A belated overview of Northern Nigeria as perceived by me:

We were lead to believe that Kano was home to approximately two million people, that Maiduguri's population was one million and that they were separated by a mere five hundred kilometers—what locals said would be a four hour drive. As it happens, Kano is one of the largest cities in Africa, preceded only by Cairo, Ibadan and Lagos. Apparently it boasts between five and seven million inhabitants. This means that Kano is the biggest city we are going to see on this entire voyage, even assuming we make it as far as Eritrea. We had no idea of this when we drove into it well after dark or marched around the miniscule area contained in our guidebook's map. Maiduguri, considered fairly insignificant in Nigeria, has between three and four million inhabitants. It is more than five hundred miles from Kano and it took us nearly nine and half hours to make the journey.

I don't like to dwell on numbers; but I find it revealing that the figures for Nigeria are particularly inaccurate. Nigerians sometimes feel that there is a deliberate attempt on the part of foreign media to criticize and belittle their nation and her people. They believe that their support for neighboring countries, their military and economic power, their hospitality and generosity are overlooked and concealed while the more statistically isolated instances of corruption and thievery are blown out of proportion. It makes them genuinely sad because they are a very well educated populace, aware of international relations and concerned about their reputation. I suspect that this grievance is one of the motivations for their spectacular hospitality towards visitors.

Only two people encouraged us to visit Nigeria as we traveled southward; both of them had lived in the country for more than a decade. Others joined in the chorus of people who warned us away with nasty generalizations. I don't want to waive our good luck around like an all purpose advertisement for every Nigerian city; but I understand why Sean says he wants to punch in the face everyone who told him not to come here. Avoiding this country would have been our biggest mistake in over one hundred and fifty days.

For many years Transparency International, an organization that rates the level of corruption in all or most of the countries in the world has consistently placed Nigeria in the top five. Epic sums of money are stolen by state governors, appointees of the ruling party and just about everyone else with authority over and responsibility towards ordinary people. Recently there has been a high profile attempt to curb this corruption and it has paid off to some extent: Nigeria is now ranked (from what I've heard) thirteenth, which is a healthy drop. However there is still a clause in their constitution that grants immunity from prosecution to all high ranking government officials-even when their theft is blatant and devastating. These people cannot be charged with crimes or taken to court until they are out of office, at which point they have generally amassed such fortunes that they can buy their way out of any problem not created by space travelers who laugh at our economy and have futuristic guns or giant claws and poison.

Nigerians hate this immunity clause and have been struggling to have it stricken from their constitution (the Nigerians that I spoke with consider their democracy to be under ten years old and regard their country's transformation as far from complete). The bill to remove the immunity clause from the constitution sits on the president's desk and he seems more concerned with modifying the constitution so that he can run for a third consecutive term in office. If he does removes the immunity clause many people expect that every single state governor (all thirty-six of them) and most every other elected person whose wealth accumulation has retarded the growth of Nigeria, will be run out of office, through the courts and into jail for life. The president is hesitant to wish this sort of justice on his friends and supporters. The hopeful Nigerians are praying that he will at least strike the immunity clause from the constitution on the last day of his presidency. At which point he would have to flee. I hope so too.

In any case, the country needs to make great strides to reach its potential and it is far from universally safe and charming. Nigeria, of course, is huge, far and away the most populace nation in Africa, and tremendously diverse. The three of us have not really been here in a way that qualifies us to discuss the country. We will need to visit all the cities we were scared away from: Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Jos, Carbala and Abuja and we will need to spend generous amounts of time in each of them. That's fine with me because I'm coming back. I will just repeat that Northern Nigeria was a wonderful place because it was full of wonderful people and while they can be nationalistic, they are not blind to the problems of their nation.
* posted by Nathaniel at 11:18 AM  —  0 comments

Nigeria has given me abundant opportunities to enjoy one of my favorite travel pastimes: being wrong. I enjoy places and people that confront me with the obvious idiot falsehood of my presuppositions and expectations. Nigeria won't stop doing this and as a result, I am starting to love the place. We have been delayed in Maiduguri by hospitality. There is nothing wrong with the car or breathtaking or shockingly AIDs related in the state of Borno; but our hosts won't let us leave and their insistence on our continued lingering and shared time is not the performative and obligatory type required in some cultures; it is real and we don't feel like refusing it.

