Copyright © 2014 Matthew Stephen

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PrefaceThis story is fictional. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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BATURI

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Chapter 1Voluntary Service Overseas

“Sa, who is the strongest, Reagan or Mrs Thatcher?” asked one of my students. It was nearly home time. I was tired, hot and hungry and so were they. I stared out the window, towards the high mud wall of the town’s prison. It was a tricky question. First I had to decide what Gambo meant by strongest. Squalls of dust swept across the baked surface of the school football pitch. I had to clench my eyelids to see into the brilliance of the school’s sun-drenched surroundings. What could I tell Gambo that would make sense in his terms? I sat on my desk with one foot on a chair, the knee of my other leg clasped in my hands to counterbalance my body. I could feel the students’ interest increasing now the subject had turned from boring maths to the fascinating world of the white man. I couldn’t find an answer. I hadn’t heard the World Service news for a good three months, not since I sold my radio to finance some travelling. But even before that, the reception had been so bad that I rarely bothered to listen to the distant voices of my homeland.

I felt very weak from hunger and from the heat. I really couldn’t think of an answer I could be sure was right. Reagan? Thatcher? They had been relegated from reality to myth, characters from the Boy’s Own, two jumbled concepts in a dream.

“Sa, is Mrs Thatcher the leader of America?” Gambo asked.

“No, it is Reagan who is President of America,” replied another student in a tone that

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implied Gambo was an ignorant fool. Here, at least, I could offer some definitive answer.

“Mohammed is right. Reagan is the President of America, Thatcher is the Prime Minister of Britain.”

“Sa, does Britain own America?”“No, not now, but 200 years ago it did.”“Sa, Bala, he think Britain is more developed

than America.”My stomach fizzed with hunger. My watch

told me that we still had twenty-four minutes till the end of the lesson. My students, and indeed most Nigerians I had met, measured development in terms of cash. I think I was supposed to disagree with Bala, but I opted for the easy way out and said, “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to America.”

“Sa, is Britain bigger than America?”“Sa, is America in Britain?”I had been asked similar questions on many

occasions, so I took the usual course of sketching a map of the world on the blackboard. I showed them the geographical relationship between Britain, America and Nigeria.

“Sa, which is more developed, London or England?”

I pointed out that London is in England and also the capital of England, implying that the question was void. Several boys asked where various places were, places they knew only as football teams. I carefully put them on the map.

Classes would often finish like this, especially at the end of the day. The students would question me about the distant, weird and

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wonderful land from whence I came. The white man could tell them amazing stories of fast cars, fast trains, aeroplanes and big buildings. A land where only a tiny minority of people have their own farms, where most people own cars, televisions and telephones. Where access to good food, running water, health care and education is taken for granted. A land of big cities surrounded by green fields, through all of which run thousands of asphalt roads. A land so different from theirs that even the length of day varies.

While the students learnt about life in the outside world, I pieced together my own picture of life inside Nigeria. But I was with them in their country, witnessing their lives first hand, while they could only conjure up mental pictures of life outside their own. It must have been like trying to imagine the fourth dimension. I told one class about electronic cash registers, laser bar code readers and credit cards. They were so amazed that I felt quite awe-struck myself. Afterwards, I couldn’t shift the nagging feeling of having done something wrong.

“Sa, do you have cheque book in your country?”

Sometimes it was difficult to decide if the ‘you’ in that sort of question was singular or plural, so I always told them about myself and then about what other people did or had.

“Yes, I do, but I don’t use it very often. Some people do all the time, like my mother, but I use a cashpoint card nearly always.”

I went on to tell them that, with one of these cards, I could get money out of a hole in the wall, at any time of the day, just by pushing a few buttons. Again I felt I shouldn’t be telling them about such things, even though they wanted to

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know. These things were only part of the story, the cosmetic part. They were material extensions to my world that came with the by-products of greed and envy. My world was a new improved techno-culture with added decadence and obscene waste. Yet here I was almost boasting of it.

The bell rang. I had forgotten – home time. Great! “Ku rufee taga!” I shouted as the boys leapt to their feet. “Nobody goes until all the windows are shut.” One of the boys reiterated my announcement in Hausa and another carried out my instructions. They pocketed their books in an assortment of bags and followed me out of the classroom. We were all fleeing from the school, escaping. Suddenly there were boys everywhere, going in all directions and shouting their various farewells. Those that owned bicycles collected their passengers to ride on the rack over the rear wheel.

