5 days before Christmas update, post christmas coming soon….
Hey, I’m typing a post and it might even get put up on the interweb by jolene so booyah!!! She said I only have 15 minutes to type, so we’ll see what comes out. Today we tried to do the radio show and went through all this wahala to get the new volunteers on there and get the ipod all ready with the right songs and such, and then when we showed up they told us, “Sorry no radio show this week.” It was sort of a bummer, but I guess we have a radio show in the bag for when we start again after Christmas which is always nice. If you’re wondering what’s been going on with us you could pretty much just look at our postings from last year as far as work, and adjust by the fact that we’re a little better at Hausa and French and more comfortable being here in general. But more specifically: My latrines and desks got all finished, so that’s cool, I’m going to try to do the same soccer tournament I did last year (but bigger and better!!!) and I’m doing the same penpal project (but bigger and longer) and radio shows are still happening (but the same length and …. prettier?).
Also, I did the aids bike ride a few weeks ago (Dec 1-5) where we went from dan barto to Zinder and it was a lot of fun. I won the yellow jersey a couple times which was good (I think) and got 7 flats and road 4 different bikes. As far as flat tires went I was far and away the winner. I think second place had like 2 or something (looooser). We also did sensibilisations (not a word in English but whatever) in Hausa and I got to be the guy in the skit who brought condoms to his friend before he went traveling and told him to make sure that he used them (he didn’t and he got AIDs though). It was a lot of fun hanging out with everyone and making some new Nigerien theater friends. Jolene even joined me the last day and we got to hang out in Zinder for the first time. We didn’t get to meet up with my mom’s buddy esther garvi because she was dealing with an injured brother or something (allah ya kawo lahiyah), but hopefully we’ll go out that way in the future.….
On the non-work line of thought our goats totally suck. Will, Josh and I built a fence and the summary of events are as follows
- We built it.
- They tore it down.
- We built it better.
- They jumped over it.
- Will left.
- Josh and I rebuilt it using 7 foot high grass mats.
- That worked for a while.
- Josh left.
- They broke down one of the sides.
- I rebuilt it and added another mat.
- They ate holes through one side of the mat.
- I rebuilt using household materials.
- They knocked down the other side of the fence.
- The climbed over and knocked down the center part of the fence.
- I surrendered.
It now consists of chairs leaning up against a broken grass matt with cinder blocks and a bag of cement and a water container strategically placed to try (and fail) to keep them in. It’s pretty hideous, and Jolene is under some crazy notion that chairs should be used to sit in and not as building materials to help house goats, so I guess I need to try again. My friend told me that I should cover it in gasoline so they won’t eat it, but that seems a little dangerous, so I think I might upgrade to chain link. My English is taking a bit of a dive too. When I tried to think of the name of a chain link fence while talking to one of the new volunteers I called it that type of fence that’s metal and criss-crosses a lot.
Anyways, I think my 15 minutes are up and Jolene’s going to take off, so type at you later. Thanks to everyone who keeps in touch (Mom and Dad you are awesome!), and sorry I don’t update more often. I pretty much completely stopped going to the internet café and only check my email at the hostel. Maybe when we have our computer all fixed up in the next month we’ll start putting up some more pictures too… in sha allah




