“Postblogs from Niamey: 3 months in”

“3 months in.” Sounds kinda like a countdown to a release date, some kind of a prison sentence I am serving, which isn’t entirely fair. More like an exile, though self-imposed. But not a prison sentence, no, though my largish school provided abode is ringed in razor wire, but: keeping Them out not Me in...no, it is a journey far far away to a distant and oftentimes hospitable land...

& tonight going out for the second time this week on the town to dance dance dance the night away @ a Club with the Nigerienne hip set...and last time I went did notice & make note of the fact that there are people gyrating and jiggling and whooping it up on dance floors all across this World to an American beat. if America is in decline as it frets itself into believing these dayz, the newz hasn’t made it here yet. Brand America: still selling, delivering, providing beats & visions of Glory to dancers across the globe, of ghetto superstars and Hollywood star(lette)s broadcasting their songs and stories and messages to flatscreens and dance halls in impoverished countries all over the land... ..

And I realize that I dig the hip club at least as much as the funky corner store folks, “The Alimentation,” with the fridge out front you can buy the yogurty drink, or the bean guy up the way who always has the koranic scholars reading something in their big gold-rimmed sunglasses when I stroll on up for today’s and every day’s special: beans or beans and rice with a hot sauce and oil, ladled out of the wood fed cauldron...yes, there’s a many places to go and see in this corner of the earth...if only I could say more than the greetings, pointings, single word sentence usually wanting something! though in all honesty none of these various local & colonial tongues hold the allure & beauty of the Spanish I learned on my last adventure to foreign lands....

...and so anyway, back to The Club story, the heading off to the unknown with the best friend of my Taureg roomie who was visiting from Switzerland without his Swiss wife, wondering only in the end WWLW, What Would Leaf (my extravagant electronic musician woods dwelling shamanic graduate student ex-roomie friend living I think in Stockton, California, now) Wear? whose sense of shame shall be eviscerated this very night? I know you forbid ugly Americanness dear Reader, but you said nothing of freaky & I certainly did not Vote for such...

& I did go out on the town, though not nearly heroically on a Thursday night as the previous Saturday night: one more chance to see the groooovy hip spots in town, hear the American music over the sound systems before the visiting Taureg returns to Switzerland the following eve, German our only common language to navigate & dance dance dance the night away... & still at this point it’s not totally apparent nor transparent who are the single gals out on the town and who are the prostitutes, but after consulting various locals and “in-the-know” foreigners after the fact, it appears that in deed most of the aforementioned gals out on the town are in fact “working gals” & that “ hip gals out @ the Clubs” & “prostitute” are interchangeable & in fact redundant terminologies much to the detriment of any sort of political correct indoctrinations or pretensions or such I may have previously held...but it ain’t like that & tonight is just for pool on battered tables with small balls & spectating & respectable amounts of drinking of various club goings ons...

& so the next day I did go to the police station, though not on account of any sort of misdoings from the previous night mind you, but instead to procure a “Certificate of Residency” so that I could open up a bank account at a local bank to put some cash in, instead of various squirreled away places I currently hide my spending ca$h away to tide me over til the next payday. & I did go to such police substation & was treated to another cultural delight of waiting in the Spartan waiting room with my school driver (named “Innocent” of all things) for the desired stamp on my photocopied passport paper & aforementioned Certificate.

Yes, I was privileged to wait there in the Po Station & witness the quite vocal quite angry quite disturbed wall-shaking-yelling-threatening-to-come-to-blows-or-worse coming from behind the partially closed door marked something to the effect of “Judicial Affaires,” while the calm and bespeckled middle-aged gals in full African regalia and headdresses who waited upon me did calmly go about their business in something of a Gandhian manner behind their wooden Colonial desk in the waiting room, a portrait of the latest government/military head beaming down on us from his framed picture on the wall, He the head of the “Committee to Restore Democracy” the caption did read, anointed when the last head of state threatened to overstay his term indefinitely as African heads can be want to do but was dutifully deposed & put under house arrest, more peacefully mind you than a previous usurper of years back who met his end on the wrong end of a rather unfortunate rocket launcher “accident”...

yes, so I did get my certificate of residency duly & was on my way again with Innocent...my residence has been certified. I am here, Resident, my permanence recognized by the State of Niger amidst the ever shifting sands of sub-Saharan Africa...

and eegad man, it’s been 5 months now here in Africa and 2 months since I started this blog entry & in the meanwhiles I’ve had 13 hour road trips to the East to the ancient trading city of Zinder & then there were the kidnappings of some French guys here in Niamey (a groom and his best man caught in the crossfire of international relations, armed al-qaedians, hot pursuits across country lines, a large pile of bodies in the horrible end) & ensuing curfews issued to official Americans & then my Dad visiting & of course camel trips & ...but that’ll have to wait for next time along with conjured up ideas for “Jackass” style stunts at the local mosque (that continues to blare entire prayer services at decidedly unGodly hours) by hijacking the sound system with “They Built this City on Rock and Roll;”...& visitors to my Maisson from Israel and Mexico with stories of woe and glory to share about their West Africa meanderings en route here across the Sahara and such...

but, must not wait any longer to get it “Right,” these perceptions of Africa thru the Western lens, my lens! must send out this message in bottle/internet as incomplete and biased as it necessarily must be!....