I hadn’t the energy to hurry. I casually stepped into the sun and walked diagonally away from the school building towards the tree-lined road leading into town. My flip-flops flipped sand up the back of my legs and flopped on the soft dry earth beneath my feet. A strong breeze of dry air cooled the sweat beneath my shirt and tussled my hair. Had I been a child I would have skipped. Today I was very happy. All around me looked happy too. Today was a day to remind myself I wasn’t sitting in a grotty office, or watching some useless rubbish on TV, or being generally hassled by the tedium of life in the English eighties. It was the start of the school holiday. Now I was free to relax and enjoy Nigeria.

I saw Abdul leaning against the doorway of his classroom.

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“Are you coming, Abdul?”“Ah, no, I have to see Principal,” he replied

with a large bright smile. Abdul lived next door to me in the boys’ quarters of my house. He never seemed to have any money and never appeared to feed his thin bony body when he did. I used to give him money to buy tablets to treat his chronic ringworm, but all too often he spent it on food for a family his sympathy required him to support. He said the father of the family was away studying, and although his wife received regular maintenance, she squandered it, neglecting her own stomach and those of her children. I ended up buying the tablets for him, although they didn’t seem to work very well.

I sometimes invited Abdul to share my evening meal. We would have a game of Scrabble over a beer or two. He loved a good bottle of beer. Whilst Abdul is a Muslim name, he was a Christian, one of only a very few in Hadejia. I never knew why he had chosen to be a Christian, when it came at such a high cost. He was frowned upon by many locals and had been shunned by his family. There was one consolation: he could drink beer without qualms. I liked the man. He was my first friend in Hadejia.

I looked on past the end of the plumbing department where Abdul taught, and saw the slow duck-like waddle of our well-built Principal, making his way towards a new Peugeot 504. He was tailed by two or three of the staff who, unlike me, had to keep on the right side of him. I never felt comfortable in his presence. He was sly, guilty-looking and furtive, forever glancing over his shoulder. He would never give a straight answer to a straight question, suspecting some hidden innuendo, afraid of the verbal small print.

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I wouldn’t trust the man further than I could throw him. I looked at him as a corrupt bureaucrat who hadn’t a clue how to run a school. His lack of interest in the boys’ education really annoyed me. He seemed stupid but perhaps his mind was otherwise occupied, thinking up new and more devious ways to screw money out of the system. How else could a lowly Principal of a Skills Training Centre afford to run two cars and maintain so many visible trappings of wealth? Alas, he only did what everyone expected of someone in his position, but the extent of his greed was well in excess of my perception of acceptability. I watched with barely disguised loathing as he squeezed into his car. The other teachers busied themselves with their ageing, battered, lightweight Japanese motorbikes.

My stomach was relieved of some of its acidic tension when I caught sight of the peanut girls. The little trio were sitting in their usual place, dressed in shabby wrappers and T-shirts, each with a round tin tray laden with small tin cans full of roasted peanuts. They stared at me as I approached. I put my hand in my pocket to reach for some money. The effect was instantaneous. I might as well have fired a starting pistol. They leapt to their feet and ran towards me with smiling faces. Their coy charm made me buy a tin’s worth from each. It would have been impossible to show any favouritism.

“Isyaku!” I shouted across to one of my students. “Do you want some groundnuts?”

Isyaku came running across, his face beaming at the offer of a freebie. Just the scent of a freebie in the air brought two more boys. I gave each of the girls their ten kobo, took a large handful of nuts for myself and distributed the rest

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to the boys. I was very hungry and couldn’t be bothered to remove the dry skins from the nuts. I just tipped them straight into my mouth and chewed. Isyaku thought it might be his lucky day and started pestering me for money.

“Sa, please help me with one naira.”“No.”“Fifty kobo? Sa, please help me with fifty

kobo.”“No,” I repeated. Isyaku had managed to

scrounge more than his fair share out of me recently and I was in no mood to give him any more.

“Sa, please give me ten kobo for coolie-coolie. I am very hungry.”

I didn’t doubt it for a moment, so was I. But I couldn’t give him any more money today. I couldn’t let him expect my generosity. That wasn’t my function. Besides, I was only being paid a teacher’s salary myself. Okay, it was a higher grade than most of the other teachers but I was finding life tough financially. There seemed to be a lot of little luxuries that I couldn’t do without.

