Swear-in/Leaving for Vacation

Hey everyone! Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you all know what I've been up to this past week and what I'll be up to in the next month or so. This past week was swear-in for my sister stage so I partook in all the festivities. Here are some pictures:

All of Team Zinder...even a couple who are leaving soon....
Some of us ladies got black dresses made especially for the event so here we are showing them off...
All the newbies rockin the "Z" symbol

As of now I'm scrambling to get my stuff together because (drum roll please) I leave the country for vacation to none other than Spain, Portugal, and Morocco! I'm super excited and am meeting up some good friends of mine there as well: Sulan, Becky, and Meera. We are going to paint the countries red along with Noah (a fellow PCV I've mentioned a couple of times). The trip will last three glorious weeks and we will be taking all forms of transportation (planes, trains, boats, automobiles) to get to our multiple destinations of Casablanca, southern Spain, Lisbon, Madrid, Morocco (various cities). I'm super excited and will be sure to take plenty of pictures. Special thanks to Dad and Monica for helping me out so much for the trip and Mom for all of her advice. I love you all! Oh and also to all of my Houston people, I give you my full support in recovering from the hurricane. I know it was pretty bad for a lot of ya'll so you are all in my thoughts. Okay, well I'll be back in three weeks!

My Village

Noah (a fellow PCV who is at the end of his service) recently came out to my village and we took a few pictures. So enjoy!



This is a main square of my village. The place where I wait to get bush taxis is straight ahead and my house is situated directly to the left of this picture in the neighborhood a couple of doors down.

This is Hawa. She is probably one of my best friends in the village and the nicest woman I have ever met. She has sat with me along with her family and chatted for hours helping me with my Hausa.

This is the family of another woman who I go visit and talk with often. Her name is Miriama, and she is by far the best cook in the village. Here is a pic of Noah with her (on his left) and her family.

One of my friends in the village named Dan Musa is a big jokester. He is sitting in the middle to the left of me with a kid in his lap. When I first came to the village he told me I needed to gain 100 kilos! He said I was way too skinny. Thanks to him and all of my villagers actually I did gain weight.... :)
The best part of my day is around 5PM when I have tea with these guys. They are so incredibly nice to me and very patient. I feel like I can really be myself around them. My two closest friends are N'fu (on the mat in the light blue) and Ma'azu (to his left in the white).

The famous Telatu. A handful a lot of times, she helps me tremendously with things. She is constantly updating me on village events and making sure I am clued in on village activities. Her along with a bunch of other girls her age come over every night after she and I eat dinner and we play cards. They are a riot.

Telatu and Noah sitting in my newly built "shade hangar" which actually turned into just an extension of my house.

The entrance to my hut and my laundry line. I wash it by hand in my village and you can see it drying here.

The first room of my hut. I keep all the cards and pictures everyone sends me and have hung some up on my walls. It keeps me remembering that I am still loved in America, haha.

A map that I hung up, my favorite chair, and my bookshelf.

The second, and final, room to my hut. Also my kitchen. Home sweet home!

Well that's all folks! Hope all is well with everybody.

Year Mark

I just got back today from training the new Education, Health, and Municipal Development Volunteers. It was surreal as this time last year I was in their shoes. It really showed me how far I've come in this service, but also how far I have to go. I guess I thought I would have accomplished more by now (as far as projects go), but instead what I found I have accomplished the most is the ability to communicate and form relationships with the people here. Not half bad if I say so myself, but I want to focus on doing more concrete work in the village I think now. Anyway, training went great. Good group of people. We are getting maybe 12 people added to our team in Zinder which will change the dynamic drastically. We are doubling our numbers with just this stage. Also, a good friend of mine from my stage, Stephanie, has decided to end her service here and go back to America to pursue other things. Pretty sad, and it leaves the number of people from my stage in Zinder at just 3. I will also be the only oldest reigning Health volunteer in Zinder. Our supervisor, Gaston, pulled me aside with a worried look on his face and was like... "you aren't leaving are you?" I was like, "No, no ofcourse not." And I'm not. The year mark hit July 25th and I feel it is downhill from here (in a good way!). I look forward to this year to come and hoping the benefits of my hard work this past year will pay off, and I can really start to do some good work.

