Niger
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Scams & Warnings
A frightening encounter took place in the Air Massif area of Niger. We were part of a ten-person group that included five French members of a non-profit development organisation, three local Tuaregs as cook/guide/driver, and ourselves. Our two Landcruisers were stopped in the previously sacred Tidene Valley just a few kilometres from Mano Dayak's grave by three masked Tuaregs with a Kalashnikov. Over the course of the next two hours, they proceeded to relieve us of the majority of the goodies on board and on our persons and even attempted to drive the vehicles. Fortunately, they were not the smartest bandits and couldn't figure out how to operate the gears. The incident was all the more shocking to us since we had spent so much time researching the security of the area before deciding to come to Niger and felt that a conservative safety assessment supported travel in the Air Massif region, at least between Agadez and Iferouane.
Ironically, the bandit's families turned them in to the police - and then the plot thickens as some police officers were apparently in cahoots. We duly filed the police reports (what a joke — a waste of a full morning) but by the time we heard that the bandits had been apprehended, we were already thousands of kilometres away in Burkina. All our efforts to obtain information on the status of the "investigation" and perhaps even to be reunited with some of our possessions have been fruitless. Perhaps one might say more than fruitless; rather, the subject of derision!
Rayna & David Wigglesworth, USA (Jul 03)
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