Tahoua 1

On September 17, Sanouna and I left Niamey to travel north and east with the three teams we were responsible for coordinating, up to the regions of Tahoua and then Agadez, in the Sahel and finally into the Sahara. It was fun to watch the landscape change. I guess the closest analog is the American West. There are a lot of rocky plateaus, and because it was rainy season, it was comparatively green.

I took most of my pictures from the back seat of a land cruiser speeding across gravel roads, and so many of them turned out a little blurred. :) I love this one, though - sunset behind a small village, in front of standing water from the rains. It could not have lined up more perfectly!

In the region of Tahoua, we were based in Illela, a fairly large village, in some houses used for house visiting dignitaries and people on state business, which we qualified for as a national program. Little perks! As housing in a village goes, it was pretty nice - cement floor, electricity, one working faucet, and a toilet that flushed by pouring water down it out of a bucket, so we could at least have an enclosed space for our bucket baths!

Sanouna has a fairly critical addiction to his computer and suffered from withdrawal if he went a day without it. Here he is working on his computer under his mosquito net at night!

The team eating dinner at night - these are rice "pates" - cooked with a lot of water and made into lumps, with okra sauce. Not really my favorite. :) I prefer the tomato based sauce.

Sanouna and I usually ate lunch here while the teams were working - pates (made of corn) with your choice of red or okra sauce, so I always had pates with red sauce and a coke (for a grand total of a dollar)! I was in the end famous for my coke (as in cola) addiction, and had Sanouna in on it. We went out for coke runs together, and I began to home to the outdoor refrigerators from which coke and drinkable yogurt in plastic bags was sold. These became my staple during Ramadan when solid food was harder to come by during the day and I semi-fasted during the day for the sake of solidarity. The teams seemed to really appreciate it.

Banco architecture - these buildings of mud and straw are surprisingly cool during the heat of the day. This is a beautifully decorated mosque.