Friday is market day. As the daylight rises (around 6am) so does the buzz and clatter of the „grande marchee“. Many vendors travel in the night before and set up their stalls with vegetables and bags of spices, dried fruits, woven mats (great for sleeping on!), chinese flipflops, packaged pasta, bolts of fabric, and slaughtered livestock. Fuel is poured by funnels into liter wine bottles and vended to motor travelers, tailors pump their treadles all day and good are exchanged for FCA's (the currency), most haggling done in Haoussa. Camels and donkeys are parked everwhere in and out of the shade. Children hawk fresh street food in basins on their heads while women drop batter into frying oil along the street.
Everyone sees more business on Fridays, including us health providers, although ours is the only free gig in town. I like the energy boost that market day brings to town.
Miracles
That´s what children are. It was my second day here and I needed to go somewhere besides the house and the Base office. So I wondered up around the corner of our house. I greeted a little girl who fell in stride with me. I realized we were walking toward her house. Around the corner, to my delight, I came upon a favorite play spot for the kids. A few boys with bikes were pumping the pedals down the slight incline and then doing stunts and wipe-outs in the sandy basin. A pair of smaller boys were pretending to be „voitures“ (cars) with empty bike tires they were rolling and the rest were watching from the side. My presence soon collected a posse of them and I just enjoyed their presence. I couldn´t think of any way to entertain them. Just being with them set the world back on its axis and made the mercy of the setting sun even more glorious.
They spoke very little French, mostly Haoussa, but we learned each others´ names. They passed mine around like a new item they'd discovered and were fingering.
I hope to find them there again.
Needless to say, I miss all my little nieces and nephew at home. To their parents who are reading this, please give them a squeeze from me.
They spoke very little French, mostly Haoussa, but we learned each others´ names. They passed mine around like a new item they'd discovered and were fingering.
I hope to find them there again.
Needless to say, I miss all my little nieces and nephew at home. To their parents who are reading this, please give them a squeeze from me.
Why Pee When You Can Sweat?
Temperature in the shade yesterday was 41 celsius. Today in the sun we watched it rise to 50.2 degrees celsius! We didn't wait for it to climb higher because we thought it might melt!
Needless to say, shade is a valuable and well-utilized comodity around here. Between the hours of 1 and 4pm there is very little movement.
I can tell though that I have adjusted to the level of heat because I can tell that it is cooler than it was the week that I arrived and the locals agree.
Needless to say, shade is a valuable and well-utilized comodity around here. Between the hours of 1 and 4pm there is very little movement.
I can tell though that I have adjusted to the level of heat because I can tell that it is cooler than it was the week that I arrived and the locals agree.
Desert-ed?
Right now, it is surprisingly green and there are quite a few trees, mostly spiny acacia trees. Currently as we drive to the health centers, there is pale green grass stretching away under the trees, and occasionally a large puddle oasis, but I´m told that in a month or two, it will be mostly sand and the lake\puddles will disapear. The real desert is many hours by rough road north of hear. Right here, we are truly in the Sahel.
Despite the hot dry conditions, I planted a garden. Okay, a small one, but seeds in the ground nonetheless. A vendor down the street actually gave me a handful of seeds that I don´t know what they are. I put them on a wet napkin one night to see if they germinated. Well! Funny that I should wonder- within 12 hours they had all broken their seed coat and pushed out a small sprout! And within 3 days in the sandy ground, they were standing an inch tall and green and sturdy with two leaves! They were miles ahead of my collard greens and savory, which were timidly showing green in this new environment.
I still don´t know what kind of plants they are, but i am eager to see because...they are all I have left. One bitter night, the grasshoppers came through and mowed down my baby garden despite the protection of a shade basket. However, they left the local seeds alone. I´m told that the plant, that I suspect it is, has a bitter leaf and is edible, but not very palatable.
On vera. We'll see. If nothing else, perhaps they will grow quickly enough to be a Christmas tree in December :)
Despite the hot dry conditions, I planted a garden. Okay, a small one, but seeds in the ground nonetheless. A vendor down the street actually gave me a handful of seeds that I don´t know what they are. I put them on a wet napkin one night to see if they germinated. Well! Funny that I should wonder- within 12 hours they had all broken their seed coat and pushed out a small sprout! And within 3 days in the sandy ground, they were standing an inch tall and green and sturdy with two leaves! They were miles ahead of my collard greens and savory, which were timidly showing green in this new environment.
I still don´t know what kind of plants they are, but i am eager to see because...they are all I have left. One bitter night, the grasshoppers came through and mowed down my baby garden despite the protection of a shade basket. However, they left the local seeds alone. I´m told that the plant, that I suspect it is, has a bitter leaf and is edible, but not very palatable.
