Adventures in Travel, Development and Law

Jacmel

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:25:00 +0000

What a crazy, great thirty hours my trip to Jacmel was.

Hands on typically has a half day every other Saturday so volunteers can rest up and potentially travel to see other parts of Haiti. Last Saturday myself and a group of seven other volunteers set out for a seat of the pants trip to Jacmel, some 50km from Leogane. It was a good group including the guys from my bunk bed row that I consider my best guy friends here -- In fact it was a bit of a guys' trip as the only girl was with one of the guys and they did their own thing for the most part.

About 3:30 pm we left the Hands On base and walked to the tap-tap station and after a quick search of "Jacmel? Jacmel?" we found a tap-tap that said they were going that way and we all piled on. It all seemed like a smooth start. We were on a tap-tap and headed up into the mountains.

The road up there is narrow and twisting and hugs to the top of cliffs and large drops and ridges where you can look down hundreds of feet on both sides. Combine that with the crazy way Haitians drive and you have one nerve-racking ride.

So as it was all working fine, something had to happen. At some random point our tap-tap just stopped. The driver said he wasn't going any further. "Jacmel," we said. "This is the road to Jacmel," says the driver. Lots of confusion and some arguing, but in the end, this was the halfway point and he was turning around to head back to Leogane. We paid him the price for this far (it wasn't just us blancs that were taken by surprise at this, but another Haitian in the tap-tap as well) and stood in the road hitching.

Nobody stopped for about half an hour, until at last a big bus (literaly a bus) of a tap-tap stopped for us. Only problem was that there was no room inside, just on the top, a good ten feet above the roadway. Being young, adventurous and a bit dumb, we climbed on up for what would be one of the most white knuckled rides of my life.

Holding on for dear life, we tore down the widing road. Probably one of the riskiest things I've ever done, it's amazing how fast you can get used to, and even eventually enjoy, something like that. The view from the top of a bus overlooking the mountains, valleys and slopes is pretty great -- unfortunately I was a little too nervous to take many pictures, preferring to hang on most of the time.

After a forty-five minute trip we ended up in Jacmel, safe and sound. After a little misdirection from an English speaking Haitian claiming to know where we wanted to go and promptly taking us in the wrong direction, we found a hotel with just enough beds left for our group.

Then, since it was basically just a guys' weekend, we grabbed a couple beers and sat on the porch overlooking the busy street below and chatted until the sun was starting to go down. Then, feeling hunger set in, we went out for a look about town and it's options for food.

Jacmel hadn't suffered as badly as Leogane in the Earthquake, but you can still see many signs of destruction that it left. The buildings are the main square had been hit hard with the big central hotel and the county administration buildings being declared unsafe and shut up. The square itself had become a IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp, which happened to be hosting a basketball tournament that night that we just missed - a good sign of the community living on after a disaster.

Eventually we settled on some BBQ chicken from a place just around the corner from the hotel and we went back there to eat and enjoy a couple more beers... and some rum.

After a while, we got up our steam again and went out looking for one of the other hotels to try and find some new people. Then, failing in that, we went to the night club across the street from our hotel. Who knows what the Haitians there thought when a group of white guys took over the dance floor just before close. We shut the place down with our great white guy styles.

Back for sleep and up the next morning fairly early to get the included breakfast. Being a little hung over I wasn't all too happy to see that breakfast was... a bowl of soup? Chicken noodle soup. That didn't sound all too appetizing, but I tell you now, it was a good bowl of soup and it hit the spot. Was good to have coffee as well. I felt ready to take on our activity of the day: The search for the Bassins-Bleu waterfalls.

First we traversed the town and a Sunday market jammed full of people. Next we forded three rivers (One big arm and two little arms of the same river really). Then it was a 5k hike up a steep mountain in the growing afternoon heat of Haiti. We arrived exhausted, sweaty, and hungry --- but no lunch available!!! We failed to pack a picnic. Lucky for us we were able to grab a couple of coconuts in the village right by the falls.

After a short repose in the village we went up to the falls with the mandatory guide we had hired in town.The waterfalls were amazing. Well, the biggest one was amazing. To reach it, you had to dive into a clear, cool pool of water bordered by 60 feet cliffs on both sides, swim around a corner... and then, there it was. 75 feet cascading down rocks. We climbed up about halfway to a ledge to jump off into the water. We floated about. We explored the caves of funky stalagmites and colors behind and around the waterfall. It was a great afternoon and well worth the hike and the hunger.

We weren't really looking forward to the hike down, but luckily a passing NGO truck stopped and picked us up after only a couple kilometers. It belonged to a Norwegian woman working in camp management in the area. She had AC in the car and I was able to enjoy it for a good 5k. And we didn't even have to ford the river again, the car took car of us. What great serendipity.

We went straight to the station. The ride home was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Leogane around 7pm and immediately decided to get food.

A good night and day. All done on a wing and it all worked out, as things do with a little patience and a bit of luck.

Give Me Shelter

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:25:00 +0000

So first up, check out this little video of life as a Hands On volunteer in Haiti:

It gives you a little feel for what the typical day around here is like.

Hard to believe I only have a week left in Haiti. My time here has been flying by. I am enjoying the work and people so much I would extend and stay on, but for the fact that I have responsibilities back in the states and can't very well just abandon a great scholarship like the one AU has offered me.

Oh well.

As for Haiti at the moment: I've been working recently on building some shelters in the area. Working with a couple of other NGOs, Samaritan's Purse and SASH, we're constructing long-term transitional shelters.

Here's how it works: Samaritan's Purse has been hiring local Haitians to pre-fab the walls, truces, planks, and all that is needed for construction of the shelters and importing that which cannot be produced locally (roof sheeting, nails, plastic tarping for the walls). Then SASH, which is in the business of managing camps in the Dufort area just a little west of Leogane on the national highway, plays the middle man in getting them to those who need them. Hands On has been providing some volunteers to act as the muscle to help put them up.

It's a fairly easy procedure. First the pre-fab walls are put up and nailed together. Then the structure is squared by measuring the diagonals and getting them at the correct length. Next, the roof beams are added as are the roofing planks - it was a little nerve-wracking for me to sit ten feet up on a single two by four, but it's amazing what you can get used to. At the same time, there are three shelves added to one wall of the shelter. Then the metal roofing is put on and the walls are covered by stretching tarp around the whole structure. That, the tarp, is by far the hardest part. Pulling it tight and holding it while it gets nailed in. It makes for some mighty sore hands.

The finished shelter also includes a gutter that directs water into rain water collection barrels and hurricane straps to keep the whole thing from blowing off in a big storm. Not a bad way to restart. And they are customizable: the tarp can be taken off and wooden walls put up (though this is expensive), they can cut out windows, add doors. We've seen a couple that have been moved into and are now real homes. It's very gratifying to build something after weeks of just hauling out rubble.

The shelters are great for keeping people dry, but they can be a little hot during the day with the tarp and all. Better than nothing and I like that they are upgradable. A starter home in a way.

And that's the latest from Haiti. Next post I'll talk about my trip to Jacmel and the amazing waterfall and pool where we spent a great afternoon. Until that time.

Disaster Risk Reduction and Sandy Beaches

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:33:00 +0000

All work and no play makes international relief volunteers dull boys and girls, so Hands On gives their volunteers every Sunday off to recover from the week and enjoy some of what Haiti has to offer. For most people this means beaches! Of course there are the waterfalls and cute coastal towns as well, but I’ll have to get to those a little later.

But before I can talk about the play, let me talk a little more about some of the work I’ve been doing here.

The first Saturday I was in Haiti I volunteered to work for HODR’s Disaster Risk Reduction education campaign. In my opinion this is one of the best and most effective things HODR is involved with. The program is to get together a group of Haitian teachers and teach them about the facts of earthquakes and how to respond to one. Basically we’re trying to get across the idea that earthquakes are a natural and inevitable occurrence and that the best response to them is to not run around screaming.

Coming from the Northwest, an earthquake prone region of the US, I had been trained from early childhood to drop and hold, find a stable doorway, or stand in an open outdoor area during an earthquake. I was also taught what an earthquake is: the movement of tectonic plates, sitting upon the earth’s crust. In Haiti, both the theoretical and practical education about earthquakes was virtually non-existent. Of course, it doesn’t help that so many children go uneducated anyway.

So, because of this lack of education, I found myself headed out in a tap-tap the first Saturday of my volunteer time here for a DRR (Disaster Risk Reduction) event at the newly completed school HODR had built in a town called Jacksonville, thirty or forty minutes west of Leogane. Of course, we would show up at the same time that another NGO arrives in town to do a sanitation education. And, of course, their event would involve loud music and puppets to get the attention of the village and especially the children. Ours was a bit more dry and lengthy and aimed at the teachers – we were outgunned – thus we were bumped to a later slot and the hygiene and sanitation education went ahead first.

This was all fine by me as we got to be a part of the dancing and watch the puppet show. They even had a giant Marti Gras style puppet that one person gets inside to be the feet and someone else runs the arms with sticks.

The downside was that our own education event didn’t start at 9:30 as originally planned. It didn’t start at 10:30 or 11:00. It wasn’t until 11:30 that six volunteers, two translators and fifty Haitian educators were settled into the classroom and ready to start.

We introduced ourselves and HODR, though most of them new of us from the construction of the school, and then we dove into the material. It went well enough. It’s hard to start something like that just around lunch time and ask people to pay attention while hungry and after a lot of crazy music and dance. We needed more interaction and attention grabbing within the event, but the material is sound.

We first discussed the causes of earthquakes. We discussed why they cause damage (the ground moves!). We also talked about how you measure them and most importantly what you can do to protect yourself in the case of an earthquake occuring.

It was surprising how little these Haitians knew about earthquakes, even after having suffered through so many recently. It was important to let them know that earthquakes are natural, inevitable, and that we need to be on guard and prepared to deal with them.

To that end we introduced the assembled educators to the earthquake drill. Emphasis in the Haitian version is more on getting outside of the building instead of the drop and cover that US school children learn – most of the buildings here pancaked downward thanks to their overly strong cement roofs and weak brick walls, so no school desk would protect a child. Instead we taught that the teacher and children should calmly, but as quickly as possible, exit the building and head to a safe spot.

It only took about three tries for them to stop running and pushing and screaming.

These drills matter immensely and will save lives. It’s always a game of sorts to children in US schools, since we do it all the time, it’s become second nature and an excuse to get out of the building. We told the assembled Haitians of one case that illustrates just how important preparedness is: The difference between the Chilean and Haitian earthquakes of this last winter.

On January 12, 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the Leogane area of Haiti and over 200,000 people died. On February 27, 2010 an 8.7 magnitude quake hit the Maule region of Chile killing 487. Why did an earthquake 70 times stronger kill so many fewer people? The answer obviously can deal with building standards, which was the first thing the Haitians pointed out, but also has to do with preparedness. Chile is prone to earthquakes. They happen every year in Chile. The largest ever recorded was in Chile in 1960, a staggering 9.5. So Chileans know how to deal with earthquakes. Children do earthquake drills constantly at school and communities are organized to respond to the tremors. Haitians haven’t had an earthquake in 200 years, since the last time Port-au-Prince was levelled and so had let their guard down. We told the Haitians they need to be vigilant and ready to act.

And so we drilled them. We made sure they had the drill right and then we told them to teach it to their students and their neighbours and to spread the word about the proper response to an Earthquake. An important message to be sure.

We also talked to the teachers about the way a catastrophic event like an earthquake can cause trauma in children and how they can use song, dance, art, and other creative means to help children express that trauma and overcome it.

So even if we started late and the meeting lasted a little too long (the format of the program needs to be tweeked a little bit), the message communicated was important and I think most of the Haitians realised that and took it to heart.

So at this point in time I had done rubble work and I had worked on disaster risk reduction education. As I write I’m working on a couple of other projects that I will write about soon – a YouTube “Life in a Day” video contest and building shelters for those who have lost their homes to the earthquake.

Before I sign off though, I’d like to say – Haiti has some great beaches and I’ve been lucky that the last two Sundays I have been off to visit one in particular where the water is warm and clear, the lobster is fresh and gigantic (not exactly cheap, but cheap enough), and the beer is cold. A good way to relax with other volunteers and to scoff at the NGOs that show up in their 80k dollar land rovers while we come on tap-taps (the local pickup truck transports) so that our organisation can devote more of its resources to projects and less to our living standard. I mean really, do you need that extra land rover? Maybe you do, but maybe you don’t. I think too many organisations spend too much money on the wrong things. But more of that rant later.

For now, I hope you enjoy the pictures I finally got a chance to load up (too many for one blog post) and I’ll write more soon about the shelters, YouTube video and my upcoming trip to Jacmel this weekend.

Rubble in the Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:34:00 +0000

The morning routine is important to all organizations. With Hands On Disaster Response (HODR), it is breakfast served from six to seven and everyone out to the door to their work transport by 7:30. Our transport is usually a pick-up truck with welded on benches, called a ‘tap-tap’ because that’s how you communicate with the driver – pound twice on the side panel, “I want to stop here.” Pound twice more, “Ok, we’re ready to go again.”

The place awakens pretty gradually – there’s no reveille. It’s not easy to sleep after the sun starts peaking over the base’s walls, so most people are up by six or six-thirty. Nothing beats a natural wake up to the sun.

Breakfast consists of some oatmeal, bread, peanut butter and jelly. Pretty much the same as I ate for everyday for two years in the Peace Corps. Carbs for the big work day ahead. And, of course, there’s some good rail-road style coffee: always a “brew of the day,” which happened to be Towo – Haitian Revenge Coffee, this morning. It really is the same black sludge brew every day, but for sanity’s sake it’s nice to pretend it’s not. But it doesn’t really matter in the end when coffee is coffee and food is just food.

Come 7:15 or so, people start to get ready for their work day. The dirty shirts and shorts for removing rubble come back on (if they ever came off in the first place), the tools – sledgehammers, picks, shovels, wire snips, bolt cutters, wheelbarrows ,etc.— come out of the tool-shed to be loaded on the tap-taps. The Bobcats come alive with a slight growl and like some sci-fi cyborgs crawl out the back door with their drivers nestled in the caged-in seat. Not everyone leaves, some stay at base, but it gets quiet when 100 of 120 volunteers are gone.

Base:

HODR has moved into a partially finished nightclub/community center/radio station/internet café/bakery of a local guy named Joe. It’s a real sturdy building which is nice to have in an Earthquake zone. Our area is a large rectangular courtyard in the partially completed community center. At the end of each head is a small stage and large, 15 foot tall over-hangs, held up with big sturdy-looking pillars lines each long side. Under one side bunks are set up for volunteers. Under the other are work areas for fabrication, storage of cement and some work equipment (like the Bobcats) and a seating area with a couch made out of undistributed emergency tents in their sacks – lumpy cushions but nice to have none-the-less.

Since there are so many volunteers and staff, the bunks are augmented by tents set up all over the place, mostly on the stages and roof. An office occupies a room behind one stage and the bathrooms occupy the area behind the other stage. Showers are set to the side of the office, tarps set up over a framework of wood for division and privacy. Bucket baths and flush toilets are the way – water is drawn from a well via a diesel feed pump. No A.C. Nothing much in the way of fans. Simple and basic living. Nice to be back to that.

In our ‘backyard’ is a large supply base. Dubbed the Joint Logistics Base, it is shared by other NGOs: USAID, CHF, Canadian Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and others. Rows of containers take-up one area while construction of steel frames, long term habitation tents takes place in a large tent in another area. Many more large tents an supply dumps area arranged in the area. A large walled in compound, HODR shares security and logistics responsibilities with the other groups, providing them with an area to work and plan, and HODR with access to partners with financing and projects to implement. The steel frame tents are a USAID financed, CHF administered project producing sturdy, weather (and Hurricane) proof housing for Haitians.

