Niger

Niger
Millet Fields in Rainy Season

Friday, February 4, 2011

The Transition Conference

The conference was filled with deep sighs, dramatic pauses form the orators, and sarcastic quips from all the usual suspects, myself included. Despite having four members of the Peace Corps Niger staff in Morocco with us, we nonetheless felt the presence and direction of the “transition team,” mostly composed of staff from D.C., to be overwhelming. I commend them for their efforts; they did a great job with a shitty situation. Tondi, Valerie (Country Director), Walter, and Jenelle were also going through a loss, and for this reason, Washington decided to put them in charge of only simple tasks, for fear of them getting emotional, I suppose.

Paperwork was filled out, medical sessions and interviews conducted, and summaries of our service written. All in all, major life decisions were given 72 hours to resolve themselves. The options were as follows: 1) close your PC Niger service, receiving most of the benefits of being an RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer), and call it quits, move on with your life, 2) close your PC Niger service, (PC pays your plane ticket home of course) and re-enroll, planning to wait 3-6 months to get a new assignment and starting fresh but all over again, a full 27 months, 3) sign up to be considered for one of a handful of positions for direct transfer, … … you know what, I’m going to spare you the details. Just know that there were a lot of things to consider, very little time, and everything was up in the air. Many people went home, some knowing that once home they probably wouldn’t be willing to “waste” three to six months waiting for a new position (we’ll see what unemployment does for those friends though) working with as little as 1500USD of readjustment allowance. So, a few of us opted for a newly crafted option called ERS (expedited return to service). Meaning: we would bypass the re-enrollment rigmarole and be put into a PST as early as March 1st, which is when my particular program in Costa Rica will begin.

All of these decisions were to be finalized on Wednesday the 19th of January and there was much talk of the necessity for the ‘stars to align’ in order for a direct transfer or an ERS to work out. Now, it just so happens that January 19th was a full moon. I wouldn’t call myself superstitious, I might be a mystic, but not superstitious. However, I have seen the moon shape the tides and I’ve seen a total eclipse of the sun, as well as the effects they have on the human spirit, and it seems utterly stressful to make such an important decision on this full moon. But, when I exited the hotel and walked down the alleyway toward the payphone to call home, I looked up and there was the brilliant moon herself, larger than usual and as full as can be. I felt her power and was grateful. For others, to be sure, the stars did not align… at least not as they had hoped. In my humble and ridiculous opinion all things in this world are always and eternally in their right place; call it fate, call it destiny, (don’t call it causality or determinism) I won’t give it a name, because to give it a name is to tarnish its perfection. Let yourself melt into it and it into you, for it cannot be symbolized.

Tune into my new blog address: http://jesusdigsthebass.blogspot.com , for the next chapters in my adventures. We are all connected in ways we shouldn’t know.

The Flight

My particular airport experience was tainted by a familiar foe, a parting gift of food poisoning which left me in the fetal position on the airport floor in those few moments when I wasn’t doing abdominal crunches over the toilet. I remember flashes of security guards, asking me “Kana da lahiya?” “Bani da lahiya.” I said. Another flash and I was lying on some chairs. When I came to my senses I was landing in Burkina Faso and the sun was rising. Next to me sat a bizarre character with a scraggly beard and hemp bracelets…but no, he was not a Peace Corps Volunteer. Our breakfast trays arrived at that moment and I declined, but it got put down anyway, so I offered it to the strange young man. He declined then I said something in Hausa I faded back into unconsciousness. The plane shook gently as we hit the runway and as I awoke, feeling no nausea, I breathed a sigh of relief divining the source of my illness to be measly food poisoning and not giardia, amoebic cysts, or Allah knows what else. Feeling the immense calm and love of life, health, and breath that almost always follows recovery, I took in my surroundings with a Buddha’s smile. I conversed with the man who didn’t eat my breakfast and he unnecessarily apologized for not doing so. I asked him what he was doing in Burkina Faso without searching for a segway; I was unfiltered and very receptive at that particular moment. His story involved his band “Kermesz a l’est,” some sort of banjo rock band. He plays the banjo and his group was in Burkina for two weeks doing a sort of musical and cultural exchange. Being from Belgium, he spoke an awfully pure French. I, on the other hand, was speaking a highly African French characterized by the use of “vraiment” and excessive amounts of “quoi.” I promised to go see him and his band in Belgium if I were ever in the area.

