Hippo Video

This is the baby hippo about 3 days after we got him- still had trouble with the stairs of his pool!

Hippo time!

Sorry for the long delay between posts- this time I have an excuse at least (well, not really). My computer is in the shop; after weeks of having it freeze up after 5 minutes of use, every time I turned it on, I decided it was time to take it in. Turns out it was packed with viruses.. you know its bad when the technician shames you for never running a virus update- I tried to explain that I would have, but that it's just so time consuming, but I just took the shame instead. I still dont have it back yet, he's putting a new antivirus on it- and updating it... and setting an automatic update... Anyway.

So life at the zoo is still jam-packed with action and I am usually pretty exhausted at the end of my work day (a good exhausted). I'm curently waiting for funding to come in for a shade hanger for the mule, working to repaint some of the animal information signs, trying to find some sort of rope swings for the new baboon cage, and still keeping up with daily things of collecting and feeding out the food donation from the hotel, chimp enritchment, baby-hippo feeding, and cage cleaning (I try to work in whoevers area that has the day off). If I have any extra time in my day, I'll take the mule out to graze in the big grassy area by the back gate.

While we had hoped that the baby hippo would have grasped the concept of drinking out of a bowl, or even a bottle for that mater, he still refuses. SO, every morning we prepare about 6 litres of milk; myself, the Vet, and at least 4 keepers jump in, the keepers get a net over him and the vet tubes him while I pass him syringe after syringe of milk- it wasnt so hard when he was a little baby, but now he's probably close to a 300 pound baby.. try restraining that. Its all worth it though when he nuzzles his cute little face on your leg. Awwww! Who wouldnt want a baby hippo?? By the way, his name is Dien Bouban- 'Dien' meaning 'son of' and 'Bouban' being the village he came from.

Ok, moving on from the baby hippo. One story from my day. So, this morning I was hosing down the chimp/ monkey area, which neither of the chimps appreciate much. Well, today, unfortunately for me, Bebe had somehow gotten ahold of a massive branch and thought it was a great game to shake it at me and watch me retreat at top speed. After about 5 minutes of this I gave it up as a bad job deciding I'd rather not have to go to the PC med office for concussion caused by 'chimp with a stick'. (that would have been an even better story though...) Then I moved on to the monkey cage where chewy, a little vervet monkey, caught me off guard and pulled out a handful of my hair. Maybe it wasn't such a great day.

Hot season may just be over(knock on wood)- last night we had a huge rain storm with impressive thunder and lightning that continued into a drizzly day today. I think the temperature said 29 C when I got up (about 85 F?) ahhh. bliss. After 5 summers in the northwoods of wisconsin I thought I'd seen my share of impressive storms, but the storms here are amazing! Aside from the high winds, heavy downpour, and briliant thunder and lightning, storms are usually preceded by huge sand storms- it's harder to tell here in the city, but back in the bush it literally looked like a wall of sand rushing in. I just hope the rains start comming to the rest of Niger. With the draught and famine situation all throughout Niger, I talk to my village often and it sounds like my village is doing better than other areas- they all asure me that the new grain bank is helping immensely- so thank you everybody again for donating! Though I do love my new job here, I sometimes wish I could be back at my village helping with the grain bank and seeing its progression. Oh well, c'est la vie!

One more thing- in about 2 weeks I'll have officially been here for 20 months- meaning I'll have technically 6 months left of my service! I can't believe how fast time flies!

Baby Hippo and a Lion Autopsy; just life at the zoo :)

Whew what a week.

First off, if I may, I'd just like to say it is rediculously hot here. I think since the last time I wrote it's been at least 115 degrees each day (some days up past 120 F) and rarely falling below 95, the one exception was after a nice 'mango rain' we had (the good things about Niamey) it cooled the place down considerably- we're talking 105 during the day and even down to 85 at night for a couple blissful days. For the most part, I think it doesnt get any hotter here than in the bush of my last village, but it did cool down at night there to a comfortable sleeping temperature, whereas here, it never really cools down enough to stop sweating. Dont worry. I have it all worked out- I sleep in the back yard on a cot, and I've strung an extension cord out the window so that I can have my big stand fan (best thing Ive ever baught for mysef) blowing on me all night.. Ok, moving on.

So apart from the heat, it's been a good, though busy past couple weeks. Last week the Musee hosted an Artisianal Festival- we had artisans come from Burkina Faso and around, as well as bands and dance groups from both Niger and Burkina perfrorming during the day and at a big concert at night. I got some great video of the dance group that hopefully I can attach, but we'll see. The only obligation I had toward the festival, because it was artisian related and not zoo related, was giving tours saturday of the zoo, which was fun.

Few days after that, we got more big news: Up the river at a little fishing village the villagers had killed a large hippo that was ruining their fishing and causing problems- made me a little angry, but, the point is, they discovered the hippo had a baby who was still nursing, so the musee agreed to take him in. We just got him a few days ago and we're still working on getting him to drink milk from a bowl. He's about the size of a really large dog, which makes me just want to climb in with him and give him a big hug (dont worry, I'm kidding... sort of.. but seriously.). To make room for the new hippo, we moved our male hippo in with one of our females- personally I think 4 hippos is plenty... but who knows what'll happen.

