Hello Goodbye Niger

It’s been an interesting past 5 months, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  To sum it up: I completed my Pre-Service Training in Niger, swore in as a volunteer, and got to site shiny and new.  I was at my site for 8 days when Peace Corps decided they had to pull out of Niger.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1691

It feels a little funny trying to sum it all up here for you.  

When we were evacuated, we were flown out to Morocco for a “transition conference.”  During this conference we had an exercise in which we had to practice answering questions about our life in Niger.  This was probably harder than anything I had to do there.  Luckily all of us learned patience so we were super good at this activity, so good that they gave us the grand prize of a flight home afterwards.  Which was a bummer because evacuating a country is extremely inexpensive for Peace Corps and I’m sure they were totally dying to keep us at the hotel in Morocco.

My Bostonian friend described it pretty well: it’s like a sunset that you try to take a picture of and no matter what you do the picture will never capture being there.

So, now that I’ve described how nearly impossible it feels for me to tell you about Niger and now that I’m in snowy Boston listening to internet radio and drinking real, ground coffee, I’ll attempt it.

I was in my village for 8 days, but it was incredibly hard to say goodbye.  It was partially because I felt so guilty for leaving but a large part of it was that in those 8 days - and in the training months, as well, - I have never felt so taken care of by a community.  Before I left for Peace Corps I listened to assumptions that people living in poverty as extreme as that which exists in Niger wouldn’t be so nice to each other.  When there are limited resources there’s more competition, more conflict.  The math seems to add up.  But it doesn’t pan out that way.  I’ve always admired the African mindset.  And, Nigeriens are some of the most socially-minded people I’ve ever met.  They look out for each other.  They greet each other each meeting, taking a holistic approach, asking about all aspects of each other’s lives.  And, eventhough we all know I am not Nigerien, and materialistically speaking I have more, they looked out for me.  In the village, my family shared their two meals per day of pounded millet with me.  My host mother pulled my water for me from the 100 meter deep well.  If that’s not motivation to be a better person, I don’t know what is.

It’s kind of funny.  I feel as though as health volunteers, we were trained to combat fatalism.  “It’s in God’s hands,” we were told they would say, when we preached disease prevention methods.  “Stand up and God will help you,” was supposed to be our line.  But adopting a tiny bit of this fatalist attitude may not be so bad in these uncontrollable situations.  “Everything happens for a reason,”  I’ve heard throughout the evacuation process from so many American volunteers and staff.  Alhamdulillai, Arabic for “Praise be to God,” a phrase used when there’s not much you can do/more you can say about a situation, but despite it, you are grateful.  So you just never know what’s going to happen in life.  At the end of this I miss my Peace Corps Niger counterparts, but I know that we are together, as our Baba Tondi said: Muna tare. And I know that I am grateful.