Michael Redman - Peace Corps/Letter 05 February 2006

Date: Sun , 5 Feb 2006
From: Michael Redman <redmanma (at) gmail (dot) com>
Subject: Michael in Niger 02/05/2006

How is everyone doing these days? Life is well? Are you enjoying the weather, wherever you are? With the recent spate of heat here, I'm getting worried that "cold season" (95 in the day, sometimes as low as 60 at night) is almost on its way out. But the health is still standing up quite well.

I feel like I've been busy, busy, busy for the last three months, but very little of that time has been spent in the village. One of the more fun things I got to do since the last email was head west to Senegal to visit my friend Molly, who's a PCV there, and we met up with Trevor & Maggie, two of our better friends from college who are presently teaching English in Japan. We had a lot of fun together, and I got to have many cold beers and tasty, gargantuan hamburgers. Plus, it's always nice to see how your friends are living. I was thinking that traveling in a foreign country would make me homesick for Niger, a place where the people are nice and - an added bonus - I can actually speak the language, but it was more hard to say goodbye to my friends again than it was exciting to come back. Though Nigeriens are, on the whole, very nice (much more so than the pushy Wolof men in Dakar).

After that, I went back to the village for the Tabaski feast, which is a bit like Christmas. It's the Muslim celebration that commemorates Abraham's sacrifice of the sheep, rather than his son, Isaac, so everyone kills a sheep or goat (or two or three, depending on one's means). My friend bought a goat for the two of us while I was on vacation (I had given him money beforehand), and I saw it on the day of the feast just moments before they slit its throat. I managed to be moderate in my consumption of the meat, but judging by the increased offensiveness of the odor on one of my well-traveled tracks on the way to my house (which doubles as a latrine for those living in adjacent family compounds), a few people over consumed. Just like a celebration should be done.

This coming year, I will be a "CC" (Cluster coordinator) for the Team Gotheye region, along with my friend Crystal. This normally involves nominal responsibility, but it's turning into more "work" and worry than sitting around in the village for a year has prepared me for. :) We had a training a few weeks ago, and we found out we will be getting five new PCVs in our region come March. That means pushing five villages to build or do upkeep on houses for volunteers, trying to explain in my still-halting Zarma what exactly Peace Corps is and does ("So, you mean, a white person is going to come and live in our village for two years? OK... Wait. Why?"). A lot of it is boring logistics stuff, but it's stuff that needs to be done if the new kids are to have a low-stress move-in to their villages (Windsong & Georgette [who left us in DEC :( ] did an admirable job for Crystal and I, and I want to do the same for the new kids).

The biggest and most exciting of the recent events I've experienced was my parents' visit. I had spent months getting excited for Senegal, and my parents' visit was more of a yet-to-be-tended-to afterthought. It snuck up on me, but I got really excited when I finally saw them in the airport terminal, already sweating from the heat :) We had a lot of fun, and it was almost completely stress-free. Most of the stress was from handling all the communication, but my parents were amazingly patient in not asking "What did he say? What does she want? How much is this?" every five seconds, which can be a bit nerve-wracking (as I've heard from other PCVs who've had their parents visit).

We spent a few days in Niamey, then a few more in Park W. T he park was nice, the highlight being (of course) that we saw not one, but TWO herds of elephants. That was something else. The food was excellent and excessive, and the accommodations were adequate and spacious (we were the only guests on the campground). After the Park was the visit to my village which, due to the tight schedule, was only a little more than a day (my village chief's half-brother graciously drove us out there, and only tried to scam $30 out of me). We took it easy, did a little bit of walking around, and visited some of my friends. My school teacher sent food over every meal, and even gave my parents a clay water jug, which they were disappointed to have to leave behind. We went to Gotheye, then on for a last day in Niamey - including a shopping spree in the Grande Marché - before they headed home. It was a whirlwind trip (they even made it to Barcelona for a few days; haven't heard it if they've made it back to America yet), and I was sad that they had to get back to the real world. I was glad to see them again, and invigorated by the fact that finally, someone back home has a vague idea of what my life is like here. I hope they tell everyone about it.

That about brings us up to date. I'm passing through Niamey on my way back to my village (I just spent a few days in a friend's village; a whole bunch of my friends that came to Niger two years ago are getting ready to leave, it will be sad to see them leave). I get to do a few of those informational, "what is Peace Corps?" meetings on TUE, then THU we (Windsong & I) are taking a field trip with some villagers to go see some more gum Arabic and some live-fencing, a.k.a. "tree" stuff. It should be... well, I hope it will be rewarding :)

Other than that, I hope you are well, and I want to thank all of you who sent me Christmas / birthday letters and packages. As soon as I possibly can, I'll try to send a letter out to you. It's awesome to hear news from home. You guys are doing pretty darn good in keeping in contact with me; keep it up!