Practice

I don't mean to be dramatic, but...

My worst fear since before I arrived in Niger came true. My grandma died while I was here. I found out that Thursday alone, in a tree, with my dad on the other end of the phone watching the slow orange sunrise in Chicago, and me with no one else to cry to in English for hours.

It was the worst afternoon I've ever had. As I hurried to regain my composure and tell my chief as soon as possible - I had to leave, I had to leave NOW, someone get me out of here RIGHT NOW, help, oh help, oh my poor mother, her mother, someone help me figure out what to do with all of this crap in my house, just take it, I don't want it, what am I doing dealing with all of this stuff anyway, I need to get to Niamey RIGHT NOW and get a flight home TODAY, please, thanks, a donkey cart would be great, thanks Djibo, you've always been a great friend. No, not going quite yet, but please get it ready, thank you. No, I can't go and come back. Peace Corps will pay for me to fly home. I can't pay for it. When I get a big person job in Amerika I can come back, but it will take a long time. I'm so sorry. Leaving like this is not sweet. No, it is not sweet.

Amirou sent for Maimouna to come over and closed my house off from visitors, knowing the whole village would come to wail as I shoved my things into my backpack to bring to the city, or into one of two trunks - one to try to ship home later, one to leave for my replacement. Maimouna came and sat on the floor, staring and saying nothing. I told her to take whatever she wanted. She didn't move. I babbled and cried and reminded the two of them, and Ousemane and Djibo, that anasaras cry sometimes, it doesn't mean we're crazy, but please don't let anyone else see me cry. Please don't tell them yet, I'm not ready to leave yet. A few more minutes. I'm not ready. Ugh, all this stuff!

Please, have the moringa committee meeting without me. Oh no, we didn't talk about the food for the tech trip all the trainees are going on in two weeks. Sorry, I can't. This pile is for Djamila. This is to be split between my women friends in the village. Ousemane, write your new number, and Amirou, yours too. I'll call you. I won't forget Zarma. Nadia and I will practice. These pictures aren't even mine - take them. The food - Maimouna, take what you want. Oh that one, well, you just open it here add some hot water and wait a few minutes and then you can eat it. Anasaras bring it when they go camping. That's when you pretend you live outside. Yes. Take what you want to your house - you know who my friends are - give them the rest. Be fair. Yes, of course, the stool, I know we've fixed yours twice and it still always falls. No, the stove and the water filter have to go back to Peace Corps. All this stuff here. They'll come pick them up when they bring the new person, or maybe when all the trainees come - can you guys show them around if I'm not here? Come on, please? Thanks. I know you can. Haoua will be here. And my cat? Kadi will take care of Kitten. She'll bring her a bit of howru, and she'll water the trees in my yard.

I barely said goodbye to everyone in my concession. It was a race to get to Niamey as soon as I was packed. My loyalties came into sharp focus as the rest of the world swam in my vision at odd angles. I climbed, shaking violently, onto the oxcart and thought about how Illou, Samira and Mardiya won't remember me. I should go see this old lady and that old lady, and Djamila and Mohammadou. No. I already missed seeing my grandma. I'm going NOW. I need to get to Niamey by 6, my dad's going to call to see how fast I can get home. They're waiting to have the burial for me. Yes, women in Amerika do that. We go.

We passed the school fast enough that the kids were blithely unaware of the circumstances and waved just as enthusiastically as they always do. The oxcart ride to the road whizzed by, with Amirou and Maimouna and I talking about cereal bank money, tech trip logistics and food, and what they shouldn't forget about how to treat my replacement. Before I knew it we were at the road, arranging ourselves under a tree for the excruciating wait for a bush taxi. We were desperate for one to come, and also for time to stop.

A very small wait produced a relatively comfortable van, and after terrible goodbyes with my brother and my best friend, I took a deep breath and re-explained to the wide-eyed group of Nigeriens in the car that sometimes anasaras cry, it doesn't mean we are crazy... It was a textbook bush taxi ride, including a detour into Sansane Haussa to pick up a guy and his cow, and me telling the guys on the roof of the van to arrange the cow so it won't pee on my backpack, because they won't let me into Amerika with cow poop on my bag. Frantic text messages with bureau staff and friends - some of whom just didn't seem to get it - made the rest of the ride pass quickly, and I got into a city taxi in Niamey in enough time for Haoua to call me and start crying, which made me cry again, at the prospect of never seeing each other again, because Allah only knows.

