BELOW ARE THE ORIGINAL BLOGS IN THEIR ORIGINAL ROUGH FORMAT WRITTEN BY SEAN SHORTLY AFTER RETURNING FROM NIGER. ENJOY!!
Part I
The first thing I have to say is that my trip to Niger was FREAKEN AWESOME!! Holy cow; where to begin? Racing across the desert in Land Cruisers, eating tuna sandwiches in sandstorms, climbing 1000 ft sand dunes or blue marble mountains, seeing horizons so vast and with such uniformity that you can't focus your eyes, or maybe the ancient villages, or seeing car parts stuck in trees from RPGs. Hmmm. I guess I could start at the beginning, in Dulles airport. . .
I am walking to my gate, which, of course, is at the other end of the universe and I am getting really hungry, because they don't feed you on American flights. I see pretzel places, bagel places, danish places and then Mcdonalds. Well, Mcdonalds is sort of real food, better than pure sugar, so I had a burger (not to good, but it took up space in my stomach). Then not 100 feet later there's a Wendy's. DOH!! A real fast food place.
I went to my gate and remembered "Air Miles" DUH! I flying like 8 gizillion miles on this trip; I should sign up for some kind of miles program. So I go to the counter and with some resistance, get signed up. Then I just went and sat down . I sat there for about half an hour when I notice a woman sitting down the row from me talking to an older couple. I think she looks quite pretty and we exchange glances a few times, but nothing comes of it.
Finally time to board and its a new Boeing 777. Cool plane! It had really high ceilings and felt like it had all sorts of room. In every seat it had a monitor and you could change channels to what movie you wanted or see where you were in flight. The flight wasn't full and I got 2 seats to myself (yahoo!!). Ohh, the woman I mentioned earlier. She ends up sitting right behind me, but still nothing is said. I ended up watching the stoner family (a very good movie, makes me cry. I'm a sucker for chick flicks, but we'll talk about that later)
On take off I look out the window and right at the end of the wing tip is the full moon rising. Its reflecting on the wing and its just beautiful. I took some pictures, but it didn't come out as well as I hoped, but I will show them on my next picture blog (later today or tomorrow). I remember staying awake to see Long Island and Rhode Island before falling asleep.
They woke us up about an hour before we reached Paris and fed us something and started making jokes in French over the PA. Everyone was laughing, must have been funny :). The sun was rising as we came into Paris and we sank into the clouds and watched the Sun disapear as we dropped altitude. After landing and during taxi I saw one of the Concordes mounted like a statue. It's was sad to see the only supersonic passager planes for "display only".
When I got into CDG Airport my first impression was. Wow! High tech for the sixties! It's like the jetsons look for the future. We went through moving walkways in tubes and everything! :)
Then came time to get the luggage. What a nightmare! Two or 3 suitcases would come out and the carousel would stop. A couple minutes later it would start again. A couple more and one would get jammed in the ceiling conveyor belt, it would stop, then the suitcase would drop making a huge bang. This went on for over two hours! Finally, one of my bags showed up, but I waited in vain for my other one. In the end, I was standing there with 3 or 4 other people, one of which was the woman from Dulles. The belts finally stopped altogether and the dude came and started collecting what was left for a cart in the corner (bad sign). So, I put in a claim at the desk and I told them I would call them for it. It ended up being a good thing, because they got to hold on to my heavy luggage for 4 days while I explored Paris.
I then went to the customs. They saw I had an American passport and just waived me through. Not even one question. Pretty good!
I then started my mission of finding out how to get to Paris. I walked around until I found a sign with a train and a bus on it. Looks good to me, so I went that way. I walked outside and found 3 buses, one of which said something to do with trains , so I got on and there is the woman again. When I got to the train station, I looked around and found what looked like a ticket booth, got in line and guess who comes up behind me trying to go to Paris too. I finally said "We got to stop meeting like this!" She laughed and said she was going to Paris and that she had already snagged a local to get her there. So I asked if I might tag along since I had no idea where I was going. By the way, the woman's name was Dolly. A true delight to talk to and be around. I ended up spending my entire time in Paris with her talking. We visited the sites, but I enjoyed talking to her and hearing her point of view more! It made it hard to leave Paris and go to Africa, but, dude, I going to Freaken AFRICA! I had to go!
