Traveling! I have a business-trip to the capital of Niger: Niamey. Since our project has an office in Niamey and because three (!) new colleagues started their work, we are invited for a one-week-workshop to get to know each and everybody. Niamey itself is h-u-g-e. Maybe because I´m coming from little Fada, but for me this place really seemed big! Buildings with more than three or four floors. Highways. Tunnels. Bridges. Paved Roads. Wide Squares and Shopping Centers.
I got my visa from Berlin, Tobias got his in Ouaga. We went to Niger by car, it´s around six hours from Fada. The road from Fada to the border is horrible. So many holes that the four wheels of the car are never at the same time on the ground. Then, from the border to Niamey is like paradise. Not one little hole. The only annoying thing are all the checkpoints. In total there exist five different types of checkpoints all over Burkina and Niger: One for passport control, one for toll for cars, toll for trucks, another one for taxes on imported goods and a last one for the car registration. I never know how to identify the type of checkpoint. I never know when to stop and when to continue, so most of the time I stop anyway to ask. But once, I´ve stopped, they do the entire program: ID-check, license check, car insurance check, and so on. However, this road trip was definitely better than to simply take an airplane to Niamey. Landscape is wonderful and it´s incredible how many time it changed. From desert to a lake-area, from flat land to high hills.
