Literacy hut class project launch

For many months we have been working to help a local Tuareg group launch its vision of a hut class. This group consists of a lot of our workers and their families and other Tuaregs living in the community around us. Our input thus far has been to fund the building of the straw and grass hut for the classes, install solar panels for 4 lights, build a latrine on site and supply learning/education materials. We are also working alongside them to design teaching content and support them in whatever way possible. The teachers are all volunteers from the community who got educated and want to give back now, and their board is all working together to learn how to manage the project, be accountable for and keep track of project funds, and to plan what they can do for their community.

This is their "governing board".

 

The purpose of this project was to benefit the men, women and children, all with different classes, to reach a higher level of literacy and education. Here is a picture of Paul at the grand opening handing out notebooks, pencils, pens and other school supplies to be distributed. Tim and Paul also gave a great little speech about how thrilled we are to partner with them. Paul drove home the idea that they don't have to live in ignorance and give up having an education. Their children CAN be doctors, lawyers, shop owners, ministers or whatever else their hearts desire, and we are here to help them make their education count. Even as adults there are many things they can learn to improve their lives.

This is Sidimou and Kutana explaining to the group of men what the classes are about. The men's class is twice a week and will focus on speaking, reading and writing (based on the french system which is what they need for government and jobs here). They will learn how to count money, make transactions, talk to their bosses with common french phrases and how to write their names. We will also teach on subjects such as building latrines, handwashing, and how to build,repair or make things (Paul's input will be awesome!)

This is a large part of the group of children that will be receiving free classes twice a week at the hut class. The purpose is to give them a place to bring their homework from school and meet with teachers to go over the concepts they didn't understand, be re-taught things and practice the things they did learn. The public school system is notoriously bad for going on strike for months and it is always the kids who suffer. By working with the kids several times a week we hope to enhance their education and success at school. Our staff members get their children's schooling paid for as part of their benefits for working with us, so this is one other way to make sure that investment is making it's maximum impact.

Who wants to learn? ME ME!!

Teachers and students. I can't wait to get in there and have fun teaching these kids and doing homework with them!

The women's class is also held for 2 hours twice a week on Fridays and Sundays. Starting in September, Chantelle will be co-teaching the Friday afternoon class with Miriama. As their own initiative, these 18 women who are registered so far have already started to donate 50 CFA (about 13 cents Canadian) every week into a communal pot. This fund will slowly grow and they are thinking together how to make their money work for them and how they can use it to help each other. We are listening carefully to their ideas!

Topics for the women will include how to count, how to write numbers and how to write their names. Almost all of these women are completely illiterate. We will also focus on health topics such as handwashing, breastfeeding, nutrition, family planning, ways to avoid their children getting sick, overall hygiene, etc. The list is long! I can't wait to get started in September to meet weekly with these ladies, speak Tamasheq and hopefully have a positive impact as they learn and improve their lives.

The opening party day itself was a lot of fun. Tim and Kristi came from our team along with our family. We got there at 10:00 am and went into the hut for some of the opening speeches. Once that was done they felt they had to feed the white people. The "real lunch" was still about 2 hours away...but maybe we looked frail? This is quite a common custom at gatherings we have been to. They pull us aside and practically force feed us to show us hospitality!

 

And when they are honoring you and even went out and bought more meat, how do you politely decline intestine and stomach all mixed in with meat chunks and sauce? For me the rule is I eat very slowly, mostly eating bread or pasta and try to be polite while avoiding too much meat, only having a few pieces of it. I know...some people delve right in and I admire them...but I am not quite up to that yet! Arielle on the other hand...she goes to town on it!

After our "pre-meal" we spent a few hours talking with the women, playing with the kids and animals, and then the real meal was ready! They had slaughtered a sheep and had a huge sack of rice and one of macaroni elbows prepared to feed the 50 or so people who were there

The cooking team with their two HUGE cooking pots on the open fire. It takes about 4-5 hours for these to cook before the meal is ready.

Platters of food being doled out and then the sauce and meat is added by the ladle-full over top.

 

And of course what day would be complete without the kids having a blast too! They love eating with their hands, playing with the kids and of course animals too.

Arielle holding baby Soufian (the baby of our main day guard)

I know it looks like Bennett is throttling the baby goat here, but please believe me when I tell you he was just trying to get it to look at the camera!

And that is it for the day! We are so excited that the hut is built and the classes have begun. I am sure there will be many more stories over time about how this class is a part of our lives and work here in Niger!