First night we stayed in a youth hotel is Marie de Clichy or something like that. It was ok place, but, of course, I had the floor with the broken bathrooms!
What was most fun was walking around down random streets, eating in little cafes and getting hot chocolate.
One of the nights just as we walked under the Eifel tower all the strobes came on! Just beautiful! Only problem was, I didn't have a coat, as it was in my lost luggage. Brrrr. I ended up with a little cold right as I got to Africa, not having a coat probably didn't help.
I remember the best food was the Tirimasu. In the grocery store, they would take credit cards unless you bought so much and so I looked around to buy something else and right there was a huge Tirimasu cake. Perfect! We ate the whole thing. In France all the Tirimasu has real alcohol in it and it gives it a real kick. mmmm. This is making me hungry :) .
The time finally came to say goodbye to Dolly and hello to Africa. I got on the charter flight, so excited, but at the same time sad to lose such a good companion.
Boy, I am about to pass out on my keyboard. Its only 11:30, but my body still thinks is 8:30 in the morning. I gotta end for now. More to come tomorrow! (the exiting Africa parts!!!!) Good night or good morning or whatever!
Part II
Ok, where was I. Oh yeah, getting on the charter flight. Getting in the charter flight was the hard part. There was about 4 inches of leg room and since my legs are about 5 inches thick, you don't have to do too much math to figure out theres a problem. I had to take my shoes off and turn my legs sideways to squeeze them in. It was a 5 hour flight, but at least they let you get up and wander around, otherwise people would have lost limbs due to lack of blood flow. The food was fantastic as it was on all non american airlines on the trip. Our first stop was in Algeria to refuel. This is just in case they can't find the airport in Agadez due to sand storm or other incident they will have enough fuel to make it to another airport, which there aren't many of in Northwest Africa. We circled the airport a couple of times as they were having a bit of a sandstorm themselves. When we finally landed, there was some kind of argument as to where we were supposed to park the plane. The pilot apparently wanted to park in a certain direction so sand didn't pile up in the engine and the ground crew wanted him to park a different way. We moved back and forth a few times and I think the pilot got his way. Then some armed gaurds showed up around the plane. I was surprised to see that they were white guys. I thought mercenary at first, but someone said they might be Ex French Foreign legion (see pics). I then made a call to my dad on my Sat phone to say hi and let him know I made the flight and that I was in Algeria. We refueled and the pilot had some lenghty discussions with the ground crew. What was interesting is that all the ground crew, even the ones in suits, helped moved the stairs away from the plane before the one guy with a farm tractor pulled them back to the terminal. We then headed for Agadez.
During the rest of the flight, I was watching the terrain go by. Seeing extinct volcanoes and cinder cones, ancient river beds, sand dunes and just awesome desolation. When we were landing, in Agadez, I noticed a lot of trenches with 45 degree angle trenches on the ends. Someone said they had something to do with gathering water, but I am still uclear what they were for (see photos). As we approached the runway, I could see all the mud brick houses and shop spreading out for miles and I saw the famous Agadez Mosque thats about 5 stories tall. By far the tallest building that I saw in Africa. As we touched down fire trucks were parked at the ends of the runway just in case. I noticed that every time a plane landed or took off, the firetrucks would race out and position themselves just in case.
As we pulled up to the terminal, I could see people lining all the walls around the airport watching the spectacle. Then four guys pushed a set of stairs up to the plane and we disembarked. They brought around some carts and by hand took our luggage around the terminal somewhere and came back with an empty cart. We all filed into a line for customs and to pay the new "Eclipse Tax" they made up the day before. After a few hours it was finally my turn to pay and move on. When I got to the guy (he was wearing a suit and real Ray Bans) checking the shots records, he looked at mine and pointed to a spot where my doctor had missed a date. He said this is highly irregular and that this is not normal. I asked him "what do I need to do?". He told me how it was a problem a few more times and then said it will cost you 20 Euros to fix. I said, I don't have 20 Euros anymore because I just spent it on the Eclipse tax. Well, he finally let me go out of customs borrow the money from Jen, our tour leader and I came back and paid (bribed :) ) him. He then said, don't forget to put in the date. Welcome to Africa!
