From Zinder to Agadez... via Nguigmi

The Termite Massif / Le Massif du Termite

Watering Points, on the way to the Termite Massif / Points d'eau, en direction du Massif du Termite

Views from the Koutous / Vue du Koutous

Post-Prandial Snooze....the would-be Tuareg - but the turban is too short :) / Sieste digestive... Un semblant de Touareg - mais le turban est trop court.

Koutous Hills / Collines du Koutous

Beri Beri Granary...I said it looked like a straw sugar pot! / Grenier Beri Beri










A comfortable ride, Goure /

Ok, little Donkey....MOVE IT! Koutous Hills

Ladies selling Fonio, Goure. The bottles on the stand are the famous Pastis petrol stations. / Femmes vendant du Fonio

Mohammed & Family @ home, borders of the Tal / Chez Mohammed, Erg du Tal

Complaining Camel, sounded like water going down the drain..... / Un chameau plaintif

Mohammed, the whip-cream Tal and a pillar-box red pot of Tea / Mohammed prépare le thé - Erg du Tal

It was a long, sandy night..... / Ce fut une nuit ensablée

Footprints in the sand...., Tal

Mohammed & Camel, Tal

Tuareg arriving at the Camel Market, N'Guigmi

Footprints in the Tal II....

Agadez to Niamey

And back we are again in Niamey and doesnt it look lush, green, fresh and cool..... when coming from up north. I guess its all relative. Id be tempted to say...almost Tropical, an exaggeration perhaps but its true that in the last month the rains have started and you can really see and feel a difference.

Mind you, we got rained on both in Agadez and N'Guigmi....what a priveledge to witness a drop of water in the desert. In fact, make that three in N'Guigmi - one hit me, the other hit Eric and the third the sand...that was about it but in Agadez it was almost a downpour.

Driving down from Agadez towards Niamey, the rain of the night before had been enough to turn the countryside, if not green then less beige. The animals were out en force, driven to the temporary waterholes to drink by the herders. The herders were either Paul or Tuareg - the Peul recognisable by the wonderful broad straw hats they wear, the Tuareg by their Turbans and long swords.

Indeed most groups here have their traditional weapons and they carry them regularly. We stopped at at a large watering hole on the way back from the Termite Massif in teh East of the country and it was a melting pot not just of Cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, horses and the ubquitous evil-minded camel but of Peul with their hats, Toubou with their short daggers, Tuareg with their elaborate swords and Beri Beri with their long bows and arrows.

The Peul villages were different too, with their houses looking like the vast skirts of complascent victorian ladies, with flounced tiers of straw descending all the way to the ground and rising into a little peak. But what are truely magnificent are their mud granaries, some bigger than the houses themselves.

They are round at the bottom, rising up to a smooth dome and capped off with a small dunces cap of straw which covr a small entry hole, as like granaries all over Niger they have no door.

The Beri Beri granaries are shaped a bit like a straw sugar pot propped up on a cradle of sticks and short legs to outwit the rats. To to get in you prop up the lid with a big stick, pop your hand in, rummage around and pull out what you were looking for....if youre lucky. But you dont have to go very far up a rickety ladder to do it, and the top is large enough for a good rummage.

By contrast the Peul ones are an impressive climb. Then I guess you have to drop yourself inside through the little hole in the top to be able to effetively route around. It must be pitch black in there. I guess you have to be an organised granary keeper to remember where everything is. Personally Id hate to have to use the same method to navigate my drawers. It would be a disaster!

Its good to be back in friendly Niamey, although Im sorry to have left the rest of the country, especially as between the heat and the heating up of the rebellion in the north we had to leave undone a lot of the things we had hoped to do and see. Oh well...a good excuse to come back.

In the meantime we prepare to leave for Mali, hopefully Monday evening/Tuesday
and hopefully by canoe. The idea is to hitch up the river on public canoe transport stopping at some significant towns on the way. We expect it will take about a week to reach Gao in Mali and I also expect there will be no internet connection....so au revoir Niger and it looks like the next post will be from Mali.

CIAO CIAO e a presto.....

Ventes de bijoux touaregs

Si vous recherchez des bijoux, la coopérative AZAMANE, regroupant une centaine de forgerons bijoutiers touaregs, artisans-fabricants vous en propose:

Contactez leur président:

Issoufou TCHABE, chargé des ventes à l'export

Quartier Amareouat

B.P. 24 Agadez NIGER

Tel: +227 96 97 66 62

+227 21 44 31 27

mobile en France: 06 70 16 72 79

ou par internet: issoufoutchabe@yahoo.fr

Vous pouvez aussi contacter en France directement:

Eliane GUETAT au 04 76 09 19 19

Claude CARRE au 01 48 83 22 30

Agence de Voyage pour le sud est

Si vous voulez découvrir le Sud est du Niger, voilà une bonne adresse:

AGADEM EXPEDITION

contactez Harouna Souleymane à Zinder

Tel: +227 21513005

+227 96996207

fixe: +227 21510255

ou par internet:

harouna_souleymane2000@yahoo.fr

agademexpedition@yahoo.fr

Zinder to Agadez, via Lake Chad.....

