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Am now in Niamey the capital of Niger, it feels a very pleasant city, tree lined streets, impressive buildings and good roads which hide at first what is one of Africa's poorest countries. I am arranging visas here and relaxing for a few days before I head onto Benin and Togo for the last 3 weeks of my trip.

Niger

Stevemonty
2005-09-23 19:10:27

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Am now in Niamey the capital of Niger, it feels a very pleasant city, tree lined streets, impressive buildings and good roads which hide at first what is one of Africa's poorest countries. I am arranging visas here and relaxing for a few days before I head onto Benin and Togo for the last 3 weeks of my trip.
Dec 3
In Niamey I spent quite a bit of time just wandering about around town. The city is in the desert and you often see camels walking across the bridge into town weighed down with huge bails of hay. One evening at dinner I joined the local restuarant staff with their after ramadam meal. They mixed cassava flour with water and probably sugar (aka African Cornflakes) with peanut butter, spinach, onion, cucumber and tomato, you may not be interested in this description but it tasted real good anyway.
Benin
Dec 3
I spent a couple of days travelling by shared taxi (10 in a 504) down through Benin, stopping at Kandi and Parakou. I'm now in Abomey, the centre of the famous Dahomey kingdom that once flourished here. It's a significant UNESCO world heritage site but unfortunately the palace and moped tour around the area were all in French and I missed a lot of the detail. There one bizare tale about the Temple Zewa, a voodoo temple where two women were covered in oil and left to be eaten by red ants. The practice of voodoo is still very active here and you can find things like monkey testicles and bat wings in the fetish markets.
Dec 5
I am writing from Cotonou, the largest city in Benin, first impressions here when leaving the taxi are chaos, pollution, noise and intense humidity. Taxis seem to communicate with each other and every other slightly animate object using several blasts of their horn and if thats not loud enough then some people walk around ringing bells or banging the box they are carrying on their head to draw your attention to what they're selling. There are petrol stations here but for most people petrol ...