Post 35: Agadez, Niger.

Kano, Nigeria to Agadez, Niger

303 nautical miles

Flying time 3 hours 15 minutes

Runway 06 Agadez.

First a correction and an apology. Flying farmer wife is Annette. Not Antoinete. Unforgiveable.



Soup. Virtally nil visibility forward. Straight down from FL085 (8500 feet) we can make out the desert (most of the time) which, each year, creeps steadily south. This is not a VFR (visual) flight. But it turns out to be less bumpy than the one from Port Harcourt to Kano yesterday. That was character-forming but not much fun.

Big Helmut in the uber-Cessna goes ahead from Kano, Nigeria to Agadez, to relay back the weather. The rest of us wait in the First Class lounge at Kano airport. The field is wrapped in a fine mist of sand and haze. On the tarmac a number of big jets wait to take Muslims pilgrims on the Haj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It is a trip every Muslim hopes to complete at least once in a lifetime. How did they manage before the age of air travel?

We take off around midday, Universal or Zulu time in pilotspeak. The visibility at Agadez is 2000 metres. Not ideal. Actually rubbish for a VFR pilot whose minimum is 3-5 kms. But Alpha Charlie has a couple of GPS systems. Plus an HSI - a Really Useful Gizmo (RUG). It’s basically a fancy Direction Indicator with a needle on a round, 360 degree instrument. It can also “capture” beacons on the ground which emit signals to tell you where they are and, therefore, where you are.

It allows you (pilots fast forward here) to bring up your destination runway on your GPS screen. What you see is the runway centreline at least 20nm out from the field, at both ends. Fly towards the line. When you’re nearly there, turn towards the runway gently, choose a steady rate of descent on the autopilot - which, in Alpha Charlie’s case, is brilliantly reliable. Land. If you have an instrument rating you can do an ILS approach and capture the glideslope. I don’t. But I do have some good kit. And I do have my co-pilot Jo, M. Passepartout. So its cool.



Tuaregs. Masters of the desert.

Niger is a vast arid landlocked country on the edge of the Sahara desert. It is bordered by Chad, Libya, Algeria and Nigeria. It is a country of deserts and mountains, a proud and gentle nomadic people with an ingrained sense of courtesy and Muslim hospitality. But it struggles to feed its people. It is prone to severe drought. The Tuareg tribes of northern Niger who roam freely across borders – Masters of the desert- have been in open revolt against the government for years. But since uranium was discovered in the north they are being pressed by a government desperate for hard cash.

Niger is also a budding Al Qaeda playground. Last year, much to the distress of many locals, a number of westerners were kidnapped. Some were shot. Tourists have gone. The few NGOs who still operate here, such the Red Cross, live under guard and never travel out of the city without an armed escort. It’s going to get worse. The Red Cross expects at least 200,000 refugees fleeing the civil war in neighbouring Libya to cross the border into Niger, many of them with guns provided by colonel Gaddafi.

Agadez is a true desert town. The town is as wide as the runway. Dusty streets. Most buildings are made from red mud and brick. There is a lovely old mosque. Stray dogs bark. I write this in the shady courtyard of the Auberge d'Azel., its pink mud walls draped with pink bougainvillea. It is 35 degrees in the shade. Mercifully it’s a dry heat.



Street life in Agadez

The muezzin calls the faithful to prayer. He has a fine voice which drifts over the town. It is a haunting and beautiful sound. The sound of my childhood in Egypt.  A nostalgia marred by the extremists who so skilfully turn the disenchanted to violence.

But dinner in the soft, pink,sandy courtyard of the hotel makes you forget all that. The town has gone quiet, the silence carried and amplified by the dry, desert air. Just the dogs barking and howling.