eat meat - which evidently meant I didn't eat anything. But after tasting the sauce and being sure to comment favorably on it, I've been the grateful recipient of invitations to lunch and occasional delivered plastic bowls with 'hawru' (generic term for pounded starch) and sauce made with squash, pounded dried okra, baobab leaves, and/or canned tomato paste, always with some salt and spices for added deliciousness. I was so happy to finally get to eat in the village. I felt like I'd really made a cultural breakthrough.

And then I got giardia.