What is that SMELL!????

This morning we were outside talking with visitors and I realized there was a really disgusting smell in the hair. Sort of like what you smell if you burn human hair. Turns out the neighbors had purchased a "treat" of a goat head and were burning off all its hair before they cooked it. I seriously felt nauseous. Now all day that burning goat smell hangs in the air and has permeated the house, our clothes, our sheets, etc. Yuck.



Even better yet, there are garbage piles and weeds piled up everywhere that are being lit on fire too. Is this a national past-time that no one informed me of? Maybe they started burning everything since it is cooler now (mid 30s in the day and high 20s at night) and they can handle the extra heat from a fire.


When my laundry was drying on the line these last few days it came in smelling like smoke. Its not like I have the option of putting it in a dryer, so i think in smoky times I will have to drape it over all the furniture around the house, to make it a little less smoky I guess. So much for that wonderful fresh dried on the line smell from back home. Never smells very good here. Now it's even worse.


Anyhow, I am headed to bed,but i think ill need to spray perfume or something on my pillowcase to overpower the burning smell. Or maybe I should look around and make sure nothing in my house is on fire. Yes, the smell is that strong. Bad part about living in a hot country where your windows are always open - you smell like the outside smells.

Wish me luck.

Goats, Gardens and Goofiness

Thank you to all of you who wrote comments and emails supporting me last week in my tussle with corrupt policemen. The aftermath played out rather to our liking. We went to the police station the next day (I was accompanied by our team leader Tim who likes to go meet and greet and schmooze people). We talked with the man in charge of the traffic division (after several sets of greetings). As soon as we told him even roughly what happened, he went and grabbed my paperwork they had taken, threw out the ticket and told us to have a nice afternoon! Woohoo! A little taste of redemption! It was clear to him that his officer was in the wrong and we went on our merry way! I must say, in this culture, having an older man with grey hair speaking on your behalf goes a long way, since they are very "elder/respect" oriented. Thanks Tim! I know we will get stopped again and again, but just pray for the patience to get through it as part of life and take the opportunity to be compassionate gentle people, even to the policemen!

The Goat project

One of the small projects we have started here has to do with "lending goats". This is something that the tamasheq culture is very comfortable with and even does among their own people, so it is a good way to go!
We bought two goats (a mother and female baby) goat for our day guard Sidimou. He lives in a hut in an empty lot about 1/2 kilometre from our house. He lives with another family, eldery women, children etc all in the same fenced lot and there are 5 or 6 goats, only one of which was his. So, the tamasheq use goat milk for cooking and drinking and it gives them a good source of nutrients. So he takes care of the goats as they grow, and each time the mother (and eventually the new baby) has a baby goat, we split the kids. Meaning the first new goat is his, the second is mine, the third is his, fourth mine etc, etc. This allows him to grow a herd of goats (which is their form of bank) without having to borrow money and go into debt to start. It also allows us to have new baby goats every year to start new projects with and give to other people in need. This is a great way to help out some of the people we work with in a way that isnt overwhelming and is culturally appropriate. Thank you for giving to our Work Special Fund and making projects like this possible!

Sidimou's House



Bennett saw the baby goat and instantly loved it. He has no qualms about going over and picking the baby goat up and carrying him around to look at everything. He kept saying how soft she was and he wanted to carry her, and the goat didnt seem to mind!



Sidimou showing Bennett where their milk comes from. It must be better than the gross powdered milk we have to buy here, but I wasn't stepping up to taste any personally!




Garden update
I am happy to report back that my experimental gardening program has met with great success! In less than a month here is a list of the successes and failures thus far.

Success!
Sweet potatoes - growing like crazy!
Pumpkins - growing like crazy!
basil - still going strong and a huge bush now
red peppers - good start, plants about 5 inches high and growing.
yellow peppers - good start, plants about 5 inches high and growing.
chives - the canadian seeds didnt work, but the transplanted african roots are growing!
Tomatoes - the plants are quite big, and although i think we planted too early a few months ago, i can see little fruit buds and small green tomatoes starting!

Failure :(
dill seeds - not a leaf or sprout in sight
green peppers - hiding in the dirt still


Too soon to tell:
Lettuce - we just planted a whole lot (like 50!) small lettuce-saplings. (is that what they are called?) we will see how many take and how it turns out.
Spinach - it looks like the canadian seeds will fail, but transplanted stalks from africa are taking good root and growing.
Mint. this plant, even with local cuttings and roots, is proving hard to grow and we only have a few little buds so far.





My basil bush mixed in amongth the flowers and plants in the front yard. Another bush is growing nearby too.



The train

Both of my kids love to build trains. Most mornings if they are here while we do language study they bring their snacks and drinks into the playroom and start new with a track through the room, complete with villages, zoo animals and gas stations.




New Friends

Bennett has slowly begun to make new friends. Outside our house, under our tree, we are often surrounded by many children. Arielle still prefers to watch from a distance, but I know her time to get involved will come too. A few of the kids have started to call out for Bennett and join him where he is playing. Yesterday, Bennett headed out the gate and went three houses down where there was a big pile of white sand in front of a house being built. Now the funny thing was that he went out in his t-shirt, Bob the Builder rainboots, and a pair of bright flowery underpants that he borrowed from his sister! Quite the sight!

Check out those underpants!



First his friend Boobay (the neighbor boy) found him there, and then slowly 3 others showed up at the dirt pile where they jumped ,hooted , hollered, threw dirt and had a blast, with Bennett right in the middle. They would help him up the hill, toss him his boot when it fell off, etc. I was proud to see them interact even though he was younger than them.

Now for pictures, I always have my little camera in the bag outside with me, but i never pull it out until they ask me too. They know what it is, and often now they come grab me to take their picture and they love looking at the screen at them after. It's not really appropriate to whip out the camera, so I always wait until they ask and this has met with great success and they love it. A good strategy to wait for their invitation!

