Tun da kwana biyu

It's been forever! Sorry about that but just wanted to give everyone a run through of what I've been up to the past months. After vacation I chilled in the village a while, no big projects or anything. Just going to the clinic daily and helping her out with consultations... which actually she does most of the work and I just kind of sit back and watch, and occasionally hold a baby or two that end up peeing on me.

So, after Christmas, some of you know I did some work with the Fistula campaign down in Niamey. Fistula is a condition women get after prolonged child birth. When the baby is in the birth canal too long it ruins the vaginal tissue and leads to holes in the bladder, urethra, or anal tract... which makes women leak urine and sometimes feces all the time. Obviously out in the bush they can't get treatment so 3 times a year these american doctors will come here to niamey and do a roughly two week campaign of free surgeries for them. Peace Corps volunteers translate from local language to english and work with the doctors. It's a lot of work and a lot of fun. I found it really rewarding to work with the women. One of the best things I've done here by far. So anyway that was in January.

February I chilled in my village and did some polio vaccinations with the clinic. Again, nothign to huge around this time. I'm still coordinator of radio in Zinder so I work on that all the time...so don't think I'm not doing anything, jeesh. :)

March we put on a girls fair which is really fun. I don't have any pictures of that unfortunately but other volunteers do so maybe i can post those later. This girls fair was in zinder and included young girls from the bush. I took four from my village. It was a combination of creativity fair and importance of education fair. Lots of fun. We taught them everything from income generating projects, like making tofu and making henna, to what space exploration is and roles of different kinds of women around the world. This was also a really rewardign project and when the girls went back to the village after this they were so thankful and the fair is all they could talk about. They really loved it and I can only hope that it inspires them to continue on with their education so that they can one day go back to the big city life of zinder.

This month I did fistula work again. And that brings us back to speed. I'm going to go down to a village called Gaya in the next couple of days which is down south towards benin, and supposedly really beautiful and green. I'll visit some other PCV's down there. Then I'll head back to the village and wait for some packages from home. I'm doing a health carnival in my village and thanks to dad and mom for their donations and donations from other friends and family it should be a hit. The volunteer before me did a carnival as well to I'm continuing the tradition and they really seemed to like it since they talk about it to this day. I'll have different health stations or games that teach them about healthy living. The prizes are everythign from toys to toothbrushes and they can reimburse tickets at the end for these prizes. I'm really excited about it and hope it goes well.

I'm also in the process of winding down my service here. For those of you who dont know I applied to grad school for my masters in social work and got into all my schools! Right now it's between University of Denver and Columbia University in New York. Denver made me a great offer, and I'm in the process of negotiating with Columbia. It's getting down to the wire to make a decision so I hope it all works out. I should know very soon and will try to let you all know when I find out. If I go to Denver I will be coming home as soon as the end of June, and if I go to Columbia it will be either mid or late july that I'll come home. Either way it's really soon, and I can't believe it! I'm getting kind of nervous at the thought but am also super excited.

Ok enough talking, here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure

Me on a camel at my friend's going away party in he village.

I was in Niamey for the Fistula Campaign any my friend's band was playing so me and another PCV sang backup for her, so fun!

This was at the hospital in Niamey, and I'm here doing translations, you can't see the doctor but thy are standing up behind me, and we are explaining to them how to take their pain medications.

All of us who did the Fistula campaign in January; Carrie, Andrea, Elizabeth, Peter, Katie, Me

I forgot to mention I did a bike ride tournament in December promoting AIDS awareness. We traveled over a 100K on bikes and spent the night at villages. In this village we were doing a skit. It was tiring but it was so much fun!

Here are a bunch of us on our bikes ready to hit the road again!

I also forgot to mention that I did a malnutrition prevention campaign in my village where I worked with an NGO and we taught the women how to improve their porridges and foods so as to provide more vitamins and protein that would help prevent malnutrition. I did this for a couple of months time and it went pretty well.