Green Shoots Of Recovery

As sporadic rains over the past fortnight herald the approach of rainy season, so too the earth has suddenly come to life. It was all too easy to believe our proximity to the Sahara during our first four months, looking out across red, dusty rock in Galmi, and then battered, yellow dirt in Danja. But now, grass shoots have appeared across Danja’s 650-odd hectares.

Look! Grass from nowhere!

Previously, the 500m avenue from the compound down to the hospital, though lined with trees, was otherwise sandy soil on all sides. But now, a green carpet has begun to creep out across the surface.

Danja’s water tower, with some of the local houses and the hospital in the background.

Last Wednesday night, we had an impromptu trip to Madarounfa – a village out in the bush, on the shores of a lake. The closer you drive to the lake, the more trees and plants start to appear as the land becomes noticeably more fertile.

This did NOT spring up this week!

We picnicked on the lake’s edge, watching fishermen finish up for the day (including the guys checking their lines of nets by stomach-surfing around on massive gourds – something you have to really see in action to have any concept of! In this peaceful, well-watered land, it was easy to forget the otherwise desperate state of much of the farmland only a 20 minute drive away.

Lake Madarounfa

Settling In At Number 5

A week ago, we moved in to our new home at Danja. It’s been great that as we start to settle in to a (sort of) routine during the week, we have also begun to settle in to our surroundings.

One of the nicest things was Ruth’s idea to try and get some new material (which is relatively inexpensive) and replace the tired curtains in the house’s main living area – bringing some colour, and a bit of a sense that we could make the space our own whilst we’re here.

House #5 – now with added evaporative cooler!

Our new kitchen…

…and the living space.

New curtains, up close.

SIM Niger on Facebook

This week, we launched the new SIM Niger Facebook page.

As well as up to date stories and information about Niger, we took advantage of the new Timeline feature on Facebook to map out a detailed history of SIM’s work in Niger – all the way back to the first project in 1924! Using photos from SIM’s archives, we hope that it helps illustrate the huge range of work SIM are involved with in this unique country.

You don’t have to be a Facebook user to view the page, but if you are on Facebook you can’Like’ SIM Niger and keep up to date with the regular flow of information. The intention is to feature missionaries’ blogs alongside international news coverage to paint a thorough image of this colourful part of the world – perhaps you too can contribute!

Rain Dance

The view out the window at Danja’s guesthouse – doesn’t quite communicate the wind!

And so, the rain dance begins. Not a literal dance, conjuring up images of some tribal stereotype – but a mental dance, back and forth.

After a half hour opening salvo last Friday night, the heavens opened at the start of the week. Thought rain was not expected to arrive properly for another few weeks, we were pounded first by dust and wind, and then lashed by a long deluge across the first half of the night. From one of the rooms in the guesthouse we had a grandstand view, and had great fun watching the water inch its way under the door…

Looking out the window, the wind howled, the water drenched, and the lightening lit up the surroundings for miles.

For dry-as-a-bone Niger, already heightened by the apparent onslaught of famine conditions, farmers are presented with a potentially life-or-death decision. The moment they think rainy season has come, and with it the promise of regular soakings for stretch of weeks, everything is put on hold and seed will be sown. Those essential crops are everything to many people: both food and income. Thus, the need to predict the start and length of rainy season is crucial.

The danger is false hope. What if it rains once, but it’s only a precursor to rainy season and not the guarantee of further precipitation? Resources will go to waste, parched on unforgiving, sandy ground.

We had a bit of a fridge problem this week as we moved in to our new home, and found ourselves ‘reduced’ to not-quite-cold water and not-quite-frozen meat. It’s easy to get wound up about this. But within walking distance in every direction, there are people who have to decide whether to stake their families’ livelihood on the decision to sow or not.

When we saw a flicker of lightening in the distance last night, we all began to wonder… but the wait goes on.

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The above was written on Friday afternoon – but I (Peter) didn’t get time to publish it. My typing was interrupted as, in the blink of an eye, a dust storm swept over the compound, reducing visibility to metres and blanketing us in sand. Knowing that this was almost certain to pre-empt more rain, we locked the office and fled to the houses. Shortly after, it began to rain for several hours.

Already, there are shoots of grass starting to appear all over Danja, and for the first time yesterday, I was greeted with the words, ‘How is the planting?’, replacing the by now expected ‘How is the heat?’ Farmers are hitting the fields hard – the sense that prayers have been answered is tangible.

And so, I think we will stick my neck out (though maybe not too far) and declare wet season well and truly HERE!

Context Is King

[Note: Sorry again, everyone, for the lack of pictures this week. The internet at Danja is finally reasonably stable, so we’ll try and get some new photos up next week!]

Niger, like most African countries, is a high context society. What this means is that, in sharp context to our low context ways at home, people are (a) a lot more observant, and (b) read things in to what they observe.

A familiar example of this is the dress code. It maybe seem oppressive to us at first that one must wear long trousers (male) or a long skirt (female), cover the head and shoulders (if not full arms) when out and about. Aren’t these people quaint and traditional, say we who wear whatever we want when at home. Because in the UK, though we will sometimes make assumptions about people based on dress, it basically doesn’t matter hugely.

Not so here, though. In a high context society, what you wear tells people a lot about your identity. And that’s the point, not the other way around. We’re not unfamiliar with this idea – a doctor wears a white coat, a priest wears a dog collar. Well, in Niger if you dress well, you must be well off or important. People of different languages and tribes wear different styles of clothes and hats. Chiefs and officials dress in lavish robes. Police officers wear uniforms.

And problematically, western fashions too have meanings here. Tight fitted clothes… well, if you wear tight fitted clothes, it’s inferred that you want people to stare at your body! If you wear shorts… but children wear shorts! So if you are a grown man wearing shorts for no practical purpose (like sport) then why are you dressing up as a child?

If an adult dresses like a child, they are not someone you would want to conduct grown-up business with, are they? They can’t even dress themselves.

Context, see?

Language falls in to this area as well. The ability to communicate becomes more than a necessity to be able to conduct yourself – it literally speaks about the kind of person you are. Now, granted, in the west we would seek a multi-linguist as a clever enough sort. But we would not necessarily infer status in to that. But again, this is different in a high context.

The primary people group we work with are the Hausa speakers. So we are learning to speak Hausa. The official national language is French, so we have some French too. It’s useful for dealing with people from other language groups in particular, such as Fulani people we meet every day.

At a point in SIM’s history, some missionaries, pressed for time and frustrated with teaching people in French – a language technically foreign to all concerned – decided to cut the middle man and teach only in Hausa. It meant they only needed proficiency in two languages rather than three – and could teach in the native language of their students.

But (amongst many problems they found in this particular episode!) one issue that arose was that of status and authority. You see, if you go to school here, you will study in French. So, it follows that speaking French well demonstrates how educated you are. An educated man has authority and is to be respected.

But if you only speak the common tribal language, along with some other language no-one understands (English), how can you carry out business? How can you claim to be someone who can teach authority? Why should anyone listen to you?

Context, see?

Where we sit, how we sit, where we look when we speak, how we speak, what we do with our hands… You know, we often think to ourselves, in our Western homes, that it would be wonderful to be able to read people’s minds. I’m rereading some Sherlock Holmes at the moment – the power of deduction seems amazing, doesn’t it? And yet, here in Niger, people think like this every day. 95% of communication really is non-verbal in a high-context society. And in that, there is a clue to the positive side of this situation. Perhaps, if we can harness this power, we will really be able to communicate more effectively than ever.