Niger c'est fini
Trip Start
Nov 02, 2004
1
5
8
Trip End
Ongoing
Niamey,
Niger
Monday, January 3, 2005
Fada-Ngourma, last town in Burkina Faso. Vultures harrass you from the rooftops. Three non-working toilets and a basin full of dried vomit - I was glad to leave. Niger border had been closed for three days due to the general election, leaving traffic stacked to the horizon and creating a refugee camp type vibe, as people slept under their cars and cooked with hot coals in the street. Border control itself was a mass of heaving people yelling at each other 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 prayer. Niamey, a city with four lane roads and high rise buildings in which you still have to dodge the camels and goat herders. The Niger river runs right through town, during sunset the air fills with red dust.
Fifteen hours by bus to Agadez, an ancient trading town on the edge of the Sahara, made almost entirely of mud. Had dinner with a Tuareg family in their outdoor courtyard, while they watched a french documentary on Tuareg culture. The savage irony of it all. Caught the one and only trans-saharan bus, after fortifying myself with 11 gallons of water, 3 days worth of dry food, a blanket, 3kgs of chewing tabacco (for the village chief), 3kgs of tea and a turban. The bus was 34 hours late. Yes, 34 hours. Eventually the bus (which looks more like a tank: reserve fuel tanks, sand ladders, winches, water supplies etc.) leaves acconpanied by the obligatory military escort, which consists of about 10 sunglassed, turbaned, semi-uniformed guys all holding giant black machine guns, in a jeep. I am, as per always, the only white guy, which is a great source of amusement to the military. We cross the Tenere, 600kms of solid nothing. The crossing of it is a haze, my water supply tainted with petrol, sleeping in the desert, shooting stars readily apparent. Standing in the fine sand, looking at all four compass points and seeing nothing but horizon, colour the only thing differentiating sand and sky. On the 2nd day when we stopped for prayer I found the sand littered with brittle white shells, left over from the times when the sahara had riverbeds.
2 or so days of this and then we arrived in Diroku in the middle of the night, no electricity, no hotel, no idea whatsoever. Was introduced to someones 'brother' who was part of the military escort, next thing I knew was clambering into the back of the jeep with the armed patrol and being whisked through the black streets of this little market village two solid days of faceless desert away from anywhere of note. It's moments like these that I understand the Muslim concept of 'inshallah', 'God willing'. Sometimes when you travel you have to place yourself at the mercy of the universe and have faith in the kindness of mankind. That night, exhausted, I shared a room with two soldiers, their weapons leaning against the walls like stern unwritten rules. It was the most comfortable nights sleep I've ever had in the prescence of heavily armed strangers...
The next day I caught a jeep to Bilma, a small oasis town 45kms away. Bilma's economy depends entirely on the mineral salt they mine in the wasteland at the edges of town. Theres is so much salt in the town that even the buildings are made of it, so the only way to make any money from it is to move it via camel caravan for 3 weeks across the desert to towns where it's more scarce. Random chunks of it lie everywhere. Even the water is tainted with it, in fact the mineral content of the water is so high that it tastes like blood. The centre of the oasis itself is all cool date palms, citrus trees and thorn fences. The inhabitants of the town are called Toubou, everybody carries a knife, including the women. Out on the eastern edge of town, human bones reach up through the salt. 8 days in Bilma sick with Giardia and sick of the God-awful food (couscous with sand, spagetti with sand, couscous with sand, spagetti with sand etc etc). Went back to Diroku, where of course there was no return bus to Agadez. After some unpleasent dealing with some Libiyans who quite obviously hated my guts, I managed to secure a space on top of a goods truck returning from a Libiyan cigarette smuggling mission. Two days of solid all day all night drving with about 40 or so other people, perched on top of all their worldly belongings etc. No shelter, blazing hot during the day and freezing cold at night. I was lucky, for some reason our truck had only taken on 40 people, normal practice is to take 100 - 120 people, as well as tying more goods to the side. It is not uncommon for these things to tip over and kill scores of people. Anyway made it back to Agadez, where I tried to get over my sickness before heading south to Zinder, near the Nigerian border, where I promptly got sick again, this time with the flu.
Zinder is just a cool mellow market town run by the Hausa people, some of who have distictive cat-like facial scars to demonstrate their ethnicity. Didn't do so much there, felt ill, avoided guides, caught an attempted pick-pocket, moved on...
Now I'm back in the capital, am picking up my visa for Mali tomorrow morning, and am hoping to cross the border in the next couple of days.
Happy new year...
