The Holiday Season

Once again I've fallen into bloggy laziness and haven't posted much lately. Here's the Cliffs Notes version of the past few weeks of my life.

After a long process of deliberating, browsing, and bargaining, I bought a car a couple weeks ago. Dealing with the paperwork, bureaucracy, and some of the personalities involved in this process was (and continues to be) frustrating, but the car gives me a lot more freedom and has so far been well worth the effort. My first weekend with the car I got pulled over (not for doing anything wrong, mind you) by the police and didn't have a shred of the necessary paperwork in the car with me: no drivers license, no registration, no proof of insurance or ownership. They harassed me for about 20 minutes or so but let me go after it became clear that I was in no rush and was willing to go to the police station with them to pay the actual fines rather than offer them something to let me go.

Last week I went to a conference on food tree species in Cotonou, Benin. The conference included a couple interesting and valuable (for me) presentations, but I wish I had had more time to see a little bit more of Cotonou. In any case, it was nice to have a brief change in scenery and food.

The holiday of Tabaski (a.k.a Eid ul-Adha, the Muslim festival of the sacrifice) occurs this week, along with Niger's "Republic Day", so we have most of the week off. Also, my little sister is coming to visit me so I'm planning to take all of next week off. One likely result of all this time off is that I probably won't be doing much blogging, although I'll try to post once and a while if I can. Maybe I can even convince my sister to contribute a little guest blogging.

Vendredi at Volume 5

The majority of my favorite African music comes from Mali, although I have no idea why this is the case. Although this song and video are about Senegal, the artists are Malian. They're a married couple named Amadou et Mariam, both of whom are blind. Some people may recognize in this song the influence of Manu Chao, who produced the album on which this song appeared: Dimanche a Bamako.

Vendredi at Volume 5

Because of travel and other work related headaches I didn't get a chance to post last week's installment of Vendredi at Volume 5. I'm terribly sorry to have deprived you of the pleasure. I'll try to get back to regular posting sometime soon, but in the meantime here's this week's clip. This video is of higher quality than I'd usually like to post. It looks like they may have hired an actual film crew with adequate equipment rather than just placed a video camera on a tripod, which is my preferred method of shooting a video in the third world. Anyway, this song is huge right now. You hear it several times per night in the dance clubs here. Other than the fact that it's Ivoirian I don't know much about the song or the singer.

Hope everybody had a happy thanksgiving!

Traveling Again

You may have noticed that I've been posting here a lot more frequently lately. Partly that's been because I've made a conscious effort to spend more time on the blog, partly it's because I've been able to post from home because a friend went on a trip and lent me his wireless modem. The lack of internet at home isn't really an excuse, though, since I always have the option of writing something at home and then posting it from work the next day. So we'll chalk it up to effort.

I'm traveling again to Maradi tomorrow and I'll be there all week. I expect to be pretty busy so I doubt I'll be doing much blogging, but I'll try to resume my current rate of posting when I get back next week.

Also, I wanted to give a belated congratulatory shout-out to my little sister who ran and finished the New York Marathon last weekend. Proud of ya, kid!

A Tale of Two Bridges

The city of Niamey sprawls over the Niger river but only has one bridge, the Kennedy Bridge, built by Americans and completed in 1970. Sometimes it's best to keep your eyes closed when crossing it, as it's only one narrow lane in each direction and vehicles are always swerving back and forth between the lanes to negotiate the obstacle course of pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, carts, cattle, goats, and camels. When accidents happen, which they do fairly regularly, you usually have to cancel any plans you may have made to do something on the other side of the river since traffic comes to a standstill on one the city's busiest arteries and it always takes hours to clean things up.

This week they officially broke ground on a second bridge, which will have two lanes in each direction and will divert most of the traffic that is just passing through Niamey en route to (or from) Burkina Faso, which currently has to go through the center of town. It's hard to imagine that the new bridge won't be hugely beneficial in terms of improving the flow and safety of local traffic.

