26. Nigeria: The last of great white hunters

                                                                

The post title is a reference to the hunt for a lion starting on the 28th of January.

 

Jalingo-Bauchi, Nigeria, Tuesday, 25 January, 1983

(HELENA) Carol drove us to the truck park, and we got a van that left without much delay even though they of course left only when it was CHOCK FULL. We got to Gombe safely, but we had to change vehicles there. Our driver sold us to another driver, but we soon found that his van MIGHT have held two more passengers, but certainty not two more plus two big packs. He proceeded to sell us to another driver who was very displeased (to say the least) to take on our packs. He tried to argue his way out of it very long and loudly (it is at times like this that I would LOVE to understand Hausa) but we eventually packed ourselves into the back seat of the van. That one held 18 passengers plus the driver.

We arrived in Bauchi sometime after 1400 hrs. Next step was to find the house of Lionel, the French volunteer who had picked us up in Niamey for our one truly successful hitchhiking stint. We were not in much of a mood to go traipsing around in search of the place, so we tried time after time to get a taxi to take us. No one seemed to know the location --except one driver who wanted to charge us way too much. Finally someone kindly told us to try our luck around the corner. The very first taxi we flagged knew where to go and took us for a reasonable price. A very courteous driver.  Unfortunately he knew the general vicinity of the government housing but not the reference place that Lionel had given us. We finally just got down, and once again Dan set off while I waited with the stuff.

Once again Dan’s talent showed through because he returned half an hour later, having found Lionel’s house. He had decided to ask a group of young men, and they turned out to be his students. “Oh, you mean the one with the big machine” (motorcycle motions) and indicated the house.

Luckily Lionel was there, but Dan was MOST disappointed that his friend, Nicole, had already returned to France[1]. Lionel was just on his way out to play tennis. When I returned with Dan, there was only a young woman there. She was preparing a lot of food for a party that they had planned for that evening.

I do not know if I can do the party justice because it was SOMETHING! It was being held at the house that Lionel shares with three other young Frenchmen doing their alternate military service. Now, all of them are of French nationality, but we discovered later that one is of Armenian parentage and one is half Armenian. As we sat there waiting, another young Frenchman drove up on a motorcycle. He turned out to be married to the young woman who was preparing the food. She is here just to visit; she is of Armenian blood, her parents live in Lebanon, and she is French. Anyway, we were installed in their darkroom, where we were to sleep, until Lionel came to pick us up for the party.

I had expected it to be a party for people of about the same age, but no. Let me describe those who came besides the five men and one woman already mentioned. (Dan tells me that the Armenian fellow also has his parents in Lebanon.) First to arrive was a couple, probably approaching forty. He is Armenian and she is Russian.  The Nigerians hired him to teach science at the Polytechnic (where most of those present teach) for two years. They had had to leave their two children behind, and at least he had no desire to be here. His English was very difficult for us to understand, so I should hate to imagine how it would be for a Nigerian.

Next to arrive was another very beautiful French girl, Claire, who turned out to be only 13. Her father teaches in a French-Nigerian school, and they have been here five years, in Peru one year, and she was born in Laos. This was sort of a farewell for her and the young French/Armenian/Lebanese woman. Claire’s school had had to shut down for lack of students. She was quite charming, and amazingly enough, appealed to both Dan and me.

Last of all was another middle-aged couple with an exotic origin; they were Turkish Soviets from Azerbaidjan. They had been here six years and seemed to accept the situation more than the others. So, there were thirteen of us “at table”, and what a wild combination! As we ate the different courses --Lebanese cold soup of yogurt and cucumber with flat bread, delicious ham pizza, couscous with chicken sauce, and fruit salad-- there was a constant stream of conversation in varying combinations of languages. The only language everyone had in common was English, but the two of us were the only ones fluent in it. The young people talked among themselves in French. The first couple talked with the two Armenians in Armenian, with the half Armenian contributing a few halting phrases. Then the two older couples would talk to each other in Russian. Of course Dan and I had to talk a little in Spanish so that we would not feel left out. Claire could speak a little Spanish, too, so…..