As we proceeded out the front of the airport, we were assaulted by hundreds of people trying to carry luggage for pay and trying to sell you all sorts of junk. I had one guy pull my pack off me and take off for my waiting car. I saw my driver starting yelling at them and I was told to just get in the car. I said "no problem!" The guy did put my pack in the car, but he never got paid. What a mob! The driver started the car and we practically had to push people out of the way with the bumper. It was such a relief to get inside the hotel. I was then assigned a room with Fred who was the "electronic technical adviser" for the trip. On the way to the room more people grabbed our stuff and then wanted pay when we got there. I handed one of them a 50c Euro coin and they looked at it as though I insulted them, so I gave them a dollar each, they seemed somewhat satisfied and left. I then went ahead and had a shower, because I knew it might be my last for sometime. After an OK nights sleep on Klingon style beds (hard as rocks), we woke up for breakfast. Breakfast included hard bread that tasted like kerosene with sugar cubes, coffee and tea. I think there was some kind of jam too, but I passed since Jam and kerosene flavors don't mix well.
Next, it was time to meet the drivers and get assigned cars. I was assigned a yellow ribbon and placed in the Washington car with two others (Joe and Stephanie) who also happened to be from WA. Our driver was Mohamed. Oh, I forgot, I bought a turban/sash from a guy in the lobby of the hotel and another man helped me put it on. It looked pretty cool! We then headed off in a northerly direction and got a nice tour of the worst, I hope, part of town. Complete with strewn and sometimes burning trash everywhere, grave sites and people kind of hanging out along the "road". There were also people selling refilled bottles of some kind of colored liquid. As we got out of town the scenery got much better. There were grass like huts and camels, sheep and donkeys everywhere. I looked on Joe's map and it showed the dirt trail we were on as a 2nd class road. I wondered what the 3rd class dotted line roads were like. We drove for about 4 or 5 hours and stopped, if I remember correctly, somewhere near Aouderas for lunch. Everyday for lunch and dinner, the drivers would lay down straw mats and place blue cushions around them for diner tables. They would set up two of these. One for the yellow group and one for the black group. I was supposed to be in yellow, but I often defected depending on what was for lunch in the black or yellow camps (he hehehe :) ). It wasn't all about food though. No, of course not, foods not that important, yeah , foods a minor concern . . . it was a . . nice to socialize with the different groups, yeah, that's the ticket!
We would almost always have green olives and peanuts as appetizers. I loved the green olives! My group always had green olives, if it didn't, my group changed :).
Then we would have the usual; Some form of lamb, vegetables, both of which are normally yuky in my book, but they had the most awesome garlic butter mustard sauce stuff that made anything good. I didn't each much of the lamb, but I got my protein in other ways (I'll explain in a sec). They way that prepared the veggies was really good especially with that mustard. Oh yeah, lets not forget the great kerosene bread. Needless to say, I didn't have any bread until the last part of the trip when they started making fresh bread in the sand. Oh, the other protein; Well, I brought some banana chips along and passed the bag around for a treat. Then I just set it next to my bed. That night I woke up with the munchies and ate a couple of hand fulls, until I realized the the bag was moving! I shined my laser on the bag and saw that it was completely full of ants. BLECK! I don't know how many I ate, but I am sure it made up for some of the missing protein in my diet. Oh, and they always seemed to have plenty of fish to eat, kinda weird for a country with no water.
At first, they handed out cups for everyone and everybody said things like "this ones my cup". By the end of trip everyone was just drinking straight out of the pitcher. I think we figured, with all the dirt, germs, ants, kerosene and other contaminants we'd been exposed to on this trip, each other germs aren't going to make any difference.
