The Stakeholder workshop went brilliantly with men and women coming from far and wide to give their thoughts and views on the issues of youth and good governance in Niger. Through the workshop we’ll be able to start planning the themes for all the radio programmes we’re making – and from the look of the list they will be everything from emigration and the rural exodus to corruption and FGM – female genital mutilation.
As everyone was leaving, I said goodbye and thank you to a religious leader from Maradi, a strict majority muslim town to the east of Niamey. I held out my hand but he refused to take it and looked down at it as though it was a dirty rag, then laughed not altogether kindly. Kader the 'responsable' advised me not to offer my hand first as a woman. I should wait until a man offered his hand to me beforehand. You’d have thought I’d have remembered that from Afghanistan, but I never had my hand refused there by any man.
I was ready for another weekend after the workshop, and I spent one day cruising around town with Victoria and her friend Rabia. They are both large and flamboyant, and arrived to collect me in a beaten up maroon coloured car, chomping on chunks of roast lamb out of a greasy brown paper bag. We set off to the museum – both of them chatting in Hausa, one of the local dialects, and belly laughing loudly as we crawled through town in the clanking car.
The museum was a bit of a disappointment – most of the displays were closed apart from the ethnic clothing department which had about 5 national costumes. But the main feature for the Nigerien families there was a makeshift zoo in the museum complex. There were hippos in tiny pools of hot, muddy water; mangy monkeys in stinking cages; some morose looking lions; and other strange sad desert creatures in hot dusty cages.
I was happy to leave after half an hour. We then limped off in the car to a beauty spot downriver from Niamey. Rabia drove right into some deep loose sand and after some furious revving with her high heeled foot, got us totally stuck. There was a group of men nearby and Rabia asked them if they would push her out. They charged her $10 to help. No one does anything for free in this place it seems.
We wandered down the river bank and then went to a Senegalese café back in town for rice and fish and 'bissap' - hibiscus juice. The ladies chatted half in Hausa, half in French. Rabia was complaining about her husband and how he always threatens to find a younger wife. As with Islamic custom, men are allowed up to four wives, as long as they can give each wife an even deal. Victoria said perhaps she was better off not having a man at all. As they chatted away, I realised how I used to long to be able to go out and about in Kabul with Afghan women – unaccompanied by men – for uninhibited chatting time.
But although I speak French I feel like an outsider. I sometimes wish you could fast forward into knowing and trusting people, and not have to begin slowly unfurling the layers of each other’s experiences and personality towards the comfortable zone of companionship.
But friendship and trust do not grow overnight like cress in damp cotton wool and you can’t rush it at the beginning – especially not in a foreign language. So I resigned myself to absorbing as much as possible and communicating wherever and whenever I could over my plate of orange spiced rice draped with fish skin, boiled cabbage and an overcooked carrot; and the metal mug of hibiscus juice which tasted like cough mixture.
From there we went to le grand marche, a huge covered arena selling the usual pirated DVDs and CDs, imitation beauty labels, synthetic materials, plastic shoes and toys. Cavernously cupped beige and pistachio coloured bras hung from rafters; and young boys sold pineapple in cling wrap from huge trays on their heads. We wandered through crowds of men and women bargaining for yet more exports from China in stores with signs saying things like: ‘Trouvez le top qualite chez Abdoul!'. I was glad to be with the ladies as the atmosphere wasn’t overwhelmingly friendly, but they seemed to know everyone and chatted and joked their way down the aisles exclaiming ‘EH! Tu rigoles!’ and clicking their tongues indignantly when they didn’t agree with the prices offered.
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