In the meantime (as I found out much later), after I left Tamtala, the entire village gathered in the chief's concession to do the alfatiyah for several hours. They prayed for the soul of "our" grandmother, that Allah would bring heaven to earth for her, that she would have a smooth transition, that Allah would bring patience to our family to relieve our suffering.

At the Niamey hostel, hugged well and handed a glass of wine by Drew and Kate, I got ahold of Chris, who was acting Country Director. He informed me that yes, there is a flight out Friday night, but that means Friday at 12:10am, not Friday-I-have-all-day-tomorrow-to-prepare. Friday 12:10am is in six hours.

Presently dad called and changed my plans: "Boo - of course we'll fly you home. We want you to be able to finish properly."

Oh. Meaning I CAN go and come. I DON'T have to join the 17 in my stage who've left early for one reason or another. I don't have to leave us with a weak 19 remaining in country. I didn't have to say goodbye forever to my village (I called & let them know - to everyone's relief and an audible sigh). But I DO have to get a ticket NOW. Kate and I run to the bureau to try the internet. No luck. Can't buy Air France from Niger within three days of the flight. I ask Issaka, the most helpful person in the world, to do his thing. He calls a friend at the airport: "Really, I'm sorry, the flight is so full," he reports. Oh crap. Dad calls. I have a reservation? A ticket? A reservation. Can it be? Pat, our admin person, happens to be in her office. I can take vacation days. Well, great. Issaka and Pat are on my list of people that need presents from Amerika when I come back. Issaka jumps in a car to take me to the airport, which allows me 10 minutes at the hostel to pack a bag. Needless to say, I pack nothing that will do me any good, and my baggage allowance is wasted. Issaka calls his wife on the way and I apologize to her in the background. He talks our way into the airport. I am checked in, Air France staff in the only air-conditioned room in the building, speaking not only proper French but English, thinking I'm crazy having had three people confirm my reservation on my behalf (unbeknownst to me) in the last half hour. I check in. I am safe. I am so lucky.

Breathing, for a moment, I realize I've had no water all day. At the darkened airport bar, Paul from Bolgatanga, who made it to his own home just in time to see his father die years ago, was doubtful that I would be able to drink the airport tap water. On the flight, Compaore ("like the president") from Burkina was on his way to Japan for a teacher training but had to stop for his visa in Paris. He'd worked as a language trainer for Peace Corps/Burkina. During my six-hour, 3-degrees-Celsius layover in Paris, I experienced my first full-length mirror in half a year (traumatizing me through my daze) and stared at all the white people going by, thinking I saw my dad. Wondering if I can still walk in heels like all the women clicking past me. On flight number two I watched "Forgetting Sara Marshall" and made lists of Niger work to follow up on, gifts to bring back, food to eat and people to call. I landed and didn't have to yell at anyone at customs. I was smellier than I ever have been, hugging my expanding family with a Boo Basket - it was, after all, Halloween.

I spent a week there in the States, close to my mother. Everyone back here asked "how was it?" - which is what I'm supposed to write about here - but why? It was terribly sad. It was a neverending wake followed by a funeral. I was furious that I was just hours away from having gotten to talk to her again (she'd been in the hospital for three days), but had no one to blame for that. It was lonely. It was painful to watch the six siblings have to deal with all the technical stuff one faces after a loved one's death. It was cool that so many of us wore pink to the funeral. I will never forget Shannon telling me the story about the sunrise, which made everything that much more okay. I got to go to Goodwill (Amerika's Dead Mans' Market) with Bridget, the chain's best customer. I got to meet Shannon's Ryan and talk African politics with him over Land Shark beers. Mom and I had two lovely dinners at Bridget and Ty's (one with Shannon too, and desserts she'd made as a new pastry chef). I got to feel out of place in the Well Spa at the Pfister, where Bridget works. I plowed through ten episodes of "Men In Trees" in the full-to-bursting living room of a house hardly resembling the one I'd left six months ago. I'm glad I got a glimpse into what I'll be walking into in a month. I'm glad our cousin Paul, the priest who gave the funeral sermon, was able to say at church that the entire family had made it together. Mostly, I'm glad I was there for my mom.

