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