Jodi and I arrived in Niamey at night on August 29th and managed to get ourselves to our hotel, the Gaweye Hotel. Gaweye is in the middle of this picture, right behind the bridge over the Niger River, seen from the balcony of the Grand Hotel, which is a terrific place to have brochettes and Coke and watch the sunset over the river. 
The project we went to Niger to do was a PDA based, GPS assisted survey. Earlier this year, Niger, with the help of the International Federation of the Red Cross, distributed long-lasting insecticide impregnated mosquito nets in conjunction with a polio vaccination campaign. An initial survey was done, then during the dry season, to evaluate the coverage of the campaign, which was fairly good, and the net usage, which was dismal. This second nationwide survey evaluated the retention and use of nets during the middle of rainy season, the peak of malaria transmission. There are 7 regions in Niger, plus the capital. In each, two departments were randomly selected, and in each department, 10 villages were randomly selected, with probabilities based on census data. The survey questionnaire was to be programmed into PDAs equipped with GPS units. This allowed our teams to map each selected village using the GPS units, and then to select at random 16 households in each village to survey. 
Jodi and I spent most of the first week getting the PDAs ready for the survey. Jodi was the expert in this department, and I had no idea how much work it took! I quickly learned the basics of programming the questionnaires into the PDAs using Visual CE software, but so many of the steps were a black box to me! The above picture is me attempting to program in Visual CE. They sell wonderful fresh roasted peanuts in whiskey bottles, so there is a whiskey bottle of peanuts sitting next to me for sustenance!
The World Bank has recently decided that Niger is the poorest country in the world, with an average per capita income of $200 per year. That draws the presence of essentially every NGO known to man. In Niamey, which is the quietest, most laid back, and safest African capital I have been in, NGO offices outnumber government offices, and the street is full of NGO vehicles - white land cruisers and pick ups. There are a large number of expats living in Niamey. This in turn fuels the development of an alternate economy targeted at expats. So....Niamey is quite a foodie town! During the three weeks I was in Niamey, I ate wonderful un-Americanized Chinese, delicious thin crust oven baked pizza, Italian, Lebanese, French, Senegalese.....For lunch, we would eat local "street" food - grilled meat, fried cakes, rice and beans, sauce over couscous, rice, etc, but would usually go out at night. As the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) was one of our partners, we went out with them several times, as in the above picture at a Lebanese restaurant. They were a terrific, very international bunch, and opened my eyes to the various opportunities other than academia and CDC. :)
So yes, this is sort of artificial... The Fulani (Fulbe/Fulfulde/Peul - depending on how you know them), stage spectacular celerations of male beauty called Geerewol in which they paint their faces, dress in eleborate costumes, and dance for the appreciation of their female audience. This was a performance put on for a conference at the hotel, but Jodi and I got our pictures taken with one of the dancers.
Sunset over the Niger River. I took far too many landscape pictures in Niger and will spare you most of them, but couldn't help myself to show you a few of them. Niger may be poor, but it's also a country of stark but spectacular beauty and very hospitable, kind people who were mostly an absolute delight to work with.
The first morning, we headed down to the market to get SIM cards for our phones. We had the guy put them in, and the phones didn't work. So, he took us to his boss, and he fiddled around for awhile and decided it was beyond him. Then he took us to the Celtel office, who did the same, and then decided we needed Kada. So, we were then walked to the Grand Hotel, where a technician named Kada is employed. Kada is a Nigerien, and is one of these brilliant "fixers". He turned Jodi's triband phone into a quadband phone for $10 in 5 minutes in his office, but mine needed unlocking. That evening, our original salesman came with us in a taxi to the other side of Niamey to Kada's home/office, a small room full electronics and motherboards in various states of undress. My phone worked perfectly from then on. Several days later, when Jodi's external hard drive froze with all her necessary programs on it, we took it to him. Had he ever worked with an external hard drive? His eyes lit up - he had heard of them, but not gotten to work on one. Since it was broken anyway, he agreed to give it a try. The next morning, it was running perfectly! There are people in every country who are "fixers" - problem solvers and solution finders, and I love finding them! In the US, those repairs would have been impossible or cost more than the original machine, but interesting how in a country like Niger, anything becomes fixable in the right hands.
Here is Jodi with one of the two trunks full of PDAs we lugged with us!
Jodi and I spent most of the first week getting the PDAs ready for the survey. Jodi was the expert in this department, and I had no idea how much work it took! I quickly learned the basics of programming the questionnaires into the PDAs using Visual CE software, but so many of the steps were a black box to me! The above picture is me attempting to program in Visual CE. They sell wonderful fresh roasted peanuts in whiskey bottles, so there is a whiskey bottle of peanuts sitting next to me for sustenance!The World Bank has recently decided that Niger is the poorest country in the world, with an average per capita income of $200 per year. That draws the presence of essentially every NGO known to man. In Niamey, which is the quietest, most laid back, and safest African capital I have been in, NGO offices outnumber government offices, and the street is full of NGO vehicles - white land cruisers and pick ups. There are a large number of expats living in Niamey. This in turn fuels the development of an alternate economy targeted at expats. So....Niamey is quite a foodie town! During the three weeks I was in Niamey, I ate wonderful un-Americanized Chinese, delicious thin crust oven baked pizza, Italian, Lebanese, French, Senegalese.....For lunch, we would eat local "street" food - grilled meat, fried cakes, rice and beans, sauce over couscous, rice, etc, but would usually go out at night. As the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) was one of our partners, we went out with them several times, as in the above picture at a Lebanese restaurant. They were a terrific, very international bunch, and opened my eyes to the various opportunities other than academia and CDC. :)
So yes, this is sort of artificial... The Fulani (Fulbe/Fulfulde/Peul - depending on how you know them), stage spectacular celerations of male beauty called Geerewol in which they paint their faces, dress in eleborate costumes, and dance for the appreciation of their female audience. This was a performance put on for a conference at the hotel, but Jodi and I got our pictures taken with one of the dancers.Sunset over the Niger River. I took far too many landscape pictures in Niger and will spare you most of them, but couldn't help myself to show you a few of them. Niger may be poor, but it's also a country of stark but spectacular beauty and very hospitable, kind people who were mostly an absolute delight to work with.
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