This section is different from
most of the blogs, as we were in a single place for nearly two weeks. We had always planned to volunteer in a
grazing management scheme around Jos, on our way through Nigeria. However that possibility had fallen through
and this was plan B. The fact that our
parents had been United Methodist Missionaries in Bolivia for 35 years meant,
in retrospect, that UM missionaries in Nigeria went out of their way to set up
volunteer work for us. Helena’s
background was in music education while I was still studying Natural Resources
Management with an emphasis on soil and water conservation. We were therefore in Zing to “help” a UM
agricultural missionary, Bill Fitzgerald.
In retrospect I shudder at the idea of an inexperienced university student
designing water containment and drainage structures that might later make the
situation even worse, but at that age one thinks they know almost
everything.
We were staying in the house
of another, single, missionary, Ann Kemper, who was a teacher in the local high school. There are some accounts of the frustrations
of trying to get basic educational efforts done.
We will not be offended if
people give this account a miss, but we include it because it gives more of an
idea of “normal” life, at least from a missionary compound, and the
frustrations of life in Nigeria at that time.
We make reference to the “good old oil days” and I assume that means the
late 70s when the world price of oil went up so much, giving oil producing
countries sudden windfall income. In
other words by the early ‘80s Nigerians already felt that they had passed their
golden oil age and that things were going downhill.
I have in recent years had
graduate students from Nigeria who begin every problem analysis exercise with
oil. Virtually every problem can be
traced to it, in their view.
Recently there have been a lot
of reports of violence in the areas where we have traveled through, including
Nigeria. Mali has been front page news
for the last month. But even then the
reports from Nigeria had our parents a little worried for example with this
episode our mother added in 1983, as she typed up and distributed copies of
this journal:
Ed:
News from Nigeria is not very good these days, but Dan and Helena are far from
Lagos where the expulsion of the aliens is centered. We have had four rolls of
their Kodachrome finished and looked at them.
Finally, though we were in a
very picturesque area, we did not take any pictures. The only reason I can imagine 30 years later,
is that the harmattan was blowing continually.
I have tried to download images (did not find any) and then a Google
Earth image showing Zing mountain, but without success.
Zing,
Nigeria, Sunday, 9 January, 1983
(HELENA)
At noon, Bill came to take us to their “wet garden”. It is set clear
away from the house (say a Km. or a little less) right over an underground
stream. He, a neighbor, and a hired gardener take care of it. It is a beautiful
garden because besides an assortment of vegetables, they have mango trees,
grapefruit, orange, and lemon trees, papayas (people here call then pawpaws).
Right now in dry season it is a green oasis in the midst of a brown countryside.
We picked some mangos (yum!) but they are all green (sniff).
Zing, Monday, 10 January, 1983
(DAN) Mr. Fitzgerald found out over the radio that he had to go to a
meeting in Jalingo, so we had to postpone our first day of work. More letters
and reading. We are certainly enjoying our placid, picturesque setting here.
Actually, we did take a long walk into town to visit the market. As we
walked out of the compound, the Fitzgerald dog, Diego, caught up with us and
led us into town. He was very well behaved, showed us all the short cuts and ignored
all the goats and sheep that we passed. The town itself has the air of a
village in transition. It has electricity and quite a few tin roofs. Probably
has a population of 3,000. On the way we passed the grade school which just
reopened after being closed a year due to teachers’ strikes. The teachers had not
been paid in three months, etc.
The market was not that complete, but cheap. Two types of beans, three
grains, peanuts, yams, sweet potatoes, onions and green peppers plus seasonings
and canned goods is the extent. Wednesday is market day, so there should be more.
Diego made sure that we got back safely before he went off on his own
business. On the way back he decided to cool off up to his chest in foul black
water. Fortunately, he did not then jump on us expecting instant affection.
Zing,
Tuesday, 11 January, 1983
(HELENA) Bill brought us some eggs just as we were finishing breakfast,
and I got up my nerve to offer to give music lessons and help with Calvert
Lessons. He said they would be glad for me to help Angie, their third grader,
with the guitar. Dan went out with him during the morning, something I shall
let Dan tell in more detail.