So, the long message id just written got wiped off the face of internet...Arg! So much for technology and wierdo keyboards where you end up pressing random buttons by mistake. We were not amused!

En fin....we finally made it north..... Agadez - phew! Didnt think we were ever going to get here. I never realised quite how in the middle of nowhere this place really is. 8 hot, dusty hours from zinder doesnt sound like much but when its across a continously shifting desert landscape....oops, excuse me, that should be, technically speaking, North Sahelian landscape but you could have fooled me, there seemed to be a LOT of sand out there! - a continual sand storm in progress; in a bus with no windows - it certainly feels like its at the end of the known world.

Indeed you could stamp "Hereafter there be Dragons" on the map north of it, although I guess its modern day equivalent would be more like "Hereafter there be a Uranium extraction plant and Algerian militants".

2 odd hours from the Algerian border we rolled into town looking like dust-covered extras from 'The Mummy'.

Agadez, Agadez, Agadez.....one of the great Saharan trading posts, the sight of its mud mineret enough to bring a little tear of joy to the weary eyes of cameleers tired after months of oceans of sand.....OOOOooooo yeah! and arent they still trading on it.

So much for my romantic medieval musings, what I found is an extended, FLAT, mud village which gears up into Tuareg-Disney-World-mode when the tourist bandwagon rolls into town from Oct to March. Charming.

After the 'normal' cities of the south (for normal, read cities that would exist whether a tourist pitched up or not) it came as a bit of a shock. Dozens of cutsy adobe hotels crammed into an area the size of a postage stamp jostle with offices of tour operatours who promise the ultimate Sahara experience.

The tea is all 'The Toureg' and the jewellry all 'Bijoux Touareg'. I suspect that all this says more about how we, the tourist, imagine the desert and want to experience it than any facet of its actual reality...although clearly, where there is smoke theres some fire too.

The few nomadic families we had the fortune to stay with in the East or meet left me with an impression more of awe at the sheer difficulty of the environment and living in it. Its a daily struggle where in 4 years a family can go from owning 800 head of camels to 200 and 200 head of cattle to 15. Where another can go from over 200 cattle to just 3 goats and a couple of chickens.

It seems grotesque to reduce it to a bottled 'desert experience' available in formulas of a couple of days to several weeks bombing across the sands in a fuel-guzzling 4x4 and ending it with a stay in a 'typical toureg-like' adobe hotel, sleeping on toureg-style beds, under a calabash lamp (tuareg, of course...), chilled beer in one hand, guide book in the other......which incidently is where we find ourselves at the moment...so there you go, look whose preaching! But there is something discomfitting and deeply uncomfortable about it.

However, despite the whole Touareg-cutsy bandwagon thing they have going, in the current torpid climate its more dead than alive and I havent seen another white face in town except for the odd expat who lives here and the Federation of the Red Cross people, but more of that later.

Having said all the above there is a certain sleepy charm about it, with its narrow red mud streets and flat-topped houses. But what has really saved the day is Ioussoufu, a friend of the sister of Timothy. One of the french Trio we met in Niamey and travelled with a bit. Ioussoufu was with them at the time and we met him there. He told us to give him a bell when we got here and so we did.

We had already booked into a small 'typical Touareg style adobe-type' hotel when we did but he had set a room aside and it was all ready and waiting for us. Still, hes spent a lot of time with us and has been very welcoming and hospitable. Its made a difference to be shown around town by someone who lives here and seems to know everyone and everyone him. Its also been fun to meet the family and be invited to several dinners and lunches at their various houses (half the town appears to be family). He is a silversmith who exports his and his associations work to Europe each year, which is how he met Timothys sister in the first place and it been interesting to be shown the workshops and how they work and have the designs explained to us. What beautiful workmanship and how much patience and time. All the above has made the stay both interesting and lot less stressful, as, as we are the only tourists dumb enough to pitch up in the middle of the Sahara in the middle of the hottest time of the year, the touts are out en force. Although if you are stupid enough to go out in the middle of the day they are knocked for a loop by the heat too and you can pass almost un-noticed.