One interesting detail is that a Chinese company is responsible for constructing the new bridge. If you follow African news, you know that an important subplot to contemporary African development is the role of the Chinese. Chinese firms are doing good business all over Africa these days, and there's a lot of angst among Western leaders (and especially the former colonial powers) about the growing Chinese influence in the region. In addition to this bridge, I've heard that the Chinese have become big players in Niger's uranium industry as well. I suppose if you're somebody who's concerned that the rise of China poses a threat to American influence in the world you'd have trouble finding a more potent symbol than the big, shiny new (yet unnamed) Chinese bridge diverting traffic from the decrepit inadequate old Kennedy Bridge.

Vendredi at Volume 5

Sometimes it's hard not to get carried away with posting videos on your blog. I feel like I've exercised a lot of restraint up to this point, but no more! Today I'm officially announcing a new Angler's Rest feature, Vendredi at Volume 5. Volume 5 was the name of a watering hole in Madagascar where clients were treated to an inexhaustible supply of the local (and some international) music videos. From now on, Friday will be my designated day for posting the songs and videos I'm just dying to share.

The inaugural installment features a good friend from Madagascar, Lien Bouessa. A single blog post couldn't do justice to what a great guy this is. Really talented, smart, thoughtful, and always the life of the party. This video is full of people and places I knew well.

LIEN BOUESSA tsy tiambady
Uploaded by cynthia_974

It's Tough Out There

I think a lot of people I know will find something to identify with in this article. Here's a taste:

Armed with a Georgetown University diploma, Beth Hanley embarked in her 20s on a path hoping to become a professional world-saver. First she worked at nonprofit Bread for the World. Then she taught middle school English in central Africa with the Peace Corps. Finally, to certify her idealism, she graduated last spring with a master's degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University.

But now the 29-year-old faces a predicament shared by many young strivers in Washington's public interest field. After years of amassing so many achievements, they struggle to find full-time employment with decent pay and realize they might not get exactly what they set out for. Hanley, a think tank temp who dreams of aiding the impoverished and reducing gender discrimination in developing countries, is stuck.

Keepin' it Real

I usually don't have a lot of patience for people who get rabid about how the "original" or "authentic" version of some song/book/movie/TV show is so superior to the popular version of the same. But every time I listen to this song I wonder what's wrong with the world. How can the vapid American knock-off be the version everybody knows and recognizes? It's not just that this version is so obviously better. It's actually offensive that somebody would think so little of an audience as to assume that turning this song into an radio-friendly jingle constitutes some kind of improvement.

P.S. Isn't YouTube amazing?

Babies for Sale

Strange stories like this one about nefarious plots by Europeans and Americans to adopt African children seem to surface from time to time even when Madonna's not involved. It's hard to know what to make of them. Obviously--and for good reason--everybody seems to be concerned about the possibility that this "charity" is actually involved in supplying vulnerable children to pedophiles or others involved in the trafficking of sex-slaves. But honestly I'm not sure which possibility is worse, that a shady ring of bandits got caught in a modern day slave raid, or that a bunch of well intentioned people hoping to rescue orphans from the Darfur genocide inadvertently kidnapped 91 children from their parents.

One detail I liked about this article is that it's not too often you see the president of a country on television engaging in this kind of exchange:

One of the Spanish pilots, still in his gold-brocaded uniform, can be seen in television footage telling the president of Chad, Idriss Deby, that he and his crew are innocent. "We are Spaniards!" he says.

But the president responds: "You are part of a pedophile ring!"

I'm no great admirer of George Bush, but I'd love to see him on TV chastising, say, Rudy Giuliani, who actually does keep a known child molester on his campaign staff.

Live in Concert

As a follow-up to the last post, I'm posting some video of Lucky Dube in concert. Last I read they had caught four people suspected of being involved in the murder.

Lucky Dube

For me the music of South African reggae sensation Lucky Dube will always be bathed in the nostalgia of hearing those songs over and over again in dirty, sweaty night clubs in Madagascar. He was pretty famous as far as African musicians go, but it was still a bit of a surprise to see that The Economist ran an obituary for him after he was murdered last week in a car theft. It had never really occurred to me until reading the obit how many of those songs were written when the apartheid regime was still running South Africa. They're much more provocative when you think of them that way. For some reason it always seem easy to forget that apartheid wasn't really that long ago. Neither, for that matter, was colonialism.

