Blogs from Niger, Africa - page 4

2-17-06 it’s hard to feel clean in a shower that earlier today was streaming out rawhide colored niger dirt water. The pipes behind the CFCA are being changed and so our pipes were full of the sandy water until they turned off the water entirely when me and yussef came back from his mom’s house. We peaked our heads over the fence to see how the progress was going and a guy right near the wall, a supervisor type, asked if they were making two much noise as a round saw in the hole drowned out his words. We denied politely. “But,” I said, “the water’s dirty in the house,” in french. He couldn’t hear me because of the welder that had just jumped in the hole, screeching away on the pipe. “You don’t speak French ... read more

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

the francophonie games are coming to niger 7th-17th of december a lasting evidence of french colonialism, countries once under, and still associated with french rule send athletes for a kind of mini olympics. the stadium is right down the street from us and we can go and watch rehersals for the dance troupes at night, quite exciting we got invited to be in a dance but considering we've only had 1 dance lesson i think we'll have to politely decline all of the walls are getting hastily white washed, a women's group sponsored a whole bunch of old oil drums to but cut in half and made into trash cans to try and curb trash, and the existing trash in the streets and sidewalks is raked into big piles to be burned. there is a new ... read more