twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

Category: Niger life

  • ceci pas une chouette

    Camille is doing a report on owls so we’ve all been reviewing owls, the pellets, the fixed eyes, the round ping-pong ball eggs. In French they don’t call a barn owl an owl hibou, they call it a chouette, like it’s a different kind of bird. Also, as you know, chouette means cool, or neat. Camille and I think it’s funny that when you’re saying, c’est chouette you are saying, “that’s cool/barn owl.” In her report she talks about the difference between the chouette and the owl. Barn owls don’t have the feathers that look like ears.

    Last week her class visited the zoo, and a visitor had something in a bag squawking. He pulled it out and here’s what it was:

    Baby_owl
    I think he wanted to sell it to the zoo, all the animals in the zoo here are local animals, but they already have an owl. Three species of owls live in Niger, owls are quite a successful species!

    Last night I stayed up way too late stenciling this t-shirt dress for Camille to wear when she does her presentation: (although I’m not sure how cool it is to walk around wearing a dress that says “not cool.” I’m not sure how much 5th graders are into irony. Hmm, maybe I’ll do a chouette lower down that says, “c’est chouette.” Oh god, back to the freezer paper.)

    Pas_chouette_2

    Later. Okay, I added it and she loves it, although she had me cut it off so it’s a shirt, not a dress. I took that dress out of the hand-me-away bag anyway, so it’s least it’s having one more go-around. Of course Stefan wanted in on the owl love.

    Stefan_teeshirt

  • same as last year on january 27th

    Eyebrows_2

    Oh, just another weekend when you hire a guide to lead a group, including the Ambassador, on camels to a village famous for its pottery, watch someone make pots from the river clay, look for hippos as you float back in boats, then have lunch of grilled capitaine on the bank of Niger river. Same old, same old.

    And the kittens are two weeks old.

  • les tomates

    Tomatoes_2

    One of my favorite things about living in Niger is the quality of the tomatoes, and the produce in general. The tomatoes are this gorgeous in January. The produce here is just super fresh and hasn’t been genetically altered to transport well, it’s grown for flavor by small farms. Le Pelier, an Italian restaurant here, inspired me to make a salad they serve, it’s just tomatoes with basil–we have it in the garden almost year-round–oil and vinegar, salt, pepper and pressed garlic.

  • does anyone still say, “gives me the willies?”

    Bats_close_2

    Driving down one of the main roads in town, Camille pointed out that she’d noticed when walking that the clumps in the trees are not tangled branches, like I thought, but hundreds, maybe thousands, of bats.

  • sunday

    Kittens_week2

    Didja think I’d make it whole week without a kitty cat post? They are one week old today. The white ones are starting to show faint markings, but look mouse-like and aren’t really as cute as the tabby one, don’t you think? I’ll think the white ones will get cuter. I hope. Or I’ll never find anyone to adopt them. They haven’t moved from this spot in about five days. They can’t really walk yet and they’re eyes aren’t open. So the first week, they just nurse and sleep, –as Craig Fergason says, remind you of anyone?

    And Stefan reading one of his favorite books, an animal picture encyclopedia. The puppet is afraid of the snakes.

    Stefan_reading

  • les fraises

    Strawberries
    Stefan had two bowls of sweet, ripe strawberries at lunch, he was so happy he did a little strawberry dance. We’ll have them for about a month. We will make ourselves sick on them, because they are the only berries we will have until we go home to Portland this summer. I can’t tell you how much it cheered me up to see these today. I bought a couple pints and they are already almost gone, I had to hide some for Camille. They are picked ripe, are delicious and go bad by the next day. This year I’m going to buy some to freeze for smoothies. Leopold knows where there is a farm and he can buy me a flat. Strawberries.

  • is it over yet?

    Niamey_christmas_collage_3

    The best part of Christmas this year was having visitors. Ana, Elliott, Camille and Stefan decorated the tree, I had a control freak mini-attack, but they did a great job. They also made a fabulous gingerbread house that looked like it was inhabited by a family with a hoarding disorder. I made a plate of lemon bars and the kids ate them as fast as they came out of the oven, before I could snap a photo. Christmas morning I made my sister’s orange-cranberry muffins, and some maple sausage I brought from Trader Joe’s and had been hiding in the freezer in the land of no sausage. We enjoyed opening presents together–I especially love my pincushion Ana made. Here is Stefan loaded down with just some of his new swimming pool toys, then they tried them all out for the rest of the day. We keep marveling that next year, it’ll be so different.

  • seven things about niamey

    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.

  • gestating

    Mademoiselle

    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.

  • lions and antelopes and warthogs, oh my

    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.

    Baobab