At the beach

First, just a couple pictures of the place where I make batiks and the people there.




Tahan'ci and I went to the river with Abdul Azeez and Tahiru (two of my batik artisan friends) yesterday afternoon. The experience was blogworthy. We didn't really know what to expect. The big Niger river cuts through several countries in West Africa, and it cuts through our city here. We had heard of people washing clothes in the river, but mostly, our experience of it had been driving over it in taxis. Other Americans have gone to swim in it without picking up any crazy diseases, so when they asked me if I wanted to go, I agreed. I had been expecting to see just a few people along the river and in the water. Instead, as we took the 10 cent canoe ride to the other side of the river, we came upon a packed beach. The 18-30-year-old bracket was out there in full force. We put down our mat next to some of Azeez's friends and set up the little teapot over some coals to make tea. Tea-drinking is a huge social activity here. A common cup is used, and everyone is poured a tiny little strong, super-sweet sip of tea each round. There are usually three rounds, each with a distinct flavor as the tea leaves lose their potency. Then, some of us went swiming, me in my ankle-length skirt and gray t-shirt, which seemed the safest option. It was striking, but not surprising, how practically everyone at the beach was young and male. Lets say a 250 to one ratio of guys to girls. Girls here are married before they are 20 much of the time, and before then, they are kept on a much, much shorter leash then their brothers. Men are often not married until they are around 27, and they wander the streets freely with their friends. One of the other BU students went swimming with her host-sisters, who live by the river, so I think that girls might just stay away from the big beach, with good reason (there are so many men.) There was one small group of girls who set up their mat nearby, but they were clearly not model daughters. They took off their head coverings and wore short skirts into the water and bras or tank-tops in the water. Tahan'ci and I didn't see that as permission to whip off our shirts.
The guys were having a fabulous, playful time in their big groups. A group was breakdancing in the sand and getting really dirty. A large mass of them were chanting songs and splashing in the water. Everyone was very happy to be cooled off. Tahiru washed his pants in the water. We talked about genies that grab people and pull them under water. We discussed the crocodiles and hippos, who stay away when there are lots of people in the river. We listened to very familiar songs from the Ivory Coast and Nigeria, and, of course, some Celine Dion (absurdly popular here.) Just like when Larai and I went to a wedding with about seven of my batik artist friends, it was so nice to get to hang out outside of the work context. All of us have made it clear (at various points earlier in the semester) that we're not interested in dating any of them, so now we are all on the same page about hanging out as friends.

Cikin daji

(The cooking area of the coutyard)



(Me with Mariama and Ramatu)




(Malam Moussa's kids. Saliafou stands in the foreground, while Mariama prepares for a photo by putting on her headscarf.)



(Hawa, the woman who comes to clean and pound millet for the family, displayed an interesting sense of modesty when she put on her scarf for the photo and then encouraged me to take pictures of her breastfeeding. Salu, Hanatu's son, gnaws on a slate next to her.)

