So how was warm season in Niger spent 20 year ago? I was looking through my mother’s image archives the other day and found lots of reminders, all from the month of May 1988. As always, May was excessively dusty – and we found we could write things in the dust coat on the veranda [...]

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We have some funny visitors from time to time. Recently, two woodpeckers came and “felt” the big gao tree outside our gate. They jumped around for a long time and seemed to be utterly enjoying themselves. Haven’t seem them since, though!

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Copyright Eden Foundation The Eden farmers and their families mix the cooked Maerua crassifolia leaves with crushed peanuts, decorate with an onion and sell it in the village. There is a lot of money to be made this way, because the meal is good! And so when making one of the two casseroles I was [...]

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For those of you who were around during the days of Isthar News, you probably remember how both Anette and I spent months waiting in vain for a foal in Arwen’s belly that wasn’t there… So for this year’s foaling issues, I’ve was really reserved at first, but once Arwen’s belly started to grow for [...]

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From a world market perspective – where the global spotlight stays focused on a handful of species that still produce the majority of the food despite the fact that there is a total of 78,000 edible species available in the world (an untapped resource for the upcoming ‘world food crisis’) – it would not be [...]

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I had a great weekend, having two long rides in the bush (unfortunately, the last one ended up with my borrowing my horse and Arwen getting limp again, so I may not be out for a ride in while…) and catching up on some much needed sleep. On Friday evening, Tabita came on and stayed [...]

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Summer in Sweden (2005) The picture above includes every Garvi I have ever met, with the exception of my two little nieces.

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I’ve been suffering from sudden cravings lately. Things I haven’t been thinking about for ages (mostly sweet items that could accompany my beloved coffee but which I can neither access nor produce on my own at my current geographical location) pop up in my mind at all times of the day. It must be the [...]

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Mr Sponheim of the Solar Cooker Archive Wiki contacted me a while back ago, and wanted me to post a profile on their site. We talked over email about solar cooker issues and he was suprised when I told him we’d bought some of our solar cookers from a local NGO in town. Well, the [...]

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With the Maerua crassifolia (jiga) bushes in my garden full of fresh leaves, I was itching to try a new recipe. A sudden burst of inspiration had me land on making a Maerua crassifolia risotto, with the aim of doing something simple, nutritious and nice – though not overdone. After all, with Maerua crassifolia being [...]

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Although it’s only May, I see many farmers in the Zinder region have already sowed their millet. It’s a gamble, because if it doesn’t rain consistently before the rainy season picks up for real, the millet sowed will dry up and die and the farmer will have to resow again. In 2004-05, the farmers in [...]

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So on Sunday afternoon, we had another shower of rain, thunder and hail (!) – you should have heard the sound it made on my metal roof! It lasted for about half an hour (I think we had about 4 mm of rain but I have yet to check for sure). I think of all [...]

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All the students of Cours Francois Villons in Zinder (1989) I had a happy expat childhood going to a tiny French school where there were less students in the entire school than in my Swedish class. Lol, I was supposed to teach the other Scandinavians French but ended up learning fluent Danish instead. We had [...]

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So the thing is: I’m getting hungry for braids again. You know the whole Nigerien thing? I’ve done it a few times, and although it takes about six hours (or more, depending on how much mesh I want to use) to braid my hair, it lasts for about four weeks which is absolutely amazing… The [...]

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So here’s the scenario: We head up 06.30 am (on a Saturday, yes), get the work done before the warmest period of the day sets in (when the air around your feet is so hot that it burns your skin!) and then head back in time for an afternoon ride… If we’re lucky, the preparations [...]

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