Traditional Medicine Anyone?

Though I just posted less than a week ago, it's been a great couple of days and I couldn't help but share.

This weekend I got a huge suprise- I got a call from one of my villagers back from my old post saying he and another of my villagers had come to Niamey just to visit me! To give you an idea, this is at least two days of traveling and a bit expensive for 'bush-people'; I was really flattered and excited that they would come all this way to see me.

So we had a really nice visit, and I asked them if they'd like to come to the Musee and I could give them a tour. Neither of them had ever been to a zoo before or seen any of the animals in it so they were both really excited (and I was excited too). So, the tour is going great, I loved giving it in Hausa, and we actually attracted a bit of a croud- I think a lot of bush people come and just wander around because they can't speak french or cant read the information signs, so when people heard me explaining things in Hausa, we had about 10 people latch on to the tour.

Every animal we saw got a 'wah!! Wayyo Allah! or Allah Ya Sarki!!'... So just for the satisfaction of hearing my villagers 'oohs and aahs' I would jump behind the railing and pet the hyenas or feed the hippos.. it was great... then we got to the lions.

So. I need to first give a little information. Lions, here in West Africa, apparently have some 'medicinal' purposes (I guess I should say traditional medicinal purposes).. People, especially from the bush, feel that lion urine and lion crap make great little home remedies. I've asked several times what exactly lion urine cures, and as far as I've been told, just about everything. I think the translation I got was 'it makes your body strong'...

Anyway. So we get to the lions. My villagers suddenly get more excited than I've seen them throughout this whole tour. I get ready to wow them with some lion knowledge, when they turn to me excitedly, 'Balkissa, can you get us some poop??!!' (shot down.) I was like, oh... uh, maybe.. I mean, Im not sticking my hand in the cage to pull out lion poo-balls, but I find one of the keepers of the area, one of my friends, and ask him. Apparently he does this all the time, so he's like no problem, puts it in a baggie and I give it to my villagers. Oh no.. thats not all. Now we want the urine. My friend, the keeper, is kinda an interesting guy himself.. we joke and call him 'owner of the bush' or 'savage' because he's often seen behind the monkey cages cooking up a couple of hedgehogs (one day he had caught a cat and skinned and roasted it!). So he happily sits down with my villagers, they're drinking tea and talking about medicinal uses of cat crap, it's the heat of the day (around 110 degrees) and I'm sitting there listening to all this and wondering, why me? Anyway, through about 40 minutes of serious bargaining (my name being thrown in every now and again as "we're friends of Balkissa! Lower the price!"), they finally fork over some money and we walk away with a bag of poop, and a soda bottle of cat urine.

I'm not in a great mood at this point (sunburnt and dehydrated) but I continue the tour and as we near the end, one asks, 'uh, Balkissa, can we get some crocodile poop?'... They left the musee that day happily with their little bags of crap. (literally.)

Sorry this is a long post, but wait, theres more. Part Two: An Afternoon on the Niger River!

Ok, so this same day (it was a long day) The Hippo/Crocodile keeper had invited Rose and I to come down to his house by the river and he'd take us out on the river in his boat (called a Kalo-Kalo, a traditional wood Songhai boat, I can't remember what we'd call them in English). It was possibly one of my favorite afternoons in Niamey. We went out on the river, he paddled us upstream for a while (of course we were wearing life jackets, peace corps.) and gave us a riverside tour of the city- it was amazing how different it all looked from on the water. I also loved the cool humidity of the water and surrounding swampy areas- all being used for gardens and rice crops. It was so beutiful and so different than Hausa land I am used to. Women washing clothes, kids splashing and laughing, men in their boats throwing huge fishing nets; it was pretty awesome. Oh, so we hear this deep cry in the distance, and sure enough, there's two hippos swimming in the river!! We didn't get too close of course, but you could just see their heads poking out of the water.

After we got back on shore, we watched his friend fish from shore with a net, and then he gave us a tour of his family's gardens. Everything, lettuce, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, mint leaves, peppers, not to mention mango, papaya, and guava trees. The hospitality in this country is really wonderful and we then went back to his house where his wife cooked us dinner and we drank traditional tea. First time- she fried these fish for us, small enough that you just eat the whole thing, break off piece by piece. They were really good, save the head, which involved a poping and squishing of fishy gooeyness squirting in your mouth as the eyes and vessles burst.. But a good experience :)

Anyway. My adventures of the last couple days!

Its a hippo!!! (no seriously, it is.)