Training

So…I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve been in Niger for over a month now and so far, I’m having an amazing experience. We’re over half way through our training, which is actually about 45 minutes east of the capital, Niamey, in a town called Hamdallaye. I’ve been living with a host family of four: the mother stays at home and is a tailor part time, the father is a teacher at the Franco-Arab school in town, and then I have an 11 year old host sister and a 2 ½ year old host brother. They are all very nice and make me feel like family, which I think is a feeling I’m going to have often in this culture and country. They even gave me a Nigerien name, Halima, which means nice and generous. However, my host brother wasn’t always so welcoming – he was scared of me for a while and would run and cry when I came home. Only within the past few weeks has he really warmed up to me and plays with me daily.
Training is six days a week with two to four sessions a day, which can be language, medical, security, cross cultural and technical sessions specific to our different sectors (Community and Youth Education for me). We definitely keep busy and time seems to go by faster and faster each week. We’ve also taken a few trips, mostly with my CYE group, to Niamey to interview “successful” women and to other villages to visit typical CYE sites. We also spent three to four days with current Peace Corps Volunteers so we could see and experience their life first hand.