Jiminy Cricket: The Dark Side

As I sat on the plane from Dakar to Niamey, the capital of Niger, on my way to run some training there, three things scared me. 

First was the 37 degree heat (it's the cool season), threatening to vapourise a man who sweats at 19 degrees. Second was running my first ever three-day training in French, a great way to expose my lack of linguistic progress and prowess. And the third was bumping into a Gaddafi, with Niger proving an exile of choice for the extended family, and maybe for the big fella himself.

In the end all worked out ok. The only major french problem was mixing up the concepts of death ('la mort') and love ('l'amour') - but what's a bit of necrophilia between friends? - while thankfully The Guide also remained out of sight, the ‘melt-ability’ of his face surely deterring him from such sunny climes.

What I wasn't prepared for though was what greeted me at the airport on the way back - an actual plague of locusts. As in the sort of thing sent down by a vengeful God in response to an arrogant Pharaoh. The sort of thing that traditionally follows plagues of boils, lice and pestilence, and immediately precedes the slaying of all firstborn children.

I've never seen anything like it. A whole runway covered by swarms of Sahelian Jiminy Crickets, through which every passenger had to fight with every flapping part of their bodies to board. The sort of add on feature that not even Ryanair could charge you for.

Naively I hadn't actually clicked this was a real life problem outside biblical times, but swarms of locusts are one of the things currently battering parts of Niger and threatening to turn an otherwise good harvest into a much more difficult year. The other big factor being the war in neighbouring Libya, as I explained in a previous post.

If divinely ordered, a plague of locusts seems a touch unfair. It's not like Niger doesn't have enough things to deal with. Just last year it was hit by a massive food crisis affecting half of its population, while even in a ‘good’ year over 100,000 children die of malnutrition. Even disasters in Japan have an impact here, with its only major export earner - uranium - not looking a great bet for the future.

The fact that road signs advertise ports that are 2000 km away suggests this landlocked state on the edge of the Sahara, by some measures the world's poorest country, won't win the top trumps of nations any time soon, but there is also another story to tell – against all the odds this could be a country with something positive to say in the years to come. 

Politically things are looking up, with recent elections feted as a great success, bringing in a new president following a peaceful transition from military rule (a possible example of a ‘good’ coup d’etat if you dare say it). Economically a programme called 'Nigeriens Nourissent les Nigeriens' is putting a big focus ensuring the country can feed itself without support from outside, and an Oxfam report will soon show that even last year’s food crisis had a few signs of success compared to a very similar crisis a few years before. Due to better management, better politics and smarter interventions far fewer people died - an uncomfortable indicator to celebrate, but an important one nonetheless.

To top it all this weekend the country achieved what it never thought it could – qualify for the African Nations Cup at the expense of continental superpowers Egypt and South Africa. Whether they will have to fight through locusts to get on the plane there remains to be seen, if so they always have the option of a uniquely Nigerien mode of transport spotted in Niamey: a motorbike being ridden entirely covered in bubble wrap. Road safety, it seems, is on the up too.