Running errands Niger-style

...yesterday was supposed to be my last day in Niger, but I'm still here. I showed up at the airport at 3am this morning to find out that my flight to Casablanca had been cancelled. I hadn't thought to call and confirm, and apparently they had notified me via email but not until last night...and there is no such thing as demanding to be put on the next flight when there is only one flight per day at best...so I'm leaving early tomorrow morning instead. It's a bit surreal because I had kind of wrapped everything up yesterday and now I have more time...but, as with all unexpected changes of plans that happen when one travels, I see it as a gift.

So yesterday was the day to get everything done, which is no easy feat here. I started off with my to-do list (those who know me well are fully aware of my obsession with lists...), first stop being the bank. Niamey is quite spread out, and I am staying in a neighborhood a few miles from the city center, so I needed to take a cab.

I haven't talked about the Niamey cab system yet, which is fascinating and infuriating at the same time. First you flag down a cab and tell them where you are going--but you can't give an exact address because, first of all, the streets are not well marked and second, none of the taxi drivers here seem to know addresses anyway, so you have to give them a landmark, which is tricky if you have only been here for a few weeks--then they tell you whether they can take you or not, depending on the direction they are headed, the other passengers in the cab (because they pick people up until the are full), often by either nodding or grunting. The fare is generally 200 francs but if you are going further out they'll ask for more, and of course they never have any change. So basically I spend a lot of time standing on street corners saying "Quartier Dar Es Salaam, deuxième pavée?" in a hopeful tone to a number of taxis before someone agrees to take me.

Yesterday I didn't have anything smaller than a 10000 franc bill, (about $25), which is very hard to change...I started walking in hopes of finding a place to get change, went to several hotels en route but no one could help me, so halfway downtown, after walking for half an hour in the heat, I bought some useless product at a pharmacy just to be able to find a cab...out on the road again, I tried to flag a cab but an older man and a teenaged boy in front of me flagged it first, and as the car came to a stop they lifted up a goat and put it in the trunk, then got in and sped away. I decided it wasn't worth my time to share a cab with several people and a goat.

So I finally got to the bank and waited for half an hour before I was informed that they would not exchange my dollars there, I had to go to the central branch. That necessitated another taxi, and therefore some kind of idea where that was...I got to the central bank, stood in line for another half hour, finally changed my money, then foolishly determined that I had enough time to stop by a tailor to pick up some clothes I had made before meeting my friend Ali. Bad idea. I had the directions to the tailor written down, but when I got into the cab, it became clear that the taxi driver had no idea how to follow them. I finally had to call Djibrine and have him talk to the driver, at which point he realized that he was going in the wrong direction...then the other passengers started to complain, but not to him. They got mad at me. The old woman next to me said, "you can't just rent this taxi, you know!" I said it's not my fault that the driver got lost, but then the driver started getting annoyed with me too. So I got out, because it didn't seem to make sense to stay in a cab with three haters. In the end, I got to the tailor's shop, but it took two and a half hours to run two errands.

Today I have no errands to run...the only items on my agenda are to eat, do a little work, and hang out on my last (no, really my last) day in Niger.

Rien n'est simple...

So, the rest of my time in Maradi involved...a lot of waiting around. Things just don't happen quickly in Niger. Nothing starts on time, nothing is ever simple...

Thursday was the last day of the workshop, and my understanding was that a final presentation would happen that morning. The ten groups of students, led by pairs of teachers, had done varying amounts of work over the course of the week; some groups had fully-realized plays and others had pretty much sat around all day. The participants also frequently had to wait for hours for their meals because the mafia-affiliated food service people took their sweet old time in showing up...unfortunately RAV is forced to use them, last time they did a workshop in Maradi they tried to talk to them about stepping up their service but in the end they are stuck with them.

In short, I waited around for two hours for the workshop to start and it didn't, so I went to the cyber café and then took a walk around the market and commercial district in Maradi...then came back, only to wait for three more hours, this time we were waiting for some Unicef representatives who were coming to see the presentation (this whole workshop was funded by Unicef). So they finally arrived in a spanking white 4x4 (quatre-quatre) at about 4:30 and the presentation began, first with some drumming and dancing and then with the two groups who had actually done their work. The reps seemed to be pleased...

