Sworn-In and Ready to Go

It's been a long nine weeks, but on Friday evening the Agriculture/Natural Resource Management 2008 stage was sworn in to full service as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV). This wasn't some small affair, ba kayna (not at all.) The soiree, if you will, occurred at the Ambassador's house, a sprawling semi-mansion across the street from the American Embassy. Truly, it pays to spend your entire life in the civil service. In attendance were most of the 140 PCVs in country, the entire staff of Peace Corps Niger, most if not all of Niger's government ministers, as well as the major media in Niger (ORTN, BBC, Voice of America, and Radio France). In all the ceremony took a little over an hour, and after weeks of intensive language training, I'm proud to say that the three speeches given by our stage were widely considered some of the best many had heard in years.

I was one of those speakers, giving a five minute speech entirely in Zarma. I'd post it here, but I doubt anyone would know how to read it. (Except there do seem to be quite a few people randomly interested in this little site, so maybe RPCVs would know.) It was a pretty stressful week considering all the partying we had to do. Monday we had our party for our language formateurs, Tuesday we had a barbecue as a meet-and-greet the new stage, Wednesday we had our host party family (which was ridiculously fun), Thursday we had an auction in Niamey for the Gender and Development fund, and Friday we had swear-in. It was very difficult to find time to write a speech, but after I did, I was promptly told by the formateurs that it was not cross-culturally appropriate whatsoever for such a grand ceremony.

This brings me to another English major topic in this post. I mentioned before that Zarma has very few words compared to English, some even doubling up with ideas not even remotely connected. I came to find out after writing my speech that the lack of vocabulary in Zarma also brings about a lack of subtlety. Everything is very rigidly defined and cannot be used out of context. For example, the Zarma word for "bandit" which the formateurs called me at site and meant trickster, joker, rogue, does not have the same connotation. Instead, it is a black picture of someone who drinks, smokes, steals, and kills. Nothing else. So my speech that centered on this one word quickly became a quagmire. I rewrote the speech in about 2 days with egregious amounts of help from my friend Rose and my formateurs. It came off without a hitch (that I know of anyway, it's hard to get the pacing of a speech in a language you've known for less than 2 months).

That's all for now. As our swear-in drew closer, we all realized that our time with one another was growing shorter. The Hausa speakers have left for points east. I and nine others have temporarily relocated to Niamey in preparation to meet the Tillaberi governor and other important people tomorrow. After that, we have a month of living at our post. We're not supposed to leave unless in the event of medical emergency (which let's face it, this is Niger, that's a distinct possibilit), so you won't hear any buzz on here for at least a month. I'll try to send letters home for Dad to post, but just think of me and know that I'm suffering through hot season (over 110F with zero humidity).

Kala han fo.