Post

It has been a little more than six days since my arrival at post but things have changed so much in that short time. I was installed third out of four people scheduled to be installed that fateful Thursday. After hours of protocol, meeting regional and departmental level government figures, gendarme captains and heads of education we arrived at my new home at 7pm. We unloaded everything off of the snorkel-equipped land cruiser and examined my new house. It is humongous. Five rooms and a space for washing as well. All the rooms have 12 or 13ft ceilings, the walls are made of concrete and the roof is sturdy tin. Instantly I began imagining the myriad of ways I might furnish and equip my new house. An oscillating fan maybe, a couch of sorts, some tapestries maybe? But what to do with all the rooms? One, a kitchen, another a bedroom, the others well maybe a relaxation room and a lounge? So many possibilities.

I still have no couch, or fan, or stove, or gas tank, but I have a bed so that's good, and a mosquito net. The lack of stove means that I have been eating food brought to me by my neighbor and host-country supervisor at the Mairie's office, Halidou. I will assure all of my fellow Hospitality majors that the level of service and hospitality here in Niger exceeds anything I have ever experienced. The first day, Halidou and I went to the market and he bought me fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, kuli kuli (peanut butter w/o the oil, like hard biscuits), and bananas! I tell him I love happels, too. But we found none. That night he brought me scrambled eggs ($$$) with lots of peppers and tomatoes mixed in. I was in heaven! Long story short, I was forced to get over my discomfort at all the money he was spending money my food because every day he brought me something better than the day before. And he would NOT accept any money, only small gifts of food. Such is the cultulre here.

Then, last night he shows up at my door with a bag full of apples and guavas!!! First I thought they were like little pears but no, delicious guavas. I learned about how to eat guavas by trial and error, eating the whole thing and chewing the extra hard seeds, then asking whether I should peel it, or de-seed it, then finding out that eating the whole thing was the way to go.

So my first dilemma was, why do I leave my house if I have all this delicious food brought to me? The answer is obvious but has unforseeably wild consequences. I must go out, get to know the ville, starting with the people. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the first days were an exaggerated caricature of what every day will be like after the villagers get used to seeing me walking around. They say volunteers often experience the 'fishbowl effect', everyone looking at you, inspecting you, admiring you, (not to mention overfeeding you) but here it is more like the 'petting zoo effect.' I shook more hands in my first three days at site than I had in all my years at college. Some of these are long 60 second handshakes, which take a lot of forced relaxation. I realized quickly that the market area, which straddles the road that goes from Niamey all the way across the country to Maradi, Zinder, and Diffa, is the most overwhelming place I can go. Unfortunately, it is where all the social circles mesh and interact, mixing and combining, losing key players then dispersing, re-forming new circles around people and places of intrigue and interest. Needless to say, I attract a fair share of attention as the only identifiable foreignor out of 50,000 or so Nigeriens in the area. Is he french? What's in his backpack? What about that shiny metallic water bottle, maybe he'll give it to me. They're always surprised when I tell them I'll be in my ville for two years. They are used to white foreignors coming for a few days, asking questions, doing some work and leaving. I learned by osmosis that the backpack makes me look like a tourist or a traveller, which I am no longer. So I have decided to leave the books at home when I'm out to see friends.

There is a certain psychology of sitting which is for some Westerners very hard to understand. In villages all over the world people sit and enjoy each other's presence and experience, together, the passage of time.