One last post

This is for Souley, Marie and her parents:

Arrival in Sweden

I'm back safe and sound in Sweden. The travelling went well. I didn't get so shocked as I thought I would be arriving at the airport in Paris. But as it was 6 a.m. people are to tired to stress... The biggest change was that the cold water actually was cold when I washed my hands. Then when I bought a bottle of water I had to stop myself to start asking the salesman "ca va bien?" "et le travail?" (in eng: how are you, and how's the work going?). Going from Paris to Copenhagen I had 2 kgs of overweight, but luckily the check-in lady didn't say anything.

My parents waited for me at the airport and I was this happy to see them!:

Me wating for the train to Sweden. I got a winter jacket (the pink one I'm wearing above) from my housemates as a goodbye present. I didn't bring any with me in Niger. My mom was nice to take my swedish one, made for swedish winter, with her to the airport:


I'll celebrate New Year's at my aunt's. I quickly found my favourite spot in the house:
This photo is exclusively for Marie (it's me and my mom playing a game):

Bye bye Niger

Tonight I'm leaving and tomorrow I'll be back in Sweden. It will be a big change! My last 24hs here have been very nice. I even had the honour to meet the national police commissioner in Niger, and at his home! Today I'm saying goodbye to people and doing some last-minute shopping. Tonight I'm eating at Oxygene with Souley and Marie. It is a tradition to eat there before anyone is leaving as it is on the way to the airport. And yes, there have been a lot of visits there this past week.
So bye bye Niger!

Wedding

This afternoon I was at a touareg wedding. It was a very nice experience.

The differences from what I'm used to is: the families celebrate separately, I celebrated with the bride's family; the bride does not participate during the celebrations, she sits in a room with her friends while everyone else is eating and dancing; neither the groom nor the bride are present at the religious ceremony, only the families; it is in the evening they'll finally meet (of course they have met before, but not during their wedding day) . I guess we were a little more than 200 people.

This is how you cook for over 200 people:

This is what we ate. It is millet mixed with meat, meat and rice. It was good! This plate is for four people:

Afterwards you danced to touareg music. There are just some people dancing, everyone else is looking:

And I danced! It was very appreciated so apparantely I was not that bad, eventhough it was a dance I've never done before:

"I've got hemorrhoids"

On christmas I texted with my jeweller, just to say hello and ask when he's back in Niamey. The answer I got was "I suffer of hemorrhoids and I'm doing a treatment, therefore I haven't gone to Niamey yet". I was very happy to have this information!! Then Mathieu explained to me that here it is seen as an illness like everything else, compared to in Europe where you keep this for yourself.

Christmas

I didn't really have any christmas feeling during the day, but when it became dark and we were all gathered in the house, I managed to get some. I had a very nice christmas.

Our christmas tree

Some chit-chat before dinner

For startes we hade foie gras with fig jam and melon

And for dinner we had guinea fowl:

Before

After

Goodbye Juliette

Many people are going away over christmas or leave because their work is finished. It's getting more and more lonely at work! Yesterday Juliette left.

We tried to pose for a nice photo together:

Here's the result!:

And here's a photo with Marie as well. You can also see the nice henna Juliette did: