Caboose

Had a very early start, the taxi was booked for 4:30am. Dave was convinced that the driver wouldn’t come, in the end he was a little late because he’d got lost in the dark.

We got to the airport before check-in opened and had some breakfast. After check-in there wasn’t much to do, so we headed on to departures. Marebec was quizzed by immigration for a while, I’m not sure why there’s an immigration check for leaving the country. Marebec and Dave were a bit worried about Nigerian and Ghanaian immigration after their experience with the blatantly racist Egyptian embassy refused to give her a visa.

More distressingly, security confiscated Marebec’s bottle of Coke.

The flight, with Virgin Nigeria, was fine. The sandwich was better than the ones British Airways throw at you on European flights these days.

Kotoka International Airport in Accra is fairly small, maybe a little bit bigger than Abuja. This meant that by the time we’d changed some money at arrivals our bag was on the carousel. Ghanaian immigration were fairly rude, not quite up to USA immigration standards but they’re obviously trying. They wanted to know VSO Ghana’s phone number for some reason.

After laughing at a few obvious ripoff taxi drivers we managed to get a taxi into town for ¢50,000 (that’s Ghana cedis, not USA cents). We got the taxi to drop us on a street with plenty of forex bureaus. I changed some pounds into cedis at a rate of ¢18,200 to the pound. Marebec and Dave changed dollars, ¢9300; to the dollar.

While we were changing money I heard a radio advert informing people that in July the Ghanaians are introducing a new cedi, with 1 new cedi equal to 10,000 of the current ones. This being West Africa they had a catchy little song to convey the message. After stashing our envelopes full of money in our bags and around our bodies we wandered back out onto the street. The largest cedi note is ¢20,000, you get quite a lot of them in exchange for £300.

[Technical note: There is actually a separate symbol for the cedi, Unicode code point U+20B5, but very few fonts contain it so I’ve stuck with the cent symbol. Otherwise you see this: ₵]

Our next stop was to buy SIM cards for one of the local networks, we chose areeba, bought some credit and then went to a nearby bar to rehydrate.

We walked up to the Kokomlemle Guesthouse, where we were told that a room is ¢80,000 compared to the ¢40,000 mentioned in the Bradt guidebook. The manager said we could leave our bags while we tried other places but that Kokomlemle is the cheapest, of course we didn’t believe him. After a long, hot trek around the area we realised that most places were full and more expensive, so we took a taxi back to Kokomlemle and checked in. I had a double room to myself, sharing two toilet/showers with Marebec and Dave and two single rooms.

The Kokomlemle Guesthouse is clean and comfortable and the staff were helpful. The windows all had good mosquito netting and the fan was very powerful.

Dave decided that the guesthouse was too expensive for lunch so we wandered along the ring road a little bit. We ended up having lunch at a chophouse. Dave and I both tried banku, which is a fermented maize lump. Neither of us liked it much. It turned out that food at Kokomleme Guesthouse would have been cheaper!

In the afternoon we set out to find the VSO Ghana office. I’d got the address from the VSO office in Abuja and wasn’t too surprised to find out that it was wrong. VSO Ghana had moved during the year, some helpful people in the neighbourhood gave us directions to the new address.

At the office we met a few VSOs, including Karen and Juliet who we joined for drinks and then a long walk to find the perfect Chinese restaurant. We ended up at a new and expensive place called Noble House. The food was great and Juliet treated us to wine. The place is run by an Indian guy and has an Indian restaurant upstairs.

During the evening we’d been in touch with Leo and arranged to meet him the next day.

I’m in Abuja just now, on my way to Ghana with Marebec and Dave.

We’re picking up our visas from the Ghanaian embassy in a couple of hours then taking the bus to Lagos very early tomorrow. On Monday we fly to Accra with Virgin Nigeria.

Updates will depend on how often I have internet access in Ghana and when I can tear myself away from beaches and nice food.

Hope everyone enjoys Christmas (at least, those of you who celebrate it).

Got up well before the crack of and took an okada to Kawo motor park. I’d expected other people to be leaving early but I was the first person in the car (at six) and we didn’t leave until 6:30.

They insisted on squeezing four people into the middle row, normal on most routes but not on the Abuja-Kaduna run. I argued but the other passengers all meekly accepted that they “always” have four passengers in the middle, a blatant lie.

