Been doing this Peace Corps thing for a week, by the most conservative estimate. So much to talk about. Indeed, the old feeling of having a ridiculous number of things to do. Should I spend time with my host family? Or should I tuck away in my booca (sp?)/ hut and create and drill some flashcards? Should I hang out with Peace Corps people I won't see much after training? Or should I hang out with my family and local kids? Should I worry exclusively about language? Or should I be keeping a keen eye on my eventual health work? With so much to report, should I try to type it to blog it, should I just journal it (as I have been doing) or should I write letters home? Should I be trying to live as closely as possible to the styles and standards of my hosts, or is it ok to enjoy a soda from the street vendor or the flush toilets at the PC compound? Should I break out some of the limited candy I brought? Save it for later? Or forget it entirely? Should I write home with things that it seems I could make use or should I do without these things, since the community goes without much? Is it better to be in a more rural site, really deep in the bush, or is it ok to be closer to Niamey and/ or closer to other PCV's? Am I learning the right language or would I be better served to be learning the other one? Is it ok to be talking FR with my host family, like when I explained all my pics from home or talked about my world map last night, or should I be trying to speak Zarma and Zarma alone? Should I play with the kids or try to learn Zarma with the parents? All these questions.
Some "things" it would be nice to have: an "office" of some kind, complete with my books, sticky notes, and notebooks/ three rings binders, to which I could go to collect my thoughts and feel like I'm doing some "work".
Ok, so let me give you some snippets of scenes that give some sense of the last week:
Would you believe I am often kept up by the TV? My host family lives in the town and apparently is farely well off. They have electricity, complete with some lights in the house and pointing into the concession (yard/ compound), a fridge, and a TV. The TV is on most of the day and until 2200 or 2300 (woohoo finally somewhere where I'm not crazy for having practied using hte 24 hour clock all these years!) Apparently, this is not as bad as some other houses, one trainee described the TV on from like 0600 untill 0000. During dinner, out table (not a blanket) is outside facing the TV in the maison. I honestly did not expect to be having dinner in front of the TV. I really want to snap a pic of my family's concession with the TV in the foreground and the two giant cell phones towers of the village in the background, but I don't think the angles are right.
Beautiful moment the other night. After soccer, two kids told me to come run a errand with them. It was night and we walked a ways across the village/ town/ city whatever one would call this place, and the littler one asked me to put him on my shoulders, which I readily oblidged. Earlier in the day, I had wandered around the marche by myself for a few minutes and went on a wild goose chase to find a friend's concession by myself and each time wondered if I was entirely safe, but even at night, I felt completely safe with my two little body guards. I almost did walk into a goat (or something) cart, but my navigator was always quick to shout "Attention, attention!" (In FR of course).
In the past week I have:
- been kept awake by the lights and TV in my compound
- slept thruogh (read: been woken up by) a sandstorm, some drizzle, and the loudest call to prayer yet in the single night
- played soccer with some local boys in the street
- accidentally walked into a random family's concession while looking for a friend and turned it into a legit faux pas by not proclaiming salaam aleykum (sp?) when I entered
- eaten with my hands...many times
- relied on a squat toilet
- thought "shit, here we go" when I felt things were really starting....a bunch of times (having to sit next to Nigeriens on the plane ride, on the ride to the training site, when walking from the training site to my new home with two host family siblings)
- learned the numbers 0-69 in a single day
- been told not to use FR as a crutch since it's "so good"
- flipped flop several times on whether it was a good investment to learn FR before leaving and decided finally...YES! Despite that they say no one in our villages will speak FR, I have used it on the plane, with our teachers, and with my host family and all the kids around the village. Par exemple, I will greet someone in Zarma and then the kid will reply Comment t'appeles-tu?
I have not
- gone for a run
- completely found peace with the number of cockroaches in my latrine
- understood much of anything the "petit professeur" (one of the little boys in my host family) who speaks to me in Zarma (since I think he's too young to go to school or is too young to havea learned much French) says to me. He's hilarious. He has great energy, points, grabs my arms, gesticulates all over the place....and I just make eye contact, nod, give a smile, or now sometimes slip in a "Ay man faham" (I don't understand).
- gotten sick of fari masa, a breakfast good that people hear compare to donuts but is actually the exact same thing as "pitzals" (sp?) that Nunnie and Nunnie Mary make
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