Jos, Nigeria, Wednesday, 2 February, 1983
(HELENA) I
started the day much the same as the others by taking a walk with Mrs. O and
Molly. We have moved it from 6:15 to 6:00 because it is getting light sooner
and it is getting a bit warmer. One of the topics of conversation that has come
up often is the aliens that are getting thrown out of the country. It is especially the Ghanaians who are in
such trouble. I cannot imagine that their figures can be accurate: a million
showing up on the doorstep of their country of 7 million persons when that
country is already in deep trouble.
Today we
decided we should be moving on since no volunteer work was materializing. Mr. O
never did come out completely and say what made him decide not to go ahead with
the dam project in the Fulani area. Much of it was that Simon Peter still has
not shown up, and he was reluctant to start a new project in an area where
employees were disappearing. I try not to get high expectations, but it was
very disappointing to me when I realized that we should move on, and there was
no hope with the project.
We were
therefore feeling a bit low at the end of the day when Mr. O showed up with a
few very welcome letters. Most important was Maureen’s letter that we have been
awaiting ever since we did not see her for Christmas in Niamey. It turned out that she had gotten sick with
hepatitis and had gotten held up. Having news about her really perked us up and
made us determine to see about gamma globulin shots as soon as possible.
Jos,
Thursday, 3 February, 1983
(HELENA) Dan
and I started out very ambitiously by washing our sleeping bags. We have not
slept in them quite every night for the last four months, but certainly it has
been most nights, and they are getting a bit dirty. They were heavy and hard to
handle, but I am sure not nearly so much as most. They dried quickly, and we had nice, fluffy,
like-new sleeping bags. We did it in two big oval tubs that the mission has.
Dan rode
into town to find out about our gamma globulin shots and to make a few
purchases. Fortunately the nurse at Hillcrest said she could give them to us
for N 7. Dan returned by taxi so that we could get that washing done before
Paul came for me to read to him.
Paul came by
about 11:00 and we spent a couple of hours together on term papers, with me
reading, him listening and giving a grade. It was disappointing to see that quite
at bit of the work had been copied from student to student. That particular
class is made up of primary teachers with several years of experience behind
them. Now they are taking a year of study to better their salary rate. The
language was FASCINATING! They would get their ideas across in such strange
ways, often with complicated words but with incorrect constructions.
In the
afternoon, Dan and I took a taxi to the terminus in the center of town and a
van to Hillcrest[1]. We
had to wait a bit, but the nurse gave us the shots quickly. The actual prick
was not painful, but after a couple of seconds it was painful.
We then
walked to Sprite, the UM compound to say goodbye to Lois Kohler, Christine,
Lois Schmidt, and the Fitzgerald family. We happened to run into Ben
Hilton, the son of a doctor who used to be here with the U. Methodists. He (Ben)
lived in Nigeria for some 14 years. He was heading for Calabar on Monday, the
day we planned to, so we decided to see about traveling together.
Jos, Friday, 4 February, 1983
(DAN) Clotheswashing day. It has been
several weeks since we have done our laundry by hand because everyone we have
stayed with in Nigeria has had a washing machine. Time to get back into shape. We have a lot of
preparations to complete before we head on to two months more of travel, so
we are giving ourselves 4 days more and then on to Calabar. We need to get
visas for Cameroon, and it is rumored that they can be obtained in Calabar. If
not, we shall have to go to the infinitely notorious Lagos.
One of our
preparations is to get together enough currency to make it safely to Kolwezi,
in southern Zaire. Mr. O did us a very
big favor of selling us $200 of Naira and
$40 of CFA (the currency in Cameroon and other Central African nations), some Belgian Francs and pounds
sterling. Theoretically that, with what we already had, will drop us into
Kolwezi. I tried to sell the famous zoom lens again but with no luck in two
camera shops. We would like to phone the U.S., but the tower in Lagos is still
out from the fire.
In the
afternoon Helena and I fired up the oven and made one batch of granola and two
recipes of corn chips with our remaining flour. The granola was “interesting”:
imported Quaker oats, peanuts, sesame seeds, guinea corn flour (grain sorghum)
and toasted peas that one buys on the streets. We had to “borrow” the molasses,
and it is scarce, so we only used 1/3 cup.