Zing, Wednesday, January 12, 1983
(DAN) Both yesterday and today I went out to Kakulu to begin work. Kakulu
Bible Institute is part of the system they have devised for the church here. It
is primarily a school to train “evangelistic couples”, husband and wife, to go
back to their communities to serve both as local pastors and agricultural
extensionists. The men who come have (in general) 0-2 years of formal schooling
and the women none. The program is on a six-year schedule, two years in, one
year out, two years back in and one year out. The course work is heavily
Christian education and ag/nutrition.
The property of the institute is especially interesting. It is located
in the bottom of a wide, gentle valley between granite hills. It was given to
the church by the local chief back in the early seventies, and at the time
there was no one living on it. This is amazing in itself because in this arid, infertile
area much of the property has an accessible water table 0-6 feet down which
has allowed them to grow many “wet season” crops -- bananas, citrus, and even
flood rice in the wetter areas.
That has meant large yields. I had a hard time believing that people
living here hundreds of years would not have made use of the water. I have
since gathered that because most of the soil in the area is sandy (weathered
granite) they only grow yams, and you cannot grow yams in wet soil. Also, I
suspect that this was an area of dry season grazing for the animals. Even now
it is overrun with cattle and goats that have helped in keeping back avocado
and cashew trees in the nursery, etc.
Yesterday Bill showed me around but specifically wanted me to look at a
problem they have with water standing in the tree nursery. The position of the
property with regard to slope of the surrounding land has great potential for
using the near surface ground water, but they have a lot of problem with
flooding and drainage in the rainy season. The nursery is not only at the
bottom of the slope, but at the mouth of a U-shaped slope. Today we started
surveying the land above to find the precise place to put in a diversion. But I
am getting ahead.
Yesterday after we looked at the site, we set off into town to visit the
government agencies to see if we could borrow a level and rod. Ministry of
Agriculture and Natural Resources did not have any but suggested we try Rural
Electrification. We tried them, but as far as they (the people sitting outside)
knew, they did not have one. As a last resort we tried the forestry office.
They supervise the cutting of the local eucalyptus reserves. No, they did not
have a level but did have a prismatic compass and a measuring chain. We decided
to borrow those in case somebody else would have the other things. When they
opened the cabinet to get the instrument, I saw that they had some cases that were
shaped like our good old hand levels. I asked the man if they were that, and he
said, “no, these are Abneys” (Abney Hand Levels). We borrowed one and a “200
meter tape” that surfaced as well.
Before we started surveying, I had a long talk with Pastor Peter, Bill
Fitz’s national codirector. He explained the program and some of the problems,
and then took me on a long walk that showed some new dimensions to the
water problem. At the bottom of the property there are two gullies that have
only formed since they have been cultivating the valley bottom. He showed me
places where it was too wet even to plant rice, and then showed me several of
their different soil types. They have all the way from an inert “lateritic”
sandy loam to black sandy clay and clay in spots. He then showed me the small
stream channel at the top of the property that then spreads out. Two years ago
they had a big rain and the water got channeled and started the gullies below. He
wanted to know if it was possible to dam the stream channel. (Mr. Fitz. had
already asked if it was feasible to put in fish ponds.) The entire property is
about 80 acres and runs from “those trees to those over there and then to the
road.”
We surveyed a while to get a feel of the instruments. We made a “rod” by
taking a white metal rod and putting black tape at my eye level. I sighted on
it with the hand level from pre-measured spots and will figure the altitude
changes from the slope and distance. Our “200 meter tape” turned out to be a 30
meter tape, and our chain is measured in yards! Fortunately, Mr. Fitz. has a 30
yard tape, and we shall just have to work in feet!
In the afternoon we went down, to work on the pump at the well house. It
is about 500 meters down the slope toward the wet garden. They have had this
diesel pump installed for a year, but it has never worked. For the time being
they pay women to carry water from there on their heads. A family of six uses a
lot of water!
The motor still worked, but water would not come out. One problem may be
that the pump is designed to pump water up from 23 feet at this altitude, and
they are trying to draw water from 21 1/2 feet. Any leak or blockage
would be enough to keep the motor from pulling it all the way. With
considerable difficulty we dismantled the entire pipe set-up and overhauled it.
