Excerpts from Julia's First Letter Home

We eat mainly millet, which is cooked into a big white lump with a texture not unlike tofu, and equally as tasteless. The lump is then placed into the center of a large serving dish, and sauce is poured over top. The sauce differs depending on the day (and the cook) but it's usually red or green with onions, garlic, spice, oil and some kind of suspicious chunks of meat, likely goat, although my French isn't yet good enough to ask. Then everyone eats with their hand. Hand is singular because it is extremely offensive to eat (or do anything else really) with your left hand, which is considered to be reserved for hygiene.

I am living with a wealthy soldier and his two wives and eight children, although the way kids run wild in the village and in our concession, it took me a couple of days to determine which children actually slept here. My children (7 months - 15 years) are the greatest kids on Earth. They immediately changed my name to Jamila. I have my own hut and fenced in concession within their (comparatively large) concession, which is essentially their yard. I also have my own shower stall and latrine, and both came with complimentary cockroaches.

So my days are spent in class - tons of language (French yippee) classes, as well as cross cultural, technical and medical, and playing with my brothers and sisters.

Nigeriens can't get enough of each other, and hospitality, friendliness, kindness and genuine concern for one another’s' wellbeing is expected.

The clay here is sandy red and every structure is made of it, with millet stalk woven hangers attached to make porches, often held up by bald branches from the poor, gnarly (and, I assume, thirsty) trees. The effect of this style of building is that everything blends together with patches of green that speak to the early season rain. To look out across the horizon, it stretches on forever almost totally unmarred, and when the sun goes down, the stars reach to infinity. I'm writing tonight because the moon is finally visible. I am looking at it now through my mosquito net, in bed-the heat requires me to sleep outside.

I have to say, poverty of this degree looks much different than I expected. The pace of life here is slow and deliberate, and there seems to be much less stress of "have nots." Without things, there is much more people-to-people time, and I'm finding it enlightening but really hard. The language barrier doesn't much help.

We got a God-sent downpour last night that has continued into this morning. Although I can no longer take my usual paths around the village (water here collects; it doesn't seem to be absorbed into the ground at all), I'm so happy to see the rain! It feels a lot more like the planet Earth here, with the rain, and less like Mars. I'm assured that as the rainy season progresses, it'll become fully green.

I cannot overstate the role of the Peace Corp in this country or how highly respected and supported we are by its people. The most successful people, teachers, doctors, politicians, etc., all seem to have fond and grateful stories of a past volunteer from their youth.

I wish I could tape the noises here to send them home, because I'm sure they would emphasize my point of how very different things are. Tuesday evening I was kept awake by a bleating goat (which is suspiciously now tied up behind my hut) and a neighbor forging tools of some sort. Our neighbor also has a camel. I mean, really, where the hell am I!