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[Nigeria]Nigerian glossary

Two Days

Written by kevin

I just spent a couple of days working in Bauchi. My colleague Niyi and I had to install some software and set up some computers at the North-East zonal office, as part of the plan to decentralise some of NTI’s enormous data entry activities.
A small room with two large desks and five computers.  Kevin is standing behind one of the computers.

We took a bush taxi from Kaduna on Monday morning, making the mistake of choosing the back row. Along the (atrocious) road to Jos my head kept banging off the roof. Getting to Jos took quite a while because of the many police and army checkpoints, each one requiring the usual twenty Naira dash before allowing us to pass. After Jos the road is much better, so the rest of the journey wasn’t too exciting (I’ve become quite casual about ridiculous near-death overtaking manouevres).

NTI’s zonal offices seem to specialise in being in obscure parts of town, so we took okadas (the only form of public transport in Bauchi city) to the Federal Secretariat and found the NTI Bauchi State office. From there an official car drove us round to an obscure street just outside the old town. We passed through Kofar Jahun, one of the old gates in the city wall, some of which is still visible as it slowly erodes away.

The zonal office staff were very welcoming and had already set the computers up on some tables. An electrician appeared and started neatly wiring up some sockets for the computers, while Niyi and I arranged the equipment and he started making network cables.

We were booked into the CFA Hotel beside Kofar Wambai, another one of Bauchi’s city gates, and under one of the rocky outcrops that dot the city. Many still have election slogans scrawled across them and most have at least a few scruffy-looking houses clinging to them. The hotel was cheap and my room had air conditioning, but it seemed that the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned for quite a while.

Before dinner I went for a stroll, back in through the gate and along to the Emir’s Palace. Northern cities are quite lively in the time before evening prayers, many local men and boys sit outside their homes and shops or go for a walk. There were football games at the school opposite the hotel and on the square outside the prison. Horses were being exercised near the Emir’s Palace. As usual, any women you see are working, rather than enjoying the sunset.

Lots of people greeted me as I walked back to the hotel, asking what I was doing in Bauchi. Small children hid behind gates and shouted baturi once I’d passed, too scared or shy to talk to me before then. I stopped to buy a bottle of water and sat outside the shop waiting for the owner to return from prayers, chatting to an okada rider who’d recently had an accident. Most of the skin had been scraped off one shin, leaving very white scarring. He joked that he was turning into a baturi.

The next day Niyi and I finished the work, delayed by the electricity being too weak to run any computers. A generator was borrowed from the state office, so we installed the software and trained a couple of users. By the time we were finished it was after 2pm and we couldn’t find a car direct to Kaduna, instead we took one to Jos.

Niyi took another car from Jos to Kaduna, I broke the journey by staying with Julia. When travelling on work I get a 5000 Naira daily subsistence allowance (that’s five times my VSO living allowance), so I treated us to a nice dinner at AfriOne in Jos.

The phrase “two days” is used a lot in the North. In Hausa kwana biu is used to mean a long time but when speaking English many people translate it literally. If somebody greets you saying “two days” they’re just enquiring how you’ve been in the time since you last met.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 14:08 and is filed under travel, VSO.

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