Greetings all,
So I made it back to Niamey... where the internet does exist. Let's see, since my last entry I've been spending most of my time in the village (Rahi). That's been good. Rainy season has come to Niger, meaning all the men who live in the bush are out tending to their fields. The rains started to really come in mid-July, and have been pretty regular since then (every other day or so). The millet in the area around my village is well over my head in some fields, and just up to my waste in others. That's mostly due to when the farmers decided to plant their seeds. Sometimes farmers can plant too early and lose their seeds (or sprouts), which happens all over the country. But luckily the rains were enough after the initial planting to keep the sprouts growing.
I've got my very own field where I'm planting millet, sorghum, beans, and peanuts. It's a fairly small field, but plenty big for me. The manual labor that goes in to tending the fields in maniacal. All the tilling is done by hand with the tools called "calmi" that kind of look like little hoes.
So, to dig up the earth (and the weeds) with this thing you have to bend over at 90 degrees. It takes about 10 minutes before my back starts to ache, which is after completing 2 of 30 rows. I'm in awe of the men who do this almost every day, all day. It's hard labor on a level I've never witnessed before.
Other than the farm, I've been teaching English to young men in the village. Many of them will travel to Nigeria at some point to find work after the harvest. And in Lagos, where most will travel, many people speak pidgin English (called "broka" for broken English). So a lot of the young men expressed interest in learning English. We've been through the greetings, numbers, "there is", and the verb: to be. It's been a lot of fun to teach them, and it's good time for me to practice my own language skills in Hausa.
So, I included some more photos here. The one on the the top of the blog is 4 of the 1,000,000 children that live in my concession. Actually there are 13, but they can multiply exponentially at a moment's notice. The mesa in the background kind of wraps around the village, and is pretty large by Nigerien standards.
Below is a photo from atop the mesa. You can see about a sixth of the village here, but the rest looks just like it. All the structures are made from mud bricks including the huts, walls, and granaries. The granaries are the domed structures. There's thatched-grass on top of the granaries to keep out the dust and rain. To give it some scale you can see about 10 ladies walking along a path at the bottom of the photo. There about to hike up the mesa path that will lead you to a neighboring village. My closest Peace Corps neighbor lives 5 km away along that path.
Below is a shot of group of boys from my village that were following me around town the first day around. I'm the first Peace Corps volunteer in my village, and also the first foreigner to live there. So as you can imagine the kids were a little curious as to what the white guy was up to. In the background you can see a valley in between two mesas. That's where the path is that I was talking about in the last photo. The one that leads to my friend's village. Yacubu, one of the 1,000,000 children that lives in my concession, can be seen holding on to my Nalgene bottle.
Here's the self-absorbed-portrait on my lake. I'm saving the sinking vessel with a trusty turquoise plastic bowl. There are half-a-dozen-or-so boats like this owned by local fisherman. That go out to the middle of the lake and throw nets off of them. And the lake is shallow enough (3 meters at the center) that they'll use long poles to get around. We we're using a broken paddle the day this photo was taken, so you might say we were at the mercy of the wind.
Well that's all for today. I'll be back in Niamey sometime in the near future to write some more. I hope everyone's well back home in the motherland, or wherever you may be. Matt.