The original collector valve was plastic, and they put on a metal replacement,
so we suspect that the valve may be too heavy for the pump. Ah yes, we did all
that with one pipe wrench and one vice grip. Mr. Fitz. dropped the other wrench
in the well earlier in the year.
Zing, Thursday 13 January, 1983
(HELENA) Yesterday I went to town with Ann. She stopped by her school to
talk with several people and to show me the premises. Normally, I would not comment
on a teachers’ lounge, but this one was a big, long room with about 20 desks in
it, one for each teacher. The desks were very close together and piled high
with each person’s papers. When they are not in class, they are expected to sit
there checking papers. Ann appears to do well in Hausa, and she takes on a
special accent and vocabulary in English when speaking to a Nigerian who does
not know much English. This school is a boarding school as most public
secondary schools are. Back in the good old oil days everything was
provided for the students, from food to uniforms to books. Now they are
gradually getting to where they cannot pay for much, but food and transport for
the boarding students are still provided. The girls get locked into their dorms
at night.
Back to Thursday, today, Dan and I went out to Kukulu together this morning.
Bill drove us out at 8:30, and we worked with surveying till noon. I would hold
the fixed end of the chain while Dan would find the next point by using his compass.
Then I’d hold the rod while Dan measured the slope and I would then write down
the data. I enjoyed it.
I had another lesson with Angie in the afternoon, and right before
supper I cut Dan’s hair and beard. I’m afraid it is getting hard to cut because
our hair is really dry these days, and thus Dan’s hair is not quite so curly.
Zing, Friday, 14 January 1983
(DAN) We put in another morning and finished the surveying. The problem
we are trying to solve is looking more complicated. What we set out to do was
to decide where to put the diversion, but it will not be that simple. Most of
the land we are surveying is planted to yams so is composed of row after row of
slightly eroded yam mounds. When they are first fashioned, they are nearly four
feet high and four across at the base. After a rainy season they melt down and
together to form a bank at least 3 feet from the channel to the ridge. (Ed: I hope they get some pictures to make
this clearer.) The effect is that of a field of terraces but with 4 feet
intervals instead of 100 feet. That should solve any erosion problems except
that the channels are not perpendicular to the slope but at an angle, and water
must run off rapidly in a rain. This could be deliberate as there appears to be
a ridge blocking the end of the channel, and there is rice stubble there.
However, I am sure that in a hard rain the water tops the ridge, concentrates
and runs onto the tree nursery. Considering the labor that goes into the acres
and acres of yam mounds, a little diversion would not be much trouble. But I
think that until the yam mounds are pointed in the “right direction”, a
diversion would be useless.
We also did a little calculating on what would be needed to dam the
stream. Based on figures that Mr. Fitz. has on rain for the last 6 years, a
wild guess at the watershed size and landslope, we would need a dam 14 feet
high, 300 feet long, and many more thousand cubic yards of earth than are moved
in a yam field.
Helena had another music lesson while Mr. Fitz. and I had a final bout
with the well and pump. We were settling into some of the last installations
when “Yours Truly” had one of his patented losses of concentration and dropped
the last pipe wrench into the well. It fell in slow motion, and entered the
water with a dignified thud and hardly a splash. I shall never forget Mr.
Fitzgerald’s harried expression as he said, “Sanook!” (the Hausa word for
“hello”, “wow”, “OK”, “way to go!”)
Possibly because I had never been in one before, I volunteered to drop
down the well and at least look for it --if they did not mind drinking the
water afterward. Mr. Fitz. reluctantly agreed, and we trekked back to the
compound to get a rope and swimming suit.
Going down was not too bad as there were ridges in the cement casings
where I could put my tender toes. Several lizards peering through the gloom did
nothing to put me at ease. The water was actually warmer than the harmattan
environment; besides, I needed a bath. We figure that it was 17 feet to the
water and 10 more to the bottom. The first two trips to the bottom brought up
two buckets that had “slipped” in the past. It took three more dives to find
the wrench and four more to decide that the other wrench had either rusted out
or been silted over.
Getting out was easier than we had feared. The nylon (owee!) rope was
long enough to reach me doubled, so I hauled myself up and sat in the loop; Mr.
