Yesterday morning at 3am I began my #ShareNiger journey to Africa. I've travelled over 2500 miles to Niamey in Niger, West Africa. The difference to where my day began and when it ended really couldn't be more different.
Niger is landlocked, bordering Nigeria and Bennin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east. It is the largest nation in West Africa with 80% of it's mass being covered by the Sahara desert.
It's hot here. Really hot. The crops have failed again due to lack of rain and around 15 million people are in need of food assistance.
The numbers are too great to comprehend but over the next few days I'm going to be telling some individual stories in the hope that you can share them with people that you know.
The trip has been dubbed #ShareNiger and my fellow traveller Liz Scarff (World Vision) has just informed me that we have already reached 1 million people. Not bad going considering we don't get moving until today.
So thank you to everyone who has already tweeted or blogged about #ShareNiger but please don't stop. We need to reach as many people as possible so that we can get aid to Niger now - before it's too late.
So thank you to everyone who has already tweeted or blogged about #ShareNiger but please don't stop. We need to reach as many people as possible so that we can get aid to Niger now - before it's too late.
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| Looks like i brought the British weather with me... |
Before I head out for the day I would like to say a very big thank you to Nicholas Kristof and his team at Half the Sky for asking me to guest post for his site. If you know me, you know how much that means to me. You can read my first #ShareNiger for Half the Sky post here.