So, we will continue hanging out at the National Air Force's Mess Hall and getting ourselves put on TV and eating locust. Whenever we get regular electricity--the lack of which is the only real maddening downfall of this place--I will give some flesh to our pursuits in Maiduguri and our growing unwillingness to leave the country that we were trying so hard not to visit. Also, I will do my level headed best to make sure that the Television broadcast that features our project will eventually end up on this website.
* posted by Nathaniel at 11:42 AM  —  0 comments

It should come as no surprise that there is precisely no sign of Thanksgiving in the air. The air is still full to opacity with the fuel of moto taxis, which are hands down my favorite form of urban third world travel. Solidly ninety percent of the staggering number of motorcycles that constitute Kano's bloodstream are unmarked taxis. Less than thirty seconds gesturing by the trashpiles or gutters on the roadside will yield as many of these chauffers as necessary. For approximately a quarter they shuttle you to far corners of the city through narrow moving spaces, over the sidewalks and as fast as possible. It feels like the Jetsons. At the few intersections where policemen actually impose order on road traffic, nearly fifty motos are likely to accumulate, giving passengers an opportunity to exchange greetings, purchase bags of water, cell phone cards or windshield wipers. While passing your friends you can slap them on the back of the head; if stubborn you can pack several people on the back. It is an unparalleled exercise in control release. The first few times that I took advantage of these taxis, which are sometimes especially eager to impress a foreign passenger with driving prowess, I was gripping the rack behind my seat in blank terror. Now I summon up all of my bovinity, shove it into the forefront of my mind and achieve a blankness that is not based in terror.

Sean and I have replaced our lost and broken glasses. We all fixed the car windows, received the trust and assistance of a saintly travel agent who cashed our personal check for $1,000 (solving our money problems) and tracked down fuel with the assistance of a worker from Kano's chapter of Women in Africa against AIDS.

I would stay much longer in Nigeria. I can't believe how many people tried to scare us away from this country.

(Brett; can you send me your email address to douglasncalhoun@yahoo.com)
* posted by Nathaniel at 8:56 AM  —  1 comments

Nobody is currently trying to scam me in Nigeria. The number of police checkpoints, during daylight hours, is through the roof (it is hard to reach cruising speed before being gestured back over to the side of the road). But they do not require finesse, obeisance, gross dishonesty or undeserved gifts. They appear to be doing their jobs, just like those extra cops in the US that stand beneath traffic lights and waive their arms around in exactly the opposite direction. Tax dollars.

Kano doesn't have power during the daylight hours so we can't get work done on the computer. Also, Kano is draining. It's tiring just to breathe the air. It is the only city that so far deserves the description that our guide book has slapped on the back of every single other metropolitan center that we've passed through: horribly polluted, overcrowded and trash-strewn. We've got business to take care of here and it's been pleasant. People have been helpful and constitute the city's only charm.

Anyways. Thanks especially to you people who are commenting on the blogs and I'll get some updated writing for you hopefully before Cameroon.
* posted by Nathaniel at 5:01 AM  —  1 comments

Bilma and our return.

Sean and I were lamenting Bilma's name. You have to work so hard to get there and then you have to call it Bilma. Such an outstanding location deserves a superior name. It should be called Wahat Al Qabzak, Hurkshiqufh Karaht or Sueno de Muertes. All around it on the map are hard sounding places like Erg du Djourab, Massif de Takolokouzet and Idhan Murzuq. Bilma sounds like someone’s clingy step mother or a town in Kansas.
. . .
This blog is growing stale. I haven't felt like writing it for about two weeks. Bilma, in any case, was restful and simple. It had absolutely no trace of tourism whatsoever: no guides, no men in costumes selling jewelry and hats, no bars, no restaurants. This is a sort of authenticity that is hard to find in places that are worth visiting. Walking in any direction from the center of Bilma is rewarding: we hiked into the dune fields of the Tenere desert; we were lead through the streams and pools of Bilma's running water by a horde of well mannered but manic children and we climbed a ramp of sand that lead to the summit of an escarpment of razor sharp rocks overlooking the oasis and the rest of nowhere. All of these walks and much about the surrounding area deserve attention; but descriptive writing can be tiresome and it tends toward purple when it grows old.

The ride back was also ridiculous. We had nearly abandoned any hope of traveling straight through the Tenere because a mere two or three trucks per month are likely to make the voyage. A collection of hospitable people brought us to the attention of the prefect of Bilma who spoke Sean's African language and liked Tuuli just find and we found ourselves in the back of his military pick up truck in the company of four attentive Nigerienne military personnel whose massive automatic weapons were always within arm's reach. The prefect, along with the mayors and traditional chiefs of the various oases of the northern desert region of Niger were heading to Agadez for a meeting with the minister of the interior. They were going through Fachi, an even less visited oasis in an even more exquisite area of the Sahara. These chiefs and mayors came from diverse tribes with diverse customs and grudges, some of them sat in the back of the pick up truck with the soldiers, the two grumpy women and us (all of us on top of the blankets that were on top of our stuff, which was leaked all over by some drums of water, which was especially awful when it became necessary to use the wet stuff for insulation against near freezing temperatures). It was impossible to change position on the back of the truck. We were only relieved by the constant popping of the tire over which Sean was sitting and the small stretch and rearrangement that this permitted.