 

 

This will likely be our last blog from Niger before we head to Canada for a 7 week stop, so see you on the other side!!

A boy's prayer

Three posts in one day! That must mean I have been home with the flu for the past few days and am trying to get caught up. So enjoy the three in a row here.

 

Here is a cute prayer from my little boy last night

 

Dear Jesus

Thank you Jesus for Mommy and Daddy and Arielle. And for Grandma and Grandpas.

Please help me to get along with Arielle, and Jesus, help Arielle to get along with me!

Thank you for today and that I could win at Uno. Thank you I was good at school. Pray that I will have a good sleep tonight, and mommy too. And no dreams!

Thank you for all the people....the English people....all around the world....in Canada.

Amen

My Tuesday morning family

Every Tuesday morning for a while now I drop off the kids at school by 8:30 am and then head on over to the home of a Tuareg family. Their eldest daughter Miriama worked with me back in February and March when we were doing the baseline development survey.  Now I head over once a week to visit with her and her family. Sometimes we head out to a cafe, but more often than not we stay and her house and visit with everyone as they wander in and out. It is great practice for my language skills to spend all morning there.

We sit out under their shelter made of wood beams and crossbeams, then covered with a quilt woven of scraps of fabrics, then covered with woven straw mats. It sure helps to keep the heat of the day away! Her mother speaks no french at all and always sits right close. I pull out my notebook and verb cards for help when I need it and we chatter away. She points out things and name them, we talk about her day, what people are cooking,etc. She seems to quite enjoy our time, even though she already asked me if I could give them money to rebuild their whole hut. Such is the life of their "token white person" !

Miriama and her mother.

Inevitably while I am there, the children show up. They have 2 little kids who live there and they invite their friends over. They show me things, we play little games of drawing animals in the ground with sticks and trying to guess what we drew, etc. They are a lot of fun. And everyday they want me to take their pictures. I have only brought my camera with me once, and they had a blast looking at themselves on my screen

 

Miriama is a special young lady. She is one of the very few Tuareg women who has become educated (she almost finished secondary school and speaks decent french). She is also the one volunteering with our literacy hut class to teach the women. As I spend lots of time with her and her family, I am slowly trying to find the best, culturally appropriate way to build her up and help her with her goals. She has spoken several times of her interest in attending a technology school. This school would teach her to type and work with computers and data and then after two years she could get a job working in an office, or a pharmacy or something like that. So please pray as we slowly consider the best way to help her and build relationships with her whole family. Miriama refused a family arranged marriage as a young teenager, and thus her mother pulled her out of school and now she doesn't know what she can do to make her life better. I want to walk alongside her and help her where I can without being offensive to the family in any way or being seen as "the Bank". So please pray for wisdom!

 

As for now, I sure enjoy my Tuesday mornings!

Best packaging EVER!

Every little care package and gift and encouragement we get here is always really appreciated and celebrated. We have been the recipients of some wonderful boxes!!
Recently, two team members went to the Arabian Peninsula for a conference and vacation a month ago, and brought us back goodies! You see, Paul's parents work there, and they were more than happy to have "cargo carriers" to bring us back some love! We loved all the goodies and candy and useful things they sent back. One thing we had requested was a set of speakers that we could plug our iPod into to act as both speakers for music and an alarm clock in the morning. It was perfect to get it from them since they live in a country that uses 220v power as well, so no need to fuss with adaptors and transformers!

 

After we had unpacked the stuff they had sent us we had supper and got the kids ready for bed and I happened to pick up the box. We hadn't opened it up yet as I knew it was the speaker set. When I picked it up I thought "wow...this box is really heavy". So we opened it up and look what awaited us!! They had taken out all the traditional, boring and inedible packaging of foam or plastic and replaced it with koolaid packs, oreo cookie packs, Coffee Crisp bars (Paul's favorite!) and coffee! So the speakers were still nice packaged in to avoid damage, but this is some of the most fabulous packing material ever! Thanks mom and Dad! A good idea for those of you out there who may know other people who live overseas too. If you ever have packages to send...think of how they might like this "alternative packing material!!"

Visiting Tagantassou

This past Thursday and Friday I had the chance to be out of town and visit the Marineaus and the village of Tagantassou. This is one village that we are focusing on to start a new holistic development program. I was a little nervous to head out of town (especially alone on a local bus) with the state of the current security and political situation in Niger, but in the end I felt a peace about it and choose not to fear. Turned out I had no problems at all, except for the smelly-ness of the local bus!

While out of town I got to spend some excellent time with the Marineau family as well. Always such a blessing to spend time with them!

