Arriving in Africa is to contemplate from the window of the plane a handful of lonely and homeless houses, Arriving in Africa is to taste the first snack of dusty air that shakes your soul like a slap, It is to break down in a sweat torrent that loosen you to the buckle of the pants, asimilar thousand scents that you hacen debatirte between Fascinacion are the nausea. Arriving in Africa is to become aware of your own translucent and helpless skin, habit you to feel weak and lost. Llegar a África es mirar has disoriented you alrededor y diez veces preguntarte seguidas that demonios estás haciendo este in torbellino Descontrolado of color, ajetereo vida y. Through the doors of adventure without looking back, banish the possibility desolate back home when you see the plane leaving for his next stop.
Terrified I am still going around that you'll see, maybe I periods less smooth drive in the state of ignition
After a moment of indecision, Abdou plump figure moving through the crowd smiling. Luce proud belly and big kid smile, take my backpack and I question the fate. "Mission Catholique sil vous plait in French gibberish". - Is it hot huh? I release him for saying something. He looks at me as if trying with a moron, And the sweat drippers that cross me like Niágares your forehead were the effects of some strange polar disease of whites typical. This is not repeated, if we are in cold season, You'll see! Terrified I am still going around that you'll see, maybe I periods less smooth drive in the state of ignition. But indifferent abdou already, I embedded against the passenger door and for a moment while my moflete detachment of the window I have the impression that if I stop to look at it could be perceived as fattening slowly, gram for gram anatomy scattering throughout the vehicle. We started the show and watch amazed disheartening to greet me the streets of Niamey.
Most West African capital, They are indescribable. When you write to tell the beauty is easy, one chains clichés and adjectives more or less grandiloquent that are composing an idyllic journal cover, poetic exaltation, nostalgia for paradise lost, the charm of adventure, find yourself wrapped in pith helmets and shirts, that kind of thing. Describe the first impression I had Niamey is a bit more difficult, diving and diving trying to find adjectives that reflect ugliness and horror and not success to transmit the state of anxiety that produced me the early hours of that l 3 January 2011.
No asphalt, no buildings in many places , themselves even streets, however there are people, many people
Calling this hamlet a city might be too generous. No asphalt, no buildings in many places , themselves even streets, however there are people, many people. They are appealed in any way almost as figures of a ghost decoration to the two margins of the road. They just sit and wait, nobody seems to have much to do. A thousand inquisitive looks assault us to our path. Eyes that become loud to look at me by turning me into a paralyzed rabbit, I am unable to tell if curious, threatening the inexpresivos. Nobody SALUDA, nobody smiles, limited to maintain tu look, serious, undisturbed, with a point of sadness. The feeling of being different, be it otro, That state of being subjected to permanent observation is something that causes almost physical oppression and does not abandon you in certain parts of Africa for weeks.
In this context the appearance of it just, de una piel blanca Dejean you look like a ghost among the muchedumbre, causes an irrational sensation of proximity, of reconocimiento, back home. During my first days in Niger more than once I saw myself running like a lunatic behind a pale and fleeting flash to check disappointed when it was one of the many albinos that swarm the streets of the city.
I cross my fingers that the Lariam operate in a country where you have a chance of catching a cold malaria
Abdou has been fired me, leaving me in the door of the Mission with dusty bag, empty pockets and an unsettling feeling of having been ripped off thoroughly. It's eight o'clock and the heat at that time reached the level of unbearable. Clouds of mosquitoes around me tenacious. I cross my fingers that the Lariam operate in a country where you have a chance of catching a cold malaria. I call all the rooms without result, the end of the courtyard under a giant gao find a mattress incorporates a half guardian. "We're closed, open to the 8 average and tells me ". "But excuse moi, Monsieur,I booked a room forgive ". For any response, the ramshacking reception clock indicates and fell asleep. It's eight and twenty.
I sit at the foot of gao and hope. At half past eight rings a bell, the type stretches, And he starts urinating indifferently against the tree a meter of me. I dream of showers, fluffy pillows and head fan and as a castaway to the rooms, When you barely turn to me, and Pas de Place Monsieur, nous somme complets Loose pack and for a moment if not to mourn me out right there, or trigger a bloodbath Full?, how, if I have booked two weeks ago? Nous sommes complets says with obvious satisfaction and highlights the ridiculous fuss with crossing hands as if they were windmilling. It's half past eight, I remain 20 Hours until the bus goes to Zinder my final destination at the other end of the country, I lost the housing, The heat makes you want to tear your skin strips and outside a bunch of the city awaits me in which a single building is not attached.
You will find him a great hotel Mr., a hotel of blancoooos, and to say the word stretches and opens her eyes
The mobile Marco Abdou five minutes to go smiling, seems to have gained five pounds over and rubbed his hands with pleasure. You will find him a great hotel Mr., a hotel of blancoooos, And when the word stretches it and opens the eyes a lot as if that meant that it will be full of all the majaderías that we do capricious and incomprehensible beings we need to live! The next two hours are an unspeakable parade of clubs in which I observe the lush wealth of the world of Nigerine invertebrates. All tell me that the minimum price per night hotel are 50 EUR. At that point I decided to hang the first tree to find.
I need a shot of the other African, I've been feeding with meticulous insistence on my childhood dreams, Postcards need refuge in National Geographic, Something to put on the salacot and greet the continent as God commands. A few 30 kilometers from Niamey still alive the only group of giraffes in West African freedom. How about going to see them? Abdou makes fingers as if he were blocking Niger's external debt. 400 euros! View hippos? There in the Niger River on the outskirts of the city? Ugh complicated, gasoline has hiked, I can not get a picture 100 EUR! On the brink of insanity, faltered, I beg leave cockroaches company not too greedy and wishing me a good firing stroke.
A few 30 kilometers from Niamey still alive the only group of giraffes in West African freedom
I spend the afternoon in a passable hotel welded to fan. Occasionally sounding muezzins' calls to prayer, I look out the window a string of little gardens where farmers tend interrupt their work and prayer mats. In the patio of the hotel all the neighbors congregate around a TV to see fascinated telesahel programming, snakes starring well -known Malian actors. A television news broadcast interrupted, have ten days before the election, disturbances with the Tuaregs in the north, we do not know anything about the French kidnapped by Al-Qaeda for months in Arlit. I stay in bed and open Moby Dick. A wave of loneliness overwhelms me like a tsunami, I feel like a Martian in a new world, alien and incomprehensible. A oceans of time from home. I let myself off to sleep, exhausted, the day's events swarm around me along with dozens of mosquitoes.
The bus leaves at 5 am, A hotel employee walk with me to the station, the road is dangerous tell me. There hundreds of people gathered around rough buses. Among the tumult hear shouting out names. Dakar, Bamako, Agadez, Gao, Timbuktu, I'm still the only white dela station, I try not to be wrong with my car and end up in Agadez, in North fearsome, that to the one that dozens of tuaregs embark throwing me looks of curiosity. I locate the bus to Zinder and me against the window Arellano, still go out at night while the radio speaks of civil war in Ivory Coast.
The landscape monotonous brown parades and shows the first baobabs
Slowly begin to sound African songs. The landscape monotonous brown parades and shows the first baobabs. My seatmate is an elder from Nouakhchot tells me that goes to Sudan traveling across West Africa to see his brother, sleeping in stations, some days I ran out of money and feeds on the dates he brought from his Mauritanian oasis, I offer half. It echoes the cry of a child, his mother cradles and gives the chest. He smiles. The bus leaves the city and makes its way between the first lazy morning light.
