May 28, 2004
Gotheye, Niger
Letter 4

Dear 7th Graders,

The week of April 25th was the most exciting one so far, weatherwise. Sunday night the wind came up unexpectedly. Hadja, my neighbors' eight-year-old daughter told me that it was going to rain. I didn't believe her. I knew that the expected start of rainy season was over a month away. I was planning to bike to Gotheye in the morning. I wanted to buy food at the weekly market and visit with the other Peace Corps Volunteers on my team. Hadja told me I wouldn't be going to Gotheye in the morning. Instead, I would be helping them to plant millet.

I still wasn't sure what to believe but I barely made it next door and into my house before the rain came driving down. I put a pot out in my yard and collected a quarter inch of rain. It was the first real rainfall I had seen since arriving in Niger in early January. And it was all over in time for me to go to bed outside as usual.

Despite Hadja's prediction, I did bike to Gotheye the next moring. The rain had only wet the soil half a hand's length down into the ground and I had learned that farmers here plant their millet when enough rain falls to dampen the soil a full hand's length down.

While I was in Gotheye, though, rain fell a second time. A few farmers, including Nadja's father, planted. It was a gamble. No one knew if rainy season had really started. If rain didn't fall again within a few weeks, they would have to replant.

Then, Thursday afternoon, a terrific storm brought five eighths of an inch of rain. Sunday's rain had come after dark, but I was able to watch this storm roll slowly in from the east. The day turned yellow then gray as the wind brought first dust then rain.

Rainwater flowed through the seasonal riverbed that had been dry just that morning. Villagers were out planting their fields before the rain had even stopped. I planted my own small field Friday morning and then went to help my neighbors. By Tuesday, small green spears of millet were poking up through the soil.

I have been keeping track of the weather since February and am sending you my records so you can see what it is like and how it's changed. What temperatures and humidities are you experiencing in West Virginia right now? Is there any place in the U.S. that has similar weather to Niger?

Have a good summer.

Your hot and sticky P.C.V. in Niger,

Windsong

September 1, 2004 Letter to Kathy B.

September 1, 2004
Zigurda, Niger

Dear Kathy,

Here are the next two letters. I think I emailed you when I was in Niamey. Now I am back from Niamey. This morning, I biked about twenty km. to visit one of the other volunteers on the Gotheye team. I was going to help her draw a world map on the wall of one of the village classrooms. But the school director has gone somewhere and taken the key with him so instead I am visiting and writing letters.

Zigurda, my teammate's village, is on the Niger River. Besdies growing millet like everyone does here, the villagers sell rice (they don't actually grow it. It's grown by a village on the other side of the river who grow it on an island in the middle of the river.) The women also make and paint huge clay water jugs. Unlike the village where I live which is Sanghai ethnicity, Zigurda people are descended from Bellas (Black tuaregs) though they seem to have pretty much assimilated.

Take care,

Windsong