Ayana.

Between November and March, the Sahel transforms. The harmattan — a dry wind that comes down from the Sahara — brings red dust that gets into everything: clothes, throats, window cracks, recorder contacts. The mornings are cold. Not cold the way they are in Europe, but cold for a place where most of the year the temperature doesn't drop below thirty. In Niamey, the harmattan shifts the schedules. People head out later. Meetings stretch out around improvised fires. Elders tell stories by the fire because the morning cold draws people together.

Ayana works with that calendar. During the harmattan, the trips to Kouré start later and the recording sessions happen inside houses, not in the courtyards. The red dust settles on everything and she cleans the recorder after each session. But it's also the season when the most stories are told, because people gather around the fire and the cold gives time to talk slowly.

The elders of Kouré hold the stories of the giraffes: how they nearly disappeared, how the community agreed to protect them, how they came back to drink from the well. Those stories are passed on quietly, with pauses, wrapped in woodsmoke. Ayana switches on the recorder and waits. "Attends..." — wait — is what she says when someone gets ahead of themselves.

Ayana's red coat is heavy wool, with gold buttons and a classic cut. She bought it in Ouagadougou at the FESPACO. In Niamey it draws attention: most people wear boubou or light clothing. But during the harmattan, the coat makes sense. And Ayana wears it with a naturalness that makes you think she didn't put it on because of the cold but for some other reason. Judgment, maybe. Or habit.

The knitted red scarf was a gift from Fatima, the weaver from the Yantala neighborhood, for no particular reason. Ayana wraps it around her neck when she sets out early for Kouré by moto-taxi, the dust sticking to the fabric and the morning cold seeping through the seams. Sixty kilometers of road that starts paved and ends in dirt, with military checkpoints in the Tillabéri area and a backpack carrying just enough: recorder, notebooks, pens, batteries.

In her apartment in the Plateau neighborhood, third floor, harmattan nights drop the temperature just enough that her hands go cold before the rest of her body. Ayana transcribes at night, headphones on, pencil in hand. At two in the morning, with a cup of tea beside her, the difference between carrying on and leaving it for tomorrow is sometimes as simple as having something that keeps you warm.