On vera. We'll see. If nothing else, perhaps they will grow quickly enough to be a Christmas tree in December :)
Small Town Sahel
So I live in a small town. We have one main dusty drag through town that runs all the way to bigger cities multiple hours south and north of here. All the motorbikes buzz up and down this road, the grand market, the hospital, the artisan market, the mosque, the NGO´s, and lots of little entrepreneurs who sell fuel, or produce, grains, mechanics, phone products, street food, and tailors, lie along this route. There is much more to discover yet of course. Quite a few people live here and most of the expanse of Dakoro is residential. It spreads out in every direction from the main street.
We do have a post office here. There is one postal number for the town and then just add the name or where you work and that should do it. Mail leaves twice a week, so it´s not exactlz busy, in fact Ive never seen another soul there except the post man and his family. They live right there behind the post. They are some of my favorite people to visit. The kids are adorable and took me as a friend instantly the first time I dropped off a letter.
The lay of the land is not hilly, but undulating so that one can´t see all the way down main street. And don´t imagine any tall buildings because everything is one level including the hospital. Imagine mostly mud-brick walls with painted metal doors that lead into the dwelling space of people.
Many families of several generations live together on one big property with few enclosed buildings. Mud-brick walls divide living spaces of goats, people, kitchens, etc. It´s common that families consist of multiple mothers with one husband, so the numbers of brothers and sisters are usually at least in the teens. When they marry, they will likely find their own space within the same family housing and start their family there. Some who have the means find their own house.
So even though this is rural, the population numbers aren´t small. The outlying villages where I work have numbers like 52,000 and 46,000 and they are significantly smaller than Dakoro.
We do have a post office here. There is one postal number for the town and then just add the name or where you work and that should do it. Mail leaves twice a week, so it´s not exactlz busy, in fact Ive never seen another soul there except the post man and his family. They live right there behind the post. They are some of my favorite people to visit. The kids are adorable and took me as a friend instantly the first time I dropped off a letter.
The lay of the land is not hilly, but undulating so that one can´t see all the way down main street. And don´t imagine any tall buildings because everything is one level including the hospital. Imagine mostly mud-brick walls with painted metal doors that lead into the dwelling space of people.
Many families of several generations live together on one big property with few enclosed buildings. Mud-brick walls divide living spaces of goats, people, kitchens, etc. It´s common that families consist of multiple mothers with one husband, so the numbers of brothers and sisters are usually at least in the teens. When they marry, they will likely find their own space within the same family housing and start their family there. Some who have the means find their own house.
So even though this is rural, the population numbers aren´t small. The outlying villages where I work have numbers like 52,000 and 46,000 and they are significantly smaller than Dakoro.
The Hoppy Sound of Rain
Something I like about Niger is the common class of insects. I haven´t seen a mouse, rat, snake or worm to speak of (none of which I am particularly fond for their slithery-ness)...but what I have seen are primarily hoppy critters.
Here the grasshoppers migrate in droves! When they arrive, it´s more like a plague than anything else. The evenings when they are in town, you will be sorry for even daring to THINK of the word „lumiere“ (light) because they will maraud you in a blind frenzy. We pay steeply for even turning on a light and most often revert to sitting around in the tranquil dark, watching the blizzard of „crickets“ (as they call them here) flurrying above the light outside our gate.
Sitting inside a screened room with a light, it sounds like pattering rain, the interrupted flight pattern of grasshoppers meeting my screen. When I walk anywhere that they have settled, I feel like a celebrity with crowds of millions making way for my coming, scattering in every direction. Then in few days, the evenings are once again bug free since the gang of hoppers has moved on to another destination. „Crickets“ are food here, so you´ll find kids catching bags of them at the electric lights. But most people wait to cook the big ones that come in December. Those guys are the size of Jimmeny Cricket- a good 4 inches in length. Bon Appetit!
In general bugs are big here- so big that you cant really be caught off guard because you can see them coming. Beetles are half dollar sized, for example.
The other hoppy critters here are toads. They are everywhere at night. I think they´re cute, inspite of their squashy, intrusive selves. They just hop right on into anywhere thats open, like under my bedroom door...and then they´re stuck with me for the night- thummph! Thmmph! Thumph! Against the closed door that they just came under and now would like to hop back through. A scary sound for my first night here, but cute when I realized who it was.
I´d take hoppy over slithery if I have the choice.
Here the grasshoppers migrate in droves! When they arrive, it´s more like a plague than anything else. The evenings when they are in town, you will be sorry for even daring to THINK of the word „lumiere“ (light) because they will maraud you in a blind frenzy. We pay steeply for even turning on a light and most often revert to sitting around in the tranquil dark, watching the blizzard of „crickets“ (as they call them here) flurrying above the light outside our gate.
