Tim and Jolene

I haven’t actually read Jolene’s blog(s) that she posted recently, so hopefully this won’t be a regurgitation of what she wrote. Right now we’re heading into a huge section of not being in our village, between coming to

Hmm…. Will should probably add something now ‘cause he just sat down next to me.

William:  I haven’t actually read Jolene’s blog(s) or Tim’s addendum, so I hope I don’t regurgitate what they have written.  Once again, I managed to ride to

Thanks Will, I don’t know about the whole adoption thing, since Will is actually older than both of us. We thought maybe Will and I could adopt Jolene since she’s the youngest, but it would probably put this weird Woody Allen vibe into our relationship that I’m not really looking for. I told myself as I was writing this that I would just go ahead and randomize all of my music on iTunes and listen to every song that played, but the Godsmack song I just listened to added up to 5 of the worst minutes of my life. 

Jolene and I had our scariest cab ride in country last Sunday.  We walked to the taxi station a little later than we should have because we had been waiting for a break in the rain.  When we got to the tasha, we had to wait another 20 minutes or so for the cab to fill up (a full taxi is one with 6 people in addition to driver, all in a car about the size of a corolla).  We left just in time for the rain to start again, at which time the taxi-man switched on the wipers, one of which fell off. He stopped to re-attach and we were on our way again. The driver took my favorite approach in times of dangerous road conditions, which is, “if it’s dangerous out, drive extra fast to make it so you’re not in danger for as long.” Pretty much I felt like I was going to die the whole time. I don’t know if I can describe it any better than that.  Oh and Jolene was holding onto my arm so tight that I think she bruised my bone marrow.  Anyways, I think we’re going to do our best to avoid the whole traveling during rain storms thing from now on.

Other exciting things include me not being sick.  It’s good that I’m feeling better now, but it is going to put a damper on my attempts to lose these last 175 pounds.  I think I’ve been going for about a week straight without having amoebas, which may be a personal record.  I’ve narrowed down my three month bout to a few possible causes.

·         Shaking dirty little kids hands all the time when I walk around from school to school combined with my love of nail biting (I know the kids are dirty, but it’s so hard to resist a high-five)

·         Eating meat that’s not cooked well enough that flies have been chilling out on all day

·         Drinking water out of little containers at schools that everyone in the world reaches into

·         Taking the new amoeba-brand diet pills that I’ve started buying from

Everything else I think Jolene and I both do equally without her getting sick, so hopefully if I cut down on the meat that I don’t cook myself and wash my hands more often I’ll stay a little healthier.

Jolene and I have gone to a few end-of-school fetes lately which have been fun.  We’ve been showing off our sweet dance moves.  It’s funny when the little kids will mimic anything I do, no matter how ridiculous it is.  Kristy (our other Peace Corps village mate) had all of them fist pumping at one point.  I think the best I got was a bit of running man, some Rodger Rabbit, and some shopping cart.  But every time someone talks to me about our dancing endeavors they’re like

“Man, you can dance, but that Jamila, she’s way better than you, she’s got mad crazy dance moves,” which goes something like this in Hausa -> “kai, ka iya rawa, amma jamila, ta hi ka iya rawa. Ta rawa sosai!”

But I feel like if you change dance to any other verb you could pretty much describe 2/3 of the conversations that I get in the village.  Darn you Donna, you and your DNA, why does she have to be so good at everything?

Ok, I guess I’ll leave it for now on that note of Jolene’s superiority, unless I decide to come back to it later.  As an extra treat though here’s what I was listening to during this blog entry:

1.       MxPx - Let It Happen - Move To

2.       Rancid - Indestructible - Born Frustrated

3.       James Brown - James Brown’s Funky People - Think (About It)

4.       Fiona Apple - Tidal - Never Is A Promise

5.       At The Drive-In - In Casino Out - Shaking Hand Incision

6.       Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh - Beehiver II

7.       ABBA - Greatest Hits - Honey Honey

8.       The Charming Gentlemen - EP plus one - Sir Isaac Lime

9.       Cat Stevens - Catch Bull At Four - Can’t Keep It In

10.   Godsmack - Godsmack - Immune

Conclusions to be drawn from that… I get distracted easily when I write blogs.