Not sweet enough for my taste, but otherwise very tasty.
Jos, Saturday, February 5, 1983
(HELENA) My
big project for the day was to wash my backpack. I had run a wet cloth over it
after our dusty trip in Mauritania, and I had dusted it off a couple of times,
but this time I went all the way. I
submerged it in one of the tubs and scrubbed it with soap and a toothbrush.
Beautiful! Dan’s still looks fairly decent, and since we would have to take it
off the frame, we shall leave it for next time.
Paul came to
say goodbye, but he ended up offering to have his driver take Dan to find the
bus station for Calabar. We had decided to try the “luxury” buses (ordinary big
ones) for this trip, and Paul fortunately knew where to go. They took Dan, he
bought our tickets to Nsukka (Anambra State) plus one for Ben, and they brought
Dan back. The “luxury” bus turned out to be more reasonable than even the vans.
This, I guess, is because it leaves at a fixed time (5:30) and we pay ahead of
time. 10 Nairas for more than 600 kilometers.
.In case you
are confused, we are going to Calabar with a stop-over in Nsukka. Back when we
were at the tourist camp in Kano over a month ago, a British professor at the
University of Nigeria invited us to stop in and see her. We are not sure her
name (she left Kano before we could arrange things), but she was interesting
and friendly, so we decided to go ahead and try.
 |
| Map showing our movements (yellow) in Nigeria and its immediate neighbors. |
We said
goodbye this morning to Mr. Ottemoeller because he was taking a couple to the
airport in
Kano. We are sending 5 rolls of film with them. I trust they will get there
faster than the others. (Ed: Film
received and sent for developing last Friday.) He will be gone all
weekend.
Jos, Sunday, 6 February, 1983
(DAN) We
spent the afternoon, evening and night re-preparing ourselves to hit the road.
It is amazing how much we have accumulated on our trip while trying not to. I
went into town with Mrs. O to find the bus station. She had offered to take us
to the bus but did not want to look for it at 0500. “Expatriots” are not too
familiar with the public transportation.
Ben, for example had never really used it. Then we found that I had
given Ben the wrong directions. We found him at the CBM (Church of the Brethren
Mission) and corrected it. Mrs. O offered to pick him up as well. This is all
in a VW beetle, so we shall see how three backpackers fit in it.
When we were
getting ready, the lights went off, so we had to do the rest of the packing by
candle and a kerosene lantern with a wick. The usual last minute rush, but
fortunately we know where things go in our packs.
Jos-Nsukka, Monday, 7 February, 1983
(HELENA) Up
by 3:45, Ben was right ready, so we went straight to the bus station. We all
got out and both Mrs. O and I carefully locked our doors, only to discover that
she had locked her keys in the car. Rather distressing since Mr. O is still out
of town and her other set of car keys is locked inside the house. We checked
all of the windows -- all tightly closed, naturally. Finally Ben, who used to
own a VW, suggested we might go through the front “boot” and the glove
compartment. Mrs. O had popped the lock at the house, but Dan had not been able
to open it). Fortunately, it was still loose when we needed to get in. Ben knew
how to open it. He and Dan tried unscrewing it, but to no avail. Then Ben suggested cutting a hole in the
glove compartment (made of cardboard) opening it, and reaching through to
unlock the door. The cutting through was no problem, but it took a bit of straining
to reach the door. Ben was finally able to open the little triangular window
and, voila, it was open. Whew!
About 5:30
people started getting on the bus, so we headed that way also. They put our
luggage on underneath, and Dan asked if they had luggage checks. The guy did
not really seem to understand, and finally told him that we did not need tags.
Then, when they saw our tickets, they discovered that they had been dated for
yesterday. Fortunately, there were enough seats that they could cross the date
out and put the 7th. This is
the first big bus we have been on since southern Morocco (between Agadir and
Guelimime) so we have gotten unused to checking tickets for things like dates.
And certainly this is the fanciest, roomiest bus we have taken on the whole
trip.
It was all
settled except that the guy checking tickets would not accept the
unofficial-looking change of dates. The man in the office finally had to
authorize us personally to get on. What
a comfortable ride! It was a six-hour trip, but there were very few stops, and
never were there people standing in the aisle. We had plenty of knee room, and
--most important -- we were near the back and could see none of the scary
driving that probably went on.