While in the village, Sophie and I got to sit down with one of the ladies there called Maimouna. I like to stop at her house every time we are in the village to talk. With a mix of tamasheq and french, we have a great time! That day she was out front in her yard making straw mats. This is one of the major little industries that the women in this village do. She makes about 1 1/2 mats per day, weaving them from millet stalks dried over from the last harvest. These mats sell for about 700CFA ($1.75)  She had her niece there helping too, so maybe she would finish 2 complete mats that day.

 

Some finished products rolled up against the wall.

I decided to get in there and give it a try again. I managed to get comfortable with the looping knot that they do to hold the pieces together, but they were much faster than me! I told her next time I would come early and we could make a whole mat together while we talked. These mats are important to the women here and provide one of their few sources of cash income. When we built the hut class recently, we bought 25 of these mats from the community and they were very happy!

 

The main reason for my last minute solo trip was to nail down a few last details for our school feeding program. You see, we are in the midst of a process to apply for a grant to fund a school feeding program for this village and the people in a 3 km radius. Daniel spent a lot of time talking with the school director to gather a few more details about a vaccination program they recently had come through and a few other things we needed for our proposal.

This is one of the classrooms in this 2 room school. While definitely better than a grass hut class, it still is in serious need of help.

As you can tell, it is in rough shape, there are not enough desks (and some are broken) and there are not enough school books to go around. When our school feeding program kicks off in October, we expect to see even more kids show up at the school and put a greater strain on their resources. So some of the things we are attempting to address is to bring their books to children ration to 1 book for 2 children, supply annual de-worming and measles and meningitis vaccinations, hand washing stations etc, all in addition to the 2 nutritious meals a day per child. All of this for a budget which equals just 33 cents per child per day for the 9 month school year! (as my brother commented- you can't even buy a pack of Ramen noodles back home for that!)

We are also hoping to partner with others to reinvigorate their classrooms. Some of the ideas kicking around right now are to work with a short term missions team to paint and clean up and repair the classrooms, or do that with the local MK school here in Niamey as a service project, or add it to the project budget and pay the community,etc.

We will keep you up to date on the project as it progresses!

While you are waiting

Hi there! Well I hope in the next day or two to have at least one new post up since so much has been happening. I spent some time in our village checking out a project and yesterday (Saturday) was the grand opening of a Tuareg hut classe that we are partnering with. But...I have a few big things on my plate for the next few days so I thought I would at least send a few new pictures your way! (You may also notice the new picture in our blog heading!)

Chantelle

Children who will get classes at the hut class project



The ladies in the village, hard at work making straw mats



and finally.....



Stay tuned for more to come!

ONE

ONE

Today is May 31. Today marks one full year that we have been living here in Niger! A year ago, in the wee hours of the morning (like 2:00am) our family arrived, 8 very full pieces of luggage in tow, and was greeted at the airport by almost our whole team and we stepped into this country to start our new lives.

In some regards, I am amazed how fast the time has gone by. It DOES seem like we have been here only 5 or 6 months. We have been so busy with life, people and language that time flies by.

 

Here are a few of the things that we have learned and done in this past year:

We have begun to learn about different cultural mannerisms, and what it is ok to do and what it is not okay to do in public. It still seems odd to me to see men and women fishing around in their nose in public with no problem. We hear loud burps from both sexes who don't seem bothered. We have learned that if you pass gas in their presence, especially in a village setting, you might as well move and go find a new place of ministry. Story goes that ministries and reputations have actually been ruined because they farted in public. yikes!

Bad driving is the norm in Niger. While Paul still gets mad out about this, (and Chantelle tries to avoid driving if she doesn't have to) we are still amazed that one country can be so full of bad drivers. We see accidents almost everyday. Half the times these include motorbikes, which are the menaces of the road for sure. People pass you on the LEFT, way out into the other lane. I think many people honestly think (or have been taught) that the center line is merely a suggestion and doesn't matter much. People cut you off all the time. At night, most roads have no street lights and driving is even more scary. We appreciate all prayers directed towards our general safety as we have to drive around here! Thankfully we have a big truck that sits up high and is tough. Go Toyota Landcruisers!

Crazy high temperatures is the norm.

Thankfully, we find we are doing much better with by now. Our bodies and attitudes have acclimated, and while we still feel the heat and sweat a lot, we don't let it bother us as much and we continue on with life in spite of it. I really do believe the battle is half mental! We tried to fry an egg on our front tile patio in the sun when it was 57 degrees (135 farenheit) and it surprised me by taking longer than i thought. Next up, I plan to try baking cookies on the dash of our truck. I have heard rumours it works!