We had come up here hoping to go the Air and the Mts Belgazane but is appears that unfortunately the Touareg rebellion is heating up again and we've been advised against it (hence the place crawling with federation people after a couple of rebel attacks), so it looks like it will be Niamey next afterall. I guess its a good excuse to come back in tourist season, to see Disney in full flow, to visit Ioussoufu again and benefit from tempatures hopefully under the mid 40's.

But I get ahead of myself.....the last three weeks have been full of activity and at the same time a lot of waiting...waiting for transport, waiting of information, waiting for a cooler time of the day to move. From Zinder we left in the direction of NGuigmi, near the border with Chad and supposedly its lake. I say supposedly because when we got there we were told that the rains had been so poor last year that 'the lake had not come back' and indeed had run in the other direction dragging all the fishing villages dependent on it in its wake. Behind it it has left a string of deserted settlements and a wide, barren salt plane in no-mans land, perfect for holding up cross-border vehicles Highwayman style.

After a several reported robberies we decided to forgo a viewing of the ex-shores of the ex-lake Chad and contented ourselves with NGuigmi's giant camel market and post market branding - (horrible beasts! You will never be able to convince me otherwise), the towns tiny winding streets and glinting grey mud houses, the salt crystals in their wall twinkling in the sun and visiting with the local expats - 6 charming nuns some of whom had been there over 35 years and one of who was a fellow compatriot of mine and made us a mean expresso. Clearly you never know what youll find where! After almost two months of nasty Nescafe, it was ..... beyond description. We also found our way out to the snow white dunes of the Tal for the night, with the help of a contact given us by someone in Zinder.

The Tal is a huge dune of sparkling white sand, and in an area where the sand is laid out in bands of beige, ochre and brown it stands out in swirling ridges like a rich blob of whipped cream. Walking along the top of the ridges at sunset with the wind chasing the grains aross the dunes is like walking in a surreal hot snowscape......

Naturally, we got sandstormed in the night and woke up well-encrusted. Im telling you, this sandstorm buisness is becoming a feature!

From NGuigmi we backtracked to Goure, where we spent the evening with a family of extremely hospitable ozzie missionaries...tucked into a suprise PIZZA, PIZZA and salad for dinner and slept like babies under the comforting drone of the central cooler. The next day saw us up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to try and find transport to Kelle, a town at the foot of the Koutous Hills.

6 hours wait by the roadside found us a lift in the back of a pickup. 26 of us and 2 squalling babies squashed into the back. Not the most comfortable ride of my life but I came out tops. About halfway through the trip I discovered that I could burrow down under the knees and make quite a comfortable, well-ventilate nest between the bags and knapsacks. Eric lost out and spent the trip perched on the rail, dodging acacia trees at a specific cry. Acacia watch was kept up by a man at the back and every so often he would let out a holler. The whole truck would collectively dodge the tree preforming interesting twists and contortions.

Kelle was pure Mungo Park style. In Zinder we had been given the contact of the Sultan of Kelle and told to go see him.

We pitched up in town quite late and nobbled a kid to show us his house. There we entered through several dusty courtyards, the wooden ceilings hung with forests of charms to ward off the evil eyes and visitors with nefarious intentions. We finally popped out into a neat little living room, painted kermet-the-frog green, lined with overstuffed velour chairs in contrasting swirls of gold and something. A plastic clock in the shape of the Haram A-Sharif in Mecca hung lop-sided on the wall over a 70's TV set, coyly covered in a crochet doiley that would have gladdened the heart of many a south coast granny.

After a little wait we were graciously received by the Sultan of Kelle who put us under the care of his son and sent us to stay in an guest house of his. Amazing...a fawlty-toweresque four star hotel at the foot of the koutous hills...all the ameneties in place: light fixtures, fans, AC but alas....no electricity, fine showers and toilet...but no water (it did come back later though)...and all covered in a fine but inpenetrable layer of dust. It was so hot though that sleeping outside was the best option in anycase and when the shower regained its water, it was perfect.

The Sultan's son and the town of Kelle (town is a big word here), hosted us during our stay. We were not allowed to cook or purchase any of our meals, their hospitality was discreet and incredibly generous. Pots of food put in sudden and unexpected appearances and in such quantities that the little puppy we shared out luxury accomodation with was extremely happy and fast became a firm friend. We were provided with a guide and donkeys and were able to set out the next day for the hills.

They are not really hills but more like a series of plateaus. Not really that hight but the combination of rock, sand and dazzling blue sky was wonderful. Our guide was extremely patient and had a bit of a resigned look of a nanny whose taken the kids out to play as we rushed around bolting up and down the escarpments and scrambling up the rockfaces. By 12 though we took up station under the nearest tree, our nearest neighbour being a very dead goat stuck half way up the next door tree...?!? and proceed to sleep off the afternoon heat...or at least try to.

