So talking to The Mo a couple weeks ago she told me I need to write more about the people in Niger, that my earlier posts were far more interesting than work this work that. I can understand that, I've grown quite accustomed to life here and what used to strike me as odd, funny, or just plain wrong now seems familiar and in its place. So without further ado here are three stories of people in Niger, the first is supposed to be funny, the second is sad, and last is about the two sides of Niger.
1) My first saturday back in Gaya after this last trip found me sleeping in and enjoying the cool morning. It's been almost cold here at night and in the mornings till about 10 or 11. What I consider cool though is definately a relative term since I see people here in parkas and a Seattle-ite would be wearing shorts and a tee-shirt.
So I'm sleeping in.... I sleep outside on the front porch. I like sleeping outside, but it's especially nice this time of year when I can get that 'I would be cold but for this warm blanket feeling,' very luch a rarity around these parts. It's maybe 830, definately LATE as a Nigerien day goes. I'm not asleep, not quite awake yet when I look up and see a NIgerien boy looking at me from the space between my concession wall and the side of my house. Does this surprise me? Not at all. Initial thoughts: oh he's gonna think I'm so lazy still in bed a 830.
Now it's no surprise since this little passage that runs behind my house was for quite a while when I first moved in a sort of highway for children and my neighbors who were interested in the Anasara. IT's been closed for a while though and so my mind slowly clicks into zarma mode and I can ask how he got in. "I climbed the wall." It's a seven foot wall, that's some effort. What does he want "Have you seen our ball? We kicked it over the wall." No I haven't. I show him out, me just wearing a pair of shorts and the women across the way get a good laugh at my pale shade as I let him out through the front gate.
9 O'clock and I'm up, I'm drinking coffee and a ball sails over and almost lands in my cup. That was quite the hang time, but I guess I finally found it. This time he comes to the front gate instead of scaling the wall.
Moral of the story: waking up to strange children in your concession staring at you is not weird. Sleeping in to 830 is.
2) I take the bus from Niamey to Gaya. It takes about 6 hours. It used to be just 4 but the road has become so bad between Gaya and Dosso as to be almost impassable but at a snail's pace. It's 230 and we're getting on the bus. As my name is called and I make my way through the mob trying to push it's way on I notice that all the seats are taken. What's left are the 'seats' that folddown in between the real seats in the aisle. Usually they're broken, but that's ok cause you end up sitting on other people's stuff anyway - there's not much of a trunk and lots of bagage.
A woman tells me to take the one in the very front, but the driver says no it's for another person. No skin off my nose I start heading to the back. This woman though is somehow offended and her and the driver get into it. Long argument short the driver refuses to drive us if this woman is in the bus. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes pass with this inpass until another driver agrees to take us.
Finally on the road, I'm well engrossed in The Economist from some months back (but NEW by our standards!!!) when I look up as people around me start yelling. We had started to pass a bigger bus, ours being of the 30 person 'short-bus' variety, on the left and suddenly this big behemoth of a bus starts veering into our lane. It's inevitable and I watch as brakes squeel and then BOOM the front windshield seems to explode as we take a good angled crash into the bus's left side just under the driver's window. Lucky for us all the bus had safety glass for a windshield and it's just dust and things from the dash that fly back, but it's still quite a shock. The bigger bus pushes us across the median and into the oncoming lanes of traffic. My heart jumped into my throat as I thought of a head on collision. But lucky for us there was no traffic and we come to a rest, for the most part unscathed.
That doesn't stop the pandamonium that broke lose as soon as me struck the other bus though. Children screaming, woman pushing to get out, people jumping out the window. I tried to apeal for calm "We're ok, we're ok" I'm saying, "we've stopped" and finally as the driver and others say the same people calm down and start to file out through the driver's door. I let others go by. I want to collect my things, and myself, a bit before getting out.
I looked back then out our back window and saw a crowd gathering in the road where we jumped the median. I saw the crowd and on the ground between the feet of on lookers I see a pair of legs bruised and broken. I thought of lumpy mashed potatoes and I knew right away that the owner of those legs hadn't a chance as we came across the road onto her side. I hope she never saw us coming. The blink of an eye and that was that.
