Miss Meraleen, I Presume?

My Blog About Peace Corps Service in Niger

Disclaimer: The views and opinions reflected throughout this site are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Let the Development Begin

Sorry, no pictures for this one. But it’s really short so bear with me.

Three weeks back in Niger now. Feels like much more. The vacation over, Christmas is reduced to a glorious dream that I, quite inevitably, have woken up from. Still, it is good to be back in Niger. After four months apart, the people in my stage have come together at Hamdallaye once more for In-Service Training (IST). Over the past three weeks we have furthered our technical knowledge of our sector and been updated in the paperwork aspect of being a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). This means that we have learned how to do quarterly reporting on our work, tracking how many people are affected and actually benefit from what we do here. We have also learned how to write project proposals and apply for funding.

Tomorrow is the last day of IST, and I am scheduled to go back to Sagafondo on Sunday. Even though I went back a couple times since Christmas, I feel like I’ve been away from my village and my cat for too long. I’m so excited to go back and resume my routines of work, exercise and community involvement. Now I also have the tools to do ‘real’ work in that I can officially apply for funding to conduct anything from womens’ groups trainings to building infrastructure. Many funding sources have deadlines in March so stay tuned for a grant-writing sprint!

As I said, our entire group, or what’s left of it has come together again. (31 out of 48 initial trainees remain.) Next time we come together like this will be 1.5 years from now for Close of Service (COS) Conference. Crazy. Looking at it right now, September 2010 seems sooo long away but I know that time will fly, especially once I get busy with projects. YAY work!

Friday, January 2, 2009

A Travel Dream

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone. I wish you a joyous year filled with laughter, good fortune and rewarding family and work relations. (In that order of importance)

As for myself, I spent this turn of the year in the most peculiar way. I missed my original flight from New York back to Africa, which forced me to spend all of New Year's Eve at the Casablanca airport. The captain on the flight crew apparently decided to take a siesta up until the actual time of departure, and, consequentially, the flight to Niamey took off at at five minutes to midnight. For the first time in my life I got to celebrate the countdown to a new year while on board an airplane rapidly ascending upward. Quite peculiar indeed. The good news is that, being so close to a major holiday, both flights on the return trip were completely empty and I had plenty of room to spread out and even sleep some!

But, let me back up some and share with you the amazing vacation I just enjoyed in the United States of America. I arrived in the evening of Thursday, December 18 and was absolutely ecstatic to embrace Ryan at Boston Logan airport. I kept asking him "is that really you?" "I can't believe it". An absolute dream to see him again. The dream-theme was to continue throughout the next ten days.

As you can probably imagine it was a little bit of a climate shock going from the Sahara Desert to Boston but I had planned ahead and so the first stop after the airport was to my uncle’s house, where I’m storing several boxes of winter clothes (and other random crap from college). I still needed to get a coat and shoes so the following day, I met up with future architect and friend Maggie, and dragged her around while I completed the first of many shopping trips. Before meeting up for lunch with Ryan, I treated myself to the most luxurious of all Western indulgences and completely unheard of in Niger . . . a manicure!

Nails painted and winter coat on, I was fit for fight, so Ryan and I set off for Buffalo and Niagra falls Friday afternoon. We got as far as Worcester (30 miles outside of Boston). At this time the Great Weather Battle of 2008 began, as the dusty snowflakes slowly turned into heave blobs of mush eventually swallowed the road and everything around it. Conceding the first victory to Weather, we stopped at a hotel room to wait out the storm. Turned out that Weather hadn't got the last word after all because I was able to enjoy two wonderful things that had been denied to me for the past 5 months: McDonalds food and a hot bath! Never has a Big Mac tasted so good or the hot water in a hot tub felt so soothing. Reward always comes to those who are patient and sure enough, towards midnight the snowstorm finally passed and at 3am we set out to catch up on travel time what we’d missed the day before. It didn't even matter that it took us a full hour to dig out the car that Weather had tried to hide from us. 600 miles and 14 hours later we finally arrive at Caesars Hotel in Windsor, Canada. All those trips to Las Vegas last spring paid off since we had glorious room with a view of the Detroit River, all for free!