June 6, 2008 – Paul Field is spoiled. Our cat, not the dentist.  Yesterday, the Tantes at the Jardin d’enfants made me and Tim half a guinea fowl with cous cous and sauce. Cat food only exists in Niamey which means that Paul field has to survive off what he catches and our leftovers, so I gave him a bone of the guinea fowl yesterday and then he wined all night for more and this morning again. Spoiled. There’s lizards everywhere in this country, he needs to stop being so needy and catch lizards. Oh and cockroaches.

Life in Niger has been quite swell lately- We have had a lot of events to either help with or just attend recently with the school year coming to an end. Last week, we helped the Scouts of Tibiri with an end of the year celebration for the college and lycee students to greet everyone on their efforts and wish them luck if they are taking the tests this year. We spent the entire day at the college/lycee playing games like knock the cans down with a ball, kick that soccer ball through the tire, put together a puzzle in 10 min (which I did in 6 and set the record – I swear I am not competitive), and other fun stuff like that. After the night prayer we went to the MJC where we danced and then watched some great skits on corruption in schools and early marriage. The Scouts are all so motivated and do such an amazing job. We are really fortunate to be able to work with them.

We attended another fete scolaire yesterday at the Jardin d’enfant which was also quite amazing. The directreuse is a really good friend of mine as well as all of the teachers there and they worked really hard as well to put together the event. All of the kids arrived in their best complets and were so precious! Kristy took lots of great pics for us since our batteries died. The kids at the school are between 3 and 6 years old and so adorable. For the past week or so they had been practicing a song and dance to perform for the local leaders. When kids first start going to school in Niger, because of the way their education system works, they begin learning French right away. French is the number one priority therefore things such as reading and writing are pushed back. Kids who attend kindergarten (which in Tibiri is probably 5 percent) have a better chance in school since they have a head start. But watching these children this last year, I have noticed that they have different intelligences then kindergarteners in the States. Their musical ability and ability to memorize is incredible. Their knowledge of money and the market is also so beyond what most children are capable in the States. It is so interesting how much context can affect what is seen as intelligent and also what is valued in a culture. Anyway, the kindergarteners performed their dance and song and then continued to dance away to the drummers. The event was so much fun and it was really cute being dragged out to dance by twenty kindergarteners and my friend Sayia.

Oh one more story… So Tim and I went to dinner with our friend the other night at this restaurant (?) called the Jardin. I always get the salad there because I haven’t been sick from it yet so my mind was already made up. Tim on the other hand was lured into ordering half a sheep head to share with our friend. I alhamdulalayed my way out of it. So, the half a sheep head arrived and Tim and our friend began to dig in along with their corn tuwo. I was slightly bothered by the thought of it, but moreso amused by all the comments I was hearing. “Tim if you eat the eye, you will see better, and if you eat the ear you will hear better.” So finaly I said to our friend, “You know, I don’t want to ffend you, but if I were to tell our family in the States that Tim is eating half a sheep head for dinner, they might think it is kind of strange.” Our friend looked confused and responderd, “Is it because in the United States you would only order a full sheep head?”

That’s all. Oh, my mom and Stuart are having a wedding reception on the 21^st of June at the Descanso town hall. Y’all should go and dance to Old Highway 80 since I can’t maybe it. Give her a big hug for me to say what’s up pops to Stuart.

