Mariana van Zeller

There's actually a building that was a rundown sort of house type thing that was built by Muammar Gaddafi when he visited in the 80s.

And they'd left that building there and turned it into basically a rundown hotel.

There's like one drop of water was the shower.

And yeah, it was very hot.

And we ate couscous morning, night and day.

But I have to say, beautiful part of the world, so beautiful, the desert and the landscape, so beautiful, and incredible people that were essential to figuring out how to get us out of there.

So we had a couple of ticking time clocks.

One was the incoming war.

So other countries in Africa, the African group of nations that I cannot remember the name right now, but they were threatening to invade Niger and depose the military leaders.

And then the Wagner Group in Russia were saying that if they did that, they would come in and defend the military coup leaders.

And so it was kind of like a proxy war happening in front of our eyes.

And so that was one of the ticking time bombs happening.

And the other one was I had promised my son it had been his birthday while I was there.

And he finished his camp.

It's a performing arts camp.

And every year, my husband and I have a tradition where we go and pick him up.

We see the play that he puts up.

And it's a very important day for all of us.

And I spent so much of my time on the road that I live.

with the guilt of spending so much time away from him.