Here are some of the pictures of the boys, all flying high! Can you pick out Bennett in all the pics?












Well, thats all for now! We have only 11 more days until a special guest arrives and we can't wait! But I'll tell you all about that in a later post!

The lost files and living amongst corruption

Well, since my last post, those lost pictures of Thanksgiving have reappeared! Woohoo! (hidden is some strange system file that is never used...)
So here are some thanksgiving pictures of the kids and other things.

The Marineau family recently moved to Tillaberi, which is an hour outside of Niamey. This is a much less developed city, but they do still have running water and electricity! What their new little house didnt have was a kitchen. Alas before moving there they constructed a little adobe style cement room outside their home in their courtyard to use as a kitchen. This is a fabulous idea since it keeps the heat of the stove and oven out of the house! ANyhow, I loved their quaint little kitchen outside.



Just before leaving for Thanksgiving we had our house exterminated. We didnt have huge bug issues in the house thankfully, but we had lots and lots of bugs in the gardens and around the house, especially at night with the lights. So apparently it is pretty standard to have the yard sprayed twice a year to keep the ants, termites, etc to a minimum. I loved his contraption and little tiny mask on his face. And this guy was one the the more technologically advanced guys around! I would hate to see the other ones...



Did I mention we have lizards? I don't think I am exaggerating when I say we likely have between 30 and 50 lizards living in and around our yard. You walk beside one of the walls and a dozen or so scurry away on every wall. Thankfully only the odd one manages to make his way into the house, usually to be discovered by Bennett who comes yelling to let us know. He then bravely grabs the broom to chase them out, only to run in fear if they dart towards him.



Hitting the heavy traffic coming out of Tillaberi for the market. Donkey carts and people heading home from the market.



The African locust. He is sitting on some pumpkin plants. It is hard to get scale, but this locust in almost 3 inches long. This is the same type on insect that wiped out a large majority of Niger's crops in 2005 and set the country into a terrible famine. Thankfully there does not appear to be very many around this year and this plague goes in cycles. Can you imagine a sky turned black in mid-day with a huge cloud of these insects bearing down on you?



The kids at Thanksgiving









Living in a corrupt society.
In Niger, corruption is a very real thing that we deal with. It's not as bad here as it is in other places, but we don't fool ourselves to believe we can avoid it. Today was a good example of that. So far, I have found the police here to be quite corrupt. I don't know anything about their upper leadership, but I'm talking about the everyday average traffic cop. I have been pulled over three times since I got here. Once was just "random" to verify our paperwork. Random meaning that we were new, they didnt recognize the vehicle and they wanted to see if they could catch us on anything at all. Another time I was pulled over for failing to signal. Even though i know 100% that I did, and my passenger agreed. Again, we were new, they didnt recognize the vehicle and they wanted to see if they could catch us on anything at all. This time, we were missing some type of window sticker that proves we paid some kind of city tax. We knew nothing about it. So after he yelled at me lots, made me cry from stress (a horrible response to stress that i cant control. sigh) and threatened to impound our vehicle, Daniel came to our rescue and took care of it. As soon as a man was involved the cop was so much nicer rather than berating me. This was only two weeks after we arrived. Paul was pulled over once for having his temporary NGO ID# on with tape rather than paint. So this afternoon I was pulled over again, and yelled at some more. So i approached a traffic circle and did not have the right of way to enter. Another car was coming fast and i braked sharply to avoid entering the lane and giving him the right of way. There was no one behind me, no one beside me, no pedestrians, no stop light and i didnt hit the car in front of me, or even enter his lane. There were three cops at this intersection and one pulled me over. I knew I had done nothing wrong, hit no one, signaled properly. So why did he pull me over? I braked too fast. Why do they care if i brake fast or slow, as long as i stop properly, dont hit anyone, cause anyone to crash behind me? You get my point. Anyhow, i wasnt about the let them make me cry, and i was mad. So my nice passengers were agreeing quietly with the cop, and i was trying to defend my position. Cecilia has been here longer than me and knows that it does no good to argue with them. We went back and forth, him telling me how dangerous it was to brake fast like that. He makes it sound like i came in at warp speed or something and hit 4 goats which i killed instantly. Sheesh. Eventually i just said "whatever, write the ticket then and let me go". He came back with a 8000 CFA ticket (around $20), which i would pay tomorrow at the police station and they hold my papers until then. Then the other cop came over and said, well, if you give me the 8000 francs then i will just sign this for you and you don't have to go to the hassle tomorrow to get your papers back etc. He said it so nicely you would *almost* believe him if you didn't know better. He would pocket the money. I refused and he looked somewhat surprised and irritated We have decided that we will refuse to pay bribes here, even if it makes like difficult. So tomorrow I shall go and collect my papers, and maybe try to plead the insanity of the ticket once more.

I wonder what would happen if I had gotten really mad at the cop for his obvious staged "crime of fast braking". Would he wither under the shear shock of a woman raising their voice and standing firm against them? Or would he need to save face infront of the others and get even more indignant and charge me with some other trumped up charge, throw me in jail, threaten us in some other way? I guess Cecilia is right, that it is not worth the risk to find out. But each time it is frustrating to know that we are targeted, hassled and yelled at. I hate driving in some parts of town where there are always cops at the roundpoints. I know corruption is something we have to deal with here, and yet I want it to be something that doesn't bother me and stress me out. I guess you can pray for me for that. And be thankful for the honest policemen that we do have in North America.

Transparency International is the world's leader in tracking corruption. Here is a map showing degrees on corruption in the world. Yellow is the best, dark red/brown the worst. You can check out more if you are interested at
http://www.transparency.org/