Images brought with love from Northern Nigeria

15th Century Hausa building

Traditional Hausa Architecture

Market Scene

Argungu Fishing Festival

Street scene at sunset

Entrance gate to the Palace of the Emir of Kano

Entrance gate to the Palace of the Emir of Zaria

Reception room of Palace of the Emir of Kano

Bauchi Harmattan Sunrise

It's really the sun up there. This photo was taken on a particularly dusty morning somewhere east of Yankari Game Reserve in Bauchi State, Northern Nigeria.

The Harmattan is a dry and dusty West African trade wind. It blows south from the Sahara Desert into the Gulf of Guinea between the end of November and the middle of March. On its passage over the desert it picks up fine dust particles (between 0.5 and 10 micrometres). When the Harmattan blows hard, it can push dust and sand all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean and South America.

Garba 1

Author's Note: The idea behind this story was to provoke, and to be thought-provoking at the same time. The story is based on real events, I did get stranded in Bauchi when reporting for youth service, and was rescued by a fellow passenger whom I had assisted before we departed from Jos. I also failed to turn up with my call-up letter, and was told that I could not register without it, which meant that I had to go all the way back to Lagos to find the letter. The Garba character, too, is based on a real person, but the story itself has been fictionalised, (taking real people, events, or historical facts and rewriting them as a story (book, film, or play) by adding imaginative details, altering facts, or changing dialogue to enhance the narrative.)

The female voice on the loudspeakers finally announced that the flight to Jos was ready for boarding. This flight had been delayed for four hours already, and it was to the relief of us the would be passengers that we were directed towards the Nigeria Airways aeroplane that was to take us on this journey from Lagos Murtala Mohammed Airport. 

I was excited, the moment had finally come when I was leaving home, going to that far-off place that I had always dreamt of. I was going to Northern Nigeria where I had never been, for my one year of compulsory national youth service. It is the requirement for every new graduate of higher institutions in Nigeria to join the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) for one year of service to the nation. 

It is the practice for 'youth corpers' to be posted to parts of the country different from where they originate, or where they had gone to school, college or university, the idea being to introduce young people to other parts of the country to which they had never been, and which they would otherwise have no occasion to visit. I was posted to Bauchi State, a place I'd only read about in geography books and heard about on the news. I had recently turned 21, and I was leaving home. And I was bubbling with excitement. The nearest airport to Bauchi town was the one at Jos, about 120km away. The plan was that I would fly to Jos and then complete the journey by bush taxi.

The Jos Plateau is a very scenic part of the country. The landscape was all quite new to me, as I had never been in a highland area. I know now that the weather was pleasantly cool, sub tropical. But at that time I thought Jos was cold, having lived all my life until then in the coastal equatorial steamy heat of Lagos and Port Harcourt. So it was with a sense of wonder that I sat in the city taxi travelling from Jos Airport across the city to Naraguta from where I would catch the bush taxi to Bauchi Town. By this time it was about sunset, the flight from Lagos had lasted for only slightly more than an hour, but because it had departed late from Lagos, we had arrived in Jos much later than had been expected. 

The journey to Bauchi from Jos would last another hour, when I eventually got on the bush taxi that is. No matter, I thought, surely the NYSC must have an office open all night in the event that corpers travelling from other parts of the country arrived at an odd hour. It was the responsibility of the NYSC office to register corpers on arrival, accommodate them, and manage their posting to whatever job they were assigned. 

I knew nobody in Bauchi, indeed in the entire north of Nigeria, so I was counting on the NYSC office in Bauchi being open this evening when I eventually arrived. At the moment, I was too filled with wonder and excitement to think too much about what would happen. Or maybe I was too scared to even consider the possibility that the office might not be open when I arrived later this evening.

Soon I was dropped off at the Bauchi Road motor park (motor park - a bus station cum taxi rank in Nigeria) from where I was to catch my bush taxi. There was a row of several taxis, all going to Bauchi, but I could see that they were in sort of a queue, taking turns to depart. None could leave until the first one in the queue had departed having first filled up with passengers. When I arrived at the motor park, the driver of the taxi at the front of the queue had taken my bags and placed them in the boot together with the luggage of the other passengers who were already sitting inside the taxi. There was only one other empty seat remaining after mine, so I realised that I had a few minutes to spare before the taxi would leave while we waited for the last passenger to turn up. 

I was excited. This was a whole new atmosphere where Hausa was the main language being spoken, of which I knew not a word. I went a few metres to a little shop and bought a Coke to quench my thirst, and as I walked back to the taxi I heard someone behind me say "Excuse me..". 