View from our Caesar's hotelroom



Over the next 24 hours we enjoyed a super fancy steak dinner, played in a poker tournament and stuffed ourselves at the enormous buffet, all paid for by blackjack winnings. In the end we still walked away with enough money to cover my plane ticket to America and the gas money. Isn’t it great when you can have a wonderful vacation, on someone else's tab? In our case we extend our thanks to Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.

On Sunday the 21st, we began the drive down to Ohio and were warped into a second battle with Weather. This time it was the Wind of the Midwest that decided to flex its strength. At times it was so strong that it almost swooshed the car right off the road. Luckily, we prevailed, and, several hours later, we arrived safely in Miamisburg, Ohio where we were to stay over the Christmas holidays. Even though the adventure over the past days had been amazing, it was nice to stay in one place for more than 12 hours. I did a bunch of shopping at Wal-Mart, ate ice cream in large quantities and played a ton of games. In short, I did everything that belongs to Christmas, and more!! I was sad not to be with my family in Sweden but the joy of being out of Africa was even greater. It’s really hard to find the Christmas spirit in Africa, when it’s sunny every day, sand everywhere and most people have never heard the word ‘Christmas’ before in their life.

While in Ohio we fought another couple of battles with Weather. We got soaking wet in a rain storm one day, just to fall on our bums the next day when all that rain had turned to ice. I daresay though that despite these harsh encounters, we came out on top! No broken bones, vehicle accidents or even the slightest bruise! Who said weather couldn't be tamed?

On Saturday the 27th, we began our trip back east arriving in New York City on Sunday. There we met up with my best friend in the whole wide world, who also happens to be named Maria. Her family always celebrates the holidays in the Big Apple, and it was quite wonderful how it worked out since this meant I got a day and a half to catch up one everything’s that’s been happening. Just writing letters, no matter how long you make them, doesn’t quite cut it. On Sunday night, Ryan and I got one last night together since Maria and her parents had plans. As we are walking back from the TKTS booth, deciding that a three hour wait in line was not how we wanted to spend that evening, I grabbed a brochure from a guy handing them out and gasp. "It's Cirque du Soleil!" My favorite entertainment troupe was performing right there in New York -- the limited time winter-only show "Wintuk." Ryan and I both agree that this is too good of an opportunity to give up and so a couple hours later we find ourselves at Madison Squre Garden, elbowing our way to the box office passing through crowds of people, all here to see, not circus, but wrestling! Now Ryan and I have been to Cirque du Soleil probably 10 or 12 times and wrestling a total of 0. It didn't matter. Despite both groups dressing in leotards and putting on a physical performance, we enjoy the acrobats doing flips landing on their feet so much more than wrestlers doing basically the same thing (but landing on their backs). The face painted acrobats of Cirque du Soleil did not disappoint. Wintuk is, just like the other shows a fantastical adventure

And so Monday rolled around and Ryan headed back to Boston, leaving me to spend some quality time with Maria (even though it did contain a bunch of me dragging her around on last minute errands. Sorry about that Maria!)

They say all good things must come to an end. And so, it was with a sad heart but reluctant acceptance that I made my way to JFK airport Monday night, expecting to begin the journey back to Niger. Turns out that what they say isn't always true.

I don't know if Weather finally got a chance at revenge or if it was just bad fortune but for some reason there was an unusually large number of car accidents on the road out to JFK airport and so traffic was at a standstill. No surprise, I miss my flight to Casablanca and get rebooked for the subsequent flight -- 24 hours later! Having no clue how to kill a full day/night cycle, I did what I so often do in times of crisis: I called Ryan. Within five minutes of hearing my dilemma, he booked me a flight to Boston that very night and consequentially I got to spend (a second) last night with the love of my life, amazing in that it was so totally unexpected. Tuesday afternoon I fly back to JFK and do end up getting on the flight that takes me to Casablanca. From there you know what happened.

And so I complete my recount of an absolute magical trip. Thank you to everyone who made it happen. You know who you are ;)




Two little red elves with Grandpa Len