In the evening, to the cry of wolves in the surrounding hills (mystery of the dead goat in the tree solved...) we wandered around a bit more before stopping to set up camp in the compound of a little old man who had grown tired of the "urban life" in Kelle and had taken to the bush with his 6 chickens, 3 sheep and supercilious camel. An extremely modest compound made of a small conical grass hut, another one for the chickens, a small granary and some rudimentary wooden fences around his livestock. We, the aliens in head torches and a mosquito dome landed in the middle of it like creatures from outer space.

Not soon after our arrival the pots began to appear - a pot of cool water to drink, a pot of rice and sauce to snack on, a pot of camel milk, a pot of millet paste and sugar and then straw for our donkeys, water to water them with.....his hospitality was overwhelming. We cooked later on and invited him to eat with us, he wouldnt, preferring to take a bit in his bowl for the morning, but no sooner had we started cooking than he stuck his hand in his granary and brought out a fat onion for us and some strips of peppery dried meat.

The next morning we left our generous host and headed back towards Kelle where in the evening we were met by Mohammed and Ahmed with a car we had organised in Zinder to take us to Termite Massif, a mountain chain out in the Sahara which is, alas, only accessable by private transport. Its a dramatic semi-lunear landscape of scraggy black outcrops and deep ochre sands overlooking the lighter plains and dunes of the desert beyond. We only spent an evening and early morning there but it was impressive. We saw gazelles out in the hills and came across the most amazing star-trek ants. They were silvery pink and glinted in the sunlight.

In the evening the elders of the local campments of toubou nomads came to visit. Through Ahmed we had an interesting conversation in which i think they felt a bit cross-questioned. It seemed only fair to ask them if they had anything they wished to ask us...after several moments silence the head look at Ahmed and said: "Ask them, there are many tourists who come here, and now they have come here. WHY? What is there to see???"

Its a feeling I have a lot in Niger. People seemed pleased to see you, happy to show you around and completely mystified as to why you might have left your comfortable existence to come and see where they live a life which they say they are used to but which is undeniably hard. Its a tough question to answer, its true that there are many beautiful and interesting things to see in this country. But a bit like Agadez perhaps a lot of the things we come to see and do are more to do with what we want to see or imagine than the reality as Nigeriennes see it. However, in the end after over a month here I have to say that it is a country I would definately come back to. Not just for the country but for the pleasure of travelling round it and for the Nigeriennes themselves. Try to explain that to a Nigerienne. It comepletely foxes them!

De Zinder à Zinder

Voilà presqu'un mois que nous n'avons pas écrit, et je dois dire que ce mois ne fut pas de tout repos. Accrochez vous, ça risque d'être un billet un peu long... mais il faut ça si vous voulez avoir des nouvelles.

Où en étions nous la dernière fois? Il me semble que nous nous étions arrêtés au marché des animaux de Zinder. C'est ça non? Petit tour du bétail, les maigres, les autres maigres et les pas très gras... ben oui c'est la fin de la saison sèche alors on ne peut pas espèrer des vaches bien grasses et en pleine santé (je vous rappelle que l'on est dans un pays désertique). Donc comme je disais les vaches sont maigres, les chèvres sont moins maigres car elles mangent à peu près tout et n'importe quoi, les chevaux et les chameaux (ou plutôt dromadaires) sont plutôt maigres aussi. Juste deux ou trois paires de taureaux sont toujours en bonne forme, mais on se demande d'où ils sortent.
Après deux ou trois jours d'attente pour un bus en partance pour NGuigmi (SNTV ayant eu un accident, SNTN ne partant pas tout de suite), nous avons craqué et on a prit un bus partant sur Diffa, qui se trouve à deux heures de piste de Nguigmi. La route est goudronnée mais reste relatiovement mauvaise par endroits, bien qu'ils soient en train de la refaire. Les nids de poule sont fréquents et certaines fois il y a des passages sans goudron et le sable reprend le dessus. Il est vrai que si on compare avec le Liberia, la piste est plutôt bonne, surtout en cette saison où le soleil est au plus haut. Sur la route nous pouvons apercevoir les premières dunes de sables, avec des parties semi desertiques, où il y a toujours quelques arbres (petits et sec, du type accacias avec plein d'épines), et des parties complètement désertiques, avec dunes de sable. Le sable change de couleur par bandes et l'on peut avoir du sable blanc, puis ocre ou orange, puis un rose...
Arrivés à Diffa, nous ne sommes restés qu'une soirée, car nous voulions rejoindre Nguigmi au plus vite. On a donc rejoint de bonne heure le lendemain la gare voiture pour trouver un taxi brousse. De bonne heure mais toujours pas assez tôt et c'est comme ça que nous avons manqué la première jeep Land Cruiser, qui est partie pleine de bagages en tous genres et de personnes SUR les bagages. Nous avons attendus environ deux heures et cette fois un Land Cruiser fermé s'est arrêté. Nous avons payé un peu plus cher mais ce ne fut pas plus mal compte tenu de l'état de la route entre les deux villes. Contrairement à Zinder-Diffa où le nid de poule est fréquent, la tendance s'inverse et là le bitume se retrouve en quelques plots au milieu de la route. Mais celle ci ils n'essaient pas de la refaire... Du coup tous les véhicules ne circulent qu'en dehors de la route, sur le sable.

