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Last week, for spring break, we (our family) were planning on going to Benin. We lined up a house to stay in, planned an early Easter egg hunt, cleaned the car for a road trip, etc. We had been told by all but one person we know that the road to Benin is terrible, with deep potholes everywhere and very little room to avoid them. We decided to ignore everyone that said the road is bad: we thought they were exaggerating – instead, we listened to the one person that had driven the road recently and said it was fine… in a land cruiser. We thought more seriously about the possibility of it being a bad road, we decided that, because it’s the Niger equivalent of Interstate 5 or 10 in the U.S, it shouldn’t be that bad. In fact, the road is more important than either of the interstates I mentioned because it is the only road to get from Niger to Benin, and it is by far the most direct road to a seaside port. We figured that because it is Niger’s source of shipped goods and necessities (i.e. flip flops, flashlights, heavy equipment, stuff from China, etc) the road really could not be in that bad a state of disrepair. Once we had set ourselves on going to Benin, my French teacher recommended that we leave right after school gets out on Friday afternoon, at 14:30, to get through the worst section of bumpy road before dark. Friday morning my mom, Avery, and Zayk went to school, my dad made final preparations for the trip, and I sat at home and wrote an AP Biology essay. Friday afternoon, at 15:00 sharp, we pulled out of the school parking lot with the car loaded, Walking on Sunshine (a song that Zayk knows inside out and backwards) playing on our mp3/radio setup, and everyone pumped for a fun trip to Benin. We left town, drove on a good road to Dosso, turned off for Benin onto the road that is supposed to have problems, and we didn’t see a single pothole for 50km. Then, we saw a lot of potholes.

I’m sure that many of the people reading this think they have been on a bad road before; I am equally sure that this road is as bad, or worse, than any road this thoughtful reader has been on, unless of course the reader has been to Liberia which is another dimension of bad roads. When we reached the bad section of the road, we were stuck in a long line of trucks going 5km/hour (us in our small, sporty Toyota Carina) over a series of potholes that was absolutely relentless. The potholes we were encountering and trying to avoid were up to a meter deep with steep edges that could easily rip off a tailpipe, total the oil pan, etc. For the first hour on the crummy road we thought that it ended ‘just around that next corner’, and at times it even seemed to be getting better. When it started to get dark outside and we were still on the bad road, we became more worried about totaling the car in the fading light, and we were not reassured by the cars being towed behind trucks going in both directions. Avery, Zayk, and I watched a movie for an hour and a half, and when it was over, and solidly dark outside at 20:00, my dad proclaimed that he would never buy a low clearance vehicle in Africa again. A few minutes later we heard the tailpipe drag particularly badly on a pothole that resembled the opposite of a speed bump from our trips to Konni, we hopped out of the car to take a look at the tailpipe; it was only slightly loose, and shouldn’t fall off anytime soon. At 21:00 my dad decided that we should stop and ask someone how much further it was to Gaya, the border town to Benin. He said that if it was more than 20km, he would seriously consider turning around and driving back to Niamey. We stopped the car on the side of the road and got out and waved down a motorcycle. He said that it was only another 15km to Gaya and that road is in much better shape after another 2km. We took his word for it, and hoped that the car wouldn’t break down; we had just received a call from my French teacher who said that the section we were on is prone to banditry at night. Sure enough, as the motorcycle guy had promised, the road was better after two kilometers. We had been told that there is a good hotel in  Malanville, a town right on the Benin side of the border, so we decided to go ahead with all of the border crossing stuff.

