My weekend, part 2

One of the “drivers” asked us if we wanted to see a tree with plenty of bats. We said yes:

The tree is just next to his village. He asked us if we wanted to visit the village school (which I think was deliberate, so we could make a little donation to it). It was a really nice school and the principal teacher welcomed us.


Then we walked through the village. I made some new friends that helped me by holding my hand on the way back to the pirogue. They wanted me to take a photo. Afterwards they threw themselves over my camera to see it. This made me also understand that they're quite used to visitors.

Back to Kanazi we were hungry. After waiting for our meal for 3 hours and nothing came, we had enough and continued with the car. This photo is taken when we just had our drinks and were still hopeful for the meal:

This is one of the best roads I’ve ever seen in Niger. And it continues like this all the way to Mali.

To cross the river, we took the ferry:

Then we went back to Niamey on the other side of the river Niger.

My weekend, part 1

On Sunday I went on a little trip with Sébastien and Cécilia. We took a car to follow the river north of Niamey. First stop was at Kanazi. There we took a “pirogue”, a sort of boat to go on the river Niger, to see hippos.

One of the "drivers"

Me and Cécilia. In front of us the driver to the car.

We saw a big rock...

...that turned out to be a hippo!

Then Sébastien and the other "driver" wanted to go in the river too.

Sorry...

..for bad updating. I'll try to tell you about my weekend tomorrow.

Taxi

Yesterday I took a taxi by myself for the first time here. The other times I’ve either been with someone else or someone helped me. It all went really well; I got were I wanted to go. The exotic thing about the taxis are that you’re usually not alone in it (if you don’t count the driver). The taxi picks up people along the way. So it can happen that they refuse to take you, because the other ones in the taxi won’t go to the same place.

The second exotic thing is of course the price. 200 F CFA. Which is 0,3 €. If you wanna go a little further away, like to the other end of the town, it will cost 400 F CFA. But the prize is negociable. If you want to go to the other side of the river, i.e. you have to take the bridge, you need to go to the petit marché, then take a taxi from there to go over the bridge.

The third exotic thing is what to say when you, for example, want to go to my house or to IRD. To go to IRD you say CEG 6 (which is short for a school), première gao. Gao is a tree. Première means “the first”. This is the première gao (the one behind the other):

And to go to me you say CEG 6, deuxième gao. Which means the second gao. This is the second gao:


As you can see there is no tree here, because they took it down, but the direction is still valid.

Chinese

Except for foreigners like frenchmen, some americans and me, you can also meet chinese people here. There are relatively a lot actually. They do a lot of construction here. It is for example them who are building the new bridge. At the moment there is only one bridge that connects Niamey over the river.

This bridge was built in the 60’s and was dimensioned for 20 – 40 years (It depends on with who you talk to). So it is about time to make a new one. (sorry for the bad quality, if you click on the image you'll see it better)

Chinese companys have also made some buildings at the university and they’re constructing a mall here. It will be the first mall in Niamey. Except for construcion, they’re also interested in the oil in Niger.

An anecdote: Guillaume lives next to a house were chinese people lives. He told me that once or twice he have heard a dog make noise and bark in their garden, then it whimps, and then nothing…

It works here too

This Sunday I had my first pizza without cheese in Niger. The waiter looked a little surprised but said ok. While waiting we we’re sure that there would be cheese on the pizza anyway, but I got what I wanted!

However, for dessert we wanted ice-cream. I wanted chocolate/vanilla, but there were no vanilla left. They only had strawberry and chocolate flavor. So Marie took 2 strawberry, I took strawberry/chocolate, Mathieu and Souley 2 chocolate. Everyone got what they wanted, and me too I thought on the first look, it was brown at least. But my chocolate was café… You have to be prepared for anything here.

If you too wanna have a pizza with no cheese, this is where to go:

Creepy insect no.4

This one is the most creepy this far. I came across it at Parc W. It looks just like a small innocent fly, like this:

It’s a black fly (sv : knott, fr : simulie). But this little “innocent” creature bites you, so quite fast my elbows looked like this:

And yes, it is blood that’s dripping. And not only does it bleed, it itches as well. It didn’t felt immediately, but during the night and the days after. It itches even more than mosquito bites. The positive things is that I appreciate mosquitos now.

The black flies were everywhere. It was mostly my elbows that were attacked, but I got some on my hands, legs, thighs and back as well. The insect repellent I had didn’t work that well, but as the genius person I am I found the perfect solution:

During the rest of the stay no one bit me. When I got home I searched about this fly on the internet. And apparently it can transfer parasites; in the worst case scenario I’ll be blind. But the symptoms doesn’t show until 2-3 years. If I got the parasite, it can be treated though. Anyone who knows more about this?

The park

The entrance

The car in front of the reception

Here you can see why it's hard to spot any animals. The nature is beautiful though.

A waterfall. During the dry period it isn't.