We walked along the sandy track towards the main road leading into town. Isyaku gave up pleading with me, but now Mohammed Garba decided to try his luck. I had a soft spot for this boy. His nickname ‘Moral’ translated as ‘gentle’. He was keen to learn English, keen to learn about England and worked hard to learn all that I had to teach. I couldn’t remember the last time I had given him a ‘dash’. He looked very hungry although he didn’t say it. His innocent face under his small brown cap got the better of me. Isyaku

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didn’t see me give Mohammed any money, but somehow he knew, and so redoubled his pleas.

“Okay, okay, I’ve only got ten kobo left. It’s the last one, okay!” I raised it in the air. Instantly all the boys nearby knew what was going to happen: a game of ten-kobo scramble. I threw the thin well-worn coin into the air, and the boys scrapped to gain the best position for its return to earth. After a quick scramble, Audo Garbo, Mohammed’s brother, rose as the victor, showing all fifty of his gleaming white front teeth in satisfaction. It was a fair contest and everyone was happy.

I’m not sure about the picture we made – a white man throwing money to black boys – however, I was sure their self-respect remained intact. I had some money to give away, like the man at the end of the grand procession during the Durbar who threw, with great nonchalance, fifty-kobo notes from the top of his horse to the children below. My ten-kobo scrambles were merely cultural integration exercises without the horse and the nonchalance.

Cultural integration was a favourite VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) buzzword. Those who didn’t integrate would not be expected to survive more than a few weeks or months. The longer you stayed the more integrated you became. You started by picking up some of the language, making life a lot easier in the markets. You made some Nigerian friends. Your shoes fell apart so you bought flip-flops. Your clothes dissolved in the highly corrosive washing powder so you bought Nigerian clothes. You got the hang of a pit latrine. Everybody in the village found out your name. You got a good tan, your hair grew, your bowels malfunctioned but it no longer

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seemed a problem. You lost weight. You developed a taste for the beer and ceased to compare it unfavourably with aviation fuel. You learnt more of the language, you made more friends, you wrote home less and less. Your craving for chocolate, strawberries and cream, sweets, baths, vacuum cleaners and running water all seemed to fade. However, we were warned that too much cultural integration could result in a major reverse culture shock, perhaps even serious loss of identity on return to the UK.

“Sai en jima,” I said to the boys as they ran off in high spirits. “Till next time,” came back the replies. I walked on, the hot breeze making my shirt flap against my back. The sun was brilliant in the clear sky. I could only walk slowly, anything more and I would have overheated. I wiped my brow with the rolled-up sleeve of my shirt. Today was very hot. I felt around my throat and found abrasive grains of salt, crystallised from my evaporating sweat – a sure sign of the heat. Now was the hot season, when even the Nigerians began to wilt. A bulging valve in a vein above my right knee told me that my body was struggling against the heat.

As I walked, groups of boys passed me by on bicycles. The slower ones had a second boy seated on the crossbar. A noisy Suzuki motorbike buzzed past, sounding like a bee in a tin can. The ‘machine’, as motorbikes were known, belonged to the English master. He gave me a cheery wave as he bounced along with the building master riding pillion behind. They both smiled at the plodding white man. I reached the main road and past the Koranic students busy with their ablutions in preparation for prayer. I was keen to get home and collapse in a chair, so I took the unpleasant short cut across the ‘shitting field’, a

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public lavatory – without the lavatory. My house was a bungalow with white walls, a gently sloping corrugated steel roof and a concrete garden with concrete garden wall. It squatted by the side of a wide sandy road back to back with a mud house.

Today was a good day. It was the end of a long term and I was feeling very mellow. No more teaching for three weeks, time for some serious relaxation. I didn’t curse the hot steel of my garden gate as it burnt my hand. Nor did I curse when the gate jammed on a small stone, causing me to crash into it, jabbing my stomach against its sharp corner in the process. I was past caring when I found a small girl crouching on the other side of the wall, emptying either her bladder or her bowel. I usually shooed them off, but today all I wanted was the peaceful sanctuary of my chair under the ceiling fan. I crossed the cracked concrete with my hand in my pocket hunting for the door key.

“Mattu!” shouted a voice. It was the little man who perpetually sat in the shade of a neem tree on the other side of the road. “Ya rana,” he called. “Lafia lo,” I replied, paying him the courtesy of turning round, smiling and giving him a little wave. He was a nice chap. I felt reassured to know that my house had an eye kept on it when I was away, so I took care to give him a thankful smile and polite duet of Hausa greetings.