At the border on the Niger side were several police/customs people that are on duty from 20:00 in the evening to 8 O’clock in the morning. I went over and talked to some of the officers in hopes of getting a shot of the Tuareg tea they were making, then went over and filled out the necessary paperwork to cross the border. While I was filling out pointless questions such as ‘Where were you born?’ (in French) (pointless because the paper I was filling it out on will probably be used to populate a trash can soon, and the officials have no idea where Utah is, even if I say I was born there), I noticed some people walking up to the officers and passing ‘informal taxes’ to the police to grease the way across the border. The police don’t force bribes, but they highly encourage them; the options are, essentially, pay a small bribe and go through, or spend several days filling out paperwork at the border. We don’t have to do either because we have a small car, but a large truck full of goods has, theoretically, a lot more formalities to go through, which are nice to bypass. When we were through the Niger side of the border, we drove over to the Benin side of the border, and went through the exact same set of paperwork. It was remarkable however the difference in quality of workplace between the Niger and Benin sides: on the Niger side, my mom had to hold up a cellphone flashlight for a police officer to hand copy the questions that we needed to fill out onto five different papers: they don’t keep the paperwork handy, and they don’t have a photo copy machine. On the Benin side, the border officials were watching a French movie, with a well lit porch to sit on, mosquito coils burning, and a nice laptop on a table that did not look like it was about to fall over. The Beninois police spoke English ‘small small’ and I was able to witness some more informal taxing while talking to an officer about the state of the bad road in Niger.

Once we were through all the border formalities, we drove through Malanville and found the hotel we were looking for. By now it was nearly midnight and we quickly got a room and unloaded the car. The hotel was made entirely of concrete and, believe it or not, a concrete building turns into a heat trap pretty pretty quickly in the desert sun. Our room was particularly sweaty because there were five of us in a room for two people. In addition to the heat, I realized very quickly that as you move south, it gets a lot more humid, and I spent the next 6 hours (the time that I ‘slept’) dripping sweat to the point that I was dehydrated in the morning. That morning we decided to get the car tailpipe more securely attached, then go back to Niamey; we had been told by the border officials in Benin that road to Côtonou, the port, is not much better than the road we had just come across. While the car was being fixed by a roadside mechanic, my mom walked around a bit to get some food. In her quest for food, she came across another, much more comfortable, hotel with a nice French manager, a clean pool, and air conditioned rooms. We decided it would be best for everyone to spend the night before going back to Niger on 6 hours of sleep, and the pool looked like you would not get a tropical disease from swimming in it. The AC turned out not to work that well, so we strung a mosquito net up over the door, and left the door and windows open; the nighttime air temperature is quite comfortable.

The next day we left bright and early to get through the border and try to get across the bumpy road quickly. The last time across that road had taken us 5 hours to go 60km, and the border can take a while. We went through exactly the same set of paperwork that we had our last time through, with exactly the same officials, and my mom got some food from a lady on the road side. This time at the border however I got to watch the distribution of the ‘informal taxes’ from the night before. Each officer received a large chunk of cash that looked like the equivalent of about 80 US dollars. When we were through the border, we stopped to get some more food in Gaya, and we were told that there is another piste, or dirt road, that bypasses much of the bad road. We decided to try it, and we got a cabo-cabo, or motorcycle taxi to lead us to it. The piste was indeed much better than the road, and cut off a lot of time and damage to our car. When we hit the bumpy road again, we made it more easily because of the daylight, and we reached Dosso within two hours. Once we were past Dosso, we decided to stop on the side of the road for lunch under a mango tree, something of sentimental value to my mom from her Peace Corps volunteer days. The lunch we ate was MRE’s (meals ready to eat) given to us by a friend of my father’s at the Embassy; the taste of an MRE is something I will readily forget, and I do not recommend. It was smooth driving all the way back to Niamey, and we were all relieved when the car pulled into the garage without breaking down. The next day we got the car fixed, and enjoyed the rest of spring break in Niamey.

(Actually, this is before we get to the camp)

