In the relative cool of late afternoon we nearly cried with relief when we reached the town. We wanted to buy food and needed hard cash to let us shop. It was Saturday and all of the banks were shut. The customs post was open but its officers felt no need for speed, and our impatience to recover in civilisation again was hard to hide. At last we permitted ourselves to venture into a hotel. The young French proprietor changed our travellers’ cheques and we sat in the breezy foyer sipping cool lemonade under a whirring ceiling fan. The joy of civilised comfort soaked into our souls.
As we sat there in a semi-daze of recovery, souvenir vendors arrived and one after the other set up their stalls in the hotel courtyard. It was all for our benefit since people who owned a car and could afford to frequent hotels obviously had ready funds. Not really wanting to buy anything Ross half-heartedly made a few low offers hoping to discourage them. The prices tumbled and we ended up with a pair of camel-leather sandals, two straw hats, a leather pouffé without the stuffing, and three ostrich feathers.
It was good retail therapy and the hats and sandals were necessary, but abandoning our budget on top of the extravagance of the hotel room left us full of remorse at giving in to their persistence. Our future mileage had stretched and fuel did not come cheap. We had second thoughts about the ostrich feathers too because they might be sensitive items to get through customs, so we wrapped them in newspaper and tucked them discreetly into a cranny in the boot. The hotel manager tactfully congratulated us on getting good bargains.
After all our troubles and privations we’d already decided a proper meal was a necessity rather than a luxury, so that evening we splashed out. As we sat down to eat, relatively clean, brushed and respectably dressed, we were about to realise our fantasy of food other than sardine sandwiches washed down with tepid chlorinated water. Our first mistake was to tuck into the freshly baked bread served with a salad for the first course, because it was all our shrunken stomachs had been led to expect from a meal for days. As a result the delicious steak and chips we’d fantasized about had to be forced down. After an ice-cream dessert we waddled uncomfortably back to our room to sleep it off. Our dreams had been made real, but the reality came with a bellyache!
1st November
On this ‘All Saints Day’ it was like entering the city of the damned. At the approach to Zinder market two parallel lines of lepers sat or stood begging for what little donation the locals could afford. In return they gave good luck to the market traders by laying their hands, or what was left of them, on the goods they were to sell including fruit, vegetables and meat. The lepers made a pitiful sight and made me want to turn and look away, but we ran the gauntlet and tried to be kind forcing ourselves to focus on the eyes of swollen but smiling deformed faces devoid of self-pity. We offered a few coins in return for heartfelt thanks.
The market measured the size of two football pitches, and the whole area was surrounded by several hundred Nubian vultures, the biggest in Africa, standing shoulder to shoulder on walls and rooftops. With a menacing force they stretched their huge wings from time to time to display up to three metres of untidy wing feathers. They watched and waited. When something was left unguarded for long enough they swooped, bounced forward and pecked with vicious hooked beaks, their pink wrinkled heads looking tender in the hot sun. Thin dogs competed ineffectively as scavengers. Fresh meat had to be guarded constantly and flicked with a switch of horsehair to deter swarms of flies.
In a separate section live camels, goats, sheep and chickens noisily waited for the day to end. Fruit, piles of dates, vegetables and dried pulses arranged in baskets sat on trestle tables or on cloths spread over the ground in a third area. Cooking pots, enamelled basins and household items piled up in another, but still no sign of a shovel.
A small child with dysentery squatted on the ground, holding up her dirty ragged dress. Her head was shaved showing signs of ringworm. Children like this seemed to belong to everyone and no one. She turned her dusty face to look at us strangers.
Everything was freely handled by all, and having to choose something to eat with our lunch we reluctantly purchased a little pile of tomatoes. Later we thoroughly washed them with chlorinated water.
As we wandered among the goods, two barefoot women approached us, each holding one end of the same broom handle. The girl at the front and leading was in her teens, the fragile old lady at the back was blind and begging for her livelihood. They both wore tattered shifts the colour of dust. Ross pressed a few coins into the old lady’s hand and she immediately launched into what sounded like a tirade. We exchanged a questioning look.
‘Elle vous remercie!’ said the young girl with a beautiful smile, she is thanking you. Far from being ungrateful, she was chanting a lengthy song of blessing for us in return for the donation, a benediction to wish us a long and healthy life. Living didn’t come easy in a country where life expectancy was only forty years, the lowest rate of all the countries we were to pass through and thirteen years less than its comparatively wealthy neighbour Algeria. I felt humbled and regretful about our overindulgence the night before after a relatively short period of deprivation on our part. This All Saints Day was showing us a few deserving of heaven.
2nd November
‘Allahu Akbar.’ The call to prayer woke us at dawn. We had hoped to get organised and away early in the morning, but no such luck. The puncture we’d taken for repair had still not been mended and they found two so it cost double. Our previous day’s treats meant we had to change another cheque.
Back at the hotel we strengthened our resolve for the next lap with a cup of strong coffee. Matt, Jim and Brad, the Americans we had met in Agadez, came to join us. We discussed the road we had all just travelled, and related our experiences with local bacteria. Ross was still in a bad way. Dioralyte was not doing the trick and he had left three pairs of underpants behind bushes in the desert. They took us to the US Peace Corps pharmacy for medication. With instructions to ‘take a slug’ whenever he felt the need Ross hugged the pint of bluish liquid. If that didn’t work they had given him a small phial with two tiny white pills inside and only one of these was to be taken if his condition became serious.
As we all walked away from the pharmacy, we somehow got on to the subject of veiled women and their place in society. To illustrate how the women depended completely on their men for support, and perhaps feeling that he knew us well enough after divulging intimate health details, Brad without warning said,
‘Matt and I went to have a look at a brothel.’
‘What did you do that for?’ I asked stupidly, and instantly regretted speaking out in my effort to break the uncomfortable silence.
He ignored me.
‘You’ve never seen anything like it,’ he laughed nervously swatting a fly off his forehead, ‘they were so old and ugly! They just sat on the floor waiting to be chosen, and the rooms were really dark and dingy.’
‘I suppose that helped in the circumstances,’ quipped Ross, trying to lighten the conversation.
‘Well we didn’t stay, no way. We were outta there believe me. Those women had hit rock-bottom and had no other way of supporting themselves. It was pretty tragic really. It was a hell-hole.’
Matt looked at his feet and kicked the dust as his friend made his revelation. We nodded not wanting to mock his candour but were a little taken aback by this salacious piece of unsolicited information. I struggled to block unwelcome images invading my thoughts and taking flight.
We left them with waves and good wishes and headed out of town.
To avoid taxation in each country, we carried a Carnet de Passage en Douanes for the car which we’d arranged in London. We arrived at the border with Nigeria and entered a building marked Douanes to get the carnet stamped. A clerk told us the customs officer would be back at midday. There was nothing to do in the remote backwater and when we returned bored and frustrated at twelve we found we’d just missed him. Until he returned from his lunch break in a further hour and a half we’d have to wait again. Although we were getting better at dealing with this sort of thing it didn’t come easily, especially at the height of the day’s heat. To remain sane in Africa passive acceptance and an absence of hurry looked to be the only way. Nigeria beckoned and a new chapter was about to begin.