HE NEXT STAGE of the journey was a visit to Iferouane (pronounced iffer-wan), an oasis town of about 5000 people where we have two volunteers working with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a mainly European-funded environmental organization.

Iferouane is located north of Agadez, at the foot of the Air (pronounced eye-ear) Mountains. To get there, the first two hours of the trip are along the highway to Arlit, an excellent road for this part of the world, more or less equivalent to a paved county-maintained road in the U.S.. It was built in the 1970s to support the uranium mines at Arlit.

The road leading from this highway to Iferouane, however, is like a wilderness logging road in the U.S., except in this case there are no logs. It leads for 130 km through rugged desert terrain, a region of hard-pan sand and gravel, massive expanses of bare volcanic boulders, and occasional patches of green grass and bushes, studded with small acacia trees, to mark low-lying areas where water collected during the just-ended rainy season. There were no signs of human habitation except for occasional herds of goats, camels, and donkeys tended by Tuareg nomads.

We drove along this trail for four hours before reaching the collection of trees, gardens, and mud-walled houses that is Iferouane.

If “nowhere” exists, Iferouane must be pretty close to its geographic center.

However, even this lonely outpost of mankind has its links to the global economy and society, in the form not only of the two Peace Corps volunteers and a resident Frenchman with the IUCN project, but also a hotel owned by Vittorio, the expatriate Italian who also has a hotel and restaurant in Agadez. In fact, Iferouane is his principal home. He was there to welcome me, along with his other guests, a French movie director and her crew who were making a feature-length film set in the region. When I arrived, they were in the process of hiring a group of Tuaregs to shoot a camel caravan scene.

Back at the hotel, the French filmmaker was still conducting her casting call to select Tuaregs for the caravan scene. This process continued until after midnight.

The next morning, the volunteers and I took an extensive walk through the Iferouane gardens. They lie along a valley running out of the nearby mountains, where water can be found three or four meters under the surface. Numerous wells provide irrigation for the gardens. The early morning desert air was refreshing, and the heat didn’t become uncomfortable until nearly noon.

Iferouane pretty much shuts down after lunch, as everyone naps or just hangs around in the shade until sundown. I spend the afternoon talking to the volunteers about their projects and life in Iferouane.

This night’s fellow guests at Vittorio’s hotel were four Dutch tourists, accompanied by a Tuareg tour guide from Agadez. During another nearly sleepless night in the sweltering hotel, I reflected that the U.S. elections, the price of oil, turmoil in the Middle East, and similar matters that had dominated my attention before I came to Niger, all seemed pretty remote from the perspective of Iferouane. I realized that I hadn’t heard so much as a radio summary of world news in the past week; and what’s more, I didn’t really miss it.
 

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Peace Corps Adventures: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4