Author: place2place

Driving around town is like driving through a fairground. Donkey carts, someone carrying a table on their head, small children dragging a box, camels loaded down with woven grass, goats crossing, a family of three, four or five on a moped next to you. Every time you stop the car, boys run to the window to sell you are phone card. Stop lights are merely a suggestion. You can drive over the curb, around any car or cart, pass on the right, stop when you feel like it. It’s crazy, then liberating: you can drive however you want.

Babies wear woolen hats as soon as the tempurature reaches anything below 90.

Went fabric shopping with Ana, my 13-year-old niece. The shop keeper put a veil on her head, covering her hair, then everyone in the store marveled at how beautiful she is. Ana wore the veil for the rest of the shopping trip, and got a marriage proposal. The more modestly a girl dresses, the prettier she is. “At home it’s the opposite,” commented Ana.

Someone asked me yesterday where there is a book store. Um. There is no bookstore.

You say hello, bonjour, fofo many times each day. I love the long exchanges I overhear, fonda this and mate that. How are you? How is your house, your children, the heat? Every day Zoure asks me Comment la fatigue?

If I don’t chat with someone while we wait for our kids to come out of school, I feel awkward. I feel awkward in the kitchen with Zoure, if I don’t make small talk. Here, you have to know each other to chat. Americans have to know each other to not chat. If I’m with the driver, I need to fill the air with small talk. The driver doesn’t feel compelled to speak with me, and can drive me all around town and not say a word because we don’t know each other. I can ride in the car with Peter and not talk, but that’s only because I know him.

The Nigerienne holidays are based on the Islamic calandar, which moves up ten days every year compared to the Gregorian calandar we use. Holidays depend on the sighting of the new moon and we never know when they will be. They cannot be determined by just anyone, you have to wait until the right guy sees the new moon and says it’s the holiday. There will be a holiday this week, Islamic New Year, Muharram, but we don’t know if it will be Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.

Jennifer tagged me with this great topic. You can read hers in her column in the Ashland Tidings here.

Now for the fun part: I tag MamaLana, Amy, and Dakota. Seven things about where you live.

Our kitty, Mademoiselle Giselle, as we’ve been calling her lately, is getting huge. For two weeks I’ve been thinking she was going to deliver any day, but every day she just gets more and more inflated. We were certain she would have the kittens before Helen, Elliott and Ana head home, but with only one day left, I’m not so sure. If you rest your hand on her tummy you can feel the kittens in there wiggling around. It’s so exciting, we can hardly stand it. I drempt she had to have an emergency c-section. Ana drempt her dog at home had puppies and kittens.

We left Friday for Park W, driving on miles and miles of washboard and spent a couple of days in the park, one of Niger’s world heritage sites. (It’s fun to look at the unesco list and see how many you’ve seen.) The animals at Park W can be elusive and we’ve had friends who drove down and saw only gazelles and guineafowl. But we got lucky and saw an elephant in our first hour there! We found lots of bushbuck and antelope, Peter saw a lion, the monkey troops were running around and then we fell in love with warthogs. Check out our flickr set.

Three, two, one giraffes. We spent the longest time with this beautiful pair. We saw an abssynian roller bird, too: breathtaking.

Stefan said he asked Santa for a truck that shoots jello (huh?). Camille can’t remember what she asked for. She is at a weird age where she wants both an ipod and an American girl doll.

A woman who works off and on for Unicef–sometimes she’s in Niger, sometimes she’s not–found this kitty as a stray a few months ago. Since she’s headed back to the US and can’t take her, she called me to put an ad giving away the kitty in the embassy newsletter. We’ve wanted to replace our kitty that got hit by a car while we were on homeleave, so we went over for a visit. The kitty is a little shy, but so cute, we coudn’t resist. We brought her home and she hid under the bed for three days. Now she’s not shy at all, in fact, she never stops expressing her opinion. Mademoiselle Crybaby is what we call her most of the time, so I think her name is Mademoiselle, although we’ve tried a few other things, they haven’t stuck. Once we got her home we noticed that she is getting fat around the middle and I don’t think it’s because of the old can of liver pate that Peter fed her.

Complacencies of the pajamas, late coffee, and then chocolate cake for lunch.

Peter’s writing a book. I did a few Christmas cards. Stefan is cleaning up the living room so we can walk and he can go to a birthday party. Camille is doing homework, her spelling list: bouquet, dangereusement, orphelin. I made the african fabric balls for baby gifts. The little one is for the cat, not that she looks interested.