My favorite of these men was the chief of Djado. He is one of the Tubu people-however that is spelt and I'm sure they don't care. After the Agadez meeting he was heading to a summit with Tuareg leaders near Diffa to move the two warring contingents towards reconciliation. Apparently-according to the Fulani Prefect-you are not a Tubu if you do not steal; you prove your Tubu manhood by stealing and you only steal livestock. The Tubu have long been a desert people and raiding passersby is a part of their custom; it predates national law by hundreds of years. The Tuareg people, situated on the other side of this conflict have not adopted a culturally relativist stance since they have most of the livestock in these parts, most of the guns, all of the slaves and none of the patience. The groups don't get along. The Tubu chief had an absolutely wonderful 10th century untouchable look of I'll-talk-all-day mischief about him and offered us sweet milk to be sopped up with bread while we stopped to fix our fifth or sixth flat tire. I got the feeling that he would have a delightful time at the talks saying exactly what the mediators would pressure him to say and that none of this would have the slightest bearing on the way he intends to lead his people. All of these men were extraordinarily kind and none of them treated us like the filthy, untitled, ripe smelling charity cases that we were.

The chauffer could have won the Saharan leg of the Paris Dakar Rally. My fingers were bleeding and blistered from holding onto ropes, plastic handles, the truck's frame and baggage straps. The truck was fully airborne at least once (there were about ten of us in the back). I know this because the only pair of tracks in the whole world anywhere near us suddenly had a three or four foot gap in them. That gap was where the pick up truck flew. I almost fell out of that damn thing about fifty times and I made little embarrassing noises of sudden terror at least ten percent of the time. I used these public displays of vulnerability to legitimize my aggressive campaign to move back into the inner sanctuary of the truck that was primarily occupied by a breast feeding woman and a miserable, shriveling old prune of a woman who thought she was the high priestess of the pick up truck. If I had died it would have been her fault. Thankfully we shared no language except eyes of hate.

She appealed to a soldier to have me move further away. He looked at where I was sitting and told her it was not possible. He was right. So I gave him some water and some dates and thought kindly of him and then when the truck slowed down because of huge rocks I asked about his life. He had children in Niamey (about three days away) and he was looking forward to an opportunity to see them. I had completely failed to take into account that this man who had shouldered his automatic weapon twice on this trip might pay attention to toothless things. I had completely lost sight of this potential fatherliness when he locked and loaded his weapon and fanned out with his colleagues around the prefect's pick-up, which had just run out of all tubes, all spares and had flattened its spare tire stuffed with blankets. He was fanning out to halt the upcoming four by fours that we expected to be full of tourists who were going to have their stuff commandeered so that our dignitaries could make the meeting in time. However, the other four by fours were full of other chiefs and mayors who were also en route to the same summit and had been experiencing their own difficulties.

This was an opportunity for tea and car repair. Several bouts of that, several interesting people, much more car trouble, deepening unspoken malice between me and the crumbling fig whose comfort was more important than my basic safety and we were within a hundred kilometers of Agadez, finally passing villages. Most people didn’t wave at our car because it was scary and full of soldiers with guns. But at one point two little boys did and the soldier who was my ally waved at them and said the French equivalent of "what's up little guys", while smiling larger than anyone not in love. He even relinquished his essential grip on the pick up’s frame to accomplish this fatherly wave. The other soldiers and passengers ignored them completely. Then he said a bit more about his sons, further confusing my understanding of soldiers. Then we were back in Agadez. Somewhere in between we slept in the desert and nearly froze, visited a Chinese oil seeking exploration with a ridiculous arsenal and some friendly mercenaries who baked good biscuits and Tuuli tried lighting a cigarette while leaning against a leaky 100 galloon fuel canister, which impressed nobody and did not succeed.

I have been lazy with these episodes because I want to catch up with time.

Soon after returning to Agadez we followed bad advice and drove south to Zinder. The road began to deteriorate, the sun started setting and so we looked for a camping spot. We saw some herders, stopped nearby, didn't have a single linguistic tool for making ourselves understood except two folded hands under a shut-eyed head, big smiles and thumbs up. You could fill have filled a large briefcase with the amount of pounded millet and okra sauce that they brought to us after our modest offering of dates. Their women were strikingly gorgeous and sat watching us play poker for nearly two hours; they completely threw off my game.

The next morning I drove through the roughest stretch of road the stingray has ever so far handled. It was necessary to maintain speeds around 40 to 50 miles an hour on winding donkey tracks of deep sand, frequently more than a foot deep. It was necessary to allow the car to bottom out, bounce around and skid wildly in order to avoid slowing to a stop in deep sand from which we would not have been able to free ourselves. It was unlikely that other cars could have pulled us from the longer stretches since their own wheels would have found no purchase. The road periodically branched in two or three directions where smaller vehicles sought to avoid the central and most traveled route that was often ruined by massive trucks that carve a central barrier high enough to leech all necessary speed from cars with low clearance. However, from time to time the tracks that wander off to the right or the left deteriorate into nothing or hit sand patches that could sink a tank. One of them crept further and further away from the main road until we began to suspect that we had actually chosen a path with its own independent destination. If that track had taken us to a village I think we might have cried. I continued to careen down this non-road tilting and jumping the stingray in ways that it did not deserve. As in several other locations, it was necessary as the last of our speed was drunk like water, for me to swerve right and left when we neared zero miles an hour. In all cases, one of our tires eventually caught, enabling us to reach the fully paved section after about two hours of the insane driving. Previously we explained to people that our car can handle all roads except sandy ones. Now, we cannot say that. It felt like rally driving. I would do it for a living. In other people's cars, I would absolutely do it for a living.

