No matter how well you try and prepare in advance, time slips away and you spend your last minutes running around trying to get everything done. Leaving Niamey was no different. But in the end, I got done what was needed.
I was supposed to do early check-in at the airport so that after the 4th of July celebration, I could take my time and not have to sit in the hot airport 2 hours before take off. But the expeditor forgot me which only added to my already stressful day. Seeing Pierre and Zourie for the last time had already made me a wreck.
Running late to the fete at the Ambassador’s residence, I put on a borrowed suit. The jacket was a bit snug and I tied the tie forgetting to look at it in the mirror on my way out the door of my office. There were a lot of people (more than I could say all my personal goodbyes to) but it was quite nastalgic with the Ambassadors’ speech and the Marines carring the flag to the bugles playing our National Anthem. It was sweltering with humidity and they ran out of ice early on. Everyone was dripping with sweat. The view was fantastic though; overlooking the river and the table top bluffs on the other side which I had run during the hash.
At 9PM, people were starting to leave and I was anxious to get back to my office, grab my luggage and get dropped off one last time at our residence to take a shower before being taken to the airport. As I entered the hall in the health unit, I saw myself drenched in the full length mirror. The knot in my tie looked remarkably well considering I tied it without looking. But it extended too long beyond the last closed button, giving the appearence of a striped arrow pointing down at my crotch. Nice exit strategy!
After my shower at home, I took one last look at our home. It served us well for two years. Amina and Kasumi drove me to the airport and dropped me off. Every camel and Nigerien we past I tried to take in for the last time. Fighting back tears, I said my thanks and goodbye to Amina who made this tour an “E ticket” ride (back in the day, Disneyland used to reserve the “E” ticket for their wildest roller coaster rides).
The plane lifts and I kept every last light reflecting from Niamey in my sightes until they where no more.
I arrived this morning in Paris to a world that seems light years ahead in time. Not so much a parallel universe but more like an intersecting one with rare bisecting lines. The young woman in a mini skirt with an open crash helmet and those huge fashionable sunglasses on her vespa with her dog at her feet made me look. But Niamey is such a nunique place. I will always remember.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 