Arrived in Niamey

We are safely in Niamey Niger, West Africa! I took this first photo from the plane window while over the Sahara desert – it is as it appears, just miles and miles of nothing but sand drifts. No roads, water, plants, animals, nothing at all but sand! The flight was fine but the jetlag has been tough especially the hot nights. It is usually 32 to 34 C in the apartment at night.

We are renting an apt in a compound in Niamey. It is owned by the mission SIM which operates the Sahel school.

This is a photo of our housing compound from out on the street, with Christine in the street. Our street is completely sand (and wide!) like most roads here. People drive anywhere on the road, usually just wherever there are less bumps or holes. We have nice trees despite all the sand. Our shared property is everything from left to right in the photo. We have walked a lot to explore the neighbourhood and shops.

This next photo shows the front of the building. We are on the 2^nd floor, right side (of 4 apts). Nice balcony! The place is called LeFlambeau. We live in an neighbourhood which has most of the head offices for humanitarian and NGO organizations including UNICEF, World Vision, World Food Programme, SIM, … Some benefits from that – we are in walking distance of the only (!) bakery in the country which makes whole wheat or multi-grain bread. We're glad to have that.

And the next photo shows our new inherited dog Missy who is a mixed lab. She is very playful like a pup.

In theory a guard dog but in reality a play dog. She stays in our compound all the time. It’s a big compound so she seems happy enough. We play ball with her as you can imagine. There is a cat as well, the dog likes to spook and chase the cat for fun but doesn’t hurt it. In additional to the dog we have a night guard/gardener/grounds keeper as well which is standard.

The next is the view from our balcony – the entire view is our front yard which has about 30-40 large trees and sand ground. The trees and the sand are quite contrasting. If you look carefully (both photos below) you can see some chairs in the middle, and the fence/wall at the back. On the right is a closer view of the same front yard – real nice patio resting area in the middle. There’s actually a thatched roof over the chairs like a gazebo but the photo doesn’t show it.

The electricity goes out almost every day it seems once or twice for 30 minutes to 2 hours. I carry a flashlight with me usually. The other day I took a shower by candlelight and flashlight! All our showers are strictly cold water. However it’s nice since “cold” water is actually about 27 C and it is hot in our place. We don’t have a TV but in this age of computers – my laptop serves as a DVD player. We had a movie night for ourselves – we put my laptop on a table in front of the couch and watched a DVD movie on it.

We were invited out to dinner every night in our first week.
On Friday (first week) our neighbours in our compound had us over for dinner – in the photo below. Our neighbours are two ladies in two separate apts next to us – one is American and the other is German. Anisa (left) is a teacher at Sahel Academy with Christine, and Christa works in ministry to prisons and students. Despite the heat, shorts are rarely to be seen here, we only wear them in private, as local people dress conservatively. People don’t show their legs or torso in public, so men always wear pants and women typically wear dresses. I’m wearing my shorts here but I would not go out in public with them.

I'm (Tim) learning to drive here and know the city a bit, but mostly we get a lift or drive. Taxi system is the African group taxi which is more like a bus.The taxi a fixed rate of 45 cents per person (200 CFA) whether you are going 1 block or clear across town, the taxi driver chooses the route and the taxi is filled with as many people as possible to fit it at any time, picking up people and dropping off. Therefore the taxi driver decides if he will take you or not and go to your destination (not door to door, just along major routes). So sometimes the taxi refuses and you have to wait for another, or he might take a lot of detours to pick up and drop off other fares along the way.

There are lots of unusual sights here that you would not see in Canada – left: typical goat on our street taking a creative initiative to get food.

Christine here in a race with the tortoise on the school grounds, but she’s not anxious about being outrun. The tortoise walked into the school the other day! The school director is in the background, we had dinner at his place.

OUR WORK: We'll share more about that on other blog moments! My (Tim) first week at Samaritan's Purse was quite busy as the country director Charles (home base in Edmonton) and accountant Moise are in Senegal this week at a conference, so on my second full day I had lots on my plate to manage the office and finances. I was given the only key to open the office, as well as combination and key to the safe. Standing in for the accountant this week is especially keeping me very busy, there’s a lot of money payments and paper work for various project activities and general operations and salaries each day. I will be traveling with Charles on Oct 9 to some rural villages (Ayourou) near Mali, to view the project work.

Christine has been visiting the school a lot and participating, she plans to fully take on her teaching role in a couple of weeks. We have both been getting to know people at Sahel Academy. It's been a great start to make friends in both the ex-pat and local Nigerien community.