Then we were in Zinder, spent time there, met good people, saw some projects worthy of respect and attention after which we departed for Nigeria, where I am now. That means I am mostly caught up. That means I can write about something else tomorrow, as I intended.
* posted by Nathaniel at 8:31 AM  —  0 comments

Looking for money in Zinder

We are all back from the desert and in good health. There should be some updated material from our trip in the next couple of days. Now we are trying to access our money in a town that won't let us and we've just learned that every single one of us has had our credit card information stolen over the course of the last two months. This strips our options down and sucks. If we can get new cards sent to us they are likely to be compromised as soon as we use them for anything. Oh well. More later.
* posted by Nathaniel at 2:41 AM  —  0 comments

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.
* posted by Nathaniel at 7:56 AM  —  0 comments

Going to war with the goats and the others.

Sean and Tuuli had been positive about their seating arrangement at the bottom. Sean was eager to teach me how to fight with goats and he and Tuuli looked less filthy than I did. At the beginning it was alright. Our corner of the truck was clearly feared by sheep. The Nigerians were the first to figure out that you can launch a goat nearly two meters away from you (up and over other goats) by squeezing brutally on the base of its tail. There were two shepherds who waded through the animals to lift the ones that had become covered after falling; they were very unimpressed with the Nigerian's discovery and scolded them in Hausa. Sean and I were extremely impressed with their discovery because hitting them in the face and kicking them in the nuts had proven only mildly successful. At first I was a bit disgusted with Sean's brutality towards the animals that would move into our region. But after a couple of stubborn muscular ones stepped on my feet, pissed on my leg and scared me with their horns I began to accept the beating of goats. If a goat came into our area quickly enough it would get beaten harshly by five people at once. The people across from us were simply smashed by goats, unwilling to battle them. With regards to our corner, I felt local pride and a sense of community. The goats were responsible for our misery. We were scapegoating.

But when darkness fell and everyone grew tired and vexed the truck's bed began filling up. The rail straddlers, fearing perhaps that they would loose their grips while dozing off after fifteen hours of driving, were crawling down onto the floor with the sheep and their excrement. My space diminished, the goats came closer and I realized that the only joy on this truck was smacking them. I preferred a sound backhand to the face or an upward slanting kick on the hindquarters to throw off their balance. I didn't like grabbing their tails because they were constantly defecating and unclean. Whenever we could knock the goats down in front of us we would do so, enjoying the protective barrier that the prone goats formed between us and their mobile counterparts. One of the shepherds eventually grew tired of our aggression and stationed himself right above us, ruining our goat free zone and complicating our self-defense. He was in a foul mood because he hadn't noticed one of his fallen goats in the afternoon and it had broken its legs—again without a sound. He didn't like the Nigerians, so he blamed it on them and yelled for a while.

Personal space disappeared and then someone's feet were dangling just in front of my face, swaying slightly. In the darkness it seemed as if I was always about to be kicked. I couldn't look in any other direction and I couldn't stop my brain from panicking at the impending face impact. I tried closing my eyes, pushing his feet away, holding my hand between them and all the while a grumpy little woman dug her knees into my thigh. Eventually the dangling foot man tried to slap my hands away when I pushed his feet away from my nose. God bless it. I stood up to get fresh air and figure out who it was. It was a punk ass twenty something from Chad. He had already threatened to throw a skinny little Malian off the truck for taking his seat (which the Malian hadn't done—he'd just vacated the seat temporarily to vomit off the back and waiver there for a while) and I had tried defusing their little macho threat session. Whatever. My Arabic isn't good enough to bollock someone, so I asked him if he knew French and he said yes. Then I yelled at him for a while about how he was the only person on a truck full of fifty people who thought it was okay to have his feet and his dirty shoes directly in front of other passenger's faces. Feet are offensive in Arabic cultures and there wasn't anyone else in his position. He should've got that. Most of our audience did. I yelled at him for a couple of minutes and repeated myself until I felt better and got his friend asking him to move. He shifted a bit and looked mean. He became someone else's problem. What am I doing on this stupid truck venting on a desperate semi-refugee from a dismal semi-failed state? I am having a wonderful evening. I forget what Sean and I were talking about after that because I think we were getting a bit delusional and stupid. Our conversation either circled around violent fantasies or lists of things we hoped to eat.

