Niamey and the Gentle Giants
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2003
1
5
9
Trip End
Jun 2005
Niamey,
Niger
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
The trip began with an eight hour ride up to Niamey from my home in Northern Benin. Bembereke (my village) is a particularly lush place, so the contrast in Niger was immediate and stark. Slowly, trees give way to shrubs, shrubs give way to rocks, rocks give way to sand. And, the houses... In Benin, many houses are cement structures with tin roofs. There are also some mud huts with thatch roofs. In Niger, there are no cement buildings- everything is mud and everything is poorly constructed. The difference between the sixth poorest nation on earth (Benin) and the first (Niger) was astute
The Giraffes
. In Benin, people are needy, but in Niger, they are desperate. It was an extremely difficult trip as the begging was non-stop; there was no peace from it. All that being said, the experience was incredibe. Niger is truly a wild place. Having fiercely resisted colonialisation, native culture and language has thrived. It was much more difficult to find people who spoke French in Niger. Niamey is a strange city simply because it is smack dab in the middle of nowhere. It is not so unlike Cotonou except there are less paved roads and the desert continually encroaches. The highlight of Niamey was a day trip out to see the giraffes who live nearby. We rented a taxi and headed out into the blazing sun. When we arrived, as we had been told, a million people were waiting on the side of the road to be our guide. We, being sucker Americans, decided to take a young boy as our guide. Needless to say, he wasn't much help so we drove around the bush in a taxi when we needed a freakin 4 by 4. Eventually, we ran in to some nomad kids who had seen the giraffes earlier in the day, so they jumped in the car and off we went.
When we found the giraffes, our 'guides' promptly began a strange whistling sound. At first, we were afraid that they would scare the giraffes away, but to our surprise, the opposite occurred. They came out of the bush and watched us, their ears perked up. They were a beautiful and graceful sight- about twelve giraffes standing over the trees watching us. It seemed unreal that these creatures, like everything else in Niger, exist in such a rugged place. They were out of place there, as though they belonged in a storybook of a long-ago paradise. Here, in the midst of sand and nothingness were these strangely quiet survivers- the last tribe of giraffe in West Africa.
Comments
irreverent
Hello I am visiting your blog-Web and I like much. Congratulations
If you want you can visit ours, one is but irreverent and iconoclastic blog of the world, and one is in Catalonia - Spain
http://telamamaria.blogspot.com
Thank you very much