Leaving Tanka Lokoto

I’ve been in Niamey for a while now, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to write an entry. It’s mostly due to laziness, but I also find at the end of my two years in Africa that my attention span for the Internet is about ten minutes max. Add to that the stresses of the last few weeks and the result is a lack of entries despite easy access. (That will be, I hope, the last Freudian slip of the day.)

As anyone can see from my past blog entries, I took some vacation a couple months ago to go out east, almost all the way to Chad. On my way back, my boss called me and told me that I would be held in Niamey for at least a week. I wasn’t allowed to return to my village. She couldn’t tell me why, and even to this day, I still don’t know what actually happened. I have some theories of my own.

Niger’s harvest this year was particularly bad. In the Ouallam department, which is just west of my village, there wasn’t really ANY harvest, let alone a bad one. As a result, the Fulan herders came back from the pasturelands earlier and fed their cattle on the little vegetation in the Zarma farmers’ fields. There’s farmer/pastoralist violence every year, but this year included a few particularly bad incidents that had the potential to spread throughout the region. In addition, the embassy revised its warden status because the North African branch of Al Qaeda began targeting Westerners. And if the threat of terrorism wasn’t bad enough, the Filingue department, my sub-region of the wider Tillaberi region, evidently began devoting all their gendarmes to the Malian frontier, which left the bandits already within the region plenty of time to do their bandit things.

So there were plenty of reasons not to go back to village. In addition to the external threats, I also had some work of my own to do. I waited three weeks in Niamey, and in that time, I had to study for the GRE, train to become a Volunteer Assistant Trainer (VAT) for the newest stage that is currently in country, and attend the Close of Service (COS) conference.

But being out of village, for lack of a better term, sucks. It’s difficult to emphasize this point enough, and I don’t expect anyone who hasn’t lived the life to understand what it feels like. I was forced to leave my small community without any chance to say goodbye or to close the work I had been doing. I felt like a refugee. Living in Niamey, out of my backpack, constantly answering questions that I didn’t actually know the answer to as to why I wasn’t in my village. After two months out of my village, I’d hit a breaking point. The country director and our program training officer had urged patience, and patient I was, but it only goes so far, even after two years in a country like Niger. I had to go back.

The embassy wasn’t happy. I’d pushed and pushed to go back to my village, and after a month, I think I’d created such a headache that everyone was just tired of me. They gave me one week. It was more than I’d expected, but there were a few stipulations. I could tell no one I was leaving for my village or that I would be living there at all. That included Peace Corps staff, Volunteers, and even my own villagers. The only people that knew I was on this “secret mission” were the acting country director, the Peace Corps security officer, and the embassy’s Regional Security Officer. I had to check in via text twice a day, morning and evening, to confirm that I hadn’t been kidnapped. Finally, I couldn’t tell anyone in my village what day I would be leaving them forever.

And so I left for village November 3^rd. This entry could be much longer than it actually will be. I’ll try to be concise and cut out all the personal, sentimental things and get right to the heart of the matter. My villagers were amazing for the week I was at home. Though my house was dirty and dilapidated, my hanger had nearly collapsed, my garden had died, and my cat ran away, I didn’t care. I was just so happy to be back.

But it was a stressful week. I spent most of my afternoons (when I usually napped during my service) packing up my house. My mornings and evenings I spent on specific missions to spend as much time as possible with everyone I knew and loved in village. At night, my favorite little kid, a four-year old named Razak (who I call attakurmizo, Zarma for a sprite or faerie) would come over, refuse to leave my side, and eventually fall asleep at my house. I’d carry him home and we’d repeat the same pattern the next day. I know I said I wouldn’t get sentimental, but he was a rock star the whole week.

I’m so glad the embassy allowed me to return for even just a week. I was afraid I wouldn’t have even an afternoon. The first night I was back in village, bandits killed a soldier and a merchant in Baleyara, the major market town about 22km from my village. It was the second such robbery in two months. The first had been a carjacking in which two merchants were robbed and murdered. It didn’t really worry me, but I’m sure it drove the embassy up the wall. I’m pretty sure my villagers would do everything they could to protect me and knowing that, I never doubted my safety in village for the one week I had.

I’ll be here in Niamey for the next month until I close my service in mid-December, so I’ll skip some of the details, but just say that my leaving party was great. I bought a sack of rice, a carton of pasta, and a goat, and we feasted. All my friends in my village and the surrounding villages stopped by to say goodbye. They knew I was leaving, but I couldn’t tell them that I would be leaving the very next day. Nigeriens hate to say goodbye, so it was probably better that way. Monday morning, I finished the last of my packing and made the rounds of my neighbors to tell them I was going out to the road to catch a car. Irkoy m’ir cabe cere (May God show us one another). Kala han fo (Until one day). Irkoy m’aran halessi (May God protect you).

By the time I had finished the small loop at my maigari’s house, there wasn’t a dry eye anywhere. The women covered themselves with their shawls and refused to make eye contact while I said goodbye. My best friends, both men and women, couldn’t bring themselves to walk out to the road with me. That was okay. I heard them crying; I understood. Even my village chief, a man who’s seen a lot and had to say a lot of goodbyes to loved ones in his 65 years, had that husky voice that usually means tears are close. It’s always hard to see an old man cry.

So much for not getting sentimental. Now I’m back in Niamey, working on a few institutional projects until I’m finished in Niger. I hope to use the next month to post a little bit more about my life here and the land that I’m leaving. I promise future entries won’t be as long as this one.