Going through security without much delay we gathered our luggage and boarded tow massive and remarkably clean buses. We cruised along the coast and through the Moroccan countryside, finally arriving in the hotel in Rabat (not Robot) after navigating traffic, something that none of us was ready to experience. Almost all of the elements characteristic of this and of any city seemed foreign and slightly sour to us.

The End

I only have a few entries left to write. Now that all ninety-eight Peace Corps Volunteers have been safely evacuated from Niger following the kidnapping and subsequent deaths of two Frenchmen living and working in Niamey, I am free to blog about these not-so-current events and the fate of PC Niger.

On January 11th we were informed by our fearless and saintly training site manager, my truest confidant, and our surrogate father, Tondi, that the PC Niger program was being suspended. He read a prepared statement from Washington; it was dry and conclusive.

The implications quickly started to be understood. All of our villagers wouldn’t quite understand why something that happened in Niamey means that I, Saadou, have to leave my safe and secure home in Koré Maïroua. The volunteers who were in the most dangerous positions were obviously those stationed in the capital, working alongside NGOs and other organizations. But the more rural volunteers live in a network of houses, a neighborhood and community that would never allow something like a kidnapping to happen. So why did we have to leave? Eventually we the volunteers accepted the rationale for the evacuation and began to think about our futures, but what came first was a set of goodbyes. All my friends in the small town of Koré said, “Sai wata rana,” (until another day) mostly because I didn’t have the courage to express to them the gravity of the situation. Others with whom I could employ my French understood more deeply what this meant for our budding friendships. Fortunately, as is not the case in all evacuations, we were allowed to go back to our villages for one day, gather our things, and say goodbye to our work partners and our amazing friends, some of them people we had grown closer to in those few months than many of our friends in America.

Goodbyes were, and always are, painful. I usually convince myself that they don’t have to be, but these were so brisk and unexpected that I found myself tearing up all too often. As Tondi said once, “you know, Nigeriens say that you aren’t supposed to cry in public, but right now…you need to cry, you need to do it.” There were many expressions of confusion, disbelief, disappointment, and sadness on people’s faces. I gave away chairs, mats, tables, my bed and mattress, pots and pans, string, a hammer, and countless other small items. I was giving away small but significant pieces of my Nigerien identity, the things, simple and scarce as they were, that had come to represent my new life, a wonderful and inexplicably rich life. Sure, some of you will say that I am idealizing this period, pretending like I loved every moment. This is true. When something is taken from you it becomes much more desirable than it was when you took it for granted. But to say the Nigerien people were the most sincere, honest, and hospitable people I’ve ever met, is not an idealization or an exaggeration.

I left my village like a ghost, putting on my turban so only a few people would be able to recognize me as I drove through town for the last time, not wanting to exchange greetings that I had come to love. Eventually, people trickled into the hostel from the far out regions of Maradi, Zinder, and Diffa, some of them in the beloved Peace Corps Magic Bus. The last night there we invited many of our Nigerien friends who lived in the capital, our past ‘formateurs’ during training, to spend some time with us on our last night in country. Emotions were all over the place. 2AM rolled around after our all-nighter and we loaded and left the hostel with a convoy of five Land Cruisers, one pick-up truck, and two all the sudden not-so-magic buses. Cruising through the streets we took familiar turns but the avenues were barren, deserted, unrecognizable. We didn’t pass a living soul. Sometimes the silence was heavy but being the amazing group we are, our favorite inside jokes bubbled up to the surface for the last few times. Most of us loaded the plane to Morocco in a state of sleepy disbelief and general numbness.