Inside my house it was dark. The curtains were closed to prevent the rays of heat from entering. I fetched a glass of water and settled myself in ‘my’ chair directly under the ceiling fan. I undid some shirt buttons to allow the downward draft to cool my body. The fan whirred above my head, occasionally screeching as it rocked on its bearings. For the millionth time I considered

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what would happen if it fell off. I reclined a little more putting my head back and running my fingers through my hair, making way for the draught to pass over my moistened forehead. Taking to my chair like this was ritual after a hard hot day’s teaching. Today seemed like any other day to look at, except it wasn’t. Today was the end of term and the beginning of my holiday.

I had some good furniture in my house: four well-made chairs and a settee, all in the same style. The thin coverings on the foam cushions were very worn, some right through. I even had a carpet. Nice idea but a nightmare to keep clean. With no vacuum cleaner, I had to resort to fierce brushing with a hand broom made of spindly twigs. Regardless of how hard I brushed it, it remained impregnated with dust. The dust! It fell like the gentle rain of an English summer – incessantly. Dust was everywhere. At this time of year it was easily swept up by strong gusts of wind and blown into my house. During the Harmattan winds the air could be so thick with dust it was like fog.

As a VSO, I knew how spoilt I was. I had some of the best accommodation of any VSO in Nigeria. Most notably, my house had the privileges of electricity and running water, albeit the water was sometimes no more than a trickle. Hadejia was home to several rich Al Hajis, and served as a country retreat for a number of senior government officials. Their presence, and financial influence, ensured a reasonably reliable electricity supply, at a voltage that didn’t fluctuate wildly. This was a rarity in these parts. Oh yes, Hadejia was no ordinary little town; we even had some street lighting. And we had our own Emir, fully equipped with a palace that was grand by any standard.

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With no TV or radio there was not a great deal to do, apart from trying to stay healthy, think, read, write and nod off. I had just begun to nod off to the rapid chip-chopping sound of the fan, when a sudden reduction in the frequency of the chip-chopping interrupted my descent into sleep. There was a cut in the ‘NEPA’ as the Nigerians called it. In other words, the Nigerian Electrical Power Authority had blown a fuse. The fan slowly ground to a halt. It became silent. I sighed with despair. “Allah hakabar!” yelled the tannoy of a nearby mosque. I looked at my watch and back at the lifeless fan. At times like this, I would assess the likely duration of the cut. The omens were not good. Firstly the cut was only local, as evidenced by the chap screaming into the tannoy; secondly my watch said seven and a half minutes past two, and that implied it was a fault rather than a cut for maintenance purposes – those usually started at a precise time and didn’t last very long.

Without the cooling draught, beads of sweat began to build up on the back of my hands and forearms. I could feel rivulets of sweat growing under my hair. Sweat began to trickle down my chest and down my face. Drops began to drip from the end of my nose. It was impossible to stay in my house without a fan. It was like sitting in a large oven. I had to get out. There was nothing else for it but to embark on the long trek to the post office to see if I had any mail, and to do some shopping on the way back. My incentive, and reward for such an effort, was the promise of a properly chilled bottle of Coca-Cola.

My walk took me through a labyrinth of densely packed mud houses, serviced by a fine network of twisting earthen alleyways. I was careful to avoid the open drains cutting grooves

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through the hard earth, brimming with unwanted liquids, and even less wanted disease. As it was a Friday, I had to skirt round the Emir’s palace. At this time of day I knew there would be a large crowd of men arranged in lines across the palace square, preparing to pray. In unison they would go through an Islamic prayer involving repeatedly bending over, standing up, kneeling down and rocking to and fro on their knees. I remember the first time I witnessed this event; I was extremely embarrassed. I was walking along the road that cuts across the palace square, when all the men suddenly knelt down. I found myself standing knee deep in the middle of a worshipping sea of people. For half of the worshipers, I stood between them and Mecca. I didn’t need to be told this was wrong on many levels. The best I could do, to apologise to so many people, was to run from the scene as fast as I could.

Life in Hadejia is in the open. It is too hot indoors and nothing like as sociable. Always, by the side of the road, there are people talking, eating, selling and buying. People repairing bicycles, making mud bricks, working with wood, peeling sugar cane and filling buckets from standpipes. On the streets I too was part of the lifeblood of the town, exchanging money for goods as I circulated its vascular system. The only people indoors were wives, locked in by their culture, their freedom constrained by Purdah.