Next, we went to the town of Timia. A bustling metropolis with a French fort high above to "protect" it. Fatima, one of our translators took a small group of us on a tour through the town. I was tagging along taking in the site when an old woman came up to me and started talking on and on about something. I was too far from Fatima to ask her what she was saying so I just kept smiling and shrugging, but the message didn't seem to be getting across. Finally, I think she got tired of walking and talking to ingnoramous me and she stopped. A few minutes later I looked back and I saw clothes hanging in a door with a bunch of guys talking inside. I thought it looked like a store so I decided to go have a look. I saw some pants I liked and I pointed to them and said "Combien?" He said how much, but I couldn't understand, just then Fatima walked in looking for me. She was surprised to see me shopping. She told me that the pants were 7500 CFA (about $15), so I said OK. I also liked the shirt on the wall, but they told me that it was a girls shirt, so I said "never mind" :) . I went with Fatima to rejoin the group and went to see the head of the village. I tried greeting him in the local way, he smiled and shook my hand. When then went out in front of the village under a big tree to wait for the vehicles to return from refueling. It ended up taking about 2 hours! Meanwhile, everyone that had something to sell showed up. I had to tell person after person that I wasn't interested. Eventually, one man showed up with some fairly cool stuff, but what I liked most was the brass plate he was wearing. I asked him how much for that. He said "this!". ah. . . $50. I said Ok, but I forgot that my wallet was in the vehicle, so he had to wait there with me for over and hour to get paid. In the end, he also gave me a little carved face as a gift. Everything in this village went very well and we all waived and said goodbye as we left. We drove about 10 miles or so and set up camp in the middle of what looked like a riverbed. Within a half an hour of setting up camp, a market appeared near our camp. These markets would misteriously appear where ever we camped. Our drivers said they followed us on motorcycles, but I never saw or heard them. Even when we were a 100 miles from a village camping on a sand dune, the market would appear. It was kind of cool and freaky at the same time. They were very polite in that they didn't interupt us and just sat 30 or 40 feet away patiently waiting for someone to come over and buy.
Everyone set up there tents, except me. I just slept on the dinner table (can't miss breakfast that way!) It was fabulous to sleep under the beautiful Milky Way with Orion straight over head.
Next morning, I tried to tie my own turban without much success. Mohamed was kind enough to tie it correctly. Then another guy came up and said, no that's not right and tied it a different way. Finally, a third guy came, undid and and tied it again. They all started laughing. I soon found out it was in the girl configuration (see pict), DOH! , so I had one of them do it again, correctly this time! The last guy to help me liked my cheap watch I bought in paris for like 10 Euros, so he gave me his address to trade watched for jewelry. Starting next week, I am going to send him a couple of cheap watches and see what happens.
The drivers packed everything back up and we headed out on the road again. This concludes part 2. To read part 3, flip 2 days into the future after I have written it.
PS. I am already remembering stuff I forgot to mention, so I will have a cool story addendums at the end.
PART III
Finally done with the tax nightmare and have time to get back to the important things like writing about Niger. Let's see . . .
I just sent the watches to the man I met in Timia today. Looking forward to seeing what I get in return. I also received an email from Fatima yesterday!
After writing and talking for the last couple of weeks I am realizing all the things I am forgetting and remembering out of order. I will include some of these in an addendum in my final blog. The only thing I have to mention now, is that we spent the night just before Timia and started the new day exploring Timia.
After Timia, we headed toward Kogo, which is the point the mountains end and the open desert starts. Our first stop was Assod which were the ruins of the ancient capital of Ar. 5000 people died there and we heard many stories of what happened and why the city was abandon. The one consistent theme was disease and that the trading capitol moved to south to Agadez. All the graves were still easily visible as were all the houses and the ancient mosque. It was interesting that the only building that still had wood timbers left in the wreckage was the mosque. We assumed that it was out of respect that they weren't taken for firewood or building material. The portable marketplace showed up again and I recognized some of the same people. They were definitely following us.
After driving for an hour or so, the convoy stopped. I hopped out to see what was going on. A small kid, maybe 4 or 5 years old had stepped one of the millions of thorns that were everywhere and it had gone through his foot. Desiree was going to see if she could work on him and get it out, but there were too many people hanging around, so we left for the campsite and she went back with a driver. I believe she was able to get the thorn out, but she told the parents to take him to town if he didn't get better in 4 or 5 days.