Here you can see why we couldn't go everywhere with the car.

The fares

I have to go back in November/December when there is a bigger chance to see lions and elephants!

Animals in the park

As I mentioned before, the chance to see animals isn’t that big during the rain season. They are less concentrated and the vegetation makes it hard to spot them. Also we couldn’t go everywhere with the car, we just had a small 4x4. We did see:

Some sort of yellow bird

Monkeys (they are somewhere in the tree)

A species of Antilopes

A Bunny!!!

Souley was there to protect us if a lion would come. It made me feel really safe.

It was difficult to take good pictures on the monkeys and antilopes as they saw us as well and disappeared quite fast.

It is obligatory to have a guide with you. And if you wanna visit by foot you have to take an armed guide. Our guide was Issofou. He really tried his best for us to see animals. And eventhough we didn’t really see anything that interesting, I’ll ask to have him as a guide next time, he knew stuff well. And he found the case to my camera, which slipped out when I took the photo of the bunny. He saw it on the road in the darkness going back. I didn’t even have time to miss it.

Animals that you can see if you’re lucky are for example: lions, elephants, buffalos, hyenas, geopards…

On the way to and from the parc

The trip took about 3-4 hours, eventhough the parc is just about 150-200 km from Niamey… On the half of the way the road isn’t paved so we went about 30-40 km/h there.

On the way we saw:

beautiful landscape

butterflies

Baobab

Termites

And for a while I saw nothing...

Too slow

Today it takes forever to upload images. I'll try to show you tomorrow how my weekend was.

Answer to how to spot a boutique

The answers are, from the left: “Restaurant”, tailor, and grocery shop. To know if you can buy chilled stuff, like youghurt, you look if you can see a fridge. No one lives here at all. In the beginning I thought that all little cabins like this actually were houses. And that I had to go to the market to buy something to eat. So I was happy when I found out that I had shops around the corner. Now I've even learned to see what you can find in them. Most of the boutiques looks like this.

Parc W

Tomorrow it is planned that me, Marie, Souley and maybe Mathieu will go to the national park south of Niamey. Will be there until Sunday. Will be fun with some adventures! I hope I'll see some cool and exotic animals, but it's not sure as it is the end of the rain season and the animals are less concentrated around water sources.

Livingroom safari

Baby gecko

How to spot a boutique

Question: Where can you buy food and chilled stuff? Where do they serve food? Where does someone live? Where is the tailor? If you click on the image it will get bigger so you can see better. I’ll give you the answers on Monday as well as tips about how find what you’re looking for.

Niamey sightseeing

This is just outside le petit marché (the small market). Here you buy mostly fruits and vegetables and other household supplies. Have been inside the market once. It’s diffucult to describe well. But it’s like a labyrinth and the stands are so closed to eachother so the whole market has a roof. You feel interesting odours occasionally.

Interesting fact

The strawberry season is in January.

Creepy insect no.3

The national museum

I visited the national museum this weekend. There you can look at animals. I saw lions, hippos and hyenas for example. It was mostly horrible though, as the lions and hyenas had about 10-20 km2 to share with their friend. Hippos are huge! And they are kind of scary, not that cute as I thought. I did not take any photos as it would have cost 1000 F CFA extra (1,5 €). You get so stupid here. 1,5 € is nothing, but I was protesting against the fact that you had to pay extra. Maybe another time, now I’m prepared that it costs more. At the museum you can also buy craftmanships from artisans. This is what I got: .

Elephant key chain carved in wood, 750 F CFA and a leather wallet 1500 F CFA.

Batik painting, 2500 F CFA

Garden sightseeing (not ours)

Bananas

Papayas

Lite modebloggning (some fashion blogging)

Bracelets. 5 for 500 F CFA (0,75 €) + one bonus. Got it from salesman on the street.

Earring 2500 F CFA

Neckless, 1000 F CFA. I actually didn’t want to buy it. But the man was so desperate and looked so poor so I bought it in mercy. Souley laughed at me, that I was so easy to trick! Probably the man wasn’t that poor after all, but it was only 1,5 €.

This weekend’s resturants review

On Friday we went to a chinese resturant. This is what we had:

Springrolls, "riz cantonais", fried chicken and guava juice

Saturday we went to Le Baron. This was the most classy one I’ve been to here this far. It was most prominent on the service. I had beef sauté with lemon and potato cubes. I took a dessert as well, the first time here! I had chocolate and strawberry ice cream. It was homemade, which you could tell. It was good.


On Sunday we went to Le Gourmet. It is a libanese resturant. There are quite a lot of libanese people here doing business. We had meze. It was delicous. Eventhough my stomach was not that ok, it was so good so I forced myself to eat it. A good sign! This resturant was in class with Beirut Café in Stockholm. But much cheaper, about 4500 F CFA, i.e. 7 €. I did not take a photo this time, needed a brake!