Last week This week

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.