The silver lining of all of this, for the Catholics in and among us, is that Gramma is finally with her husband, who died on the 11th of November 21 years ago. I flew back into Niamey on that anniversary, and was lucky enough to get myself and my bottle of Kahlua, padded with two bags of marshmallows, back in without a problem. My two bags consisted of 90 pounds of food, having been emptied of the random junk I'd stuffed into them in my two hasty stages of packing the week before. Upon walking back into the oven that is my beloved host country, the chocolate in my backpack melted, I started sweating again... but I knew how to get a taxi. I was still genuinely charmed, like any naive first-time-visitor to the developing world, by the half-dressed kids kicking a crappy soccer ball through the red sand among the yawning, putrid gutters in Niamey.

After a day and a half of jet lag - up from 1am on the roof of the hostel, watching the bright bright moon edge across the sky and the stars swing round after it - I went to Tamtala for an hour or so with Haoua, scouting for Tech Trip and letting them all know that yeah, I'm back! Believe it! Um, can I have my blankets back please? Just for a couple of weeks? And my water bucket? Thanks guys. I'm okay without the rest. I was surprised they left my maps on the walls.

Then we headed to Hamdallaye, where those clean and shiny Americans I watched get off the plane in October are getting browner and sandier by the day. These guys are badass - community-based training from the very beginning, and most of them biking 14-22 kilometers at least twice a week in this heat (oh but the heat has decreased in the last two weeks! oh it is so very nice and cool! oh how I went to bed with wet hair and got a cold! oh how this morning I wore a sweatshirt until 10am!).

My first day with the trainees was site announcements - the day Peace Corps tells you which village they've chosen for you and the next two years of your life. The trainees had tons of questions - about their specific villages, about Niger in general. I realized how normal life here has become for me. I spent hundreds of CFA text messaging my stagemates across the country, most of whom are being replaced by people in this group and were anxious to know the fate of their villages. Obviously this was a big day for me, too, since I was there to see who would take my spot in Tamtala. I was happy for Tamtala. Their new guy's name is name is Ali (in Niger), he reminds me of my cousin Billy, and he'll do great.

Ali and 12 of his stagemates - all the environment-sector (NRM) volunteers - were lucky enough to see OUR village this week on Tech Trip, a whirlwind 36 hours in three villages where NRM trainees get to see real NRM projects in action. In addition to checking out the Moringa plantation, the healthy millet grinder, the under-construction cereal bank and the Gum Arabic plantation, and planting trees at the school, we spent the night in Tamtala after an evening of drumming and dancing. Though this is REALLY uncommon, the village pulled out the stops for the visitors. Maybe Americans think that every African dances to drums all the time, and we wanted to deliver that fantasy - I don't know. Regardless, the women hauled out the water tubs, calabashes and sticks only used for "karyan" at the end of Ramadan and at Tabaski, and everyone gathered near Ousemane's house to watch the spectacle. The trainees provided much of the entertainment to the villagers, and vice versa. Amirou's mom Leitchi (who lives in Tillaberi and is part of a singing group that has performed across Europe) was the headliner and sang a bit before the big dancing began. Old ladies shook their stuff, village conflicts that had recently been resolved were re-enacted in a kind of theater, and Ali, Tamtala's new American, made himself loved and famous by joining in much of the dancing, along with the rest of the trainees. Good job guys.

So I had a practice day for leaving my village. Practice for my last bush taxi ride (as if I needed that). Practice reentering American society. Practice going to a grocery store and not hyperventilating. Practice answering unanswerable questions about Niger. Practice using English to talk about all the work I've done here. It's all coming up for real in a month... wish me luck.