It was nice to hear someone speak a language I understood, so I turned around and saw this tall young man dressed in traditional Hausa attire, a sky blue embroidered caftan with matching trousers, and that cap on his head that is so typical of northern Nigerians. This fellow introduced himself as Abdulrahman. He was a student at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and was heading to Bauchi to visit with relatives. However, he had not done his sums properly and now found that he was a few Naira short and needed some assistance to pay the fare. I agreed to assist him, not that I had a lot myself, but it was easy, because I could see straight away that he was genuinely in need of help. He was decent, polite and I thought that this could easily have been me in his position seeking the help of a stranger. Together we paid Abdulrahman's fare to the driver and got into the taxi, both of us sitting side by side. So it was that for this journey into the unknown, I had earned the company of a young man of about my age who was native to this place. I was alone no longer.

As expected the journey to Bauchi took just over an hour. By the time we arrived it was already dark. Bauchi is not a large city, it is an old traditional Hausa settlement with an ancient city wall that surrounds the old city. However, with modern development the city had expanded outside the city wall. This was now a state capital and the road leading into the city was broad and brightly lit. Also it didn't feel cold as in Jos. 

Abdulrahman had explained that shortly after we left Jos we had descended from the Jos Plateau and that we were now on the vast Savannah that covers almost the whole of northern Nigeria. On the way from Jos I had told Abdulrahman who I was, and explained why I was travelling to Bauchi. He said he knew where the NYSC office is located and that the taxi would drive past in front of it. He suggested that it might be a good idea if I let the driver know, so that he would stop there and I could get off. I agreed and then he said a few words in Hausa to the driver, who nodded. 

When we arrived in front of the NYSC office in Bauchi, it was already about 9pm. The street was brightly lit, as every major road seemed to be in this town. But the building. There was not a single light in sight. Not even an open window. Abdulrahman had pointed out the bulding to me and as he did so, he must have noticed the shock on my face, because he immediately decided to alight from the taxi with me. 

I was in Bauchi with all my worldly possessions, late in the evening, in front of a locked office building, with nowhere to go, and no idea what to do next. I was thankful that Abdulrahman had decided to leave the taxi and stay with me, because the task of rescuing me from this predicament now fell upon him.

Abdulrahman told me that his uncle whom he had come to visit in Bauchi lived not very far away. He suggested that we should go to his uncle's house and stay there until the next morning, when I could return to this office and get myself registered. It was not as if I had a choice, so of course I welcomed the suggestion and so off we went, him helping me with my heavy bags. 

We got into a local taxi that took us to his uncle's house, a very nice house in a part of town that I assumed was where all the important people lived. On the way he told me that his uncle was the state commissioner for something or the other, sort of like a state government minister. The house was very nice indeed, set in a beautiful arid garden. 

The northern part of Nigeria is a semi arid zone that lends itself to arid gardening. I marvelled at the immense good taste in which this front garden had been created, and how lovely it looked in the floodlighting set strategically among the various cacti and succulents. Walking past the garden and the main house, Abdulrahman and I went straight to the back house, commonly referred to as the 'boys quarters'. This is usually accommodation provided for the domestic staff who worked in the main house, but in this case Abdulrahman's cousin, his uncle's son, had laid claim to one of its rooms. 

It was into this room that we entered after Abdulrahman had unlocked the door. Although it was not a large room, my first thought was that it contained too many items of furniture. It was apparent that its owner had gone to great lengths to assert to anyone who entered that he was not a domestic staff in this place.

Abdulrahman showed me around, the conveniences and such like, and then left to enter the main house to inform his relatives that he had arrived. I think he must have at the same time also told them that he had come with a visitor, because shortly afterwards he came back to the room accompanied by two teenage boys of about 13 and 14, who seemed eager to see who this person was who had accompanied their cousin to their home. They were friendly and I felt very welcome. Abdulrahman said supper was on the way and that in the meantime I could freshen up if I wished. 

Of course it had been a long eventful day, so I welcomed the opportunity to take a shower and change my clothes. Abdulrahman went back inside his uncle's house with two young cousins.

Returning to the room after my shower with only a towel draped around my waist I saw that the door was ajar, it was obvious that there was someone inside. I was a stranger in this place and didn't want to upset anyone, so I carefully knocked on the door and peeped inside to see who it was. There was indeed someone in the room, but not someone I had met before. He had his back turned to the door but turned around just as he heard me enter. He seemed surprised to see me, well, obviously he didn't know who I was, or what I was doing there. 

"Hello", I said. "I arrived a short while ago with Abdulrahman". 

"Oh..?", was his reply. He stared at me briefly then smiled and for the first time I got a clear view of his face. 