There’s been a lot of cooperation in Haiti, even if there hasn’t been a lot of organization from the top. Maybe it’s just HODR being open to cooperation, but in the couple days I’ve been here there have been meetings with NGOs, UN Missions, and Haitian locals to coordinate planning and project implementation.

Rubble removal is the mainstay of HODR’s activities, but they also work in many other areas. There are people working in house demolition, as hospital runners and orderlies for the field hospital next door, developing sand-based water filters that can be produced locally, composting toilets and sanitation education, redevelopment of public spaces, building schools, interacting with orphans, and training teachers on disaster response education and how to help kids recover emotionally from the tragedy. The projects are many and people are encouraged to try out different ones. Each evening there is an ‘All Hands’ (get the pun?) meeting where the day’s work is discussed and the next day’s is presented. Afterward people sign up for the jobs that they are interested in for the following day.

So far, I’ve done Rubble Removal which is the mainstay of HODR’s work in Haiti.

Rubble Removal:

Someone in the news said recently that at the current rate of clearing rubble, Haiti will be free of it in twenty years. Twenty years! One of the projects HODR works on is removing rubble for Haitians so they can have a clear place to start anew. Whether the new start is a tent or a new house is up to them, but we can at least help them move on to that point.

This is some of the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life. I’m used to being physical active, even in the heat (Drum Corps, anything in Niger), but I’ve never before put in a four hour shift of swing a sledge, dragging out rebar and concrete and carting rubble off in a wheelbarrow. For me, the heat here isn’t too bad, but working in it… that’s a whole other story. You sweat and sweat and sweat, till your shirt drips and your shorts and work gloves are soaked.

When I arrived at my first rubble sight, where two houses had collapsed against each other, a twisted pile of concrete, exposed steel rebar and buried belongings, I thought, as everyone does “Where do I even start?!”

It’s a process of sledging up the large chunks, to free the rebar which, if in good shape, will be used again, and to make the debris small enough to cart away in the wheelbarrows. Nothing is ever straight forward in clearing a rubble pile. Multistory houses create level upon level of solid roofs or walls that have to be completely smashed to move downward. Rebar becomes so twisted that it needs to be cut with heavy and awkward bolt cutters. For some reason Haitian roofs were much stronger than the walls so that a wall can be demolished in a couple minutes, but a roof will take thirty or more – maybe one of the reasons so many houses collapsed.

It’s offer the small victories over a stubborn piece of rebar or a particularly stout ceiling that keep you going through the heat and exhaustion and aches and pains. It almost seems to take longer to tear down a house than to build one in the first place. It’s amazing how many volunteers have been here with HODR for three, four, or five months, clearing away the rubble and helping Haitians find a place to start over.

Notes:
- On my first day there was a cute little girl named Jessica who was trying to help me out. After trying on my gloves herself, she put them on my hands for me, she brought me my water and tried to carry some rubble, though she tired of that quickly.

- Her brother(?), on the other hand, spent the afternoon clearing out one little piece of rebar by hand on the back side of our sight. Worked away at it for a good long while.

- Just like in Niger, kids run rampant. Not as bad as there, but they’re still all over the place. Sometimes they’re annoying, sometimes helpful, but most always cute little buggers.

- I am on picture taking crew on monday so will try to get some pictures up then.

The Air Over Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:55:00 +0000

I know I said I would finish blogging about my trip, but real life moves on. One day I'll get back and finish those two posts (they're basically already written in my journal), but for now I have more important and current events to write about:

I’ve never flown over the Caribbean before. It isn’t an hour into the flight that we were passing over large bare, muddy, soggy flat land, much the way I imagine Haiti to look in the rainy season. Storm clouds, anvils a thousand feet high, dot the landscape (airscape?) around our Air France flight. I can’t stop thinking what am I in for? Why am I going?

Eight months ago I was just returning from Peace Corps and a couple months of traveling. I needed a new adventure to take me away from the boring, day-to-day of law school applications and sitting around my parents’ house. After the earthquake I wanted to help. I didn’t want to give money, I wanted to give time and energy, so I applied everywhere I could think of or find online. Now here I am on a plane to Port-au-Prince (PaP in the international slang down here). First thing: My French is a bit rusty, but I think it will come back quickly enough. Second: I’m a bit nervous. No need to be really. I’m going to be picked up at the airport, my hand will be held a bit. I think I’m nervous about what I’m going to see – and what I can do. Oh, and of course, it’s going to be hot and humid. All these thunderheads are dropping a good amount of rain judging from the smear of gray that follows under them.

We fly over strange turquoise streaks in the water. Reefs? It’s always great to see a part of the world for the first time. So many new things.

I didn’t write much when I was in Seattle. Only a couple of pages in a journal, one blog post. It was a comfortable eight months. I worked, I played with friends. I didn’t meet a bunch of new people; I was trying mostly to reconnect with friends of old. I had some good dates (and some bad). It was comfortable and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the life there. I could have, yet again, satisfied and content, but instead I pushed myself out to do something different in a different place. I pushed myself to be uncomfortable. I wonder why I do that. It seems to be a family trait with Kate perpetually on the move. What happened in our childhoods to motivate this? I can’t think of our parents ever pushing internationalism. So where did it come from, this wanderlust?

The muddy land we flew over wasn’t Hispaniola. We’ve moved back over open water again, though it’s dotted with many islands, big and small.

I guess, for me, comfortable just doesn’t inspire me. I want to be inspired. I want a muse. Travel and new faces can be muses of sorts. I wrote everyday I was on the road. I wrote much when I first arrived in Niger. I plan to write in Haiti.

I think Haiti will be a lot like Niger.

A short nap and I awaken to “Nous nous commençons notre descente vers Port-au-Prince,” we’re beginning our descent into PaP. Similar thoughts go through my head coming in over PaP as did coming in over Niamey. Poverty is obvious from the air – shacks and trash heaps. The Earthquake is evident too, though less obvious. Some collapsed walls and rubble. Though what we flew over was a short stretch from ocean to airport, not many concrete buildings to begin with. One thing quite noticeable from the air are the blue tents. They stand out against the metal roofs of shacks and houses. There are so many of them, clustered in groups, sometimes standing alone in a concession or alleyway.

As we taxi to the terminal we base a full on military air operation based in the middle of the PaP airport. Helicopters, field tents and support vehicles arranged orderly in the middle of grass fields between runways. A Peruvian transport loading up a contingent of Peruvian UN troops to head out is parked next to us on the tarmac.

The airport itself shows signs of the Quake: cracks and exposed brick work. The main building is still unused it seems and customs and baggage have moved into a secondary building.

Not quite as chaotic a scene as when I arrived at the Niamey airport in Niger – the porters are all held outside the gate, down a walkway from the exit from customs. That, however, didn’t stop someone from pulling my bag off the baggage conveyor and stealing the hard drive I had in my side pocket. Frustrating to lose so many photos and all of my music. A short attempt to talk to the airport and Air France officials was useless. They just shrugged and said I should go talk to someone else. The run around.

After the hard drive fiasco and meeting up with another volunteer, it’s off on a crazy drive to Leogane, a city to the West of PaP where Hands On Disaster Response (HODR) is based and the epicenter of the January earthquake. Something like 80-90% of the buildings in Leogane were destroyed.

Traffic is always crazy in the third world. Rubble piles in the middle of streets don’t help the free-for-all style of driving much. It was just a mess in PaP with busses, pick-up trucks, and motorcycles all competing for their route and lives.

We took a route that passed by many damaged and destroyed buildings. The main cathedral was just a shell, the entire roof had collapsed leaving arching walls sixty feet tall and stain glass windows intact. The parliament’s entire front façade had fallen away and many ministry buildings in the area were heavily damaged. I saw buildings that had fallen sideways, some collapsed, and some entirely all to rickety-looking to have been lucky enough to have survived.

Weather isn’t so bad. It is hot and it is humid, but it’s nothing worse than I ever experienced in Niger. Very much like Niger during the rainy season.The terrain is not all mud and bare ground as I had feared. A lot of green, palm trees and hills. No forests which I guess is what people are referring to when they say this half of the island was logged off.

People remind me of Niger also – friendly, energetic, loud, a bit pushy when it comes to waiting in lines. Here, though, I feel that being white will have a slightly differeny connotation. In Niger I was an anomaly, something out of the ordinary, but I get the idea that Haitians are more accustomed to the aid workers, especially after the Earthquake. It will be interesting to see how that affects relationships with locals.

It’s surprisingly nice to be back to this type of place and people, even if I’m not so comfortable with it yet. But, hey, wasn’t comfortable what I was escaping?

A long hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Tue, 18 May 2010 03:44:00 +0000

It was about the time I left Madrid that I fell off the face of the Earth, at least blog-wise. It's a good thing that I kept a daily journal of my travels -- not that I will put up here a daily trip log, but I would like to end my trip. Here's the plan: one post for each country left. I have Belgium, the Netherlands, A short stop in London and Iceland. I'll have to sort through my pictures as I write the posts and pair them down. It's ridiculous how many pictures you take when you have a digital camera and a 4GB memory card. Sometimes I feel like I should go back to 35 mm.

In this post I'll finish Spain and tell y'all what I'm up to these days. So first up, history or current events? History forms the backdrop for our modern world, so let's start there.

Six months ago, in my last post, I was in Benavente, Spain, staying with my good friend Meagan from Peace Corps. It was a great couple weeks spent working on my spanish and my cooking. Me and Meagan cooked together in Niger/Benin and it was even better in Spain, even if we stuck to the tiniest budget we could. I could see myself living in a little Spanish town. I'm very jealous of how she lived there, learned Spanish, and had the chance to appreciate that style of life.

High-lites of Benavente:

A day trip to Salamanca, home to the oldest University in Spain (founded in 1218!!) and some good old Spanish architecture. Nothing exceptionally interesting, but it had a nice little university town feel.

TAPAS COMPETITION: Perhaps one of the BEST things I was able to be a part of during my trip. Many of the bars in Benavente had a special tapas for a euro in a competition where one would travel around the town tasting the tapas and vote on the best. My favorite was the cavier and prawn topped salmon pure ice cream cone. Seriously. It sounds weird, but yum. There was also the cow's stomach potatas bravas. The idea of tapas is great. Enjoy food with drink. Good food.

Walking about town. We rambled in the country and around town. Even in little Benavente the Spanish had a eye to parks as they developed their town. More compact towns with parks in the center and here and there. I think that's the way to do cities, not suburbanization.

It was the first of November that I made my way back to Madrid and then onto Brussels. And I'll leave that for the next post. Preview: Good beer and some good Aussies.

So where am I now?

Back in Seattle. I arrived here on November 23rd. Having spent just about a week each in Belgium, Netherlands and Iceland. I moved back in with my parents. Spent the holidays seeing family and friends I hadn't seen in years. Got my applications for law school in order and come the middle of January I was back at the job I had been working before I left for the Peace Corps. It seems in a way like I hadn't gone anywhere at all. My friends were all here doing basically what they had been doing when I left and now I was too. Comforting, but also a little discomforting at the same time.

I'm good at my job. I think I'll make a good lawyer, even displaying some of the drafting and research skills now. It's just not a job I would want to do day in and day out for years. I've been there a total of five months so far and I'm ready to be done. I best find a law degree that isn't associated with a firm like that (not that the people there aren't great).

I was writing today. First day in a long time. Inspired me to get back on this blog (that and seeing John and Cary for the DCI countdown and how they said they used to read my blog, but it hasn't been updated in a while -- GREAT to see you guys!).

I was writing about how it seems like I feel more in my element when I'm out of it. I'm more comfortable when I'm uncomfortable. New situations, new people, and the unknown help me feel at ease where the familiar and expected have me feeling in a sort of malaise. Life's funny like that. I wonder if it's a generational thing. My parents and my parents' parents were about settling down and starting a family. Don't read into this that I wouldn't like that. In a way, I'm jealous of my friends that are there, that have kids. If things had worked out differently in my life, that could have easily been me and I would have been happy.

Still, there's something that propels me forward. A sense of trying to experience something new or of reaching beyond what I know I can grasp. Something out there keeps me yearning for more. For good or for bad, it seems that I can't be satisfied staying still.

I'm off to American University for law school next year. It could have been the University of Washington, I could have stayed in Seattle. It isn't though because, in the end, it was the bit of hesitation and nervousness and fear that I felt in moving to DC that swayed me. I've enjoyed being in Seattle. But I feel I'm complacent here. It's time to get back on the road, to see something new again. It's time to be uncomfortable, unknown, and out of my element; it's time to, once again, find that version of myself.

If y'all are still interested I'll get up the other trip posts and try to be more active in my blog-o-sphere actions. I'm also going to get back behind the lens and starting taking more pictures. But for now enjoy the benavente spread. Not the best photos, but I promise better from Belgium and especially iceland. I'm gonna get back into this, stay with me.

Tales of the Alhambra, Madrid and Skipped Flights

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:36:00 +0000

Leaving on this trip, I went through the effort to find a tent in Niger, not an easy thing to find. Thanks to my PCV neighbor, Meagan, I was able to get a 'BugHut,' which is basically a mosquito net with a door held up with poles. It's great for Africa, light and easy to pack around. We used it a bit in Tunisia, the only problem was when it started to rain; no rain-fly so I had to hustle all my stuff under cover... at least the BugHut dries out quickly in the sun.

So coming into Granada, when will and I learned that there was absolutely NO available hostals in town, we thought 'oh, hey, we can camp.' Then we checked the weather. And we were assured by weatherunderground.com that no rain was coming. So we went for the camping option.

Unfortunately Granada is a bit colder than both Niger and Tunisia... go figure. It was just cold at night really, being in the mountains. Our first night I was FREEZING, even all bundled up in a sweatshirt and long pants, a stocking hat and SOCKS!

We ended up staying in Granada for four or five days.

Granada -

Granada is a nice place. I think it might be the capital of the bohemian world. You can see many, many... well, what Americans might call 'hippies,' but not quite the same thing. Our buddy, David from Poland, put it a good way when he asked, 'What do you call them... natural? This is the best place in Europe to live homeless, since it's warm and the people are nice.' And that about sums it up. Natural and living off the kindness of others. But man, do they have awesome dogs. So well trained. I even saw a dog helping itself to water from a water fountain, up on it's hind legs lapping at the stream of water spurting up. Quite cool. Good dog.

The big highlight of Granada is the Alhambra (which in arabic means, The Red One, so really, people keep calling it, The TheRedOne). Up on a hill overlooking town, it is quite a sight. We were shown a great vantage point by David a couple nights before we were to visit the actual Alhambra.

The Alhamba is famous mostly thanks to Washington Irving, who wrote the book 'Tales of the Alhambra,' saving it from being lost to time and forgotten. What a life that guy had. Traveling around Europe learning the language and culture for years. Became an ambassador for the states to Spain. Just writing and traveling. Wouldn't that be a great way to live? Ah... the aristocracy.

It actually requires buying tickets in advance to get into the highlight areas of the Alhambra, even with a specific entry time on the ticket. It is never fun to feel like you have a time-limit to see a place, especially when paying 13 euros. So maybe that has something to do with my opinion of the place, but I found worth the visit, but no more impressive than the alcazars we had already seen in Sevilla and Cordoba. Inn really it is more impressive, but it's due to the setting and not the architecture really. Set up on the hill, overlooking the city, a little hut would still be an attractive place to visit.

It really was a great place to visit, especially the Generalife, which, though it appears to refer to the insurance company, actually means 'Architect's Garden' in Arabic.

Will and I had a great time just sitting on the main path in the Generalife people watching, he sketched the scenery and I just happily wrote away and wandered off to take photos every once and a while. Good afternoon.

It was a nice time in Granada, aside from the cold nights. We boarded an overnight bus for Madrid a couple hours after seeing the Alhambra and woke up at the southern bus station for the capital.