Fitz. pulled on the loose end, and I pulled on the side tied to the motor. Next
thing we knew, I was drying off.
We went to the Fitzgeralds’ again for supper: sweet and sour pork and
chocolate meringue pie for dessert. Afterwards we played games until it got
late.
Oh yes, we got the pump completely reassembled, and it still did not
work! It looks as if they will have to trade pumps with another station. Since
the other pump is electric, they will have to take electricity all the way down
to the well.
Zing, Saturday, 15 January
(HELENA) When Ann got back from her 7:00 radio date, I made banana
pancakes while she took a bath. After breakfast, she showed us how to feed her
chickens (with five chickens, she is getting 3 eggs per day) and Lady, her dog,
and she left for Jalingo to pick someone up. She will not be back till tomorrow.
It felt good to get the guitar out this afternoon and review some of the
old repertoire.
Mother recently asked what we were wearing these days. Dan mainly wears
his painter’s jeans with tee shirts or khaki shirts and saves his khaki pants and green plaid shirt for crossing
borders and getting visas. Everywhere we have gone, I have mainly worn my jeans
and tee shirt to travel in (always with my boots, since there is no room to
pack them) and wear my blue wraparound skirt on ordinary city days. Pants are
definitely frowned upon here for women (as they were in Orodara) but I have
worn them to work in the field. I try to save my blue flowered skirt for good,
but it gets used pretty often. One thing for sure, this harmattan cools things
off more than we expected, so I use my Indiana sweat shirt a lot and Dan
has a hard time finding a good time to wash his one long-sleeved (khaki) shirt.[1]
Zing, Sunday, 16 January, 1983
After church we went up town to look for a mill. Last week we bought a
measure of white grain sorghum but did not have much success either boiling or
toasting it. We decided to buy a measure of corn and have them both ground into
flour. We had seen at least four of small
mills in what we saw of the town. They use the flour to make the stiff porridge
similar to what we ate a lot in Upper Volta. There it was “tow” and here it is
“tuo”.
For lunch we were over at the Fitzgeralds’ again. This time it was
barbecued chicken (their own) and ribs (from the morning pig) scalloped potatoes
and real lemon meringue pie. We are really getting fortified for another
bout of road-street fare.
We spent a quiet afternoon writing, working on the diversion design, and
reading. Ann never did get back. We had
some of the flour in “Indian Corn Pone” (More With Less) and more of our
famous beans. Good fare!
Zing,
Monday, 17 January, 1983
(HELENA) Several days ago Ann had invited the Fitzgeralds over to have
Nigerian food on Monday. She does not really know how to fix it, so she had
asked Eden (pronounced “Aiden”) to do it. Since Ann had not returned, he first
decided not to go ahead, but she apparently talked with Bill Fitz. on the radio
and asked him to go ahead with it. Eden is a man with nine children (he lives
in town) who has worked at this “station” since he was 12. So, even though he
has had only a couple of years of schooling, he has excellent English that he
has learned from all of the missionaries. Ann and the Fitzgeralds share the
cost of his salary since he washes their clothes and cleans their houses
(occasionally for Ann and regularly for the Fitzgeralds).
So Eden worked on lunch all morning. The first thing he did was to sharpen
a knife --and slice a tiny piece off his finger. I’m just glad he could run over
next door because I would not have felt too confident doctoring. Lunch was tuo and mia. For the tuo Eden had
mashed a yam in the tacú (mortar and
pestle) until it was a uniform, sticky mass. The mia was a soupy sauce with spinach and pieces of yesterday’s pork.
He used palm oil. He had apparently not
used so much as usual since there was not a film of oil on top. Eden had done
the cooking on the wood stove, so although there were not many dishes, there
were a lot of pots--BLACK pots. Mother, when you used a wood stove, did it
blacken your pots? Ann says that her grandmother’s did not.
Ann tells us that the Nigerian government hires
many teachers from India and the Philippines. They give them housing, pay for
their trip over, and give them a good salary. Ann’s school has several of
them. In the five years she has been
here she has also worked with VSO’s (British volunteers) and young Nigerians
doing the equivalent of a year in the provinces, but never with a Nigerian
woman. They do work in primary schools but never in the upper forms.
