13 March, 2001— Niamey, Niger

It was Sunday night. Niamey and the prospect of an air-conditioned hotel room lay approximately six hours ahead. In the end, this prospect was far too tempting for our overheated, dirty, tired bodies and we made the decision to drive straight through that night. This meant we had to buckle down for a few hours of some extremely dangerous African night driving. I wouldn’t recommend night driving in Africa to anyone. Sure, there are many things that cause issues when driving at night in Africa: unmarked speed bumps, cars driving with no lights on, enormous potholes in the middle of the road, etc. However, there are two variables that contribute the most to the take-your-life-in-your-hands aspect of the adventure:

First, Africans are terrible drivers. (Yes, I am completely generalizing here — but I’m right.) To me, driving an early 80s Citroen with no doors and a goat tied to the roof at 90MPH on terrible roads isn’t a terrific idea, but to a large number of Africans, it’s just fact of life. Want to pass an overloaded lorry but there’s a car coming at you in the other lane? No worries! He’ll drive on the shoulder when you honk and flash your one working headlight at him. Are you a bush taxi driver in a hurry? No problem! Just pass around people and then slam your brakes when you see your fare standing by the road. It’s really uncanny. I’m pretty sure I know what causes it, too . . . the fact that traffic laws were only introduced to bilk money from tourists when they "break" them. "Officer, help me understand this. I’m getting an infraction because I stopped when the Peugeot 505 almost hit me as he was backing around the rotary? I see. How much, then?"

Second, there are animals and carts everywhere. For some odd reason, every time we drove at night seemed to be just after a market day in the town we were passing. The issue is that market day means thousands of donkey and horse carts on the roads, returning home loaded to the brim with hay, gourds, wool, or poop. (Yes, poop.) I’m actually unclear as to whether animals are suicidal and want to be killed by cars (pony Prozac, perhaps would help?) or they’re simply playing some crazy farmyard version of "Chicken." So many times, you’d drive up near a cart, pass it and then the animal pulling it would freak out and run right towards you and their imminent death. Al actually had the scariest situation. He was lagging behind a bit (as usual — probably distracted by his own singing) and came upon the 1051^st donkey cart of the evening. This time, though, the beast decided to cut into the middle of the road, directly in front of Al’s truck. Al had to swerve hard to avoid killing the donkey, the driver and his six family members riding in the cart. When all was said and done, Al skidded sideways off the road and stopped about two inches from a tree that would have done some serious damage to his truck, not to mention him.

Frazzled, we arrived at the Hotel Gaweye in Niamey right around midnight. We must have been a real sight for the front desk people, showing up at the best hotel in town covered in dirt and dust dragging Rubbermaid bins into the lobby. We checked in and went right to bed, knowing that the next day would bring lots of work on the trucks.

The next day did bring lots of work on the trucks. Shane and Jim sorted out Mike’s brake problem. Somehow, the adjuster had been rounded off and was not holding the shoe proper position to make contact with the drum. A few spots of weld and some grinding rectified the problem. In addition, Jim figured out that Mike’s carb was gummed up beyond reasonable cleaning, so we swapped it out with a new Weber unit from our Rovers North parts. After a complete fluid check on all the trucks and a few more hours fixing miscellaneous other problems, the day was done and we spent the evening at a Chinese restaurant called Dragon d’Or. They had some entertainment in the form of a guy from Niger who had learned English from his Chinese employers singing and playing the piano. Never in my life had I heard a better version of "I Can’t Hewrp Fawrring in Rove rith You." It was truly breathtaking.

The next morning we finally had some time to explore the city and wander aimlessly around until we got lost enough to require a taxi. Niamey was built up and "modernized" in the 70s during the uranium boom, which saw the price of the mineral skyrocket artificially and create a huge amount of wealth for the country. The government spent the money on huge building projects in cities like Niamey where they added such modernities like traffic signals and lavish government buildings. Businesses followed suit and built large, luxury hotels like the Hotel Sofitel Gaweye and the Bank of Africa building. The problem was that once the uranium boom bust, there were no longer any businesspeople to stay in the hotels and no government money to pay for light bulbs in the streetlights. All the buildings are in a constant state of disrepair and those that are kept up (like the Sofitel) are in a time freeze. It’s kind of strange — you feel like you’re stuck in 1974 down to the carpet in the hotel room (wide green, blue and orange stripes) but a freaky 1974 with open sewers, non-working traffic signals and the worst drivers in the universe driving the worst 1970s vehicles on the planet . . . French ones.

I’m being quite unkind. Niamey is actually a pretty cool city with plenty to do and some of the nicest, most friendly, helpful people around. In one instance, we were searching high and low for an Internet café that was open during the normal rest hours in the afternoon. A guy noticed us talking, came over and offered his assistance. We expected to be taken over the coals again and have to deal with him asking for some exorbitant amount of money, but after riding with us in a taxi all the way across town merely asked for taxi fare home. When I gave him 1000CFA (about $1.30) he said, "No, no, that’s far too much. A taxi to my house will only cost 150CFA (20¢)." It was really a welcome change from some of the other places we’d been. The police on the other hand were another story . . .

There was a rotary (roundabout) right outside our hotel that we had to negotiate every time we drove somewhere. Now, the French system of using a roundabout differs from the English / American system. In America and England, the people in the rotary have the right-of-way. In other words, when entering a rotary you stop and wait until there’s time to go. In the French system, the people entering the rotary have the right-of-way, so as you’re going round, you have to stop and let people in. We had pretty much mastered the French system by Niamey so were fairly surprised to see that in Niamey they really had no system. You just kinda went when there was space. Needless to say, the traffic cop standing in the rotary was diligently doing his job by giving the tourists tickets for doing it wrong. The first time, we were supposed to have stopped when entering and the second time were supposed to have stopped while in the rotary. Maybe the rules change depending on the time of day. Nothing can compare, though, to Mike stopping in the middle of the rotary to avoid a Peugeot 505 that was backing up around the rotary after he missed his turn. I’ll give you one guess who got the ticket. This time it took some help from a local and close to $20 to get Mike’s driving permit and laissez-passer back. I swear, we funded many a police officer’s pocket money fund while in Niamey . . . and all of West Africa, really.

I have some advice for Africans, take it for what it’s worth. Tourism will help your economy greatly, but the way to attract tourists is not to have your officials hassle us to the point where we don’t want to come back . . . just because you think we’re rich doesn’t mean you should extort us.