20 April 2009
In the last month, I've had some good glimpses of the way most Nigeriens live. They are pretty far removed from the people who live here in the capital.
Yao da sati uku, na zamna tare da iyalina Nijer sati guda.
Three weeks ago, I stayed with a Nigerien family for a week. Each of us BU students chose a family from a list. Although they were all Nigerien, there was a huge socio-economic and cultural range. It included a wealthy employee of a uranium company, a family with children at school in the States, a local pastor's family, a middle-class conservative Muslim family, a family who works for the US Embassy, the family of the woman who cleans our building here, etc. I chose the family that was listed as the "most traditional," not exactly knowing what that meant. I stumbled into the right place. Malam Moussa had just returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca. He and his family live a bush-taxi ride away from our building, meaning that it is too far for normal city taxis. To get to class in the morning, I raced for a spot in one of the crowded minivan bushtaxis down the sand road from his house. In the afternoon, he'd pick me up on the back of his scooter. Fortunately, a lot of my classes were cancelled, so I was able to spend several days just with his family.
High mud walls inclose a small compound with two mud brick buildings. The buildings have dirt floors, and (most importantly) no fans, so pretty much all activity is out in the small sand lot inbetween them. There is a plastic trashcan full of water (when the daughters have made the trip to the pump), and that water is used for drinking, bathing, cooking, and washing the arms, feet and face before prayer five times a day. There's an outdoor latrine with a couple holes and a host of cockroaches. There's one lightbulb that shines on the outside lot at night, while Malam Moussa eats his dinner alone and writes in Arabic. This is really cool. He writes formulaic passages of the Koran in ink on a wooden tablet. Then, he washes the ink off into a vial. The used ink functions as a medicine, which he sells. During the day, he works in a chemistry lab, studying types of millet. When we got back in the evenings, he'd teach the Arabic script to me.
Malam Moussa has had 4 wives, and the divorce laws allow him to keep all of the children, so his compound is full of a mix of children. He now has only two wives, and one was at the hospital. He has chosen to keep his wives cloistered, which means that they are not usually allowed outside of the compound (the only rare exception being when they are accompanied by him to visit relatives, and, I guess, hospitalization). It was a thought-provoking situation to walk into. Every day, I hung out in the compound with Hanatu, who has been married to him since she was 15, and the children. It was fanastic for my Hausa, since none of them speak French. One of the other BU students gave me a Jenga set, so we played a lot of Jenga. Hanatu lounged around, cooked, and nursed her baby (so she was often topless.) Hawa, a poor widow, came by with her kids every day to run errands at the market (since Hanatu can't go outside), pound millet and corn, and sweep the sand. She is very outgoing. The kids go to a nearby thatch shelter in the morning to memorize the Koran. I went with them a couple times, and the teacher was never there, but I guess they do have class sometimes. I am so happy to have a Nigerien family. I took all the kids to the zoo the other day, and I am trying to go out there to visit once a week. It was a priviledge to have a rare glimpse of what life is like for one conservative Muslim family in Niger. The kids are a lot of fun.

*break in writing this post. Now it's 26 April

After a week of classes at our home base, we all went out to Konni, which is a six hour bus ride East towards the central south of Niger. It is only a few kilometers away from Nigeria. From Konni, we were split up into twos to head out to villages where Peace Corps volunteers are stationed. Larai and I stayed with a guy named Peter (Hausa name, Idirisa). He has been in Niger for almost two years, and his Hausa is fantastic. The people in the village were incredibly nice, kids were always in and out of Idirisa's compound, and everyone only spoke Hausa! Idirisa is in the medical sector of Peace Corps, so he works with the new village clinic and travels around to neighboring villages to do AIDS awareness campaigns, but mostly, he just visits people and hangs out. We visited the school, which has 30 boys and one girl in it (this is only a small percentage of the number of kids in the village.) We met with the chief and tried to pound millet with Idirisa's neighbors. Village women spend the bulk of their day preparing millet. Then, on the third day, I had a high fever and spent a day sleeping on a mat under Idirisa's thatch enclosure. At 4pm, we decided to go to Konni so that I could be tested for malaria. Normally, we would have walked for three hours to the road to catch a bush taxi, but instead, we hired three guys in the village to take us on the backs of their motorcycles. The motorcycles are funny, because they say "For on-road use only. Always wear a helmet. Read the direction manual before use." in big letters on them, but no one can read, and none of those instructions are carried out. I had already had experience riding on a motorcycle in deep sand with Malam Moussa. It is kind of scary, because there is a lot of slipping and sliding. Fortunately, there were only a few patches where the sand was not well-packed. It was fantastic! The heat of the day had passed, and we sped through huge expanses of dry land. We only got one flat, but conveniently, that happened in a village, so I got to lie down on a mat they spread out. Some things are absurd, and the mat which had the American flag and an eagle on it was one of those things. Once we got to the main road, we packed into a rusty bush taxi and rode to Konni in that for almost an hour, only stopping for the 7pm prayer. Then, we were back at Peace Corps headquarters to sleep under mosquito nets on matresses outside. The next day, Zaure (who also had a fever), Hadiza (our RA) and I spend the whole day traveling back to Niamey in a big public bus, catching a taxi to the clinic, getting tested for malaria, and sleeping. I didn't have malaria and the fever passed. Zaure had malaria, but she is better now. The whole experience helped me to understand how very isolated most of Niger is. Getting from one place to another is a huge process. Many people in the village have never made the treck and probably never will.

Have I mentioned that it has been absurdly hot here? Think 107-114 degrees with bright sunlight (so, "real feel" 117+). Fortunately, it has been down for the last week and a half with temperatures more like 103-107. I had my vigorous African dance class at 7pm a couple weeks ago (at the peak of the heat) when it had cooled off to an evening temperature of 103 degrees. We are no strangers to sweat here.