I’ve been in Niger now since Sunday afternoon. I built sufficient buzz amongst my little zeitgeist that people are asking me, “what’s it like to be back?” That’s a good question, I’m glad you asked.
It’s awesome, really. It’s good to be here, slowly getting into being here, getting to know the field office I’m supporting from HQ. I kind of wish I knew more people here so I could hang out a little bit more, get out to the Grand Marche, etc. I’ve got a whole list of things I want to buy while I’m here… I’ve actually been working a lot.
The sounds are still there – the fast Hausa or Zarma, the revving motos, occasional prayer calls or African music. Chaotic traffic. Dust. Some heat, although not nearly as bad as it could be, and to be honest, after a DC summer I’m loving the “dry heat.”
Because of the AQIM kidnapping 7 people, including 5 French, 1 Togolese and 1 Malagasy, France sent what seems like a garrison of soldiers here, and a handful of them were staying at my hotel. I don’t want to get beat up by any French soldier that I could offend, but man if they don’t look silly in their short shorts. They’re all decked out but with these 1980, daisy-duke camo shorts. They almost look like they’ll break into a boy-band dance at any time. But I digress…
The Niger River is really high, almost to touching the bottom of the bridge. So I feel awful for the farmers and fisherman’s families whose campements next to the river have been washed away.
I’ve had Tele Sahel on for about an hour now while I’ve been online, and I’ve actually been very pleasantly surprised by all the industry that seems to have developed in Niger. When I was here before, I remember the milk company and maybe the pagne company. Now they’ve got lots of nice looking, Nigerien businesses advertised on TV (bottled water, various grocery stores, long-haul passenger bus systems, pesticides, hadj tour companies) which means they’re successful enough to pay for advertising, which is saying something here.
The other cool thing about Nigerien TV is they seem to broadcast a lot in Hausa and Zarma, in addition to French – in fact, most of the commercials are in either Hausa or Zarma.
As for the politics – all indications in my purview make it seem like the current military government is interested in helping regular Nigeriens. My NGO colleagues say that the last Tandja regime was very anti-NGO and restrictive of many kinds of project, especially food-for-work.
A representative from Zain Mobile communications came and gave us an interesting presentation on using mobile phones to make cash transfers to rural beneficiaries. We like this a lot and hope to integrate this – there are so many development advantages to this that it’s worth helping Zain enrich themselves and increase their customer base. It promotes literacy and numeracy, the phones can be used for long term monitoring and evaluation, it does all the other proven things that cell phones have been linked to – such as what I’ve mentioned and other things like flattening commodity price fluctuations.
So, I’ll be more on my own with the local staff the rest of my time here, my M&E colleague Mamadou is heading up north for an assessment for the next 6 days. Hopefully I can get some stuff done and leave the program in better shape than I’m finding it, which is not all that bad.
Alheri.
Vox Souley 