Paul has spent that last 9 months in intensive studies for french. He has learned a ton of the language and we are so pleased with his progress. He will be starting full time Tamasheq studies in September. Chantelle has spent 9 months in full time tamasheq language. This language is related to Arabic loosely and is quite a challenge. After 9 months, I am beginning to be able to hold my own in basic conversations and sit and visit with the women (who speak no french)

We have also taken a lot of time this past year to work on our relationships with the people around us. I have 5 different women I feel welcomed to visit and spend time with as often as possible. We love their children and feel like aunts and uncles to them. It has been so exciting to build friendships and learn culture from them and be accepted. Really, this is all the icing on the cake for us! This gift to stand out at something "different" to them and to be invited over time and time again to share in their lives, teach them things and pray for them. What joy!

In our past year, here is some of the development work we have been doing:

Paul is working a lot in the little welding shop out front. He is teaching 2 men on and off how to use basic tools, how to grind and saw and piece things together. This shop has done work for a missions aviation group, the Adventist Relief agency, Sahel school (solar cooker box) and our own projects building pulleys and systems to outfit a well, designing and modify roof racks for team vehicles and anything else that anyone needs fixed. Some days he has more work than time, but he is loving the way to work alongside his workers, speak french and teach them, while blessing others in his skills to build things.

Chantelle spent many months designing, implementing and tabulating all the data from our team's first baseline development survey. As you may have read in our posts about it, we gathered health, education, death, illness, water source, family changes, and much more from over 1200 people in the areas we work. This information is now helping us better plan our next steps in these communities

 

Our family has been the team point persons for working with a local Tuareg community group to build a hut class and latrine for them. They are starting classes for their own people to teach them literacy, french language and health/hygiene topics. The grand opening is next week, so stay tuned for more information on this exciting project! We are also working with our Tuareg team members the Marineau family who live about an hour outside town to put together grant funds and plans for a school nutrition & feeding program we hope to start this September. This school only has 40% attendance (at the primary level!) and we hope that by giving 2 meals a day that meet international nutritional standards, that we can improve attendance and their consumption rates, thus positively impacting their health and education at the same time! We are still in the planning stages, so more news to come!

 

Bennett and Arielle

Our two little tikes are now 3 and 4 years old. They have spent the past 9 months attending a morning preschool in french. This frees us up to have language classes all morning. They are enjoying learning lots of songs and we are quite pleased to see the level of french they are slowly starting to acquire. Arielle will continue in this preschool next year, while Bennett will transfer over to start real kindergarten at "La Fontaine", thus starting his scholastic journey in the french system. We have chosen to put him in the french system for now to ensure he gets not only a great education, but the best chance we can offer him to learn french really well and be bilingual. As you can tell, language is important to us! Arielle will likely follow the year after

 

Firsts

Some of the things we have seen for the very first time here in Niger

Families of giraffes out in the wild

Minivans and buses packed higher than the height of the vehicle itself

 

Photographed, sat on and played with a giant turtle

Seen little moped motorbikes used as major transportation haulers. We have seen these things carry animals, 6 people at a time, lawnmowers, other mopeds strapped on top with the driver, full wooden dresser/armoire units, 20 foot long wrapped lengths of iron, barrels, gas cylinders and many other bizarre things.

Moto with two people and a sheep

Sweat. I had no idea we could lose so much water via sweat and still be standing and healthy. Here is Paul after a few hours outside working in the shop.

Water. We have seen whole communities of people drink water from wells that is so dirty that we wouldn't even consider drinking it back in Canada.

Photo courtesy of Tim

Sand storms. Never before have I seen a blue sky turn completely orange in the middle of the day. The sand storms normally get pushed up ahead of rain coming and the high winds roll into the city, bringing with them huge sand storms. In minutes the sky is covered and we run to close all our windows and get inside. A fine layer of sand still makes it into the cracks in the doors and windows and we sweep out a fine layer of sand from the floors and off the surfaces in the house. These photos have not been touched up at all for color, saturation or effect. This is how it really rolls in. Notice the patch of sky just barely peeking through in the top right of this first one? It is the middle of the day.

 

We rode camels.

Chantelle learned to grind up millet in a traditional mortar and pestle. Hard work!

 

And so now we embark on another year. Many new adventures and projects planned, and many more opportunities to spend our lives with the people of Niger. Thank you for being with us thus far!!

