Niger

Niger
Millet Fields in Rainy Season

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Library

Library:

Excerpt from “The Glass Bead Game” (Das Glasperlenspiel), by Herman Hesse

“Sometimes he felt capable of any achievements. At other times he might forget everything and daydream with a new softness and surrender, listen to the wind and rain, gaze into the chalice of a flower or the moving waters of a river, understanding nothing, divining everything, lost in sympathy, curiosity, the craving to comprehend, carried away from his own self toward another, toward the world, toward the mystery and sacrament, the at once painful and lovely disporting of the world of appearances.”

Can you imagine being presented with this passage and only understanding every third or fourth word? My abounding love for learning, books, and literature is steering my aspirations, the goals of my service, toward the creation of a public library. I have not yet reached the six month mark and have not, therefore, participated in the famed In-Service Training (IST) which will provide me with the basic knowledge and courage to start a real project. At this point I couldn’t get started even if I was overly anxious enough to want to. The training will be mostly centered on funding sources available to volunteers. Unfortunately, books are very expensive. But, I have opened my eyes to start searching for the future librarian for the Public Library and Community Center of K___ M________. (Edited for security)

Other volunteers have succeeded in the creation of a library but stories, myths, and warnings are circulated about wonderful libraries without librarians, without the money to pay them, or without continued interest from the community. It is very anti-PC of me to say this, but having a library without patrons still seems better to me than having no library at all. I grew up with a library always available (not that I spent ALL my time there) and I have grown to love stepping into the atmosphere of silent contemplation only a library can offer. It’s almost as if the building itself is thinking…deeply thinking. It’s like a living organism with one organ dwelling hopelessly on romance and love, another organ totally rational and valuing only pure facts and figures, and yet another devoted to distant pasts and forgotten languages and cultures. To stumble around a library is to stumble around the world, when your checkbook can’t quite provide the means to do so in real life. I just can’t imagine what my life, especially the last five years of my life, would have been like if libraries didn’t exist. So, you, faithful blog readers, will clearly be hearing more about libraries from me.

Today was bittersweet; as is every day to some extent, especially in the Peace Corps. I spoke to my favorite high school teacher and he informed me that he no longer works at the CEG, he has been reassigned to a different village. For many volunteers, myself included, this is a constant surprise and disappointment. People from schools and mayor’s offices will appear one day, brighten your life indescribably, and disappear the next. You think you find someone who will be a key to your happiness and possibly someone who will provide help with projects and moments later they are moved to some random location, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away. They have little to no say, of course, because they are in need of the job and saying no to a new assignment means you’re broke! I value flexibility and I try to embody it literally and figuratively, but my God, it sometimes seems there is no rhyme or reason to the process. En tous cas, I wish my friends wouldn’t be taken from me with such stunning frequency.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Southwest Potatoes

So I peel the potatoes and cut them meticulously into uniformly random pieces, about the size of a quarter and as thick as three nickels, never four. All the while I can already taste the finished product. Usually, as is the case with human neurology as well as many other animals, more pleasure is had preparing and anticipating the reward than when actually or receiving it. But in retrospect, tasting the southwest seasoning doused liberally on these potato bits, fried golden brown, with precious olive oil, may have been the moment of purest pleasure all day long. There’s something about southwest seasoning that sets me right. I couldn’t help singing to myself as I flipped up the frying pan, sending the potatoes into the air and letting them fall back into the pan. The sound of the sizzling, the silence of the potatoes in the air, and then the sizzling again. The kitchen is a place of mediation, of the yoga of cooking. Rarely, while preparing food, am I somewhere else mentally. Each cut, each potato peeled keeps me right here in the kitchen, right now, totally in the moment. Later, when eating the food my mind begins to ramble. In Hausa there’s a word for things that come into your mind, or in a Hausa’s terminology are brought into your mind, while you are eating. Santi is that word. If you bring up something random, or even not so random, while eating a Hausa will tell you that you did santi. I’m starting to demystify this concept for myself (as Westerners often do) while writing this entry. Now, I think about those ideas coming to me as me leaving the now moment in which, while cooking the food I was so absorbed – skittering off into the infinite array of memories and connections after having been so present in the kitchen. But now I will re-mystify because this idea of santi, if said by a Nigerien man, who never cook the food themselves, can’t be explained by my justification above. I suppose I’ll have to accept the mystery and destiny of santi. And back to Southwest Potatoes. I hope potatoes come into my life now as GI disorders did during my first three months. For the last 18 months before coming to Niger I avoided starchy vegetables like potatoes like the plague. I indeed thought it a crime to call them vegetables at all! Now here I am, asking Allah to bring me more.

