Christmas Letter - 2004

December 6, 2004

Dear Mom, Dad, Wolf, Elizabeth and Bjorn,

Merry Christmas. I am going to give this to Georgette to carry with her so hopefully it will get to you. While I won't be with you this Christmas, at least you'll know exactly where I am.

I got this at Institute Geographique National in Niamey. They didn't have any real maps left but I was able to get this photocopy. I will give you some places to look for:

• Kodo Kouara and Gothèye for starters, of course. I don't think you'll have trouble but if you do, look along the paved highway to Tera.

• Bangou Tara. The main market (Saturday) for my villagers. It's a surprisingly large market for not a huge town. I'm told that it draws people bringing animals etc. in from the bush who I guess don't want to walk to the really big towns of Dargol and Gothèye. And then there are buyers coming - perhaps looking for lower prices. Last time I went to Bangou Tera I saw a man we buy meat from in Gothèye looking for goats.

• I helped a Koda Kwara woman named Buja to plant peanuts. She said she came to Koda Kwara from Dargol last year. She doesn't have any kids with her so sometimes her niece (?) walks from Dargol to stay with her for a while and help. I've never biked to Dargol but I've been as far as Safatane to visit Keri. Safatane has big shady Gow trees all along its stretch of seasonal river. But during rainy season it has to cope with being on the wrong side of the water from the road.

• My closest PCV neighbor is Seth in Garigangui. Garigangui is not a very unified village. It's more of a collection of hamlets with one section identifying with Troumbo (where they originally came from) and the other with Kakassi. I can walk to Seth's house on the far edge of Garigangui in an hour and a half. Surprisingly, it only takes about half an hour longer to bike to Georgett's in Ziguida.

• Alicia's village is called Atteforme but the map calls it Haméné Kouara. Georgette and Alicia's villages are right on the Niger River. Bani Bangon where Nate was is not far away but not near the Niger. I believe it's on the same seasonal river as Kodo Kouara. A volunteer tried to drill a well there last year. They went 50 meters down before giving up. Evidently the geology in this part of Niger means that the water is petty spotty.

• The seasonal river near us is the Dargol but there's another one farther south called the Sirba that Gothèye PCVs were posted along during the 90's.

• Our Gothèye transit house guardian Hasan and his wife Zuwera are not originally from Gothèye. They came from Torodi where there had been a P.C. team at one point. During the summer we gave Zuwera money to go back to Torodi for her sister's wedding. Even though Torodi's on the same map, she had to go to Niamey to get the highway to Torodi.

• Under optimal conditions we can get from Niamey to Gothèye in not much more than an hour. One of the reasons this doesn't happen very often is the "Bac" Ferry. It takes a break in the middle of the day so if we don't get off on time and think we are going to miss the last Bac of morning we may choose to cross the one bridge at Niamey and take the gravel road up the west side of the river.

• A couple of weeks back, Abibulai, the 16 year old neighbor boy told me that men had speared two "haw bi"" (literally "cow black") Georgette and I looked it up in the dictionary. We think they must have been water buffalo. They speared them down near Guériel. I didn't even know there was anything like that in our part of the country. I see lots of birds but no wild animals larger than hedgehogs.

Well, I'd better stop now as the car for Maradi is supposed to leave at six tomorrow and I need to pack.

Love,