Wow, yesterday was an amazing (going to need to expand my vocab) day. Let me see if this list from the past few days will cover some of the highlights of demyst. I don't know exactly what my notes from the past two days have been, but I feel like I've had a mini apprenticeship and learned more about what it means to do Peace Corps in the last few days than the first two weeks (though I didn't really work on zarma). My host was a PCV with less than a month left in his term of service. Though at first, it was intimidating to me to see all he had accomplished, it was great to just go through the day with him, ask a million questions, engage at the drop of a hat in a convo about all sorts of things from the Peace Corps purpose here to....I dunno all sorts of big questions and little lessons. The first real role model of my PC career. I can't tell you what a boost this has been, though I think I'm understating it here.
I have...
-climbed a butte
- finally took an xc shot (see xc blog) (sidenote, crap, I'm not sure if this pic worked)
- took part in one of the afternoon prayers in a mosque. This is worth a little more. Before going in, one has to wash up. Always right then left. So, rinse right hand three times. Left hand three times. Uh..mouth maybe three times. Nose three times. Right arm three times. Left arm three times. Behind each ear once or three times. With hand, drag water over back of head, then forward again. Right foot three times. Left foot three times. I've surely botched this, but it's something like this. I apologize to all my Muslim readership for my errors. The prayer consists of maybe three repeats of something like this cycle: bend at waste and touch hands to knees, stand back up, put head to ground in a kind of downward dog position, then sit back on heels, then stand up, put one hands up then down, and cross ones arms. This is a terrible description, sorry. Rushing to type all this up. I will delegate a description of prayer to youtube or something.
- in large part to the spectacle of praying at this important mosque and also staying in a pretty conservative/ fundamental village, I started to see sexism in action. My demyst partner was female and she noted many times how men would shake our host's hands (he's male), and my hand, and then not continue to her. She could not come to prayer in the mosque with us, and the two of us were very confused about whether she could see the Seik (see below) or not.
- thanks to a long day of walking and restarting some pullups and pushups, finally been sore again.
- had a dance party with some kids in the village to hilarious pop/techno. We stopped because the kids reading the Koran by the fire had their teacher show up and we didn't want to be disrespectful.
- Observed a bunch of kids recite verses of the Koran off of ink on a kind of cutting board slate in by firelight. The wood for the fire was fast burning millet stalks so it gave a quick burn and big flame but had to be added to consistently and huge bundles were burned up.
- visited a health center, thereby being reminded health is more than nutrition/ food security
- been totally pumped by finding things like super glue, tape, paper in a store and, here's the clincher, soem wood shelving/ organizer stuff. Niger office, here we come!!!!
- learned that Power of One was made into a movie. Afraid it might ruin the book. Won't be a problem, since I have no way to watch anything.
- worn shorts in the concession. The comfort of short as opposed to pants cannot be overemphasized.
- performed 1-3 acts of kindness, hopefully not overextending myself
- not sure if I have mentioned this yet, but am coming to greater perspective, a greater understanding of why people are content to stay home, stay comfortable, not push the envelope all the time (or any of the time), not try to change the world or change oneself. Because it's balls hard.
- been very thankful for my too large camera case (thanks mom and dad!), which I used as a mini daypack during the 8 hours of walking on....uh, yesterday I guess
- taken a bush taxi (definition here: it seems to me based on my limited time in Africa that a "bush taxi" means any kind of automobile that moves from one place to another and carries people. In the first case, it was a pickup truck, and the second a mini van.
- visited some class rooms..."subbed" for like 50 sec whrn no teacher was there. There were three classrooms, one inside for maybe elementary kids and two outside for younger kids I guess. In the two outside classrooms there were no teachers. I was told sometimes teacher attendance is as much a problem as student attendance and that for villages more in the bush, there can be little, if any, evaluation and assessment of the teachers. On this day though, since the classes take a mid morning break or something, that the teachers had just popped home to check on their OWN kids and were soon to be back.
- seen mango, orange, lemon and many others trees (e.g. meranga)
- picked cotton from a cotton plant
I have not...
- met the Seik or a Seik (I need to learn more about Islam). There is a Seik in the town over from where I stayed for demyst and we prayed in the same mosque as him and then went to see him afterwards, but so did 5000 million other people, so we decided not to pursue him into his home with the throngs and wait forever.
- given the mother of a baby that was sick and wasting away money for meds. I did not notice the baby was sick....lots of kids are tired and really visibly underweight. But the mother told us (all of this like everything was in Zarma through our host) he was sick and we looked at him and his arms and legs were so skinny. His skin at some points looked....loose, like someone who lost a lot of weight too fast. He looked like he was falling asleep and would sometime try to grab his mom's clothes or something. Oh. I guess he is sick. Classic image: baby sick, maybe dying in Africa. Apparently the mother has gone to the clinic, and the doc said to get it some meds, but she could not afford it. Classic scenario. I was sitting on 5000 CFA, part of our stipend for the weekend. We gave the mom some of the supervegetable we had harvested the day before and went on. Again, so...this is Africa.
- delivered a baby. When we visted the health center, a maybe 16 year old girl had "just" given birth earlier in the day. Maybe missed it by minutes, maybe by hours.
- not worn a shirt for a few hours in the concession. Amazing.
- stopped having a flurry of ideas, questions, etc. This is good.
- made peace with the idea of being in a village by myself. A group of three, especially when one is a second year volunteer that knows the ropes is one thing, but having a village to oneself is another thing entirely. It is very dark, for one, and trusting one's community (just as they take a while to trust you) comes slowly.
- bought jewlry, but watched my host clean his Tuareg sword and my demyst partner buy some earings.
- gotten over the minor GI distress, but thankfully, did not have to take any bathroom breaks from the bush taxi
- not understood everything (it was in French) done in class to elementary school students. So much for my French being any manner of proficient.
- been driven through an intersection that used a stop sign (actually, there was a stop sign in English in one tiny town, but we pulled to the other side of the road to get out, so...not quite used to intention), traffic light, roundabout or other ideas to organize traffic flow.
- seen any girafffes (not right time of year where I was) or elephants (some other trainees who were played farther south for demyst did)
Yesterday was awesome, let me recap to make sure I haven't missed anything. walked mabe 2-3k to town, more k up a butte thing, played around in a cave/ tunnel on said butte, perused through town, met another PCV, saw a health center, prayed in a mosque, walked 2-3k back to the village, saw some camels in route (we had seen some camels with people on them around the town where we have training, but these were more wild camels.
Some things I feel I may have habituated to already and will easily overlook:
- goats everywhere
- cell phone towers everywhere...in Africa
- chickens and roosters everywhere (in towns and villages that is...same with the goats) and the roosters don't know they're only to crow when the sun comes up
- the sun is mad hot
- there is lots of sand, it's very difficult to walk through, and it gets mad hot
- driving is chaos, confirmed
So, I've said this a million times, but it makes me really self conscious, so I'll say it again: so much happens and its very difficult to know what to type up, what to take a picture of, what to record in my personal journal. What I rely to you all serves as your entire understanding of my experience, and it is, even after a fairly detailed update like the above, very incomplete of the smells, tastes, feelings, and thoughts of everyday life here. I need to find a sustainable way to keep on blogging, so this is going to be reorganized a bunch of times. Also, I always feel like I'm missing some of the most important stuff.
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