Grand Hotel du Niger Niamey

Saw a camel today from a taxi where I made the foolish mistake of telling the taxi driver that I was not married. He offered to accept me as one of his four wives (under Muslim law men can have a maximum of four wives). I graciously declined his offer. I told him that in Europe you are only allowed one wife and we agreed that four were best. I asked if a woman was allowed to have more than one husband, and this was received with a decisive shake of the head. If a woman ...

... lunch... i had no way of finding out since I couldnt speak French. So I just sat und** the tree with ev**yone else, and played with this cute little kid. Once he saw the cam**a, he wanted pictures of ev**yone. A selection follows: Finally through repeating the word "Cotonou" many times and gesturing, I figured out this oth ...

... pour les routes des caravanes qui trav**saient le dés**t du Ténéré au nord-est du *****. Il s'agissait du d**ni** survivant d'un groupe d'arbre qui avait poussé lorsque le dés**t était moins aride que maintenant et il s'est élevé, seul, pendant des décennies. Pendant l'hiv** 1938-1939, un puits fut foré près de l'arbre et on découvrit que ses racines atteignaient la nappe phréatique, plus de 30 mètres en ...

Our director, Pastor Issa, arranged for me to attend an evening worship s**vice right before I went to the airport to return home. This church is right by the airport and has used Bible League mat**ials for 3 years and has had tremendous success with them. During the s**vice, many people stepped forward to share testimonies of how the BL mat**ials impacted them. They invited me to stand up and say a few words. So I shared ...

I arrived safely to Niamey today and was quite surprised to find the temp**ature to be quite cool! I guess I expected ***** to be des**t hot all the time, but as the director of our ministry in ***** says, "the weath** this time around is quite m**ciful." It felt much like late Spring...v**y pleasant. And it wasn't so humid, a v**y dry climate (I was expecting the dry climate to help clear up my face, but no such luck!! ;) The ...

... It has allowed me to get to know people (locals) a lot bett** and feel more like I'm in Africa and part of African life, wh**eas h**e you can feel v**y apart from that life. It also made sure I took being part of a local church s**iously and not just fall back on the English s**vices. And I will be really happy to get back to 8.00am starts in Benin - they start at 7.30am ev**y morning h**e, which is even more uncivillized that 40+ temp**atures, if you ask me. Oh, hey, that ...

... the five giraffes spotted in a bush. I felt v**y satisfied having spent an excellent day with me, a coffee and a newspap**. Sight seeing in Niamey included the markets and large baskets of fried crickets before checking out the national musem/zoo, which contained some int**esting exhibitions but a v**y sad bunch of animals. Howev** I was v**y happy to see the Ténère tree. The Ténère is a large des**t in northeast ***** and in the middle grew a lone Acarcia tree 400 km ...

... the fact that it was probably the most disgusting house I have ev** stepped foot into, the volunte**s w**e a great resource and we got to sleep on the roof (on soiled rusty beds, und** mosquito nets with holes, while the volunte**s had a drunken frat party below us). As you might expect, ***** doesn't get so much tourism, so the people w**e laid back and didn't harass us. We went to th**e petit and gran marches (small and large markets) and w**e amazed at the ...

... camp type vibe, as people slept und** their cars and cooked with hot coals in the street. Bord** control itself was a mass of heaving people yelling at each oth** whilst armed guards manhandled them out of the building. How I got my passport out of that place without bribing anyone I still don't know to this day. Got to Niamey at night, due to regular stops for pray**. Niamey, a city with four lane roads and high rise buildings in which you still ...

... oth** "ordinary" voyage in West Africa. Kelley, Cristy, and I set off first, but many oth** Peace Corps Benin volunte**s would join us lat** on and bring our numb** up to 12! But the three of us girls got to explore Niamey on our own, and we also had ourselves an adventure in the sparse bush south of Niamey when we decided to look for the last "wild" giraffes in West Africa. We rented a Niamey city taxi to take us to Kouré, wh**e we would find a guide and eventually giraffes ...