summary of week 3 niger!

Summary of Week 3
So we went on demystification this week, and I went with a good friend, Maya, into the Dosso region to visit with a current volunteer named Aisha, who was a Peace Corps health volunteer and worked at the district hospital in Birni. She was wonderful! And we had great food, though there is very little access here to most food types because the market is dependent on the growing season as well as the ability to get goods from outside the Nigerien borders.
We walked around a lot in her village, we asked her a million and one questions about being a volunteer, and we got to do a lot of resting and relaxation! We also visited the district hospital where she did a lot of her work and learn a lot about the health system in Niger. Here’s a few points: sadly healthworkers are not the nicest to their village/bush countrymen. There is a lot of mistreatment that goes on within the healthcare facilities towards patients that have very little means to get to the hospital, pay for services, afford to stay at the hospital or pay for food, or afford the trip back home. And there is very little oversight of what’s going on at the health facilities, as well as very little incentive to improve conditions (as healthcare workers are not paid on time or enough), collect data, improve statistics, or whatever. It’s kind of sad, because it’s just a vicious circle of mistreatment, lax working conditions, and bad health statistics all around.
Zarma is going pretty well, and I’m slowly forgetting all my Spanish…but I promise to get that back up to par after training! I have 100 years of solitude in Spanish with me!
We are also doing a lot of gardening, which is sooooo exciting! I can’t wait to grow things at my home post!
Otherwise, village life is pretty great. We’ve been gathering together and playing cards…I haven’t played so much cards in ages!!!! Good times… I’m also doing a lot of reading, which is great! And we’ve been celebrating birthdays (we cooked on the floor of a hut the other day for a friend’s b-day…and I’m planning on having a “bush party” aka party in the African bush village that I live in…involving a little bit of dancing and food). It’s funny how we get so much pleasure out of things that would have never meant anything to us in the USA, such as bad cookies, bad sodas, popcorn, peanut butter in a bag sold on the side of the road, watching a movie in someone’s hut, having running water, and having a band-aid that stays on one’s body for more than 5 minutes!
Things are good, and we are entering week 4! Yay!