                                                           Bauchi - Jos, Nigeria, Wed., January 26, 1983

(DAN) Lionel and another of the Frenchmen commute to the Ag. campus (60 kms) every day, so they invited us to breakfast and offered to drive us to the taxi park on the way. Today’s van left with only 8 passengers, so we had a nearly sedate trip through to Jos. Once we arrived, however, the driver made us get down at the extreme north end of town. Sprite, the UM-SUM compound, is several km out on the south side of town. First I tried calling by phone. I found six businesses that had telephones, but not one would let me use it. I offered to pay and let them do the dialing, but they simply would not. There has been too much abuse, I guess. Jos is large, 300,000-500,000 population, and we really did not know where we were nor where Mr. Ottemoeller (Mr. O) lived, nor where he wanted us to stay. Finally we had to “park” Helena and the bags, and I took a taxi to Sprite. Lois had just left, and though Mrs. Fitzgerald was in the guesthouse, she had none of the phone numbers. Finally the maid let me into Lois’s house, and I found a number for Elm House. A woman answered, but said the O’s have no phone, but that she would see him that evening and tell him we were in town. I then taxied back to Helena, and then we took a taxi back out to Sprite. There does not appear to be a cheaper way to get around here -- no buses.

Mr. O did not arrive until about 1600, and then we worked on the Unimog (drum roll, please) so we had a look at the hostel and at the kids (blond teenagers running around and speaking English). Mr. O  is about 5’ 10”, burly, 60 with a trimmed white beard. He has been in Nigeria since 1948 save a couple of years in Selma, Alabama. He was a farm boy from Grand Island, Nebraska. There was another man there to work on the vehicle, Jan Pastor. They were getting the Unimog ready for a hunting expedition. Jan is from Czechoslovakia and is head of the dept. of geology at the University of Jos.

Mr. O and the Unimog.

The Unimog is about 8 feet high, 14 years old, German (Mercedes Benz) and painted yellow, blue, black, and olive green. It says L-W-R in front because it was originally used by the Lutheran World Relief to distribute food during the Biafran War. It was sold and bought again by Mr. O to carry food around Niger during the Sahelian drought in the seventies.  He has two ex-Nigerian Army Unimogs around that he uses for spare parts. It has 24” of clearance because its wheels are offset. In other words each wheel has an individual gear box that connects the axle to the wheels. It took about 2 hours to remove the starter and exchange it for one from one of the spare Unimogs. He keeps the vehicle for hauling and for his work with the Fulanis. It also makes a rather nice hunting vehicle.

When we got to their house in Dogon Dutse (tall rock) it turned out to be about a km from where Helena was parked 9 hours and three taxi rides before.  It is a unique place with granite boulders sprinkled about.  Jos is an old tin-mining town. All of the mission compounds and dorms we have seen were bought from old mining companies, so that is why they have nice landscaping and Elm House has a swimming pool. I guess that the explosions we hear periodically are from the bit of mining that is still done here.

Dogon Dutse, the Lutheran compound in Jos.

Mrs. O is ten years younger, from California (originally from Arkansas but moved in the thirties) tall and stately. They have five (of course) children all through college but the youngest. They have a  4 room house in a big Lutheran compound. There is an empty guesthouse across the way where we shall be staying. They are recently arrived, so things are still in the air as to how long we shall be here.

                                                                                  Jos, Thursday, 27 January, 1983

(HELENA) Mrs. O (Mary) had invited me to go walking with her and Molly, a CUSO

volunteer who lives in another house at the Lutheran compound, so I got up at 5:45 in the cold and dark, and we went walking around one of the two stone mountains that almost meet at one end of the compound. They take the same route every day, and it takes about half an hour, so I think I shall join them as long as I am here. It gives the day a good start, even though it is hard to go out so early into the cold wind.

Dan went on a trip with Mr. O.  Since our days will be different and separate, I think we shall  both have to write a bit every day. Horrors!

I accompanied Mrs. O to a Bible study for some 15 women. It was held in the home of a Lebanese woman (well-to-do, naturally) and most of the women who came were missionaries from different denominations plus a couple of Nigerian women and a couple of wives of men who work with different companies. Mrs. O says she goes mainly because she would not see those women otherwise.

On the way back to Dogon Dutse we stopped at the market to buy some melon seeds, ground hot pepper, and “green leaves” for the Nigerian dish she was fixing for some new missionaries. She and another young missionary were having this new family over for supper. The melon seeds are ground up and used for thickening, as with peanut sauce.

