Kouré

I did not expect to be moved by giraffes. I had filed them, mentally, under the heading of things you see on safari posters and forget about. Then we drove an hour south of Niamey on the road toward Dosso, turned off onto a sandy track, and a guide named Issoufou pointed at the horizon and said, very quietly, there. And there they were: a small group of pale, impossibly tall animals moving through the thorn scrub with that slow-motion gait that looks like it should not work at all. The last wild giraffes in all of West Africa, and they were maybe two hundred metres away, entirely indifferent to us.

The last herd of their kind

The story is more remarkable than the animals themselves, which is saying something. The West African giraffe — a distinct subspecies, lighter in colour than its East African cousins, with patches that fade to white on the legs — once ranged across the whole Sahel. By the mid-1990s, hunting and habitat loss had crushed the population down to about fifty individuals, all of them clinging to this one corridor of bush around Kouré. Fifty. That is a number you can hold in your head. The community here, working with conservationists, decided these animals were worth protecting, and the herd has since climbed back over six hundred. They are not fenced. They wander through farmers’ millet fields, and the farmers, by and large, tolerate them. I find that arrangement quietly astonishing.

You hire a local guide at the reserve entrance — this is non-negotiable and also the entire point, because the fees go directly to the communities that share their land with the animals. Issoufou knew the giraffes the way you know neighbours. That one is old, he said, of a male with a notched ear. We walked. You walk, here, on foot, through the bush toward animals five metres tall, which is a sensation I am still processing. They let you approach to a respectful distance and then decide, with great dignity, that you have come close enough and amble off.

Heat, dust, and the long afternoon

I will be honest about the conditions. It is hot in a way that rearranges your priorities. We went in the dry season and the bush was the colour of weak tea, the ground cracked, the air thick with a fine reddish dust that got into the camera, the water bottles, my teeth. Lia, who is more sensible than I am, had brought a scarf to wrap over her face and looked like a desert veteran while I squinted and sweated. The light at the end of the day, though, is the kind photographers chase across continents — low and gold and turning every giraffe into a silhouette out of some older, larger version of the world.

We drove back to Niamey in the dark, quiet, the way you are after seeing something that did not have to survive and did anyway.

When to go: The dry season, roughly November to February, is the most comfortable and the giraffes are easiest to find as they concentrate near water. Avoid the peak heat of April and May. Go early morning or late afternoon — midday is brutal and the animals rest in shade. Always hire a reserve guide; check current security advice for the region before you travel.