le 4 decembre

Yesterday, I forgot (to mention)
- wondered about the sustainability of the lang immersion sched. For me, putting in lots of personal study time, the most taxing time of PST so far. A real grind. If longer, I would take mroe time to relax probs to make it more bearable over long term. I do welll with the structure and the consistency: wakeup, run calesthenics, breakfast (brush teeth), try to do dishes from last night, start class 0830-0900, pause around 10/1030, lunch (brush teeth) with multivitamen and iron supplement, fulanzam (study time...well, fulanzam means rest, but that's when I study) from noon to two, class or similar activity until 4 or 5 (break somewhere in there again). Tea making and questions and talking and people watching by the road. Dinner making around 1800/1830. Make up beds. Shower (hopefully). Dinner. Talking. Studying. Blog note. Journal with small snack. Floss and brush teeth. Bed 2130-2200. Repeat. Repeat
- wanted to reframe the description of my pace during these two weeks from "rushed" or even "frantic" to "purposful"
- had fun in class. Played game where one person blind folded and he/ she was given directions in Zarma (game my idea). Our teacher tried to walk me into a tree, which was unsuccessful (I had my hands out), but she found hilarious
-made several jokes, some "off color" in Zarma. This is super good sign. P.S. "night work" implies what you would think.
- rejoyced over dinner of chicken and corned beef (canned) sandwiches. The mustard (bought from Niamey) really made the meal
- (over the past few days) had at least one confidence/ morale boosting convo with people around town. I try to greet everyone by the road when we go to buy morning masa and sometimes a snack later in the day. Today a woman starting talking to me more in depth (i.e. over my head), which drew a small crowd of children. I understand some, asked and joked about what I did not understand and felt real poised the whole time. had my left hand behind my back, clasping my right arm (like my demyst PCV did...he left today P.S., his service done), which always helps

Going to bathroom in the middle of the night: The Scene
I wakeup. If its late enough that everyone is asleep but before the 0530 call to prayer, it is dark, quiet. The only light from our teacher's lantern inside. We sleep the rock ateo on a mat and a foam mattress. I get out of my mosquito net, now not bothering to put my shirt on (pants def on) just hoping I don't see anyone. Sometimes I take my flashlight, sometimes not. I try to not let any barefeet touch the ground, putting my flip flops on quicly in csae dirty this way comes from the ground. if it's up, I move the screen thing that blocks the entry to the pateo. We put it there to prevent goats from eating the beans that take up half the pateo, drying waiting to be cleanred or opened up or cooked or something. I walk to the first latrine, the one htat is mostly full anf mroe nasty, to save time and avoid the long walk into our "backyard". Most often I just pee on the ground just off the path just beyond the corner. If I do use the latrine, I use my t-shirt, if I have it, to cover my nose and mouth to help repel the stench. I breathe carefully, not often, but so infrequentyl as to necessitate large gulps of pugnant air, weighing many nanograms. There is a thin path between teh wall of hte pateo and the weeks. Animal poop sits as landmines sporatically. In the weeds, everywhere it seems, is garbage. Mostly plastic bacgs, but some cardboard perhaps. Just trash. I look up. The starts are very prominant without much of a moon. When the moon is present, it over powers them. In Zarma, starts are called, literally "moon's children". Noise comes from the crickets. Maybe an animal. Maybe the ghastly wail of a donkey. If it is late into the early morning, the call to prayer fractures the silence, as it is meant to I suppose. I cannot decide, in that moment or any, if it is beatiful, annoying, ominous, or just unimportant. I imagine a documentary of Niger opeing with the sound of a call to prayer and footage of the sun rising over the expanse in a village such as this one. I walk back to my bed, move and replace our backshift gate, and try to make as little noise as possible with my flip flops smacking the hard floor. The other two trainees and I sleep in a tight line bound by the house and the pateo wall and I don't want to disturb them. I somewhat smoothly (lots of practice) slip off my flip flops, climb into the mosquito net, remove my shirt if I had it one, and hope only I will not have to get up again before morning. Most nights here, I am up three times. At home I rarely sleep through the night and tehre is no special respite here. I have not slept through a single night. I replace my earplugs maybe and lie on my back, wrapping my t-shirt over my eyes. Or I will likeon my stomach and wrap my t-shirt over my head. Sometimes I will lose one earplug through out the night, so I ut hte single earplug, if replacements are immediately on hand, in the ear that is exposed (if I lie on my stomach) or closest to the noice  (if I lie on my back) though the latter strategy surely makes little difference. Lsat night, a sharp exception to all the previous ights here, I sleep poorly. Slow to fall asleep each time I lie down. Zarma runs through my head. Other ideas, many good ones. I remember unfinished business at home and I become restless adn uncomfortable- nothign can be done now. I want to check in but, partly by design, I have no phone. I wonder if its the strong Nigerien tea that keeps me from sleep tonight, and I vow to obstain tomorrow (which was today), but I had some anyway. Maybe I think again, how PST is really not that hard from a broad perspective. Lots of resources, lots of support. Perhaps I wonder about a sleepless walk like this one month from now, in my village on the first night, alone.

Today

I have...
- attemped to make tea. Did ok. Maybe I will describe the process later. For know, know its harder than it looks because the cups used for mixing it get (should have been obvious) balls hot!
- written today's post with pen on paper because battery died on comp
- took my computer next stoor (where they have electricity) to charge it. They plugged it in and the TV shorted out. Jam bambata. I apologized somewhat profusely (I had had a bad feeling from the start about thsi scenario) and shrinked out. Hopefully I will get it back tomorrow untouched and charged.
- (all the time here) ran in sand. Like on a beach. Some parts less dense or more packed down (think how the  sand is closer to water) but it's just ALL sand here. At the training site, it is much more rocky or clay-like. Here it's just sand.
- saw a backhoe like truck ( would have kown the name 15 years ago) go by on the road today. A trainne next to me commented, "Isnt't it weird/ wrong that meakes us think of home?". Driving on the sand/ dirt/ clay road to get here last week I saw, for the first time, road work. There were huge piles of dirt blocking the road mostly (the car had to zig zag to get past) adn some kind of equipment was smoothing those piles out onthe road to eliminate holes.
- been very grateful for my roomates/classmates. We are all very excited to learn Zarma, find excitement in learning new stuff, and are greedy to excel.

I have not...
- given money or food to the girls from the compund who asked. They are young teenagers. They get all our water for us, lugging it in buckets on their heads from 400m across the street. That in addition to doing tons of work int heir house. It's anoyoing to be hit up for money. One worries about giving to one and either setting a terrible precedent for the other annassaras or with these girls in particular or finding twice as many girls on our doorstep the next morning. The frustration, in part, comes from these thoughts being in conflict with the obvious fact that theey are probs mad poor, even if doing well by their standards, definitely overworked and have limited prospects for the rest of their lives. Wo why whould we not enjoy a snack with them to give them just a little joy...today at least. When we told our teacher he becames mad. he said they shouild know better...and besides, he gave them 500F on Wed for their work. I hate annoyance. Can you blame them? I was given 40000F for these two weeks.