Last week my dad and I made another trip out to Birni N’Konni to
interview people for my dad’s PhD research. Rissa (pronounced Raisha),
Hamidoune’s middle son, came along with us to visit his family in
Konni. This time the drive to Konni went by much faster because we
kept our original destination pass; last time we made the trip my dad
bundled up a piece of gum in it and it blew off the dashboard and out
the window. Similarly to the last drive, we scraped the bottom of our
car on several oversized speed bumps, including a particularly bad one
in the village Kallon Mota, or ‘look at the car.’ These speed bumps
ended up having a negative effect on the bottom of our car which I
will describe later. When we reached Dogan Doutchi, the place with the
tall rocks, we stopped for lunch at an outstanding restaurant on the
roadside. The restaurant consisted of a shaded concrete slab about
20ft long by 30ft wide, with several plastic tables and a gas stove
somewhere behind it. They served some four different dishes, all of
which were outstanding, and the three guys running it were very
pleasant. I ate two plates of yams and rice, before continuing on the
road to reach Konni in the mid afternoon. In Yaya, a small town about
an hour from Konni, were some particularly large speed bumps.
Something that was unique here however, was that rather than there
being beggars next to the bumps, there were about 20 young men with
Tuareg tea ready to go who would run over to your car and sell shots
of Tuareg tea at 50 CFA per shot (about 10 cents). The tea is very
strong with lots of sugar and gave us a good energy boost to get to
Konni in the mid afternoon, right around 3:30. When we reached Konni,
we met Ghalitone at his shop, then we went to his house to figure out
what to do next. At Ghalitone’s house we sat around for a while and
talked, Ghalitone showed us pictures from when he was touring as a
musician in Europe and Australia, and we waited for the temperature to
drop before driving out to the Tuareg Camp where several of Rissa and
Ghalitone’s relatives are. Before driving out there however, Rissa,
my dad, and I all took showers to cool off after the road trip. When
it was my turn to shower, Ghalitone pointed out where the bathroom
was, and I set out to find it. When I walked into the bathroom/shower,
the first thing I noticed was the butt of one of the largest
cockroaches I have ever seen. Next to the roach and all around the
ceiling were massive spiders of several different varieties. In the
right corner of the bathroom was a toilet that had clearly seen better
days, and had obviously not been used as a toilet in quite some time.
In front of the toilet were several large, dusty, plastic crate like
things leaned against the wall; I didn’t go anywhere near them, you
never know what lurks in dark corners. The floor of the bathroom was
damp everywhere, and certainly not a place to drop your cloths on the
ground; I had the misfortune of stumbling and dropping my boxers which
I then had to clean off, and put back on because I didn’t have a
change of clothes with me. I hung all my clothes on the shutters of
the window and then stepped into the shower. I felt reasonably sure
that if any of the miscellaneous critters in the room were going to
move, they would do so when the shower was turned on. Nothing moved.
When I was halfway through the shower, I heard a very loud buzzing
noise outside the window, which very quickly turned into a very large
wasp flying into the bathroom and working on its nest – something I
hadn’t noticed about 2 feet away from me. I quickly remembered the
saying that if you stand still, a wasp won’t bother you; needless to
say, I stood very still. When the wasp was done working on its nest,
it started flying in circles and looping very close to me. It then
started to make angry wasp noises and buzz louder, then, finally, it
flew out the window. As soon as it left I jumped out of the shower,
dressed as quickly as possible without dropping my clothes on the damp
floor, then left the bathroom before that wasp came back. Once I was
safely outside and away from the wasp, I caught my breath and sat down
on the mat just in time for the second round of Tuareg tea. 10 minutes
later my dad was done showering too, I put on my turban, and we were
ready to go. Rissa and I were wrapping our turbans at the same time
and more than one person commented that I can wrap a turban better
than Rissa can; at once a compliment to me, and a jibe at Rissa. We
laughed and got in our car with Rissa, Yassin (Rissa’s mother), and
Imma (Rissa’s cousin) and took off for the camp. Now, our car is a
rather sporty looking blue Toyota Carina, certainly not designed or
suited for being taken off road. We pointed this out before taking
off, but we were assured that road is excellent condition all the way
out there. Apparently they aren’t up to the U.S standards of
‘excellent condition.’ The ‘road’ was a nice dirt trail for the first
150 meters before it turned into a sandy track barely wide enough for
our car to get through; this is still the good part of the road. We
then reached a Hausa village with very narrow streets and lots of
people, we were forced to backtrack several times because our car
could not handle the most direct route. When we got through that
village we drove on a small dirt path for another 15 minutes before
reaching another village. Here we ran into a more interesting problem.
Remember the ‘negative effects on the bottom of our car’ that I
mentioned earlier? Yeah, in the middle of this village is where our
whole exhaust system fell off. As we were rounding a sandy corner, all
the sudden our car went from very quiet to roaring like some sort of
race car. We immediately stopped and hopped out, I saw a good
opportunity to take a Flip Video, and my dad, Imma, and Rissa all took
a look at the back of the car. After a couple minutes, they realized
that the whole exhaust system had broken off right where the whole
thing attaches to the engine. Apparently oversized speed bumps take
their toll. We decided to stash the exhaust system in the village
overnight, and come back for it the next day; it was already getting
dark, and we didn’t want to get lost on our way to the camp. As we
drove off in our very loud car, the road outside the village was in
much worse condition. It was essentially a walking path, wide enough
for a motorcycle, not our car. Imma got out of the car to lead the way
and we simply followed him and drove over/near the trail. Another 10
minutes and we were at the camp.

