Sunday, May 17, 2009

Rain! Work! Cat! Ghana?

Well, its been about a week or so since the last post, so its about time to write again I guess...
This past week has been extremely hot, but with not one, but two suprising middle-of-night rain showers in my village! The sound and smell of rain is probably almost as exciting as.. well, I dont know, its just really exciting. The first night it rained, I wasn't prepared ("one month til the time of 'sky water'"-'sai wata guda, akwai lokacin ruwan suma'- thats what my villagers kept telling me) so, that night at first I was really excited sleeping under my woven-grass shade hangar, when I felt the first rain drops.. about 45 minutes into the storm I was soaked through and freezing (I didnt know it was possible to be 'freezing' in 93 degrees..), so needless to say, the next chance I got I went to my market town and bought a large roll of plastic, and waterproofed my shade hangar. The second time it rained it was bliss....
So a small piece of big news, I got a cat! Yes, I am alergic, but I got him anyway; he was sitting at this little cafe stand near the peace corps hostel and I just asked, can I have your cat? and they said yes.. So I put him in a box and traveled the 3 1/2 ish hours to my village.. Its a kitten, so its still really whinney and obnoxious and drives me a bit crazy, but suprisingly, he's growing on me :) Still no name for the thing, so send ideas my way.
WORK! Finally, I feel like I have stuff to do! Right now Im in Konni buying seeds for my big field project Im planning... Well, actually I wasnt really planning it per say, it just kinda fell into my lap. So, I was talking to my women's group leader in my village, and I asked, so, can i help you with your field this season? Learn the ropes, figure out how to do it, so that next year I can do my own field project? She was like, sure! That'd be great! So, then a few days later I was talking to her again, so what are we going to plant? Well, we're planting millet, beans, and peanuts... ummm... how big is this field? Oh, we have two of them... What?? oh... so you have the seeds? Oh, no- you should go buy them. Oh...
So instead of this just being a learning experience, I'm going to work with one of the agriculture programs here that does improved crops and seed varieties- I'll plant some of their 'improved seeds' and work with them on data collection to help them create better seed varieties with higher yield. So, trail by fire.. it'll either turn out great, and it'll be a nice demo plot for my villagers to see an imroved seed variety, as well as improved techniques (chemical fertalizers, etc), or, the test-'improved' seeds could turn out to produce less yield than the local variety and my villagers can just enjoy watching the 'batura' (white girl) working in the field. Anyway.
Other than that, not much new to share! Its been hot, sweaty, and it seems neirly everyone (volunteers) is escaping off to Ghana to spend a couple weeks on the beach. I was going to wait on a vacation and buy a horse now, but, as my villagers have pointed out, horse feed will be pretty expensive right now until harvest season-- so I might jump on the band wagon and head to Ghana sometime in August and buy the horse, instead, coming October, harvest season.. which seems so long away, but I've already waited 7 months, I spose I could wait a few more! And, with a trip to Ghana, maybe coinciding with the time of the Harry Potter 6 reliese of course, the wait wo'nt be too bad!

1 comment:

NIGER1.COM said...

I am so glad to rread about someone who is from where i am from Konni , Niger
from my new York City living room every time you update your blog I get Konni news wow
amazin

and I believe the cyber cafe in Konni you use is my cousin one when you go there ask him if he know Moussa Oubandawaki from Konni well I am also the webmaster for a website that give Niger news go on www.niger1.com