I think many of my best pictures on this trip so far were taken here, so check out the picasa album.

Madrid -

First off, arriving at 630 in the morning, we had a couple hours to kill before we could check into our hostel... So we sat in a park near the place for two hours. It was so cold, I did something I hadn't done since I visited Paris last December: I put on shoes and socks. Shocking, I know.

Our first day in Madrid was full of museums. We saw the navel museum, which, if you're into models and swords and stuff, is a cool place. And of course, we were, so it was a full two hour visit. Plus it's FREE.

Then, that evening we were able to visit the Prado museum, again, for FREE. Everyday, from 6-8 the museum is absolutely free. What a great way to give people access to the arts. Two hours is NOT enough to really appreciate the museum, so most people visiting the city for just a couple days would probably still pay for entrance. But if you lived in the city or were visiting for a couple days, what a great way to see the art inside without breaking the bank. Two hours here and there, taking your time to see smaller sections... very nice.

Some of my favorites from the Prado were Goya and Velazquez. Especially the Goya pintars negra, his black paintings. So different from his portraits, dark, indistinct faces, but still full of emotion. Many twisted and... yeah, good stuff. Dark, but good, especially considering that this was all in the age of doing light portraits and landscapes. I always find those transitions between types/eras of art very fascinating.

The next day we were able to get into the Reina Sofia for free also. The same idea as the Prado. Brilliant! We also played frisbee in the park with a couple of dancers, Sarah and Maryann, from New York and Marco, another of the Italian guys we've met. Sarah and Maryann were Americans, but unlike almost every other Americans we met, they didn't make us cringe and speak in Haussa or Zarma so they wouldn't know we're Americans also. They spoke Italian and Spanish, were traveling right, in our opinion. Were laid back and into seeing a place for real. In other words, good companions for me and will for a couple days in Madrid.

Why are so many Americans abroad loud, annoying, and totally clueless? They also don't even try to speak foreign languages for the most part, or if they do try to speak, it's all American English-ized. Of course, we should probably distinguish between backpackers and what we've been calling 'tourists,' the people who have a tight schedule to keep, secluded hotels to stay in, and no interaction with the locals, other than in souvenir shops. But enough of that... onto the Reina.

The Reina is more focused on modern art, featuring a large collection of Picasso. It houses his masterpiece, Guernica. What is especially impressive about the exhibit is that in the adjacent rooms to the painting, the museum displays a series of studies Picasso made for the piece and a series of photos for the work in progress (including changes Picasso made part-way through). A cool look into the way such a piece comes together.

The Reina also has Miro and some famous pieces from Dali, like The Great Masturbater. It's a very living museum and the exhibits seem to change all the time. Also, it's great at incorporating a variety of art, not just painting and sculpture, but sounds, video, even dance art (no caged dancers, but the costumes and videos of performances).

Madrid definitely has it going in terms of art museums.

After two days staying in a hostel, we met up with Will's friend, Carrie, and stayed with her and her fiance for a night. They gave us a GREAT walking tour of Madrid. We saw the big park (I forget it's name), and quite a few different neighborhoods. We went for tapas and tea and hookah, and more tapas, and then a birthday party. Great great time and why you should make friends with people in places around the world so you can see the real life of a place.

Thanks to Carrie and Alberto!!!

So unfortunately (well, actually turns out it could be fortunate), my plans in the UK fell through. Josh's buddies had second thoughts about having us come to stay and join them on their trip (word must have reached them in advanced about who was actually coming) [too many parentheses?].

So, showing up to the airport a couple, four, hours before our flight to London, will and I decided we didn't want to go to the UK if we were to just continue getting hostels and seeing sights. Let's face it, the UK just isn't that exciting and it's EXPENSIVE. I've been there before. I would like to hit Scotland or Ireland again, but not now. So before our flight took of, I had decided to skip it, bought a ticket from Madrid to Brussels in two weeks time and decided to just jump back onto my original plans there, cutting out the middle.

So now I'm here in Benavente, staying with my Peace Corps neighbor, Meagan, the very same Meagan who gave me the BugHut. So not only did the BugHut return home, but I have a place to stay, free of charge for two weeks. Working on my Spanish and cooking real food in a real kitchen. Plus I'm going to take a bath tonight. A good break from the constant movement of being on the road, recharge for the last leg. Plus, it's a good start to the adjustment to a new, colder, climate.

More on the town and our visit to Salamanca later.

New Picasa albums for Granada and Madrid.

¡Hola!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 09:51:00 +0000

Wrote this post about a week ago now, but have been waiting to get some pictures uploaded before I posted it. So, a week later, here's my post about Barcelona, Sevilla, and Cordoba. I'll get one about Granada and Madrid up later this week.

[Just a quick update on what I'm up to now: My buddy's friends in England sort of un-invited us to their house and their trip to the lake district in the North, so my and Will decided to stay in Spain. I've moved in for two weeks with Meagan, former neighbor across the river from me in Niger and now English teacher in Benavente, Spain. More on all that in a later post]

-10/10/09-

So it´s been a good long while since me last update; why break from established proceedures and write frequently just because I´ve left Africa?

We´re in Granada, Spain at the moment, and what has encouraged me to get back into this blog a bit is that we´ve found a cyber cafe that will let us upload pictures to picasa! So I´ve been catching up on uploading photos from Tunisia (and a second album of new Tunis pictures), which are a good three weeks old now, and will be working on the Spain ones soon as well. Incha Allah.

After spending a couple days in Tunis, seeing the Bardo museum and inhaling as many cwarmas as we could, we spent a long night in the Tunis airport waiting for our flight to Barcelona. So, the buses and trains to the airport stop running at eight PM or so and don´t start running again until around seven the next morning, meaning that to catch our 7AM flight, we would either have to catch a Taxi or spend the night there. Seeing as the taxi costs money and sleeping on the floor at the airport is free.... well, being ex-Peace Corps volunteers traveling on a small budget, that was an easy choice. I bet it made for quite the sight to see us three set up in a corner of the sidewalk just outside the airport entrance cooking pasta on a camp stove. Not sure we could have gotten away with that in Europe.

At the airport in Tunis, the third musketeer, Josh, decided to split ways with us in Spain. He´s currently walking the Camino de Santiago, and if all goes well, we´ll be seeing him again in Madrid.

So, arriving in Barcelona, our trio became a two-some of Will and myself.

Barcelona -

What a great city to visit. And I imagine a pretty good place to live as well if you can get just out of the most touristy areas. The parks, oh the parks! I think we spent every day in Barcelona seeing a new park. And we could easily spend the entire day in just one. Park Guell, the landscaped area just north of town, designed by Gaudi was very impressive. The park at Montjuïc was massive and includes the Olympic facilities from the 1992 games. It would be great to live in a city with so many fine sports grounds.

The arcitecture on many buildings is amazing. Again, Gaudi can be thanked for much of the most impressive areas, but other Modernist arcitects also contributed. That, combined with the gothic and enlightment era buildings creates something akin to Paris with medival village, with something almost futuristic.

We didn´t actually go in the Sagrada Familia, but it was impressive from the outside and we spent at least an hour sitting on the sidewalk enjoying it.... and another hour in a small park across the street which also has a nice view of it over a pond.

We, almost literally, ran into our Niger PCV friend Vicky and her sister on the street one day. Small world! So they joined us for something of a high-lite day of park viewing. They´re traveling kind of the same course I am from here, but hitting everything first and in a shorter time frame.

So after a good five days enjoying Barcelona, meeting some great people, and sitting in the sunshine in the parks we decided we should really see more of Spain since we´re here, so we boarded a train heading south to Seville.

Seville/Sevilla -

The train ride was long. The night BEFORE the train ride was a long one too, so I think we spent most of the first five hours sleeping. I was awake for the first hour or so, and watched a truly impressive sunrise over the city. With the train sliding along, the sun would appear and disappear between the buildings and over the water. Was a great sight.

In fact there were quite a few sights to see outside the windows. Spain is a very pretty country. I would love to spend some more time here sometime. Maybe bike across it. The plannning begins....

We pulled into Sevilla about 7, something around twelve hours on the train.

Central Sevilla is a maze of twisting streets, as it has been since medieval times. We found the hostel alright, but got lost that night walking around (without a map) and learned to never leave the house without one; a rule that was broken at least once and resulted in half an hour of wandering back from a bar. But, really, it wasn´t that long till we got a hold of the city.

Sevilla made a great first impression on a friday night. It has a laid back atmosphere, but people, as with everywhere in Spain, came out about midnight to enjoy life. We wandered along the river and then through town and in every square there were groups of people sitting around socializing and drinking. The bars were going till late, and not just with young kids, it´s a common thing for older generations to stay out late as well. It´s a wonder anyone can get up in the morning at all, but about 9AM the city comes back to life.

We stayed in two different hostels in Sevilla and met quite a few fellow travelers, as you tend to. That´s the great thing about hostels, the common living space lubricates the social contacts you make and, then again, so does a shared bottle of wine.

We saw the sights of the old part of town. We actually paid (!!) to go into the Alcazar, which is a centuries old conglomeration of moorish and christian palaces and royal accomidations. It started out originaly as a muslim fort, and then the Almohades built the first palace on the spot, which was constantly updated by subsequent rulers (muslim and catholic alike) until the 16th century. The parks here were great, and as we´ve become park experts, you can trust me on that. Lots of water integrated into the landscape and flowers. Ended up taking a nap in a little corner of the place, only to wake up to a giant peacock wandering on by. Good way to awaken.

We also tried to get into the Cathedral, which we heard was free on Sunday afternoons, but after standing in line for 20 minutes, we found out it really does cost 8 Euros to get in, and so we about-faced, and went back out, browsing the souvenir store on the way. Fun fact about the cathedral: during the 16th and 17th centuries Sevilla was THE place to be in Europe, rich and far reaching power as the gate way to the Americas. With the influx of money, the catholic leadership decided that they needed a cathedral to show off the importance of the city. So they wanted to, quote, "Let it be a church so beautiful and so great that those who see it built will think we were mad.¨It´s big alright. And Christopher Columbus is probably buried inside (though there´s a chance, the remains are not really his, having been moved from the original grave in the New World).

One cool thing we saw, FOR FREE, was the Archivos General de Indias, housing a huge collection of documents from the Spanish explorers plodding their way across the new continent. It was interesting to see many of the maps and letters they have on display in the small museum attached to the archives, but mind-boggling to think of all the thousands and thousands of pages stored away in the floor to ceiling shelves on two floors of this big building.

Last thing I´ll ramble on about in Seville was the amazing graffiti they have down by the water. In a rather drab park along the water there are tons of different pieces done by a variety of graffiti artists. Some are really good. Most are pretty decent. It´s too bad that 1) graffiti gets such a bad rap and 2) that taggers will tag in places they shouldn´t, for instance, the Plaza de España, which is also in Seville and a very beautiful building, but has been tagged in the upper balconies by a plethora of people, sad really. I guess 2 causes 1 really. Fortunately, for the most part Sevilla keeps its graffiti in the right places and it´s very enjoyable, good quality art. Check out my picasa album here for some shots. And I just found this blog on graffiti, originally (2007) in Seville and now about graffiti in general. Check it out if you´re into that.

Cordoba-

So after five days or so in Sevilla, we decided to push on and ended up heading out to Cordoba. We had heard some good things and bad things about Cordoba. First impressions were not so favorable, it seemed to be a more modern city and not something to write home about, but that was really just around the bus station. As we moved into the center of town and found our hostel we warmed a little more to the place.

Unfortunately we then went for a walk through the old, touristy part of town and ended up crossing the restored roman bridge to walk the other side of the river and found a..... well, either a very poorly done park, or one in the process of being completed, but it was not so nice. Day one impression up till dinner was only so-so.

But we made ourselves tuna sandwichs for dinner (with tuna we found in the previous hostel... thanks Wendy?) and went up to the terresse on the roof to eat them. Turns out that night was a free tapas night at the hostel bar and before we knew it was packed with people. Met a bunch of great spaniards and foreigners that night. In fact, one British cat, Liam, invited us to out the next night. He took us for tapas and beers and then back to his place where he made us a great spread of tortillas and tapas again. We shared wine with him and his house mates and then went on to hit a club with them as well. It´s so great to meet great people like that in the world, especially while traveling in a new place.

Other than some good people, we were lucky to run across a free entrance into the Alcazar in Cordoba. Not quite as impressive as the one in Sevilla, it was non-the-less a great place to see arcitecture and some wonderful gardens.

Having seen all that, we left for Granada, where we´re currently encamped, and I mean that quite literally. All the hostels were booked up, so we ended up on the outskirts of town in a campground. It´s not bad at all, but for the fact that my sleeping bag, even with an extra liner isn´t the best at keeping me warm, so it´s bundle up with extra layers and a hat. Still, brrrrr....

---Back to the present---

Check out the new picasa albums for Tunis Round 2, Barcelona, Sevilla, Sevilla Graffiti, and Cordoba. I know that's a lot of photos at once, I had to edit them down from many, many more after all. In fact I'm still trying to motivate myself to give them all captions! Also, as I'm still trying to grow as a photographer, any thoughts and criticism is warmly welcomed.

I will try to get a post and pictures up for Granada and Madrid later this week, but I'll give both you and myself a while to get over this glut of images and info. Until then, adios.

Tunisia almost at an end

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:19:00 +0000

When we last saw our intrepid trio of tenacious travelers, they were heading south into the hills and valleys of the Tunisian mountains after a week of lounging on the beaches along the Northern coast.

Let's check back in with them.

Since the last post they've made a loop of the Tunisian interior.

First was a southern leg from Tabarka to Le Kef, via the ancient Roman town of Bulla Regia. This was one long day of travel, but well worth it, both in the scenery of the ride, and the site of Bulla Regia. Heading south out of Tabarka, the road gradually rises from the seaside to some impressive hills and mountains. There were moments along the twisting and turning two lane road that it seemed our bus was just perched on the precipice, inches from toubling down the steep slopes. But the views were great and the small towns and villages seemed very picturesque, it's an area I would like to spend some time exploring in the future perhaps.

The bus dropped us off on the main road, at the turn for the Bulla Regia site, about 3km distance. We hiked in with our big packs, leaving them at the museum desk to check out the underground villas in the town. The roman town here has houses build underground to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter and quite a few of them were very well preserved and you can just wander on in. Many great mosaics were left intact as well. The most impressive villa open had many underground rooms centered on an open-air atrium complete with a fountain.

From here we moved onto El Kef (Le Kef), having to hike up hill to get from the bus station to the town's center, based around the Kasbah (castle) perched on the top of the hill. El Kef has been a defensive point in Tunisia for millenia, for punic, carthaginian, roman, namibian, and islamic civilizations. It is a nice, laid back mountain top place with great views out over the surrounding rolling farm lands.

After two nights here, we were set to move on. The plan was to hit the Roman town of Haidra and the hill fort of Jugurtha, south of El Kef, but on route our bus broke down for a couple hours and we missed our morning window to find transit out to these remote areas so we decided to continue on and she the Roman town of Sbeitla just outside of Kesserine, an interior transit hub for Tunisia and an area much easier to navigate through.

Turned out to be a good choice since Sbeitla was a great site in it's own, complete with some great towering temples. Three of them were built right next to the town's forum, one each to Jupiter, Minervana, and Juno and they're the highlight of what's left of the place, but it's also home to a great theatre and the scale of the city from one side to the other gives you a sense of the size some of these towns could be. It's a good half a kilometer from one side to the other and just packed with streets, houses, a market area, the forum, baths, amphitheater, theater, all your good ol' roman trappings of a town. And this wasn't even that big of a place. I would have loved to see it during it's hey-day.