Part II

The Tuareg camp we were visiting is made up of 5 closely related
families of Tuareg. All five of these families defer to the patriarch
of the central family; a guy in his mid 50s that was recovering from a
staph infection on his stomach while we were there. They are currently
staying on land that belongs to Hausa farmers who are actually paying
the Tuareg a sack of millet once a week to stay on the land and let
their animals fertilize it. Between this group of 5 Tuareg families,
my dad and I estimate that they own approximately $50,000 (U.S.
Dollars) worth of animals including camels, goats, sheep, donkeys,
cows, and chickens. When we arrived at the camp at around 7 o’clock in
the evening, the sun was just starting to go down, and we really did
not see many of the animals that they have. We greeted everybody,
Rissa caught up with a bunch of his relatives, and my dad started
asking some of his interview questions for his PhD. At around 7:30 or
8:00, a pot of rice and some sauce was brought out for my dad, me,
Rissa, Imma, and one other cousin, to share. In the pot were three
large wooden spoons; I got one, my dad got one, and the other three
people shared one amongst them, each taking a bite of food then
passing the spoon on. There was plenty of food to go around, and right
when we were finishing up with the meal, Rissa and Imma got up to go
help slaughter a goat. I went and watched the whole process; it’s
quite remarkable how quickly someone that is good at skinning things
can skin a goat. When the goat was all skinned, they cut it open and
pulled out all the innards; nothing gets wasted. When Rissa and Imma
were done with their part of the process with the goat, we all went
back over to the mat where we had eaten dinner, and Imma’s brother
started a round of Tuareg tea. By now it was nearly 9:30 at night, and
I was rather tired from the drive. I lay down on the matt and rested,
then eventually fell asleep while my dad interviewed a few more of the
Tuareg about their herding. At some point around midnight or one in
the morning, my dad woke me up because the goat meat was ready. The
meat was absolutely delicious; some of the best I’ve had made even
better by topping it all off with several sips from a large mug of
warm camel milk. After the meat, everyone was ready to go to bed, so
we rolled out more mats to sleep on, threw a blanket on the 8 or 9
Tuareg kids that had just come together and collapsed on a matt a
couple hours earlier, then went to bed ourselves. Both my dad and I
had our turbans with us, and we used those as pillows/shield from the
wind (it was windy early in the morning)/block out sunlight (I wanted
to sleep for at least a little bit past the crack of dawn); long and
short of it, turbans are very useful. When we woke up in the morning,
I put on my turban, then got up to take a look around; I hadn’t seen
much of the camp because we had arrived in the dark, and I was
surprised to see how many animals they have. We took two rounds of
Tuareg tea, then walked 100 meters over to another little family to
interview them. Amongst the people that we interviewed were a
silversmith who was impressed with the ring that I made, and, more
importantly to us, a ‘cabo cabo’ driver, or motorcycle taxi driver who
does errands for people that live in the bush near Konni. We told him
about our dilemma with our fallen off exhaust system, and he helped us
get it back into Konni when we were leaving. When we were done talking
to that family, we went back over to the area where we had slept the
night before, and everybody in that 5 family group wanted to get
pictures taken. Once the pictures were all taken, Imma, and the cabo
cabo driver went back to the Hausa village where we had left our
muffler, and picked it up for us. While they were gone, we were given
several parcels to take back to Konni, namely goat meat and what
appeared to be a bag of sand. When they got back to the camp, we said
our “thank yous” and “goodbyes,” then the cabo cabo guy, with Imma on
the back of the motorcycle holding our 8 foot long muffler/exhaust
system, led us back to Konni on a slightly better and more direct road
than the way out had been. 45minutes later we got back to Konni and
Ghalitone’s place, ate a little bit, my dad took a shower, and we
distributed the goods we had brought back from the camp. When I pulled
out the bag of sand I gave it to Sutu, Ghalitone’s grandmother, and
asked her what it was. She immediately took it and told us that it was
a bag of cow piss to help break in Ghalitone’s new leather sandals. I
thought that was pretty amusing, and I imagine that it does help;
eighty-something year old Tuareg ladies that chew tobacco and walk
around with only a shawl and a skirt in the summer probably know about
these things. The next challenge to deal with before leaving for
Niamey was what to do with the muffler. Obviously we didn’t have the
tools to fix it, and it is rather large. We ended up sticking it in
the car lengthwise with one end touching the back window, and the
other resting on the dashboard. With the muffler in the car, the bag
of cow piss out of the car, and the time getting close to 12:00 noon
(we wanted to be back in Niamey before dark), we thanked everyone at
Ghalitone’s place, then took off for a very noisy drive back to
Niamey.

