...yesterday was supposed to be my last day in Niger, but I'm still here. I showed up at the airport at 3am this morning to find out that my flight to Casablanca had been cancelled. I hadn't thought to call and confirm, and apparently they had notified me via email but not until last night...and there is no such thing as demanding to be put on the next flight when there is only one flight per day at best...so I'm leaving early tomorrow morning instead. It's a bit surreal because I had kind of wrapped everything up yesterday and now I have more time...but, as with all unexpected changes of plans that happen when one travels, I see it as a gift.
So yesterday was the day to get everything done, which is no easy feat here. I started off with my to-do list (those who know me well are fully aware of my obsession with lists...), first stop being the bank. Niamey is quite spread out, and I am staying in a neighborhood a few miles from the city center, so I needed to take a cab.
I haven't talked about the Niamey cab system yet, which is fascinating and infuriating at the same time. First you flag down a cab and tell them where you are going--but you can't give an exact address because, first of all, the streets are not well marked and second, none of the taxi drivers here seem to know addresses anyway, so you have to give them a landmark, which is tricky if you have only been here for a few weeks--then they tell you whether they can take you or not, depending on the direction they are headed, the other passengers in the cab (because they pick people up until the are full), often by either nodding or grunting. The fare is generally 200 francs but if you are going further out they'll ask for more, and of course they never have any change. So basically I spend a lot of time standing on street corners saying "Quartier Dar Es Salaam, deuxième pavée?" in a hopeful tone to a number of taxis before someone agrees to take me.
Yesterday I didn't have anything smaller than a 10000 franc bill, (about $25), which is very hard to change...I started walking in hopes of finding a place to get change, went to several hotels en route but no one could help me, so halfway downtown, after walking for half an hour in the heat, I bought some useless product at a pharmacy just to be able to find a cab...out on the road again, I tried to flag a cab but an older man and a teenaged boy in front of me flagged it first, and as the car came to a stop they lifted up a goat and put it in the trunk, then got in and sped away. I decided it wasn't worth my time to share a cab with several people and a goat.
So I finally got to the bank and waited for half an hour before I was informed that they would not exchange my dollars there, I had to go to the central branch. That necessitated another taxi, and therefore some kind of idea where that was...I got to the central bank, stood in line for another half hour, finally changed my money, then foolishly determined that I had enough time to stop by a tailor to pick up some clothes I had made before meeting my friend Ali. Bad idea. I had the directions to the tailor written down, but when I got into the cab, it became clear that the taxi driver had no idea how to follow them. I finally had to call Djibrine and have him talk to the driver, at which point he realized that he was going in the wrong direction...then the other passengers started to complain, but not to him. They got mad at me. The old woman next to me said, "you can't just rent this taxi, you know!" I said it's not my fault that the driver got lost, but then the driver started getting annoyed with me too. So I got out, because it didn't seem to make sense to stay in a cab with three haters. In the end, I got to the tailor's shop, but it took two and a half hours to run two errands.
Today I have no errands to run...the only items on my agenda are to eat, do a little work, and hang out on my last (no, really my last) day in Niger.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Rien n'est simple...
So, the rest of my time in Maradi involved...a lot of waiting around. Things just don't happen quickly in Niger. Nothing starts on time, nothing is ever simple...
Thursday was the last day of the workshop, and my understanding was that a final presentation would happen that morning. The ten groups of students, led by pairs of teachers, had done varying amounts of work over the course of the week; some groups had fully-realized plays and others had pretty much sat around all day. The participants also frequently had to wait for hours for their meals because the mafia-affiliated food service people took their sweet old time in showing up...unfortunately RAV is forced to use them, last time they did a workshop in Maradi they tried to talk to them about stepping up their service but in the end they are stuck with them.
In short, I waited around for two hours for the workshop to start and it didn't, so I went to the cyber café and then took a walk around the market and commercial district in Maradi...then came back, only to wait for three more hours, this time we were waiting for some Unicef representatives who were coming to see the presentation (this whole workshop was funded by Unicef). So they finally arrived in a spanking white 4x4 (quatre-quatre) at about 4:30 and the presentation began, first with some drumming and dancing and then with the two groups who had actually done their work. The reps seemed to be pleased...