The truck stopped. I was too drained to eat. I think Sean and Tuuli had some raw garlic and chili peppers. Tempting, but I slept. It was colder than before and there were goat hairs woven through everything that I owned. The next morning we reached Dirkou after a speedy hour and a half. The police who supervised our arrival were shocked with the rapidity of our voyage; but when they saw the driver, they understood; he had a reputation. They whistled, still impressed. The other trucks that we passed were probably cruising at 10km an hour. This demon had just flung his vehicle 600 kilometers through the world's least truck friendly location in about 24 hours of driving time. We had planned for six days of desert camping. We had barely touched our water and we had eaten next to nothing. My test paunch was almost completely gone. That was the best voyage of my life.
* posted by Nathaniel at 10:51 PM  —  0 comments

Above the goats, waiting to fall

Then we slept. I woke up a few hours later shaking with cold. It was ridiculous. I was fully dressed with three shirts, a hooded sweatshirt and a thick ski cap, wrapped around with a large sheet. I removed the remaining clothing from my bag and spread it over my body. It made little difference and I slept poorly. Morning commotion woke us. They were loading another forty sheep into the back. This did not really seem possible. But nobody with any power over the situation looked the least bit concerned and I focused my energies on finding a shack that would serve us Nescafé with concentrated sugar milk.

I was able to install myself on the roof of the cab facing backwards, legs dangling into the area for goats. When someone protested about my new location I played dumb and exchanged Arabic pleasantries with my neighbor. I thought that this seat would be a real delight. I was sitting on our bag of foodstuff with the ambition of protecting its contents. There were five men behind me facing forwards who had the best seats on the truck. They were teenage boys (Sean and I suspected that they were the same ones from the room marked for narcotic offenses that we saw as we passed through the police station seeking official permission from the Nigerienne officials for our somewhat unconventional trip); all friends and very defensive of their space. Others were crowded around me.

The turbulence was much worse up here and the pulverized essence of goat filth from down below was carried in a vicious updraft straight into my face. I wrapped a shirt around my head in imitation of a turban, anchoring it with my ski cap and dividing them with my glasses. I had to hold on for my life or at least to avoid impaling myself on goat horns or breaking my legs. We were not driving on a road; it was just a deeply rutted sand track over dunes and through rocky wasteland. I would have been fine if I had thought to attach our bag of foodstuffs to some part of the truck; but I had not done this and the foodstuff bag was advancing, inch by inch, bump by bump, over the lip of the roof toward the ten foot drop onto the people below. It was a heavy bag; it would injure however many people it struck and then they would injure me. I began by removing a sock from my left foot, looping it through my belt and tying it to my backpack which one of the teenagers was sitting on. With the other sock I made a handhold out of a security rope tied so tightly that I could not slip my fingers beneath. Now I, at least, would not fall; I was clear to work on the problem of my vanishing danger seat.

I tried pushing the bag backwards; but things were usurping its place. I sought in vain for something to connect it to the truck's upper deck. All of my attempts involved groping around the asses and gripping hands of other men. None of my attempts worked and none of my attempts were popular. My neighbor was the only person sympathetic to my plight, perhaps because we were locked into a food and water sharing ritual and both suffered from the well situated and gradually reclining teens. Eventually I got Sean's attention from below and we managed over the course of fifteen minutes, as I balanced on a wire strung over the holding area, to work the bag gently loose, to the point where he and Tuuli could catch it when it fell and swing it beneath them.

With this accomplished I felt somewhat more secure. I was able to watch in relative comfort as an unholy vomit fest began beneath my feet that left large portions of the floor, quite a few articles of clothing, Sean's backpack and a great number of sheep covered in the underworked stomachfruit of some deeply ill and very unhappy travelers. Sean and Tuuli were about two feet from this unpredictable fountain. The goats were unperturbed. They suffered in admirable silence. The shepherds could actually lift them by the ears without causing complaint. There hides were not pierced by one another's horns or hooves. They just dealt with it. From this vantage point, I admired them.

The only language I could use for communication was Arabic and I engaged whole heartedly in debates about where it was possible to sit and who had the good chair. The man to my left was from Niger, traveling to Libya for work, the man to my right was a Chadian who anticipated a successful crossing into Italy for work. I was an Irishman going to Bilma because Egyptian Bedouins had taught me to love the desert.

The landscape gradually emptied of everything that was not sand. From my perch I could see the occasional Tuareg caravan, with up to several hundred loaded camels, returning with animal salt from Bilma. They purchase huge salt licks for approximately forty cents. After two and a half weeks of walking through the desert, they can sell the same licks for about fifteen dollars in Agadez. That is why this is the only viable old school caravan still operating with great regularity today. Fuel for the truck costs far more than straw for the camels and makes vehicular salt shipment cost prohibitive.

