Gaya and the French

As far as places to live and work for the next two years go this is quite a nice spot. I was down here visiting the town for a couple of days to get a feel of how life will be. This afternoon I head back North for another week of preparation before we swear in and all that good jazz. My house is amazing, I have two bedrooms, a livening room, a kitchen, and a spare room… more space than I could possibly know what to do with, especially considering any amenities I buy will most likely not be coming home with me when I leave. A huge change from some the places I saw when we dropped off other volunteers in their posts out in the bush. They end up in villages of 500-1000 people and live in huts, like we have right now. None of their houses we done yet.
Gaya itself is a nice spot. I’ve been told there has been some trouble with robbery and they don’t send female volunteers do here anymore after a couple incidents a few years ago, but I’ve met quite a few extremely nice people here so far. I have a group lined up to play soccer with when I get back. I inherited a friend from the volunteer before me, a Nigerian (as in Nigeria), who owns a motorcycle shop around the corner and, get this, speaks ENGLISH!!! Just being able to talk to him has made it easier these last two days of going it alone.

So let me tell you a story about our trip down and the crazy French jerk we met:

To get down to Gaya we took the Falmey road which runs closer to the river than the paved road by some 50-60km. It is the only way to access many of the villages some of the other volunteers were headed for. It’s dirt and pretty rough in spots, potholes are everywhere. Things are going along fine when we come across a big CAT doing some roadwork 40km or so from Gaya. By roadwork, I mean it’s smashing a tree to splinters as we rolled up… why? I have no idea. It’s taking up the whole road so they wave us around it down by the river. We don’t make it but 15 feet before we’re swallowed up to the wheel well in the mud. Our driver, Seini, tells a worker to go get a rope to help pull us out with their pickup. Off he goes. Ten minutes later a Land Rover comes roaring up. Out comes this fifty something, French, John Travolta Saturday Night Fever wannabe. Receding hair line, scrap of a vest with no shirt on underneath to show off bushels of matted chest hair. Four teeth. He starts yelling at all the workers to hurry up and finish, they’re leaving. Seini explains the situations and says they should help pulls us out. The French mann turns on him, yelling that this is French money at work and that he’s not going to spend any of it helping Americans. After all we started to war in Iraq and now we have to live with the consequences. (Stuck in the mud in Niger = Iraq war….. right). Seini doesn’t miss a beat and points out that it appears to be the French behind the current problems in the North.
An aside about this: It is fairly obvious that after Araba, the French energy powerhouse, lost out to some other companies in the government grants on uranium mines, they started helping some disenfranchised groups, with grievances towards Niamey, by supplying them with trucks, and who knows, maybe even the weapons themselves, and if not the weapons, certainly the cash that bought them.

Continuing on: Seini makes the point that the French are trying to meddle here a start problems. After some choices yelling (with lots of spittle sprinkled in for good measure) Frenchy hustles his men into the trucks and roars off. I have a couple other choice words to describe the man, but I’ll save them for the sake of grandparents who may be reading this.
Lucky for us, there were a bunch of people from one of the near by towns out watching the big machine work. Not two minutes after the bastard left we have all the village kids running to get rocks and the men at work digging out the tiring. It took a hour or so, but with a lot pushing and many dirty hands and feet we got out. Nigeriennes are great about taking care of other people. If you’re in trouble in this country everyone will drop everything they’re doing to help.
Turns out the guy works for the mining operation in the area. The only reason they’re working on the roads is to help themselves exploit the resources more, the money from which is going to line fat French pockets, not the help anyone here. And their road work leaves much to be desired. America has done more for this country than France ever has, and he refused to help us? His thinking: Peace Corps = US Government = War in Iraq = The war France was to weak to Stop (Showing it’s decline in International Importance) = Pissed off that I’m stuck working in the mines in Niger instead of a typical French job where I can take two hours for lunch… oh, and I’m probably a little unstable as well…

Ok, rant over. Just pisses me off. I was never for the war and again here I have to live with it, as do Americans everywhere. And, by the way, I have nothing against most French, in fact I have quite a few friends there, but this man…. And sometimes the French government….

Here's a picture of one of the kittens that we have at the hostel in Dosso. They're about a month old now... so cute and a good note to end this post one. Another good thing about Gaya is there is an internet café I can use to update this blog and check e-mail, etc. (though they just broke the server so I'm posting from Niamey, hopefully it'll be back up when I return) OH!!! I have a new address, check out the sidebar. Packages or letters can be sent directly here from now on. Next time I plan on writing about the Education system here and my role in it, for those of you wondering what exactly I will be doing…. Which includes myself most of the time as

well.

Kala Tonton.