Blogs from Niger, Africa - page 6

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 conversations cause i don't want to miss anything, it's making me learn to log names, dates, places, new words in my head so they stay there more permanently. i am amazed at the things that ... read more

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 pyramids and we knew how to get back too the grand scheme of things map is clicking in my head brilliant i have upper lip sweat... read more

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 hang was reinforced with plastic bags they sang us songs and banged on a calabash floating in an orange bucket of water with a blue flip flop he made us try this instrument that was ... read more

Niger, Il fait chaud! Niger is hot, very very hot. And Niger is big, so very very big - thousands of miles of barren scrub and desert. As a result there were times in Niger where I felt I was on the road to nowhere. For those of you that have been following my blogs regularly there is news about the political situation in Niger. I'm quoting here from IRINnews.org IRIN is a project of the UN office for the co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "Niamey, 20 April 2005. The government of Niger has struck a deal with a civic movement that brought the country to a standstill with a series of strikes and demonstrations at a new tax on food and essential services. The agreement... exempts flour and milk from a new 19% Value Added Tax ... read more