Ann says she remembers meeting our parents in
Allentown in 1977. That was before her
first term here. Do you remember a very
short, young woman with short dark hair and glasses? She says people in churches she visits ask
“Are you the missionary?” because she is so small and young looking.
At the risk of saying that all Helena does is
talk about food, I must not forget to add that Dan and I took advantage of the
wood stove and made some corn chips using the More With Less
recipe. Dan mixed them up using our corn
flour and sorghum flour. One batch naturally had to burn up, but the rest are
definitely edible. We’d like to make up some to travel with.
Zing, Tuesday, 18 January,
1983
(DAN) Today was unexpected. We woke up thinking
that I might go out to Kakulu to start working on the diversion. Mr. Fitz. had
said that they would try to get a government tractor at least to start disking
the area to be worked. Instead, he decided that he had better go to the church
meetings in Jalingo. The plane flew in to pick up the local honchos, and as he
headed over to the strip to catch it, he asked me if I could get the pump ready
to send. They had switched pump engines with Bambur, and it needed to be
disassembled to take back on the plane.
When Eden finished with the washing, we put the
electric motor in a wheelbarrow along with a tool box and trudged down the hill
to the pump house. We disconnected the diesel engine easily enough but could
not even lift it off its moorings between the two of us. Mr. Fitz. had arranged
for Pastor Peter to drive out to pick it up in the land cruiser pick-up, so we
decided to wait till there were more people.
During the night Ann had gotten violently sick
and was down on her back. She was supposed to attend a staff meeting at school
to discuss the school postponement. Helena had been to her school before, so we
drove her car into town to inform the proper authorities. This being the first time I had driven in
Africa (aside from taking pictures of elephants) we made sure we took my international
driver’s license along. It was a good thing, as there were policemen at many of
the intersections.
In the meantime Carol Richart (who is from
Nebraska) had arrived with Natalie Mohr (the German nurse we met in Jos) so
Ann’s house was really crawling with everybody except Ann.
Pastor Peter was a couple of hours late and had
still not appeared with the pick-up, so Mrs. Fitzgerald asked me to drive their
new $33,000 Land Cruiser out to Kakulu to look for him. It was not until we saw
the first policeman that I realized I did not have my driver’s license on me
any more. He just waved me through, but
I had visions of his pulling me over to make conversation and wanting to see
permission, etc., followed by impounding of the precious car, etc. On our way back I really thought I had bought
it because he motioned for me to stop; however as soon as a car passed, he
motioned me through.
He was just directing traffic--whew!
Eden says that the policemen are all out
because there was going to be a big political pow-wow with four state governors
participating on their way from Jalingo to Yola.
Pastor Peter had followed us back, so along
with four neighborhood boys, we went down to pick up the pump. Not quite so
simple. The well is out in the middle of a yam field which I have described
before as resembling a field full of continuous terraces. Well, instead of
going down till he was on a contour with the well, he turned into the field as
soon as we got there. He drove on the contour until he was 100 yards uphill
from the well and drove straight down over the yarn mounds.
With some effort we got the motor loaded. He
did not want anyone to get in the back with the motor, so the first time he
went up and over a mound, the motor turned over and started spurting diesel all
over the place. We righted it and then two of us held it in place as he went
uphill over all the yam mounds till the edge of the field. Then he turned on the contour and drove to
the road. We drained the motor and cleaned it so that when the plane came
winging in, we loaded it right on.
The plane is a Cessna one-engine 5-seater. I wonder if it was assembled and flown out of
good old Strother Field![2]
Ann says that even today the people around here
and especially farther south still practice human sacrifice at some point each
year. They kidnap random strangers and perform “rituals” on them. This year it
happened to a professor from the U. of Jos. (Ed:
Makes us parents feel nice and secure.)
There have been festivities around here
associated with the traditional animist beliefs of the area. There has been a
lot of music and dancing every night, and one evening they burned the grass up
and around Zing Mountain as part of the festivities. It can be very beautiful
to watch from our vantage point, but the harmattan was too thick.
Today was the first day that we have had
visibility of more than one km. From any given point one could see many granite
outcroppings, inselbergs, and balanced rocks jutting out of the rolling brown
hills. Aside from the drums the music
here at night sounds more like flutes rather than the
balaphone sound that was never far away in
Upper Volta.
