Peace Corps Niger Celebrates 45th Year

Peace Corps Niger has the honorable distinction of running for 45 years without disruption. Accordingly, we duly celebrated this occasion in September with a visit from Director Ron Tschetter from Washington and an open house at the Niamey Bureau.

Much work was exectuted to present the history and successes of the five current program sectors, Natural Resource Management, Agriculture, Community Health, Education, and Municipal and Community Development. Many volunteers came in from their posts to prepare for the event with their best foot forward. For me and my fellow NRM volunteers, that meant making a life sized paper mache giraffe (or giraffasauras as our Program Director likes to call her!) Buying supplies in the market was a memorable trip and several eyebrows were raised as my friend Barbara and I tried to draw and explain our construction diagram to the perplexed woodcutters.

One of the coolest parts of this anniversay was meeting returned Peace Corps volunteers who served in the sixties and seventies and decided to come back to visit their villagers. Hearing their stories made me feel like kind of a wimp for all the conveniences I can access now! Some of them had to travel for several weeks to get to their post from the capital Niamey, and many spent 6 months or more at a time out in the bush. Listening to them reminded me of what I hoped to find when I got here, and gave me resolve to head back to the bush for a good chunk of time. I've had enough of the "big city" life.......see you at Christmas!!

(photo index: Ambassador Bernadette Allen, Peace Corps Director Tschetter, Country Director Mary Abrams; building Girtie the Giraffe; Jamie and I with Girtie)