Bike Ride (Part 2 of 3)

As I was getting ready to leave Niamey the day after Thanksgiving I got a phone call from one of our program directors asking if I could fill in on the AIDS awareness bike ride they were planning from Gaya to Dosso; they had a volunteer drop out at the last minute. So onto the bike ride I went, though I hadn’t ridden a bike in, oh, six years or so.
Too bad the day before we were to start I came down with a bad case of something. Bacteria, Amoebas, Flu, not sure, but I took some meds slept all day and was ready to go by the next morning.

The bike ride is one of the biggest events the Peace Corps here puts on each year. This year we traveled from Gaya to Dosso, 150km, on bike over the course of a week. It really wasn’t very grueling, the most we traveled each day was around 30km and only 15km in the longest single stretch. We stopped at almost every village along the way to put on a show and educate the people about AIDS. It was a great time and I was lucky to even go since first year volunteers aren’t usually invited. Since my language skills weren't quite up to par to act in the skit or conduct meetings I was usually relegated to kid duty, which proved to be quite a handfull. I also became somewhat of the photographer for the ride, taking 500 pictures in a little over a week.

The bike ride was my first real chance to experience “the bush.” Gaya is definitely not what one imagines a Peace Corps experience. Electricity and running water (at least from a pump in the yard) are luxuries here more than the standard living. Part of my journal entry from the time (I’m about as good with my journal as I am with this blog):

“They have a thatch wall/roof school, one room, almost tall enough to stand up in. Not quite. It’s flat here. Much flatter than Gaya and from what I’ve heard this is like the rest of Niger. The village is spread out in clusters of huts here and there. Two wells. Ok, let me talk about the wells for a moment. They’re deep, very deep. Around 75-100 meters deep. Very rocky ground apparently is to blame (or so the villagers say). To draw, a black rubber bucket thing is dropped down on many ropes tied together. The other end, through a pulley, is hooked a couple of tired looking donkeys who seem to pull these buckets all day long. A bushless track runs out in a fan from the well, showing where the ground has been worn bare by the constant tread of hoofs. Women take turns tunning this system. One at the lip of the well, one with the donkey, one to move around buckets of water. Takes a good four minutes to draw a single bucket of 4-5 gallons. Seems like a process that goes on constantly. There’s a pump here, but it’s been broken for years. Same as in the last two villages we passed. Seems up keep here is lacking. No surprise. Like everything in this place, it’s a factor of money. NGOs come in and pay for a pump to be installed, but the long term idea of upkeep, repairs…. That’s lost in the feeling of accomplishment the first buckets cause. Then the NGO is gone, thinking everything is solved. Sustainability is a buzz word around PC and NGOs but the actual sustainability of projects involves more infrastructure and economic building than a single pump, or even a thousand pumps, can provide.”

Think that about sums up the problems we see here; self-sustainable progress is the key. It requires an educated population, if not university smarts, at least educated on what the government needs to do to get them there. And it requires money and investment from outside sources, or a new source of income for Niger. (Pray for an increase in the price of Uranium) Our work here isn't going to change the country, but it can start to help educate the people on what they can do to start that process.