Here we are sitting around the campfire at 5:30 am waiting for the
Police man to get back and tell us whether or not we can go on. From
left to right, Olivier, me, assistant police kid, Gérard, and the side
of another law enforcement person. My dad took the picture, and the
other police man is off on his motorcycle.

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Ever since meeting Gérard and Olivier, the two French guys that we ride with every weekend, we have been planning on riding from Niamey to Parc W, a game reserve on the Niger River. The ride is about 150 kilometers, and we were planning on making it into a big group trip with all of our families meeting us at the park to spend the night. My grandpa brought lights for us to ride at night, and the night before the ride we set our bikes up for the ride, filled up our camelbaks, and prepared our bikes for the ride. The next day, the morning of the 8^th we got up at 4:00 in the morning and left our house to meet Gérard and Olivier at our designated meeting point. The sun doesn’t come up until 7:00ish so we still had a couple hours of darkness. When we reached our rendezvous point Olivier told us that we have a serious decision to make: there was a rumor circulating that two French people had been kidnapped from a bar late the night before and both Olivier and Gérard were having some trepidations about going. We decided that they were probably just rumors and that we should do the ride; besides, if someone really had been kidnapped, wouldn’t there be more military and police activity in Niamey? We rode out, crossed the Niger River, then rode about 10k down the Say road to the Post de Police. At the police stop, the officer in charge told us that there was a problem and we would have to wait while he left to ask permission from his superiors to let us pass. Apparently at about 11:30 in the night they had received orders not to let any white people by. As he was telling us this, I thought the man might be mildly drunk or something because he was blurry eyed and was having trouble walking in a straight line. A couple minutes later though it became clear that he and his two companions had been on duty since 8:00 the previous morning. The officer told us we would have to wait until he returned, and that we should make ourselves comfortable around the campfire. He was particularly concerned for our bikes, and made sure that we parked them less than 10ft away. Once the officer was sure that no harm would come to our bikes in his absence, he left on his motorcycle and was gone for about an hour; in fact, we thought that he might have wrecked because he was so sleep deprived. During the time that he was gone however, I talked to the two other policemen and spent some time tending the fire myself; it gets pretty cold at 6:00 in the morning. By the time the police officer was back, we were all huddled around the fire, and no one was doing much talking. The officer had brought his superior back with him and, now that his task was done, collapsed in a chair by the fire. The man he had brought back with him was the Commissariat de Police, the equivalent of a chief of police in the States. He walked up to us in a suit and asked where we had been planning to go, then, in a very professional sounding voice, he told us to please wait and he would see what he could do. He went off toward the road a bit and talked to someone on his phone. In the meantime, we listened to all the mosques in Niamey competing to make their prayer call heard, and then the old man near the police stop performing his own call to prayer. After a while, the man in a suit came back over and asked us, in these exact words (except in French):

Chief of Police: How many of you are there?

Us: Four

Chief of Police: What Nationalities?

Us: French and American

Chief of Police: How many French?

Olivier and Gérard: Two

Chief of Police: How many Americans?

My dad: Two

Me: [muffled laugh]. Absolutely classic.