From here, we were on to Kairouan, one of the seven holy cities of Islam and home to the oldest mosque in North Africa. The city has a great medina and of course more mosques and mosoleums to holy Muslims than you can shake a stick at.

We were here for the last couple of days of Ramadan, so we got to enjoy the Medina's night life as it came to the end. We had many cups of tea, ate good sandwiches and played a lot of hearts. It was almost sad to say goodbye, but the time was right to move on again, this time to Sousse.

Sousse. What can I say about Sousse? Don't go here. It's a tourist trap, artificial atmosphere place with way too many euro-trash vacationers in their gaudy clothing (or what only sometimes partially passes as clothing). What a striking difference to Kairouan, a real tunisian (and islamic) town we loved. We ended up staying two nights in Souse, just because we didn't realize how bad it was till it was too late. Oh well, live, travel, and learn.

So we hoped the train back to Tunis and rolled in here Tuesday night. We went straight to make the ferry reservations and it's a good thing too, because we found that all the ferries were booked solid for two weeks, meaning a scramble for a new itinerary and course of action. We settled on a flight direct from Tunis to Barcelona. That unfortunately means cutting out Sicily and the South of France, but it does mean we get to spend an entire three weeks in Spain, giving us the time to make our way leisurely about. I'll just have to hit Sicily and the South some other time.... still on the to-travel list. We fly out on sunday.

So for the next couple of days, we'll be killing time in Tunis. We visited the Bardo yesterday. The Bardo is Tunisia's biggest museum and home to some great mosaics from it's roman archeological sites. Spend a good deal of time picture taking and wandering the rooms. Unfortunately a lot of the place was closed down for work.

The beach was our target today. And it probably will be tomorrow as well. And Saturday. Unfortunately the cyber cafe here isn't letting me do much to upload photos, I'll try again later, but for now, there's only a couple new ones to see at my picasa album.

Will catch you all up again later from Spain. Bi'salama!

Tunisia Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:32:00 +0000

From Tunisia

Not much more to add, we've moved on from Bizerte to Tabarka on the Norhtern coast. Now near the Algerian border. Will pass a couple days here and then head south into the mountains. Added some pictures at picasa to check out.

Ma'as-salama for now

From Tunisia

Tunisia

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:07:00 +0000

So it's been just under a week in Tunisia so far. Of course the first day was mostly traveling, but since arrival we've had some great beach time and seen carthage and the medina, some good touristy things. Now we're trying to get off the path a little and onto the quiet beaches. It is off season now so really there isn't much in the way of crowds anyway.

No pictures yet, I need to load them onto my tumb drive for the next posting....

We found Tunis to be a great place. It's Ramadan right now, so that limits our ability to enjoy the food and cafés, but Tunisians make up for it at night with an almost carnival atmospehere of shoping and eating in the streets of Tunis. Was great to come back from the beach at 5, eat and nap till 9, then head out for tea and people wathcing on the streets. Wow, Tunisians love their shopping! I've never seen so many shoe stores side by side.

Currently we're just outside of Bizerte on the Northern coast, camped at a little ground just off the beach at Remel.

The weather has been (mostly) perfect, warm enough for swimming, but almost chilly in the evening (last night it was down right cold by niger standards). Night before lastwe had a bit of rain. Me, being in the tent with no rain fly, I had to scramble to find a dry place in the camp ground. Ended up sleeping on the walkway next to the closed caffeteria, but then had to move when it started to flood. Ended up on the covered area just outside the bathrooms. Was able to get to sleep despite the damp sleeping bag and was later awaken by the guard of the grounds telling me to go sleep in one of the rooms they have, which he had opened for me. It was a long and cold night up to that point ad I've got a bit of a cold to remember it by, but that's the adventure of traveling.

Next morning (yesterday) I got up to explore the shipwrecks about 2 miles down the beach. The storm from the night before was still hangning around, but looked like it would head inland. It gave me some slight mist on the way there, but as soon as I reached the wrecks it took an abrupt left turn, headed back OUT to sea and came right over top of me. I ended up seeking shelter in the shack of these two Tunisian fisherman hidden in the brush on a dune just above the beach. Here's me, soaking and these two who don't speak a lick of french. Conversation was just gestures and 'Bush... (thumbs down). Obama.... (shrug, we're not sure what to make of him yet body language).'

Hung out there,wishing I had brought the travel book which has a scant section on Arabic so I could learn a little, when the foreman of the company tearing up the nearest Wreck to shore came by. I was invited to come get a closer look and see thm pulling the wreck apart beam by beam and rivet by rivet. A lot of work.

Well my hour on the internet is approaching quick. I hope to do more short posts on route (with pictures!)

Until then.

Goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:20:00 +0000

So I guess I've been avoiding writing about my immanent departure from Niger, both here and in my handwritten journal. It's not like I trying to pretend I'm staying here, that's not it, I'm very actively packing, re-packing, and searching out souvenirs and music to send back home. I think what it comes down to is that I don't want to analyze this experience yet, to look back and think about everything I've done, attempted to do, failed to do, never even started.

Peace Corps is a strange and wonderful experience. We left our homes, families, and friends, to come live like and with the people of a country we knew nothing about before landing. We learned the language, we integrated, we made friends and found new families. Some of us did work, some didn't, but the fact is just in coming we ALL did something.

Peace Corps has three stated goals: 1) to aid developing countries with their need for trained men and women, 2) to bring American culture and an understanding of Americans to a foreign culture, and 3) to bring that foreign culture and understanding back to Americans at home.

The first goal is 'work.' The other two are 'life.' Peace Corps really should be all about the life part. Yes, it would be great to see volunteers help to develop a country, but, as currently organized and funded it volunteers really have no chance to do anything about the 'development' of a country. Not in terms of buildings or gardens or any of that. What Peace Corps should focus more on is the "ambassadors of America" type of idea. Send Americans out, good examples of Americans to live in foreign places, to introduce new ideas and different ways of thinking. THAT is how volunteers can really make a difference. Help people realize that there is another way of living out there; corruption doesn't have to be rampant, children don't have to die of preventable diseases like malaria, you don't have to have twenty kids. But that kind of change takes a long time and needs constant deployment of volunteers. AND that type of development doesn't produce the numbers.

If there's one thing that frustrated me about Peace Corps it's the emphasis on numbers. How many people did you convince to go to school? How many people understand better how to grow meranga? How many will send their girls to school?

Every four months we have to provide the numbers. And you know what, it's all BS. Who can actually tell you how many people are now making Oral Re-hydration Solution for their babies with diarrhea after listening to my radio show? But in order to have funding we have to show numbers, even if they're just fabricated out of thin air.

That mentality needs to change. The idea that you can quantify development and the human condition. I understand the need for oversight and all that, but there are better, more subjective ways to do that (and subjectivity is necessary in this type of field, dealing with humans).

But anyway, this is the exact type of thinking I have been avoiding by not writing as of late. Let me fill you in on the facts of life as they have been:

I''ve moved out of Gaya. Took a Peace Corps car up from Gaya on Tuesday. Did my last radio show the week before and spent the week saying goodbye and passing out my e-mail address, though that's unlikely to get many messages. Check out pictures of my last week. It wasn't all that hard to leave. Some people cry, some get depressed... I guess I'm just not the type to dwell in one place all too long. I'm anxious to get back on the road.

I met my replacement. His name is Brian, he's from Massachusets. I think he'll fit in well in Gaya. We had a good time, I spent my last two days showing him around - work, important types, like the mayor and prefet, and of course my friends and where to get good food and the occasional beer. Took him to the border to introduce him to the guards there so he won't have much trouble getting across.

It seems weird now to think I won't be going back because it still feels like I should be going back next week. It's strange to think that I'm leaving this country on a plane saturday morning. When will I see goats as passangers on motorcycles again? Or hear Zarma? It's so satisfying to hear a local language and know what people are saying about you, then to bust in with a comment and watch their floored expression, "You hear Zarma?!" Yes I do.

When will I ever be able to do that again?

So now I'm in Niamey doing paperwork, hanging out with my friends here I may never see again, but that's life isn't it? Things are constantly moving forward, changing. We can't stay still in the present like statues. That's living. I guess in some way I've throw myself into a live that will always constantly be flowing. If I had stayed at home, settled into a job, I would have the same friends, the same city, same house. Maybe the small things would change, but the essence of my life would stay. That can be a comforting and pleasant thing, something I will one day want. But I'm young, this is the time when I can pursue an international career, I can travel, see and do things, develop a world view that I could never settled in one place.

Traveling plans for now:

Tunisia - Sicily - Italy - France - Spain - UK - Iceland

My and my buddy's Josh and Will are taking to the air, road, and water on a cross-europe trip. Should be a pretty good time, these two guys have become some of my better friends over the course of the last two years and this will be a great experience to share.

-Route to be Filled in on the way, South to North-

It's not as spectacular as our envisioned motorcycle trip (Niamey to London on bikes!), but given the hassle of borders and Al-Qaeda of the Magreb and cold european weather to ride through in November.... well I'll take the beaches of the mediteranian at a liesurely pace over that right now. Just get me to the water!

- Original Trip route -

If anyone knows of willing people that have places we could crash at or places to see along the way (staying mostly along the coast, traveling north from southern italy all the way across france to spain) let me know.

Happy trails for now

Close of Service Conference and Giraffes!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:29:00 +0000

And of course, sticking to the way of doing normal business a month has gone by and not a single post has gone up. At least this time though I can say honestly that it's because I've been quite busy. I've gone on a week long bike ride in Benin, had our close of service conference in Niamey and spent a week in Gaya trying to get everything finished up in terms of work and the text books.

Bike Ride in Benin -

Being that I'm right on the border, my closest PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) neighbor is in Malanville just across the river from Gaya, a mere 7km away. She knows I'm into biking and invited me along on their Family Planning education bike tour from Kalele to Parakou in central Benin. Got the project and ability to travel cleared through the Bureau and was off on the bike ride from May 27th till June 2nd.

Differences between Benin and Niger Peace Corps experiences:

Food- Oh my god, what good food they have in Benin. Even the pounded stuff is better there; it's yams and rice instead of millet. They have cheese!!!! Cheese in all every sauce in fact. And there's juices, bisap, much deliciousness was to be had.

Weather- We biked 20km at 1pm, and no one died. I don't think that could be possible in Niger. It was hot in Benin, by Seattle standards, but not by Niger standards, maybe mid 80's to low 90's, nice biking weather in my opinion. Plus it rained on us once, which up to that point hadn't really happened yet. Funny story on that episode; it was our first day riding and we were on the last leg of the day. As we were getting ready to leave the village we heard our first clap of thunder and the clouds that had been slowing growning more and more ominous took on an especially dark look. We thought, "hey let's try to outrun it" and so we took off. It seemed like everything would work out fine, the road ran opposite from the approaching storm which blew at our backs a refreshing breeze. Then, in a 'turn' for the worst, the road curved so that the last 10km ran perpendicular to the storm's path and before we knew it, rain started up in big wet drops. Luckily, the lead biker saw a three room house that for some reason these two Beninois guys had built in the middle of nowhere and we (20 people) were able to take refuge inside one of the (small) rooms for an hour till the front blew past. Played the harmonica a little bit inside and, with the heat and sweat, it felt sort of like being locked away in a small prison cell. But at least we weren't rained on...

Language - This is one area where PC Niger has Benin beat. We hear the local languages. Every Niger PCV is taught a local language and so we are able to be a little more connected with our communities, especially bush villages, rural places where education isn't so good and people might not understand french. In Benin, the problem is really that there are so many languages (60) that it's damn near impossible for PC to teach their volunteers the language in their village and so they stick to French. In Niger we can usually get by with teaching hausa or zarma, though other languages are around these predominate and most people can understand at least a little in either one. Volunteers in Niger have also organized trainings for themselves on other native languages like Fulan or Tamachec when they thought it would be usefull.

Clothing - It's a lot more casual in Benin. I wore SHORTS for an entire week. Wow. Plus I saw girls' knees; I had to be physically restrained.

The Volunteers - Not too different. They complain about the bureau, they love and hate their experience and the country (mostly love), and they can drink a grand biere in about 5 minutes flat.

The Work - While the health and environmental sectors are basically the same, Benin has small business and english teaching volunteers that Niger doesn't. Our education volunteers, like myself don't teach.

The ride was 160k over 4 days and it was beautiful. We did around four meetings a day, one in each village we passed, talking about the why and how of family planning. Nothing funnier than asking someone to demonstrate condom use on a wooden phalis.

I really love biking and a bike will have to be the first thing I buy back state side. I don't even want a car. Spring time plan is to bike to San Fransisco. Incha Allah.

So that was my wonderful 'work' week in Benin. Couldn't have asked for more on a vacation.

Last week was our Close of Service (COS) conference. The group I came to country with got together for the last time as a whole and we had session on resume writting, readjusting to life, the administrative side of things, etc. Best part of the 'official' conference part was a trip to see the giraffes. Last time I walked, this time, air conditioned car!

We also had a big dinner together, watched a slide show of pictures of our time together and then had a party to celebrate our two years. It's sad to think of not seeing many of these people again, but I'm also ready to move on from this experience to the next, even if I'm not sure what, entirely that will be.

I've been looking into law programs which are strong in international law, and thinking of matching that up with either a masters in public administration (MPA), or a legal masters (LLM) in sustainable international development (UW!) or another international emphasis. Both ideas would be four year programs, but are highly selective for the schools I'm looking at (NYU, Columbia, Duke, UW, American University) AND I'd have to do a lot of the work in applying and looking for money from here.

I might want to take a year off to organize myself and get things together. At least I'm starting to get on it now. Better late than never. T-minus 5 months till application deadlines. First thing - resume and my COS paperwork.

Anyway, some happy news is that the planning for The Trip is coming along well. So far the basic itininery includes tunisia, sicily, italy, france, spain, the UK, and either Ireland or Iceland (maybe both!). Planned out almost three months for travel with Josh and Will. Should be an amazing trip and a chance to move on from this place in style. If anyone has any travel ideas or knows anyone willing to play host to some returning volunteers let me know.

Oh, I almost forgot -

Niger Political Update:

If you haven't heard (and US news being all about presidential fly swatting and not substansive news) Tandja, the President, disolved the National Assembly a couple weeks ago after the constitutional court ruled against his bid for a third term. There was some rioting (they attacked the Governor's house in Dosso, and burned part of it down, the grand marche in Niamey caught fire, police fired tear gas into crowds, one woman died), but most of the protesting has been peaceful and there is no big threat to anyone here or a big chance that the government will fall apart. Everything done so far (even on Tandja's side) has been within the letter of the law. Tandja wants to hold a national referendum on constitutional ammendment in August which would allow him a third chance at election, but recent rumor has him planning on stepping down now that the opposition is gaining strength. Nothing official yet.

Also, I added new Pictures to Picasa in two albums: Benin Bike Ride and Giraffes!!!

Four Seasons

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:14:00 +0000

In Niamey. Came in because I 1)chipped a tooth and so have a dentist appointment and 2) wanted to grab my passport so I can participate (incha allah) in a bike ride in Benin this coming week - though nothign certain yet.

It rained last night, a good solid rain. So that begs the question, Is rainy season here?

Of course in Gaya we had our first 'rain' way back on April 20th, but it was a pitiful amount and since then there have been a couple of good sprinkles, but nothing substantial that has really gotten people excited to plant their fields.

In honor of the upcoming (and long awaited) rains I wanted to give a brief summary of the four seasons Niger style:

June - September : Rainy season. The long dry spell which lasts the entire year finally breaks and the dust, quite litteraly settles, so that things have a cooler and cleaner feeling. The temperatures drop, at least when it's raining, which is a god-send at night when hot season can make it almost impossible to sleep. The downsides are that after the rains, the strong sun here will pull the mositure back out of the ground and it can become VERY humid - think the South in the US, only with hotter sun, but just as much humidity. It feels like the earth is breathing out one long steady hot breath. Another downside is the bugs. They die out over the long dry spell, but come the rains, come the mosquitos, flies, etc. This is malaria season as well as planting season.

