Sorry for the lapse...

I know it's been a long time since my last entry, but I have a reasonable excuse (hopefully). Almost two weeks ago, the one ISP in Niamey went down and the entire city was without internet for three days. And then for some reason, the internet at the CFCA never came back on and our calls for repair service have gone unheeded. So I'll be visiting this internet cafe until that gets fixed.

Two weekends ago, we visited Parc W, a huge wildlife reserve that stretches across three countries. Unfortunately, Niger is the least-appealing of those countries from the animals' perspective, so we didn't see more than a few antelope, some crocodiles, and a couple of baboons. It was still really fun to ride around the park on top of the SUVs, though. I'd love to post some pictures, but my sort-of-broken camera was completely broken by a child last week, so those will have to wait.

I spent the last week living with a Nigerian family in a suburb just off the main road out of the city, which was cool. They have three kids and are wealthy in the sense that their home has electricity and running water. They fed me crazy amounts of food and helped me practice my French and Zarma.

We were with our homestay families for Thanksgiving, but everyone worked really hard yesterday to cook a belated Thanksgiving dinner. There were yams, chicken (no turkeys here), stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, mac and cheese, sangria, and two kinds of pie. Of course, Thanksgiving has always marked the beginning of Christmas for me, and my roommate and I have been taking advantage of the opportunity to sing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs. Did I mention the sangria?

Three weeks from today, I'll be in a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. I'm not at all ready for this to end.

written by

The Boston Wanderer on December 1, 2008 from Niamey, Niger

from the travel blog: Sandstorms

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