Long ridges of dunes, for the most part, were more than a kilometer distant, miniaturized and hard to appreciate. From time to time we drew near them and could see with what purity and delicacy they had been composed. The truck drove fast and relentlessly. A few times I saw speeding black dots in the distance, kicking up dust, driving in formation; I was sure we were going to be robbed. There were nearly fifty people in this truck who were carrying everything they owned and everything that established their legal identities. It would be a good target. But this Libyan driver was also not messing around. He would certainly give any aggressor a mean chase and his truck could probably handle deeper sand; also, it is impossible to guess what kind of arsenal he had concealed in the ample cabin space.

We stopped when we reached a giant covered well in the middle of nowhere, established by a coalition of NGOs who put their names on the only billboard in the Sahara. Every year 80-100 people die making this crossing on trucks. Most die of dehydration. Some of them must fall off. There were at least three meager figures straddling the rails of our truck like gunshot cowboys. Nobody would have been shocked if one of them dropped or failed to wake up in the morning. I do not know what we would have done with the body. We were told that our stop at the well would last just thirty minutes so we neglected to cook a meal. Instead we mixed two cans of Palestinian Foul and a can of tuna into a plastic cup and ate it raw. Then we waited. We waited for another hour and half and got hungry. Then our departure was signaled. Tuuli wanted my seat so I gave it to her.
* posted by Nathaniel at 7:46 AM  —  0 comments

On a truck outnumbered by goats.

Our Tuareg coordinator informed us that we could leave Agadez for Bilma on Friday evening. Some complications involving a deplorable internet café and shifting timetables gave us a late start. We had to board a push-starting, beaten pick up taxi and rush past the military checkpoint for Agadez, chasing the truck seven kilometers out into the desert, hoping to catch it at a staging point for its evening voyage. The truck's driver was already in possession of our money and would be departing whether or not we were aboard. Fortunately, we found the giant machine surrounded by lines of people, presided over by a soldier with an interest in paperwork, not yet depareted. It had eight tires in the rear and two in the front, large "all steel" sand tires; they were clearly enough. It looked healthy and armored, sort of like a reinforced, open topped, grey uhaul tank, like a military transport vehicle. Plastic water containers, sewn around with burlap hung from either side, where troops would've lashed rucksacks.

There were between forty and fifty people around the truck. We were concerned that we might not be given space, that these people might have preceded us. But after sitting idly in the direct path of the truck for five minutes or so, we were encouraged to load our supplies (60 liters of water, 5kg of natural gas in its battered cooking stove, a duffle bag with five to seven days of food and three personal back packs). Sean's elbow is still troubling him so it was my job to cart this stuff up the welded steel ladder just behind the passenger side door of the cab. As soon as I reached the top of the ladder my enthusiasm for the trip dropped a notch or two. There were approximately forty goats milling around in the back. Of course. That's why there wasn't an improbable amount of nonsense spilling over the sides of the truck, piling into the lower atmosphere. It should have been obvious, but the animals weren't making any noise and they didn't smell, so it came as a surprise. Just as I finished hoisting the last of our things into the area with the goats some sort of invisible whistle triggered a stampede of all the remaining passengers who clambered into the vehicle from all sides. I tried making a tiny wall with our three water bins to keep the goats away; but the space behind me was suddenly full and Sean and I ended up sitting on them.

The car started up long before anyone was settled and the message became clear within minutes of bouncy and high velocity movement that sent goats, passengers and baggage slamming into one another: the driver has one priority; the priority is reaching his destination quickly; the passengers are not even a variable.

Thankfully, a row of bodies seated themselves between the goats and my shins. Sean and I were not the first line of defense against these beasts. The three Nigerians to our right were protesting, "This is nonsense. Leaving us to sit with the animals. We are not animals. We are paying money. This is nonsense." A less articulate protest was voiced by a Chadian man who began projectile vomiting, first on himself, then on the other passengers and finally, after being shoved in their direction, onto the goats. I had expected this ride to offer opportunities for talking with aspiring immigrants and other interesting characters. But the task of maintaining balance (our plastic water containers were hardly bolted to the floor) and the essential vigilance with regards to goat horns (some of which were easily a foot long on either side and all of which were sharp) made it difficult to focus on other people. Plus, with this little space at our disposal, those nearest to us were quickly turned into rivals and I was again glad to have the most bony elbows of any non-starving man.

To my surprise the truck came to an abrupt halt after four or five hours of very rapid driving. The Nigerians discovered that we would be staying the night in this place and informed us. We waited for the other passengers to disembark and then passed our things down and sat beside the truck on our sleeping mats. We were in a small town called something like Tankan. It was the last inhabited place that we would pass; there were more than 500 kilometers of Sahara between this ten hut watering hole and our destination. The shepherds slaughtered one of the goats a few meters in front of the truck then strung it up from the grating of the radiator, switched on the headlights and butchered the animal within fifteen minutes. The driver and his crew were going to be well fed. We were too tired to cook and decided to eat only those things that had been smashed open by all of the people who stepped on our food bag. This included one can of hummus and some biscuits.
* posted by Nathaniel at 7:38 AM  —  0 comments

Bilma?

