Niamey Updates
April 9, 2006
Greetings all on the day before Mouloud, Mohammed’s birthday. The Peace Corps office will be closed tomorrow to honor the national holiday. It seems that in the past Niger only celebrated French holidays, which included Easter Monday, Christmas Day, and All Saints Day. Then Mohmmar Quadaffi came on a visit from Libya and reminded Nigérians that they were a 90% Muslim nation. So now we celebrate Mohammed’s birthday.
It’s noon in Niamey; the temperature has hit 110 degrees; and dust is blowing off the hot desert. What better place to be than in my air-conditioned office. Mark took my first messages from Niamey and created his mother’s first blog. The notion of writing a blog has paralyzed me ever since. But Don will be here in five days and our correspondence will improve.
In short, I’m having a great time. Lots of work, lots of challenges, but lots of rewards with some great Volunteers and good staff! I’ve managed two-day trips to visit Volunteer sites, which are not for the faint of heart. I’ll send photos soon. Just to say that every Volunteer lives in a mud brick house. Some are tiny; some are a big bigger. But they’re all mud brick.
For me, I live in the Country Director’s big house. I have a great Togolese cook and a covered swimming pool. Peace Corps regulations state that no staff can have a swimming pool, so mine is covered with metal roofing material.
The Country Director residence is located on “Mali Béro Boulevard”, en face du Skyéyee,” in other words, Mali Béro Boulevard across from the Skyeyee gas station. Mali Béro is a true boulevard with a strip of scrubby bushes dividing the four busy lanes of traffic. Each morning a watering truck bumps down the road dousing the occasional bushes with a badly needed drink of water. By 2:00 pm the temperature reaches 112 F. They say it will reach 120 F during the “hot season.”
The walk to the office takes twenty minutes at a slow pace; variety means walking at a slow pace (during the cool mornings) and walking at a slower pace (during the heat of the afternoon).
The walk way is wide; at least the width of the road. At each intersection, women have set up their stoves and their stools and cook fried dough or spoon out sauce on long loaves of French bread. Young boys- I see few girls- tumble down the street on their way to school. Each has a tin bowl slung over his shoulder with a piece of rope. They smile, ask for a cadeau and then wander on smiling. The man at the “Jams Pressing” boutique next door always invites me to inspect his facility and return with my dirty wrinkled clothes. At a construction site, bricks are being made on the spot, or rather on the walkway. I calculated over a thousand bricks this week. Not sure what magic number will signal the start of construction.
Trucks, taxis, cars, and bicycles share the roadway with donkey carts laden with firewood. Pedestrians share the walkway with goats and camels, also laden with firewood and straw.
Mali Béro runs east west. I walk into the sun in the cooler morning hours; I walk into the sun in the late afternoon scorching hours. I move like a slow lizard, clinging to the walls, sliding under trees, searching for shade.
During my first two weeks I read 6 books, watched 4 Netflicks, completed 10 crossword puzzles, and finished one full season of Curb Your Enthusiasm DVDs. Realizing that my entertainment stash would never last for 14 weeks, I had a friend take me into the bowels of the Grand Marché where I purchased a satellite dish and receiver for $280. A technician and his 3 helpers installed the dish for $20. Since time is too short to hook into any expensive subscription services, the technician aimed my dish at the sky and hooked me into free channels originating out of Dubai. I now can fill my free time watching 80 different stations, all but 4 of them in Arabic. There are Arabic diet and exercise channels, Arabic cooking channels, Arabic cartoon channels, Arabic MSNBC channels, Arabic American News channels, as well as live broadcasts from mosques across the Arab world. I stick to French TV5, BBC World, a movie channel (with subtitles in Arabic) and a variety channel that includes Oprah, Survivor, and more.
Life’s good.
Greetings all on the day before Mouloud, Mohammed’s birthday. The Peace Corps office will be closed tomorrow to honor the national holiday. It seems that in the past Niger only celebrated French holidays, which included Easter Monday, Christmas Day, and All Saints Day. Then Mohmmar Quadaffi came on a visit from Libya and reminded Nigérians that they were a 90% Muslim nation. So now we celebrate Mohammed’s birthday.
It’s noon in Niamey; the temperature has hit 110 degrees; and dust is blowing off the hot desert. What better place to be than in my air-conditioned office. Mark took my first messages from Niamey and created his mother’s first blog. The notion of writing a blog has paralyzed me ever since. But Don will be here in five days and our correspondence will improve.
In short, I’m having a great time. Lots of work, lots of challenges, but lots of rewards with some great Volunteers and good staff! I’ve managed two-day trips to visit Volunteer sites, which are not for the faint of heart. I’ll send photos soon. Just to say that every Volunteer lives in a mud brick house. Some are tiny; some are a big bigger. But they’re all mud brick.
For me, I live in the Country Director’s big house. I have a great Togolese cook and a covered swimming pool. Peace Corps regulations state that no staff can have a swimming pool, so mine is covered with metal roofing material.
The Country Director residence is located on “Mali Béro Boulevard”, en face du Skyéyee,” in other words, Mali Béro Boulevard across from the Skyeyee gas station. Mali Béro is a true boulevard with a strip of scrubby bushes dividing the four busy lanes of traffic. Each morning a watering truck bumps down the road dousing the occasional bushes with a badly needed drink of water. By 2:00 pm the temperature reaches 112 F. They say it will reach 120 F during the “hot season.”
The walk to the office takes twenty minutes at a slow pace; variety means walking at a slow pace (during the cool mornings) and walking at a slower pace (during the heat of the afternoon).
The walk way is wide; at least the width of the road. At each intersection, women have set up their stoves and their stools and cook fried dough or spoon out sauce on long loaves of French bread. Young boys- I see few girls- tumble down the street on their way to school. Each has a tin bowl slung over his shoulder with a piece of rope. They smile, ask for a cadeau and then wander on smiling. The man at the “Jams Pressing” boutique next door always invites me to inspect his facility and return with my dirty wrinkled clothes. At a construction site, bricks are being made on the spot, or rather on the walkway. I calculated over a thousand bricks this week. Not sure what magic number will signal the start of construction.
Trucks, taxis, cars, and bicycles share the roadway with donkey carts laden with firewood. Pedestrians share the walkway with goats and camels, also laden with firewood and straw.
Mali Béro runs east west. I walk into the sun in the cooler morning hours; I walk into the sun in the late afternoon scorching hours. I move like a slow lizard, clinging to the walls, sliding under trees, searching for shade.
During my first two weeks I read 6 books, watched 4 Netflicks, completed 10 crossword puzzles, and finished one full season of Curb Your Enthusiasm DVDs. Realizing that my entertainment stash would never last for 14 weeks, I had a friend take me into the bowels of the Grand Marché where I purchased a satellite dish and receiver for $280. A technician and his 3 helpers installed the dish for $20. Since time is too short to hook into any expensive subscription services, the technician aimed my dish at the sky and hooked me into free channels originating out of Dubai. I now can fill my free time watching 80 different stations, all but 4 of them in Arabic. There are Arabic diet and exercise channels, Arabic cooking channels, Arabic cartoon channels, Arabic MSNBC channels, Arabic American News channels, as well as live broadcasts from mosques across the Arab world. I stick to French TV5, BBC World, a movie channel (with subtitles in Arabic) and a variety channel that includes Oprah, Survivor, and more.
Life’s good.
posted by Adventures in Niamey at 8:35 AM
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