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Niger Travel Blogs

Background: Not until 1993, 33 years after independence from France, did Niger hold its first free and open elections. A 1995 peace accord ended a five-year Tuareg insurgency in the north. Coups in 1996 and 1999 were followed by the creation of a National Reconciliation Council that effected a transition to civilian rule by December 1999. Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world with minimal government services and insufficient funds to develop its resource base. The largely agrarian and subsistence-based economy is frequently disrupted by extended droughts common to the Sahel region of Africa.

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By tamaffa
September 27th 2005

on eating in niamey... Africa » Niger

a typical meal day for us: bread from the guy at the end of the driveway with jam, butter, nutella, or peanut butter or oatmeal(quaker) with tea with condensed milk bissou and soumana make our lunches and dinners everyday except sunday they do mostly american things, only one or two truly nigerien dishes tuna melts for lunch and pizza for dinner hummus and pitas couscous and sauce crepes lots of salad beans and rice is a big favorite today we went to yazi dogo's house, the afore mentioned super famous nigerien actor who appointed our nigerien names who just got back [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 27th 2005

on going to the bathroom in niamey... Africa » Niger

if you're lucky the toilet will be a porcelein lined hole in the floor with convenient non-skid foot places if you're unlucky, it'll be a hole in the ground they're usually open to the air if it's at someones house there's always a plastic teapot for washing afterwards in various colors; blue and white stripes, green and white, yellow and blue there's no toilet paper ever our house has flush toilets so when we're out we have to hold everything but pee today at yazi dogo's house, a widely known nigerien actor who gave us our nigerien names, there was a [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 19th 2005

on taking taxis in niamey... Africa » Niger

we're usually our big group of girls taking multiple taxis at night going someplace, we squeeze four in the back and two up front, no seat belts. sometimes if the taximan sees cops and gets nervous he tells us to hide the person in the middle... it costs 200 cfa about 40 cents anywhere unless you get ripped off in the day time, when it's just one or two of us, you can hail an almost full taxi cause they take people in packs. never get in a taxi before saying your destination sometimes i'll say where i want to go [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 19th 2005

on music in niamey... Africa » Niger

there is such a random assortment of music tastes here... as i said before, there is french rap which is greatly influenced by american rap, but then celine dion is HUGE here. joe thomas, akron, and the new craze from cote d'ivoire the "couper de caler" with a dance balancing on one foot. i have heard madonna, barbie girl, men in black, rigatone a lot there is a stereo in the library at the cfca where we live and the boys bring it out every night to listen souk is really big too, cheesy french love ballads guys dance really well [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 19th 2005

on communication... Africa » Niger

i thought a lot about what it would be like to meet people in another laguage before i came here, and now here i am, doing it getting to know peoples personalities and quirks and likes and dislikes IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE! sometimes i have moments in the middle of listening to a conversation and just laugh in amazement at how it's happening that the still slightly foreign words that are accosting me are somehow getting mapped out in my head enough for me to form opinions. i appreciate gestures and facial expressions more moremore, i feel so much more attentive to [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 9th 2005

on rap concerts in niamey... Africa » Niger

the rappers here rap about aids, education, not marrying girls off at a young age and how appalling the politics are. i don't know if that's what they normally rap about, but for the rap competition happening all this week entrants must rap on any of those subjects. they rap in french or zarma or hausa the crowd loved almost everyone, except a group of three who couldn't really keep a rythm or hold a tune. we knew a kid inadvertanly and cheered when he came on stage, he had a lot of fans and he was really good. his second [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 6th 2005

i think i figured it out Africa » Niger

ok so i found fast email with and american keyboard and i discovered the "publish" button on this website and i have a lot of time so i will divulge as much as i can... where to start i have a new nigerien name tammafa pronounced tammaHA no f sound we, the seven girls in our group, got our names in a naming ceremony/baptism our second night here with a hundred in attendance and dancing and sodas in bottles my name means 'belief' or 'expectations i'm at the internet cafe with farida from washington d.c. who goes to barnard. her name [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 6th 2005

excerpt from an email... Africa » Niger

i bought some brown linen today and some school supplies a plain notebook and a harry potter notebook! and 4 solanis yogurt in a bag yum i know where i'm going too! it was really liberating, me and handu(from connecticut going to george town, name means 'moon') were walking around and just arbitrarily, but not really, took a street and it took us right to the petit marche the bustling petit marche with meat frying on the street and bundles of chickens carried around by their feet where i am a valued customer cause i'm white and tomatoes pile in enticing [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
September 3rd 2005

another excerpt from an email... Africa » Niger

so, the other day we went to rissa's house rissa is a tuareg one of the nomadic tribes of niger he is an artist, he lives in niamey we hung out under his front yard canopy thing he has a bunch of wives and apprentices that learn tamasheck, their language, and instruments and painting he's eccentric he looks like a darker einstien, kind of he yelled at us for not writing tamasheck letters correctly after only looking at the handout for a couple seconds it was funny we had super strong shots of tea it started to rain, but the over [View Full Entry]

By tamaffa
August 28th 2005

market day Africa » Niger

so this travel journal will hopefully work better, you'll all be able to read it and it will tell you when i write a new one... so today was a market day, the bigger, once a week market an hour and a half outside of niamey. lots of livesock; cows, goats donkeys, camels. six of us girls road an extremely tall camel 10 feet for 500 francs('bout a dollar) in an increasingly large crowd of onlookers. ok, now that i started i'm going to stop and get this sent out and type more from the cfca, where we live... [View Full Entry]

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