October - November : Mini Hot Season. After the rains end there is typically a two month period where the heat rears its ugly heat again. Really I think that the heat never went away, the rains just mitigate it a lot and so after the rains it seems as if the whole world heats up again. This is harvest time as well so lots of hot work for Nigeriens.

December - Febuary : Cold season. Keep in mind cold is a relative thing here. Cold could be 80 degrees, but sometimes it gets down to the parka wearing depths of 60 degrees... parka wearing if you're a Nigerien, though for me, a fleece is enough. Surprising how we can become accustomed to a certain range of temperatures. I frequently think, oh it's not too hot today, only to look at a thermometer and see it read 95. Cold season can be nice since it's 'cold', but it's also the start of the long dry stretch where everything green starts to wither and die and the dusts of the Harmatten start to haze the sky and coat everything in the house in a fine layer of sand. This is the time when people do their gardening so tomatoes and other veggies are more available.

March - May : HOT season. Pretty self explanitory. 110-115, even as high as 120 in some places and times, though not usually that hot in Gaya. The dust of cold season continues to hang around, but the winds stop blowing for days at a time and the heat can just settle in like a blanket that one can never throw off. Pretty terrible at night when the temperature barely changes from the day time. Life during hot season is largely onr of trying to stay as cool as possible, naps in the afternoon, and a lot of sweating. Bus rides are a bad idea during hot season (though unavoidable usually). The saving grace of hot season is that the mangos start to ripen.

Just a short post about nothing. Small chat on the weather if you will.

Kala Tonton.

Musings on Development

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:38:00 +0000

A short preface for this essay: I just started reading The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs and will be reading Dead Aid when I receive a copy in the next couple weeks (thanks mom and dad!), so my opion here (and as the side bar says, MY opion, Peace Corps' it is not) may change and evolve, as perhaps this essay will as well as I shift through the thoughs even more. This is just my view at the moment as I exist here in Niger; West Africa. Enjoy.

Development in Africa - Big Men, NGOs and Money

I heard a book review on BBC a while back about a book by a Zambian author, entitled Dead Aid. It’s about development in the third world, or I guess more like what’s wrong with it and why development here in Africa lags so far behind. I’ve yet to read it, but a copy is on the way, and from what I hear, its themes tie in with much of my musings and conversations of the past couple months as I start to sum up in my head what I’ve done here, what I’ve seen, learned, and accomplished.

Up front, Africa is not the US, Africa is not Europe, not Asia, or anywhere else. Africa is a unique place (aren’t they all really?) and what works elsewhere will not here. Africans see the world differently, they value different norms.

African culture is centered heavily on Big Men, that’s to say chiefs (village, tribal, etc), governors, presidents, generals, dictators, even the local police sergeant. There’s a certain affinity to look to these people and to have a sort of patronage relationship where, if you just go along and support him, you’ll get something in return. In fact, glad handing to important types is so important, people will even allow themselves to be humiliated by Big Men and give no resistance. It’s why I have to inform the Inspector, the Mayor, the Prefet (like a local governor), the local counselors, and everyone deemed important before I so much as think of doing something.

This is a system and way of thinking that pre-dates the arrival of white folks (read Europeans). I just read Things Fall Apart and the first section is pre white arrival and one can clearly see these themes expressed. Colonization only played into and upon this system. Europeans appeared and became the Big Men of Big Men through intimidation, violence, and lots of nice, shiny things to sell and give away. All these being acceptable ways of becoming a Big Man, Europeans were easily integrated into the social hierarchy in Africa as the Biggest Men without altering society at all. In fact, supporting this system just helped Europe maintain its control. What use would encouraging democracy and civil equality have to six white guys trying to maintain control and dominance over 3 million black people?

Maybe you can see how, after Europe pulled up stakes and left following World War II, there was a sudden power vacuum for the new Biggest Men. Europe said, “Now that we’re gone, you should have governments like we do,” but it was a concept without foundation in Africa, even under European rule. Sure, people could understand the concept, those with high levels of education could even cherish the idea behind it – equality – but without an anchor in social life, democracy is a concept like quantum theory, to be taught in schools, to profess knowledge and acceptance of, yet, secretly at night, in bed, to admit to oneself that there’s something that is floating just out of conceptional reach, making the whole thing sort of alien and unreal, unnatural.

Can we superimpose a vision of social order upon a culture that has historically been arranged around another, almost opposite, concept? No. At least ‘no’ in the short term. Culture change usually takes a long time, something America and Europe are learning the hard way in other places where we’ve tried to ‘encourage’ democracy.

And even in our own past we can cite examples of change occurring at a slow pace. In the United States, where ‘all men are created equal’ is the most basic concept professed in our culture, it has taken hundreds of years to progress to the point where in reality men and women of different color really do have equal rights and there’s still room to move forward. How long will it take for this to happen in a land where ‘all men are not created equal, some are Big and many are Small’? It’s no wonder that half a century after African ‘independence,’ countries are still trying to figure out what their society represents and where it is going.

Like America and European societies, development, economically and in terms of health, wellness of life, must be tied to ‘development’ socially. Perhaps it is better to term it as a ‘move’ toward more liberal and humanitarian thought, a more just, equal, and predictable society, since some may not view this as ‘development’, but social change, for good or for bad (development would imply ‘good’ and many people see African society as just fine where it is). In the West this social ‘development’ (or ‘change’ or ‘move’, whatever) started with those on the bottom, the farmers in colonial America, the proletariat in France, the serfs and indentured servants of the world raising up to demand their place at the table and their piece of the pie. The idea that development only really occurs if everyone gains benefit, all boats rising together, as I recently found myself explaining to one Nigerien colleague with whom I was having a conversation about the topic.

In Africa, development has been mostly done backwards. The influx of big money in the 80’s and 90’s just went, for the most part, to support Big Men and the Big Man mentality. Instead of helping, this money has been a hindrance in many ways.

During the 60’s and 70’s there wasn’t really that much in the way of aid going to Africa, and I think Africa was actually more firmly on the path to development than it is now. Speaking for Niger at least, I can say for certain that education and infrastructure were better developed than how. I have to clarify though, that’s to say they were better developed for those with access. Yes, those living in the bush still went without, but those educated were well educated and those living in the cities had well planned and modern cities. From this start, which was largely funded by the governments and private enterprise of the countries themselves, the road to development, as happened in the US and in Europe, runs from the cities outwards to the ‘bush’ or ‘countryside’. And this is where Africa lost its way on the path to ‘development’. The West, I think rightfully, thought that they could provide money and help rural Africa develop, but instead of really helping, we just gave tons of money to allay our guilt at seeing starving children on the news.

This new influx of money went first to the governments, where, being of the Big Men mentality, everyone skimmed a little off the top as it made it’s way out to the bush. Africans expected this to happen, they still do really, but now it’s usually written into a budget as ‘per-diem’, what people are paid daily to just come and do what they should come and do anyway. However, Africans also expected governments to actually do some development, and this is the normal path of the farmers, the workers, demanding of their government an equal chance in life. What changed was that money began shifting more and more to NGOs and away from the government exclusively as the West saw the graft and waste governments were creating and instead of demanding better accountability, they just tried to work around the problem, hence the birth of the Non-Governmental Organization as imputis for development.

Two things happened with this development on ‘development’. First, governments got a ‘get out of jail free’ card to play on actually having to do any real development. NGOs were now the real face of it, not government Big Men, who were now just supporting actors allowing them to hold power and profit, but show even poorer results. Second, NGOs started throwing money into one project after another as budgets grew and grew and grew through the last two decades of the 20^th century. But this money came with no long term support or coordination within the country, what should have been the role of government and local actors, meaning that many projects that had cost much to start ultimately failed due to a lack of oversight and long term vision.

In the 1980’s in Gaya, for example, some NGO came in, saw the river, saw the climate, and thought ‘this area could do really well if we brought in fruit trees and planted orchards here.’ GREAT idea. This area is ideally suited for mango, orange, lime, grapefruit, banana… So the NGO built workers’ housing, irrigation, provided transport, seeds, and know-how to the initial workers, and then they left. No real thought was put into what happens next. The government took over for a while, but the money was never the same and everything began to fall into disrepair, disarray. Eventually, maybe some four years ago, the government finally just said ‘enough is enough, we’re done, we’re outta here.’ Luckily for Gaya, fruit orchards, once started, are a pretty easy thing to keep up. I’m not sure entirely how they were divided up, but now they are all privately owned and in addition to the fruit trees most private spaces also sport vegetable gardens thanks to the proximity of the river and some wells long ago dug by the NGO. The buildings, buses and farm equipment are still here, but they’re falling down or rusting hunks of scrap with no use. Gaya’s biggest development story has a happy (enough) ending since it transitioned easily into private business, but what if this had been a story of school buildings or material, or a water pump for a village (as opposed to an open well – both time/energy saving and more hygienic), or a hospital? The NGO’s pull out, and then the government’s, would have meant the whole thing would have collapsed, a waste of time and money in the end.

So now money has corrupted an already corrupt system. Aid money has, I dare say, set Africa back on the path to development. It has become, as Reagan era reformers would say, a hand-out society, where, at all levels, from small villages to Presidents, everyone just expects some fund, foreign state, or most likely, some NGO to come in with a bunch of money, spread it around, and then leave, probably leaving some new shiny stuff behind as well. ‘Development’ has become about overseas Big Men bringing stuff and money to those in need and after twenty, almost thirty, years of that, it has become the new standard and expected by all.

Being a Peace Corps volunteer, I get the bad end of that standard. I’m not a big NGO (or even a small one) with money or stuff to give to people. The idea is that, unlike many NGOs, I integrated into my community, became a part of it, while the Swiss NGO in Gaya, of which I never see the two white guys running it, hunkers down in their big beautiful house with guards, a cook, and air conditioning. Fairly enough, they work mostly in the bush, not in town, but why do I never see them in market or even just walking around? Because they are money and stuff and I am community and integration and an attempt to understand where I live.

As a volunteer, I’m more about connecting with people to exchange ideas and culture. And, really, that is what development in Africa needs the most: Guidance and ideas, not money. A road map on how to move forward, not the means by which to do it. It needs people willing to go live in a village for a year or two to teach them about desertification or nutrition or clean water or the importance of sending their children to that brand new shiny school the government or some NGO just built next door, instead of holding them at home. Sounds like Peace Corps, I know, but what needs to be different, is that these people should really know what they’re talking about. Peace Corps trains volunteers for two to three months before they head out to post, that’s not sufficient to really provide knowledge on many subjects. It’s lucky for us that, being Americans, and highly educated Americans for the most part (it’s not easy to make it into Peace Corps without higher education) we already have a head start on most villagers so we can fake deeper knowledge than we have. It’s not a stretch for us to know hand washing is important, but for an African villager….

More importantly than training Americans, or whatever other foreigners may chose to live as Africans in Africa (JICA!!! Japanese are awesome!), development in this way, that is, community based, should really be done by, what Peace Corps terms as, Host Country Nationals (HCNs) – people who live in that country. Training them for three months is different than training us. Language – not a problem. Cultural integration – not a problem. Just get them trained on the information; how to plant fields more efficiently, how to fight soil erosion, how to rehydrate a baby with diarrhea. To employ HCNs in this way would provide much needed jobs and would help develop, not just knowledge at the village level, but social development – Imagine a woman trained and sent by the government to help farmers farm better, that would turn some heads. Even just a man would mean stirring the pot a little and that’s something that’s need to create social change.

A teacher and a community development agent in each village!

This type of agent wouldn’t be something for Peace Corps to train, don’t get me wrong. That’s not Peace Corps’ role. But the ultimate goal of PC is for us not to be needed anymore for development. I would love to see one day where PCVs are cultural ambassadors, who may work with HCN development agents on projects, but whose real ‘job’ is just to integrate, spread good will on the behalf of Americans and to take home an understanding of foreign culture to share with others.

Being an education volunteer, that’s the area I usually focus on the most when I think about development. Education, though, really is the base of development. Education in the ABCs and in soil restoration are equally important and both are sorely neglected, but formal education, schools, as I mentioned before are, unfortunately, worse now than they were ten, twenty, thirty years ago. That’s entirely true, from a matter of perspective. Let me explain.

Starting in 2000, Niger launched a ten-year education plan to revamp a system that stagnated through the late 80’s and 90’s. The goal was to bring a school within reach of every child. Admirable. Problem was, who’s going to teach in this school? Under 14 years old is the fastest growing population group in Niger, so that means not only ‘who’s going to teach this year’, but ‘who will be the teacher that we will need to add to that school in two years and then again another the year after and then again another new teacher two years after that’. Niger started a crash course program to train teachers and send them into the bush, which unfortunately has just produced many poorly trained and underpaid teachers. So education may be more widespread than previously, but on a whole it’s of poorer quality as compared to the 70’s, for example, where schools may only have been found in the big towns, but they were funded, equipped with books and university educated teachers, not only from Niger, but from other West-African countries, in other words, a quality education, though limited in its access.

This is nothing to say about the lack of funding the program has received from Niamey. Months will go by and teachers won’t be paid. No wonder they go on strike what seems like every other week (though something must be mentioned about the French influence here…). I just recently read a manifesto published by the biggest teacher’s union in Niger, the Société National des Enseignants du Niger (SNEN). The manifesto demanded that the government immediately produce the promised money for the ten-year plan that has been undistributed for almost a year now, amounting to billions of francs CFA, millions of US dollars. That’s money, not just for teacher’s pay, since that tends to be the first thing paid, but for also for books, school buildings, everything within the educational system. The manifesto warned of an implosion of the education system if nothing changed and I’m not sure that was just tough language. Would you do the hard and all too often thankless task of teaching for free while you see members of government getting acquitted of embezzlement charges and drive home in their brand new Hummer? What kind of future teacher will a student who receives a sub-standard education make, and what kind of downward spiral in educational quality does this mean?

Africa is a land of Big Men and the Big Man mentality. The Big Men drive hummers and send their kids to private school and the rest of the country watches and says nothing, or says very little because the squeaky wheel gets greased in Africa, but not usually in a good way. The sudden influx of money and NGOs in the 80’s and 90’s just increased the monetary power of the Big Men while letting them shirk many of the responsibilities of doing the actual development work. That’s not to say things haven’t progressed in the last twenty years at all, they have, just horribly, horribly slow when it comes to government services. Private sector has boomed in Africa. Even in small and remote villages one can often find cell phones, and when standing on a certain termite mound, facing east at 4:30AM, a network signal. Buses now criss-cross the country, meaning (more) reliable transport of people and goods, though roads remain questionable. Even in the public sector, education is more widespread, though not of an acceptable quality and health ‘huts’ are a common feature in most moderate sized villages, though, again, adequate training of employees is sometimes lacking. One just needs to look at Ghana or South African to see true democracy on the march.

What is needed to put African back on the path to true ‘development,’ both in the terms of services and socially, is a little tough love. The money needs to be harder to get, it needs to be given only when appropriate accountability can be shown. NGOs need to stop spending and giving blindly with their hearts and work with local actors to create long term vision and development. A lot of that will require more people like Peace Corps volunteers, people who can help create links between local communities and NGOs, between communities and government. These facilitators don’t have to be Peace Corps, better even if they’re HCNs, but they have to be someone integrated, trusted, and respected by a community, but not a Big Man with money and power, someone normal, someone anyone in the village could become, someone who just knows people and things, someone who embodies knowledge for development’s sake. Whether Nigerien, American, or Japanese, people in these type of positions are the way forward to drive change, call it ‘development’ if you think it’s good, both in terms of society and services rendered and knowledge gained.

