- poems from road
i’m sitting in a car riding for 12-14 hours to zinder staring out the window as huts and millet meander by, and feel the need to poem.
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naked child playing, crumbs of brown sand dusting her protruded black stomach. she falls. she laughs and gets up. naked child pure, innocent, déjà-condamnée.
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fields of green with camel. not oases, just sprinkle season.
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cow cow cow cow cow cow lizard cow cow cow.
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- referendum
i’m sitting in a hotel watching the nigerién news. amazing, heartbreaking, appalling. the referendum is taking place aug 4 which aspires to amend the constitution to allow the sitting president to remain in power. he has already sacked or replaced the national assembly, the constitutional court, cabinet members, election officials and pretty much anyone else who is against his usurp of power. music videos play his image and posters adorning the cities urge the people to vote yes in the referendum. but much is not heard from the opposition on the national media.
the entire situation is a damned shame. niger is already at the bottom of the list of economic development, literacy, health, education, mortality rates, etc., and the one thing that it actually had going for it was its semblance of democracy. now this will be tarnished, as well, as the eu, un, ecowas, etc. have already threatened imposing economic sanctions and garnishing international humanitarian and food assistance.
- so many questions
i’m sitting in my office trying to frantically finish up coding, error testing, creating info posters, arranging for them to be printed, setting up training sessions, doing lots of things that anyone – irrespective of locale – would be doing in preparation for a new software launch. but then i take a break to get something to eat, as i usually bring my lunch, today i go to the local fast-food/convenience-store. the sun is shining brightly and as i cross the street, i see that this place is a hopin’. inside the small tin structure that is adorned with various advertisement – mainly from telecoms like zain and orange, you can buy things like rice or millet pre-bagged in measurements of one handful. [this is one sign of an impoverished country: small denominations of staples] you can by cups of cool water or yogurt that are also pre-bagged: just bite off the end and suck! (my favorite is the strawberry yogurt which is hard to find). outside the tin structure on a concrete slab under a large tin awning is where the fast-food stand sits. the stand is a wobbly wooden table that is covered with a plastic sheet on the outer periphery of the table sit four or five large tins of condensed milk, nescafé and canned peas and carrots. on one corner of is a stack of eggs and maggi chicken bouillon cubes, a plastic bottle of oil and on the other side are plastic plates, a knife and a big blue rice sack filled with long baguettes. below the table is a little propane tank with a stand on which sits a metal pan. i ask for an omelet with onions, peas and carrots. while i sit in a chair on the concrete slab observing the six or seven other men, i start wondering about them:
what are they thinking? what are they thinking about me? can they read? do they have a cell phone? what telco do they use? how much of their money do they spend on voice calls and text messages? if they could read/text and were in the business of buying and selling something in/from a/many marketplace/s, would an sms service with accurate prices be of use to them? will it be useful to the villagers? will they understand the explanatory poster i made on how to use the system? will they understand the message they receive if they make a type-o (is a type-o in an SMS a text-o?) ? and it comes back all to what i’m doing here…
what are we doing here?:
- a) trying to see if cell phones aid in literacy/numeracy acquisition,
- b) creating a system, imac (informations sur les marchés agricoles par cellulaire | agriculture market information via cell phones) that incents the newly-literate/numerate villagers to use their new-found skills (magazines, newspapers and children’s books are very uncommon in native languages — or in any language as is the case here in niger),
- c) trying to see if IMAC can aid in improving livelihoods.
some photos, with more here:
- nigerién democracy?
i’m sitting in the guesthouse where i’m staying watching france24, the frenchy cnn. and i read at the bottom of the screen the scrolling words, “le president de niger s’était arrogé des ‘pouvoirs exceptionnels’ pour gouverner par décrets” (the president of niger has assumed ‘extraordinary powers’ allowing him to govern by decree). and then i’m sitting at the office working when i get a tweet from @niger1 that the president has dissolved the constitutional court, replaced the 8 ministers, who quit in protest of tandja’s proposed referendum to amend the constitution to allow him three further years of power, with 8 new loyalist _and_ that he had the largest(?) tv/radio broadcaster dounia shut down. oh goody — so what’s next?
throughout the preceding weeks the president has said that he needs to stay in power so that he can finish the work that he’s done. isn’t that the role of his party and political coalition? he says that the referendum is needed in order protect the independence of niger — but protect the independence of niger from what? the republique de dogondoutchi? the huge sand monsters of agadez who are threatening all of the uranium reserves?
and then i look to the twittosphere to see what’s being said: nothing search #niger and you get me and the indepedent journalist @fieldreports. and where are all of the bloggers? forget about it. in a country that is 80% illiterate and 80% rural, with internet penetration at 3% and computer ownership at 0.5‰, forget about it. all that’s being reported is from the outside looking in.
the head of the military did ask all sides to keep them out of it; will this remain?
so, what will the people do? good questions. most of the opposition is found in the urban areas, whereby the president’s support is mainly rural, so here in niamey i’ve only heard from people appalled by the situation. to that effect, the opposition has called for protests and tomorrow they will stage a ville morte. dead city.