And that was just Thursday...Friday we were supposed to leave early in the morning to drive back to Niamey, but as always there were errands to run, and then Djibrine wanted to drive across the border to Nigeria to get gas...let me explain. There are gas stations in Niger, but also tons of roadside stands where people sell gas in used bottles. So in most cases filling the tank means pouring gas from a coke bottle into the tank using a plastic funnel. This is one of the many things that I have strangely stopped noticing. And gas is half the price in Nigeria. We debated me coming but in the end were told that we'd run into serious extortion at the border given my whiteness, so I went to hang out with the workshop trainers, which entailed drinking some tea, politely declining to join them in eating some animal intestines and then sleeping on a creaky bed for several hours...all in all we didn't leave Maradi until 2pm, for a 450-mile trip. This time Check Kotondi, the director of a theater company in Niamey and the lead trainer, was with us, which turned out to be very very fortunate. The trip went fine for the first half...we chatted and listened to my iPod (I can't tell you how surreal it is to be driving across Niger, passing through little villages that consist of some mud brick houses and granaries with straw roofs, a few food stands built out of wood, some goats and a tiny mosque, listening to Steel Pulse, the Strokes, and Culture Club)...then, at about 11, we drove through a huge pothole (calling it a pothole is not really doing it justice, more like a crater) and blew not one, but two tires at the same time. So here we were in the middle of nowhere (en plein brousse, or in the bush) with two flats and only one spare. It was decided that we would flag someone down who could take Djibrine and the two tires back to the last town to fix them while Check and I stayed with the car. I have had many adventurous moments traveling, and this was certainly one of them, but for some reason I wasn't really scared. It was a beautiful night, you could see all of the stars and the milky way, and all you could hear were some frogs and occasionally cars. So we sat, and waited. Once the tires were back on, I took over driving for the next several hours...at one point, we stopped at a toll booth (which consists of a rope stretched across the road, attached to two barrels with condom ads on them), and a large man with a machine gun asked for the car's registration and then my driver's license. So I pulled out my California license, which he looked at carefully, turning it over and over before finally handing it back and letting us continue. We all agreed that it was without a doubt the first California DMV-issued document he had ever seen and the novelty of that probably helped. In the end, we got back to Niamey at 6am. Needless to say, I am still very very tired...
Thursday was the last day of the workshop, and my understanding was that a final presentation would happen that morning. The ten groups of students, led by pairs of teachers, had done varying amounts of work over the course of the week; some groups had fully-realized plays and others had pretty much sat around all day. The participants also frequently had to wait for hours for their meals because the mafia-affiliated food service people took their sweet old time in showing up...unfortunately RAV is forced to use them, last time they did a workshop in Maradi they tried to talk to them about stepping up their service but in the end they are stuck with them.
In short, I waited around for two hours for the workshop to start and it didn't, so I went to the cyber café and then took a walk around the market and commercial district in Maradi...then came back, only to wait for three more hours, this time we were waiting for some Unicef representatives who were coming to see the presentation (this whole workshop was funded by Unicef). So they finally arrived in a spanking white 4x4 (quatre-quatre) at about 4:30 and the presentation began, first with some drumming and dancing and then with the two groups who had actually done their work. The reps seemed to be pleased...
And that was just Thursday...Friday we were supposed to leave early in the morning to drive back to Niamey, but as always there were errands to run, and then Djibrine wanted to drive across the border to Nigeria to get gas...let me explain. There are gas stations in Niger, but also tons of roadside stands where people sell gas in used bottles. So in most cases filling the tank means pouring gas from a coke bottle into the tank using a plastic funnel. This is one of the many things that I have strangely stopped noticing. And gas is half the price in Nigeria. We debated me coming but in the end were told that we'd run into serious extortion at the border given my whiteness, so I went to hang out with the workshop trainers, which entailed drinking some tea, politely declining to join them in eating some animal intestines and then sleeping on a creaky bed for several hours...all in all we didn't leave Maradi until 2pm, for a 450-mile trip. This time Check Kotondi, the director of a theater company in Niamey and the lead trainer, was with us, which turned out to be very very fortunate. The trip went fine for the first half...we chatted and listened to my iPod (I can't tell you how surreal it is to be driving across Niger, passing through little villages that consist of some mud brick houses and granaries with straw roofs, a few food stands built out of wood, some goats and a tiny mosque, listening to Steel Pulse, the Strokes, and Culture Club)...then, at about 11, we drove through a huge pothole (calling it a pothole is not really doing it justice, more like a crater) and blew not one, but two tires at the same time. So here we were in the middle of nowhere (en plein brousse, or in the bush) with two flats and only one spare. It was decided that we would flag someone down who could take Djibrine and the two tires back to the last town to fix them while Check and I stayed with the car. I have had many adventurous moments traveling, and this was certainly one of them, but for some reason I wasn't really scared. It was a beautiful night, you could see all of the stars and the milky way, and all you could hear were some frogs and occasionally cars. So we sat, and waited. Once the tires were back on, I took over driving for the next several hours...at one point, we stopped at a toll booth (which consists of a rope stretched across the road, attached to two barrels with condom ads on them), and a large man with a machine gun asked for the car's registration and then my driver's license. So I pulled out my California license, which he looked at carefully, turning it over and over before finally handing it back and letting us continue. We all agreed that it was without a doubt the first California DMV-issued document he had ever seen and the novelty of that probably helped. In the end, we got back to Niamey at 6am. Needless to say, I am still very very tired...
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