daily photo niger

local

This desert tortoise lives at the American School and kids have to play baseball around it.

some niamey sunshine

In Niger, March came in like a...furnace. It was 111 degrees F (41C) on Saturday.

st valentine's day

A lovely local pair, with heart-shaped tusks.

goat on my street

bat tree

When you are sitting outside in the evening you will see many bats take to the sky at dusk, swirling around, hopefully eating mosquitos. They spend the day here, in a long row of trees, right in downtown Niamey. (See a more close up photo at my place2place blog.)

fabulous make up

if you haven't had enough giraffes, check out my regular place2place blog

giraffe week continues

out in the tiger bush

They call it the tiger bush because of the stripy way it looks from the air. There use to be lions, but people have been living in West Africa for 2000 years, so most of the lions are gone. The giraffes are doing pretty well though. A couple hundred at last count, up from a low of sixty, ten years a ago or so. On this outing we saw eight or ten individuals.

kouré

Number one thing on the "to do in Niger" list.

nous sommes les derniers

Right outside Niamey, near the village of Kouré, roam the last herd of wild giraffes in West Africa. You can tell this picture was taken around Tabaski time, those are sheep on top of that van.