Vacation: Day 1

After a 6 hour flight from Niamey to Paris, a 3 hour layover in Paris, a 9 hour flight from Paris to Johannesburg, a 13 hour layover in Jo-burg, and a 1 1/2 hour flight from Jo-burg to Maputo, Mozambique, I had finally arrived. I waited in a very long line at Customs, feeling excited and, well, a little nervous. It had been 10 months since Vic and I had last seen each other: I didn’t really know what to expect, but I was ready to be out of that line.

When I got to the Customs agent I found out that I couldn’t pay for my visa with a card, and I didn’t have any cash on me (except some CFA, the currency for French-west Africa, which was useless). The agent kept my passport, and told me to go outside where I would find an ATM, then come back and pay for the Visa.

I was totally flustered. I wanted to get this figured out as quickly as possible and be done with it, and was also acutely aware of the fact that I was about to see Vic for the first time since July. However I had envisioned our initial reunion, this wasn’t it.

I walked out through security, feeling completely overwhelmed. I turned the corner and saw him, standing there, looking about as nervous as I felt, and holding a dozen roses. I’m sure he could tell I was stressed, and I think I told him what was going on in breath. He took out his wallet, handed me some cash, and said, “That should be enough”. I was trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was there, seeing and talking to him after so long, that he had brought me roses, and still feeling stressed about this whole visa-thing. So I went back inside to take care of it (which took much too long), and finally went back outside to greet him again, properly this time.

Within a few minutes we were walking away from the airport towards the main street, where we could get a shared taxi towards our hotel. Before we ever reached the taxi I had realized how strangely natural it felt to be together again. I’m sure we’d both changed in the 10 months that had passed, and in ways that could not sufficiently be expressed through weekly phone calls or text messages. I expected us to have a lot to catch up on, and we did, but basically it felt like picking up where we left off. It seemed like however we had each grown, it had been in the same general direction.

Computer Literacy

The mairie recently got solar panels, and thus electricity, and a computer. Everyone is really excited about it, obviously. And I, apparently, have been appointed “computer expert”. Those of you who actually are deserving of such a title should find this amusing… I know probably as much as the average American does, but was a bit concerned about being expected to answer every technological question they came up with.

As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. They really just wanted to use Word and Excel, and I am more than qualified to teach someone how to cut and paste. We went over incredibly basic skills, but they were the most useful skills for the work they were trying to do. For the most part, they wanted to be able to store records in the computer, so we made a template for birth, death, and marriage certificates. Then they needed to write letters, type up meeting minutes, or record a budget.

For weeks, I was constantly running between my office and the secretary’s desk, helping her undo a delete or cut and paste something, or into the mayor’s office, trying to figure out how to say “double click” in Hausa… But lately they haven’t needed my help nearly as often. Rabi, the secretary, can now do pretty much everything she needs to on a daily basis without any help from me. The other day she pointed this out. She was beaming. I remember how frustrated she had seemed when we first got the computer. It was overwhelming; a huge amount of new skills to acquire in a very short period of time, and some of the male staff could be a bit impatient with her. Tasks that she could have done without help in maybe 20 minutes on the typewriter now took an hour and a half, with constant pauses to ask me to explain things or show her something. But now, she is confident and capable of doing her work on the computer. I asked her if she preferred the computer or the typewriter, now that she has gotten the hang of it. “The computer,” she said immediately, smiling (this is a woman who just a few weeks earlier seemed about ready to throw the computer out the window and/or burst into frustrated tears). “It’s faster. If I make a mistake I don’t have to start all over again. And we have the birth certificates saved, so I can just change the name and date without retyping the whole thing. And years from now it’ll all still be there if we need to find something. It’s so much better.”

Office Calendar

“When’s the next council meeting?”

This seemed to me like a simple question. The commune’s council meets regularly, and I’ve sat in on enough of them to know that they usually set the precise date for the next meeting at the end of each.

“Uhhh… you’ll have to ask the mayor. He’s in Konni today.”

“Will he be in tomorrow?”

“Uhh… I don’t know.”

Sigh. This really shouldn’t be difficult.

This is a common trend. The mayor is usually the only one in the mairie to know when meetings are happening, when NGOs are coming to visit, etc., and he is away on business fairly often; in Konni, in Tahoua, visiting another commune. So it is far too common to have what could be simple inquiries go unanswered.

But I had an idea: Some other volunteers had used blackboard paint to make perpetual calendars in their mairies. If I did this, and got people to use it, then both the municipal staff and the community at large would have a better idea of what was going on at the mairie. And maybe, just maybe, it would encourage planning beyond today, tomorrow, or (at best) next week?

Painting the thing proved more complicated than I anticipated, but I won’t cry over spilt…erm… paint. In the end it got done, and while the first couple of months the only thing written on it was my vacation, people have finally started posting meetings and NGO visits, and overall the reaction has been really positive.