Another 5 minutes of phone conversation later, the Commissariat de Police came back over and told us to put down our names, nationalities, dates of birth, and contact information. He told us that for our own safety, we could not continue on to the park today; we have to go back to Niamey. We thanked him and the other police, then left to ‘go back to Niamey.’ In Reality, we turned off onto a laterite plateau and went on a 3 hour ride through the bush before returning back to Niamey; French people in general regard rules as a set of guidelines. When we got back to Niamey, we got a call from the Embassy security officer telling us more of what we already knew, and what they were ordering official U.S. Embassy people to do. Because we are not Embassy, we do not have to adhere to their 8pm to 6am curfew or the other rules, but we follow most of them as set of guidelines. The situation is not good, but we feel safe, and are still planning on staying here through our original departure date: June 8^th.

On the bright side, I am silver smithing at the Musée National, and have completed an Agadez Cross, a ring, and a bracelet with my name in Arabic engraved on it. Check back soon for a blog post on that.

Last Thursday my father and I went out to Konni to visit Ghalitane (Raw-li-tun), the oldest son of Hamidoune one of my dad’s old friends from Niger. Ghalitane plays the guitar quite well, and is one of select few Nigerien musicians to have gone international. Up till recently, he was the lead guitarist/singer for the Tuareg band Etran Finitawa; he had a falling out with their manager, and he now lives in Konni. The drive to Konni is about 400km, and takes approximately 5 hours- That may seem like quite a road trip, in fact, it goes by quite quickly do to various and sundry sights along the way. About 5km out of Niamey we go through a Gendarme stop where they verify our papers and where we’re going. Any time you stop your car at an intersection, slow down for a speed bump, or pull into a parking space, your car is surrounded by people, like a pot of honey and flies. At this Gendarme stop we were mobbed by 3 people selling cell phone credits, 2 people selling cheap snacks (cookies, chips, etc.), and an old blind beggar being led around by her 8 year old daughter. It took about 5 minutes for the Gendarmes to check our papers, and then we were moving again. Our next stop was about 50km later, a peage where we have to pay a toll to keep going to Konni. This stop is not marked all that well- no reflectors, signs leading up to it, or lights; it is simply a bunch of rags tied across the road that you have to stop for. As we pull up to the stop, one of the police guys there walks up to us and starts talking to my dad in Hausa, when this guy leaves to go get a receipt for us we start talking to each other in English at which point, the other police officer walks over and says in very broken English: “You… you are not Français; you are American.” We assert that we are, indeed, American, and about this time the other officer gets back with our receipt. He then praises the English speaking officer and says in Hausa to my dad: “Don’t mess with the police here; we know what we’re doing.” The other guy swells with pride, and we drive off to meet or next challenge.

There are villages on the road side every 5 to 20km, and each village has speed bumps. These village speed bumps provided us with enormous amounts of entertainment because each bump is unique and has its own set of characteristics. Most of the speed bumps are made out of pavement, some are made out of concrete and rocks, some are just rocks and mud, but none of them are the same size. Most of the bumps are about 3 times the height that they should be, terribly marked, and very uneven. They generally have something large sticking up from them, and if you hit one too fast, there goes your oil pan. As it was, we were very careful in how fast we approached them, but we still scraped the bottom of our car on some of the 1 ½ foot, particularly uneven ones (a big speed bump in the states is less than a foot tall, and has a very gradual slope; the speed bumps here are very abrupt: almost like a 15” curb in the middle of the road). Another extremely amusing part of the trip was all the village names. There was Dadin Kowa, literally: the place where everybody’s happy, Dogan Doutchi, the place with the tall rocks (“tall rocks” is relatively speaking; they were no more than about 50 ft tall but still stood out against the flat landscape), and my personal favorite, Ahole, which I am still trying to find the meaning of.

