Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006
From: Michael Redman
Subject: Michael in Niger (Well Update #2) - 12/12/2006

Greetings again!

I am flashing through town again for a few hours (I head back out in the general direction of Gotheye tomorrow morning), but now I'm sitting at the Peace Corps office all by myself--and this time I was smart enough to grab my camera when I left the house this morning!  So, as I'm composing this, there are pictures being uploaded--check them out at http://picasaweb.google.com/redmanma/WellProject/

Not too much has happened with the well project since my last update.  Or rather, not much has changed.  People go out in the morning & dig (though sometimes they get a later start; there seems to be a bit less enthusiasm after the first round of digging--not because they don't want the wells, but because it's hard work!), then set down the shovels mid-afternoon.  The next day, the next neighborhood picks up where they left off.  The best news is that the first hole, after five days of digging, has reached water!  As we all said here, "Alhamdoulilahi!" - "Thanks be to God!"  That was SUN afternoon. Then on MON morning bright & early they woke me up and we measured out the 2nd hole (as you can tell from the pictures, this is pretty high tech--it involves tying a tailor's measuring tape around a stick & dragging that stick in the shape of a circle). T hey got--or wanted--no rest.

The actual cement work was supposed to start today, but, things being as they are here, it didn't happen.  I was partly upset with my village chief because he said people were going to go out & collect rocks to mix in the cement yesterday, which didn't happen.  However, when I saw that the rocks weren't where they were supposed to be when I went walking around last night, I also noticed that the well moulds hadn't come either (Issifi, the well mason, said he was going to send them over from the village a kilometer away, but that didn't happen)--so not having the rocks became a non-issue.  Anyway, I'm not too worried.  Everyone wants this work to happen, so it'll happen.

My village chief had a message for me to pass on to the "Amerik borey"--"American people."  Little idea does he have that I can sit down in front of this screen and actually pass it on on the same day.  He wants to thank any & all of you for your efforts, and he thanks you all "gumo, gumo, gumo, gumo!" (a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot! :) ).  He said he's very happy with all the assistance you're providing him & his village, and he said without it, he didn't know how the people of Safatane would make it, so thanks.  Then he repeated himself a few times (in case you didn't catch from the "gumo, gumo, gumo" thing, repetition is the way you emphasize things in Zarma).

I also ran into another woman as I was wandering about in the last few days, and she made the effort to stop me and say that the work we're doing "a ga boori" - "It's good."  Keep in mind that "a ga boori" is something to say to pretty much everything.  "Genghis Khan, you're walking in the village? A ga boori!"  "Genghis Khan, you're writing that Zarma word you didn't understand down in your book?  A ga boori."  "You're going off to have fun in Niamey for a few days while we're stuck out here?... A ga boori."  However, in the way she said it, slowly, making eye contact, I knew that she meant it in a real way--that what we were doing together was going to make a positive impact in her life.  I didn't think about it til later, but it's interactions like that that you join the Peace Corps for: to feel like you're making a positive difference in peoples' lives.

Anyway--thanks again to y'all, and enjoy the pictures!  I ought to be out in the Gotheye area more or less up til around Christmas-time, assuming nothing unexpected pops up.  Enjoy your wintertime, those of you who have one.

(And FYI, it can get relatively cold here: I recorded a low of 46.9* last FRI night--that's cold!)

- Michael

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Corps de la Paix
Gothèye, NIGER
West Africa
+227 96-53-88-30