(DAN) When Mr. O got back from the States, he found that “his veterinary worker, Simon Peter”, had gone down to work in the Fulani area for a couple of days and was 8 days overdue. The family was worried, so he promised to go down to look for him. There is not only the ever-present worry about possible highway accidents, but also the ugly business with this Vet official of the area[2]. The trip is more than 300 kms, one way, much of it over sandy tracks. The Unimog is better with sand but slow on the highway, and since we wanted to go and come in a day, we took the VW beetle (Brazilian, naturally). It is the area where we may work with the dams in the farthest east part of Plateau State, about 100 kms south of the Yankari game preserve and 100 kms west of Jalingo. Not too far from Pero. It is in the Emirate of Wase.  

We left at 0700 and went to pick up Simon Peter’s brother to do the talking. The road is on the plateau as far as Pankshin, and then drops fairly abruptly into the Benue-Pai basin. The 2 km hill at the edge of the plateau has around 20 wrecks spread near the downhill curves, and those are only the ones that were too far gone for spare parts.

We checked with the police at Langtang and Wase, but none knew anything about Simon Peter.  From Wase we continued on the track to a couple of Fulani villages and asked again. Yes, they had seen Simon Peter as recently as four days before but thought he had headed toward the Benue river. At the same time Mr. O made extensive inquiries about three lions that have been “terrorizing” one of the USAID dams in the area. Yes, they had killed four more cattle since his last trip. Mr. O has verbal permission to shoot the lions though they are “protected” here in Nigeria. He is planning to come down in the Unimog tomorrow to go after them. Apparently he made quite a splash in the papers when he shot a man-killing lion near Jos last year. He has invited me to come along.

We skidded to two more villages and narrowed the last sighting of Simon Peter to two days ago; however Mr. O wanted to get back for the welcoming dinner, so we headed back about 1400.

Wase and Langtang are interesting towns. On the inside they are similar to the older parts of Kano, miles and miles of winding lanes with mud buildings and urban sheep. They are both small emirates and were important in the history of Hausa-Fulani civilization.

Brasilia really did itself proud with this particular beetle. We skidded around the rutted roads till we got to the pavement and roared off with the best. The area is one of the most isolated in Nigeria so should be fun for workingBlue dots indicate the trip with the Brazilian VW beetle.  Red dots the hunting trip with the Unimog. The yellow dots are trips we had made over the previous two weeks.

                                                                                              Jos, Friday, 28 January, 1983

(DAN) The morning was spent in preparation for the hunt. There were three people going, plus me: Mr. O, Jan Pastor, and Roger Samuel. “Roger” is a story in himself. He has a degree in architecture from Kansas State University[3] and knew Dr. Bidwell circa 1952. When Dr. Bidwell was here in the summer, Roger had him and the O’s over for a meal, and that is how all this got started. He is in charge of some big construction company here. He has a chalet in Greece where he and his third wife live.  He provides the “chop” (as they say here in Brittish West Africa) for these expeditions, and I happened to pack the chop box: 3 cans of Campbell’s lentil soup, 5 cans of chicken casserole, 3 cans of fancy beef stew, 3 cans of pate de fois gras, a bottle of whiskey, one of brandy (medicinal, no doubt), a “tin” of pineapple, one of pie cherries, one dozen eggs, and a kilo box of Kleenex. The cheapest item was the pate at $3 per can. Oh yes, a can of ham. The O’s provided cocoa, coffee, milk, detergent, etc. There was quite an arsenal consisting of 5 rifles, two large enough to hunt elephants, and two shot guns.

We loaded the sturdy stuff into the back of the Unimog and the more delicate into Roger’s bright yellow Nissan Patrol. The Unimog is quite a mutt in its old age. The bed is from a Daihatsu, the passenger seat frame from a Land Rover, though one has to sit on a straw tick in lieu of foam. I rode in the U. with Mr. O and the other two rode in the Nissan. We finally pulled out at 1400 hours. Just before we left Mr. O found out that the government policy on shooting lions had changed; somebody had verbal permission to kill a lion and had only wounded it. The person had subsequently refused to be responsible for the resulting damage, so now one must have written permission. The purpose of the hunt was changed to going for buffalo, rather than try to get written permission.

The change in objectives meant that we headed for a site farther north of the dam area and much closer to Yankari game preserve. This is dry season, so we were going to head for the Pai river and find a swamp where animals are forced to go at this time of year. I must admit that as I rode along astride the powerful throbbing diesel animal, the caveman inside me considered the demise of a buffalo or roan antelope at my hands. I hesitate to call the expedition a Safari. You see, my stained army surplus shirt was the only stitch of khaki in sight!