And that was just Thursday...Friday we were supposed to leave early in the morning to drive back to Niamey, but as always there were errands to run, and then Djibrine wanted to drive across the border to Nigeria to get gas...let me explain. There are gas stations in Niger, but also tons of roadside stands where people sell gas in used bottles. So in most cases filling the tank means pouring gas from a coke bottle into the tank using a plastic funnel. This is one of the many things that I have strangely stopped noticing. And gas is half the price in Nigeria. We debated me coming but in the end were told that we'd run into serious extortion at the border given my whiteness, so I went to hang out with the workshop trainers, which entailed drinking some tea, politely declining to join them in eating some animal intestines and then sleeping on a creaky bed for several hours...all in all we didn't leave Maradi until 2pm, for a 450-mile trip. This time Check Kotondi, the director of a theater company in Niamey and the lead trainer, was with us, which turned out to be very very fortunate. The trip went fine for the first half...we chatted and listened to my iPod (I can't tell you how surreal it is to be driving across Niger, passing through little villages that consist of some mud brick houses and granaries with straw roofs, a few food stands built out of wood, some goats and a tiny mosque, listening to Steel Pulse, the Strokes, and Culture Club)...then, at about 11, we drove through a huge pothole (calling it a pothole is not really doing it justice, more like a crater) and blew not one, but two tires at the same time. So here we were in the middle of nowhere (en plein brousse, or in the bush) with two flats and only one spare. It was decided that we would flag someone down who could take Djibrine and the two tires back to the last town to fix them while Check and I stayed with the car. I have had many adventurous moments traveling, and this was certainly one of them, but for some reason I wasn't really scared. It was a beautiful night, you could see all of the stars and the milky way, and all you could hear were some frogs and occasionally cars. So we sat, and waited. Once the tires were back on, I took over driving for the next several hours...at one point, we stopped at a toll booth (which consists of a rope stretched across the road, attached to two barrels with condom ads on them), and a large man with a machine gun asked for the car's registration and then my driver's license. So I pulled out my California license, which he looked at carefully, turning it over and over before finally handing it back and letting us continue. We all agreed that it was without a doubt the first California DMV-issued document he had ever seen and the novelty of that probably helped. In the end, we got back to Niamey at 6am. Needless to say, I am still very very tired...

Power Cuts et les Pauses

...two things. First of all, there are intermittent power cuts every night in Maradi. This creates a problem when you are trying to sleep in comfort, because if the AC doesn't work your two options are to open the windows and invite in the malaria-carrying mosquitos or to sweat it out...the night before last I opted for option number two in addition to a cold shower, but then the hotel's generator kicked in which meant that I had AC but also what sounded like a huge idling lawnmower right outside my window. And since I had cranked up the AC I found myself freezing in the middle of the night.

The upside of this is that during power cuts the numerous outdoor bars and restaurants in Maradi that are situated in gardens are much more pleasant...there is not a lot of ambient lighting in Niger, so to cut it off altogether makes for a more peaceful Bière Niger drinking session. Speaking of, Bière Niger comes in big bottles, because why bother with a small bottle when you can have big, and is pretty strong...

Second, every morning I go to the RAV workshop early in the morning to discover that it hasn't started yet...apparently the woman who has been contracted to provide the coffee, tea, food, and beverages for the workshop is mafia-connected, so her prices are way too high but there is no other option, and on top of it she is always late. So everything gets started late...no big rush. But the thing is, the work has been done, two groups of students will present their forum theater pieces this afternoon.

But in any case things here definitely move slowly, and service is a whole other issue. Yesterday we were at a restaurant trying to order some food but they were out of almost everything, so finally we just asked for a salad with whatever they had...after probably 45 minutes they came back with potato salad. Enfin bon. The other day I went to a restaurant that specializes in a Nigerian milk/yogurt thing, but when I ordered it they were out...how do you run out of your house speciality?

On Tuesday afternoon I went to a forum theater performance with Clemence, the wife of Djibrine's colleague Bernard at GRET, a Paris-based development organization. Clemence had never seen a forum theater play; this was in Hausa so neither of us understood the details but she at least got the sense of how it works. While waiting to meet her in front of the bank I made friends with the guards who offered me a seat and some tea.

In general I like Maradi--it's relatively calm, although the motorcycle/car/donkey/camel traffic on the main drag can be intense...I'm going to take a second tour of the market today, since we head back to Niamey tomorrow...

Forum Theater in Maradi

Today is the second of a five day training sponsored by RAV here in Maradi. A group of teachers are being trained in the principles and structures of forum theater, and at the same time a group of about 150 students ages 13-15 are engaging in theater exercises...today they broke into small groups, each one run by one or two teachers, to start creating forum theater pieces. The themes are prevention of STIs/HIV/SIDA; women and children's rights; educational rights, particularly for girls, and...I forgot the last one. I floated around and observed the small group work--it was particularly interesting watching the groups rehearse and seeing how much I understood even though the plays are in Hausa. Theater is best when it is clear, visual, and emotional, so to take language out of it is a good test.

The youth participants are focused in their work, but honestly, all the same, they are like teenagers in the US...I love watching them interact. Most of the girls wear colorful veils and the traditional two piece costume, although some of them are now starting to appear in sweatpants, t-shirts, even shorts.

Observing the process of "teaching teachers" is always helpful for me...I've been thinking about how much of this process to codify, how much to leave to the individual participants to discover on their own...

Otherwise, Maradi is a pretty decent place to hang out for a while. I've been catching up on sleep and trying not to let my digestive system go haywire on me.

Road Trip to Maradi

On Friday, the workshop culminated with a demonstration for RAV's board and some of the artists in the network, as well as administrators for some local NGOs. It went really well--the participants described the process, we showed various steps in the creation process, including tableaux, and then presented one of the short forum pieces and two of the participants, Rachid and Edouard, joked the forum together. Everyone agreed that it went really well. This group was challenging in a way that the group in Ouagadougou wasn't in that they are all so experienced that at first I think they felt like they didn't need another workshop, that they knew everything already, but by the end, they were really appreciative.