A Nguigmi, nous recherchions la mission protestante, qui dans le guide, était mentionnée comme ayant des chanbres de passages. Ne trouvant personnes pour nous indiquer son emplacement (on est en pays musulman, alors les chrétiens, connaissent pas...), nous avons attérit chez des blancs, les seuls de la ville. En fait, ces blancs, ou plutôt blanches étaient des petites soeurs catholiques qui vivent ici et dans une communauté en brousse depuis de nombreuses années. On est tombée sur soeur Mariama, un petite italienne qui est arrivée en ville il y a 34 ans maintenant. Nous avons eu de la chance de la trouver étant donné que nous étions dimanche et qu'elles partent généralement en brousse pour le service. Cette soeur un peu malade ce jour là, devait se reposer et a donc put nous accueillir et nous offrir un café italien qui nous fit énormément de bien, puis nous a indiqué l'emplacement de la mission.
Nous nous sommes rendu là bas et après quelques négociations avec le gardien (le propriètaire -américain- n'étant pas là) et un coup de fil, nous nous sommes installés dans notre demeure avec chambre, salle de bain, cuisine avec frigo. Le luxe quoi...
Notre première visite du lendemain fut le marché, avec ici aussi un marché au bétail, où les chameaux sont vendus puis marqués au fer rouge avant d'être emportés. Puis nous avons fait un petit tour dans cette ville proche du lac Chad, au carrefour entre le Niger, Chad, Nigéria, Cameroun. Le lac et ses abords n'étant pas sûr, à cause des rebels se promenant du côté du Chad, nous y avons renoncé. De toute façon, il se trouve trop loin à cause de la sècheresse.
Nous nous sommes alors organisés pour une visite de lErg du Tal. Nous avons pris contact avec un Lybien un peu politicien de la zone, qui a put nous procurer une voiture pour y aller et nous a laissé dans sa famille. Une chance que Solange parle l'arabe, ce qui nous a un peu permit de communiquer, sinon... Nous sommes donc partis en fin d'après midi, à travers les pistes de sable fin, pour arriver dans un campement d'arabes d'origine lybienne, qui nous ont offert le thé. Mohamed a scellé son chameau puis nous a conduit sur le Tal, où nous avons passé la nuit. Couché de Soleil sur les dunes buvant du thé, nuit étoilée (malheureusement sans la lune) puis tempète de sable pendant la nuit, et petit déjeuné sur notre campement recouvert de sable. Nous sommes ensuite retournés sur le campement et nous avons passés un partie de la journée à boire du thé, couchés sous la tente, à voir défiler les gens de la famille. Le retour s'est ensuite fait en chameau, en partant sur le coup des 4 heures alors que le soleil commence à descendre. Du coup on est rentrés avec le postérieur en compote.