Once we got to Konni, we met up with Ghalitone at his little shop place where he hangs out with a bunch of other Tuareg men. We then sat on a mat for several hours and drank tea while my dad and Ghalitone caught up with each other and I tried to understand what they were talking about in Hausa. When we were done with the three rounds of tea we went over to Ghalitone’s house and talked to everybody living there including: two of Ghalitone’s wives, 9 of his 12 children, his mother, and his grandmother. All the girls in the family are the spitting image of each other from about 2 years old, all the way up to the great grandma, Sutu, who is in her mid-80s and chews tobacco 24-7. The two older ladies only speak Tamashek, the Tuareg tongue, and pronounce my name “mack-uss,” while one of the wives speaks French, Hausa, and Tamashek, but is 9/10ths of the way deaf. They share the compound that they live in with their goats, chickens, and marabou stork. Despite all the amusement to be derived from watching two little boys call each other villagers and swordfight with switches in the compound, Ghalitone took us 20km out of town to show us his garden that he’s getting started and a plot of land where he is going to build a house and move to. While we were out there, we met the Tuareg chief for the whole area around there, and found a nice place to sleep for the night; we decided earlier that we’d rather not share our sleeping space with all the people and animals in Ghalitone’s compound. After looking at the garden, we drove back into town and ate an awesome dinner of beans and potatoes at Ghalitone’s house, then convinced Sutu that we would not freeze to death sleeping out; she was very worried and claimed that Tuareg can handle the cold just fine, but us, we don’t know what were getting ourselves into. We assured her that we would be fine and took off for the night. Out at the Chiefs house where we were sleeping was, in fact, quite cold (40 F), but we ended up being fine, and we were also given a large mug of fresh camel milk – very good stuff.

The next morning, we rode our bikes back into Konni and on the way rode by a truck stopped on the side of the road… in the process of a complete engine overhaul. Sights like this are not unusual here; people try to make everything work for as long as possible. Earlier on the drive we passed a semi-truck that was tipped pretty drastically to the left side and at the same time driving down the road crooked: it was turned mildly sideways so it took up a lane and a half but was still going straight. We took a picture of the engine overhaul truck, then another of a bush taxi laden with people, then took some more pictures while drafting off a motorcycle that was carrying its driver and a dead, skinned, sheep.

Once we got into town, we rode down to the Nigerian border and I got within 3 meters of Nigeria. On our way back into town, we ran into Al Haji Abdodo, another one of my dad’s old friends, and also very successful, in evolutionary terms, with his 29 children. He is a big business man and is doing very well, and one of his son’s lives in Washington D.C area. When we returned to Ghalitone’s house, we had another very good meal of rice and sauce, then took pictures of his whole family before heading back out to our campsite to return to Niamey. The drive back to Niamey was just as entertaining, and at night the lack of proper lighting at speed bumps and police stops was accentuated; we came about 6 centimeters from testing just how strong the rag barriers are. When we got back to Niamey, showers and food were in order, then we slipped back into our Niamey routines with softball practiced the following morning.

Check back soon for a new post; I’m on winter break right now, so I should have a few more posts in the next couple days. 

I'd like to hear more feadback from people, so please comment.

