Adaptation is an amazing natural phenomenon. I run around in 40 plus Celsius shade and forget to think about how incredibly hot that is until someone asks "et la chaleur?" (hows the heat?)
I mean of course its hot, but I'm in Niger and that’s normal. My body has adjusted. I don’t sweat the way I did on arrival. Well, it was also hotter then. I actually prefer to wear long cotton sleeves if I can because then if I'm in the sun, it's not blazing directly on my skin.
The other week, we had a big rain storm blow through and with it went perhaps 10 degrees of heat. The next day when the air was fresh, I worked in a longsleeved collared shirt that is 70% polyester and a rayon skirt. Unbelieveable.
Harvest
The "recolte" or the harvest is gathering momentum. Donkey carts leave town each morning with laborers of all ages bound for the surrounding fields. Each family has their plot that has been passed down by family lineage, so like our properties, they know very well the boundaries that mark their fields. Huge sacks bulge with the grains winnowed from their cane like stalks and excess is sold to the government stock warehouse. This is sold to those who don’t have fields. In a big family or if you are orphaned, not everyone gets a "champ" (field) handed down to them and they must make a living another way or rent a field from a friend or pay someone to herd a flock of goats for you and spend your days driving vehicles for NGO's (like my driver).
Friday's market was obviously swollen with the harvest in progress. Almost exclusively sorghum and millet. Other veggies are potatoes, yams and "traditional potatoes" which are hearty and a satisfying sweet. Melon types are also grown here, like summer squash, watermelon, cucumbers. I think the tomatoes come from Nigeria. Beans are the other local crop and are dried and stored like the grains in beehive shaped buildings with a pointy thatched roof. Each family has one to store their winter food safely from the birds.
P.S. You might be surprised how much the fields here resemble the fields of drying corn at home. Here they harvest the grains off the top, and the stalks are made into fences and buildings and roof covers, to replace the decrepit ones from the previous year's harvest.
Friday's market was obviously swollen with the harvest in progress. Almost exclusively sorghum and millet. Other veggies are potatoes, yams and "traditional potatoes" which are hearty and a satisfying sweet. Melon types are also grown here, like summer squash, watermelon, cucumbers. I think the tomatoes come from Nigeria. Beans are the other local crop and are dried and stored like the grains in beehive shaped buildings with a pointy thatched roof. Each family has one to store their winter food safely from the birds.
P.S. You might be surprised how much the fields here resemble the fields of drying corn at home. Here they harvest the grains off the top, and the stalks are made into fences and buildings and roof covers, to replace the decrepit ones from the previous year's harvest.
Regular People
You know what I like about the world? Everyone who lives on this big ball is just regular. That's why I love travelling to new places…to find out the same thing. It's a kind of personal research project I've had over the years, a longitudinal study.
Preliminary findings show that there's a handful of personality types that can be found the world over, but dressed in a myriad of colours, mindsets, and families. It’s a recipe for infinite and dynamic flavour!
People here are just regular, like you are, like me. Not to say that I don’t notice the skin colour differences (because I stick out), but often, if people didn’t notice me for my skin color, I could forget about it and I often do, kind of like the heat, until someone reminds me.
People here remind me of people I've worked with, grown up with, been neighbors with, people I have respected and wanted to get to know, people who annoy me, people who have an attitude about everything, people who are generous, people who try to keep things covered up, people who are whipping smart, other people with really simple processing, people who love where they live and people who have dreams of change.
One of the regular people that I've come to like is my driver. He is one of those great locals who knows the lay of the land and all the secrets of the town, and who has a few of his own. He is one of those dependable workers who will not assume what is not his responsibility, but will take reliable care of what is his work to do. He's given me some good advice in that regard. He's around the age of my oldest sister and he has a wife and three young daughters. I ply him with any curiosity that comes to my mind as we drive to and from the rural health centers. I have learned so much about how things work here, from him.
Over the hours, he has patiently adjusted to figuring out what I'm trying to ask or tell; that has served us well when I needed an assistant for delivering an already deceased premature baby in the back of the vehicle.
On days that other team members go to my two clinics, I let them sit up front, to give his ears a break from my broken French :)
Preliminary findings show that there's a handful of personality types that can be found the world over, but dressed in a myriad of colours, mindsets, and families. It’s a recipe for infinite and dynamic flavour!
People here are just regular, like you are, like me. Not to say that I don’t notice the skin colour differences (because I stick out), but often, if people didn’t notice me for my skin color, I could forget about it and I often do, kind of like the heat, until someone reminds me.