Nous n'avons pas pût trouver de transport pour rentrer avant le samedi suivant, avec la SNTN. Notre objectif était de rejoindre Gouré, puis Kéllé, pour visiter les collines du Koutous. En une journée de bus nous avons rejoint Gouré, et cherchant un coin pour dormir, nous avons attérit à la mission, où une famille d'australiens vivent et travaillent avec des jeunes du coin. Et quand je dit une famille c'est vraiment le père la mère et les deux petites blondes. Ils nous ont alors proposé de rester pour la nuit, ce que nous avons fait. Le lendemain, nous nous sommes dirigés en ville dans l'espoir de prendre un taxi nous conduisant sur Kéllé. Après six heures d'attentes, nous nous retrouvons dans un Land Cruiser Pick-up, dans a remorque bien sur, sur la piste de sable en partance pour Kéllé. Pas un très comfortable trajet mais on l'a fait. Le tout est trouvée une place entre les 25 personnes qui sont avec toi et les bagages et marchandises en tout genre. Puis de temps en temps il faut essayer de baisser la tête pour éviter les accacias (ça fait mal).
A Kéllé, nous nous sommes présentés directement au Sultan, qui nous a bien cordialement trouvé un lieu pour passer la nuit. Un lieu digne d'un hotel, avec AC mais pas d'électricité, avec des matelas mais une couche incroyable de poussière, avec une douche mais pas d'eau qui en coule. Bref, on a quand même dormi dehors tellement la chaleur est étouffante. Il nous a aussi trouvé un guide pour nous amener dans les collines et nous avons put partir le lendemain matin dans les collines avec deux anes et notre guide Maï. Les collines sont plus de petits plateaux, d'une hauteur digne des collines de Voinjama, mais avec un côté désertique et un peu lunaire incroyable. Nous avons rejoint les collines, grimpés sur les rochers, puis sur le coup des midi, on s'est trouvé un gentil coin d'ombre pour y boire le thé, manger un morceau et faire une sieste. On est repartit vers 5 heures, histoire de grimper en hauteur pour voir le couché du soleil, puis redescendre sur un campement où un vieillard habite seul avec son chameau et ses trois poulets et deux moutons. A première apparence cet homme n'a rien, si ce n'est son grenier, et il nous a offert à boire, à manger, une place pour dormir, voulait même nous donner de la viande sèche. Nous sommes repartis le lendemain matin, puis gravit une autre colline avant de rentrer sur Kéllé.
Le soir même, une voiture d'agence que l'on avait contacté à Zinder (Agadem Voyage), nous a rejoint, afin de partir le lendemain pour le massif du Termite, un peu plus au nord, bien au milieu de nulle part. Le lendemain matin, départ pour une traversée du désert. Après une journée de route ou presque, nous avons atteint les Termits, entourés de désert. Ce n'est pas un massif très haut, mais une roche noire et sèche, recouverte par de nombreux endroits de sables ocre nous a beaucoup impressionné. Vous en verrez certainement plus sur les photos, si on peut les télécharger (insha allah!!!).
Nous sommes repartis le lendemain matin, avec retour sur Zinder. Nous avons prit le bus en direction de Agadez où nous sommes actuellement. Une autre traversée du désert riche en poussière et sable nous a conduit ici. Nous sommes maintenant en recherche pour partir sur Timia et l'Aïr.

Meditation on the local Fauna - no Flora...to dry

Went to the animal market this morning......How many things can you fit on one small scooter......at last estimate we had: 1 small scooter....2 rather plump men, an enormous sheep and at clutch of at least several chickens - head down, of course!

The sheep around here are the tough supermodels of the ruminant world. Long, spindly-legged, skinny. They look like little barrels on toothpicks, with the most enormous flap ears. It also looks like most of them fell bottom-first into vats of white paint, as most are half black/half white.

As for the camels, they seem a supercilious, cantankerous bunch - noses in the air, batting their eye-lashes and chewing their neighbours ears.

No pix, sorry. The connection is slow slow....

De Niamey à Zinder... pas de tout repos

My, my how time flies....been more than a week since put pen to paper...err guess, that would be more like finger to keyboard but the sentiment remains the same.

We're no longer in Niamey but rather in Zinder, a large, old, caravan-route town on the border with Nigeria and about halfway along the countries bottom rim. We've been here a while now and are getting ready to leave tomorrow for the region around lake Chad. But Im getting ahead of myself...

The last days in Niamey were great fun, although I discovered that you can sweat between your fingers, from your knees and even your shins. Luckily it seems like elbows are impervious to heat, about the only body-part which is! On the less sticky front, we met a lovely french couple who had been teaching and nursing in Reunion and like us thought the plane a, well... somewhat to... direct (??) manner of travel home....but coming from Reunion is a lot more serious than our little saunter from Liberia. They had been on the road 10 months (Mother take note and count your blessings ;)..). A friend had also come to meet them for the Niger leg of the trip.

The 5 of us went Giraffe spotting and hippo watching. Its strange to be in a capital city and to be able to drive 20 min down the road and come across a herd of Giraffe happily munching away at the roadside, or hippos wallowing in the river. Although, to be frank, on the hippo front it was a bit like our Voinjama elephants...an ear poking out of the water is all we spotted most of the time. Although once a WHOLE head emerged -which proved to short-sighted, sceptical little me that they were actually there, and not merely conveniently-placed underwater branches. However, even if they had been, being out on the Niger at sundown would have been enough.

