Teach A Man to Fish  named the Nomad Foundation as a “first place in country” winner in the 2011 Educating  Africa Pan- African Awards for Entrepreneurship in Education. A $1,000 prize was given  for the foundation’s unique solar project that has trained nomads to fabricate solar panels from mostly indigenous materials.

Then the Sultan of the Air died after 52 years in power.  His funeral was a massive procession from the airport where his body arrived to the sultanate next to the mosque.  To everyone’s great surprise a new Sultan was picked in only two days.  He is the Sultan’s nephew.  Hannah was the first journalist to interview him.  Sidi has been arranging many interesting interviews for her.

Then we had the opportunity to accompany the presentation of the bride price to the family of the new bride of Bashir, our next door neighbor.  This involves the family of the groom driving through the streets honking madly and the young friends of the groom doing maniac manoeuvers in their cars. (what we call doughnuts–they call zeros)

Hidden in that dust cloud is a wildly spinning car.  For the first time in my life I saw no goats or other animals in the streets–lucky for them.

This procession used to be done on foot and camel with the women singing and ululating carrying baskets of new clothing for the bride.  Now it is madly honking cars and a nest of plastic suitcases full of money.  Oh for the old days.

Our final night in town we went to a concert of Bombino.  I have always known him as Omara.  He has been to the US three times for the Nomad Foundation and now he is making a pretty big name for himself internationally.  It was great to see how he has evolved.   The wild thing about the concert is that Agadez has quite a few Libyans living here because of the troubles there.  Both sides were represented.  The Ghadaffi supporters were pumping fists and the revolutionaries were flashing what we think of as the peace sign, but for them it means revolution.  I was wondering if a new war was going to break out, but they all danced together on stage–happily pumping fists and flashing revolution signs at each other.   Bombino is a rocking guitarist and his music was a great bridge.

Onions were a good harvest and we brought in the first 40 sacs, but the price is horrible some say because of a closure of the border with Nigeria due to Boko Haram (a islamist group) and the problems in Ivory Coast which was a market for Niger.  For whatever reason–no money in onions this year.  So welcome to the realities of agriculture.  We will now diversify with fruit trees, melons and tomatoes which we will dry, mangos and more Moringa.  At least our water will be free now that we will have solar.

Linda and Alhassane in the garden for a picnic.

The solar students installed 8 new panels next to the four existing.  We now have one small system and one large one.  Next step is the pump and then the tank.

The first thing on arrival at the dunes at sunset is to get to the top of the highest one.  Alhassane goes to the top…

The sand is so cool and clean you want to take of your shoes–and crawl around in it.

So everybody starts clowning around and taking photos…

Sidi, Achicha, Alhassane

Leslie, Sidi, Linda, Alhassane

Hannah, Leslie, Linda

Linda saves Alhassane after Sidi has pushed him off the edge.

Pushed off the cliff, we look up from the bottom.

Even the military get into the act…

Bread baked on the fire.

And then we listened to Alhassane’s guitar music as we watched the stars…

In the morning it was off on a hike to the top of the falaise of Tiguidit.

Going to the top was exhilarating, but coming down was REALLY fun.  I had never been down the back side before.  It looked so steep I was hesitating until one of the soldiers led the way.  You step off into midair, but the sand cushions and you slide and float as fast as you want.

And then we all posed for a final photo and a sad good bye.

This group of guards was from Ingall, the area where we work, so not only did they do their jobs as bodyguards, but they were interested in the work we were doing to help their nomadic families.

They made themselves useful in so many areas:

Helping us navigate a crowded festival in Ingall…

Note the name tag on this soldiers shirt.  We thought his name was Marck and Linda kept calling for help from Marck.  It turns out that it is the brand name of their military garb and they were ALL named Marck!!!

Pushing out a stuck car…

Organizing patients and guarding the clinic door…

Helping explain medicines, or showing the kids how to blow up balloons…

Or just clowning around…

But they did their job to maee us feel safe and more…it was nice to have them around.

Linda Lamb guarded the entrance.

And Bob and Achicha consulted patients and helped continue the training of Azarra, one of the matrons.  She was able to practice on live patients which proved really valuable.

We finished up the medical clinic and loaded up the cars to go on a mobile mission.

Dolee is a community with whom we have worked for years.  We built a school, cereal bank and well.  One of the matrones from here was sick and could not attend the recent training so we wanted to visit the community for several reasons.

We arrived late and they greeted us with a dance.

We called the pregnant women first.  There were eleven of them.  The first was the grandaughter of the matrone and had delivered four children, but hemorrhaged severely after each.  She was at high risk of dying in childbirth on her next delivery in about a month.  Dr. Skankey explained to her mother the necessary things to do and medications to administer, but advised her to go to the maternity in Ingall.  She said she had been there in the last month, but they had told her nothing and given her no medicine or vitamins.  We have heard this again and again.  It appears the local personnel either lack the resources in medicine and training or the desire to make the effort help these women.  The good news is that Ingall has been promised a new doctor and we are hoping to work with him to improve the conditions.

After evaluating eleven pregnant women and seeing several at risk, making references and recommendations, we called a community meeting to ask them about their opinions of the most prevalent health problems and what they are doing themselves to improve their health.  We talked about the sources of fevers, diarrhea  and malaria and related them to hand washing and protection from mosquitos with nets.

We emphasized the importance of the Nomad Foundation’s goal of putting skills in their own hands to improve their own lives.

After consulting 28 patients on mattresses under the trees,  moving to avoid the hot sun and stay in the shade, with Linda keeping order, Louine dispensing medicine, me explaining it and of course Dr. Skankey and Achicha talking to the patients we left for the next camp–totally exhausted.

Linda donned her Wodaabe skirt…

Achicha helped Hannah don a turban.

And we were ready to see patients.  Again we said pregnant women first.  We had a challenge with our first patient.  She was bofido.  This is a time of life when a young married woman is pregnant with her first child.  She goes home to live with her mother and wears only black with no color or jewelry.  She is not allowed to interact with any men but her brothers or father.  She is to be totally reserved.  So when she came in to be seen she refused to talk or be examined–a puzzling situation.  Eventually with her mother there to negotiate we were able to examine her and found no serious problems.

One of the main reasons for the mission was to train the midwives with actual patients–showing them how to determine due date, position of the baby, if the mother is anemic and taking blood pressure.

As the treatments went on more experienced mom’s got more co-operative

…and we were deluged with patients.  Linda kept the kids busy by distributing balloons and enlisted Sidi and one of our guards to teach them how to blow them up.

When we left we had not seen even half and so promised to send Ali back in a week to see the rest.

Linda Lamb gives Mariam a hug and thanks her for her hard work.

The crew poses for a final photo–proud of our hard work and the success of the program.

Achicha explaining medicine

Testing some pretty cool sunglasses

Congratulating the matrones she worked so hard to help train, upon the completion of their second training session.