People here remind me of people I've worked with, grown up with, been neighbors with, people I have respected and wanted to get to know, people who annoy me, people who have an attitude about everything, people who are generous, people who try to keep things covered up, people who are whipping smart, other people with really simple processing, people who love where they live and people who have dreams of change.
One of the regular people that I've come to like is my driver. He is one of those great locals who knows the lay of the land and all the secrets of the town, and who has a few of his own. He is one of those dependable workers who will not assume what is not his responsibility, but will take reliable care of what is his work to do. He's given me some good advice in that regard. He's around the age of my oldest sister and he has a wife and three young daughters. I ply him with any curiosity that comes to my mind as we drive to and from the rural health centers. I have learned so much about how things work here, from him.
Over the hours, he has patiently adjusted to figuring out what I'm trying to ask or tell; that has served us well when I needed an assistant for delivering an already deceased premature baby in the back of the vehicle.
On days that other team members go to my two clinics, I let them sit up front, to give his ears a break from my broken French :)
Rejuvination (addendum to Team Life)
Birthdays are celebrated perhaps with a cake or special meal or a movie. Farewells may include an invitation to the many national staff here in town, a meal of couscous and meat sauce and sodas and music.
I have been thankful to find friends on the team. Eventually there is a way to connect in some way with each one, but there are also some other young women who like to do the same things I do, like play guitar, go for a picnic, visit neighbours, hang out at the tailor shop, do Taibo in the morning, drink tea with the guardians who work at the house, make popcorn, play scrabble in French!
Another diversion is that my friend from Holland and I started a weekly English class for our colleagues who want to learn English. I'm not sure what I'm thinking, that I can teach my own language using a languge I speak not very well. But its an excuse to enjoy people and have a creative project to work on.
(Hmmm..I guess I'm still me, all the way over here in Niger :)
I have been thankful to find friends on the team. Eventually there is a way to connect in some way with each one, but there are also some other young women who like to do the same things I do, like play guitar, go for a picnic, visit neighbours, hang out at the tailor shop, do Taibo in the morning, drink tea with the guardians who work at the house, make popcorn, play scrabble in French!
Another diversion is that my friend from Holland and I started a weekly English class for our colleagues who want to learn English. I'm not sure what I'm thinking, that I can teach my own language using a languge I speak not very well. But its an excuse to enjoy people and have a creative project to work on.
(Hmmm..I guess I'm still me, all the way over here in Niger :)
Team Life
It's been good to be on a team again. This project is a big one, and may not be typical, but enjoyable in many ways. Technically the international staff (like me) is about 15, but in my 5 weeks here we have seen a lot of transition. Three staff finished their term here, two went on vacation, one got sick and is recovering at home, and another got sent to an outlying town where we are seeing literally over half a thousand clients each day and there was a need to open an intensive care unit there for the sickest malnourished children. Normally they are referred here to our town, but that is over 100 Km by rough road and it was not feasible for many families. So that has made our team feel suddenly small and gives chances to connect with randomly assorted combinations of the group.
We each have our own rooms among three houses, two on one property. The main area is where two meals a day are cooked for us and our stock of food and drinks are. There's a TV here, which is annoying, but enjoyed by some. The front porch is a comfortable hang out place, usually in the relative dark, to avoid too many bugs. Most people eat at 1pm for lunch and they make a plate for those of us who are out at the health centers to eat when we get back in town. Supper is then at 8pm and usually shared by most everyone.
There are dynamics that change and ebb as people come and go. In general, the new blood is always good. We also frequently have visitors from the coordination team or other consultants who come to the project for several days.
All in all, its pretty tranquil and easy to get along. One can participate in the team life or recourse to one's room or go out and find friends in the neighbourhood.
In the milieu of our work, it's a positive sense of teamwork despite our differences and inequalities and languages.
We each have our own rooms among three houses, two on one property. The main area is where two meals a day are cooked for us and our stock of food and drinks are. There's a TV here, which is annoying, but enjoyed by some. The front porch is a comfortable hang out place, usually in the relative dark, to avoid too many bugs. Most people eat at 1pm for lunch and they make a plate for those of us who are out at the health centers to eat when we get back in town. Supper is then at 8pm and usually shared by most everyone.
There are dynamics that change and ebb as people come and go. In general, the new blood is always good. We also frequently have visitors from the coordination team or other consultants who come to the project for several days.
All in all, its pretty tranquil and easy to get along. One can participate in the team life or recourse to one's room or go out and find friends in the neighbourhood.
In the milieu of our work, it's a positive sense of teamwork despite our differences and inequalities and languages.
Market Day
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.
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.
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