Every single
woman on the bus was wearing “western dress” and had short, sleek haircuts
rather than wearing the long, wrap-around cloth and head cover we have seen all across West Africa.
And there was only one man wearing the Hausa cap and robe that are so common in
Northern Nigeria and Niger. Quite a sudden change! Mostly Igbo
passengers we suspect.
The bus was
headed for Enugu and Onitsha, so we were left off at the main road at Obolo.
Obolo was
most memorable for being a place where everyone was selling cashew, either in
little bags, roasted, or the fruits with the one little nut on the end. It was
still a bit pricey for us, but Ben bought a bag and we tasted some. Not bad,
not bad.
Another man
had gotten off the bus with us, so the four of us shared a taxi for the 20 Km.
ride to Nsukka. The driver let us off in the middle of the campus, and Dan set
off in search of our nameless friend while Ben and I waited with the luggage.
He was soon back, having gotten her name, Rosalind Shaw, and her address. The
person who had given him the information told him to take a taxi. Fortunately
we did not as it turned out to be right around the corner from where we were
sitting.
Dan went by
himself first, and though he had to remind her where she had met us, we were
very welcome to spend the night there. Her husband had already gone back to
England (he is a classical and jazz guitarist) but her mother, Manon Shaw, was
still with her. One amazing
thing about Rosalind is that she is the one person they could get to teach
Islamic studies at the university in Igbo land, a very anti-muslim part of the
country. It is not at all her specialty, but she is a dedicated teacher who
tries her best to communicate.
After a good
cool glass of water (we are now a much hotter part of Nigeria) and a bit of
conversation, she set off with us to see the campus. Almost the first thing we saw was a fairly
new-looking, but roofless and burned-out-looking building where the State of
Biafra had been declared. The rest was a rather newish, raw-looking
campus, surrounded by very bare hills. We had taken along our swim suits, but
they would not let us into the pool because they were having a “swimming lecta”
(lecture). On the way back we stopped in at the university “bar” for a soft
drink.
Rosalind is
there for 18 months, so she is living in the house of a professor who is on
leave. (She previously worked a time in Sierra Leone.) Otherwise she would be
in the position of many others (she says there are especially a lot of Polish faculty)
who live in one room and have no cooking facilities. As in Jalingo, the water
situation is quite interesting. She is SUPPOSED to get it piped in 3 days a
week, but often that does not happen. For the rest of the time, she depends on
having some small water tanks filled by a water truck. Lights and water are NOT
to be taken for granted in the Nigeria we have seen. One of the foremost topics
of conversation is NEPA, the national power company (Never Enough Power
Available).
While
Rosalind went to her once-a-week Igbo class, we rested, read, and talked a
little with Manon. She is quite an interesting woman who reminds us a lot of
Grandmother. She belongs to the British “Green Party”, and has some really
interesting ideas. In her mid-seventies she ran for district office on the
Green ticket.
We had a
very enjoyable meal, the food being rice with sardines (it tasted a lot like
Senegalese chebugen), an appetizer of soda bread with a Middle Eastern dip,
bread and butter pudding (yum!) and our favorite Earl Grey tea.
I slept in
an extra bed in Rosalind’s room while Dan and Ben slept on the sofa and another
bed in the living room.
During our
walk we had asked how large the university is, but she would not even make an
estimate. We have found with repeatedly
with any queries of population. Dan estimates an enrollment of 25,000 for the
U, but it is a guess. It has grown from nothing in 1960. It was the
headquarters for the Igbo side in the Biafran War. The town itself was little
more than a village before.
Nsukka -
Enugu - Abakaliki -Ikom - Calabar, Tuesday, February 8, 1983
(DAN) The
day started with the unquestionably civilized British custom of a wake-up cuppa
tea in bed. "Manon" got up very early and had it ready followed by
toast with marmalade before we knew what day it was. It kept us going a long
time, for the day turned out to be one of our longest and most trying.
Upon
Rosalind’s suggestion we “rented’ a taxi (bought four instead of three seats)
and went from her corner right to the taxi park in Enugu. We got a taxi right
away and set off. I shall have fond memories of the 70 Km stretch, memories of
a luxurious Peugeot, of the tropical countryside blurring by at more than 140
kph, of the roof collapsing because of the vacuum caused by our speed, of the
ever-smiling driver. All to the insistent beat of Reggae. Or, as Ben calls it,
“The Beat”.