Incidentally, I've recently read two really good book on African history: John Reader's Africa: A Biography of the Continent and Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa. Both were excellent, although I'd say Reader was especially outstanding.

I Hate the Bank

I've never heard of a good bank in Africa. Generally they're just varying degrees of awful. But I think I got a little bit spoiled by my regional bank in Madagascar, which was by far the least painful banking experience I've had in the developing world. No doubt that was in part because the director of that bank was a great guy and a friend, not to mention a lookalike of the "Bald Bull" character from the old Nintendo game, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out (which was later renamed Super Punch-Out after Nintendo apparently decided they didn't want to associate their product with a convicted rapist and lunatic). We'll just call him Maurice.

When I got here I was optimistic that my banking success would continue. The bank I was instructed to use here, Bank of Africa (BOA), was after all the same one I used in Madagascar. But whatever magic Maurice used to turn the tiny Fenerive-Est branch of BOA into a little slice of financial heaven is clearly missing from the Niamey behemoth of the same name. In almost three months I've probably been there 10 times now. Not once have I exited having accomplished everything I went in for. Every time I end up wandering down hallways knocking on unmarked doors asking for Madame So-and-So who's the one who's supposed to help me. Upon reaching Madame So-and-So, usually I don't get halfway through explaining my request before I'm redirected to Monsieur Such-and-Such. This usually goes on for an hour or so before they decide they've had their fun and they tell me to come back another day.

Today I found out that the application I filled out for a bank card on my very first visit back in mid-August (which would mercifully allow me to do at least some of my business through a machine rather than going inside and dealing with Mr. and Mrs. Whatever) had never been received, which is kind of funny because I filled it out right there at the counter. I don't think it got lost between my hand and the hand of the teller who took it from me. So I filled out another application and Madame happily assured me that this time they'd be sure to process it. I ought to be receiving my card in "one or two months".

DoTS

I know I've mentioned the movie Death of Two Sons to a lot of people over the past few years, and I'm about to mention it again. This is a documentary directed by a guy I went to high school with who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea and produced by a guy who was a volunteer I overlapped with for just a few months in Cote d'Ivoire. It's about the notorious shooting of African immigrant Amadou Diallo by New York City police officers and the lesser known death almost exactly a year later of Jesse Thyne, the Peace Corps volunteer who lived with Diallo's family in a village in Guinea.

They're releasing the movie on DVD on October 30th, which you can buy through their website or on Amazon. It's also available on Netflix, so I'd encourage you to add it to your queue.

Update. You can read a short review of the movie from Variety Magazine here.

No, I haven't Forgotten about the Blog

Things have really picked up over the last month or so. I've been doing a lot of traveling and spending a lot of time putting a plan together for what I'm going to do over the next year and a half and how I'm going to do it. A lot of things are still up in the air, but I finally feel like I'm really getting some momentum and clarity about what I need to be spending my time on.

It looks like a big part of my project here is going to involve carrying out a survey of rural farmers. I'm sure the Sanford folks out there will envy my opportunity to return to the always fascinating questions of survey design, sampling strategy, weighting, dealing with bias, and all the other pressing concerns we dealt with under the watchful eye of P. Cook. Hopefully those lessons will be applicable to surveys that aren't about gun ownership.

In other news, Ramadan ended last week. The big thing about the end of Ramadan is that everybody has to buy new fancy clothes. Of course everybody is buying their new fancy clothes at the same time, so they all end up paying twice as much as they would have paid if they had bought them a month earlier or later. I've tried having this discussion with several people, but it never goes anywhere. Anyway, the city seems noticeably more lively now that Ramadan's over and people are all smiles strutting about in their fancy new robes and boubous.