What else has been going on...well, I've been non-stop sick lately, which is kind of annoying. My village nurse was doing polio rounds in surrounding villages, and I accompanied her on the three day voyage. We spent the night in different villages for these nights, and I ended up drinking unfiltered water, which always spells trouble. Ofcourse I end up getting amoebas, but it was so worth it to see different areas of my region. I helped administer the Polio vaccine and I must say, Niger is coming close to erradicating Polio. Was glad to be a part of it. Anyhow, so I end up getting Amoebas and then during training I get this awful cold (thank you new stagieres with your American diseases, haha). I'm starting to get over that now though so hopefully I can just relax these next couple of days.

Been working on radio quite a bit. Turns out we have to start going to the studio to do our segment (before we just used a digital recorder and just turned in tapes to them, but the quality they said was too bad). I did a live show with another girl from the Agricultural stage before me and it was tons of fun actually. I was really nervous but it turned out really well. I also busted out some scripts before training, all in Hausa, which was exhausting, but pretty awesome that I could pull it off. Now, I think I'm going to try to conjure up some old scripts people have already done as doing four shows a month, all new shows, is pretty much impossible if I want to keep my sanity. The two I recently wrote were about malaria and importance of using mosquito nets and the other was on the recent polio vaccination campaign. I'll be taking on more and more responsiblity as coordinator of radio in Zinder, especially with Noah leaving pretty soon (the other radio coordinator). Hopefully I can handle the workload, and some of the new people will want to help out.

Well I go back to Zinder on tuesday, hopefully get some radio shows recorded, and then get back to the village on the 16th, I think thats friday? I've been out of the village for a while now, which I feel guilty about, but I am working so can't feel too bad. Hopefully they haven't forgotten about me, haha. Maybe I'll get another update in before then, but if not, take care everyone and I'll write again soon!

Here are some pics from some of my happenings...

Some pics of the training site that we decorated right before the trainees came.

Pic of the Volunteer trainers and the Training Staff

Trainers waiting for trainees at the airport and next pic is trainees just arriving!

Us showing the new trainees the prenatal consultation process at the local clinic at the training site

Laura and I doing our live radio show!

End of Hot Season!

So rainy season fast approaches which I'm VERY thankful about. For the past month and a half I have been beyond hot, insanely hot. I thought coming from houston that I would get through the season easy but no no no. So after that suffering, the coming of rainy season is awesome. Even though we have to deal with the bugs and storm-interrupted sleeps, its fine.

So biggest news: I got picked to be a trainer for the next new group of Peace Corps Volunteers! I will be one of four health volunteers training on my sector. It will be quite a trip to see and get to know the volunteers that are going through what I went through a year ago. In some ways I feel I've come so far but in other ways I don't. It was so overwhelming at first, and I finally feel like I'm getting to a place where I'm comfortable. Oh it only took a year....jeez!

Right now I am in Niamey because we had our mid-service training. Learned a little about collaborative work with other organizations here which is helpful. I feel I have a good grasp of this because I work closely with the NGO in my village and it's proved to be really beneficial. We are supposed to be doing a malnutrition project soon where we teach families in the red on how to make better weaning porridges. All very interesting huh? Haha, well I also want to have a big party at the end of the week and hire drummers or something.

Well mostly I wanted to share some pics with you. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my memory card with the health mural photos on it, so I will get those on here another time. Rather, I'll go ahead and put some pics up from Pangea, a cross-cultural sharing musical/arts event that I participated in. It was really amazing as I helped with the girls' weekend (where young Nigerien girls get to take classes on dance, drumming, spoken word, songwriting, etc) and it was really rewarding at the end when they got to perform all they had learned. It was amazing to see these girls come out of their shell. We don't get to see that much here in Niger. Most girls are really quiet and shy because their participation in pretty much anything is suppressed. Okay, well I'll let the pictures talk for themselves.

