zan dau'u
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 05/Oct/2010 13:00, 34 days ago
It’s not that I used to have a vile journey to work.In many ways, crossing the Thames, seeing Parliament reflected in its glittering if murky waters, and walking up to the edge of St James’s Park between the forbidding and grandiose structures of Whitehall before descending into the world’s most miserable and hateful bunker was rather splendid; glamorous in its own dignified manner.But it doesn’t have a patch on the walk up to this place.I’m into the habit now of taking anachabaonly part of the way (well, most of it), so that I can walk the last bit into this office (the one at the Education Board), away from the main thoroughfare, with its fug of traffic fumes and buses chanting their destinations in a vaguely musical monotony, like human cicadas.This is where Nigerian education looks like a success story: not the children squeezed in lines chanting words they’ll never use or remember; but the boys (always boys) gathered around men mending generators, motorbikes and cars.They watch with the patient intensity of sports fans, with one occasionally being given something to hold, or the chance to test out pieces of whirring machinery.So many things aren’t a concern – health and safety being the obvious one, as metal is sliced or soldered or melted by men in flip-flops surrounded by eager children – and so many things aren’t right: but the sense of communal, sustainable, practical, purposeful learning is powerful.I find it incredibly frustrating that the schools– and even the ambitions for the schools – look a world away from this process.But that’s another whinge.I always expect there to be kose women along here.There never are– or never at the time I arrive, anyway – which is good for my waistline (kose is God’s own breakfast food, particularly when He’s hungover, but that’s only because He’s at little risk of a heart attack and has that massive beard to hide double chins).But there are lots of blackened pots over small fires bubbling away– merrily or ominously depending on whether or not it’s raining.It’s a strange thing (and may be inaccurate: I’m pretty stupid in the olfactory department), but all of the overwhelmingly strong flavours of Nigerian soups and stews seem to refuse representation in the parliament of smells.So all of this food being prepared (presumably for impending lunch hours) seems to only emit faintly metallic or burning odours.On the left, after the grimy greyness of the various workstations, is a road with rich green growth on either side: Kaduna’s a very verdant city – and we’re told it’ll still be comparatively vernal even when the dry season eventually arrives (you can never have too many v’s in a sentence, or so I’ve been told).Right now, though, the joy of this place is that it’s bedecked with immense, vicious looking spiders whose webs interlock in a vast architectural spectacular which ascends to and encompasses the wires stretching overhead.They’re the kind of monsters that I had nightmares about after watching ‘Arachnophobia’: metallic looking; jointed in a manner which makes them appear strangely robotic and mindlessly aggressive; viciously pointed legs; jet black with the occasional shot of colour just because they can.It’s easy to stand and stare at this monstrous suburb, but a crowd will gather to stare at you if you do, so it’s best to move on – having attempted to extract them from your nightmare schema and found them a secure foothold in the natural world.There’s a nice little sequence of farm-type shops coming up next on the right.Some mornings, a continual chorus of cheeping is coming from piles of boxes containing young chicks for sale.I still harbour fantasies of buying and keeping some chickens, which are obviously hopelessly unrealistic and will never come to fruition.It’s a cheering little video to play in my mind nonetheless.Just before the railway track (my favourite bit of Hausa so far, that:hanyan jir’gin kasa, which means something like‘road vehicle track type thingy’) is where I usually start to encounter the hawkers and beggars setting out for their long day in the sun.Hawkers are almost all children– incredibly small, usually, and it’s hard to know whether they’re as young as they look or ‘just’ malnourished.Many of the beggars are children, too: cheeky and charming groups of boys, or quiet and sad looking individuals, who are oftenalmajeri– children sent to learn from an Islamic teacher, and who are usually taught enough Arabic to earn theirmallamsome money.In towns, they beg: in the countryside, they work the fields.Many blind and disabled adults go out to beg, too: mostly with a child to lead or push them, and to do the asking for money part.It’s not a cheering sight.Achabadrivers choose various random spots around Kaduna to hang around waiting for custom, and this part of the railway is one such location.They’re quite safe: the tracks are so narrow that the one train which supposedly heaves itself along must be tiny.It takes four days to get to Lagos (assuming there are no derailments), so you’ve got plenty of time when you see it coming, too.The drivers and the meatsellers opposite them are always delighted to see abaturi, and say so loudly: there’s lots of good-morning-ing to be done, as well as wide grins to be forcibly sustained when you catch too close a glimpse (or whiff) of skinless goat heads lined up for sale, or intestines blowing slightly in the breeze like newly washed but somewhat well worn stockings.Cow herds mostly travel all over the place with their Fulani herdsmen (or -boys), but there seems to be a resident herd just here, who sit around gazing mournfully at their brothers’ guts as they chomp on the long grass.Young goats trot up and down, scampering from underachabawheels and occasionally falling into the sewer ditches which run either side of the road.Weary older goats– one of them being the most heavily pregnant animal I’ve ever seen in all the days of my life – sit in the shade or lumber towards a patch of grass.Chickens scramble around on maniacal, imperative tasks of their own or stab thoughtfully at the odd heap of litter.I’ve even – most unlikely of sights in an Islamic slum – seen two little pigs grunting around here once.Earth has little to show more fair than a pair of piglets out for a walk.Children, of course, are everywhere: by this stage of the walk, they’re mostly in school uniform and confident enough to gleefully and loudly announce your presence.Some even manage to respond to greetings, and all like to stare.In London, I’d have assumed that my flies were undone or that I’d sliced my Adam’s apple out while shaving: here those could still be true, and it’s certainly always the case that I’m pouring with sweat in a manner fascinating to anyone who hasn’t spent a lifetime next to the Niagara falls, but thereal pieces of joy are my white skin, and my remarkable motorbike helmet – neither of which seem to make any sense in these children’s world as yet, hence requiring careful and close study.Every so often, I wonder why I’m so endlessly fascinating to them: they must all have seen me enough times and studied me closely enough to draw my face in their dreams.But then I realise that all of these things– completely normal, everyday things, like seeing a pigeon in London or an unhappy face on the tube – delight, intrigue, appal, thrill me every day I’m here.I guess the moment I stop being Other to them will be close to the moment it all stops being Other to me, and I’m pretty confident that won’t happen in eighteen months – so on my last day here I’ll be as open mouthed, as gleeful, and as sweaty as I was this morning.