Niamey
Recovery from the Journey from Hell takes at least two days, and is assisted by numerous cold beers. The Estonians are big drinkers and, convinced they’re the first of their countrymen in Niger, hold something of a celebration. Not wanting to let the side down, I join in.
The great joy of Niamey is that it serves the best – and cheapest – beer I’ve tasted since being in Africa. It’s called, rather unimaginatively, Niger Beer. But it’s good – for lager – and cold, so for the first day, we don’t do an awful lot except sample various of the local hostelries and their fine wares.
On the third day we set out to explore a bit of Niamey. There’s not an awful lot to see here. There’s the Niger, of course, but we saw that the day before from the comfort of a riverside bar.
In fact, picturesque as it looks here, the Niger is relatively insignificant in historical terms. So instead we head for an area of town where we’ve heard there’s a colony of giant fruit bats living. Strange, but apparently true.
Walking down the street where the bats are said to live, Pritt, one of the Estonians, starts pointing into a tree and gets his camera out, snapping off a shot. As we stand there looking up, it suddenly strikes me that this bat looks rather lifeless.
‘That’s not a bat, it’s a plastic bag,’ I point out to Pritt. He looks crestfallen, but brightens up when a few metres on we find another tree this time full of what are unmistakeably giant bats hanging upside down and squeaking at each other.
This is about the high point of central Niamey. Niger is an unbelievably poor country – statistically the world’s poorest. Because most people live off agriculture, they tend to have large numbers of children to spread the burden of working the fields. Consequently it’s Niger’s kids that really suffer, with two-thirds malnourished and only about one-third receiving any kind of education.
In the country’s far north, they have an even worse lot, as this is the area where Niger’s uranium mines are to be found. And, unsurprisingly, it’s the children who get the bum job of having to go down into these living tombs, in unspeakably awful conditions.
I’m surprised at Niamey, and how comparatively well it disguises its status; in some ways it looks better off – and certainly better organised – than Bamako in Mali. But look more closely, and Niger’s pains are there to see: scores of rag-clad children with hungry eyes wandering the streets with begging bowls; leppers with fingerless hands looming out of the shadows pleading for help; polio victims with useless, contorted limbs dragging themselves across the ground. It’s a painful sight.
On the evening of the third day, Dan arrives from Bamako, having against all odds managed to get a new passport and all the necessary visas to carry on. We’re back on track.
Tags: Niamey, poverty, Travel
djnorwood