 

Paul & Chantelle

When methodologies collide....

Sometimes we see things here that are frustrating. Normally we try not to let them get to us, to walk away and wipe them from our psyche and hold no ill-will. Sometimes that task is a little harder. Let me tell you about yesterday. Actually, first, a little back history. Our house is in front of a school. Like directly in front of it. If there is a stiff wind while the kids pee on the school wall (lack of latrines) it might hit our front gate. That's how close we are. This is a National Government school, which means it is often on strike, but when it is functioning we see the kids, they play with our kids and neighbors. I speak with some of the teachers who might come and sit on the bench under the shade of our tree once in a while and chat during the afternoon break. I am learning how their school functions, where they grew up, what their lives are like,etc. I don't know if I would call them friends, but everything is a relationship in progress :)

The school yard from the vantage point of my front yard

So yesterday afternoon during the school time two trucks came filled with white people. I am saying white people simply because they were white, spoke english and I don't know what country they were from, and I won't identify here which organization was emblazoned on the door of the truck. I am guessing a short term visiting team? They brought with them boxes of books. More specifically, soft cover Sunday school type materials with Bible stories in them. They emptied all their boxes and handed out these books to all the children. They video taped the whole event while handing them out, smiling children, etc then they drove off. Paul walked up just when they were leaving and found out what had just happened. He was not impressed to say the least. He saw some of the kids jumping up and down on piles of the books, tearing out the pages and flinging them around and jumping on them. Small fires were set for some. The teachers didn't try to stop them. Our neighbor boy, who does not attend the school, also had a copy which was torn and dismantled within minutes. This morning when I walked outside you can see the sand littered with bits and pieces of the pages all over the sand.

Shredded pages of the books blown up against our garden fence.

This one struck me as particularly poignant. I remnant of a page that is torn and says only "Dieu voulait" - God wanted.

This morning a bunch of parents (around 40 according to my guard outside) descended on the school, clearly very mad that the school (a govt school in a Muslim country) had allowed this to happen on school grounds, and if they hadn't given permission for it (we have no idea if they did) that the teachers allowed it to happen. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they did in fact get permission from someone higher up, that they have a relationship with someone in the school who maybe invited them or told them it would be ok? That just never got passed on to the teachers or parents. They were extremely upset and mad and mistrustful of the strangers who had no relationship with the school and just descended in a "carpet bomb" of literature at a public school, took pictures, then left. A few of the teachers said they didn't know anything about it ahead of time and were surprised and upset it had happened too. I guess they didn't feel powerful enough in their own jobs though to go challenge these people handing out freebies on their school yard during recess.

I feel sad about the waste of those books. Had they been more appropriately targeted then lots wouldn't have been shredded and destroyed. I know there are local churches here who would have probably really appreciate them. I feel fairly sure the supporters who purchased those materials would not be happy either. I am sad that the school teachers and especially parents are totally mistrustful now of the efforts of white strangers and we worry about impact on our own relationships there. I am trying hard here to understand. I am trying hard to see a benefit of this type of drop off. There was no relational context at all and to our guards and neighbors.

I know that my heart and personality beats for building strong long term relationships and working in development to better the lives of the people here. I know that people have different approaches, opinions, etc. I really do get that and by no means think there is only one approach to love people and reach them. But really I am struggling with this one. My other neighbors are angry as well. They are a well to do Muslim family we have being slowly befriending ever since we moved in next door. Our guards saw it happen and were mad at the "typical missionaries!" (their words - not mine!) Haven't we learned and grown as people and grown in our respect and love for each other, for cultures and for building relationships. Really - I just don't get it. I am not trying at all to slam this effort or their hearts motivations, I am trying to understand.

Pray for us as we now talk with these neighbors and parents who are angry now. We aren't sure ourselves quite what to say.

For us, sharing our faith is very relationally built. As I sit with my language tutor, the village ladies etc, eventually they want to know about me too. They want to know why I would leave the land of riches (North America) to live here in the "heat and poverty". And I tell them why. I have hours under their straw roofs to talk and share tea and watch our kids play. We talk about hygiene, education, breastfeeding skills, crops, cultural mess-ups I have made, words I don't yet know and our children. We also talk about love, life, faith and hope. And I love it.

Feel free to share in the comment section your thoughts, insights, experiences etc with different methodologies, maybe you have some insight or words I could really use to help me understand this one. Opinions are welcome on the issue. No bashing please. Slander won't be tolerated and will be deleted. I believe above all that we are all here to love the people of Niger and no one is trying to purposely hurt the ministry of people, or act in an unintentional fashion.