I got out. I stood there. I texted Kelsey to tell her I loved her, I'm ok. I asked who she was. She was just a girl on her, maybe 14 or 15 on her way to set up the place where her and her mother sell fried millet balls or some such snack. The coast was clear on her side of the street and now it's just her body being scooped up and taken away to the hospital in the first passing car and her scattered stuff being gathered together by those standing there, a sad collection of her head scarf, flip-flops, cooking pot and broken stool with small spatters of blood that wouldn't be very obvious if I hadn't know to look for them.
People are upset, but there's no police, no ambulance, with her removed, it's just two banged up busses. People move on quickly here, death is still all too familiar. Makes you think how quick something like that could happen. I cross the street just like her many times a day in Niamey.
But it's not a quick enough moving on for the woman who caused the argument with the driver. She's berated and yelled at that this is her fault, she should have just let it go. She yells back and soon I think nobody remembers what happened because of the accident, they're just concerned about who caused it.
3) A Tale of Two Nigers
So this story has a lot to do with my work (sorry Mom) but at the same time I think it speaks a lot as to some characterstics of Niger and development in Africa.
I spent yesterday morning and this morning as well speaking to the students in our CEGs, that's middle school, about the need for them to bring in their money for the English textbooks. I had a great time talking to the kids at both schools, they really open up and enjoy it when someone stands before them and doesn't just talk AT them; but engages. However, between the two schools there's a big difference in the directors that I'd like to talk about and that highlights the two paths laid out before Niger.
CEG I-
The director is shady. I think that's the most apt description. He's unkempt, smokes in his office, oversees crumbling old school complex where broken tables litter the area. He tries to speak over anyone who is talking and just keeps getting louder and LOUDER till the other person gives up. I have no doubt he would skim off the top of any project aimed at helping his students. How do I know? Every time I suggest something to him the first question is always "What's in it for me?" He tells students that Niger is the most uneducated and backwards country in the world; well he litterly yells it at them. The fact is itself debatable, but non the less why rub it in the faces of students, making them feel ashamed of their country. Excuse the french, but he's all around an ass-hole and I hate having to work with him.
Now take as counterpoint the director of CEG II. He's great. He's always clean cut, wearing nice suits you could only buy in Niamey or elsewhere, talks TO the kids not AT them, doesn't yell or belittle them or try to intimidate them into accepting his autority. He's funny, inviting, and eager to do all he can to improve the status of his newly (2006) constructed school, which is well keep and clean. Three more cement classes to come next year to replace some of the temporary milet stock ones!
CEG I is what holds Niger back; corrupt, suffering from mismanagement and major Big Man complex, no thought for up keep, just ask the next white person to buy you new stuff when what you have, and don't take of, breaks.
CEG II is the bright future possible, where Nigerians take the responsibility for their own destiny and foreigners are just a source of help, but not relied upon. It's the totally welcoming part of the culture I love.
Talking to the Inspector (superintendant) here this afternoon about that dicotomy confirmed that even Nigerians can see their country in these two lights. He doesn't trust the director at CEG I either, told me without a doubt he would steal, but that he's not the only one, it's a cultural thing. They're raised thinking it's ok to take a small piece of the pie. There's a struggle going on in Africa right now over its identity. As my inspector said, Africa is a a place of Big Men and strong central powers where people are, if not happy, very willing to give power to others and just keep their heads down. One cannot see democracy here as they do in the US. We talked much about how there is definately a struggle to find new indetities for Africans and african society which balances the old and new; a balance between strong protectors, benefactors, and even oppressors, and the new wave of people demanding more freedom and rights and democracy. It's not an easy thing to do. See: Kenya, Zimbabwe... but also Ghana where democracy scored big this year. I want to expand on this idea in another post, to describe more the concept of Big Men and the willingness to give away power to strong central governments, even ruthless ones, but for now I have to go. I've written enough for now and have a friend visiting who just told me he's arrived in Gaya.
Assalam Alaykum
Caught Up! (for now) — Pakse, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
13 years ago
