Destiny

Our dear neighbors, the Community Radio Nata, had a “rap” concert last night. This consists of the same basic beat playing over and over with various youth attempting to rap in either Songhoy or French. It’d be entertaining if it wasn’t from midnight until 3 am! I took the time to call Le Boy.

Back in Ansongo (I ended up waiting until the Monday morning Niamey bus because halfway down the road out of town on Sunday I realized I left all my drugs back at the house. Oops), we received 52 babies for weighing. The ACF doctors came for a supervision in the CSCOMs, but stop by to see how we were doing. A girl who was only moderately malnourished 3 weeks ago came, now severely malnourished with complications. She had been marked abandoned because the mother had stopped coming in for visits. The child didn’t even react to the VAA/VAR needle prick. She drank some milk, but was clearly beyond help. I went to go make some sugar water while Bébé was trying to get her to take her medicine; I come back, and she had stopped breathing. Bébé just says: “That’s destiny.” Cause of death filled-in as “destiny” is not an acceptable answer for me.

People are starting to think about my departure scheduled in um, another 5 months. I think it is because I am pressuring them into working by saying I’m not going to be here forever. So someone asked for my stove, another for my radio, I’ve received plenty of requests for the bike, the women in Djéfilani asked for a sewing machine. Once again, “if you give a mouse a cookie…”