End of February Cont.

I welcome myself back into your lives to bring everybody up to date in my life.

I left off just before IST which stands for Peace Corp’s In-Service Training. The three week technical training, once over, clears us to apply for funding and gives us the skills we need to initiate and follow through with projects in village. The first few sessions were spent doing “Experience Sharing”...aka talk about our villages and experiences so far. To be honest, those discussions often turned into gripe-sessions, but I defend myself and everybody else by pointing out that the ability to share among fellow Americans was incredibly cathartic. Once the “You would not believe me if I told you…” stories and flip-out sessions were over, we were able to get down to business and learn from each other’s situations and move forward into the technical sessions. The Bureau did a fairly good job scheduling our classes, my favorite of which included: Nick’s Small Business Group session, Zarma vocabulary and hands-on demonstration for making mud cook stoves, Introductory Haussa language lessons, working with Boy/Girl Scouts in Niger, Project Design and Management, proposal writing and funding for projects, PEST MANAGEMENT IN NIGER, learning about the Education volunteer’s classes and teaching them about our Community Development knowledge, how to use visual aids with Nigerien audiences, a gardening demonstration and a two-day conference with each volunteer’s Nigerien counterpart.

After classes we always had a group playing volleyball, there was a very nice paved road down in town on which to jog or bike in the morning and evenings, and plenty of laptops to watch movies, have dance parties, and share photos. Every person in my stage is so wonderful! I could never have believed that 22 people could get along so well but while not everyone is absolute BFF, everybody gets along and genuinely enjoys each other’s company. No drama, no fighting, just tons of fun! Three weeks of bonding over classes, Hamdallaye food, and weekends in Niamey for partying (:-P) and group dinners + Team Dosso sponsored Sunday Brunch…life in Peace Corps Niger can be so good sometimes ;-)

One thing you will have to understand and perhaps get used to reading my updates is that we here in Peace Corps Niger, and particularly my group of friends, talk about food a lot. We talk about it, dream about it, and make good food at every opportunity. Consequently group dinners and breakfasts are frequent events. One weekend in Niamey during training team Zinder busted out with veggie stew over rice, and our final weekend together team Dosso (my team) whipped up Sunday brunch for all 22 people. Scrambled eggs and over-easy, spicy and non-spicy batches of home fries with ketchup on the side, southern biscuits and pepper gravy, loaded fruit salad, cinnamon rolls with walnuts and real homemade icing, and Mimosas. We were filled to bursting and then some for less than 1,000 CFA per person for food and a little extra if you had the Mimosas. Real food is heavenly!

The past few weeks coming off of IST have been eventful. Trying to strike while the iron was hot, I was able to organize the first meeting for my largest project…a metal fence to create a permanent gardening space for the Women’s Groups of my village. The meeting included: the government representative of my commune and one neighboring commune, my Mayor, Vice Mayor, Community Development Agent, Agricultural Agent, representative from the Chief of Canton (traditional collection of villages), and the traditional Chief of my town. We discussed the land that will be enclosed and the organization that will be needed of my town’s over 30 women’s groups in order to make this project work, and be sustainable…guess whose job it will be to organize the women into one over-arching Union? Yeah…I’ll be busy.

Another project that I will be starting soon is the re-animation of my town’s public library. My librarian and I will be meeting with the Library’s committee to propose a series of programs involving primary school students. I want to work with the schools to create fieldtrips during the school day that energize students and acquaint the younger kids with the library and all that it contains. I will even see how story time works out!

Above and beyond work I was back in village just in time to realize that after months of speculation, my cat Kaydiya was in fact very pregnant. I came back and she was a tank! It was so cool watching the babies shuffle around in her belly and fun speculating what kind of mother my scatterbrained child would be. My villagers were excited when I told them she was pregnant and this past Thursday her time came! I skipped work that day and like a true mother stayed by my kitty’s side while she gave birth to three very small, very adorable babies. That day I also received a site visit from one of Peace Corps’s Doctors. Walter, transporting my friend Emily on his way back to Dosso, stopped in to see how hygienic my living conditions are, and was very pleasantly surprised. If I do say so myself, my house and yard are very well taken care of and I have finally reached the “homey” stage. The only thing missing now is some greenery, and hopefully I’ll be able to jerry-rig some good gardens this coming rainy season.

While Walter and I conducted our interview under my shade hangar, I spotted the first snake I’ve ever had slithering along my fence. Walter managed to kill it by throwing large rocks at its head, and after Emily and I took pictures, he stuffed the snake in an old olive oil bottle of mine and sealed it up for the journey back to Niamey. Continuing our interview after the action, I noticed that the snake was continuing to move! This was no mere muscle spasm….Walter’s snake with a crushed head and we thought a broken neck was actually still alive and coiling around and around the bottle! Thoroughly horrified, Walter, Emily and I watched this poor creature suffocate to death, earning the title of “Rachel’s Twice-Killed Snake”.

After all of this, we come to this weekend and the end of my update. I bush-taxied into Dosso in order to pick up my new bike (sorely needed and much awaited) and ended up staying these past few nights due to the full and uncomfortable manifestation of a case of Bacteria. To all, please enjoy your relatively germ-free existence in America…it’s not fun eyeing your food wondering if three days from now it will turn on you! As our highs have been between 100-105 degrees and climbing I also hope you enjoy your cool spring weather! I now leave you to return to the rest of your day and I hope that all is well!