Miss everybody! Thanks to all who are continuing to write and call. You have no idea how nice it is to be kept up to date.

Till next time!
Sommer

The Pangea set. This was one of the bands that played during the week. There was one band called "Chibia" which means bellybutton in Hausa. I thought that was pretty funny.

So these are some of the young girls performing spoken word. It was really great because they got incredibly into it. I recorded some of the performances and put together a radio show on it in Zinder so their voices were heard over the airwaves! Too bad they couldn't hear the show though because they are in Niamey...

This is the massive crowd that showed up. There was a lot of support for this event.

Here we are giving the girls certificates for completing the intensive weekend and for giving such stellar performances.

*** to see full album of Pangea pictures go to: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2206906&l=e85d5&id=23908191

Hello everyone. It's been a long time since my last post. I guess I should pick up where I left off... in Ghana. Well, it was amazing. Got to see the Nigeria vs. Ghana game, which Ghana won. I was literally picked up and twirled around by a complete stranger when Ghana scored their last goal. It was all very exciting. Also, I ate a LOT of good food including sushi, indian cuisine, and I even had a smoothie! Considering you can't get any o fthat in Niger, that is huge. I also found time to go to the artesan center and picked up some souveneirs for my villagers and myself... it's funny, the bracelettes I got some of the women in my village are said to have healing powers by my villagers. They put some of the stones around the ankles of their children to help them heal from cuts/scrapes or sickness. I didn't have the heart to tell them that the stones weren't going to help their child get better but instead tried to give them alternative methods as well...like washing the cut with soap and water, haha, seems simple enough right? Well you'd be surprised. So Ghana was very refreshing, but the long trip back to Niger snapped me back into reality. Since I've been back a number of things have happened:

1. I attended a health training with a counterpart from my village (a woman who is in charge of some village affairs named Hawahu) who is also my good friend in the village. Although some of the training was frustrating (ie we did it in abou tthree different languages so had to sit through three different translations, exhausting) we did get some good techniques on preventing malnutrition, such as enhancing food recipes in villages, organizing monthly baby weighings, etc.

2. Participated in a girls' conference in Zinder put on by some older PCV's. Girls chosen from the "bush" or rural areas of Zinder region were transported out to Zinder city for a fair on education to try to encourage them to go onto higher education. They got to shadow successful career women in the city, hear a career forum, and do fun things like yoga classes and bobbing for apples. At the end we made them school gift bags and had a danceand photo slideshow of all they had accomplished over the few days of the fair. It was amazing to see how excited the girls were about it all. This had to be the best thing I've helped out with thus far in Niger.

3. Helped paint a health mural in my friend's village in the Maradi region.

4. Started working on radio shows and will be co-coordinating radio in Zinder with another PCV. We have a 30 minute slot every friday morning that all of Zinder region has access to listen to. The first time my villagers heard me on air, they were very excited. Come to think of it, I was too! Radio is pretty big here since that is their biggest means of finding out news...none of this TV set in every house nonsense, haha.

So now I have a few things I'm working on. I just bought paint supplies to do my own health mural project in my village. I plan on having three different ones...one on the outside of my clinic that will be big enough for cars passing by to see. One on the inside (as per request of my nurse) that includes food groups, and one painted by a girl in my village after a drawing contest in the school. This should be happening in about three weeks. Also, there is an event called Pangea in Niamey which is a weeklong event that consistst of teaching young nigerien girls about the arts... I'll be helping out with a voice class. This will be at the end of may.