A bit after the news of the new hippo was more drama. Our oldest lioness, Fati, got beat on by the male in the pride during feeding time. She was isolated and watched closely, but with the beating she took combined with her age, she didnt get up for a day and a half. That afternoon myself and the lion keeper were watching her when we finally both looked at each other and realized she was dead. After the initial sadness of the situation, I was excited that I would get to watch her autopsy. So the next morning behind the lion house, I got to observe as the vet took a sample of each of her organs for testing. Its times like these how disticly different Niger is and made me smile. Like, trying to get the eyeball out, two different people had their fingers shoved up the eye socket arguing about how to get it out, or, when the vet asked where the paws were- "they're inside"... "all four of them?" "no, just two.." "Two?? Where's the other two??" "Well, so-and-so took them because he wanted them..." and then after it was all over the Musee workers hovering and cutting themselves a bit of lion meat/fat/intestines/anything else.

Ok, last but not least, part of my big week- yesterday was May day and the big workers holiday! So, who knew, but here in Niamey they had a parade!! and I got to be in it! Basically every work organization/company got together in a matching pagnae outfit with their business logos and had banners and 'floats'. Yes, there were even 'floats'. The musee's float was a pickup truck with a hyena in a cage, and on top of that, a Jackal in a cage, and a crocodile in a cage. Then we all walked or rode in the truck. Besides our own float of course, I have to say I did enjoy the float that was a pickup truck with a operating table in the back, with someone laying on it, and a few people dressed up as doctors.. It was a lot of fun to be part of the parade and see all the other people representing their work.

On Safari: A few days in Parc W

It's been so long since I've posted- I'm really sorry!! I have quite a bit to write, so prepare for a long one..

Yesterday we got back from our mini vacation (about 3 days) from Parc W... thats right, on safari. :) The parc is spread though Burkina, Benin, and Niger and named for the 'W' bend in the Niger river running through it. Though it was hot season, it was still gorgeous and a huge change from the sahelien landscape of up in Tahoua region or really anywhere further north, but from what we heard, this was the time to go, because the animals tend to gather around the diminishing water holes during the hot days. Anyway- so it was just three of us volunteers- myself, Maeghan, and Nathen who went, along with Hadji Moussa, or good friend, regional PA/driver for peace corps. It was a lot of fun to say the least (not to mention my first safari!!); we rented a car, drove down and stayed a couple nights in a great campsite by the river. Our guide, Ishmael, was really nice and also spoke Hausa, so the two days were spent driving through the trails of the parc spotting warthogs, red monkeys, green monkeys, baboons, antalope, buffalo, gazzelle, and... ELEPHANTS! Oh, we also saw numerous colorful birds.. the guide was great- every antelope, monkey, and bird we saw he could tell at a glance what species it was, whether it was male or female, etc, not just in French, but also in Hausa and even sometimes in English.

Anyway, so a little Hausa wildlife language lesson: Warthog= Giado, Monkey= Biri, Elephant= Giwa, Lion (which we werent lucky enough to see)= Zaki, Antelope= Barewa, Hippo= Dorina, Hyena= Kura, Crocodile= Kada, and Birds= Tsuntsu. Study hard. I will test you all when I get home.

I think my favorite part of the trip was easily the Elephant spotting- they're so big and beutiful and we got to watch them from pretty close. When I got back to the Musee a couple of the workers asked why I didn't bring one home- I told them I tried, but it when the parc people saw it in the car the refused and I had to leave it. :)

The Musee has been great- Rose, the other volunteer, has officially, as of a week and a half, completed her service and now I'm all alone at the Musee. No, it's really been great- I've tried to put in at least 5-7 work hours each day, and I'm enjoying the task of setting my own goals and creating my own projects. Things I've been working on as of late: The new baboon cage is nearly finished, so I've been working to furnish their cement cages with tree limbs, and reliable waterdishes- it's been a huge problem in the old cage- what they did was make a cement hole in the ground for water, which over the years cracks, water empties in about 10 minutes, and then he's left without for hours. Problem is, can't open the door to put in a new waterdish, so the poor baboon has to live with it. Right now I have a hampster-style waterer hooked to the outside, but it too rusts quickly, leaks, and will soon break. So, to solve the problem in the next cage (which they again put in cement holes for the water) I have some nice stainless steel water bowls to install. Wow, that was really interesting.. a whole paragraph on baboon waterers. Sorry. Anyway, I've also been working each day on a project started be the last volunteer, where the local hotel donates all their fruit and veggie peels/ meat scraps, etc., so each day a take a couple hours to collect it and feed it out to all the monkeys, warthogs and porcipines. I'm still working with the mule, just to get him out of his small inclosure to graze and use his legs- maybe someday to do pony rides, but I'm not sure, his hind legs are in pretty bad shape and his joints have lost a lot of movement probably due to arthritis. Anyway, I am also hoping to put together a brochure for the musee to help with tourism, and maybe eventually a website, and lastly, working to update all the animals information signs- a lot of them have worn off and you cant read the information anymore.

Ok. Moving on. A few of us went to a Niger vrs. Nigeria football game a couple weeks back- exciting!!! This was the first Niger game I'd been to- neirly everyone I talked to said that Niger never wins, blah blah... BUT, the game was great, and a lot of fun, and... WE WON! 2:0! It was a good day. Rose and I got all dressed up in our Niger jersies and face paint, hair bling, and then danced in the cheering section- all the cheer-songs were in hausa! My favorite one was at the end we sang, 'Nigeria, sai wata rana! or, 'Nigeria until another day'. Also, some of the people I work with said they saw me on TV.. "Balkissa! I saw you on TV! You were doing this (jumping up and down with cheering-arms motion)!"... great.

Ok, one last thing, one of the Jackals at the Musee, Wylee just had pups!! There are two of them- really cute. I'll let you know their names in a week. (Nigerien tradition you know :))

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.)