Starting a Student Government (Inshallah)

One of the goals for Municipal & Community Development is Civics Education, which means teaching people, usually kids, about what the government’s role is and about what it means to be a good citizen. The Scouts does this in a way, promoting civic participation and volunteerism. Another project that I had discussed with some of my villagers was starting a student government at the middle school. This would teach kids about the electoral process, how the government is structured, etc., and provide a means for the students to become more active participants in their community and take on leadership roles. Both the municipal staff and the school director were supportive of this idea, and the director and I set up a meeting for the following week with the few teachers who would facilitate the student government to make an action plan, a timeline for what needed to be done to get this going.

Unfortunately, the teachers went on strike the following week, so we pushed the meeting back to the next week. They were on strike the next week, as well… and the next… The strike would go for a few days, stop, and then start up again. Apparently the teachers haven’t been receiving the pay checks… In the end, we decided to put this project on hold, try to make a plan over the summer vacation, and start the student government next school year. Keep your fingers crossed…

"Scoots": take 2

After the chaos of that first meeting, we had two more sessions with Ary, formed 3 scout groups (two of older kids and one for the younger kids), and the older groups began having weekly meetings. Unlike American scouts, these groups are made up of both boys and girls. I helped them to plan a “community clean up day”, where they picked a part of the town and went to pick up litter for about an hour. They did this at least twice, and were so enthusiastic. Every time I walk through the village, I see some of the kids and they would raise their two fingers, the international “Scout” sign, and say, “Farida! SCOOTS!” They are so into it.

Just one problem: Ary isn’t, never was, a scout. He doesn’t really know what goes on at the meetings, and didn’t teach them how to plan or run them. And I am certainly not qualified to teach them this. They have so much enthusiasm, but they don’t really know what to do. They need direction.

When I was in Niamey, I met with the head of Scouts in Niger, and we planned to have him and two other scouts come out for 2 days to give the kids more training and direction. The trouble is just getting the funding to pay for them to come out to our village, food, etc., which isn’t difficult but can take a while. So for the moment, my scouts are kind of in abeyance. They are still enthusiastic, but I don’t think they’ve been keeping up with the weekly meetings, as they really don’t know what to do at the meetings. I’ve explained to them that some scouts from Niamey are going to come, but that I don’t know when they’ll be able to come. My only concern is that they will lose their momentum. Hopefully we’ll be able to get this moving again soon.

"Scoots": take 1

Like most mornings, I walked down the main road from my house to the mayor’s office. Like most mornings, I was greeted by several groups of young children as I went. “Farida! Good morning! Hello! Hello Farida!” Unlike most mornings, though, there were not just the usual neighborhood kids. As I approached the mairie, I saw more and more kids. “Farida! There are people at the mairie!” I was starting to get a little bit nervous. As I got closer, I began to hear the rumble of hundreds of little voices. Uh Oh.

Then I turned the corner, and saw them. Easily 1,000 children, all around the mairie. They were up on the hill, in the trees, on the steps. And then they saw me. “FARIIIDAAAAA!!!!!!!!” sounded like a war cry. Good Lord… Within seconds I was surrounded, slightly terrified, thinking both; this is ridiculous, and how in the world are we going to deal with this?? I had to laugh. What else could you do?

It was Saturday, and earlier that week I had gone to the schools, the elementary and middle school and told them that we would be having a meeting on Saturday for any kids interested in joining the new scouts groups. I was beginning to regret making an open invitation…

“Farida is having a party.”

“Farida is going to kill a goat for us.”

I sadly realized that the vast majority of these kids didn’t understand what the meeting was about. They had simply come because I had asked them to. I was doing something, and apparently I’m very interesting.

I went into the mairie and saw the mayor and the SG (Secretaire Generale), who were both chuckling. Thank God. They could easily have been annoyed at the situation, but to my great relief they both found it as amusing as I did. But let’s get serious now, we need to talk strategy.

Even if you have never had to get over 1,000 young children to listen and do what you want them to, I’m sure you can imagine what a difficult task that could be. We decided that we would keep the middle school kids for the meeting, as a reasonable number of them had turned up. We would have to send away the younger kids, and then the following week we would ask the school director to choose 10, 5 girls and 5 boys. The trick would be getting them to leave, now.

The mayor went outside to face the masses. “The guest isn’t coming today. We can’t have the meeting now. You all need to go home.” He made this announcement several times over, but still some of the older kids had to help round up the kids and herd them back towards the village. It was insane.

Finally, we were left with about 40 older kids, ages 12-18. Ary, who works in the city for the government and does youth development stuff, got to the mairie a mere 20 minutes after the majority of kids had left. The first scouts meeting went well, considering the craziness of that morning… Ary explained to the kids a bit about what it meant to be a scout (“scoot-ism” as they call it…), they sang some songs, played some games, and we planned the next meeting where we would form the scout groups based on age. The kids were incredibly excited about all of this, which was a great feeling. What had started out as an enormous disaster had somehow turned into a successful first step in my first project. We were on our way to forming scout groups in our village, creating youth groups that teach responsible citizenship, emphasize the importance of volunteer work, and promote equity between girls and boys. Finally, I thought, I’m doing something.

"Kungia", my women's leader/Nigerien grandmother, and some of her friends. She's amazing.

The well in the community garden. Pulling water is hard!

My garden! My villagers helped me plant carrots and cabbage (mine are the 4 blocks that look empty... because I had just planted them, not because i'm agriculturally inept - although that's probably true, too)