Postcards from the Edge of the Sahara I

For those of you who have never been introduced to the PFTE series, mainly I just make observations about the culture that I'm visiting, and try to provide some sort of education of the various countries that I'm visiting... hopefully it will be illuminating, and occasionally funny (particularly when I talk about stupid things that I do)...
As I mentioned before, it's quite hot in the desert. This actually affects when Nigeriens eat during the day. (Aside: Differing between people from Niger and people from Nigeria is quite easy. Nigeriens (pronounced with a French accent) are from Niger, while Nigerians are from Nigeria. Interesting.)
The 'strengthening' meal of the day is at 10am. In fact, that's the equivalent of the 'lunch break'. We also have siesta time from 1-3 pm, mainly cause it's too hot to do anything useful at all, except for maybe pass out from heat stroke. Nigeriens will tend to have a small snack at that point, while all us foreigners will be eating lunch at that point. Finally, they'll tend to eat dinner much later, around 8 or 9pm, because it's too hot to try and cook earlier than that (all of us silly foreigners who eat around 6 or 7pm are clearly just being silly; 'slaving over a hot stove' takes on a WHOLE new meaning here).
julia