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Africa: North to South, Part 2

Africa: North to South, Part 2: Mali and Niger

Simon and Jennifer
2006-04-26 10:19:47

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air, with speakers hanging from the tree above. The game was with Algeria, and Mali won 2-0, much to the delight of the village.

Later that evening, after a wonderful meal of chicken and chips, we watched the trucks roll in one by one, usually with the bonnet open before the truck had stopped, and our mechanic friend was kept busy all night, mainly with his hammer which seemed to be the solution to most problems! As each truck or bus rolled in, the young woman girls of the village rushed forward with their wares on their head, fruit, sweat pastries and peanuts. This truly was Africa!

Mali is a truly stunning country, we write many stories about the places and people, particularly along the River Niger, but after just a month our visas expired and we followed the river Niger into Niger itself.

Niger

There are two things distinctly memorable about our trip through Niger, the first was undoubtedly our visit to Park W, which we visited while awaiting our visas for Chad to come through, and the second was more sand.

Park W was nothing like Etosha, the park we knew well from Namibia. Instead of open plains and well maintained gravel roads kicking up clouds of grey dust we had overgrown 4x4 trails and not much hope of seeing much unless from the roof of Lara. Luckily Lara had plenty of roof space and so we took with us an extra 3 French students who were part of a group there studying the hippos. They had no transport of their own so no opportunity to view the park which seemed a great shame to us. In return they took us out that evening on one of their research trips. Now we may not have studied hippos for very long, but we do know that they are the biggest killers in Africa so it was with some trepidation we found ourselves in a makoro heading out into the pitch black with the local guides singing in time to their "punting", was it to keep their spirits up or just as part of the routine to keep time? While we obligingly aimed huge bright lights at the shore in search of grazing hippos, another of the students was busy with his sound equipment, dipping an underwater microphone into the river and listening intently through his headphones. , The singing became muted and finally stopped altogether leaving us listening to an eary silence. Apart from a few reflected eyes from the shore the trip didn't seem to be too productive, even the sound man seemed disappointed. It was cold and dark and looking around found us totally disorientated, I couldn't even have said for sure which bank of the river we had originally set off from! Suddenly one of the students whispered "there" and pointed to the shore, personally I couldn't see a thing but there was no doubt it was there for in the next instant the silence was broken with what I can only describe feebly as a roar of water and the boat tipped violently, the local guides shouted and waved at each other, steadying the boat and pushing us towards the shore. A few seconds and it was all over, the hippo was obviously not used to being disturbed and had acted instinctively by running straight into the safety of the water, and straight towards us! "Wow" one of the students said "were you scared?" "Not really" I replied, "I knew we were in the hands of expert researchers." "Well I was" came the comforting reply "that's the closest I've ever been to a hippo." On reflection, I'm surprised any of the students who apparently visit every year survived, how many years of research does it take to realise that hippos run towards water when sensing danger and that a small flat bottomed boat in the pitch black of night is totally inadequate protection?!!!

Still, survive we all did, and if any of you are reading this please get in touch we'd love to know what you're up to these days, France? Mauritania? Still studying hippos? Pray do tell!