Rob Lemkin

About ten years ago I visited Dioundiou, a village in Niger two hundred kilometres south-east of the capital Niamey, and met a man known as Albert Camus. Hosseini Tahirou Amadou was the village history teacher. Nicknamed after his favourite writer, he was an expert on the events of 24 February 1899, the day a French colonial contingent turned up in the village demanding water, food and women. When the residents resisted, the French destroyed the village with cannon, massacred 373 people (according to Amadou’s research) and kidnapped hundreds of women. Even then, Amadou talked of bringing France to justice one day.

In the centre of the square of May Jirgui, a Nigérien town on the edge of the Sahel, five hundred miles east of the capital, Niamey, are the graves of two French soldiers who were shot dead at the spot in July 1899.