For the first week, we kept all of our teams in and around Niamey to make sure everything was working well.
When it rains in the desert, it pours, and when it rains in Niamey, parts of it turn into a lake (ie, the streets), making getting around fairly difficult at times! The other adventure that week was a riot we narrowly missed. The government was evicting a squatter neighborhhod that had grown up too close to a runway by the airport. We drove by as a crowd was assembling, the police were getting the tear gas cannisters out, and young men were coming up from the neighborhood throwing rocks, and I was so thsnkful to not get caught in it. Another of our vehicles wasn't so lucky - a rock crashed through one of the windows, hitting someone on the arm, but fortunately no one was seriously hurt.
I spent the week following the teams to make sure everything was going well, walking around the Niamey neighborhoods with them. Here are two of the surveyors ("enquetrices") beaming data to each other after mapping. Nigerien women are beautiful!
Some of the teams were very organized and brought lunch with them. In Niger, you can knock on the door of any house with your food and ask for a place to eat, and they will usher you into the living room, put out a platter, and bring water to wash hands. What hospitality! I really enjoyed eating out of the communal platter with the teams!
One of the teams clowning around during a rest between mapping and questionnaires - they had a great time together. While Niger is predominantly Muslim, it is fairly moderate, and there seemed to be a fair amount of freedom for women, evidenced by almost 50% women among our highly educated surveyors, and the relationships among team members. One aspect that I really appreciated about the predominance of Islam was the almost complete lack of come-ons. In Cameroon, I was used to propositions and/or proposals almost every day, and was pleasantly surprised that Nigerien men completely abstained from such behavior! Actually, when a Nigerian (you distinguish people from Nigeria by spelling the ending -ian vs -ien for Niger) guy was a little too forward, one of my teammates told him to back off. Very nice!
I loved walking around the neighborhoods and seeing daily life. While their is a little more freedom for women than in some less moderate Muslim countries, Nigerien women work hard!!! Even among small children, while the boys are out and about, the girls are at home working. This woman is pounding millet, the staple. Most work is done outside, under a tree if possible.
These women are cooking in a courtyard of a home. Household structure is so communal, making definitions of a household, and thus mapping, fairly complex. You could map American households fairly simply - a household per house. In Niger, you enter a complex with the greeting "Salam aleikum" - peace be with you - and never know how many households will be in that courtyard. A household is defined as a married man, his wife or wives, and the children, or a woman and her children if there is no man present. There are typically 3-8 rooms contructed around the edges of the walled cortyard. It may all be one household - the many wives of one man, or several - the grown sons and their wives as well as the original patriarch.
In one of the villages surrounding Niamey... this is a makeshift mosquito net (of fabric) hung over a bed in a typical woven hut. This is a straw mat over bamboo (both the walls and the bed). Think next time you complain about the leaks in your house or your uncomfortable bed! The surveyor is in the foreground with the protective "otterbox" around the PDA/GPS.
Drinking "boule" - a drink made from milk and ground millet from a traditional gourd bowl and spoon in the village chief's house. Did a lot of drinking various things and praying not to get sick. In the end, all I got was a cold from a team member. :)
I spent the week following the teams to make sure everything was going well, walking around the Niamey neighborhoods with them. Here are two of the surveyors ("enquetrices") beaming data to each other after mapping. Nigerien women are beautiful!
Some of the teams were very organized and brought lunch with them. In Niger, you can knock on the door of any house with your food and ask for a place to eat, and they will usher you into the living room, put out a platter, and bring water to wash hands. What hospitality! I really enjoyed eating out of the communal platter with the teams!
One of the teams clowning around during a rest between mapping and questionnaires - they had a great time together. While Niger is predominantly Muslim, it is fairly moderate, and there seemed to be a fair amount of freedom for women, evidenced by almost 50% women among our highly educated surveyors, and the relationships among team members. One aspect that I really appreciated about the predominance of Islam was the almost complete lack of come-ons. In Cameroon, I was used to propositions and/or proposals almost every day, and was pleasantly surprised that Nigerien men completely abstained from such behavior! Actually, when a Nigerian (you distinguish people from Nigeria by spelling the ending -ian vs -ien for Niger) guy was a little too forward, one of my teammates told him to back off. Very nice!
I loved walking around the neighborhoods and seeing daily life. While their is a little more freedom for women than in some less moderate Muslim countries, Nigerien women work hard!!! Even among small children, while the boys are out and about, the girls are at home working. This woman is pounding millet, the staple. Most work is done outside, under a tree if possible.
These women are cooking in a courtyard of a home. Household structure is so communal, making definitions of a household, and thus mapping, fairly complex. You could map American households fairly simply - a household per house. In Niger, you enter a complex with the greeting "Salam aleikum" - peace be with you - and never know how many households will be in that courtyard. A household is defined as a married man, his wife or wives, and the children, or a woman and her children if there is no man present. There are typically 3-8 rooms contructed around the edges of the walled cortyard. It may all be one household - the many wives of one man, or several - the grown sons and their wives as well as the original patriarch.
In one of the villages surrounding Niamey... this is a makeshift mosquito net (of fabric) hung over a bed in a typical woven hut. This is a straw mat over bamboo (both the walls and the bed). Think next time you complain about the leaks in your house or your uncomfortable bed! The surveyor is in the foreground with the protective "otterbox" around the PDA/GPS.
Drinking "boule" - a drink made from milk and ground millet from a traditional gourd bowl and spoon in the village chief's house. Did a lot of drinking various things and praying not to get sick. In the end, all I got was a cold from a team member. :)
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