This place is tough, you know. People are poor, kids are so skinny, it's hot, and we're sick and overwhelmed but every once in a while stuff works out. Every once in a while I understand exactly what my villagers are telling me and they are so happy for me. I'll catch a joke and we'll laugh like crazy. It makes it all worth while.

There is so much to be discouraged about here. Just Google Niger if you every feel like finding out. But the people are so happy. It means of course that they don't know the numbers. They don't know that one in four Nigerien children won't live to see age 5. That 60% of the kids are underweight and 20% are emaciated. They don't know that the Sahara is getting bigger every year, but they live it. Their life is so hard but they are so happy. If I learn nothing else, if I take only one thing out of this whole experience, I want it to be their ability to be happy in spite of it all. To laugh hard and often, to focus on what's good instead of what's not.

There is A LOT of work that needs to be done here, but this place is not a lost cause. People need to hear the success stories. The small victories. It's easy to lose hope for Africa if you look at her from a far. But anyone who comes here and meets the people will find an entire continent filled with hope.

Letter of May 22, 2006

About six weeks ago, I was walking around the village looking for the locally elected representative, Soumana. I wanted to set up a time for him and me to go to Gaya to meet with the well builders. I found Soumana at a work party -- some men were repairing the wooden frame for the top of a hut. It was house building/repairing season then.

As I was talking to Soumana, Londay (the hardest working man in my village) asked Soumana to buy him a mango tree while he was in Gaya. Because I knew my grandfather was sending $50 to buy trees for the village, I told him to save his money because my grandfather was sending money for that very purpose.

About four weeks later, the money arrived. I had already talked to three men from my village, Amadou, Hamadou, and, of course, Londay, about going with me to buy the trees. They are all really hardworking men and Londay and Hamadou have huge gardens already, so they already had a fenced place for the trees. I decided it would be best for them to come with me so they could meet the man who sells the trees, ask questions, see the manmade pump, and know where they should go for future
reference.

Joe, the PCV in my neighboring village, asked me to take a man from there, Kallum, with us and gave me 5,000 cfa (the equivalent of $10) to pay his way and buy trees for him.

I arranged with Hassan, a man in our regular market town who has a car, to pick us up and bring us back from Gaya on a Tuesday. While Gaya has market every day, Tuesday is the big day when people come from all around to buy and sell. I figured after the tree nursery, the men could take a walk through the market and buy anything they needed but had not been able to buy because it wasn't in our much smaller local markets.

On the Tuesday, Hassan appeared in Tassobon at 8 am on the dot. Unfortunately, Londay was sick, so we told him we'd buy the trees for him. We made it to Gaya in about two hours. Niger is all about
formality, so after we went to the nursery, we went to the man's house who owns it. The men sat and talked with him for a while. They talked about where they came from, whether they had started planting, who I was, what we wanted, how many trees we were going to buy, etc. We had about a 45 minute conversation, only about five minutes of which was actual work talk from an American perspective. Once we'd squared away how many trees we wanted and what kind, we walked back to the nursery and chose the trees. The men wandered around and asked a lot of questions about grafting and tree protection. We were done with the nursery by noon.

All of the men wanted to go to market and some had other errands as well, so we agree to meet back at the Peace Corps house by the 4 o'clock prayer. The nursery men delivered the trees right after then and the driver showed up a little after 5. We were all home before the 7 o'clock prayer. Four men got three grafted mangos and three tangelos each, for a total of 24 trees. All the men were really happy and extremely grateful.

We were doing PACA in a village (not mine, PACA's been done but I wanted to see how it all went) and were meeting with the girls asking what are the biggest problems in their life. The old women were watching because their turn was next and they wanted to have an idea of what to expect.

Now, the vast majority of young girls here are not used to being asked their views on anything, so it took a lot of prodding to get them to start talking. First they said no school supplies for the school, then it was no time to do school work (they had to spend too much time pounding millet, getting water, etc.) but the last thing they came up with was early marriage. They didn't like it that their parents might marry them off at 14 or sometimes even younger.

Listening to those girls talk about how they were scared of leaving home and having a husband in front of their mothers was amazing. I could see the faces of the old women change. The girls too. They felt like they had this moment to say what they wanted and they said it. I could see them gaining confidence as they spoke. They said it too, not us, which means so much more. The village women were hearing from their own daughters--not us--that they didn't want to get married so young.

I think had a big effect. Up to that point I doubt any of the women had talked to their daughters about how they felt about getting married. The daughters have no choice in the matter so they don't even think to ask how they felt about it. It's just something that happens here, like a good rainy season, or a bad harvest. Here they talk a lot about suffering. No one wants to suffer or to make anyone else suffer and I think the women realized for the first time by marrying their daughters off early they were making them suffer. It was pretty amazing. It's really wonderful to open someone's mind.

Last September we held an environmental education kids camp in Gaya. 5 PCVs participated, 12 kids (ages 9-13; 7 boys, 5 girls), and 3 teachers. We brought the kids to Gaya, where our hostel is, for 4 days and 3 nights. We taught them about the water cycle, the importance of planting trees and protecting the environment, about not having too many kids, etc. We took them to a tree nursery and showed them how to graft fruit trees and then had each kid try. It was a great success.

So about 5 months later we did a follow-up to see how much the kids remembered and if they were doing any of the things we taught them. The second round was much shorter. It was only 2 nights. We took the kids to the radio station and taped a show with them answering questions about protecting their environment, gardening, tree grafting, etc. The kids remember everything. Even how to graft in perfect detail. The two Japanese volunteers (JICA) came and worked with us and the kids. So everything is going great. It's the ultimate in cross cultural exchange. We are learning about the kids, about our JICA friends, and vise versa. We had a mid-day break day two and played a bunch of games (leap-frog, three-legged races, wheelbarrel, etc.). That might have been the hardest I've laughed in country. It was SO much fun.

Okay, now to the good stuff. This has all been back story.

That night we--the PCVs--acted out a play we wrote about a father explaining to his son how the land looked 40 years ago and how it will look in 40 years if things don't change. After the play we asked the kids why they thought we put on this play for them. What did they think we were trying to do. The conversation could not have been better if we scripted it ourselves. The kids got everything. They said that the land was tired, the trees were disappearing because people didn't protect them and didn't plant more trees after they cut trees down. They understood that their land is turning into a desert more and more and if they wanted to protect themselves they would need to start to value the land.

We asked the kids what they would do makes things better. They came up with all kinds of answers, all of which were great, but one little boy said that they needed to, "reduce" is the literal translation, it means they need to have fewer children. This is huge. Possibly the biggest problem Niger faces right now is overpopulation. The average Nigerien woman has 8 kids. She gives birth probably 11 times but on average only 8 survive. I was completely floored that these little kids not only understood the importance of this but were able to verbalize it so clearly. He just came out and said we need to have fewer people. He didn't beat around the bush or talk around what he was trying to say. We talked about family planning but not to the extent we talked about planting trees and protecting the exisiting ones. We just felt it would be too much for the kids. They are not in a place where they are thinking about having families so we thought it wouldn't sink in.

I felt so good at that moment. I was like, "okay, if we got this one little boy to understand that it's important not to have 15 children then we've succeeded." But we did so much more than that. All of those children now understand simple things they can do to make their lives better and to me, that's all we can hope to do here.