I was naked under this towel draped around my waist and was somewhat embarrassed that he was seeing me for the first time like this, but I extended my hand. He seemed to understand how I felt because after shaking hands, still smiling at me he left the room so that I could get dressed. Not very long after that there was a knock on the door and Abdulrahman returned with the same man who had been here when I entered after my shower. Abdulrahman introduced him to me as his cousin, his uncle's son and his name was Garba. Garba and I shook hands again, and I mentioned  to Abdulrahman that we had already met. 

Garba was not tall, not as tall as Abdulrahman. He wasn't even as tall as me. But he exuded masculinity, and he was very well groomed, with a neatly trimmed moustache and perfectly manicured fingernails. I couldn't held noticing.

A loud knock on the door and a woman entered carrying a tray on which was set a huge meal of rice and peanut stew with beef. The aroma was heavenly. The tray was set down on a mat on the floor, and the woman, obviously one of the uncle's domestic staff, left as quickly as she had arrived without saying a word. She returned a few moments later with a pot of piping hot tea, which I was told is called chai, and some mugs, and then left again. No cutlery was provided, and as is the tradition among the people of the north, all three of us sat around this tray of rice and beef and ate with our hands directly from the tray. The food was delicious, and Garba was very pleasant. And he kept smiling at me.

Anengiyefa at 10:09 am

That blue car

I've just taken delivery of that car I've always wanted, you know, that blue one with the leather trim interior and the wood effect dashboard. I didn't manage to sort out the insurance before the week's end and against the best advice of my friend Albert, I went spinning around in it this afternoon. And boy, it is something!

I haven't owned a car for the better part of 10 years, mainly because I convinced myself that I didn't need one. And there was a hint of the desire to do my own small bit for the environment. But driving around this afternoon listening to loud Aswad on the stereo, even though the traffic was heavy in parts of town where Premiership football was just disgorging its huge crowds of fans into the streets, I realised what I've been missing. Thoughts of standing all the way to my destination on a crowded London bus, or standing on a train station platform on a freezing cold wet morning flashed through my mind and I shuddered. It was nice and warm and comfortable in the car, and I've vowed never to go anywhere unless I'm driving there in this beauty. Within the last hour I must have looked out of my front window about 100 times already, just to make sure she's still sitting where I left her when I came in. I'm going out again shortly...

Technology and me

I haven't blogged for a few days and it was almost as if something was missing although I couldn't tell exactly what it was until I started typing this post. Nobody told me blogging is addictive, or that there are withdrawal symptoms. Anyway now that I know I'll try to keep up with the posts.

I was thinking about a news report I saw on television sometime ago, about how some weird people were queueing in front of a store somewhere in London where Apple's iPhone was to be launched the next day. I mean this live report was sometime in the late evening on a cold windy night, when every sane person ought to have been sitting snugly on a sofa in front of the TV, or at least making their way home in order to do so. And there was this throng of wild haired men and women proudly announcing to the TV reporter that they were happy to brave the foul weather all night, just to be sure that they obtained the iPhone the very minute it became available in the UK the next morning when the store's doors opened. Thinking about this I wondered what was so special about the iPhone that was to be sold on the first day. Was it perhaps different in some enhanced way to any other iPhones that would be sold the day after? What about those who would acquire the iPhone weeks or even months after its launch? Taking into account the pace of technology, perhaps its even sensible to wait a few weeks I thought to myself.

I am fascinated by technology and the advances that we have witnessed within just a few decades. It's nothing short of amazing. But having said that, I personally have struggled to keep up with innovations, although when I do finally catch up, I've often wondered why I was so slow in realising how truly awesome this thing is, whatever it was that I was just catching up with. Let's start with mobile phones, or cell phones as some people say. For a long while I was entirely convinced that I did not need a mobile phone. What for? I would question myself. I already had a phone at home and another at work. Surely I didn't need a third phone? Who would want to contact me anyway when I was out and about? But when I looked around and saw that even school children carried mobile telephonic devices around, texting and the like, I started to feel like a visitor from another planet, or from a place in time somewhere in the past. Not until then did I realise how ancient my thinking must have seemed to those to whom I fervently argued that a mobile telephone was a completely unnecessary frivolity. Anyway, as I have often had to do, I caved in and acquired one.

It was pretty much the same with the Internet. Even this blog was started five years after everyone I know had already started a blog. As a child sitting in the back seat of my parents' car, anytime the car stopped at a railway crossing, or whenever there was the possibility that we would be anywhere near a passing train, I clearly remember the panic that would take hold of me and how I would try to duck down under the driver's seat until the train passed. I feared engines and machines or anything mechanical. I seem to not have outgrown this anxiety about machines and technological innovations generally. I despise pocket calculators, but I have to use one regardless. Thankfully today's computers are user-friendly, but apart from the basic word-processing, emails, blogging (now), music and videos, there isn't very much else that I do with them. I like to draw with crayons and paint pictures with a brush. I love to read books that are made of paper and cardboard. I love writing with a pen and ink. Sitting in front of this computer screen is a necessary evil, the way I see it. I looked up the word "technophobia" in the dictionary and was surprised to find that it's a real word, defined as the "fear of or aversion to technology, especially computers and high technology". That finger is pointing directly at me. 

