Niger Currents
Exploring life and technology along the Niger river

In a few days I will leave Tamale. I will leave my home, my friends, my family and my work - I will leave behind the last two years of my life and begin something new. Moving on always brings mixed feelings - It's difficult for me to leave a place that has really become my home, but I'm also excited about the journey that is about to begin. On Sunday evening Eli and I will begin a two and a half month journey along the Niger River.

We are calling this journey Niger Currents. In many ways it's a personal exploration for us, but it's also an exploration we hope to share with people back in Canada. Our goal is to learn about the lives and livelihoods of the people who make the Niger their home and to explore the role technology plays in their lives.

During our journey we'll be travelling by local forms of transport, spending time in the small villages that line the river and as much as possible living a lifestyle in unison with that of the people we meet. Each week we will be posting an update to this website about the people we meet and places we visit.

When we arrive at the headwaters in Guinea we will buy bicycles and begin our journey by bicycle, travelling 700 kilometres along the Niger River to Bamako, the capital of Mali, arriving in mid-June. At Bamako we will trade our bicycles for a wooden paddle boat and continue our journey, slowly making our way down the river until our journey concludes in early August. Our end point will likely be somewhere around Timbuktu, but reaching a final destination isn't the goal of this voyage.

So who are the people behind this journey?

I'm a native of Vancouver Island who has spent the better part of the past two years working in Ghana with Engineers Without Borders Canada and our Ghanaian partner KITE on a project aimed at providing energy services and spurring economic activity in rural communities. Before coming to Ghana I completed a degree in Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Victoria.

Eli graduated from the University of Calgary with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He has spent the last ten months working with Engineers Without Borders Canada in Tanzania and Zambia on small-scale irrigation projects. In Tanzania he was working with manufacturers of treadle pumps, and in Zambia he was working with small scale farmers doing dry season vegetable crops.

This journey is taking place for a number of reasons. Over the two years I have lived in West Africa, I have come to respect and admire the dignity, grace and intelligence with which so many people approach their daily lives. I am regularly inspired by people who are working to build better lives for themselves and their communities. When I think of rural life in West Africa, I think of my friend Dawuda, a farmer in a small village called Changnayili who spends his days on the farm and his evenings teaching basic literacy skills to community members who didn't have the same opportunity as he did to attend school.

It seems to me that the picture of Africa portrayed in Canada is often of a continent that is troubled by war, famine, starvation and corruption. These things certainly exist, but the view I have after two years of living in Ghana is much more positive.

I want to help paint a brighter, more accurate picture of Africa - by relaying the stories of everyday people in Africa that are struggling with dignity to build better lifes for themselves, the kinds of people I meet everyday but whose story is rarely told.

I have a learned a lot during my two years in Ghana, but many things about rural life remain a mystery to me. In many ways, I view this journey as an opportunity to learn more about the lives of people living in rural communities, about their livelihoods and how about technology fits into their daily lives. It's an exploration I'm excited about and one I hope people reading this will be interested in as well.