Wednessday

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:55:00 +0000

4/29/09
Woke at Megan’s house in Malanville, slept real well with belly full of taco and beer.
Made a trade of bike maintenance on her breaks for coffee and bread with Nutella, then off to Gaya. I decided to take the ‘back road’ once on the Niger side of the river, but even with no semi-trucks to threaten flattening me, it was a bad idea cause I had to fight the sandy path the whole way, mostly up hill. I went straight to the inspection and was pretty much soaked in sweat by the time I got there. Rinsed off at the tap nearby, but that just added to the look of a drowned rat.
Chatted, made formalities with the inspection peoples, and then was asked to get their new computer in order.
It was a computer brought from CEGII, one of our middle schools which was granted a couple of computers by an NGO, but has no power… Typical. So someone had the idea to use it at the inspection, and they need a computer, so this is good. Unfortunately, someone also had the idea of first using it at one of the local cyber cafes. (Well, only one works now, so I guess it was the cyber café). This is bad, since it was taken there without any anti-virus software installed and began its career at the inspection chalked full of viruses.
Had a hell of a time with it, every time I tried to install the antivirus it would crash and restart; some virus defending itself by preventing the installation was my guess. Had to revert the computer to it’s initial state to get Avast installed, then scanned the hard-drive: 437 infected files of some 4000 scanned. Over 10% filled with viruses.
Now that it’s protected, we have to figure out a way to get office onto the computer – I had to delete it, reverting to a previous-to-installation date to get Avast to work. They have a pirated copy of Office 2007, but it won’t install until we get Service Pack 2 installed, which is difficult when there is no internet…
Said I’d come see what I could do in the afternoon. For now, lunch.
Went to Illiasou’s shop for a water and ended up eating lunch with him. He gets food from his brother’s wife who is a great cook, so I like to eat with him and it’s always African style, with our hands, which I also like. Hung there for a while, then back to my place to do some laundry: sheets, 1 of the 2 pairs of pants, 3 of the 4 pairs of boxers. Can’t bring myself to buy more – rather would save the money for the trip, besides I have some…. They’re just in Niamey.
Watched some of How I Met Your Mother and slept a bit during the hot part of the day and by 4 was back at inspection to try to do Avast and Windows updates.
My Inspector actually has an internet connection which works over one of the the cell phone services. It’s just REALLY REALLY slow. But even though it was too slow to get the updates downloaded over a three hour time frame, I was able to check my email and prepare the first three days of this “week of posts – a week late” for the blog. I count it a success then.
Then I got a text from Sommer, a fellow volunteer who was coming down to visit, saying that she was at the bus station, so I made my way there on my bike (scary night-time ride). Went back to my place, made curry, caught up on life, and then, 9:30PM, time for bed. Tomorrow, James and Serette are coming and we’ll be headed to Malanville for pool and pounded yam.

I guess that makes a week of daily posts. I did get a little long-winded in the end, talking about nothing much, but, regardless, I hope y’all enjoyed it and have a better idea of what my day to day life is like. I may actually take to writing more often if I stay here in town for a while, though I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

Tuesday

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:51:00 +0000

4/28/09
I knew it wouldn’t last. I am writing this entry the morning of the 29th at the inspection, listening to theories of Kaddafi (the Libyan president) as a destabilizing factor for countries. Evidence: He passed through Mauritania, now there are problems there. Then he passed though Guinea, now problems there. Just a month ago he was here in Niger…. Problems to come?
Anyway, this is supposed to be about yesterday, Tuesday. Up and going through the normal morning routine, when my attention was drawn from the overly juicy mango I was eating to the knocking at my front gate.
Dripping juice from my chin and elbows I made my way to the tap to rinse and opened to door. It was Megan, she had biked up from Malanville to do our radio show that afternoon. I hadn’t been expecting her till later and here she was already at 8AM. No big problem. Welcoming Megan in, I told her I needed to run by the inspection quick. I had a meeting with Saidou to talk about a possible field trip with some student government kids.
Took a show and then my leave after a bit of catching up, being over a month since we had last seen each other.
At the inspection everyone was gone, all out in the bush doing a tour of schools. Even Saidou who I had just talked to the day before was MIA. So typical and so frustrating.
Deciding maybe I’d try again in the afternoon after the radio, I was taking my bike out onto the road when I saw something strange: Someone white. Well whiter at least than your average Nigerien. It was the new JICA volunteer in town, Hidenori. We had been texting back and forth a bit, but had yet to make a face to face meet.
Stopping by the road side, we exchanged pleasantries. He’s learning Haussa and not very strong yet in French so we had limited comprehension, but sill all good to talk to another foreigner. Was leading him back to my place to hang there for a bit when I saw Saidou flagging me down.
Stopping by the road side, again, (second time within 100 feet), I talked to him for a couple minutes. Introduced him to Hidenori and asked about the plans for our possible trip.
Here’s the run down on this work stuff –
Right now, Ibrahim, who works at one of our local NGOs that works with human rights is really into the student government concept. It fits well with teaching civic rights/responsibilities, children’s rights, etc. He has been instrumental in helping fund the elections (ballot paper, envelopes, etc.) and now wants to organize a training for the student leaders to help them better understand their roles. He asked me when I saw him last week if Saidou could be the one to lead it since he had been at my training in Niamey.
Saidou, who works at the inspection, wants to do a trip with a small group of students and teachers from each school to Kollo, where there are student governments which have been in place for a couple years, as a way of seeing SGs already up and running. A way for students to have an idea what they themselves should be doing their own SG work.
Similar ideas right? Help students understand their roles and responsibilities within the student government frame-work? I thought, hey let’s combine, work together. We can do a couple days of training and then a trip, or vice versa, trip then training. Either way they seem to work well together.
Saidou was pretty cold to the idea and after pressing him on it, he said he wants Ibrahim to ask him personally if he wants to be the trainer, not to go through me. It’s a Nigerien respect thing. Can make work hard when you have to worry about insulting someone all the time, I was just trying to be a communication between the two. Guess I better figure out a solution for that, I still want to do a combined project and the school year is running by, so we need to get on this quickly.
After telling Saidou I’d talk to Ibrahim about asking him personally, I left with Hidenori for my house. There we chatted along with Megan for a bit, then he was off to get oil for his motorcycle – Yeah, Peace Corps get bikes, JICA get motorcycles. Meh.
Megan and I finished up the radio script for that afternoon, which I had done most of the day before. Needed her to bring knowledge of Meningitis, since I know next to nothing about it except that we’ve had a outbreak recently in Niger and now Doctors Without Borders is doing a vaccination campaign that I wanted to promote on the show (“Meningitis is bad! Get your kids vaccinated!”).
-- They call Meningitis ‘jinde kobu’ here : twisted neck --
The show was also to be on Malaria since World Malaria Day was just a couple days before and the hospital and other locations were giving out mosquito nets. I wanted to make sure people understood their importance in malaria prevention (i.e. “don’t sell them, don’t use them as fishing nets”). Also talked about symptoms, treatments, and other prevention techniques, like cutting down all the weeds behind the house where mosquitoes are likely to hide during the day. Prepared lunch while we finished up, the napped under the kitchen fan for about an hour before getting stuff together and biking to the radio station.
After the sweaty ride in the 110degree heat up the hill, we got there, started to set everything up, and then…. Power outage. Typical. No power = no radio. We sat and waited, but our whole time passed and no power, so we started to get ready to go and, as if on cue, the power comes back on. Again, Typical. TIA – This is Africa. Oh well, next week then.
From radio station, biked to Malanville. Megan had just returned from Cotonou and had brought some SOUR CREAM with her, so we were going to make tacos.
Quick stop at the market for flour and peppers, and a delicious, semi-frozen bissap (hibiscus juice), then to her house. Everything was made from scratch except the beans (from a can) – tortias, bean and tofu filling, salsa, sour cream. Amazingly delicious.
After dinner we went out for a beer with Melanie, the German student is doing some research and work on fish and fish stock in Malanville.
Two beers, good conversation (in English!) and back to Megan’s for a well deserved bucket bath and bed.
Played a little harmonica. Megan said I should play her to sleep, so did just that, then put my own head down and slept well and deep.
One problem on that day – Didn’t memorize the day’s quota of ‘The Raven.’ Leaving that for the morrow.

Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:28:00 +0000

4/27/09

Up at 6, sore from a rough night of sleep on the millet stalks (maybe sorghum?), but was eager to get on the road before it got too hot. Left Sia by 6:30 and was on the open road. Felt great, as always, to be biking. Makes me look forward to our end of service motorcycle trip through Europe.
Broke for a fruit and nut bar, water, and stretch break at what I thought to be about half-way, then back on to continue to Gaya. Reached here at around 8:30, so two hours, a little longer I’m guessing than the last time I made the trip, but last time I had been biking more and was in a little better shape. Good news though, is that sitting here writing this up tonight, I’m not the least sore or achy from the ride.
Once back, I did the morning routine, showered, had a quick breakfast, and then was off to the inspections. Neither inspector was around, nor was my counterpart for student government work, Saidou, whom I had been hoping to catch. Made him a call, set up a meeting for tomorrow morning, happy that my French and zarma skills are to the point where phone calls are generally easy affairs and that communication is now not really much of an issue.
Visited both inspections briefly and then came back home to do laundry, now an almost daily experience, having moved most of my stuff, including clothes to Niamey when I thought I was leaving. That leaves me with only a like five shirts, two pairs of pants, and four pairs of underwear. Now that everything is there, why go through the effort of bringing it all back again?
The zipper broke on one of my pants while I was washing though, so I had to dig through my clothes trunk, which is really just a collection of torn/non-wearable clothes since the move, and pulled out an old pair – torn on the leg, hole in one pocket (Remember Jeremy – money in the right pocket!), and, though I don’t feel like I’ve lost a any weight here, they’re a bit too big for me. Lacking a belt, I’m now using some string from my house to hold them up. Classy, I know.
Grilled cheese lunch. Trying to use up the Velvetta since no refrigerator.
Worked on memorizing stanzas 5/6 of ‘The Raven’ and then napped. Ok maybe I was a little tired from the bike ride since I slept (or half-slept) for two hours.
At one point, I woke up drenched in sweat, so went and showered, and then laid down again soaked, water is much better then sweat.
Slowly roused myself later. Shower again, since was once again sweating, then played harmonica for a while before writing up a script for my radio show tomorrow. Megan’s coming up from Malanville and we’re going to talk about malaria and meningitis.
Made macaroni and cheese and peanut butter (need a protein source) for dinner. Read some of Le Petit Prince, my new book, played with the kittens and am now ready for bed.

Kitten News-
Still no names, but I’m starting to see each one’s personality. I have two outgoing ones who aren’t really afraid of me anymore, and one scaredy-cat who hides under the bookshelf whenever I pass. The two are making their first playful foray into the garden tonight, Musu and myself both on alert for that damn tomcat who seems to be on the prowl around here, all too possibly for kittens.

No power since I’ve been back. Long time, even by Gaya standards.

Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:09:00 +0000

4/26/09

In Sia, 45k North of Gaya, visiting David with Mary Abrahams (our Country Director) and Lynn Foden (our Africa Regional Director).
Sleeping on a haussa bed – think millet stocks buddle together – with no mattress or sheets and then going to bike back to Gaya in the morning, some true good-ol’ Peace Corps living.
Day started out pretty normal. Sunday – tried to sleep in, thought I slept in, but when, after what I imagined an hour of laying there, I got up to find that it was only 7AM. Normal morning routine and then off to market to find ginger, mangos and limes; I’m brewing up a batch of mango wine which I hope to have ready by Cinqo de Mayo.
After walking all over Gaya looking for decently priced mangos (one problem of whiteness is that everything is more expensive) and limes, I came back to my house to wait for Mary, who was on her way down to pick up Lynn from the Niger-Benin border.
She showed up about 11:00. After chit-chat for around half an hour, she got a call from Lynn saying she was on the Benin side of the crossing and so we went down to our side and the timing was great as she was just finishing up the paperwork when we got there.
From there, I took them to lunch, my new favorite restaurant, Maquis de Tropique. Couscous and chicken. Yum. And Mary paid! Double yum. And we had cokes! I felt spoiled.
Back to my house, showing off my kittens and then to inspection for a brief meeting with some counterparts.
After the meet and great and small talk with one of my inspectors and some other people, Mary and Lynn invited me to come up to Sia with them for the night. I would have to find my own way home, but that’s not too big of a deal, I just told them to strap my bike to the top of the car and I’d ride back in the morning. I’ve done it before, I can handle it.
We came up the road to Sia, stopped shortly to drop things off and then went out to visit two volunteers who live right near by, Ely and Emily. Emily was the first stop and her village was great. Beautiful place. They have a couple of big trees right in the middle of the village which have been hijacked by this parasitic tree which grows up around the existing tree’s trunk and slowly crawls upward taking over branches and sending down creepy hanging ‘roots’ or something as it progresses. Cool trees, they have a naturally haunted look and it’s weird to see two distinct sets of leaves and bark on the same ‘tree’. Unfortunately, her village also has a lot of malnutrition, nothing extreme, but it’s all the more sadder that it is normal. Too many distended bellies and faded hair.
Then we were off to Ely’s, where my good buddy Kim was before here time finished. The big surprise was that he got a goat so he can enjoy fresh goat’s milk each day. Good time watching him milk it. Then it started to RAIN. I love rain. After a short visit, it was back into the car and back to Sia for dinner.
Been fun hanging with the two directors for the day. It’s not just us volunteers who live in a small world and thus talk about each other, catch up on the gossip of people, events, and Peace Corps changes, but PC staff is pretty much the exact same, small and interlinked with many connections. They’re just privy to a lot more information than we are as volunteers.
Dinner of rice and beans and CHICKEN! Boy, chicken twice in the same day. Really, meat twice in the same day is a rare and amazing thing here, so I ate my full and now am sitting happy with a full stomach ready for bed. Sleep now.

Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Saturday April 25, 2009-

Saturday! Would be more exciting if yesterday hadn’t been a holiday anyway. In fact, I was busier today than yesterday in many ways. Started by getting up around 6:30 again, soon after sunrise. It’s so easy to get up early here since the sun is always raising 7 or earlier and I sleep outside so the biological clock is more in tune to raising earlier, whereas in the states, especially in Washington, the sun raises later, as late as 9 it seems to me, and I sleep inside so can avoid the sun if I want to sleep in. Not possible here.
Woke up, did a quick work out and then was off to Rahman’s wedding. At 730, I went to the mosque near the bus station where they did the praying and then came back to his old house, which is just two doors down from mine, for the chatting and eating that accompanies a wedding. We were fed tapioca and a meat sauce with bread, was actually really good. Spent about an hour there chatting and eating, then since I had run through my usual conversations (hey you’re white and you hear zarma!, the heat, where can I get a visa?, your buddy just got married so he’ll be tired tomorrow –nudge nudge, wink wink, etc), I took my leave.
On the way out Rahman asked if they could use my electricity to power some speakers so they could have music. The house they were at is his OLD place and since he moved the power company had cut the power and so he brought over a long extension cord and we ran it from my house through the yard of the empty house next door and to his place. No problem, I told him it was his wedding gift.
So here’s how weddings work here: Once the man has found who he wants to marry, he approaches her family and they set a price, once paid the wedding can go ahead. It involves praying in the morning, then a day of leisure and food, and that night the man goes to the woman’s house to "take" her, and him and his buddies speed off on their motorcycles and in their cars to the new husband’s house where the new wife is installed and hangs there for a week and all her friends come see her in her new place and friends and family of both come to bring them gifts.
After leaving his place I came home (the whole 40 feet away) and played harmonica for a couple hours, forgot how much I used to like practicing an instrument, so was back reliving my hours of practice I used to do in high school. Wouldn’t say I’m getting good yet, but I’m starting to be more comfortable and quicker at figuring stuff out.
Then I read a little more from a book of Edgar Allan Poe poems I have. I’ve decided to try and memorize the entire "The Raven" poem. It’s long, but if I can do two stanzas a day, I can have the whole thing done in 9 days. Something to fill my time with, better than thinking too much. Quote the raven, Nevermore.
Napped again for the hotter part of the day, and about 3pm made my way out into the market. I’m having a tailor here make me a suit. It’s an experiment. He made me some nice dress pants, so now I’m giving him a chance to do the jacket too. We’ll see if it comes out nice or not. I was adamant I don’t want the ‘funk suits’ people wear here, real baggy jacket with short sleeves and a much too high cut. For good or for bad only gonna cost me about 30 bucks.
Then was off to hang at Illiasou’s shop for a couple of hours. He’s a good buddy of mine here, sells sodas, bags of water, yogurt, and a local millet drink (which is actually quite tasty once you get used to it, first time it’s a bit of a surprise).
-- Side note that here in Niger and elsewhere in west Africa, bags of water, juice, even yogurt are all over the place. They’re GREAT and so convenient, but unfortunately create a bunch of waste. I would love to see them in the states, especially since we could recycle the plastic. There’s not much better than a cold bag of yogurt in the morning. –
Illiasou’s shop has a TV, so half-watched Die Hard With a Vengeance dubbed in French, half-wrote/recited the first two stanzas of The Raven for two hours. Wrote a short poem about African kids, just a first draft but here ya go:

Bare footed, heedless of sharp rocks
Or thorns or other sole-full shocks,
They run and shout
And chase each other about
How many children can one country contain?