Zing, Thursday, 20 January,
1983
(DAN)
The day got off to a slow start.
First, it was wash day, and Ann’s small washing machine would not work.
Finally Eden went over and washed at the Fitz’s. After an hour or so I decided
that Mr. Fitz. would not have work to do.
When I finally got to scraping paint in our bathroom, he appeared, not
to work on the pump or the diversion, but to build rabbit cages. They have been
having a lot of trouble with ear mites that lodge in wood of the old cages. He
had bought large sheets of 2” soldered wire mesh and was cutting them with an
electric wire cutter. We worked nearly straight through until it got dark. We
cut 20 cages worth.
About 1700 hrs Pastor Peter came by with
another man who turned out to be one of the striking government tractor
drivers. We took him out to the institute and showed him what we had in mind
for the diversion. On the trip back into town we found that the postmaster is
striking as well, also because he had not been paid. The high school still has
not started up as the food contractors all over the state, or maybe it is the
nation, have not been given money for food. The administration claims that the
only reason there is no school is that the students have not shown up. We have
voiced the opinion that in Bolivia the high schools seem to get by without
feeding the students, but of course it is deeper than that. Back when there was
still oil money, a wide “busing” policy was instituted. To combat tribalism,
students, including those who live in towns with high schools are transported
to other parts of the state and boarded, all at the expense of the State. Now
the state cannot afford this, but now "it is the only way to go".
Zing – Jalingo, Nigeria, Friday, 21 January, 1983
(HELENA) Since we knew this was our last day in
Zing, Dan and I decided to climb Zing Mountain. We were on our way by 6:30, and
it felt good to be out in the early morning and MOVING. The dust in the air was
not too bad, but it was far from clear. It is only a short way because we
climbed the rocks as far as we could (Dan a bit farther than I), walked down a
different side of the mountain, walked through a couple of compounds where Dan
took pictures of some different types of grain storage bins, and were back for
breakfast by 7:30. For breakfast we tried a dish which is a family tradition of
Ann's, eggs poached in milk poured over
bread.
 |
Grain storage bins on granite boulders. Near Zing, Nigeria
|
Around the base of the mountain we saw
countless stones that I at first thought had been hollowed out by standing
pools of water. Later, I had to admit that Dan was probably right in thinking
that who people used to live there and had hollowed them out by grinding on
them.
The last morning of our stay the tractor man
came, and Dan and Bill rushed over to dig the diversion. I really wish I could
have seen it. Dan seemed pretty pleased, and since yesterday was a very
fruitful day, we left on a good note.
Even before they left to dig the diversion, Dan
climbed inside Ann’s big water tank to help Bill remove the pipe that leads to
the spigot. It had been leaking, so they were trying to fix it somehow.
Lunch over at Fitz’s: she outdid herself again
with lasagna (naturally with homemade noodles) and apple pie. (Ed: I am forced to concede in the pie
department. Barbara Fitzgerald has baked more pies in one week than I did in 33
years in Bolivia.) Now, apple pie may not sound all
that special to you, but people here simply cannot get apples. She had used
some of the precious dehydrated apples she had brought from the USA.
Ann went with us to the road to see us off. She
really was an amazing hostess. Angie and Diego (Fitz’s dog) came down to join
her, and it really surprised me to see Angie crying. Ann had said that she is
pretty lonely and that she would really appreciate any special attention I
would give her. She has so much responsibility with the younger kids that she
needs that special attention.
The van that we flagged looked full, but they
managed to get us and our bags in. We were pleasantly surprised at the
reasonable speed our driver took --probably a pace forced by the load and the
condition of the van. Once we thought we were goners because it started to
sputter as we went up a hill. The driver simply turned around and went back to
get gas. Fortunately we were right at a place to buy petrol.
We arrived in Jalingo, where we had spent the
night once after our trip down from Jos with Charles, after a short and
pleasant trip. Ann had drawn us a map, so we set off walking toward Carol and
Fred Richarts’ home. Before long we met him in their van and got a ride the
rest of the way.
We chatted a bit with them, and then Fred drove
us over to Charles’ for a glass of eggnog.
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