Caboose

We had a day of sightseeing in Maiduguri, starting with the zoo. The guidebooks claim that it’s OK. “Many of the animals are captives without cages, and are kept in place by large ditches surrounding reproductions of their habitats” says the Rough Guide. In fact many of the enclosures are empty, all of them are overgrown and the animals looked distinctly neglected.

The right-hand picture above is of an enclosure in one of the more neglected parts of the zoo. We could make out something inside the building but couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was (maybe a hyena, there was one in the next cage). The floor of the cage was littered with rotting meat, the puddle you can see below one of the lumps was frothing with maggots and the smell was nauseating.

It seems the locals in Maiduguri keep complaining about the zoo and it seems to be a popular place to go. Maybe the state government could raise the entrance fee from 20 Naira and actually look after the animals a bit better.

Next we went across the road to the state museum. The building was fairly new but had obviously been neglected since it was built. The staff showed us round the few exhibits and explained a bit about the history of the area.

We looked at some craft shops and then had lunch. I got mine quickly but Dave suffered from the common Nigerian problem where everything he ordered had finished.

The next day we travelled back to Jos and had a couple of days relaxing there, on the whole a very restful holiday.