That night we all slept on a small island so as to be able to get to a local market bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the crack of dawn the next morning. And it would have been the crack of dawn , honest guv... except that we almost all got blown away by a hurricane-grade sandstorm in the middle of the night. It all started innocently with a breeze pleasant enough to make us think that ditching sleeping indoors was a bright idea. That was until we were rudely awakened by the crashing of chairs off porches, jerricans flying through the air and Nigerienne equivalent of a pea-soup London fog. Its amazing what crevices sand can lodge in.

Having battled the doors to the room closed the whole Kaboodle went with a bang to wake the dead. It took us a further quarter of an hour to man-handle it closed. From the sounds of things it wasnt happening only to us either as bits of roofing peeled off and shutters went flying.

Given the antics of the night before I was quite impressed that we managed to crawl out of bed at all, if somewhat bleary-eyed. Naturally the market was in full swing and I guess losing the roof off your house is a matter of course in the rainy season. As it was no one seemed to batt an eye at it. RAINY season, sure!...there wasnt a drop of the stuff. Just sand, sand and more sand... and, at a certain point, to add insult to injury, a couple of well-aimed hail stones the size of golf balls. It was an interesting night.

As for us, we left for Zinder a couple of days later, via Maraadi... and made the supposedly 9 hour trip in a record 16. Thank GOD we'd only decided to go half way.

Crammed in like sardines, a breakdown later; numerous inexplicable stops where no one either got on or off and a final fatal death of a wheel... we limped into Maraadi round about midnight in a psycadelic yellow, beaten-up coke-can on wheels....but at least this beaten up coke-can moved....kind of. It had picked us, and some equally forlorn fellow passengers, off the road 4 hours earlier as we sat mourning the death of the original transport. Note to self...inspect your bush taxi WELL before putting your little toe in the thing. Assume nothing. Be prepared for EVERYTHING....

Zinder is an interesting town. Huge, sprawling and still somehow strangely homey. It helps that there appear to be no buildings above 2 storeys. Its an old caravan town, so the old quarter is made of beautiful banco houses, slightly trapezoid with pointed little turrets on their flat roofs and decorated with raised geometric patterns. In fact, its funny how Moroccan it all is, meaning southern Moroccan here. From the style of the houses (which are attributed to the Hausa), the decorative motifs, the little turrets and even the music...not to mention one of the dialects. Indeed the Touareg dialect here, known as Tamalshek has a more significant sprinkling of Moroccan Arabic in it than even Moroccan Tashelhight has. Its bizarre to come across such strong cultural syncretism this far south.

For all the above, its also NGO-land. It is strange being in such an environment and for once not to be the one working. The regions of Maraadi and Zinder were the two most affected by the 2004-2005 droughts. Indeed most of the cattle look like they could lock ribs if packed to tightly together. To be fair we are also here right at the end of the dry season. But still, from a work-point of view its scary. The environment is so degraded and fragile it amazes me they are able to grow anything on it at all. As for what the cattle, sheep, donkeys and goats eat - its anyones guess. Working on what could might constitute some kind of semi-useful and, errr.... sustainable ?? livelihood programme here would be an interesting, if frustrating, challenge.

So tomorrow we leave for N'Guigmi and the east, the Massif de Termit and the Koutous hills...

Ooof that was long and uninspired-o! Will do better next time but it may be quite a while...internet connection seems to be getting worse and worse as we go along.

A presto -

Voilà maintenant plus d’une semaine que nous n’avons pas écrit, mais je dois dire que ce ne fut pas de n’avoir pas essayé… Il est vrai qu’après Niamey, trouver un ordinateur avec internet fonctionnant plus ou moins, ce n’est pas chose facile.
Bref, essayons de résumer un peu cette grosse semaine plutôt chargée. Tout d’abord, après les deux premiers jours sur Niamey, nous avons l’occasion de rencontrer des compatriotes français, avec qui nous avons pu sympathiser. Petit clin d’œil à Valérie et Timoté, qui continuent leur voyage et à Romain qui vient de reprendre le boulot (désolé !!!!).
Dans notre découverte du Niger, nous avons donc pu apprécier la ville de Niamey, puis nous nous sommes organisés une petite excursion : « à la recherche des dernières girafes de l’Afrique de l’ouest », qui se trouvent du côté de Kouré. Départ en Land Cruiser de chez Tatayi (notre auberge sur Niamey), on retrouve nos bons vieux véhicules de travail, puis on fait environ 60 km en dehors de la ville. Arrivée presque au milieu de nulle part (comme c’est assez souvent le cas au Niger, seule la route montre qu’on est pas encore perdus), nous prenons un guide puis montons sur le toit de le toit de la voiture et c’est partit pour un mini safari. Petit tour de repérage sur le goudron (sous un soleil de plomb…), puis on commence s’enfoncer dans la brousse. Ola, doucement chauffeur, c’est pas très stable en haut.