Tabaski

So as the story goes (and correct me if I’m wrong): God musters up the courage to speak and s/he’s all like “Yo Abraham, what you’re gunna have to do is kill your son to prove your love for me.” Then Abraham is all like, “Aight God, you’re pretty stellar, if I do say so myself, so I’ll do it.” Abraham is about to do the deed when, in a stunning anti-climax, God decides that he should just kill a sheep instead.
The rest is his-tory. This morning a huge amount of men, women, and children went to the largest mosque in town, one that is used only twice a year for Tabaski and Ramadan, for a special 9am prayer. The sheep stayed home and surely sensed the change of atmosphere, something was brewing out there, they could feel it. After the prayer everyone returned home in an anxious trot, mentally prepared for the sheepicide. And so it was that today, hundreds of bah-ing sheep and maa-ing goats had their lives ended in tribute to Abraham’s fealty, and to the love of God. The scene was so gory and bloody that it seemed to me to be out of a movie. Pools of brilliant red blood in the 10am sunlight. “Jini ya yi yawa,” said a little girl – too much blood. Yeah, I said in English, yeah.
Within the next few hours certain households started burning huge piles of wood surrounded by as many as ten or twelve carcasses. They would be slow roasted and basted in the animal’s own body fat, but not eaten until the next morning, as is the tradition. Instead, the first day of the fête families feast on the organs only. As they day progressed there were many events worthy of recounting but they were more like non-events, a sort of daydream. I went to my neighbor’s house and whether it was planned this way or not I arrived at the exact time that they were ready to eat – but this was no normal meal. There was ice water. There was couscous and a sauce unparalleled by anything I have ever tasted in Niger. His wife, whose name I still can’t pronounce, is full of mystical powers. She is something like a sorceress when she begins to brew these unspeakably delicious stews, of which she will never tell me the full list of ingredients. The sauce was full of melt-in-your-mouth onions, tomatoes, and peppers poured over perfectly cooked guinea fowl and chicken. My first sip of cold water put me into a trance and I departed this sweet world for a brief moment.
I started to walk around and made it 200 ft. before I sat down to drink some tea with some people I’ve never met. There was a guy named Jos, dressed super-fly and a red car (with air-conditioning he assured me) was parked nearby. Apparently he is some sort of village celebrity back from Cotonou where he works selling motorcycles and cars. People were flocking to him having heard that he was back in town and I was along for the ride. I stayed for almost three hours talking to him about Niger, being a bachelor, business, and the U.S. After a while I realized I should visit more people so I made my way to the road and sat down with some friends where I often have profitable conversations. BBC Nigeria was on and I tried to understand as much as possible. The problem with understanding a discourse or lecture in a new language is the moment the speaker makes the switch to pronouns and ceases to mention the people, places, or processes that are the basis of the discussion. If you happened to have missed any one of these things you are hopelessly lost. Only rarely do I catch all the details.
The two o’clock prayer rolled around and when everyone went to the mosque I went to the tasha, where all the personal vehicles which constitute Nigerien public transport pass through. To my surprise, there were people engaged in all sorts of card games and gambling. I guess I thought, or assumed, that a culture that prohibits alcohol and concubinage would also prohibit gambling. I played some foosball (yes even in Niger, except no beer to go with it) and despite my partner being the best player in the tasha, I lost the game for us in a miserable display of ham-fistedness. Embarrassed, but smiling, I walked home ready to relax but I was called into a concession, it was the home of Baragé, a man who started the École Privé here in town. Also there was the co-founder of the school, ex-vice-mayor, founder of the Centre de Developpement Communautaire, and village badass, Moumouni. This is where I learned the most about the traditions of the fête. We laughed a lot, sat on mats, it was quite wonderful.
Soon thereafter, Moumouni asked me if I wanted to take a trip to Mai Kalgo, a nearby village. Sure, I said. When do you want to go? He asked. Whenever you want, I said. How about tomorrow and we’ll come back Saturday? …Ok, yeah, sure. I said, running through all the possible snags in this plan. I have learned to keep my word much more than in the U.S. because you’ll get some serious beef from people even for small promises that you don’t keep. I was not sure what to expect of the visit or the village but he assured me that he has a house and family there and it will be fun. See entry, Mai Kalgo for details on this trip.
After an hour or so, the sun was about 45 minutes from setting so I headed towards my house. Halidou, my neighbor, called me in from the street and with a slight reluctance I entered. “You got here just when the organs are ready to eat.” He says calmly. At this point I’m just a molecule of water flowing in the River Tabaski, ready to go anywhere and unable to change my destiny. Destiny then led me to eat some intestines, then they brought the liver which, delicious and meaty, I devoured. Then came the heart, and I recalled the sheep whose head I had rubbed just that morning, and as I ate his heart, sautéed in a frying pan of his own body fat, I felt something of the sheep’s life force, and I rejoiced. Halidou came over with a bag full of dates. “Eat these and you won’t have diarrhea.” I asked him if even Nigeriens get diarrhea and he said, Yes of course. I foresaw the future, dates would do me no good but I ate them anyway. The question remains as to whether it is the bacteria from the meat that causes the diarrhea or the sheer quantity of easily digestible meat relative to the other foods eaten during the day.
I went home after a vigorous hand washing and took an open air shower in the twilight. All the mud walls around my house were a brilliant orangish red, and I felt overwhelmed by appreciation for the pastel orange and purple clouds and the way they augmented the ethereal twilight.