I got up bright and early--both my iPod and watch alarms set to 3:30am. I snoozed a couple of times and got up, brushed my teeth, did the last minute packing and headed out to see the night watchman. He was sleeping in the lobby and woke up as I approached. We went out and turned right and went a block or so to a relatively major intersection. Then we waited. After about 5 minutes a cab came. The driver offered to take me for CFA 1000 (US$2). Oh well, I'm used to getting dinged when I'm white and have beaucoup baggages. I tipped the nightwatchman CFA 500 as well. So the taxi ride that would have been CFA 3000 from the driver the night before who offered to CFA 1500--CFA 500 of which was a tip and with a little more time could have been CFA 500 only. Not bad. I'm learning.
I got to the SNTV station which was already chaos. I had no idea what was going on. After a while, the baggage enregistrement guy came and everyone flocked up to him. He takes the tickets one by one and copies a bunch of information off the ticket onto as many luggage tags as the ticket holder needs. It is not an efficient process. My bus was supposed to leave at 5:30 and it was 5:15. I didn't know what to do. I got two tags eventually. Then a baggage handler took my bags and requested CFA 500. There are three doors--one labeled International Lines and two labeled National Lines. A bunch of Bamako-bound people went through the National Lines door. It was getting close to 5:30 and I kept trying to get out to where the buses where but they kept telling me I couldn't go through this door. The whole thing is chaotic as hell. Finally someone told me our bus leaves at 6 and I should wait at the middle door. I waited and time ticked off. I had no idea what was going on. Finally at 6, they told me that I had to go through the door marked International Lines to get to my bus and that it had boarded long before. So I went through and got a seat in the very back.
At 6:30 we left. The trip is supposed to be about 9 hours. I had my laptop on the seat next to me. Everything was fine until 10am. Then we hit a massive pothole and I went flying. My laptop case flew too and landed on the worst corner it could land on--the corner where I keep my iPod. I gathered up the laptop case and kept it restrained the rest of the trip which wasn't easy. From 10:00 to 11:30 we were offroading at highway speeds in the bus and my butt felt like the hammer of a pile driver. From 11:30 to the end, it wasn't offroading so much but still we hit a big pothole that knocked us all around about once a minute for large stretches of time. Fortunately, there were also large stretches of time where it was pretty smooth and my butt could recover. We kept stopping for stuff, but it wasn't as bad as on the way to Niamey. At 4pm, we stopped at a town before Maradi and the bus had a hard time leaving. It reversed and then went forward and seemed to get out whatever bind it was in. We headed down the road and, after about a minute, started smelling something burning. We stopped. Oh boy, I thought. Another breakdown story for my blog. But alas, they figured out the problem soon enough and we headed away and the burning smell went away. So nothing good like our flat tire on the way to Segou. Oh well.
It was interesting watching the architecture change. The cylindrical buildings that dominate the more western regions turn into sort of bulbous buildings--maybe 4 or 5 meters in diameter at the center. The conical roofs start to become more rounded and instead of ending in a cone point end in a sort of cylinder--like the top of the Capitol building where all the grass is bound together. Also, these bulbous buildings also have smaller grass caps. Sort of like yarmulkes but shaped more like those wide cone straw Vietnamese hats. They are perhaps 2 meters in diameter and cover the bulbous buildings sometimes on top, sometimes cocked to the side. There are plenty of the square flat roofed buildings with the drain spouts as well as there in the Sahel.
At about 5pm, we arrived in Maradi. It looked like they have an ATM that takes Visa. I didn't see one in Niamey. Would they have one in Maradi but not Niamey? Oh well, too late now. The hotel I wanted to stay at is just down the road from the bus station. I got my stuff--happy it was in fact there--and headed down to the hotel. There were a few other French people and I wanted to get to the hotel before them just in case. The place had 3 rooms left--room '4', room 'F' and room 'H'. They showed me the nice room--room '4'--with the private bathroom first. Not bad, but 16500 CFA and I don't to shell out $33 for a room in this town. So I had them show me a room with the shared bath for CFA 6500 (US$13). Room 'F'. Definitely not as nice, but I'll just be here over night and will get the hell to Nigeria tomorrow morning. It looked good and I took it. The guy gave me the key and left. I looked at the key--not what I expected. It was the head of the key. The key part was broken off in the lock. I called him back. He tried to show me that I can lock it from inside and it would be locked. "Peut-on utiliser un tournevis?" "Non!" he assured me. I got out my Swiss Army knife and pulled out the screwdriver part and locked the door like he showed me. Then I opened it with the screwdriver of the Swiss Army knife. He acted like this was a shocking revelation. "C'est ne pas sûr" I said and we switched to the other room with the shared toilets--room 'H'. That room seemed good for a while, but then I noticed that the door knob was attached to a piece of wood that wasn't properly nailed to the door. I locked it and tried to open the door despite it being locked. Easy! Dammit! This place has cheap rooms, but they might as well have neon signs saying "Bienvenue Voleurs".
Oh well, I'll deal with it. I opened my laptop case. OK--this was going to be scary. My laptop took a hard spill and landed on the corner where I keep my iPod. My heart pounded. I took my iPod out. The touch screen was shattered down at the bottom where the button is. Fuck! I hate fucking Niger and its fucking potholes roads and the fucking SNTV that takes the potholes at highway speeds. It turns on but in recovery mode. Next I took out my laptop. Whew! No problems there. The iPod wants to be connected to iTunes and I connected it. iTunes said the iPod was in recovery mode. I clicked the recovery button. But I'm not connected to the damn internet so it can't do anything other than complain that it's not connected to the internet. I have one month left in Africa. I have iTunes, so I can listen to all the songs I downloaded from iTunes because iTunes vouched for them when I moved my iPod management from my desktop which is now in storage to my laptop. But the CDs I loaded into iTunes by myself are gone. That means no ABBA. No ABBA. Let that sink in. No ABBA. For a whole month. No ABBA. I don't know if I can survive. I have a playlist of downloaded songs I listen to and ABBA Gold. I alternate between them. Now, no ABBA Gold. Screw you, SNTV! Screw you Apple!
The hotel has a bar--though nobody is in it. Apparently this region of Niger is pretty strict Muslim territory. Bars are as welcome here as in Salt Lake City. There is one bar described as hedonistic and I wanted to check it out. But I can't lock my door, I'm just going to stay here with my laptop and my journal in their bar. Those are my 2 of my 4 irreplaceables. The third is my iPod--but they can have that now. And I always have my ultimate irreplaceable on me--my passport.
The bar has small Heinekens for CFA 1000 (US$2) and half liter Bière Nigers for CFA 700 (US$1.40). So I went cheap. At least it's cold.
So that was my day. One iPod down. But I'm close to the border with Nigeria and I'll quit this awful Niger. Tomorrow I'll be in Kano. They will have ATMs and I'll get Naira and spend a couple of days there loading up on it. Then I'll head to Lagos to get my Cameroonian visa. After that, I'll go to a few places in Nigerian and get to Cameroon. Then, I just gotta make sure I'm at the airport in time for my flight to Ghana. On a horrible day like today, I really look forward to Ghana and Chicago and home. In Ghana I'll shop for all the stuff I wanted to buy all along. I'll do that in the morning and in the evening I'll go to Ryan's Irish Pub.
Friday, November 14, 2008 18:48 Niger local time
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