I need to try and write more often because so much happens in between blogs that I forget…. Last time Tim wrote we were in Niamey. It was a surprise trip that I really didn’t want to have to take but was necessary if we want to go on vacation. So ATM machines, like most things in Niger, are very scarce or pretty much non-existent. The funny thing is that there are ATM machines in Maradi, however they lack international capability and most Nigeriens do not have ATM cards, so they are not even hooked up. So the series of events started when we realized it was a lot cheaper to buy tickets here in country then it would be on line. What appeared to be our only challenge was that we needed to pay in cash, because there is so much credit card fraud here or something. Tim’s ATM card expired in November of last year conveniently so it was up to me to get money out of my account.  There are about 5 or 6 banks in Maradi and I had the great opportunity to visit each and every one of them and ask for a cash advance or a wire transfer. Each bank was somewhat confused or pretty sure that it was impossible for me to do so they would send me to another bank. By then end of the second day of this, I had probably walked ten miles between banks. Echo bank was by far the nicest; it was a great reminder of what it is like to have customer service. Unfortunately they weren’t able to help me and didn’t laugh too much when I filled out both the send and receive forms for western union in attempt to send myself money from my bank account. So on the third day, I spent three hours waiting for the director of a bank to come and help me with a wire transfer which one man said was simple and another said was impossible. Nonetheless, the director never came and frustrated as heck, I began to yell at the man who told me to wait for him. Immediately I had five men helping me, making phone calls, and trying to fix the situation. It’s amazing how good my French and Hausa gets when I am angry, it just seems to pour out of me like a fountain. In the end, they were not able to help me and said that in order to access my bank account in the states, I would have to travel over 400 kilometers to Niamey. So that is how we ended up in Niamey. But the hurdles continued to appear out of nowhere. I had already made numerous phone calls to my bank in the states which in the end calculated to almost $100 since it is so expensive to call anywhere from here. They were very unhelpful and gave me false information and made the situation even more exciting. Finally after three days and more phone calls we had the money for vacation. I wrote some very wordy emails to my bank in the states and was able to get reimbursed $70 for transaction fees and phone calls which was nice. And we bought tickets to Greece!!! So we will leave for vacation on the 12^th of July (Happy birthday Lacey Panties and Congrats on the job), and Rachel and Deanna are going to meet us there. We are staying until the 7^th of August.  I guess maybe since we had to work so hard to be able to get tickets, I am that much more excited about it. This also means we will be spending our one year mark with the Peace Corps in Greece which will be pretty sweet. I hope people speak Hausa there.