That's all the exciting news I have so far. On a personal level, I'm doing alright. I think I'm getting a little burnt out and the newness is starting to wear off. I'm beginning to realize that this is going to be a constant uphill battle, especially where language is concerned. Not to mention that I miss home a LOT. A lot more than I thought I would too. Also, the pace here is a lot different than what we are used to in the States. No one meets at the ttime they say they will and not very many villagers have a lot of effort in general. It's just a different mentality. Anyhow, I hope with a few projects under my belt I'll have a little more sense of accomplishment. Until then, I'm trying to maintain a good sense of humor about things. But know I miss everyone and love hearing from you all. Hope all is well! Oh and I'll try to update more.... :)

Ghana, do i have to leave?

So it's my last day in Ghana and I must say it is going to be very hard to leave this place. So far this has been the little america of west africa. It is so developed here and I didn't realize how much I missed that. Things are good, and I have met some locals who have been incredibly nice...not to mention people speak english here rather than french and that has been so much easier. I don't actually have to translate in my head what i want to say before i say it. Ghana won their match against Nigeria so the streets were crazy that night. Think mardis gras but without girls flashing. Anyhow, I leave tomorrow and have a long bus ride ahead of me, but I feel refreshed and definitely miss things about village life. Will write when I get back to Niger...

Lome aka Paradise

Hey everyone! Well just came from Benin where we lived it up high balling Benin style going to the classiest clubs and resorts there...no joke, we got taken around by some extremely nice locals and some Lebanese car dealers (yeah I know that sounds shady, but what are you gonna do?). Now I am in Lome, Togo and its absolutely breathtaking. We've met up with some PCV's here and they are going to give us a proper tour of the place. This trip has been amazing so far and I couldn't have picked a better group to go with. There has been non-stop laughing the whole time. Well, I will try to keep everyone updated throughout the trip and maybe download some pics if I can find a decent internet cafe. Until then...I'm gonna hit the beach!

Soms

Leaving for Ghana!

Holy crap! I leave for Ghana tonight, and just in the nick of time. Finished writing my quarterly report and grant proposal for the project in my village. Feels so good to get that done and now I get to go on vacation! First we will be going through Benin and Togo, and in Togo we must wait for a Visa for Ghana. So I'll be getting in Ghana around the 2nd or 3rd or February. All very exciting. I will try to keep the blog updated on my travels. African Cup here I come!

Soms

It's been a while....

Hey everyone, sorry for the long delay between posts. With the holidays and everything I've been keeping pretty busy. First of all, for those who have been reading up on Niger or stay in tune to the BBC, there have recently been some landmines throughout the southern part of Niger, where PCV's are posted. We were put on something called "standfast" for a while....right before Christmas and for about a week, but now we are off of it. Don't be alarmed, things have calmed down a bit, but we are all trying to stay alert and be cautious. I feel safe and Peace Corps has done a decent job of keeping us informed. Just wanted to let people know and clear the air that things are good. Another bizarre things happened yesterday. A couple of NGO volunteers were at a restaraunt near the Zinder hostel when their car got hijacked. The mom and one of her kids were thrown out their car and the carjackers drove off. However, a four month year old baby was still inside. So a bunch of NGO's and some PCV's (me included) did a massive search last night and this morning. Luckily the baby was found and is safe and sound. In fact, we were told he was smiling when they picked him up! It ended well, but it's been a bit crazy what with landmine scares and this bizarre carjacking. Not to worry though, I still feel safer walking down the street here than I did in downtown dallas!

On other news....I go to my village tomorrow and will be happy to get back. I've worked on a few proposals and just wrote a grant for a well/garden project that will happen (if funds get granted) at the end of this year. I held my first meeting with the heads of my village to talk abou the proposal. It was interesting trying to get everyone to meet at a certain time and place...they really have no concern with punctuality here :). Regardless they sounded excited about it.

I leave for Ghana very soon and am super pumped. It will be good to see some pretty beachscape and get a vacation. Hopefully I will be able to see one of the African Nations Cup Games live. Very exciting.

Hope all is well in teh states. I love hearing from all of you. Till next time!

Soms