Le Sunday

My view from the hotel, the one sunset I saw:It turns out one can find fun in Niamey. I found it.

I went with a group of people to tour Niamey, and get a better sense of the city other than just the line between the hotel and CARE and the stadium where the conference was held. It was a nice tour that invovled the Grand Mosque (paid for by Libya), a drive down by the river where the tannery was (peeeeeeeee-yooo! them hides was stinky), skirting through the dusty streets, and a stroll down embassy row. Those ambassadors do not live too badly, even if it is 110 degrees! Grant Mosque below:

We also wound up at an artisanal store. Nigerien crafts are particularly good--leather work, batiks, textiles, baskets, pottery, etc. I couldn't bring myself to part with the remaining cash that I had, though I would have loved to buy something, but I didn't. Sorry to those of you waiting for that perfect Nigerien souvenir!

After that tour, I was dropped at the Grand Marche (the big market) because I wanted to see it. No one else wanted to join me (see my complaint below), but I took on the challenge. The country director of Niger called me while there and said "You're at the Grand March? Alone?! You're brave!" to which I nervously looked around me and said "I am?..." Picture below:

I am glad I went. I wandered around the hundreds (thousands??) of stalls in the market. For sale? Kitchen items, shoes, cloths, textiles, tools, food, toiletries, everything!! I mean it was a huge maze, I got lost many times. I got extremely light-headed and sat down in a cloth store where I was trying to get some West African prints. Several people offered me water, which I couldn't drink but someone offered to go buy me bottled water, which was nowhere to be found since only tourists drink it. Though I saw hundreds of Africans at the market, I must agree, I saw no one with my complextion there! And not too many women, either.

The one thing I found sad/annoying was that no one else was excited to join up with me, or do some things together. Though I understand people sometimes want to be alone, why would you want to continually be alone in Niamey just at your hotel? I invited others to join me for dinner, go see the giraffes, drink a beer by the sunset, etc etc etc! Never once a taker. It was surprising because when I've traveled alone before I've easily found companions. Oh well.

To end the day, I spent several hours working, sweating like crazy at the Grand Hotel, and then went to a dinner at a "pretentious French restaurant" before heading the airport at midnight. Yucky late night short flights to Paris!

I took almost no pictures. It was kind of like being in Moldova--there aren't really things to take pictures of. Taking pictures of people would have been the most interesting thing, but it just feels so damn disrespectful that I couldn't bear to do it. Of course I regret that now because there were so many styles of Nigerien dress and many peoples and cultures. Well, oh well. Also my camera had no batteries and died.

Finally, Delta broke the wheel on my bag. It sounds like hell now when it rolls. They gave me $100. Ok fine.