Things I didn't know about Niger...

Rachel Palmer, Information and Communications Officer in Niger

8 May 2010

My day to day job is very office based, sitting in front of a computer, sending emails, making phone calls, coordinating the team, persuading people, fixing things and coming up with new ideas to talk about age old issues. Sometimes it’s easy to feel very distanced from the families we’re working to support, based the other side of the world, in places like Zimbabwe and Afghanistan.

Last year a chance came up to get much closer to the ‘action’. I got onto Save the Children’s Emergency Operations Programme – a course designed by our Emergency team with the aim of building up a ‘standby team’ of people who can at a moments notice get on a plane and be part of the response to any disaster that strikes.

After nine months of virtual seminars on everything from humanitarian principles to how to set up a food distribution topped and tailed by three weeks of responding to a fictional disaster in the middle of Wales I graduated onto the global standby team. The final part of my training would be as part of the response team to a real disaster.

But with a team to manage in London and a heavy workload, disaster responses came and went and I wasn’t able to take time out of the office to be a part of those responses.

Now, my opportunity has come. Niger is suffering from a drought worse than in a usual year. People’s food supplies have run out four months earlier than usual and although food is available to buy the price of food is too high for people to afford. Speculation is that the food crisis this year could be worse than it was in 2005 if we don’t act now. In the shadow of the earthquake that struck Haiti in January our challenge is to make the world sit up and care about the situation facing families in Niger.

A week ago I was asked if I would join the Niger response team as the information and communications officer. After some negotiation with my manager and a hectic week tying up work projects and making sure my husband was going to be ok for the two months I would be away I got on a plane to Niger.

9 May 2010

Things I didn’t know about Niger

As the plane touched down the temperature gauge read 100 degrees. It had been climbing rapidly as we descended into Niamey, the capital of Niger. Jungo, the driver who met me at the airport said that it’s not very hot at the moment!

Before arriving in Niger I have to admit to not knowing very much about the country except that it had a severe food crisis in 2005 – a repeat situation we’re tying to avoid this year.

A quick Google on Niger only came up with rather depressing statistics:

Life expectancy 42. My husband would have been dead six years ago.
Literacy rate 17.6%. I wouldn’t be able to read these stats
1 in 6 children die before they reach their fifth birthday
Niger is ranked bottom of the UN Human Development Index
Niger has the highest fertility rate in the world – meaning that half of the population is under 15
80% of the country is desert

With a little more digging I found that:

In 1972 Issake Dabore won a bronze medal for Niger for boxing in the 1972 Olympics – Niger’s only Olympic medal so far
Niger is home to giraffes – West African of Niger Giraffes to be precise, as well as lions, elephants and leopards
Niger is one of the worlds leading producer’s of uranium

So a lot to discover.

I spent my first day in my new office at the Save the Children base in Niamey finding out about our current programme work in health, nutrition and food security and livelihoods and the plans to scale this work up dramatically to reach the increasing numbers of families needing support during this tough time

Things I didn't know about Niger...

Rachel Palmer, Information and Communications Officer in Niger

8 May 2010

9 May 2010

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