Yes I accept, I am officially a technophobe, because now Twitter is all the rage and I am breaking out in a cold sweat.

I know I've been rambling in this post, but I just needed to let that out somehow. It's even had a therapeutic effect in that I've been able to share with this blog something that has lurked somewhere at the back of my mind for a long time about which I'd not been able to speak to anyone. But of course, I still haven't acquired that Apple iPhone, although I might just do so someday.

PS: I set up my Twitter account shortly afterwards.

Easter

We are told that Easter Sunday is the day on which the resurrection of Jesus Christ is marked. If there is any other reason why this day is important in the Christian religion, then I suppose it is the fact that it marks the end of lent, the season of fasting and penitence that commenced 40 weekdays earlier on Ash Wednesday. In reality however, in modern times, just like Christmas the religious significance of this day is shunted aside and what Easter appears to have become for most of the Christian world is a holiday weekend, starting on the Friday before. Of course, there is the obligatory movie or two on television about the life of Christ, or some other similar biblical story, and then, at least in every country where I have happened to be when Easter came along, the compulsory live broadcast on Easter Sunday morning of that dreary Mass at the Basilica in Rome. While I cannot dispute that there are those who hold this day in reverence, what seems more apparent to me is that most people think of this weekend as a holiday. Bars, pubs and restaurants are packed full of people having a good time. On the Thursday before Good Friday, many people leave work early and because schools have broken up since the Friday before, airports, train stations and coach stations struggle to cope with the mad scurry out of town of those who wish to spend these precious few days of holiday someplace else. And of course since the railway companies have announced clearly that major engineering works are scheduled for the Easter weekend, you miss your train on Thursday at your peril. And then the roads. Early on Thursday morning, traffic reports on the radio warn that this day is traditionally the busiest day on the road network.

Why all this commotion, one wonders. Is it really because Jesus died? Did Jesus die and rise from the dead so we may gorge ourselves with food and ingest as much alcohol as we can? Where is the connection between Jesus resurrection and Easter eggs?

This G20 Summit

History teaches us that is it not very often when two or more countries agree on something that each country will act upon what was agreed on in exactly the same way. In the G20, there are 19 countries and the European Union, which itself is a political union of 27 member states, only four of which are represented independently in the G20. The way I see it, this is a hodge-podge of diverging interests and it seems clear that no form of consensus can ever be achieved in actuality, although on paper the final communique to be produced at the end of this summit will undoubtedly purport that there has in fact been consensus. Recent political history is replete with examples of agreements made on paper, on which are conferred as many different interpretations as there are signatories to the agreements.

The very nature of the G20 itself is such that there can and should be no disagreement. Yet, even before the meeting began it was well known, with regard to regulatory reform, that there was a split between the Anglo Saxon capitalist model of the UK and the USA on the one hand, and the more interventionist European model of Germany and France. Indeed, France's Monsieur Sarkozy even threatened to walk out if no firm measures were taken to rein in the banks and hedge funds.

Gordon Brown's brainwave of a fiscal stimulus, a major new initiative to kick start the various economies has come up against a solid roadblock. Angela Merkel, (and not her alone), has firmly indicated that she has no intention of letting the G20 write her national budget. Not to mention the recent cutting words of Brazil's Lula da Silva, blaming white blue-eyed males for the financial crisis. All in all, I expect little more than rhetoric from this summit, as opposed to solid and detailed figures. The rhetoric will lean towards highlighting the benefits of concerted international effort in dealing with the financial crisis, but few commitments will be had from governments, if at all.

Methinks that one positive outcome of this summit will be the formalisation of the shift of the balance of power from the traditional economic powers like the US, Japan, Germany and the UK, to the newer players like China and India. And particularly in relation to the issue of voting rights in the IMF, taking into account the fact that an enlarged role for the IMF inevitably carries a substantial price tag, a burden that the traditional powers will not be terribly keen to shoulder in the present economic situation.

While trying not to get bogged down with all this economic stuff that we have been bombarded with recently, most Londoners are basking in the limelight of Obamamania. Many know there are several heads of government in town, but everyone, including the almighty BBC, are following Obama around. It's almost like an Obama state visit. And Michelle, she's grabbing all the headlines.