Tuesday in Niamey

The kids are at their afternoon class time: they went from 8:00 am to 12:30, then go back from 3:30 to 5:15. I’m at the embassy to use the computer. The weather has been lovely today, then I went outside to the CLO lounge computer from Peter’s office and I could see the sky was dark and the trees were whipping around. The electricity blinked off, then serged on with the generator I guess. Now it’s POURING, with thunder and lightening. Stefan isn’t going to like the thunder. I love the rain here, it’s so dramatic. The roads fill with water, the pot holes are three feet deep. If you go fast, you hope to hydroplane. The sand turns into clay mud, you should see my yellow frye boots! (someday I’ll have you-know-what at home and will post pictures.) The roads are really not passable, except in the lovely, lovely land cruisers. The Saab is hopefully enjoying it’s retirement in Oregon. Can’t wait until our car–and stuff–gets here, but it probably won’t be until Oct.

I got the NYT! Boy did I miss the newspaper. It may be Sept 12 to you, but to me it’s August 29th and Clinton is in Rwanda!

There are three grocery stores in town, like french supermarkets. On Saturdays I like to go to the one that has vegetables imported from France. We can’t eat the lettuce here, even soaking it in bleach water isn’t punishment enough for thinking of giving us giardia; I am happy to pay three dollars a head for gorgeous french butter leaf lettuce. They also have apples and red bell peppers, not locally available. We haggle at the vegetable stands on a contant basis, especially one called Chateau Un. There I buy bananas, if they aren’t too ripe, zucchini, not-so-good-carrots, perfect pinapples, funny little tomatoes and nice green  and red onion. They want to sell me overipe watermelon because here they poke a straw in it and drink it, it’s a  little soupier than I am looking for. So I have to have Peter along to choose the watermelon. I have gotten really good french melon too. Peter buys fish from a guy who sells it across the street from the embassy, from a cooler plugged into a tree. Otherwise you can buy fish at the supermarket, but when I say fish, I mean a whole fish, wrapped in saran wrap, and not marked. Peter went through them, "that’s trout, that’s a carp, that’s a perch." He threw them all back though.

Peter gets a car to drive home every day from the motor pool, usually a land cruiser. The ambassador is on her way to the Cure Salee, the biggest festival in Niger probably, held once year 1000 miles away in the desert. They have the Wodabe men dancing courtship dances, and a separate contest for the prettiest camel. Maybe next year we’ll go, when just a trip through the potholes to the freezer filled with whole fish at the supermarket isn’t such an adventure. Meanwhile, while the ambassador is gone, we get her other car; isn’t that gonna be a great bumpersticker?