Whether in bright dresses
Or shirts and pants torn from the stresses
Of this daily life,
Dirty faces attest
To hot weather and strife.

Often cheerful, sometimes tearful
Always staring at "the white."
They’re often the part that softens my heart
In a country which as accustomed me to hard sights.

I’ve gotten more into writing, including poetry, as of late. Something I miss from the days when I was in school and that I have sadly let fall to the side since, much like playing and practicing an instrument. It’s too easy to NOT do something, even something that brings you joy. Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we stop doing the things that bring us the best joys?
One joyful experience I was all too happy to enjoy today was the new toy a friend of mine across the street received from Nigeria today.
I was headed back home from Illiasou’s place and saw a group gathered around a table or something just around the corner from my house. Interested, as it seemed everyone else was, I wandered over to see what it was. It was a pool table!!!! Irikoy beri!!!! I was so excited. Who cares if it’s missing a ball, or that it’s a small table with small sized balls? It’s mostly flat and has a cue!
There was quite a sizeable crowd gathered around to watch the two guys playing. I saddled up next to my friend and inquired about the table and he said it was his and that it had just been unloaded from his friend’s truck direct from Nigeria. He asked if I knew how to play, did they have snooker in the states? (It’s not a snooker table, I don’t think, just a small pool table, but then again I don’t really know much about snooker). I told him I’d played a little before and so I was up for the next game.
They played 8 ball like in the states, but scratches mean the next player gets two shots instead of one, even for table scratches. No problem, just note to self - don’t scratch. I came out well, went up one ball to six right away, but then ran into that age-old problem of all his balls blocking the shots I have on mine. So after a while he finally made a run and it was three to one and then… I missed an easy shot and he ran the rest. Sad end to a game that started with some good shots, a cut and a bank that had the crowd laughing about Anasaras and how they know games. The guy went off laughing, telling me to meet him same time tomorrow.
Luckily no one else wanted to play so I got in a second game against the guy who had brought the table to town. Won it and regained the honor of white people everyone at being good at bar games J Had to snap a couple pictures as I walked away. Amazing! A pool table in Gaya. I would never have imagined.
So back at my house now, waiting for the rice to cook for my dinner, should be good by now actually, so I’ll sign off for today. Three days gone and three actual posts. I might make this after all.

Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:29:00 +0000

Friday April 24, 2009-
Was watching the Cowboy Bebop movie on my laptop last night after dinner, when suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my concession door. "’Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping on my chamber door – only this and nothing more." (Was reading Poe this afternoon… and I should try to get Mary to let me post her re-imagined Raven sometime)
Turns out it was just another PCV, Dillon, who I had forgotten was coming down from Sia to stay with me for the night. He came in so late because the thunder and lightening I had been watching actually came down as a heavy rainstorm there and kept his bush taxi from leaving. And then of course there was the obligatory ‘oops, we ran out of gas’ moment, so then it took even longer.
This morning he took the early bus to Niamey. For my part, I took my freshly oiled bike out for a ride to the border and back, about 20km. It was nice to get in a good ride, being in Niamey destroys my bike riding time. I definitely think that returning to the states, I’ll be in the bike lines.
Stopped by the market on the way back to pick up some supplies – mangos, rice, pasta, bread and matches. Then came back home to water the garden, work out, eat breakfast and wash some clothes. Since today was a holiday I had no place to go and so I lazed around. I finished reading "Things Fall Apart" and played harmonica for an hour or so. Then it was lunch, made some Nigerien inspired spicy rice stuff.
Today was Friday, of course, so it was prayer day, meaning that by 1pm there was a crowd in front of my place, packing the alley way between my house and the mosque. As it always does, that means that I can’t leave until the prayer is over. So, like usual on Fridays, I just hunkered down, ate a big lunch and took a nap.
After napping, I played with the kittens, played the harmonica, then went for another stroll through the market. I bought fried fish to give to the cats and tofu for myself. Walked around a bit greeting some friends and ended up at my buddy Innocent’s place, not far from my house. Innocent is from Nigeria and so speaks english well and it's always nice to slip back into native tongue.... Sat there for a while chatting, talked about many a thing, including relationships, the heat, and lots of football (soccer for you americas) Allez Barcalona, revenge Liverpool!!!

Made a list of things I saw while sitting on his stoop:
-Street side motorcycle maintenance
-Cigarette vendor with his wares stacked high on his head
-Girls passing in brightly colored fabric
-Men passing still sporting their Friday prayer best
-Cow carts loaded down with mud bricks and small boys at work
-Children running around, chasing each other and laughing
-Negotiations
-A man sweeping up garbage from the street
-The tailor across the way at work in a shop with an eclectic array of wares – fans, generators, cloth, thread, linoleum flooring, and TV stands
-A young man who had to run to jump up on the back of a truck that didn’t wait for him as it was leaving market, his buddy extending an arm, action movie-style to help pull him up
-A herd of goats passing by, poking about for food among the trash
-A man pushing a cart full of 10 gallon water jugs for sale
-A coffee/tea vendor with his carry stand full of drinks and bread, and his big hot water pot and attached charcoal heater
-A motorcycle taxi passing with a kid in front of the driver and a woman with a big basket of market produce on her head behind
-A traditional medicine vendor with his cart full of old plastic water bottles full of roots, leaves, and other assorted remedies
-A mute motorcycle taxi driver trying to negotiate a fare with grunts and gestures

None of that is anything out of the ordinary, except the mute driver, had never seen him before…

After hanging there for an hour or so, it was back to my house to make dinner, which was another heart-attack sandwich, this time with grilled onions, tofu, and some more velvetta cheese. Yum.
Heard an interesting radio show on music schools in Venezuela on the BBC, how they can act as agents of social change while encouraging musical accomplishment. So now, power out, typing up day two of the week and watching How I Met Your Mother, that stupid cute show with Doogie Houser.

Well then, I have a wedding to attend in the morning and a shower to attend to this evening. Until tomorrow, Incha Allah.

Last week This week

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Finished writing my last entry in the journal I brought to country (Thanks Chass; GREAT gift!). I was never the most frequent writing, typically writing once every other week, with spurts here and there of actual chronicling of my Peace Corps life; mostly thoughts, and major events. So, wanting to write a bit today, I’ve turned to journal writing on my laptop and thought it would be interesting to try to write about my day to day life and events for a week, EVERYDAY, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. So here’s to the effort! It'll be posted as a daily update a week later, so 23rd on the 30th, you get the picture. Here we go.....

Thursday, April 23, 2009 –
Woke up a little early this morning. Actually set my alarm, since 6:30 is near-enough to sunrise that I may have slept late. I sleep outside on my front porch, a small, maybe 12ft by 6ft, cement area under the eaves of my house. Shelter from the rain and the sun, this is where I spend the majority of my time at home.
Finally rouse myself from bed about 6:45 with a little help from Musu asking me to open the door so she could go in for breakfast. The kittens came out from under the bookshelf, where they’ve taken to since I spent two weeks in Niamey, to greet their mom and get their own breakfast. They’re still scared of me when I’m by myself and, if outside their bookshelf cave, will bolt back in if I get too close, but they’re totally fine with me if Musu’s there also. Haven’t yet named them, guess after I lost the first patch, I’ve sort of taken on the Nigerien mentality that you should wait a little while to know that a baby will live before giving it a name. So I’m tossing around ideas in my head, trying to figure out, first of all, which kitten is which and their personalities.
After playing with the kittens for a little while I went through my typical morning routine: Swept the porch of the dirt blowing in during the night, converted my bed into the "couch" (I sleep on a cot with a mattress on top and a mosquito net, so during the day I pull down the mosquito net, thrown a blanket over the whole thing, push it to the side of the porch and, presto, extra seating), then while listening to the BBC I did my little bit of stretch/workout, watered the garden and trees, did the night before’s diner dishes, made breakfast – oatmeal and a small mango – showered, read a little and went off to the inspection just after 8.
The inspector from the primary inspection asked me to come in to type something up for him. I’ve become the official typer for him when he has something. Others around there can do it, but if I’m around and nothing else to do I like the task, a good way to work on my French. Today it was a letter from the school director in Albakazé about girls’ education in Niger, why it’s important, what’s hurting it, etc. The inspector had it typed, to make copies to give out to each teacher in the region. Nothing new in the letter, but really, in order to get the changes needed, it is necessary to constantly reinforce the message, so bravo Mr. L’Inspector.
After having typed up the letter, dictated to me by one of the other inspection employees (not an easy task to listen to French and type it out, but good practice), I went off to the other inspection to inform them of the coming visit of my Country Director and the Africa Regional Director for Peace Corps. This Sunday, our Country Director, Mary, is coming down to pick up the Regional Director at the Benin/Niger border and then see and visit some volunteers on the way back to Niamey. So Mary asked me to organize a small meeting for them to meet some of my Nigerien counterparts. Also wanted to ask the inspector about a way to get CEG 1 to do a better job of stamping and storing the English textbooks they just received. I went by a couple weeks ago and they were just piled in the shelves, not even being used yet, with a single "property of" stamp on the cover page. This in comparison to the CEG II director who stamped the front, back, side, and multiple pages to prevent theft and has them numbered and organized in boxes for use in class. Again, the two sides of development and Niger.
Chatted with everyone for a while about the heat, politics, etc. Then, since the inspector is off to Niamey to have medical stuff checked out by a doctor friend of his, wished him safe journey and by 12:20 was back at home to make lunch and hunker down away from the heat. Luckily for me there was power so got to use the fan! Did laundry and hung it up to dry and then made lunch, a heart-attack sandwich of melted Velvita Cheese from mom’s last care package (which was great by the way- Thanks!). Yesterday, I even had some pre-cooked bacon I was able to put on it, tasted like a bacon-cheese burger (thanks Kim! Bacon was what I chose from the Ely/Gaya package). Amazing.
After lunch, I watched a couple of episodes of Cowboy Bebop on my laptop, played with the kittens, who are still scared of me in absence of Musu, then napped from two till about four PM. Roused myself, trying to figure out how to spend the afternoon. Thought about going to greet the librarian at the MJC and see how the books I gave them are. Instead, figured I’d do another load of laundry (sheets and two towels) and work on my bike, which was in poor shape after a couple of months of neglect and hot, sandy, windy weather. Gave the bike a bath and watched as the sky, which had been a bit cloudy on my awaking, gathered layers of clouds from white to gray to dark gray. Then I gave the gears a good oiling, the brakes a little fine tuning, mostly doing more harm than good as always, to the point that if I just have it running in the end, I’m pleased with myself.
Started the split pea soup for dinner while working on the bike, so after mechanic, manly time, went to fix the onions, garlic, curry for the soup, then sat out and read from "Things Fall Apart" and watched as the sky turned darker and darker and even heard a couple clashes of thunder and saw some lightening.
I don’t want to say that rainy season is here already, hot season has just now hit it’s peak and that lasted for over a month last year, almost two. So to say that now, two weeks into the full fury of hot season would be over-optimistic, but it has rained already once this week, briefly last Monday, and has been cloudy and thundery both in the evening after the rain on Monday and in the evening today. No good solid rain however.
Power went out around six thirty or so, so had to spend the rest of my cooking time with my headlamp on my sweaty head. Now it’s about 8 o’clock, soups almost done, power just came back on, conveniently just in time for the prayer call, and the thunder has faded, but the sky continues to be covered and with the moon blocked out and no power, it was pretty dark around here. One big difference between my post and a bush post is that here the utter darkness of a bush night with no moon is lost unless there is a power outage (which happen multiple times daily, but usually it comes back in just a few hours).
Not a super exciting day all around, but was nice to get my bike into shape and have split pea soup and CRACKERS (thanks James for leaving them behind! – Side note, James gets a package a week, sometimes two, so my house is usually overflowing with food from them, and I often get little goodies. At his post he has an entire trunk full of care package food. Irikoy Beri! – God is Big!)
Tomorrow is a Nigerien holiday – Concord day – so no work at the inspections or the MJC, was thinking of doing a morning bike ride, then going to market… well, we’ll see, hopefully I can actually fulfill this commitment to write daily for a week.

When Everything Seems to Mean Something

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:50:00 +0000

Ever been through one of those points in your life where every song lyric is brilliantly poignant to your own situation? “How did he know? That’s exactly how I feel, what I’m going through.” Every movie’s hidden messages of redemption, loss, love, brushing your teeth in the morning, is speaking out to you. Where life revolves around your problems, or at least since they're constantly in your head, while not even thinking directly about them, they pop up in the strangest ways, when you least want them. But then, when the problems fade and the world changes and starts to look brighter, even that seems to be reflected in the world at large.

It’s been a couple of weeks like that for me. I couldn't count the number of song lyrics I’ve written down in my journal and scraps of paper lately.

“Maybe there is a God above,
But all I’ve leaned of love
Was how to shoot someone that outdrew me

And it’s not a cry that you hear in the night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah”
- Jeff Buckley

“Breaking and rebuilding and we’re growing,
Always guessing, never knowing.
It’s shocking, but we’re nothing,
We’re just moments
We’re clever but we’re clueless
We’re just human, amusing and confusing
Trying, but where is this all leading?
We’ll never know.”
- Jack Johnson

“I will carry on, bury all, bury all, bury all.”
“… the notion that I don’t need anyone but me,
Don’t drink the water!”
- Dave Matthews

“You’ve made me smile again,
In fact I may be sore from it,
It’s been a while.”
- Ben Folds

“If revolution had a movie, I’d be theme music.”
- Common
(Ok, this one, I just love the line, but not necessarily as it applies to me. Common is great. Saw this interview with him in Elle just yesterday, not sure he’s all the message MC he used to be, but still got respect.)

I could go on, but where would we end up? I’d just be the Pandora radio of music quotes, and not even the best I’m sure.

