October 16, 1980

AGADEZ, NIGER
Happy Birthday to me! My first and best present was what I gave to myself after ten days of constipation. it couldn't have been better if it had come with a ribbon and bow. My second was when Jens, Jean-Michel, Fatar and Didi met me on the street and sang Happy Birthday with terrible accents.

After that, it wasn't so good: we set out to find a taxi-brousse to Tahaou (halfway to the capital, Niamey), which supposedly left when it had gathered six to eight people. Instead, we were told that an old bus was leaving at 9am for the same price, so we got on (8am). After a while, someone came to collect our money and told us we'd be leaving at 10am. Around 10:30, someone claimed they couldn't find the driver and by 11 it was apparent that we'd be leaving when we were full and not before. At noon, we took off. We stopped to get some luggage across town, then came back to exactly the same spot. Towards 1pm, our luggage was moved to a little taxi-brousse and the 17 other people in our bus got in it. We were also expected to get in this sardine can that couldn't hold five more flies, let alone five more people, for 12 hours. We got our money back and sulked for a while.

Eventually we made contact with a truck driver who promised to be leaving by 6pm. I hadn't wanted to go back to trucks so soon, but didn't want to repeat this performance every day and the more reliable national bus company didn't have a departure for three days, so we took the truck.

Hurried on at 6pm, waited until 7. It was empty except for people and luggage, so we had more room than in our first truck, but the driver was a maniac on the pot-holed dirt road, so it was my most violent ride yet. Rested off and on all night, but didn't really sleep.

I enjoyed Agadez—street vendors selling coffee and tea, canned saltines and herring, soap, shoes—the same dozen products in every booth; Mama's restaurant, where you can get a delicious, big salad for a dollar—with meat for $1.25—the fancy Hotel Tetwa, with its funky night-club terrace, beautiful black children whose word of greeting was as often "cadeau?" ("gift?") as "bonjour." Once, a little girl held my hands for two blocks, jabbering in who-knows-what language. I didn't enjoy the eleven-hour wait, though, and I expect all future birthdays to seem comparatively bright.

PHOTO CREDIT 1
PHOTO CREDIT 2