Agadez is a staging point. It has a prominent mud mosque, jutted by an even grid of rough sticks. It has three different markets, one of which operates primarily at night beneath meter long florescent lights that obviate the need to squint or feel mysterious. Agadez is a place to prepare for a crossing of the Sahara or it is a place from which to take tiny camelback expeditions through the Air mountains or into the sand dunes. It is best to come here and see what tempts you. Sean and I are tempted by Bilma. It is one of the most isolated towns on earth, a fortified oasis more than six hundred kilometers from the nearest large town—Agadez, which is not really a large town at all. Bilma is nestled against a towering escarpment on the far side of the Air mountains and the Tenere desert, the most scenic offerings of the Sahara.

In order to get there we will have to pay a commercial truck drivers roughly twenty-five dollars each to ride on top of his truck. We will then spend three to four days driving through the desert with whoever else happens to be hitching a ride, which is likely to be quite a few people. These trucks are on their way to Libya. Many aspiring illegal aliens make this arduous trek with the hopes of jumping the Mediterranean Sea to land in Europe. They will have begun their voyage as far away as Abidjan, Accra or Lagos. It should be good company. We'll bring along some gin.

A Tuareg man is asking around on our behalf. Tomorrow morning at 11am he will meet us at this hotel to let us know whether or not anyone has agreed to transport us. In preparation for good news we will be getting special permission from the police to make this particular journey, purchasing additional water storage containers and buying food for ninety-six hot sandy hours.

In preparation I am also getting fat. Burkina Faso forced me to punch two new holes into a belt I'd worn for years. I've never exactly burst out of my clothes, so this transformation concerned me, especially since reserve weight is a buffer against all sorts of feverish African maladies. While in Ghana I gorged on fufu, rat, ice cream and stout in order to inch back out to the regular hole of my waist delineating pants suspender. Now, I am sporting a test paunch. This does not concern me at all. If this sunstroke journey doesn't knock me back a few kilos some awful poo virus in Cameroon will.

Anyways, I am praying that Bilma is untouched by internet technology and I suspect that I am likely to be off the map for about two weeks. I don't know if my other team members share the motivation for West African travel that I have so far kept to myself. I continue to expect one of several ruinous things: perhaps our car and all related possessions will be taken from us by armed bastards, perhaps we will finally reach a point on a terrible road that destroys something essential and expensive in our car, or perhaps our car will simply become mired in a dreadful mudpit or sandtrap, irredeemable and lost. Fearing these things, and projecting that fear into Central Africa, has made me quite comfortable with delaying our descent and with exploring this region and its circumstances to the fullest. Here, at least, we should be able to travel in relative safety. Here, also, issues related to HIV/AIDS are less frequently discussed.
* posted by Nathaniel at 2:39 AM  —  0 comments

Driving into the Sahara

Agadez is still 120 kilometers ahead of us. It is 5:05pm. A trick of this evening light enables all potholes to appear, deep and jagged, from precisely nowhere. We blew one tire about an hour and a half ago. One spare remains. I am sick to death of these costly tender black balloons. We've blown through nine of them now. We've tried all sorts and they don't last. Because of these insubstantial and chronically untrustworthy tires, our jack is my least favorite thing in the car. There are at least three thousand things in this car and there are many of them that I do not like. But I HATE the jack. It does not take advantage of centuries old discoveries in the field of leverage. It doesn't use leverage at all. It causes blistering, bloody knuckles, loss of equilibrium, sweat and cursing. It doesn't even fit together. We might as well lift the car with our teeth.

There are stretches of this road that more precisely resemble the middle of nowhere than anywhere I have so far been. Of course it is beautiful. The desiccated grazing weeds provide a softer lemonlime cover to the hardpacked dark gravel base of the Sahara's welcome mat. Two camels on my left are using flexible necks to reach the leaves on a thorny tree. To the right, two grown men in aviators, wrapped like nomads, trot along a ridge on a donkey, their legs almost reach the ground. Frequently, goats stand on their hindquarters to strip the lower branches of leaves; they look human, like performing dogs—it explains why all these trees are about the same height from the ground. (In agricultural areas, trees are protected by giant Chinese finger trap baskets until they are five or six feet tall. Otherwise the goats will destroy them. In the desert here, trees survive their infancy by being plentiful and full of spikes.)

Just now, as the sun sets further, all of the green bushes that have been making things look somewhat cheerful or at least neutral have whimpered off into the landscape behind us. Now it is true deep desert sand, indifferent, tan and salty. There are still scrubby tufts of grass and the occasional rock; but there isn't anything to shelter under or hide behind. In response to this rougher terrain, the road junks out. Now we are averaging perhaps fifteen or twenty miles an hour. There is no way to make Agadez before nightfall and while flat campsites are literally everywhere, we would be an obvious flock of oblivious snoozing gold geese to anyone who happened to want something nice from the unarmed idiots on the side of the road. Banditry around Agadez is common.

