The Featured Post Blog

A collection of the featured posts as they appeared on mo'time

by: Lewana

[The featured post is back!]

Travel in West Africa can be quite daunting if not risky at times. It takes tough nerves, guts and planning to explore sub-sahelian Niger beyond its capital Niamey. The moment you are leaving the relative comfort zone of the city for a river tour, you can expect no more doctors, mechanics, pharmacies, and shops - not even potable water.

French-born Jean-Claude Berronet, who has made Niamey his retirement home, is definitely the man to organise a river safari to W National Park.

Indeed, I was very lucky to hear about Jean – Claude's Niger River Tours for he does not no marketing, neither in Niamey nor overseas. Still, bush drums here in Africa work miraculously well in this part of the world. It was partly thanks to a friend’s phone message –– asking me whether I wanted to join a couple of tourists doing a two day pirogue tour along the river towards W National Park. As you would expect, I jumped at the opportunity for I had just read several interesting articles written by Joost Brower, soil scientist and founder of the NiBDaD (Niger Bird Data Base - www.birdlife.org.uk )

Especially Brower’s articles in the Bradt Tourist Guide (the first guide in English printed in 2006 about Niger) about Niger’s rich birdlife had caught my imagination. His inside knowledge about Niger’s biodiversity, agriculture and environmental issues wetted my appetite for an adventure that promised camping in the wilderness, exploring native villages and - most importantly - observe and discover the rich and varied wild–life of the unique wetlands that run along the Niger River.

So – quite unprepared and still a little jet-lagged for such an expedition at 7 o’clock on Friday morning I found myself in a “mangotier”, a shady garden filled with shady mango trees, stepping gingerly on board a large pirogue.
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posted by: howard at 21:49 | link | comments (1) |

Comments:

#1  15 November 2007 - 16:12

 

Hello Howard,

Many thanks for picking my recent post as a featured post.

Here in Niamey I have to buy my Internet time by the hour, but it feels good to be connected via mo'time to the rest of the world.

My current travel article is a work in progress and as time and upload capacity permits I'll hopefully finish it by the end of the week or so.

Cheers from Niger

Helmi

Lewana

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