Blogs from Niamey, Niger, Africa - page 3

as promised, here are my musings on morroco: Morocco is like Scotland. Foggy and green. Or maybe it’s like L.A. and smoggy. It has american looking freeway under/overpasses, California looking eucalyptus but comfortingly African with people walking along the sides of the big highway and people riding on overladen trucks and motorbikes. The signs are in Arabic and English. The airport was terribly signed and misinformed; they sent a bunch of people from out flight upstairs to “transit” what does that even mean in English? But we were supposed to pass through passport check, not pick up our luggage and go out and upstairs to get our free hotel room voucher. All this I found without the help of signs, english or otherwise, but from exasperated airport workers. I must have had my naive look freshly ... read more

2/7/06 Cataco four light bulbs 1,000 three tomatoes 50 pumice foot stone 25 metal scrubby 75 bag of henna 100 small pepper 25 ½ kilo bag of sugar 250 ½ bag of flour 75 paint brush 750 little sack of ginger 25 jar of peanut butter 600 pasta 300 6 nails 100 1/4 ground meat 300 water 10 taxi 400 onion 50 total 3,735 $7.47 2/5/06 the funny thing about money in a poor country is you can never use big bills. It sucks to have a 10,000 denomination bill, the equivalent of twenty dollars; no one can or wants to change it for you. Even a 5,000 bill is difficult even if you’re going to buy something a little bigger, because chances are you will have to take a taxi to where you’re buying the ... read more

i came for adventure and it is here for me everyday every "promenade" that i take. like the other day heading into the grand marche this guy with old bottles full of murky water who i accosted with questions. traditional medicines, he said, for black people, not for me because i'm white. but white people do buy them, rarely for ailments but mostly for testing in their labs to see that, oui vraiment they work. or the other day when i went to look at two houses and this kid on a tricked out bike with a viking flag on the front and an annoying flashing/whining light on the back and colored plastic and baubles who followed us into the houses giving his opinion. he liked the house with the blue door and the trees in ... read more