Let it Grow

For some reason I always think it's cool when the bloggers I read regularly post while traveling. I like to imagine them sitting in an airport bar typing a something for the blog before jumping on a plane. So this is my own attempt at blogging from the road.
The photo above is a pretty typical of the landscapes in the Maradi region where I've spent the last few days. Millet fields as far as the eye can see, although there's other stuff in there too: especially sorghum and cowpea. What's remarkable about this view if you spend a lot of time looking at millet fields--which I do these days--is how many trees there are dotting the landscape. Over the past 20 years or so farmers in this region of Niger have begun managing the native trees on their farmland (primarily for fuelwood production) rather than clearing them off the land as was customary. The most obvious benefit of this practice is that farmers gain an additional and renewable source of income by selling firewood, but as I described in a previous post, there are a number of additional benefits to keeping trees on farmland. Encouragingly, this appears to be a growing trend in this country and it's attracting a lot of attention. See, for example, this article from the New York Times last February for a pretty good description.

Off to Maradi

I got a last-minute invitation to tag along on a trip to the Maradi region for a week. I'm expecting to do a fair amount of work there during the next year or so, so I'm glad I'll finally get a chance to check it out for a few days. Anyway, if this blog is quiet for the next week or so, that's why.

Because 23 Would Have Been Too Many

ESPN Headline: "Blue Devils build lead, hold on to stop 22-game slide"

The sad thing about this is that the game was at Northwestern, so the Duke fans didn't even get a chance to tear down the goalposts. Still, a win is a win. Aaron and Mark, our names may not actually appear on the Duke roster but nobody could deny that we contributed to this victory.

My Research Excursion

Agroforestry is sort of the generic term for agricultural practices that involve the use of trees. In a country like Niger, people typically clear all the trees and shrubs off of a plot of land before planting their crops, but trees can be beneficial to agricultural production in a number of ways. They protect against both wind and water erosion, their leaves and roots contribute organic matter to the soil, and some trees enrich the soil by fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Additionally, trees can provide other valuable products such as firewood, fruits, edible leaves, and traditional medicines.

When I talk about an “agroforestry system” I’m describing something more specific. Agricultural scientists have developed many different models for how best to combine certain trees and certain crops to achieve the greatest possible benefit. This project of mine involves studying three such systems, which range from loosely defined and flexible (fostering and managing the trees that sprout naturally in a field instead of clearing them) to quite prescriptive (planting measured rows of exotic species including grafted fruit trees at ten meter intervals to be managed according to an specific calendar).

As I mentioned below, I spent last week touring around some rural areas of southwestern Niger. The point was to visit and interview a bunch of the “pilot farmers” for one of these agroforestry systems. These guys are the first stab at taking a system developed at the research center and putting it in the hands (and on the land) of farmers who could potentially benefit from it.

As far as my research project goes, the trip went really well. It was extremely valuable for me to be able to sit down with these farmers in their fields and talk with them about their impressions of the new systems, their challenges in carrying it out, the likelihood of other community members trying to adopt this system, and other topics. What’s really affecting about these kinds of visits, though, is the personal interaction you have with these people. They share their stories with you. They tell you about the founding of the village or the history of their family. With a combined total of maybe five words in common you manage to exchange a few jokes. And although this is kind of a boilerplate observation for anybody who’s spent time in rural Africa, but it’s hard not to be struck by the kind of generosity they show to visitors. One chief gave me two chickens. Another farmer gave me 30 guinea fowl eggs. These are valuable gifts, and you feel guilty accepting them from such truly poor people but there’s absolutely no way you can refuse.

I tried uploading a bunch of photos from my trip but the internet is not cooperating today. Maybe next week.

Direct Trade Coffee

One of the links over on this blog's sidebar is to a company called Intelligentsia Coffee. I used to regularly order coffee from them (I still would if I could get it here) because (a) it's REALLY good coffee and (b) I liked their practice of working directly with individual coffee growers to produce a more valuable, more profitable crop. This practice is becoming increasingly recognized by the name of "direct trade", and there's a good article about it in yesterday's New York Times. Intelligentsia is one of the companies mentioned. I recommend the whole article, but the the main point in terms of how direct trade is different than other efforts to help coffee farmers is this:

[Direct trade] also represents, at least for many in the specialty coffee world, an improvement on labels like Fair Trade, bird-friendly or organic. Such labels relate to how the coffee is grown and may persuade consumers to pay a little extra for their beans, but offer no assurance about flavor or quality. Direct-trade coffee companies, on the other hand, see ecologically sound agriculture and prices above even the Fair Trade premium both as sound business practices and as a route to better-tasting coffee.