We spent the night in a village between Bashar and Zurate in a building that used to be the center of Yankari (game preserve) before it was reduced to a fourth of its size a few years back. Now the village is on the edge of the reserve[4]. We had our first meal from the chop box, the pate.

                                                                       Near the Pai River, Saturday, January 29, 1983

The Last of the Great White Hunters

The dawn broke softly and crept into the room along with the dust from the harmattan. Jan awakened, rolled over and coughed politely. 15 minutes later he rolled again and coughed louder. After a while he sat up, stretched, coughed--nothing. About an hour later Mr. O sat up in his sleeping bag and said, “Well, it looks like Alabama isn’t gonna take this one” as he took an ear-plug from his ear and turned up the unmistakable sounds of Armed Forces Radio[5]. They’re down by 12 with four minutes to go.” But before we could find out the finish, radio Moscow broke through. It is an inescapably small world.

We spooned down some oatmeal for breakfast, and then reorganized our mounds of gear under the watchful eyes of 32 townsmen. We were only taking the Unimog “in bush”. Before we left we picked up two local hunters who were commissioned to show us to the game marshes. We drove 19 miles over a track to Zurat and then south the same distance over a winding motorcycle path. From there we turned up a draw and bounced cross country through some very closed savannah. The Unimog is especially protected for going over logs and knocking over young trees.  Most of the area was burned, but where it was not burned, the grass was about ten feet high or just under our eye level sitting on the vehicle.

On the way we raised a covey (?) of guinea fowl, and Jan brought down three with two blasts from a shot gun. After a very rough hour, the guide had us stop and prepare to go on by foot. We checked the rifles, passed around the ammunition, and then chopped  -- bread and ham.

Jan, the shorter guide and I struck out in one direction while the other three spread out in another. We were not out two minutes when Jan saw two antelope. He hit one from about 100 yards, miss-fired, and then missed. They both got away. We waited for almost three more hours but never saw anything else. We saw plenty tracks of buffalo, antelope, elephant dating from the rainy season, but not much else. We never did find the marsh that these men said we would. It was all upland.

When we all got back to the Unimog, we boarded and continued east another 7 miles across country to the Pet River. However there was a large Fulani camp on the shore and signs of many cattle, so we headed back into the hinterland to camp. Jan and I cleaned two of the guinea fowl and made a MOST delicious stew with onions he had brought. We gave the third fowl to the guides, and they cleaned it but they would not eat it because it was killed by a non-Muslim. There is infinite firewood in the area so we had a rip-roaring fire. Jan, aside from Czech, German, English and several of the Slavic languages has also picked up a lot of Hausa, so he did all of the communicating[6]. He reminds me so much of Kruno, my Yugoslavian (now Croatian) roommate at KSU, his build, smile and serious honesty.

                                                                                   "The bush", Sunday, January 30, 1983

The “bush” campsite.

(DAN) It took a long time to get off again in the morning. Without packing anything we set out walking again with the same groups. Once again it was exhilarating to walk through the brush, trees and grass, constantly watching for movement. Again we saw a lot of tracks including what our guides said were giraffe tracks. They are supposed to be extinct from this area of Nigeria. We passed some elephant wallows where the clay soil had really been mixed and then left with huge tracks about 1 foot in diameter. Walking in the entire area is difficult because the surface over large areas has been disturbed by some kind of small animal that makes millions of small stacks that look like giant worm castings when the soil is wet in rainy season. This forms a brittle light crust about 6 inches thick that one breaks through with every step. All the while we were raising silt dust and brushing against burned logs, grass, etc. so that the soot and dust combined to make us as filthy as I have ever been.

After two hours we were giving up when Jan spotted another small antelope. He shot and killed it from 150 yards. Unfortunately he had used one of the elephant guns and the bullet blew a hole 4 inches in diameter from one flank to the other. Not so exhilarating. The guide ran ahead and ‘killed it according to Muslim law”, meaning he cut a wedge out at the neck and said a prayer to Allah.

We had a long way to drive that day, so we headed back to the vehicle. I think that everyone was pretty disappointed as Jan was the only one who even got a shot off. It took us 3 hours of cross country driving to get back to the Nissan. The crowd gathered to watch the transfer of gear again. They did not hide their amusement at the lack of success in the venture.