Haven’t done any updating of this thing lately, but let me give my best shot to make up for all of my slackage. The month of April was filled to the brim with soccer tournament excitement, as Rabiou and I held the first annual primary school soccer tournament, featuring 12 teams and 20 games of non-stop 10-14 year old soccer excitement. I think when all was said and done it was 20 games in 26 days which is pretty ridiculous. It went well, but I did get sucked out of my anticipated role of background supporter to be a soccer referee, quite the blast from the past for me seeing as I hadn’t donned whistle and digital watch since 12th grade, but I think I still would’ve made my old referee coordinator proud (you know who I’m talking about Janet). I only ended up giving one red card, but I don’t think the kid held any hard feelings against me. The day after I kicked him out of the match (that his team ended up winning to claim third place) he helped me set up the field for the final. He was like “why did you throw me out of the match?” and I was like “Cause you punched that kid and then ninja kicked him in the back” and then he was like “oh, good point.” My only complaint about the whole thing would have to be where everyone was demanding prizes at the end. The whole point of the tournament was to have something cheap and sustainable that would increase kids’ interest in coming to school, but for some reason people here think that all tournaments should end with lots of prizes and money especially when a foreigner is helping to put it on. I think things make a little more sense to people now, but it was a bit frustrating putting in a lot of work for something and instead of getting a “hey, good job, thanks for all the work” each time I met up with people after the tournament they were like “why didn’t you ” or if they did compliment me that compliment would always be used in a conjunction that had but between the two sentences. I tried to always have a mature response such as “well that’s a really good idea, but it turns out I don’t care so shut up” hmm, maybe that’s three sentences joined together, I’ll have to ask for a ruling on that one. We’re planning on having a meeting to plan for next year, and my goal is for them to completely finance and be in charge of the thing, so if something’s lacking they have no one to blame but themselves. I’m also trying to wrap up the years work on the pen pal project between kids in various towns in the Maradi region. We successfully sent off the first letter, and about half the kids have written the second. There have been some surprising coincidences, however, where entire classes have been made up of 11 year olds with a 1 year and 4 month old sister named Frida… what are the odds? But I guess even copying what a teacher writes on the board without having any idea of what you’re doing is better than nothing. I think there’s something in the water here that kills originality. As for other work stuff I haven’t been too terribly busy. The weekly radio show that we do with Kristy has earned us somewhat of a celebrity status, which is fun. I think it may have helped with my bargaining weight in the grand marché in Maradi a few times. I just throw out a “do you know who you’re dealing with? I’m the world famous Aboubacar, wife of Jamila, son of Jerry…. Um I mean Jafarou.” (not sure if Jerry would fly in these parts) but anyways, other than that we helped with a SIDA mural, Jolene worked like crazy to make this girls fair thing in Maradi come off smoothly (and I sort of helped), and we played soccer up in another region on the Anasara (white stranger folk) team. We tied one and lost one. The game we lost was somewhere between 3 and 5 to zero, depending on who you ask. I blame it on the fact that our star left forward of san diego club team fame decided to head back early to do some “work.” Way to leave your team out to dry Jolene. I should also note that we’ve been trying to get all of our wedding thank you notes finished, but I make no promises whatsoever on when that project will be completed. In fact a few have been returned to sender, which I think is absolutely crazy, seeing as we gave them to a friend who mailed them from the states, and they returned them all the way back to us in Niger, with just a first class stamp from the good old US of A. Seems kinda crazy, but thanks for looking out USPS. So to anyone who decided to move in the last year without really fancy mail forwarding action, looks like you might be SOL on the wedding thank you front. The only specific one I can think of so far that we’ve had returned to us was supposed to be to Chris Dolar, so here’s a wedding thank you to cover our bases until the rest arrive (or in case they never make it across the ocean) that I’d like to dedicate to my good buddy Chris. Hey , thank you very much for the toaster oven. It was very shiny, and will make a beautiful addition to our kitchen set when we return to the states. I’m glad you made it to the wedding (or sorry you missed it, whichever the case may be), and I hope the “post-wedding” lull the past few months hasn’t got you down. Did you hear . Neat huh? Anyways, thanks again for the toaster oven, and make sure you use sun block. Love Tim and Jolene Hope that will tide us over for a few more weeks. The school years winding down, and it looks like “in sha allah” we’ll be off vacationing for the last 3 weeks or so of July in Greece with De and Rach, so that should be fun. Jolene said she’d fill in blanks of what I didn’t talk about (e.g. how fun it was to arrange said vacation), so hopefully that will be soon to follow. Thanks to everyone who reads this, and even more to those to write and let us know what’s going on (we’re all kinds of out of the loop here). Blog at you soon Tim PS. I’m reading Dune, does that make me a nerd?

To sleep or not to sleep. That is the question, it is nearly 11 pm and I still need to pack and get ready for the shuttle that will arrive at 3 am to take me to the bus station for the 12 hour ride back to Maradi. It would be an easier decision if I knew whether or not I would actually be able to sleep on the bus. However, since I am generally holding on to my dear life - my heart racing the entire time - I would have to be pretty dead tired in order to actually even imagine that I might sleep on the trip. But, this is my last chance to put a blog up for a while so I thought I would write a little bit and postpone the sleep till tomorrow night.

This last week was relatively production. I attended a radio workshop with a woman from the radio station that we do a show on every Saturday. We got some good ideas for shows in the future and how to make them more effective so overall it was beneficial. After that I stuck around to work with some other MCD folk on compiling our manual in order to have it prepared for our sister stage who will arrive in the beginning of July. It is just a reminder of how quickly time is flying by. But it was actually really nice to pretend like I was back at a 9 to 5 job. I also felt a little slow since typing in English seems to slowly get harder and harder. Another reason I should write more blogs…. I’ll try to add that to the to-do list, but to all you all who have not received a thank you card for the wedding yet… those are number 1 on the list so don’t you worry. They are on their way, in sha allah, well by June…

Tim has been at post this last week doing work cuz he’s awesome and I can’t wait to get back to see him. We bought an oven a few weeks ago which is absolutely amazing! We baked a cake one night and made chocolate frosting and ate just it all for dinner- and just that. My old Jolene-like habits. And then we made over 80 cookies another day and gave away about 20 and continued to finish them off over the next two days. I love baking. Well, I guess I love the final product.

