Category: Niger life

Votes poured in to select the new chef at the embassy, a stack of votes for one guy, a single vote for the other guy. The good news is, Leopold won, hands down. The bad news is, we gave away Jennifer and James cook! He worked for them Monday through Friday. We had him cooking for us on Saturday, I thought for sure he wouldn’t continue with us if he got the job at the embassy, but he insists it’s not too much. But he is too busy to continue during the week next door. After all the Fulbrights have done for us! They did cleverly have Leopold teach their housekeeper how to make a lot of dishes though. So today is Friday, which means Leopold is going to come and sit and discuss with me what to prepare, and then make a shopping list with all the prices, then we figure how much money he needs. This time spent sitting figuring out menus and shopping and prices is a job Peter’s Russian grandmother would have loved.

The kids are requesting onion rings for tomorrow. Here he is with rice, fish in a ginger sauce and salade verte.

Walked out the gate to go next door and take a picture of Norma’s pool for the movie and this was coming down the street.

You met the one little girl the other day, she had a pot on her head. Her name is Amiata.

Way in the background, by the car, right in front of our house, in an orange shirt, watching me taking pictures and waiting to give me cash and the car key for my errand to the drinks store for a case of mineral water, half a case of Biere Niger and half a case of pineapple soda, you can see Le Patron–everyone calls him that and it CRACKS me up, and it cracks him up that they call ME Madame le Doctor, I mean, what a promotion I got–Peter.

Air France tickets on sale. For example, if you want to fly from Seattle to Niger, only $1500 round trip, in September, just in time for the Cure Sale. All US points of departure are on sale, but they are going fast, so look now.

Yesterday Jennifer and I visited the French gym, a really nice facility opened and now languishing since the Francophonie games held here in 2005. As we were backing out in our car the guy working at the gym said, “Don’t go out in your car tomorrow, they’ll be looking for cars like that to throw rocks at.”

The teacher-student strikes are in full swing. Zuri said people were walking down the street this morning with sticks. “Don’t do sports this morning,” she told me, which is how she refers to my little jaunts to the stadium. Tires are burning in the streets. Jennifer is trapped up on campus at the University. One side has declared that whatever happens is the other side’s fault for taking so long to come to an agreement.

But it’s calm in the house, the kids are on vacation, so there is no drop-off, pick-up–Camille is writing an animal story on the laptop, Zuri’s braiding doll hair, Stefan is having the gardener blow up a yoga ball. Peter went to work early and has to stay late for a meeting, until after dark when things are calmed down. So we’ll sit behind our walls and hope they get things resolved and wait out the rock throwing. It’s too hot to protest past much past noon anyway.

You can read a newspaper article about the strikes here.

This tree lost all it’s leaves and now it’s come up with these flowers that look like lilies. I just love the way the bouganvilla has joined the party. When I starting taking pictures, all the little neighborhood kids ran up and wanted their picture taken.

Then I went to look at fabrics at the neighborhood of fabric stores, just a research trip. If you don’t like thrift stores, you may not like shopping here, it’s sort of a hunters paradise. I found lots of great gingham, but no dotted swiss, which I am dying for, or some kind embroidered white on white. When I tried to leave, a taxi had blocked my car from behind and I couldn’t move. Two guys came up, opened the taxi door, put the car in neutral and pushed the taxi out of the way for me. We all laughed. I hope it was okay, these situations make me feel a little weird, even though we had a good laugh over the whole thing, and they didn’t seem to expect anything, but I gave them a dollar.

Amina took me to her tailor’s shop today. The place has no name, unless it’s the only thing painted on the side of the small storage unit-like building: Overt 9:30-12:30.

James, of Four Kinds of Hot, says one of the many difficult adjustments to Niamey is that when you see a store here, it just doesn’t click that what you are looking at is a store. My early, reptilian mind looks for the clues that tell me, “I can buy something there.” Clues like signage, a parking lot, a door; and not seeing any of these things my developed-world early brain decides there is nothing to buy and moves on.

You know it’s a tailor because there are two guys sitting in a the small space, each at a beautifully old-fashioned treadle sewing machine. One guy has an electric Singer sitting on the same small table as the foot-powered one, almost on top of the other machine, if you could put one sewing machine on top of another. One guy is sewing beads onto a child’s tie-dyed shirt–huh? on these machines I think they should only be sewing clothes appropriate for Beatrix Potter– and another guy is doing a very nice job on a man’s dress shirt.

I bought a ton of this great, almost vintage, probably vintage, brown gingham from the Netherlands at Big Boss–you know the owner is French because she waves you in the direction of what you are looking for with a hand trailing the smoke from her cigarette. Her place has a sign, a parking lot and a door, so I know it’s a store, by the way. So I gave the tailor the fabric and a shirt of Stefan’s to use as a pattern. Stefan is going to smell like he like smokes Marlboro lights.

I haven’t gotten my Boden dress yet because they sent it to my pouch street address here, with all the city information for Portland. So I took some white with red dots fabric I got at the Grand Marche for like $3–I mean I bought yards and yards of it for $3, but I think everything should be either white with red dots or brown gingham right now, don’t you?–and the picture of the dress from the website. The guy took three measurements, told me this would all be roughly $12, and to come back next Wednesday. I can’t wait. I asked him if he could do the embroidery shown in the photo and he said yes, he has the right machine and he patted the treadle Singer.

And don’t you love it that in a country that is 98% muslim, Easter Monday is a national holiday?

The first time a sewing machine guy clanged his scissors at me I had one of those paranoid American moments: “Why is he threatening me with his scissors?!” I was running at the time, and I ran faster.

Everybody here lives behind a wall, including Nigeriennes. Maybe behind the wall will be a hut, but there will be a wall or you don’t own the property. As the sewing machine guy strolls around he clangs his scissors open and shut and it sounds like a bell. So, like the ice cream man at home, we hear the sewing machine guy when he’s in the neighborhood. I’ve seen them stop to work at someone’s house, sitting in the entryway to the yard, on the ground, repairing a pile of clothes. I would need an extra arm to work those machines, it has a crank on the side they turn by hand.