Category: Niger life

Had Camille's slumber party on Friday, kind of hard to have a party when you don't have any of your stuff. We are camping in our own house, using the Embassy welcome kit, with the sheets made of sandpaper. We fly on Tuesday at midnight. Camille has already arranged playdates on the plane, we are flying to France with about half her class.

I will miss shaking hands one hundred times a day. I love the soft handshake of Niger. If someone is too far away to shake your hand, the shake their own hands over their head. If they are on their moto, they clasp an invisible hand overhead, the black power salute. Try it, it's fun. If they are feelin' it, the men touch their chest when they shake hands, . Peter does this and it cracks me up, it's almost as good as everyone calling him "Patron." Some people snap fingers after shaking hands, or bump their fists together in a super cool secret handshake, but I am not cool enough for someone to do this with me. I make the kids do it with me though.

While Peter was in Ouaga, the U.S. Ambassador to Bukina Faso, Ambassador Jackson, gave him an award for outstanding service.

Are you sliding off the toilet, being pinched on the bottom, having to go without a toilet seat or being bounced off the toilet by your toilet seat? You might be in Niger!

On about day two Peter's sister Nina, who is visiting from Alaska, posed the title question. Good observation Nina!

The toilet seat in our master bathroom is off its custom hinges and bounces you sideways off the toilet every time you sit down. Was it a good idea to install toilets with a customized toilet seats so that the seats are unreplaceable? All the toilet seats in our house are either sliding off the broken hinges or missing because we have traded them up to more-frequently-used bathrooms. Then Nina comes to visit us at work, where out of the three toilet options, one has a missing seat, one seat is cracked and pinches your behind hard everytime you sit down, and the third toilet has a normal seat, but don't use that one becuase the toilet sprays water out the side in a gusher of a fountain when you flush.

I'm sparing you by not posting a photo today.

Last night’s Fati Mariko concert celebrated the release of her new CD and was slated to start at 8:00. Around 8:00 I called Sue, see below, who was already at the Palais de Sports for another event earlier in the day, to ask her if it was was starting. “They haven’t taken down the basketball equipment yet,” she told me. I called her back at 9:00. “There are like, ten people here,” she said, “they’re still setting up.” If I waited any longer I’d get too tired and decide not to go, so I left the house at ten after ten.. The Palais de Sports is five minutes from my house, I got a parking place five spaces away from the front door. Think I’ll get that kind of parking at my next concert? I went in and found Sue in the front row, there were maybe two hundred people in a venue that will hold a couple thousand. Why it wasn’t packed I don’t know.

A karaoke warm up act sings on stage, it includes a midget dancer, who actually is good. Then we have some clowns who are not. Then a single guy sings karaoke. I complain that if this were the US, everyone would be stamping their feet on the hardwood floor and screaming, “Fati, Fati!” There would be an MC to whip us into a frenzy. Instead the Minister of Culture gets up with a thick packet of notes and makes a long-winded speech. The only Americans there have not lived in the US in the last two decades and have lost touch with how exciting a concert is suppose to be. I want to scream, but am too bored. Someone walks around giving away (badly designed) and now outdated posters. Finally, finally, Fati Mariko is in the house, takes the stage.

And yea! She’s great! Six dancers are with her, and their costumes are beautiful and the dancing is amazing and the singing is fabulous! And everyone sits politely in their seats with their hands folded on their lap.

This reminds me of a Neville Brothers concert in Switzerland where everyone sat in their seats, really rocking out by tapping their toes. At that concert I was with other crazy Americans and we ended up going on stage and dancing at one point.

So then Fati Mariko sings my very favorite song of hers, Bébé, and she’s amazing. I mean, really, like a $60 ticket at the Filmore. She sings four songs, and then we have a couper d’electricité, and the venue is plunged into utter darkness and silence. Hundreds of cell phones light up. “Did we rock too hard?” I say to myself and “I guess that’s the set.” We sit in silence for ten or fifteen minutes, no announcements are made, no effort is made to get the show up and going. Everyone starts to leave. I don’t want to find my way out of a pitch black building by myself, so I leave with some friends. I asked Sue today if the electricity ever came back. “Yeah, they got it back on, but we left before they started the show again.” Maybe they really got going in the middle of the night.

Meet Sue Rosenfeld. She runs the program for exchange students for Boston University here in Niger. If you google Niger, the first hit is Sue Rosenfeld. When you ask her long she’s been in Niger, she’ll tell you to the day how long it’s been, every time. Today it’s twenty six years, five months and three days. She comes to our house once a week to watch some version of reality tv on the Embassy-supplied American system. Lucky for me, Sue is addicted to American Idol and Survivor. We watch our shows, then we talk about books.

Sue raised the chimpanzees the National Museum until they were old enough to live on their own. Once she came over and tossed her key ring on the sofa. It weighed more than she did. I went through the keys one by one and each was a story. Two small keys were identical. “What are these for?” I asked. “The key to chimp cage at the zoo. You can have one if you want.” I put it on a necklace.

Sue lives without air conditioning, because her students do. She speaks English of course, but also French, Zarma and Hausa. She has superstar celebrity status in Niamey, if you go in a restaurant with her, it’s like you’re there with Madonna, better than Madonna, because here they may not know who Madonna is, but they WILL know who Sue is. She received an award from the National Ministry of Athletics for her involvement in basketball, (Camille, age ten, is taller than Sue.) She is Judy Blume’s first cousin. She once had her dress torn off at the zoo by a chimpanzee.

In this photo Sue was dancing in the first rain. Scarlett had called us while we were at lunch to say “The sky is red,” (it was going to rain for the first time in nine months.) Sue’s response: “The eagle flies at midnight, what are we talking about here?”

From the Quoteable Sue: Why have cat when you can have a dog? Why have a dog when you can have a chimpanzee?

Peter keeps asking when I’m going to post this picture, so this week seems appropriate. The wolf is scary, but Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t seem too concerned. We went to a costume party at the French Embassy compound, a pirate had a pop gun he kept shooting off. We ate dinner outside next to the river at what felt like the middle of the night, then danced to Brenda Fosse music with our friends.

In Idol news, and really what else is there? I’m sorry to see Jason Castro go, but he seemed ecstatic to be voted off. Love that kid. Simon: “Jason, what were you thinking?” Jason: “I was thinking Bob Marley! Yeah!”

Right now he’s in telling Stefan about how he use to camp as a little kid.

Aicha impresses me with the fine lines and beautiful designs she paints in henna, and she’s so fast! The henna smells like incense. After the henna dries, which happens quickly in 105 degree heat, you wash it off and can barely see the designs anymore. Then you put your hands into a huge pot that has in the base of it smoking embers. You sit slumped over in an inelegant position with your hands in a pot of smoke for five or ten minutes, the longer the darker the henna.

Here people usually get painted for a special celebration like a wedding. Don’t worry Mom, it’s temporary.