Ramadan Begins

On the map above you'll notice there's a small town in the far East of the country called Diffa. Last night somebody in Diffa reported to have caught a glimpse of the crescent of the new moon, meaning the whole country begins to observe the month of Ramadan today, a day earlier than expected this year. The cafeteria here at the research station where I'm based, which is usually pretty lively, was a graveyard today. Just me and a few co-workers from Burkina Faso.

Since I have the map up there already, I'll also point out that I spent all of last week on a trip visiting and interviewing farmers around the towns of Dosso and Gaya. I even took an illegal trip across the border into Benin for an afternoon. The trip went really well and I learned a ton. I'll try and post some photos and more details about the trip sometime soon.

L'Arbre du Ténéré

I guess there aren't that many famous trees in the world. This Wikipedia page lists only four in Africa, so maybe I should count myself as lucky that I can wander on down to Niger's National Museum for a glimpse of the famous Arbre du Ténéré just about any time I feel like it. I checked it out on Saturday, along with the rest of the Museum.

L'Arbre du Ténéré was famous for being a solitary, isolated tree in the middle of the Sahara desert. This highly visible, revered landmark seems to have the curious problem of being repeatedly struck by passing trucks, one of which finished the job in 1973. Seeing the tree today, hundreds of miles from where it once grew, is a little bit like visiting a mausoleum. It's a weathered old piece of wood rooted in a concrete block and enclosed in a metal cage, mercifully inaccessible to motor vehicles.

Some Pictures

The lack of recent posts has been mostly, but not entirely, my fault. My work internet has been down a lot recently, but mostly it's just difficult to find enough time and interesting things to write about to keep the blog updated. But one thing I managed to accomplish this morning was to upload some photos I've taken (a painfully slow process on this internet connection). Most of them are from around the research station where I'm currently based, about 40 km outside of Niamey. Click here to take a look.

Bouger Bouger

Since I got so much positive feedback on the Magic System video (believe me, I did) and since I don't have time for a real post at the moment, here's another Magic System video.

"La maladie du bouger bouger on s'assoit pas!"

Rainy Season

August is the wettest month here. We've had one good thunderstorm since I've been here and a couple days that have been a little drizzly. This is a photo of the Niger river I took on Wednesday evening. Looks pretty full to me.

What am I doing here?

Several people have asked, but I’ve hesitated to write a post explaining exactly what I’m doing here because I’m a little unsure myself. Several different organizations involved in promoting agroforestry in Niger requested, through CHC, a fellow (me) to research the impact of their efforts. So broadly speaking, my project is about evaluating how successful several of these agroforestry promotion projects have been in terms of raising incomes, reducing poverty, and improving food security.

The problem I’m running into as I begin to get into the specifics is that the projects of the different organizations—3 of them, basically—are not really comparable. And because of the differences between them, each organization seems to have a different idea of how they should be evaluated. There seems to be some consensus that I’m to focus on social and economic aspects, but beyond that it’s kind of a mess. So my current challenge, and what I’ll be working with for roughly the next three months, is to learn enough about all of these systems in order to come up with some kind of broad evaluative framework that applies to all of them.

The plan is for me to spend the first year here in Niger collecting information and the second year in Benin, using that information to develop reports, papers, policy briefs, or whatever we decide the products of this research should be. Overall it's a pretty exciting opportunity. I'll probably get to travel a fair amount within Niger, and the fact that I'm working with 3 or 4 organizations (depending on how you count) rather than just one gives me a degree of independence to carry out the project the way I want.

Magic System

As some of you know already, I have a sort of fascination with the local pop music in the different countries I visit. I try to find out as much as I can about the stuff I hear in bars and restaurants, in taxis, on buses, on the radio, and on T.V. One of my absolute favorite “finds” over the years is Magic System, an Ivoirian group who’s now gotten pretty popular in Europe. One of their more recent hits is called "Un Gaou A Oran", which you’d discover has an embarrassingly high playcount if you looked at my iTunes today. Imagine my pleasant surprise when the first time I switched on the Nigerien television the video above came on within the first few minutes. And it’s a pretty sweet video, too!