Been here in Niamey for just over two weeks now. I hadn’t really wanted to stay here so long, but I think it’s a good thing I am here. I needed to see some American friends to unload on. My Nigerien and Nigerian (From Niger and Nigeria respectively) just see relationships in a totally different light than we do in the US. Here, especially in Niger, relationships between a man and a women usually jumped straight from “hey there” to marriage since ‘dating’ isn’t really an approved of thing, at least outside of the cities. If you like a girl and want her as a wife, you go talk to her parents and settle on a price and then, if you all agree, she’s to be your wife.
Thus, it’s not really that marriage is about love, more so about convenience and first impressions… and money of course. In Nigeria, they like to think that love has more to do with it, for sure ‘dating’ and relationships are a little more western, or maybe it’s a little more Christian juxtaposed to the Islam. Whatever it is, people are more likely to have it casual there for a while, but even that… well it’s a West African thing that women are for having a kids, cooking and cleaning. Of course, you want a woman that you like and who is good at pleasing you, but really as it boils down to the essentials, love is the first thing boiled off. There is love here, no doubt, but it’s not integrally tied up in the institution of marriage as we see it. Though, even in the US we romanticize love and marriage to the point where we forget that they are separate entities.

But I digress….

I wanted to say that I had to escape the African view of women and relationships for a while. Most all my African friends kept saying, “She’s with someone else, that’s why she broke up with you,” “Leave her, she’s no good if she can’t please her man.” Really though, there were two guys (Nigerians) who fielded very open minded opinions about her need for space and love finding a way and things going as they should in the long run. I was quite impressed, yet another example of how Africa is at a cross-roads of ideas and customs. The globalization of media has really meant a huge impact on the way people in the developing world see the world since it’s mostly western ideas on TV and the radio. At least here in West Africa. There’s local media, there’s Nollywood – the film industry in Nigeria – But even that takes large cues from the stories of Hollywood and the west, Bollywood too is a huge influence, so you get most movies being about love overcoming obstacles or good triumphing over evil, movies spouting their ideals, but real life still, for the most part, clinging to the traditional views.
It’s nice to see when the two, media and traditional viewpoints, coincide rather than combat. For example, I’m reading Things Fall Apart right now. A contemporary book, but written very much like an Africa fable is told. Not so far into it yet, but really interested.

Have I lost you yet?

Problem with writing on the fly without somewhere to go.
But if you’re game, let’s press on.

Was talking to my friend Mary the other day about a very similar subject: the diversity of influence on American culture. We were saying how the greatest thing about American culture is it’s vastness and depth, it’s innumerable foreign and domestic influences, all meeting and melding into the greatest cultural stream that the world has seen. Black, White, Chicano, Indian, Native American, Irish, German, Protestant Catholic, Conservative, Liberal… Like I said, one could make an infinitely long list of adjectives to describe the actors of social influence within American society. – or I could just say, People of all colors and creeds have had input and influence on what is now “American Culture.” This is an amazing thing.
It’s also an amazing thing to see a different culture and a different world view. Living in Africa the last (almost) two years has really opened my eyes to the way culture is different in different areas, but really not all that different in the end. All cultures hold many of the same values, respect, family, hard work, as important and so have commonalities. This new age of global media and information though is having a similar effect on other countries that the US’s history of immigration had on it. Cultures are starting to mix more and more, blending in places where it would never have ten years ago even. My buddy, Illiasou, the other day in Gaya showed me, on his cell phone, the Google search he had just done to learn about the Obama’s, he was especially interested in their new dog. And really, Obama has become, I think the first president to REALLY, TRULY, be an international figure. Everyone knows about him and, while that obviously has something to do with his personality and charisma, I think it has just as much to do with the globalization of culture, being that the US is still (for now) the cultural power house of the world, people hear about US the most.

Culture – A society’s set of norms, traditions, and values.

But also influence and information I think.

The world is changing, it’s always been changing of course, but it seems to be going faster and faster, spinning with increased anxiousness. Instant communication between any two points. A straight line is no longer the shortest distance between two points. This ease and quickness of cultural exchange can’t help but increase the rate at which the world changes. For now it continues to be a top down influence of media dispersing dominant culture around the world, but even that is changing. TV like Al-Jazira (actually a very good news station if you give it a chance) or radio like BBC Haoussa are giving voices to people not usually associated with the mainstream. Internet will do this even more and even faster as it starts to become more globally available.

In my point of view this is all a good thing. Just like the immigration history of the US has produced a culture that has so many and varied influences, the chance to have cultures around the world broadcast themselves can only but help diversify the world. A person in the US can now read a Peace Corps blog from Malawi and understand more of the culture there. They could also read a blog written by a Malawian and understand even better that culture. And it’s all at their fingertips. The globalization of information gives the smaller voices a chance to be heard along side the bigger voices. Bigger voices still have the power of top-down information decimation, especially where people are reliant on radio/TV as apposed to the internet, but as information and culture exchange shifts more with the technology available, we’re gonna see greater and greater power for the small voices and that will help diversify culture and maintain culture in areas where big voices are in danger of imposing their weight and changing it.

Well, anyway... that's enough rambling, maybe I should organize my thoughts more next time.

Last weekend was my 26th Birthday and to celebrate I went out with some friends, had a steak dinner. Good times.

People have been requesting some videos of life here, speaking of cultural exchange over new media, so here are a couple I just uploaded to facebook (so painfully slow):

The present Is too much for the senses, Too crowding, too confusing - Too present to imagine.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:28:00 +0000

Was introduced to the wonder that is Robert Frost. I mean, who hasn't heard of Frost before, but for most people, as it had been for me, it's "The Path Less Chosen." Last night I got to read through a large collection of his poems thanks to Mary's enormous, well thumbed-through book. Some notable poems I ran across are below, they range from large and life-pondering to 'hey, that's what it is like when it rains here also!' Enjoy.

I WILL SING YOU ONE-O

It was long I lay
Awake that night
Wishing the tower
Would name the hour
And tell me whether
To call it day
(Though not yet light)
And give up sleep.
The snow fell deep
With the hiss of spray;
Two winds would meet,
One down one street,
One down another,
And fight in a smother
Of dust and feather,
I could not say,
but feared the cold
Had checked the pace
Of the tower clock
By tying together
Its hands of gold
Before its face.

The came one knock!
A note unruffled
Of earthly weather,
Though strange and muffled.
The tower said, "One!"
And then a steeple.
They spole to themselves
And such few people
As winds might rouse
From sleeping warm
(But not unhouse).
They left the storm
The struck en masse
Like a beaded fur.

In that grave One
They spoke of the sun
And moon and stars,
Saturn and Mars
And Jupiter.
Still unfettered,
They left the named
And spoke of the lettered,
The sigmas and taus
Of constellations.
They filled their throats
With the furthest bodies
To which man sends his
Speculation,
Beyond which God is;
The cosmic motes
Of yawning lenses.
Their solemn peals
Were not their own:
They spoke for the clock
With whose vast wheels
Theirs interlock.
In that grave word
Uttered alone
The utmost star
Trembled and stirred,
Though set so far
Its whirlnig frenzies
Appear like standing
In one self station.
It has not ranged,
And save for the wonder
Of once expanding
To be a nova.
It has not changed
To the eye of man
On planets over,
Around, and under
It in creation
Since man began
To drag down man
And nation nation.

DEVOTION

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

CARPE DIEM

Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.
He waited (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy,
"Be happy, happy, happy
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing -
Too present to imagine.

SAND DUNES

Sea waves are green and wet,
But up from where they die
Rise others vaster yet,
And those are brown and dry.

They are the sea made land
To come at the fisher town
And bury in solid sand
The men she could not drown.

She may know cove and cape,
But she does not know mankind
If by any change of shape
She hopes to cut off mind.

Men left her a ship to sink:
They can leave her a hut as well;
And be but more free to think
For the one more cast-off shell

THE FLOOD

Blod has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.
It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
Weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave
That when it has swept by, leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

IN TIME OF CLOUDBURST

Let the downpour roil and toil!
The worst it can do to me
Is carry some garden soil
A little nearer the sea.

'Tis the world-old way of rain
When it comes to a mountain farm
To exact for a present gain
A little of future harm.

And the harm is none too sure,
For when all that was rotted rich
Shall be in the end scoured poor,
When my garden has gone down ditch,

Some force has but to apply,
And summits shall be immersed,
The bottom of seas raised dry-
The slope of the earth reversed.

Then all I need do is run
To the other end of the slope,
And on tracts laid new to the sun,
Begin all over to hope.

Some worn old tool of my own
Will be turned up by the plow,
The wood of it changed to stone,
But as ready to wield as now.

May my application so close
To so endless repetition
Not make me tired and morose
And resentful of man's condition.

Life or something like it

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy Kelley) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:56:00 +0000

It's hot season once again. Fun. I'm also single once again. Fun. Which is worse? Well, I'm gonna have to say that's a toss up, at least breaking up doesn't give me heat rash. Just heartburn... :)

Anyway, it's not that big of a thing. She needs space to think things over and what better time to get space than when we're already thousands of miles apart? If it's meant to be and a strong enough love is there then things will be fine in the end. Sometimes you have to let the things you love go and see if they will come back. Can't say as I blame her for it, we've not had the easiest relationship and should it work in the end, this will just be another brick building up our foundation.

But hot season.... now, THAT ain't never gonna change. Glad I can pick up and run from it eventually. Been about 110 everyday for a couple of weeks now. Sweating all day long, trouble sleeping at night for soaked sheets. To be honest, the worst is yet to come temperature wise, it's just the humidity in Gaya these days that's killing me, as the temperatures rise that will die down a bit, until the rains come that is, and then.... well each season is special in it's own way let's say.

But really, regardless of everything that seems to be going bad for me right now (and it's been a hard couple of weeks for sure), god, as they say, works in mysterious ways, and I am in a certain sense glad to still be in Niger. It's sure that the projects I would have been close to 'finishing' would have been a last minute PAIN, since even till now I don't have all the community contribution required for the books. Asking for Nigeriens to give money is like pulling crocodile teeth.

I have a chance to now do some more traveling around the country, visiting other volunteers and seeing their villages. In fact, I'm off to my good buddy Josh's village on Sunday for a week-long visit. Tomorrow I'm visiting Mary and cheering on kids in a soccer tournament she organized for her commune. After Easter, it's back to Gaya for a couple weeks, then I hope to travel East for most of the month of May, seeing places where I don't speak the language (hausa), maybe will learn some while out there. Then in June I have a conference in Niamey on closing up our service. After that, well we'll be playing that one by ear, or heart, to see what happens next.

I forgot to bring my long hoped to be publish rant on African development to Niamey with me, so that will have to wait for another day, but I would like to relate a little bit about what I've been up to in this, maybe futile, attempt to help Niger develop.

STUDENT GOVERNMENT-

It's been a smashing success. People have loved it. We had radio coverage of the elections and other school directors have been asking when we can get them tried so they can start governments in their own schools.

And best of all, I didn't even really do that much. I put a lot of effort into the conference in Niamey last year, and had a couple of people from Gaya trained on impletementing student governments. MY counterpart Seidou has been amazing and after a brief hiatus for christmas travels, I came back and within two weeks we had a conference with the directors, teachers, and students' parents from two of our local primary schools. After the two day (two morning) training, the directors took it all on themselvs to organize the elections, even seeking out funding for materials from one of our local NGOs that works on human rights, especially those of women and children, so it fit great with their goals as well.

It has seriously been the highlight of my service to see these schools and my community pull together to accomplish something like that without relying on me or some big international NGO. That's very encouraging and the type of thing that PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) should be focusing on, but it's all too easy to get caught up in 'hey my village needs this, let's find money!' I mean so many things DO require money and we know how to find it better than many Nigeriens, it's just well, money corrupts. But that's my whole thesis, so I'll develop it more later and instead talk about....

I have a giving the pictures here captions to help tell the story of the elections, you may find it interesting.

THE BOOKS

Still waiting on, yep that's right, the devil - MONEY. The community contriubtion side for this project runs like this: 25% has to be provided by the community. And so for this project, the remaining books (after the initial two schools took their earned shares) were divided into 44 book lots, one available to each of the 16 CEGs in the Gaya commune for a total contribution in their price of 40,000CFA, about $80. I figured that's a small price to pay for such a benefit (and it is), but getting people here to value education, especially ENGLISH education to the point of putting up money has been a challenge. Some communities jumped at the chance and had the money to me in a couple days, others just had the 'if god wants it, he'll drop the money from heaven into our director's hands, cause we sure as ain't paying that' attitude. Sad, but true. Some people just don't put any value on education, it's not perceived as having much value when, most likely, you'll end up planting and cutting millet, even merchants who need to read and write, do math, only need a primary level education. What good is English then?

Well, let's see, how about doing business in an English speaking country. Nigeria, Ghana, ever heard of them, they're the two biggest west african economies, you think maybe you would want to have the ability to do business there. How about, going to high school or university? Both REQUIRE you to pass the english part on entrance exams. Well, whatever, doesn't ring a bell for some people.

FRUSTRATION

It's the name of the game as of late. Maybe it's my personal troubles, the heat, or something I ate, but sometimes I just want to burn this whole damn country to the ground. There are so many just uneducated and clueless people. And the food... :(

But then invariably I will have a conversation with someone in zarma and see that light in their eyes go on when I describe something NEW and DIFFERENT to them, and I know that a new connection was just made. Or I see a cute kid, like the beggar kids who hang outside my house. The greet me home like puppies, running up, yelping "ca va", not always welcome, but seeing this one girl smile everytime I see her breaks my heart; to know that there's nothing I can do to change where she is and how, in many ways her life is already laid out for her. It's a smile of such innocence and beauty, how can it exist on a girl who has to beg for food? (though they get fed pretty well since setting up shop outside my house and just across the street from the mosque, helps also to have the good shade from the trees there)

There's always something, even in my most 'I hate Niger' moods to put a smile on my face, unfortunately it's also true that the constant 'Nigerienness' of some people do nothing but wear me down. I refer to the DAILY and REPEATED episodes such as (translated from zarma of course):

Kid: "Hey white man, white man, hey look over here!!! White man!!!!!!"

Man: "Hey, how's the wife?"
Me: "I have no wife, I'm too young"
Man: "Well, I'll bring you a wife. A nice young girl, you know *wink*. She'll help you with all your 'work' *wink* Come on you need a nigerien girl to marry. I'll go get one right now."
Me: "no, really that's fine. Ha ha ha *laughing so he'll stop, joke's done*
Man: "How about I bring her by tonight?"
Me: "Thanks, but that's fine, I have a girl back home, I can only have one"
Man: "Oh, you can have one there AND one here. She'll never know..."
AND so on and so forth....

Me: "How much for the shirt?"
Merchant: "5000CFA" - that's like 20 times the price it should be
Me: "Really, you know I live here, what's the real price."
Man: "That is the price. Ok, how about 2500, you're white you can pay that."
Me: "Nope, goodbye."
I make a point of NEVER buying from these types, just the ones who offer a resonable first price

Director of CEG I, the bad side of Niger: "We need more tables, find us some tables, we need your help."
Me: Thinking 'Yeah and I bet you already got money to fix the ones you have, but spent it on beer and prostitutes', though saying "Yeah, I would if I could, but like I tell you EVER time, I don't have money."
Director: "But you know people who do right....?"

*SIGH*

So Niger is wearing on me, but like I said, there's always a bright spot if you keep your eyes open, mostly the smile of a child or the kindness of a complete stranger on a bus, the things that I love about Niger. Just like in life everywhere else, joy is often hidden in the silver linings of a cloudy situation. Kala Suru.

Enough for now, I don't want to be so negative in my writings, but you go where the flow takes you sometimes.

I'm happy (and incredibly sad) to be here still, and we take life one day at a time, and try to do good things for those we can, and really THAT is a very nigerien sentiment and one we should all be able to take to heart.

Check out my new pictures of Gaya, student government elections on Picasa. Until the next time.

P.S. WILLIAM COBOS - For God's sake leave me your email address next time so I can get back to you! What good is it to start a blog so we can communicate if I can't even write on it or send you an email!!! But I like the name you gave it.