Mais au bout d'un petit moment nous apercevons nos premiers animaux à long cou. Ils sont relativement tranquilles, broutant leurs arbres d'un air hagard. Ils doivent se demander ce que ces petits êtres sur deux pattes leur veulent, et pourquoi ils ne les laissent pas manger peinards.

Nous avons durant environ deux heures pu observer les girafes nigériennes dans leur habitat naturel, où franchement elles n'ont pas des tonnes de bouffe, mais j'imagine qu'elles sont habituées.



Le lendemain, nous nous sommes rendus sur Boubon, petite ville (20 km de Niamey), assez célèbre pour ces poteries (canaries en terre), où nous avons été reçut comme les seuls et uniques touristes du mois (voir du trimestre). Nous avons été accueillit comme des rois (ou blancs), sur le camping de l'île de Boubon. On doit dire qu'ils nous ont un peu chargé sur le prix des bouteilles d'eau, mais le capitaine farci du dîner était plutôt bon.

Dès notre arrivée sur Boubon (nous nous sommes fait emmener par le propriétaire du camping), nous avons eu droit d'aller voir les hippopotames, avec petit tour de pirogue (motorisée quand même) sur le Niger, puis visite guidée de la ville, avec explication sur les poteries, et même une démonstration "en live" de la fabrication, la cuisson...

L'intérêt était de passer la nuit et de faire le tour du marché le lendemain, riche en couleurs, épices, bétail (un peu maigrichon en cette fin de saison sèche, mais bon...), et( bien entendu de poterie... oh et de citrouilles aussi. Les "donnes moi cadeau" ou bien "donnes moi le bic" se font entendre de plus en plus, surtout sortant de Niamey, mais j'ai tout de même réussit à bluffer les gamins sur le coup du bic. Et c'est sans parler du fait que nous ne sommes pas de bons touristes et ne donnons pas assez pour le pourboire des guides ou des dix minutes de démonstration de poterie... Mais il est bon de ne pas être "bon touriste" mais de rester juste.

Nous sommes donc restés la nuit dans le camping, où il nous offrait une place dans une hutte relativement moderne (ce qui signifie charpente en fer), pas très propre et assez chaude. Nous nous sommes alors installé un lit improvisé dehors pour profiter de la brise nocturne. Mais après une heure environ, on a considéré que la brise devenait vent et le vent devenait presque ouragan, et on est vite rentré. On a en effet essuyé une tempête de sable, qui a amené la poussière partout. Je dois dire que ce fut assez impressionnant.



Retour sur Niamey en taxi brousse, petite dernière soirée ensemble avant de partir chacun de notre côté. Nous nous dirigeons sur Maraadi, puis sur Zinder.

Le trajet de Niamey à Maraadi ne fut pas à piquer des vers. Sur un trajet qui aurait du durer environ 9 heures, nous avons mis 16 heures, en taxi brousse. Nous avons cru que nous n'arriverions jamais. Bien que nous n'ayons pas eu de véritables problèmes, à part une roue à changer et une crevaison, nous nous sommes arrêtés à chaque petit village, pour charger décharger ou même parfois pour... rien. Un voyage terrible, long, serrés comme des sardines, les ressorts nous perforant le cul, une petite nigérienne vomissant son déjeuné dans le van, nous ne comprenant pas vraiment ce qui se passe... mais au combien amusant. Et puis on a bien le temps de voir le paysage. Mais je dois dire que l'on s'attaque un peu à des parties où les gens ne parlent pas forcément le français et notre Haoussa n'est pas des meilleurs. Bon, ça va gérer.

Pour le trajet jusqu'à Zinder, nous n'avons pas risqué encore le taxi brousse, et nous avons reprit le bus, le vrai, celui qui se pointe quasiment à l'heure et arrive aussi plus ou moins à l'heure. Heureusement, car cette fois aussi nous avons essuyé une tempête de sable et ce ne fut pas pour rire. On a vu un nuage (ou bien devrais je dire un mur) de sable se rapprocher, bien distinctement, de plus en plus près, jusqu'à ce qu'on soit engloutit. A partir de ce moment, on roule doucement en essayant de repérer la route, et on attend un éclaircie. Puis une petite pluie montre le coin de son nez, sans pour autant laver le bus de sa poussière.



Nous sommes quand même arrivés sur Zinder sans encombre. Nous avons passé quelques jours dans le coin, et nous nous préparons à partir sur l'est pour rejoindre Nguigmi. Nous allons donc passer certainement quelques temps sans mettre à jour, alors soyez patient.