Niamey Roads

Our Internet connection has been down for 8 days. It felt like I lost a friend.  When we came here we found out that we couldn’t use our iPhones.  Oh, no!  But we got over it.  Not so sure about the Internet.  It’s our tie to the outside world.

I have been trying for the longest time to do a blog on driving here in Niamey.  I know I have talked about it many times but I haven’t really been able to show you what it is like.  I wanted to have you feel like you were here, to share the same fears and trepidations that I feel every time I’m behind the wheel.

One of the things that has kept me from writing such a blog about driving has been the fact that the pictures we have taken just don’t do justice to the real thing.  We are not supposed to take pictures of public buildings or public grounds, any embassy, camels, people, or anything interesting. We cheat but we have to do it on the sly and as such, we don’t always get the best pictures.  Also, when the chaos of the roads is 3-dimensional a 2-dimensional picture just can’t capture the reality.

Nevertheless, I am now writing a blog on driving and I am going to show you the best pictures I have.  The best image I can of the road I can give you is think of driving on a go cart race track at 10:30 on a Saturday night in August.  What you have in this situation are way too many young adults each controlling a dangerous object with the sole intent to get to the end, wherever that may be, faster than anyone else.  This is not a perfect image because lacks just a few things that gives Niger its true flavor.  So add to the track a few goats, sheep, holes in the road, speed bumps, dust, pedestrians, and drivers that have no prior experience driving on normal roads and following rules of any sort.  Can you get the picture?  Oh, yes, don’t forget to throw in 40 motorcycles and note; the motorcycles can go wherever they want on the track and can go much faster than the cars.  I’m going through all of this because the pictures just don’t tell the tale.

Let me show you the two vehicles I have to choose from.  Neither one has air conditioning so the windows have to be open despite the dust and they are both stick shift. The truck is nice because it is up high and can be converted to 4 wheel drive if you get out of the car and turn a knob on the wheels.  The drawback of the truck is that the windshield has been scratched so much it is hard to see out the front, which happens to be the direction I usually look when I’m driving.  (The reason it is scratched is that people have used the windshield wipers to get the dust off the windshield and the dust has permanently scratched the window.)  The green Corolla is easier to handle but so low you feel vulnerable to attacks from all sides.

While I have you sitting on the edge of your Lexus seats let me tell you about a driving experience Sally and I had.  I took her to the dentist which is on the East side of town, there really is no downtown but if there was one, the dentist would be on the east side of it.  We went to a nearby grocery store that is always out of things you want and today it was baguettes.  So Sally wanted to go to the bakery.  There is one good bakery and it is on the north west side of town.  So instead of going back to the center, which is on the South west side, and then going to the bakery, I decided to cut across town.  The road I selected took me through the entire length of the Grande Marche, the BIG market.  I mean multiple blocks of a narrow road with people and taxis on both sides and in front and back of you, and no real movement.  I had the truck and I was the only truck on this road… for a reason, there wasn’t enough room for trucks.  Oh yeah, it was noon on Friday, there were other people there too.  I’d like to say it was a fun learning experience but actually we were both terrified for the whole 45 minutes we inched along the road.  We got back to the center and declared victory, bragged to all of the people here who totally understood what we had been though, and I am now wearing a purple heart.

The infamous Grand Marche at lunch time.

Grand Marche

JFK Bridge.  Often stopped up due to donkey carts and truck breakdowns.
One time a camel got it's foot stuck  and all traffic stopped.

This is not a road.  

This is not a road either

This is a road.

Normal intersection.  Notice our car is blocking the other cars.

The craters don't show in this picture

Normal street scenes

Petit Marche

OK, I know, if I am not whining about the heat, I whine about the dust, and if I don’t whine about the heat and the dust I whine about roads.  I can only say I have used a great deal of self control to limit my emotions to simply whining.  What I really want to do is to scream.

Enjoy 35W or the Crosstown.