Ben, is
an unusual mixture of “Missionary Kid Coming Home” and “The California Beach
Bum”. His parents were in Banbur through 1969 with the EUB church where his
father was a doctor. They left when the hospitals and schools were
taken over by the government. Then they
lived in Puerto Rico for a few years and then returned for a term in 1975 to
work with the Church of the Brethren. Ben graduated from Hillcrest in 1976. He
then went to McPherson College (Ch. of the Breth. in McPherson, KS) for two
years, Purdue for one semester, and then finished his degree and certificate in
tropical agronomy at the U. of Florida.
Now he is in Nigeria looking for a job. He pretty well has one lined up with a
Lebanese dude who, among other things, owns land in the Benue basin where he
wants to start a 700 acre citrus farm.
Now the
California bit. He was in Puerto Rico the early teen years of his life that I
was “inner tubing down at the river” in Caranavi (tropical Bolivia). They lived
a block from the beach and he was surfing before and after school every
day.[2]
He has been all over the coasts of the US, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Central
and South America and the Caribbean traveling with two surf boards. He has
casually long, beach blond hair, and I am sure that Helena would vouch for his
good looks. He had a lot of stories such as renting houses in El Salvador for a
month and surfing, etc. He has even surfed in Rabat and Agadir, Morocco
The “Drivah”
(still smiling) did us the disfavor of insisting on making the arrangements for
our continuing travels. In general we were not impressed with the Igbo
transport people we encountered, as we were lied to, seriously, at least 5
times that day. Our Drivah told us we would need to go first to Aba-Kaliki and
get another taxi to Calabar. He got us a ride there in a van. The drivers
assured us that yes, that was the way to Calabar, 2 Nairas to Aba-Kaliki and
then another 2 Nairas to Calabar. Even then I looked at the map but could only
find “Aba”. It was on the route we had decided to go, so we bought our tickets
and SQUEEZED in.
About noon, ust
as we were coming into Abakaliki, I finally found it on the map. It, unlike
Aba, was not on our desired path straight south and then east, but straight
east of Enugu and north of Calabar. There was nothing between us NOW and our
destination but 200 Km of jungle and two largje rivers. One taxi in
the desolate park offered to take us to Calabar for $81. It was hot and dusty
and humid, and we were farther from our destination than when we started in the
morning!
 |
| Details of this portion of the trip including the surprise dip over to the Cameroon border (1982 Michelin map of West Africa). |
Rather than
backtrack, we decided to go to Ikok over by the Cameroon border, farther east
than we wanted to go. From there we would have to curve way back west and again
east to get to Calabar. But the Abakaliki drivers told us that once we got to
Ikok, it would be an easy, 3 Naira drive to Calabar, So we paid our 5 Nairas
each of fare, sweated in the sun until the van filled, and set out again.
We have
decided that there should be a new category on road maps called “Major Road
Under Destruction”. It took us 3 hours to cover the next 78 kms, over, around,
under, and in spite of a formerly glorious paved road. We wonder if this is one
sign of the alleged neglect of Igbo land since the Biafran War.
We got to
Ikok at 1730 and still had 240 km to go. First we got the good news that it
cost 8 Nairas not 3 to Calabar, and then we got conflicting information from
the transport people. The ones who would take us to the border said that we did
not need a visa for Cameroon, while the people who would take us to Calabar
said we DID need to go to Calabar. We agonized for nearly an hour, finally said
goodbye to Ben who was going on to Calabar anyway. Just as his vehicle was to
leave, we ran into a high border official who said that we certainly did need a
visa, so we ran back to the taxi. It was nearly full already, so we were going
to wait for the next vehicle. Instead, the drivah kicked out a woman and 5
small children and put us in the supposed room that that left. She had refused
to pay more than one fare-and-a-half for all of them. We felt guilty, but
really could not do anything about it.
