Monday, November 07, 2005
Dirkou won't show me its face.
Dirkou tricked me entirely. I like to feel that I can spot cops and robbers from far away. I like to feel like I can sense the room temperature drop, like I know when to leave and when to move in. But I spent about eight hours in Dirkou and thought it was a charming little transit spot, a sudden and sunny, escarpment shaded, tree studded market town en route to Libya. A few nights later, in Bilma, I was told that just four years ago I would have seen huge guns and trays of marijuana along with hard drugs all openly displayed in the market that I walked through about five times. All that stuff is still available since Dirkou is apparently a smuggler's mainstay. Fifty percent of the women in Dirkou recently surveyed by an NGO admitted to prostituting themselves and at night there are supposedly ghettos (clubs), organized by country (Ghana Ghetto, Nigeria Ghetto, Benin Ghetto) where you can find people decked out of there heads on drugs you can't find most places in Africa lulling and jittering against the walls while someone spaces out on an electric guitar.
Come on. I didn't get a single whiff of that. I'd like to emphasize how tired I was after that wonderful truck ride. I'd like to doubt the people who told me about Dirkou's dark side; but I probably just missed it. The locals are that good at hiding their game. The military moved in four years ago when the nomadic peoples of the lower Sahara were in a state of semi-rebellion. The military is primarily composed of members of rival southern tribes (they also represent a government so far removed from these desert people that it doesn't logically belong alongside them); so, when they put the military put their gridiron roots down, the northerners just clammed up: clean hands, blank faces. What? Canons and drugs? Come on. We just drink tea and breed camels. Go home. Draw a new border.
I didn't see a thing. Fair play. But I wish I had seemed sufficiently troublesome to receive an offer of something illegal. I always did before. Some kind of counterfeit metal or blood diamond? Something to put up my nose or kill people with? Did some slinking early riser pin a merit badge to my back? Did someone write something on my face last night? Oh well. Maybe that's part of looking old. The prefect of Bilma, a man of 37 who is directly responsible for the largest and most unstable department in Niger, thought that I was "more aged" than he was. Great. Everyone in the room agreed. Three years ago I was mistaken for high school students. Now grown men suspect that I am 40. It was great fun when I passed around my ID from three years ago that makes me look not a day older than 14. A real barrel of laughs. Sean suggested that I have the aging sickness or a disorder of the pituitary gland. I suggested something to him that was unfriendly and then made fun of his face.
Dirkou tricked me entirely. I like to feel that I can spot cops and robbers from far away. I like to feel like I can sense the room temperature drop, like I know when to leave and when to move in. But I spent about eight hours in Dirkou and thought it was a charming little transit spot, a sudden and sunny, escarpment shaded, tree studded market town en route to Libya. A few nights later, in Bilma, I was told that just four years ago I would have seen huge guns and trays of marijuana along with hard drugs all openly displayed in the market that I walked through about five times. All that stuff is still available since Dirkou is apparently a smuggler's mainstay. Fifty percent of the women in Dirkou recently surveyed by an NGO admitted to prostituting themselves and at night there are supposedly ghettos (clubs), organized by country (Ghana Ghetto, Nigeria Ghetto, Benin Ghetto) where you can find people decked out of there heads on drugs you can't find most places in Africa lulling and jittering against the walls while someone spaces out on an electric guitar.
Come on. I didn't get a single whiff of that. I'd like to emphasize how tired I was after that wonderful truck ride. I'd like to doubt the people who told me about Dirkou's dark side; but I probably just missed it. The locals are that good at hiding their game. The military moved in four years ago when the nomadic peoples of the lower Sahara were in a state of semi-rebellion. The military is primarily composed of members of rival southern tribes (they also represent a government so far removed from these desert people that it doesn't logically belong alongside them); so, when they put the military put their gridiron roots down, the northerners just clammed up: clean hands, blank faces. What? Canons and drugs? Come on. We just drink tea and breed camels. Go home. Draw a new border.
I didn't see a thing. Fair play. But I wish I had seemed sufficiently troublesome to receive an offer of something illegal. I always did before. Some kind of counterfeit metal or blood diamond? Something to put up my nose or kill people with? Did some slinking early riser pin a merit badge to my back? Did someone write something on my face last night? Oh well. Maybe that's part of looking old. The prefect of Bilma, a man of 37 who is directly responsible for the largest and most unstable department in Niger, thought that I was "more aged" than he was. Great. Everyone in the room agreed. Three years ago I was mistaken for high school students. Now grown men suspect that I am 40. It was great fun when I passed around my ID from three years ago that makes me look not a day older than 14. A real barrel of laughs. Sean suggested that I have the aging sickness or a disorder of the pituitary gland. I suggested something to him that was unfriendly and then made fun of his face.
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