Wake Me Up, Before You Go-Go

Monday 17th
I know I said I wouldn't write again unless something spectacular happened, but it sort of did and, on reflection, the disjointed sprawl of the last missive was a suitable farewell to Niamey only stylistically (one of the best descriptions of the town I've heard was "it's a giant bush village").

Today was really my last day, and has been - entertaining. I met Dr. Marianne last night when she was on call at the private clinic down the road, and she said that she'd take me to the airport, as she was on-call again tonight and so was free during the day. We agreed to meet at 16h. Otherwise, the day was quiet - I spent an hour waiting for two pointless pieces of paper from the internal medicine big chief, most wanting to drill into at first his and then my own kneecaps with boredom. Then a final fling round the local area giving away all the stuff I wasn't going to need, and back for my 4pm rendez-vous with Dr. Marianne.

She was late. I watched some very bad cartoons, and some international Greco-Roman wrestling. She was still late. It reached 5pm. I began to get antsy, not wanting to have to find a taxi just before the end of Ramadan.

I waited some more. At 17:20 I recalled that she had complètement oublié me before, so I went to leave the key at the clinic, feeling a bit pissed off. Happily, I met the watchmen on the way to the clinic and, amid warm farewells, they told me to pay 200CFA (20p) to get to the grand marché, and 300 from there to the airport. This was about one-fifth of what the useless Bradt guidebook suggested.

Walking out with the rucksack felt like the right way to leave Niamey, as it did when the taximan dropped me at a taxi-brousse where a boy in a pink shirt took 500CFA (I was too relieved to be leaving to haggle), loaded my bag, and I climbed in. Midway through the journey, the conductor-boy asked me for the fare. Confused, and with a vague sinking feeling, I explained that I'd already paid 500 to the boy in the pink shirt. The driver scowled. He hadn't passed the money on.

The upshot? Well, you can imagine - I paid another 500. Or so you might imagine - but you would be wrong. What in fact followed was a minute or two's irate muttering in Djerma, followed by the driver - who at this point had not one CFA of my money - giving me my change, and saying darkly, "we'll deal with the boy later". The fare was in fact 125CFA; I gave them double in the end because they'd been so scrupulously honest and not shafted me when it would have been extremely easy to do so.

I did have to walk the final 200m to the airport off the main road and, once inside, deal with a couple of tossers coming up and saying that as I was leaving I had to give them souvenirs of, say, money or my watch, but my day had gone well enough that I was curt and offended-sounding without once resorting to swearing copiously in English.

Then, happily, Dr. Marianne turned up. She explained that she had heard the flight was late and so had just not bothered turning up (NB: she only actually said one of these two things). Her two boys and husband were in tow, and were fun, so we chatted over a Ramadan-flaunting drink in the airport bar. During the course of the conversation, I checked she'd got the note I'd left at the clinic and said the man there had been surprised you were on-call again tonight.

Dr M: "No - it's not me."
Me: "Oh - maybe I misunderstood. I thought he'd checked it - because you'd told me yesterday you were on call again tonight...?"
Dr M: "But I write the rota - I wouldn't put myself on two nights in a row! Why, I'm exhausted!"
Me: "I must have made a mistake."
Dr M: "I have it here - I'll check."
Dr M: "Merde."
Me (glancing at watch, which read 18:58): "What time does it start?"
Dr M: "19:00."

So after some scurrying about and a quick farewell, she wended on her way. It made me feel much better about her having completely forgotten me previously, anyway. And was very amusing.

Check-in was uneventful and surprisingly smooth given that I had expected them to take one look at my e-ticket and throw me out the airport, and it was enlivened by the two energetic kids, one of whom drew in my diary and then danced to Wham! when they came on TV singing Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. It's a source of some amusement to me that a strictly Muslim country has a main TV channel which not only shows a video featuring George Michael in a tight white T-shirt emblazoned "choose life" about once an hour, but has even adopted a sort of elevator-music version of the song as its theme music. I suspect if they knew of his more recent, non-musical exploits, they might pick a different song...

I was going to write more about how the taxi experience reaffirmed my belief that these are good people, and about how the curtailment of what they can hope for is so depressing, but instead I'll give you a little quote from Alexandra Fuller's rather wonderful book Don't let's go to the dogs tonight:
But our faux-Spanish house, with its stucco walls and its long, cool stretches of linoleum and its vast veranda and its spacious garden, seem, suddenly, exhaustingly, too much.
Mum shakes her head. She says, "I know, Bobo."
"But it's so awful."
"It won't go away." She is watching me stuff plastic bags with clothes. "You can't make it go away."
I sniff.
"It was there before you noticed it."
"I know, but..."
She gets up with a sigh, dusts her knees. She says, "And it will be there after you leave."
"I know, but..."
Mum pauses at the door. "And bring back my plastic bags. We're always short of those," she says.
It's as gentle a reminder as I reckon you could find that just going somewhere, just being somewhere, doesn't change things, no matter how strongly or naively you believe that it might.

As the flight took off, Niamey drifted lazily away from me, a great chaotic raft of white lights surrounded by an ocean of darkness.