Culture and the Balance of Emotion

29 October 2008
3:10 pm

It's cool and at least somewhat heartening how quickly things can turn around. The past few days I've been pretty down and listless. It's a form of laziness, but it's also been just a complete apathy to working, socializing, or even moving, and I have to admit it's been hard. Without any American neighbors close by, I've had no one to talk to about any of this, so it just continued for several days. But, with one or two small things, I've realized that a great day can be ruined, or a bad day can turn out really good. Last night was better. I went over to my neighbor Djodi's house to chat, as I occasionally do. I got over there and one of the guys was messing with his phone. Now, there isn't an electronic in Niger that doesn't suffer horribly, but this phone was a true piece of crap, even by Nigerien standards. It look like it was about five years old, it was missing its keypad, the screen didn't work, and the clock said it was 14h00 rather than 10 pm. The best part about this is he was trying to fix the clock from memory of how to run through the settings.

So everyone was getting a big laugh out of this guy's phone. One of the biggest came when it nearly died and he told us he'd charged it that morning. I asked him where he'd gotten such a terrible phone:

"Did you find it on the side of the road?"

"No, why?"

"Because it looks like someone got frustrated with it and chucked it out the window of some bush taxi."

Now Nigeriens love a good burn. They love it even more when the white kid who is still learning the local language can join in and torch a guy in Zarma. He told us that he'd dropped it in water, which none of us much understood as it's hard enough to even find water in this country, let alone find enough to ruin your phone. I told him he'd be better off using a rock, and after the clock reset itself to 2:37 am, I picked up a rock, pretended to make a call, and said, "It's for you, a brand new phone. It's much better than the one you have now. Just make sure to keep it charged." This, of course, caused an uproar as this poor guy just couldn't catch a break. An important lesson: in Niger, if you think you're going to get off light with something ridiculous (i.e. a bad haircut or a broken-down phone), think again. They are merciless, not in a mean way, just that they love to laugh, and people do a lot of ridiculous things here.

After we calmed down a bit, we talked about the stars. One of the greatest things about Niger is the lack of electricity means there's almost no light pollution from cities and towns. On clear nights, you can see the Milky Way and all the stars in the sky. I found an Audobon Society star guide here, and I've been learning the constellations. I told them about the Pleiades, and how the Polynesians believe that they used to be one bright star that boasted of its brilliance so much that the gods threw Sirius, the dog star, at it and shattered it into the pieces we now see. The younger guys didn't know the stories, but Seydou, an older man, knew them all, and I have to admire him. He told all of us that the Zarma equivalent of the Pleiades were called "Gorndariaze" - the hen and her chicks. When it's crests the sky, in mid-October, the rains are over and won't come again until next year. It's a connection with nature that we just don't have in America anymore. He doesn't seem very bright, but that's because he never had any schooling. He didn't even learn to write letters until he was 28 and living in Cote d'Ivoire. Everything that he lacks in academic learning, he makes up for in experience and age.