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Beginnings

We spent close to a day in transit, but we finally reached Niamey on Sunday afternoon! I'm almost through with my second full day here, but it feels like so much longer. So far, I have taken two Zarma lessons, received a new name, slurped yogurt from a plastic bag, and visited a museum/zoo. ...

permalink written by  The Boston Wanderer on September 2, 2008 from Niamey, Niger
from the travel blog: Sandstorms

Food

This blog may inadvertently have conveyed the impression that food only instigates diarrhea, and that would be a tragic miscommunication. Bacteria cause diarrhea, not food. Remember that. I have had memorable meals in my life, some simple and some grand: a blowfish we caught and cooked off...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 18, 2007 from Dosso, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

Break-in

Dawn was heavy and grey. I awoke to find everyone asleep around me and climbed up to the roof for some air. The American embassy was having an evacuation drill, a taped voice ordering everyone to stay away from the windows. Doves cooed in the trees, and I heard squeaking and wailing from...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 18, 2007 from Dosso, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

Hunger

Sahelian Niger experienced food shortages as recently as 2 years ago, and I looked to World Hunger, Twelve Myths by Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset (Grove Press, 1998) for some understanding of the issue. I learned the following surprising facts: 1. Food is abundant. 78%...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 18, 2007 from Dosso, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

Visa

We got to the bus station at 8am the next morning, not far from the abandoned Texaco station where I had left Nassirou. I met two young girls dressed alike in pink checked dresses, one blind and the other leading her from passenger to passenger pleaded for money. A woman in immaculate green...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 18, 2007 from Niamey, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

Utopia

When I awoke it was to a sideways view of a bustling street filled with small stands and street vendors and truck drivers. Nassirou waited for his patron to arrive (“I drove all night to get here on time, and he’s still sleeping with the cell phone off”!), and I went to a bike shop with my bike...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 15, 2007 from Dosso, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

All-nighter with Nassirou

I was sitting there by the side of the road considering how I might cut down the height of the nubs on this fat tire so that my wheel would fit, when all that gris-gris I bought in Agadez kicked in and a very big, very empty, lots of room for the bike Orange truck pulled up, the first in a...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 10, 2007 from Dosso, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

Flat

Finally back on my bike, I took off from Agadez headed west across the Sahara fringes. They call it the Sahel, but it looked and felt like the desert, only with a few more plants and absolutely flat. Before he left for Ouagadougou, Wolf Gaudlitz highly recommended I head south to Zinder rather...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 10, 2007 from Abalak, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

Birds

Hovering, waiting, grabbing at this or that, the birds over Assamaka and some of the people living there share a certain sensibility. A flock of kids greet you approaching the town from the desert, looking for something, anything really, that they can extract from the newcomers. “Donne-moi une...

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 9, 2007 from Assamakka, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

???

Awesome name, and I was really looking forward to checking this place out. Unfortunately, no one seems to think it actually exists: there is absolutely nothing but sand between Assamakka and Arlit...oh, and 2 trees.

permalink written by  roel krabbendam on February 9, 2007 from Oubandawaki Makiani, Niger
from the travel blog: Harmattan

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