Mr. O asked if I wanted to drive the Unimog back to the pavement. Once we got there, he told me to keep driving, and I ended up driving all the way home. I must admit that though it was hard work, it was a lot of fun. Once on the highway its top speed is 43 mph, so you have to force the accelerator which gets very tiring after a few hours. It was challenging to handle it in the hilly areas as well as the volatile evening traffic once we got to Jos. I think I’ll look into buying one next time I have a spare $40,000. Oh yes, the brake does not work unless you pump it twice, but it has been like that since the Biafran War, Mr. O says, so I guess you get used to it. It can make your heart do imaginative things when you are charging along in 6th gear, a taxi pulls around you and decides to stop suddenly, and you do not slow the first time the brake goes down.

(HELENA) Since it would not have been too proper for a woman to go along, I stayed home with Mrs. O. In the afternoon we went ever to Sprite where I finally picked up the package of orange tea that had gone from Elm House to Ottemoellers’ to Christine Anders’ and finally to me. In the meantime everyone knew we had a package of tea, and we could not imagine who might have sent it. The actual sender (my ex-roommate, Sue) was far from anyone we had thought of.

In the evening we drove over to the teachers’ housing for the University of Jos, not far from here, really. First we visited with Avis, a young British woman who teaches in the special education department and whom we had seen that morning. She had told us that she would talk to the blind Nigerian professor (Paul) to see if he had anything that I could read off onto tapes for him. He is the head of the department. Avis lives with her little 8-month-old daughter and another British woman. Meanwhile, her husband is studying in England.

Paul did have a pamphlet and a book for me to record, so I have my work cut out for me for awhile.

My weekend was nice and peaceful although I missed being with Dan. On Sunday we went to the baturi (white folks) service at Hillcrest school where I got to see some of our

U. Methodist friends, and then we were invited to have lunch at Elm House. The Ottemoellers were in charge of the dorm for 9 years, so the kids are very fond of them. 

                                                                                  Jos, Monday, 31 January, 1983

(HELENA) I spent some of the day reading a pamphlet to the tape recorder, but I did not get too far due to the erratic Jos electricity (it often goes off or is quite weak, and in some cases surges through so strongly that it trips a switch that is set to turn things off in case of a surge). We (Mrs. O and I) spent part of the morning washing clothes. They use the set-up that the guest compound has, a small washer that has a tiny part for spinning clothes, followed by a rinse in a tub and a go through an old wringer.

At about 16:30 the hunters came over to clean their guns, and I guess Dan cleaned his first gun (dubious honor).  Dan and I spent a good while cleaning out the food trunk that they had taken. They had used very little of all of the fancy stuff that Roger’s wife had sent with them. Of the dozen eggs they had taken, there were exactly 3 unbroken ones, so you can tell what a rough ride the Unimog took.

It is so neat to listen to Mrs. O switch over to her Nigerian English when she is talking to a Nigerian or telling a story. It is a bit sing-songy, leaves out a few articles, and separates words pretty clearly, aside from having a different accent.

Saturday night I went over to the main guest house on the compound and played the piano for a bit. The lights were off, so I took a portable bottled gas lamp. It was awful! Actually my performance was better than I expected, but the piano is the most out of tune I have EVER heard and the action was bad. It was a little hard to thank her for the use with a good comment. The same happened the next day when we had lunch at Elm House. It was a little Wurlitzer. BUT.... I have been enjoying the guitar that Ann lent us.  She sent it from Zing when the Fitzgeralds came up.

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[1] I can no longer picture Nicole, but she was stunning enough that a year later I named my first car Nicole, after her.

[2] The details I no longer remember, but it meant that the volunteer stint that we had set up over a number of months, and a main reason for taking the West African route, eventually fell through completely.

[3] Where I was studying at the time, and Dr. Bidwell my advisor and friend who had spent some years as an exchange professor in Nigeria.

[4] Having spent much of the rest of my life helping to set up protected areas in Bolivia, Peru and Brazil it seems tragic that in my lifetime a rare game reserve would have been made smaller.  I think that only a few years later it would have been possible to keep the original size, but create zones where the outer zones permitted use of the resources, but still allowed for conservation.  In retrospect what we were doing was helping to hunt out the animals that might have still been around from the time of its larger extension.  As it was we did not see much game.

[5] Our father, an avid sports fan, always found a way to follow US sports on AFR, no matter how remote our parents’ posting was.

[6] It seems odd in retrospect that he would know more Hausa than Mr. O with 34 years in country, but it is not without precedent.