We decide to ask the next village for permission to camp in their territory. With ten or fifteen minutes of remaining daylight we approach a small settlement of perhaps a dozen squarish single story banco dwellings that are interspersed with the domelike gypsy huts of nomadic peoples—often these huts are strengthened with large monogrammed international food aid sacks. Sean claims to spot a sign reading "Bar and Restaurant" and that makes us slam on the brakes and choose this town. Anywhere with a bar and restaurant will cater to travelers. We swing into reverse and pull up next to three well wrapped men who are conversing by the side of the road. We expected to meet Sean's people, the Fuulani, so when they respond to his ritualized Puular greetings, Sean thinks he is understood and begins to speak freely and rapidly in his local African tongue. His inquiries about the bar and restaurant confuse them completely and after a few minutes it becomes clear that they speak about as much Puular as Tuuli.

The most outgoing amongst them leans lower to get a look inside the car. He asks us if we speak Hausa (in Hausa). He asks us if we speak Tamashek (in Tamashek). Then he asks us if we speak Arabic (in Arabic). I feel like I have just been dropped from one of those circus chairs into a basin of cold water. I was expecting to relax while Sean played ambassador. I was not expecting to be forced to recall my atrophied Arabic in eight seconds. But I start up with the same idiot questioning about a restaurant. I am told that I can find one in Agadez. I gesture at the placard Sean had read. Baba Salam. That was the name of the town; the sign was badly faded by desert sands; the hallucination of a bar and restaurant is excusable. However, there is definitely nothing resembling a bar or restaurant in Baba Salam.

I introduce us, tell them about how Sean and I come from Ireland and how Tuuli is Finnish. (I will generally lie about my American nationality when dealing on a short term basis with friendly Muslims in the developing world. There have been too many times that saying "I am from America" has had a shameful stink bomb effect on friendly conversation. So I avoid the problem by manufacturing a false personal history.) I apologize for forgetting my Arabic, tell them where and when I studied it, tell them it is a beautiful language and then get down to the task at hand. I want to ask if we can stay here for the night but I can't remember the verbs for stay or sleep or rest and I never knew the words for tent or camp or shelter. I manage something like, "When sun is finished, travel is no good. Possible we are good here? Put the car by our little houses and go to Agadez tomorrow?" The little houses bit throws him off; so he walks me over to a building that his people have not yet put into use. It has a sort of porch on which he encourages us to sleep. That's great. We accept the arrangement, the mosque sounds a call to prayer for the last day of Ramadan and now Hamada Ahmed (HMD, HMD, Mohammed Mohammed) must go. He promises to bring us milk to drink after he has broken fast.

The small crowd that had gathered around my faltering communication disperses to pray and to eat. We are left to our own devises. If the children felt like coming over to stare at us, they were not permitted. I have a deep respect for this sort of hospitality that is not fawning or intrusive. Hamada brought us delicious milk in a small tin bowl and urged us to drink heartily and deep for our health. He saw that we were cooking our own dinner and saw that we had established our tents; so, he departed, wishing us good night and saying he would see us the next morning if the lord was willing. No gaping, no lingering, no expectations, little ceremony, just a basic respect of travelers and their needs. He gave us a safe place to sleep and then allowed us our privacy there.

He returned in the morning with another generous bowl of milk to see us off. It was the feast day that celebrates the end of Ramadan's fasting, a time when Muslim children wear their finest clothing and expect gifts. We have been carrying around a small floppy Frisbee disk about the size of a tea saucer. "Is there a son of Hamada?" Yes. Hamada calls him a bambino. Whatever that term is doing in the Sahara, I have no idea. But I tell him that this is a Sallah gift (the traditional gift of the day) for his small ones. We show him how to use it and he throws it to some of the other adult men who are with him. It is very easy to catch because it is soft and several of the men laugh openly at the silliness of the thing. But they catch on and understand. Under normal circumstances they may well have refused any gift that we hoped to give them; but this is the one day for presents in the Muslim year and it is always harder to reject something that is given for one's children.

It turns out to be another two and half hours of driving to Agadez. It's a good thing we stopped.

This area is connecting our present trip with my experience living in Egypt. It is making me want to relearn my Arabic. It makes me want to live in the desert. We are now further north than we have been at any point on this trip, several hundred kilometers further north than where we started (in fact, if we were on the coast, we would be in Mauritania). But we are also further east, totally past the protruding Western bulge of the continent, somewhere straight north of Yaounde. Our trajectory is more or less straight south from here. Somehow, it feels oddly logical to dry out for a few days in the desert before free falling through all of the dense and muggy equatorial jungle of Africa's more notorious nations. The straightforward, contractual dignity of the desert's logic is grounding. It is one of those rare environments that you have to obey and I have always enjoyed its dryness.

And happy birthday Peter Nelson.
* posted by Nathaniel at 2:31 AM  —  5 comments