A Trip to Remember

I have to give a little bit of time to one of the best/worst things about service in Niger: malaria medication. There are three types for PCVs in Niger: malarone, doxy, and Mefloquine. The most effective, and thus the one used by most PCVs, also has the most interesting side effects. This post is the Mefloquine nightmare, I hope you enjoy.

I could talk a little bit about my cluster curse, a legendary series of bad luck events that have hit my cluster and resulted in my near-total isolation in Niger for most of my service. For those of you who don't know, Volunteers are posted in clusters within a few kilometers of one another to assist in work and support in a foreign land. My cluster has unfortunately been decimated by a rash of bad luck: early terminations, medical evacuations, problems with village posts, and the occasional "wack-evac," a medical separation based on mental health issues. As a result, for most of my service, my closest neighbors have been 30k away or, when they're gone 120k, a five hour odyssey to the capital Niamey. With the new stage swearing in this week, I'm finally getting new neighbors, and I will no longer be one of the most isolated Volunteers in country.

Unfortunately, the cluster curse nearly hit again. I have two new neighbors, and one of them was accidently dosed with Mefloquine. She spent a horrifying week unable to sleep for three days. To give some kind of reference, Mefloquine is an anti-malarial prophylaxis that causes strange dreams among everyone that takes it, some rare cases of extreme anxiety, and has been known to make everyone a bit crazy at time. We take it once a week, and my new neighbor, Annette, took four at once, and managed to keep them down. Everyone in Niger was horrified to hear about a four pill dose of Mefloquine. The only thing it could be compared to was a mythical story about a stagere who was given weekly Mefloquine instead of daily Doxy and took it for 12 days in a row before he had to be medically separated and sent home for psychiatric treatment. Now, just to clarify, I don't know if this story is true, but it's one of the great legends of Peace Corps Niger.

The best/worst part of this drug is the intense, vivid, long dreams it gives you. While on Mefloquine, I can remember a few dreams, the weirdest of which I'll share. I remember I was at a book signing with my college professor Jim Fisher. It was a book I had written, and he asked me, "Well what do you think about all the Jews?" I looked around and saw a lot of rabbis in different technicolor outfits. Instead of black robes, hats, and shawls, they were wearing a variety of reds, oranges, blues, and greens. For some reason, that I still cannot explain and probably will never be able to, there was a phone that wouldn't stop ringing. I didn't want to answer it because it was in the toilet. Not just in the bathroom, but in the toilet.

In another, I remember thinking that I wanted to steal some green peppers growing in an orchard. In the dream, these peppers were the size of my head and grew from palm/bamboo type trees. It took me about eight waking hours before I remembered that peppers don't grow on trees.

The latest dream that I can remember was my father visiting Niger. My father has been in a wheelchair since he was a kid, so the sand in Niger would usually present a problem for him, but he had an all-terrain wheelchair with some strange independent axle system, which enabled him to roll over rocky terrain like a moon rover. He kept explaining how to kill a goat (this was right around Tabaski) and kept impressing upon me how important it was to do it right. Then he ran me over with his all-terrain wheelchair.

This is only a small sampling, and these kind of dreams are the fun ones. They're not always like that, however. I accidentally dosed myself with two Mefloquine one horrifying day in mid-September. I didn't have a problem sleeping, in fact, it was more of a problem waking up. I took a nap, and I remember waking up and texting my friend Rose from my house in Niger. Then I woke up. My phone was across the room. Then I woke up. My cat was sleeping on my chest. Then I woke up. My cat was sleeping in a corner across the room. Then I woke up. It repeated like this for hours and hours: dreams that were not different from reality and were, in fact, dreams within dreams within dreams. It lasted for three days total, during which time I almost called our medical officer because I could not differentiate dream from reality. The only reason I didn't is because I wasn't sure if I would actually call him, or call him only in a dream. Luckily, this horror show only last three days. Any longer and I would have gone home and checked myself into a mental ward. Schizophrenia and terror for all!

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.