Sitting inside a screened room with a light, it sounds like pattering rain, the interrupted flight pattern of grasshoppers meeting my screen. When I walk anywhere that they have settled, I feel like a celebrity with crowds of millions making way for my coming, scattering in every direction. Then in few days, the evenings are once again bug free since the gang of hoppers has moved on to another destination. „Crickets“ are food here, so you´ll find kids catching bags of them at the electric lights. But most people wait to cook the big ones that come in December. Those guys are the size of Jimmeny Cricket- a good 4 inches in length. Bon Appetit!
In general bugs are big here- so big that you cant really be caught off guard because you can see them coming. Beetles are half dollar sized, for example.
The other hoppy critters here are toads. They are everywhere at night. I think they´re cute, inspite of their squashy, intrusive selves. They just hop right on into anywhere thats open, like under my bedroom door...and then they´re stuck with me for the night- thummph! Thmmph! Thumph! Against the closed door that they just came under and now would like to hop back through. A scary sound for my first night here, but cute when I realized who it was.
I´d take hoppy over slithery if I have the choice.
Sur La Route
I spend a lot of time on the road. My job takes me around a circuit of approximately 240 kilometers In the villages of Soly and Goula are found two health centers in the area surrounding our town. These are existing state-run health posts but, we additionally provide nutrition and basic pediatric care for children under 5 years and prenatal care in some of the centers. I serve as a supervisor for the staff in these two centers.
So imagine with me a landcruiser (Toyota of course) leaving town by the dusty main route. I am prepped for the day with water, the supplies that the CSI´s (health centers) have ordered, and an emergancy box, for whatever might come up along the way. To my left is my driver who knows the route like the back of his hand. He is well known all along the route which is a great advantage to our safe passage. In the back we may have several parents and children who have been discharged from the services we provide within the local hospital (nutrition, pedicatrics and maternity) and are returning to their homes. There may also be other teammates who work in health promotion or water and sanitation who may also be going to the CSI.
Each morning the fleet of vehicles and teams depart from the base here in Dakoro and fan out to our various centers. A large portion of the team also works here in town at the base, or the hospital, or the intensive care for malnurished children, or the supply chain and logistics. It´s an impressive operation.
Each CSI serves many surrounding tiny villages, so parents come from far by foot, by donkey or by camel. Just like most people in the world, parents bring their children for health care when they notice a problem. Here is is most commonly malaria, intestinal and lung infections, anemia. These illness are common, but much more deadly and serious in kids that have little nutritional reserve. So we treat them, of course for the illness, but enroll them in the weekly or bi-weekly nutritional and educational program. If a child is urgently sick, the vehicle we came in becomes an „ambulance“ to take them back to the medical services we have in Dakoro and I become the nurse who accompanies the transfer.
I unfortunately cannot communicate directly with most of the clients because I only (half) speak French and not their local languages. However, all our local staff in the centers speak both, so its no problem.
I make my rounds and attend to details and watch over how the care is given, what are the training needs of the staff, etc. There is much to learn and absorb. I hope I can get up to speed quickly enough to also contribute to the good of this project in 6 months. I really could´t ask for more patient teammates.
So imagine with me a landcruiser (Toyota of course) leaving town by the dusty main route. I am prepped for the day with water, the supplies that the CSI´s (health centers) have ordered, and an emergancy box, for whatever might come up along the way. To my left is my driver who knows the route like the back of his hand. He is well known all along the route which is a great advantage to our safe passage. In the back we may have several parents and children who have been discharged from the services we provide within the local hospital (nutrition, pedicatrics and maternity) and are returning to their homes. There may also be other teammates who work in health promotion or water and sanitation who may also be going to the CSI.
Each morning the fleet of vehicles and teams depart from the base here in Dakoro and fan out to our various centers. A large portion of the team also works here in town at the base, or the hospital, or the intensive care for malnurished children, or the supply chain and logistics. It´s an impressive operation.
Each CSI serves many surrounding tiny villages, so parents come from far by foot, by donkey or by camel. Just like most people in the world, parents bring their children for health care when they notice a problem. Here is is most commonly malaria, intestinal and lung infections, anemia. These illness are common, but much more deadly and serious in kids that have little nutritional reserve. So we treat them, of course for the illness, but enroll them in the weekly or bi-weekly nutritional and educational program. If a child is urgently sick, the vehicle we came in becomes an „ambulance“ to take them back to the medical services we have in Dakoro and I become the nurse who accompanies the transfer.
I unfortunately cannot communicate directly with most of the clients because I only (half) speak French and not their local languages. However, all our local staff in the centers speak both, so its no problem.
I make my rounds and attend to details and watch over how the care is given, what are the training needs of the staff, etc. There is much to learn and absorb. I hope I can get up to speed quickly enough to also contribute to the good of this project in 6 months. I really could´t ask for more patient teammates.
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