We were traveling down the "road" when the first driver made an abrupt left turn and we all followed and drove out into the bush in what looked like a random direction. We finally came to a riverbed and stopped to set up camp. During camp set up one of the drivers was trying to break off a huge dead branch for firewood, so I thought "lets put some of this mass to work" :) and I pushed the branch until it snapped off, but in the process I hit a branch full of huge thorns. They tore my sash right off and left a couple of gashes in my scalp. I'm glad I was wearing that thing or it would have been much worse. The gashes actually ached for the next 4 or 5 days! But the worst incident, beside the little kid, was when Gail ran into a bunch of them with her face. She looked like she got in a fight with a bear. I am sure glad I brought real shoes with me, because people were getting them through their flip flops all the time. Even my 2 inch thick soles weren't enough when on my last day in the desert one went right through the sole and into my foot.
Well, after the thorn incident I decided to set up my telescope and as I was doing that, everyone started to notice the sunset. The sun was a huge reddish ball and some of the guys ran to a nearby hill to get a good look. I saw it and I had to grab my camera. The pictures actually turned out awesome!
After sunset, I spent about 30 minutes collimating the scope. It was completely out of whack from all the banging around. Once I got everything aligned, I started showing everyone Saturn. Some of them had never seen it and there were lots of oohh and ahhhs. For some reason I had to keep adjusting the scope as Saturn was drifting really fast. I thought maybe the motor had too much sand and banging around, but I could here it running. When I turned the motor off, I saw that Saturn actually moved slower. I said to myself "what the hell?". Then I realized DOH!! I had the telescope backwards!! DUMB! I had the forks facing south instead of North. It's not like I work with telescopes everyday and sell the things for a living, otherwise I would have felt really bad. After correcting my "error" I showed everyone the Orion nebula. Holy Crap! It was spectacular even in a 5 inch. It was almost straight up and the nearest light was those 2 or 3 street lights I saw back in Agadez, hundreds of miles away. You could see the Milky Way run into the horizon in both directions. Late in the night, I woke up and when I opened my eyes, the center of the galaxy was straight up. Freaken awesome! I was all excited, but everyone else was asleep. After starring at the sky for a while I got up and wondered out into the dark. I could hear camels and and sheep making noise along with some dogs in the distance. There had to be a bunch of nomads or something nearby. I stood in the dark and listened for maybe a half hour and then went back to bed. One of the best things about the desert was that every time I opened my eyes from sleeping, there was the universe right in front of me, huge and bright! I always went to sleep with a smile on my face.
At first, I was the only person from the group who didn't sleep in a tent. I gave up on using tents many years ago, as its easy to dry your sleeping bag on your dash board, but putting away tents and setting them up, especially when it rains, is a huge pain in the ass. Plus, I have always felt safer outside where I can hear and see what's coming. Sleeping out had the added benefit of making a connection between the drivers and me who all slept outside next to their vehicles.
The next day we continued heading for Kogo. On the way we stopped for lunch at the blue marble mountains. They were awesome! Huge mountains of marble covered in sand. I just had to climb to the top and look around. One the way up my throat quickly dried out and started to hurt. I adjusted my turban to cover my mouth and nose and it really helped. As I approached the top, I had to climb in stages as the sand was getting very loose. I would make mad rushes between rocks and then stop for a breather. I finally made it to the top, stood on a big rock and gave out a indian type yell. People from the camp way below yelled back. When I looked around, I could see the end of the mountains and the beginning of the open desert, where we were heading. I tried to take a timed picture with me and the background, but my body ended up taking up the whole picture! DOH!
After looking around for a while I galloped down the slope and ran into camp for some water and lunch. I drank about 4 containers of water as soon as I sat down. Lunch was a mountain of cool vegetables with my favorite mustard garlic sauce. I think I ate with black group that day.
We eventually all woke from our afternoon naps and we were on our way again. As we approached Kogo, the spaces got wider and the vehicles spread out and sped up. It was like we were in a huge desert race. I was playing music I brought with me and we rocked to Walk Like and Egyptian as we raced the other drivers with my arm and leg hanging out the window.
On the lead car Hamid decided he wanted to film from the top of the car and the driver decided he wanted to teach him a lesson, so we were going pretty fast and I could see Hamid bouncing around on top of the Land cruiser. I leaned to my driver and said fool He laughed! I would like to see the video Hamid made while being up there. I bet it's awesome. The best thing about all this racing around in the desert was it always felt like I was in some movie.
That's it for now. In our next episode we will finally be in the open desert and get to the real sand dunes.