Once more we
set off rocketing down a semi-paved road, this one under construction. What
this meant was that for long stretches there was two-way traffic speeding along
over a smooth, recently-worked dirt road under a complete cover of red dust
clouds. The drivah had apparently passed the skill level where one has to slow
down when going through areas where men and machines are working. At times we
went through such areas at 100 kph under dust clouds with perhaps 50 feet of
visibility, at dusk with on-coming traffic. We nearly collided with a large
dump truck that was --the audacity-- backing across the road. This, in spite of
a man with two young boys in the front seat who from time to time exhorted the
driver to greater caution.
By the time
we got to Calabar it was dark, really dark, as the lights were off all over
town. It is purported to be a rough town, and we did not even have the name of
an EXPENSIVE hotel; however one of our co-passengers who handed out
two-month-old copies of The Watchtower said he had a friend who could
put us up. Possibly because of Grandmother’s favorable opinions of her Jehova’s
Witness neighbors, we accepted. This involved hiring the taxi driver for
another 4 Nairas to drive us through the dark streets to the house. The front
part turned out to be a bar, and since the friend was not at home, we sat there
and waited.
While we
waited, I went over to another, better-lit bar (they both had generators) to
inquire about cheap hotels. The bartender, Henson, gave me a note to the owner
of the Potsol Cinema and told me that this man had the only place in town for
less than $15 apiece.
It was
getting late, so we decided just to wait for the friend. He finally showed up
around 2200. It was one of those situations: The friend, a surveyor, is
single and has a small, three-room apartment, along with a young female cousin
who is studying in the university. After a while, though, we were really glad
to have come as we all got into a rousing conversation about Nigeria,
capitalism, socialism, Libya, Gaddafi,
Jehova’s Witnesses, etc. They were by far the most fluent English
speakers we have met here in Nigeria. I think they are not too far removed from the college radical group.
Both Silas Walker, our host, and Alfred Augri, our rescuer, are about 26 and
come from Ifec Language tribes. It was midnight before we all got bathed and
later when we got to bed. They gave us the bed and cushions, and the three of
them slept in the living room on the sofa and chairs. No amount of argument
could change that.
We had, we
believe, a plate of pounded yams and cow stomach stew.
About the
better English: It is generally held that English is spoken better in southern
Nigeria. On the one hand they have had English/Christian schools for 3
generations more than the North because of the gradual movement of
missionaries, The big difference, however, is that in the South, English is the
trade language, the language that people from different towns or even different
neighborhoods use to communicate with each other. In the North it is purely
Hausa[3].
This causes many problems in that the North and South are not only different
tribes, religions, and occupations, but also trade languages. It was
good to finally have a prolonged, intellectual conversation; it has been
frustrating us.
The
countryside changes incredibly from Jos to Calabar. Officially there are four
changes of vegetation type. Jos is guinea savanna which changes to woodland
savannah, then rain forest south of Enugu, and around Calabar it is officially
fresh and salt water mangrove. It is much more complex than that, of course.
The tell-tale sign for me is that the thatched roofs changed from grass to palm
thatch before Nsukka. The only other place we have seen palm thatch is in
southern Senegal rain forest. After Nsukka we began to see alternate patches of
wasteland, open fields, and palm forests. The area is still hilly, but all of
the hills are stripped and eroded down to the laterite.
Once you get
to Cross River State in extreme southeastern Nigeria the forest closes up and
assumes the damp smell and look that I associate with Bolivian rainforest areas.
Nearing Calabar there were extensive rubber plantations. We never did get to
see the mangrove swamp as Calabar is on very high ground above the Cross River.
It was
interesting to see that around Enugu the land was in small, subsistence-sized
plots, but once you got into the really thick stuff, it was all in
large, capital-intensive use. There were a lot of log trucks plying the road,
so Cross River Basin is not completely exploited. A sobering thought
is that Cross River State, smaller than any Department of Bolivia has a
population of 5 million, and it may be the least populated area of Nigeria. All
of the Nigeria that we saw, excluding Kano State and part of Benue was not flat
as alleged but rolling, even mountainous and picturesque.
It was a
LONG day!!!
[1] An interesting story about
Jos in 2013 and a football game at Hillcrest between Christians and Muslims. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-street/religion-and-conflict-in-nigeria-learning-to-play-well-with-others_b_2695805.html
[3] We have experienced this
since in India. There are parts of India
(mainly the NE) where English, not Hindi,
Urdu or Bangla is the trade languages.
It is much easier for us to communicate.
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