A couple of hours later I arrived at Jabi motor park. The road into Abuja was being dug up so I had to walk up the road a bit to get any transport. The bus touts insisted that there are no buses going to area 10 but then they tend to lie a lot too. No buses appeared, so maybe the routes have changed. Instead I entered a shared taxi.

As we reached the ring road the passenger in the back with me said he wanted to drop but the driver refused. The driver then started asking what was inside the back passengers bag (in the boot), the reply was “dollars”. A weird story followed, about an employer he’d worked for for three (later eight) years who’d sent him with the money.

After a bit more questioning from the driver and the front passenger it was revealed that the bag contained one million dollars and that the back passenger had stolen it from his employer. It seems the employer was involved in oil bunkering (illegal smuggling and theft of oil). The back passenger then begged not to be taken to the police.

At this point the driver and front passenger started negotiating over how much the back passenger should “settle” us to not take him to the police. His first offer was $10,000 but they preferred that he keep half the money and we split the rest between us.

This all seemed highly dubious. Even if the story was true I wanted nothing to do with the stolen money and I suspected it was a trick to get me in a position where they could extort money from me. I told them to drop me where we were and then had to get another taxi to Radio House.

Later in the day I took my passport and paperwork to the Ghanaian High Commission. It seemed to me that all the staff there are recruited on the basis of sullenness. I didn’t get so much as a grunt in response to my greetings.

It’s always interesting coming home from overseas, to see what you notice as being different and what ‘everyday’ things seem strange.

Things are going OK on my holiday, although I’m finding it a bit weird to be in places where almost everyone is white! I went down to London last week for a lunch at the Tallow Chandlers’, who are sponsoring my VSO placement.

London was quite overwhelming, although it was fairly quiet. It seemed so inhuman and unfriendly. Wandering the streets of a Nigerian city it’s impossible to feel isolated from other people because people are so friendly, in London you might as well be invisible. This could just be part of having to get used to not being noticeable because of the colour of my skin but I think it’s also related to cultural differences.

Back home in Stirling things are less strange, I’m enjoying spending some time relaxing and visiting friends and family in the area.

After arriving back in Scotland and spending a couple of days with my family (including Dad’s 60th birthday) I’m now down in Cambridge visiting old friends there.

It’s slightly weird to be back in Cambridge. I’m not having any serious culture shock or anything, just a kind of mild bewilderment. One of the oddest parts was flying down to Birmingham and collecting a hire car, it’s a while since I last drove and British roads now seem incredibly orderly to me!

Everyone has been talking about what a mild October it is, while I’m feeling the cold.

On Wednesday evening I’ll be heading through to Norfolk to visit my grandparents.

After more than 18 months in Nigeria I’m going on my first holiday back home.

I’ll be flying out of Abuja later today, arriving in Edinburgh tomorrow, coming back to Nigeria in about six weeks time.

It’s kind of a strange feeling, even though I’m not going away for long I’m feeling sad to be leaving Nigeria as well as excited about seeing family and friends after such a long time.

Abuja’s a bit strange too now, since the okada ban (BBC news) there are many more people walking.

Some big buses have appeared, but they only serve the satellite towns, passing through the city on their way. There are no routes within the city itself. Taxi prices have shot up and there are rumours that the ordinary taxis will be banned soon, leaving only the expensive Abuja “green cabs”. One ride in a green taxi costs slightly more than half a day’s VSO allowance, for many people here it’s much more than they earn in a day.

Just imagine if all public transport in London was banned, leaving only black cabs that cost more than you earn in a day. That’s the situation in Abuja now. Of course the people who make these decisions never used public transport, riding around in air-conditioned cars paid for by the government, with police escorts ensuring that they’re not even bothered by inconveniences such as traffic lights.

If you’re interested in visiting the Sukur kingdom you’ll find some background information at sukur.info, written by some anthropologists who worked there.

I put together a map of the area, based on the Federal Survey’s 1969 Madagali NW and SW sheets. It took quite a bit of effort to scan the map in, calibrate it, convert from the weird Nigeria East Belt Grid (measured in feet, of course) to UTM grid (GPS-compatible) and turn it into a nice PDF. It will print out on two sheets of A4 which you can stick together.