So this may be a little heavy and more theological than our normal blog fodder - but this is our life :)

How to keep cool in Niger - a tutorial

The hot season is on. Well, not like it ever gets turned off here, with the temperate daily average rarely dipping below 30 even in COLD season, but this season, which I think lasts from March-July mostly, is miserably hot before we get some rain the end of July. The daily average in the SHADE these last few months has been 45 degrees Celsius (113F). The house usually seems to sit inside around 36 degrees with the fans running. So with this kind of heat for this long we need options to keep our brains from frying! We have found many different options on how to help keep us cool and active, rather than falling into a sleepy, grumpy, dysfunctional hot mess. Here are our  ideas for "beating the heat!"

The daily recommended 8 glasses of 8 ounces a day is just over one of these bottles. Paul and I drink about 3 each a day, and the kids one a piece. So this table represents the minimum our family drinks per day around here. I also have 2 or 3 bottles that are half full in the freezer than I top up with water when I go out somewhere to ensure lots of ice cold water in the heat! At least hopefully we won't get heat stroke from being dehydrated. We have three fabric carrier bags with straps that insulate and carry our water everywhere. We even have an extra for visitors (hint hint!)

 

In the morning if there is a breeze, we like to sit outside on the terrace to do language study or work. It is still in full shade, and when there is a breeze it makes the heat quite manageable. The same is true for the evening when the sun is down and the air is moving. You can see we are in the middle of screening in a little room here. We hope to be able to sleep outside when it is hot and the power goes out inside, and give us a refuge at night to sit/read/study/visit people or play guitar. We need the screen for bugs and lizards. At night hundreds of bugs are attracted to the lights and drive you crazy, and malaria season is soon upon us, so the screens are a must.

When inside, the heat and humidity would be intolerable without fans. At least being able to get the air moving around you feels like it drops the temperature by 10 degrees. So if we are in a room, the fans are turned on. Really irritating side effect is that all your papers get blown everywhere. We have lots of little paperweights now.

This fan below is a new model dual purpose fan/hair dryer. Yes, this is what I actually use 90% of the time to dry my hair, especially in hot season. The normal hair drier isn't strong on its cool setting and the normal air  makes my hair wet with sweat faster than I can dry it! And if I am feeling really hot and sweaty I go stand in front of this fan just to dry off and cool off. I call it the "jet engine" since it is really large, powerful and noisy.  Paul says he feels all proud with this "industrial" fan around.

 

Sometimes our power goes out, and when that does, the heat instantly settles in the room, with no fans to chase it away. This is particularly horrendous if it is 3am and you wake up with no power, no fan and a puddle of sweat and wet hair where your pillow used to be. So I made 4 long fabric tubes, with divided partitions, that hold a mix of lavender, corn and beans. These sit in the freezer all day and when the power goes out, we distribute one to each member of the family. At night this means we can fall back asleep and it will keep my head cool for the 30 minutes or so before the power comes back on usually (thankfully we are close to the power plant and come back online near the front of the pack!) In the middle of the day we will get them out and wrap them around our neck while studying, and Bennett especially likes pulling several of them out and laying under them as seen here. Arielle seems to like the heat the most, and Bennett the least. He always wants to be as cold as possible!

Another option we have here is the swamp cooler, or you may know it by the name "Evaporative cooler". It uses a motor and fan to pull air through a mat/screen of water which cools the air. As you probably already thought, this also adds humidity to the air. So in the really dry part of the year, these work really well for a single room. As the humidity starts to rise, as it is now, they becomes less useful since the air gets too humid so you are dripping with sweat from that too. Sometimes you just can't win! Also, these do wrack up the electricity bills, using about 40%  more power than just running the ceiling fans alone. We have been calculating and keeping track!

Our final option in the house is two air conditioning units. They are located in the bedrooms for us and the kids (who share a room) during hot season last year we had all four of us in one room. These are only big enough to cool the bedrooms. We try to only use the minimally and only at night. They are the most expensive option and one of our largest expenses every month is electricity. In the cooler season from October to March we didn't use them at all almost, but now in hot season we run them at night so we can sleep.

And when all else fails - the power is out and we have no escape from the heat, we do what any self-respecting Canadian would do, we head to the closest pool!! (This is a picture of our favorite pool at a local hotel where you can pay $5 per person to come for the day.

So come to Niger, and beat the heat! We have lots of options. Feel free to share your ideas if you know some others. We are always looking for new ways!

 

Until next time,

Chantelle