We are currently trying to plan a vacation to Greece this summer and will hopefully be able to meet up with my sisters-by-fate, Deanna and Rachel who are living in Spain encore. Hopefully the dates will all work out, but I am super excited about baklava and Greek salads, yum. But in the mean time, Tim and I are keeping ourselves busy between soccer tournaments, newspaper club, young women’s fair, Nigerien Women’s Day event, first aid kits, and kindergarten fun, and probably something else I forgot.

The heat has arrived, cuz hey- it’s the time. But with the heat has also come mangos and they are delicious, especially with solani (yogurt in a bag). I predict I will be spending more time at the pool in Maradi in between everything else and eating more mangoes than I could have ever wanted. Oh yes, and I’ll be wearing lots and lots of sunscreen. Well, it’s time to pack the backpack and get ready to sleep for a couple hours I guess. Miss everyone. So who wants to come visit? We’ve got lots of sun and for the time being lots of rice and beans- hopefully the rice and beans will stay true through hunger season. But we’ve got an extra mat and mosquito net really… just give us a heads up?

Hmmm… I can’t figure out why it says the author is Tim, so my best solution is going to be to call it a liar and tell you all that is not Tim but rather, Jolene. Hey there :) 

Tim decided that we should really get some goats. He wants two little baby goats so that they can grow up to be friends and then maybe someday more than friends so we can have more baby goats. I explained to Tim that this means we wouldn’t be able to have tomato plants because they would eat them, yet he then reminded me that even though our tomato plants grew quite large, the plants did not in fact produce any tomatoes. Like I told him, that’s a pretty good point. One afternoon I was walking back from the college with some boys that go to Kristy’s school (la maison de l’espoir). I told them about Tim’s hopes of owning two baby goats. They seemed to think that it was a splendid idea as well and they decided to start looking for goats around the village for Tim as we walked around. Each time we happened upon a goat, which was about every five seconds, they would ask, “like that one?” Yet at first all of them seemed too large. Nonetheless, a baby goat eventually wondered out of a concession and I quickly said, “There! Like that one!” Before I knew it, the boys were running after this baby goat as the young girl who the goat must have belonged to yelled with an element of confusion and despair in her voice. Old men sitting on mats, sipping tea laughed and greeted the boys on their effort. I didn’t realize how much more difficult it is to scream “uh uh!” (“no” in Hausa) than it is to just shout “No!” until that momet. The poor goat seemed a bit bewildered as it finally escaped back into the concession. I know Tim would have been very pleased to have started his little collection of goats, however I was quite relieved that the goat had at least an ounce of cleverness to flee the hysterical scene. God must not have willed it… be patient.

Jolene and I (and many more) went to swear-in  this past week to witness the addition of lots of sweet new volunteers (agriculture and natural resource management). It was good times, and only 3 people tried to rob me, yay! I had good intentions of taking lots of pictures and putting recent things up on this site, but unfortuneatly I only managed to take a few pictures while we were driving in, and then some on the actual swear-in day and none of them are of these infamous new volunteers.  Well, actually I think in the last photo some of the shirts behind Ally might belong to them, so you could probably just imagine up some heads for the tops of those bodies and get the general idea.  Anyways without further ado…. pictures:

will jones and me riding to niamey... weeeee!

so we made a video when we were at IST due to a general lack of other things to do, but jolene was senegal-ing at the time, so she’s 1 of 3 or so people from our stage that doesn’t make an appearance in it. due to problems that this connection-web thingy is presenting me at this time you may have to copy and paste the link below…. i appologize ahead of time for my poor acting.

http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=2105044312606183766&hl=fr

ps CHA = coordinated husbandry androids