A few things to note:

• You should get written permission from a National Commission for Museums and Monuments office before visiting Sukur. There’s one in Maiduguri and others in Abuja and most state capitals.
• It helps if you speak at least some Hausa, many of the Sukur people speak no English.
• Getting to Sukur isn’t as difficult as the guidebooks make out, if you leave Maiduguri early you’ll be at the palace by midafternoon.
• It might be a good idea to spend the night in one of the villages at the bottom and then walk up to Sukur in the morning, when it’s cooler.
• Take something to use as padding, the bamboo beds are very hard.

To get to Sukur:

• Maiduguri seems to be the most convenient place to start.
• Take a bush taxi from Maiduguri to Bama, from the Bama motor park. Alternatively you may be able to get a bus all the way to Madagali (probably heading to Mubi).
• From Bama you should be able to pick up a bus to Madagali.
• You can either drop at Madagali or at the turn-off for Mildo (there’s a sign advertising Sukur World Heritage site). We hired a minibus from Madagali to Mildo for 1000 Naira, on the way back we took okadas for 200 Naira each.
• Go to the museums office by the district chief’s house to sign in. If the office is closed ask someone to show you to the museum’s guide’s house.
• You’ll be guided up the mountain by one of the NCMM guides. It’s not an especially strenuous hike but steep in parts and very hot if the sun’s out.

The week before last I went on a little holiday with Dave, up to Maiduguri in the north east of Nigeria and on to the Mandara mountains on the border with Cameroon.

I’ve added all the posts about Sukur to a new category: travel/sukur.

When I get time I’ll summarise all the details of how to get there.

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.

We got up a bit later than planned after another uncomfortable night. The rain had made it a bit cold, so I actually climbed inside my sleeping bag, which meant there was less padding underneath me.

After another breakfast of unsweetened porridge we packed our things, including the still damp clothes from yesterday. The leftover food was dashed to George, who seemed quite pleased.

The king and his advisers appeared for a final photograph and to send us off back down the path to Mildo market. Tuesday is market day, so many of the locals had already gone that way.

At Mildo market we stopped for refreshments with George and the others who had walked down with us. The Site Higher Executive Officer from the National Commission for Museums and Monuments came to greet us and ask how we had enjoyed our visit.

Dave stopped to buy a present for Marebec and then we headed over to where the buses and motorbikes were. The only taxi driver was demanding far too much money, so instead we arranged motorbikes to take us back to Madagali for 200 Naira each.

Just as we were leaving Simon the guide reappeared in a bit of a flap. He said we should have come to see him at his office to “sign out”, but his office is some distance away beside the District Head’s house. We had visited Simon’s house as we’d promised on Sunday, but he wasn’t there. He hadn’t brought his forms with him, so in the end we just left him complaining at the side of the road.

We were waiting for a bus at the side of the road in Madagali when a man appeared, saying that he was from immigration and we had to come back to his office. It seems his boss had seen us passing on the machines. After checking his ID we hopped on machines again for the short journey to the immigration office.

At immigration we met the man in charge there, whose office was in a garage. Both men were quite friendly and talkative, I suspect they were just bored and wanted a chat. They’d both been posted up to north-eastern Adamawa state from the south and I think they were finding it difficult. We didn’t mention our little trip across the border yesterday.

They eventually stopped a bus for us and it took us all the way to Maiduguri, dropping us just after the university. From there we took machines back to St Patrick’s.

Once we’d showered and changed we walked into town and tried to visit the palace of the Shehu (the local equivalent of an Emir). The guards asked us to sit down while they talked to the Shehu’s secretary and kept popping back to say he’d be coming shortly. After a while he drove out, the guards insisted he’d be back soon. Eventually one of them pointed out a few features in the courtyard then took us outside to show us the front of the palace. It was a very subtle way to get us out, not what you expect from the Nigerian police at all.

We went out for suya in the evening but were concerned by the hygiene standards at the suya stall. They insisted on washing the cooked suya sticks in grotty-looking water. When we complained they replaced with soapy water from an unknown source.

During the night the early morning call to prayer from the mosques seemed to go on for at least half an hour. In contrast the cathedral summoned its faithful with just a few dings of the bell. Maiduguri has always been peaceful but there were nasty riots there this year, Father Marcel told us about how they had had to barricade themselves inside the cathedral compound.