Morning all,
Our final day here in sunny and very hot Niamey.
Yesterday we made sure all our guys were paid by the accountant, had the usual discussions about hours/days worked/rates etc and we then took the obligatory group photo (See attached 51).
We then gave away some clothes and a little bit of gear and the boys left the site in our hire car to go and see the Giraffes up at Koure.
See photo 10771 attached for an interesting shot of Coop’s getting a smidgeon too close to a giraffe, who let him know.
From what the boys tell me, Coop was definitely more concerned than the giraffe was!
I did a quick lap around the site, made sure everyone had gone and locked up the buildings. I then drove through the gate for what could be the last time, and took our cleaning lady in to town.
The rest of the day and this morning was pretty low key, spent getting souvenirs, swimming, having a BBQ and moaning about the heat as the power was off from about 8 till 1.
I haven’t mentioned the Power cuts for a while. Over the last couple of weeks, these have become much more prevalent. I often go to sleep at night listening to the sound of next door’s generator, annoyed that AA allowed our landlord to take away the one on this villa before we moved in. Now that it is hotter here, everyone has the aircon going full belt most of the time, along with everyone in Nigeria which is where most of Niger’s power is generated, at least until the Chinese finish the hydro scheme. (assuming they’ve been paid obviously).
The easiest way for Nigeria to satisfy their own demand is to flick off the switch on the Niger feed.
Anyway, they have been occurring usually a couple of times a day at least and last for anything up to about 4 hours. Most inconvenient.
Im writing this on battery power, which is not at all unusual and it will be sent just as soon as the power comes back up, and we’ve reset our wireless for the 9389millionth time.
Tonight we’ll be going into town for dinner, hopefully with Larabas Moudy and a few others, and will then be home to finish packing and leave around 21:30 to head to the airport.
Malcolm John and I are off to Paris at midnight, and Coop and Ash are off to Casablanca at 3am.
Lets hope we return.
I certainly need to as i cant fit all my gear in my bags!
Me