About 3 days after we arrived here in Niamey, we (my dad, myself, Uncle Doug, and the housekeeper guy for our house: Ibrahim) went to Le Petit Marché, or the “little market” in English. We walked outside, flagged down a taxi, and drove off. After ten minutes, I got my first glimpse of the Petit Marché. To describe the Petit Marché in words is difficult to say the least; even a video hardly does it justice. Like many things in Niger, to truly understand the Petit Marché, you have to go there. Until the time when you’ve visited it though, my description will have to do. Picture to yourself an area that resembles a triangle and is about 500 meters on each side. It is absolutely packed with stalls, livestock (alive, dead, and being killed), people, goods, and food in various stages of rot. As you start to near it, you’ll notice from about 200 meters away a smell reminiscent of a giant compost heap.  As you draw closer, it’s a good idea to put all valuables away in a bag or something, and put your money somewhere that it won’t be stolen; the pickpockets are as bold as they are many, without trepidations to do such things as snatch sunglasses off your face or grab stuff off your lap through an open car window. If you pull up in a car, you will soon notice that the road was built to be two way, but the market has sprawled into it so far that one car can barely eek by. On the outskirts of the market are guys pushing wheelbarrows full of different vegetables and bugs eating the vegetables. These guys seriously obstruct the already slow traffic flow. As you step into the market itself, you may notice the kids from a Quranic school[1] who have been sent out to beg because it will make them more humble. Or perhaps the man with a pair of fingernail scissors who is removing an infected ingrown toenail from one of the sellers – without any sanitation. Or maybe you’ll notice the Mallam[2] that is counting money, scratching his butt, picking his nose, and rubbing his feet all at the same time. In any case, if you are used to the U.S. food safety standards and a normal Trader Joes or Costco, the level, or lack thereof, of sanitation will appall you and possibly cause a mildly sick feeling in your stomach; in any case, you will probably lose your appetite for dinner. Apart from the visual aspect of the market, your other senses will notice things as well. Immediately upon entering the market, you will go from sweating mildly to sweating absolutely profusely. The combination of humid rainy season, heat, and tons of people moving around are more than enough to make you sweat like you never have before. Another thing that will hit you is all the people trying to move around; the stalls are generally two to six feet apart, and between the livestock and people it gets pretty congested, and becomes an ideal spot for the above mentioned pick pockets. Something else that takes some practice is bargaining; all the sellers will try to gage you as you examine their wares, and will base their prices according to how you look. They try to tell if you could be a long term customer, in which case they could act nice and give you a good price, or could decide that you are some Anassarah[3] that doesn’t know what to do, and put the price much higher. In any case, bargaining can lower the price on stuff to 50 or 75% less than the original asking price. One of the most disgusting looking things you can buy at the Petit Marché is raw meat. It is some of the best meat you will ever eat in your life, entirely organic, and the animal walked to the market to be slaughtered, but when you’re first standing there, the stuff looks nasty. One trick is to go for the piece of meat with the most flies on it; if the flies are eating it, it shouldn’t be rotten, and the guy that is selling the meat will cut off the whole outer layer, and clean it up for you so it does look pretty good. Most of the food at the market may make you feel mildly sick to the stomach when you look at it in the market, but once it is all cleaned up and ready to eat, you’ll forget all your trepidations and chow down like you would anywhere else.  All things considered, Le Petit Marché is a place to block out your food poisoning fears, and simply enjoy the experience.

Picture the most beat up, atrocious looking car you’ve ever seen that is still used to drive around. I don’t know what you came up with, but I’m 99% sure that I can find more than one here to match or surpass it.  The way the taxi system works here is one person will own a car, maybe a few cars, and they’ll let taxi drivers, usually relatives or friends drive them. In exchange for using the car, the taxi driver gives the car owner a fixed amount of money every day or week, and keeps the rest of the money he earns. After a predetermined length of time (from my understanding, quite a while), the taxi driver takes full ownership of the car, and keeps all the money he makes. Because the taxi driver does not actually own his car, the cars get driven into the ground. It’s not rare to see, and ride in, taxi’s that are missing bumpers and windows (and in their place scotch tape), with doors that don’t close, broken lights, and various other problems that should probably be fixed. Seatbelts are rarely/never used, and in one of the first taxi rides I took, I put on the seat belt and ended up with a big line of dust running from shoulder to hip that had accumulated on the belt in all the time that it hadn’t been used. Catching a taxi can be a pretty hit or miss affair at times, but generally speaking all you need to do is stand on the side of a reasonably well used road and have 200 CFA (the equivalent of about 40 cents) in your pocket. A taxi will pull off the road sooner or later (you can always pick out taxis because part of the regulations for them is that they all have to have a certain red and white paint coat) and as soon as the taxi is mostly stopped, tell the driver where you’re going and hop in. The driver will deliver you to the door of your destination, and collect the 200 CFA fee there. If you are running several errands, and need a taxi for several rides, you can hire the driver for 2500 CFA (5 dollars) per hour, and they’ll drive you anywhere you need to go and wait outside to take you to your next destination. If you need to be more assured that you’ll be able to catch a taxi, you can buy an abonement, or membership to a certain taxi driver, and tell them when you need to be picked up from certain places. Most drivers are reasonably good at driving, and despite the crazy conditions that are Niger, there are surprisingly few accidents. The actual experience of sitting in the taxi can vary considerably depending on the driver and the other people in the car; you can be with the well dressed, clean Al Haji, or be sitting next to some woman with a child that’s puking out the window on her lap. Personally, I would prefer to ride my bike, or drive in my own car, but in a pinch, a taxi will get you where you need to go.