Looks like the school trip's off

It appears my plan to head up to a charity which runs a school for the children of the Touareg nomads may be off. The idea was that I would this charity, help out the visiting doctor, and do a health survey of the local population. Interesting, proper full-on rural medicine, and really useful to do.

The downside? It's right up on the border with Algeria/Mali, and it has been on the FCO list advising against "all but essential travel" for ages. Happily, the info on the relevant bit of Niger changed a couple of days ago, to:

We advise against all travel to the Aïr Massif region and on the road linking Assamaka, Arlit and Agadez. Armed groups are operating in the North and are known to be using land mines. Extreme caution should be exercised when travelling to the following areas: the Ténéré and Kaouar regions; the Azawagh area, particularly the area between the Malian and Algerian borders and the towns of Tahoua and Ingall; the east of the Aïr Massif.

Advice I can take with a pinch of salt; landmines less so. Oh well.

Preparation

So I am off to Niamey in Niger this summer for my elective - two months of living in the poorest country in the world (according to the UNDP Human Development Index) and experiencing some medicine without anyone squabbling over whether they should get this or that drug on the NHS, or whether having to pay to have your GP look at your cold at 11:30 at night.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to it - it's also part of Francophone West Africa, so I get to brush up on my French and perhaps try to learn Hausa. My mother is not looking forward to it: she thinks I will catch some hideous disease there and/or be kidnapped by fundamentalists and held for ransom. I've been trying to persuade her that it's no more or less dangerous than Vellore or Addis Ababa where I've already been - but to no avail.

However, one of the fun things had been deciding what kit I'm going to take out with me - I don't mean all the things I'm going to have to nick from the hospital beforehand (e.g. boxes of gloves, probably a bunch of needles, syringes and cannulae, all that sort of thing), but more things I can buy to take out with me.

First is a wind-up torch. I think it looks pretty cool, don't you? And if it's anything like Addis, where the lights went out during surgery several times, it may even be lifesaving... The photo to the right may explain why the lights went out - that was one of the three plugs in the theatre they used for caesarean sections...