Back in the Village

First, a description of 'les personnages'. Ramatou is one of my best friends in the village--she named her second child after me (they actually call her Jesse). Illa is Ramatou's brother-in-law who lives in Dakoro, which is the market town 10K from the village--Mai Lafiya. (2000 cfa is about $4, but I could eat about 5-6 meals on that.)

Illa: Ramatou, give me 2000 cfa--I brought you something from Dakoro.

Ramatou: 2000 cfa?!? What on earth did you bring me?

Illa: To find out, give me the 2000 cfa.

Ramatou: Fine, I'll give it to you. I've got it here. But you have to tell me first!

Illa: I brought Zara.

Ramatou: Zara herself??

Illa: Yep, Zara the white person.

And that's how Ramatou found out that I was back in the village.

Everyone else saw me as I rode into town on the back of Illa's motorcycle, waving like a crazy person. People were waving back, but I'm not sure they knew who it was right away. There was a boy at the well--he was about 7 when I lived there--and he was kind of my first friend, Bouzou. (If you remember the story, he's the one who was so excited when my neighbor gave me a baby chicken--he kept running back to his house to get something else the chick needed. The fourth time he jumped up to get something, he was running out of my concession and accidentally stepped on the chick--splat!) Anyway, he was the first person who's face I could see clearly as I rode in, and as I was recognizing him, he was recognizing me. First, he has this look of curiousity, then surprise, and it all ended in a big smile.

Illa deposited me at the chief's house (the chief is called Mai Gari (MG), owner of the village). No one was there, though. MG's wife, Selma, came in first--she told me MG had gone to Dakoro. Then, about 5 men I knew showed up, and it was enough to make me start crying, which made everyone kind of uncomfortable. I guess no one was really that surprised, though, since I had cried when I had left the village.

Then, MG's compound filled up with kids--seriously, like 30 kids showed up. I knew most of them; I actually felt kind of bad that I didn't have any candy. When I used to go to the market on Fridays, they knew I'd buy candy for them, so every time I'd ride my bike back into town, the kids used to come running.

Now, all the kids were so big! It was a strange experience--in the states, if I don't see someone or their children for a while, I usually have photographs to keep me updated on how they're changing, but I hadn't seen any of these kids since February 2005. It was like one of those nature videos wehre they film the growth of a flower from the planting of the seed until it blooms, but they speed it WAY up so the whole process only takes like 2 minutes.

Someone eventually went on a motorcycle and picked MG up from town--when he got back, he set me up in my old house. No one's living there now; I think they are still holding out hope that Peace Corps will change their minds and re-open the Dakoro regions. I think it's pretty unlikely in the near future.

BTW, because I know Team Dakoro folks would like to vicariously experience my bush taxi ride from Maradi to Dakoro: it took 5 hours. Everyone told me, rather excitedly, "Oh, they're paving that road!" Ha. Well, no one's been paid, so the work has stopped. Plus, they left all kinds of road blocks in order to protect their work, which meant we were mostly driving on sand paths NEXT TO the road. And, it had just rained profusely--so we stopped 5 or 6 times when we got stuck in puddles. Fortunately, there were enough men in the back (I was in the cabine), and I never had to get out and push. This was NOT the case on the return trip, when we got 2 flat tires, and I had to get out twice to help everyone who was fasting push the truck out of the mud.