Writing about Africa

I don't really intend for this blog to be a blog about Niger or about Africa. The point is really to use this space to write "letters home" and keep in better contact with people than I have on past occasions when I was living abroad. Nonetheless, you find pretty quickly that it becomes difficult to write about daily life without a lot of background information. Just in order to get a simple story across, you often find yourself forced to assume the responsibility of explaining "how things are" and "how it works here", which often later turn out to be horribly wrong or naive. Occasionally I come across old letters or e-mails I wrote from Cote d'Ivoire and Madagascar that make me cringe. It's not just that I'm wrong about broad assumptions of fact, but even my personal impressions are off: people I describe in glowing terms turned out to be jerks, and vice versa. Anyway, all this is just a long-winded disclaimer to the effect that the role of educator on African issues is not really one I'm comfortable playing, but one I may reluctantly assume from time to time in order to communicate my experiences here as best I can. Please keep that in mind.

On the subject of writing about Africa, I'd encourage people to take a look at this satiric essay on the subject. There's a lot of good stuff like this:

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Two posts in two days! I'm really off to a flying start.

The Eagle Has Landed

I had hoped to get started on this blog a week or two ago, but it’s been hard to find the time. I’m writing this post on my first morning in Niamey, with the day quickly heating up and some rather loud drums and singing carrying over the wall of the compound where I’m staying (it's either a marriage or baptism, according to the guardian). I’m at the guest house of ICRISAT, one of several organizations involved in my project and the one I’ll be working most directly “under” during my time in Niger. Hopefully I’ll be out of here and into my own place within a week or so. I’ve been living out of bags for several weeks now, and although it feels great to have finally gotten to Niamey, I’m anxious to get somewhere I can unpack my stuff and finally feel like I’m done traveling for a while.

I won’t spend too much time summarizing the past few weeks of retreats, trainings, orientations, etc. I really enjoyed the time in Washington getting to know the CHC staff and the rest of my class of fellows, and I also managed to sneak in some quality time with friends from Bates and Duke. My time in Rome with Bioversity (one of the other organizations involved in my project) was also very positive, and it allowed me to meet a number of people who I think will be immensely valuable resources over the course of the next couple years. And really friendly people, too! I was invited to fancy lunches and dinners all week long and not allowed to pay for anything. One last chance to fatten up before the inevitable 15 pound weight drop.

The moment I stepped off the plane I felt good about being here. Although this is my first time in Niger, the experience felt very much as though I was “coming back”: back to the developing world, back to Africa, back to Muslim francophone West Africa. Everything from the initial blast of hot air to the ridiculous “customs” agent to the sights on the road between the airport and here (women effortlessly carrying huge loads on their heads, men wearing boubous, kids and animals running about every which way) made me feel excited to be back. The feeling was reassuring, because after being back in the States for a few years I had begun to wonder whether living in Africa would continue to offer the same excitement, enjoyment, and satisfaction that it did before. Do I really want to live and work in Africa, I asked myself, or does my goal of returning have more to do with foolishly trying to recapture an especially eventful and exciting period in my life? I suppose it’s too soon to really offer an answer to that question, but my initial impression is that my decision to come back was a good one.

After getting to the guest house last night, I took a nap and woke up to found myself hungry and a little bit stranded. I had come straight from the airport, so all my money was in euros and dollars (and still is). Nobody else is staying here, so the building was all dark and quiet. I wandered outside and the first people I could find were the guardians, to whom I explained my situation and asked what I should do. Within about 10 minutes someone had arrived to loan me money, and I went out on the street and bought some grilled chicken with onions and some bread. I had no place to eat, so I went back to hang out with the guardians, who were also just about to start eating their dinner. In no time the four of us had thrown everything together for a veritable feast of chicken, onions, bread, rice, sauce, Fantas and Cokes. A delicious and auspicious beginning to this new adventure.

I’ll try to post again soon with more details about the work I plan to be doing over the next couple years.