Friday afternoon we left Niamey for Maradi, the third largest city in Niger and the commercial center. It's about 10 miles from the Nigerian border. RAV has been supervising a training conference in forum theater there for the last several months, so a team of trainers needed to go back to provide additional training and observe the work that the local teams had accomplished.

So a road trip in Niger is very different than a jog from SF to LA in the United States...the highway is two lane (barely) with stretches where they are repairing it and you have to drive on a dirt side road, cows and goats in the way, huge trucks that seem to break down everywhere with no shoulder, etc etc etc. Maradi is about 450 miles from Niamey but it tooks us more than 12 hours altogether...the first surprise for me, though, was how beautiful the landscape is, particularly because it's the rainy season. The land is very flat, with an occasional red dirt hill, so you can see for miles...red earth and very green trees, fields of grasses and vegetables, and grass huts with domed roofs that ended at a point like a meringue...at night we saw incredible lightening storms miles away. At sunset we were passing through a nature preseve and Djibrine told me to turn around...and there was a giraffe hanging out on the side of the road. I think I read that Niger has one of the only remaining giraffe herds in West Africa.

We arrived in Doutchi, the halfway point, late at night, in the rain...and once stopped, the car would not start. Long story short, after trying to push start it and then wandering around for a while and finally hiring some local boys with motorcycles to drive us around, it was clear that a mechanic was not available until morning. So we left the car and found a hotel.

It took most of yesterday to fix the car, turned out it was the alternator. Now I have a bunch of new french vocab...car parts! We got on the road again late yesterday afternoon and arrived in Maradi at 1am this morning. Driving across Niger, through tiny villages and towns, was fascinating. There were times where we stopped the car to buy food or drinks and I sat there, surrounded by crowds of people going about their small town Africa Saturday night business with nothing but flashlights to light the way, speaking Hausa, and realized that I was the only white person for miles...but aside from the occasional crowd of kids begging, just like in Burkina, people are so welcoming...you never just say hi when you see someone, you ask them how they are, how their health is, how their family is, how they are dealing with the heat, if they slept or ate well, etc etc.

I have also eated some seriously interesting roadside food. Here it's grilled meat here there and everywhere...we stopped for some, guess what, grilled meat, and the first thing I noticed was a cow tail sitting on the grill. Apparently that is put out so that you know what animal is currently on the grill, kind of like a little advertisement or menu...

So this morning I am going to observe the training. I like Maradi so far, it's more calm than Niamey, but has an energy all the same...fewer cars and more motorcycles, white sand instead of red, and it's not as hot.

So, more from Maradi later...

La Patronne

I am fighting a stomach ache that I got from an extremely spicy meal I am partially responsible for preparing...yesterday evening Sara, one of the workshop participants, invited us to her house for dinner, and I helped her make it. This was after an afternoon spent sitting on the patio at my guesthouse with her and a henna artist who created an incredibly beautiful design on my hands and feet. It was nice to spend time with two women when so much of my time here is spent with men...the majority of the workshop participants are male, most of the people I know here are male...it's so complicated. Polygamy is legal, fewer women work, the debate is framed differently...but then again the women I have met here are strong.

The workshop ends tomorrow--we are going to finish with a demonstration of one of the short forum scenes created, this one about a female boss whose power is undermined by a manager below her. Different cultural context, but not an unfamiliar problem...it seems like the workshop participants have gotten something from the workshop, and I have certainly appreciated the theoretical exchange that we have each morning, followed by getting up on our feet.

This afternoon I went to a birth celebration--big tents were set up outside the family's house, where guests come, sit, listen to music and stories, eat (I had just eaten lunch but when the food was put in front of us, Edouard, a theater director who is in the workshop, said here we eat even when we're not hungry...so I ate), and generally pay their respects to the parents. I'm glad I went, even though I stuck out like a sore thumb (an expression that I attempted to translate with little success).

Tomorrow I am going to Maradi to observe a training mission with RAV; so I'll experience a road trip, Nigerien style...

Taking Tea and Making Theater

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening with Ali, a friend that I met in Burkina, the master tea maker...we sat outside his house (not exactly a stoop, more like a dirt front yard) on a mat and drank tea and hung out with various people who came and went, including Nanna, who is in the same theater company. We then piled onto motorcycles and went first to a Senegalese restaurant (I think my body is still battling the oily food I ate there...) and then to an open air bar with trees and sand. I tasted my first Bière Niger, very good.

This morning the workshop went really well. We created short forum theater scenes and talked about ways to convey clear messages. The group is working together really well and I feel more comfortable...the huge advantage of working with people who already have a lot of theater experience is that they know exactly what to do! It's not often that I have that chance...

Another thing I noticed in Ouaga and here is that West Africans joke around a lot...I don't really think the word plaisantrie translates well, but I really appreciate that people don't take themselves too seriously.