The best driver in Niger (maybe the world?)

This is the man:

Abdoulaye

Only he can get out of situations like this:

But the most the important thing is that he drove me safe and sound to Diffa and back.

I'm not the only one who find it cold outside

This morning I saw a little boy wearing this:

cultural and temperature shock

At the moment I find it really tiring to not recognize people. I feel really stupid if I have talked to someone and the next time I see the person I don't know who it is. And I still have problem with the names... Also with the greeting procedure. In sweden we just say hi, or just nod with the head. Here you get asked about your health and work. It's nice with the greetings, but sometimes I'm unsure how to do it correctly and nicely. I hope I'll be an expert soon.

It has started to get really chilly in the mornings and evenings. So chilly I could easily put a sweater on. It scares me when I look at the thermometer and see that it is actually 25 degrees. How will I react when I come back to Sweden in the middle of the winter? The good thing about the coldness is that I can start to do some jogging in the evenings!

Where the car couldn't take us...

..cows did:


You can't really tell, but while crossing the pond, the water came up to the carriage so you had to stand up.

Snapshots taken from the car

Not the best quality, but still photos on exotic features. In these environments a 4x4 vehicle really comes in handy!

Animals at Diffa

In the region there are plenty of sheeps, goats, donkeys, cows and dromedaries. This does not change so much from the Niamey region. The difference is that the donkeys had other colors than grey, like white or a little black, and that all the animals are a little "fatter", probably because there are more to eat and they work less. And I saw horses too! This is exotic as I have never seen one in Niger before. Here you can see some (or a lot of!) dromedaries at the river I'm studying:

I needed to wash my clothes one day. I looked for a bucket and it was dark. I found a pink one where the guard sits. When I took the bucket I heard something rustle. I thought it was leaves the guard had gathered, but by curiosity, instead of just emptying the bucked on the ground, and also by luck, I took the bucket to the light to look inside and found this:

This scorpion is not mortal, luckily, but poisonous. There are mortal scorpions at Diffa but they're black.

I managed to take a nice photo on a pink dragonfly:

Do you see any animal on these two last photos? I promise you there is, but it camouflages itself very well... It's the same individual on the two photos, what can it be?



I also saw a monkey, but it disappeared as soon as I saw it. One animal I didn't see is the black mamba. This does not bother me, but it would have been interesting to see one though, at a safe distance!

On the way to Diffa

Having a tea in a "café" by the side of the road; Maï, me and Guillaume

The biggest slope on the road to Diffa. Going to and from Diffa we saw trucks with a breakdown on the top...

Lunch

An anecdote: I needed to go "to the loo". We stopped on the road and I looked for a hided place. Before going I said "I hope that no little boy herding sheeps will pass by". Everything went well, but when coming back to the car, I see this, just passing by where I just was. I was lucky!

Hotel room in Zinder