I greeted many people along the way. I had become quite a celebrity; although I was white, I didn’t behave like a normal white man. Normal white men are very rarely seen, and even then, only through the windows of passing cars. The children always found me very entertaining. They heralded my appearance with gleeful shouts of “Baturi! Baturi!” Baturi is best translated from

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Hausa as ‘white man’. In Kano, the state capital, some of the market traders still called out “Master! Master!”, a throwback from colonial times. Some of the children had another name for me: ‘Garago’. Garago is a food additive made from lumps of crushed peanuts, to which I obviously bore some resemblance.

Living and working in the community, being readily identifiable, a lot of people came to know my name, or at least some variation of it. Some called me ‘Mr Mattu’, ‘Mr Maths’ or even ‘Mr Mighty’ – I quite liked that one. Every time someone called out my name, I always responded with a greeting and a smile. I made a point of smiling a lot. It was easy to understand and I always received a smile in return. No wonder a walk was almost always guaranteed to lift my spirits.

I passed groups of men in rows, praying by the side of the road. Each group was headed by a man who led the prayer with chants from the Koran. Five times a day, people would go through their prayers. Some of the prayer groups congregated inside little wayside mosques topped with loudspeakers broadcasting homage to Allah. Walking past such gatherings made me feel very heathen, but at least as a Christian, albeit a non-card-carrying one, I thought I had some idea what they were trying to do. I turned off the road leading to the palace square, and onto the Kano road – the lifeline of the town. Only a couple of the roads in the town were asphalt. I took a road that looked like it had once been prepared for a tar coating but had never received it. It was raised in the middle, but lacking tar, had become eroded by the seasonal rains that scored a herringbone pattern of mini valleys along its sides.

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I reached the mournful site of an unfinished town gate. Like so many things in Nigeria, it had failed to reach completion before its finance reached exhaustion. The original design was to have incorporated two mighty reinforced concrete pillars and a central support, but the piece they were to support had never materialised. Regrettably, the central pillar had been involved in a collision with a vehicle. Half of it lay prostrate on the ground, a monument of sorts, but not the one portrayed in its design.

I broke my journey to boost my blood sugar levels, and drain some of the heat from my body. The small terraced shop by the side of the road was a regular pit stop, one of the few places where I could be sure of getting a very cold bottle of Coca-Cola. Walking between the stacks of plastic drinks crates and through some battered green doors, I found myself in an Aladdin’s cave of goods.

There were rows of tins containing dried milk, Bournvita and protein-filled high-energy drinks. So many tins. There were even small tins of Heinz baked beans, left over from the days when the local people could more readily afford such luxury imports. I earned twice what the average labourer could bring home, yet with nine naira a day to spend, a small tin of baked beans at three naira a throw was out of the question. Among the bottles of bleach and other cleaning liquids was Vim, at the crazy price of four naira. Cheaper was Elephant Power washing powder, nestled among the foot-long bars of yellow soap and piles of light bulbs. To the left, on a shelf threatening to break away from the whitewashed mud wall under the strain, were loo rolls. Alas, on closer inspection they proved to be the usual poor quality: no perforations, rough performance, no

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staying power – a total rip-off. Good loo paper was becoming very hard to come by. I spotted a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup, covered in dust. Everything was covered in dust. At these prices it wasn’t surprising. I promised myself that I would buy a bottle of ketchup for my birthday. The shop was crammed with goods for sale. On every visit I spotted something new, often a poignant reminder of home. Today, tucked away behind the hurricane lamps and plastic containers of spice, I spotted two tins of Kiwi shoe polish.

Dominating the centre of the room was a long wooden counter. It was a plinth for the supine but imposing figure of Umar, dressed in a grubby white riga.

“Mr Mattu!” Umar acknowledged my presence with his perfunctory approval.

“Umar!” I announced, as if we shared secrets of boyhood mischief.

“How is it, Mr Mattu?” asked Umar, as though the sole purpose of my visit was to engage in his confidence.

“Too hot, Umar!” I proclaimed. “Aargh, it is too hot, really, very hot!”I helped myself to a Coca-Cola from the

fridge and removed the top with the aid of a handy tool suspended from the door handle. I put the bottle to my lips and tipped the contents into my mouth. As the glands in my throat rejoiced, my mind excluded everything but the signals of cool undiluted pleasure. Even my hand enjoyed the chill of the bottle.

Umar bestowed his mildly benevolent gaze on me from his reclined position.

“Mr Mattu, you have no envelopes today?”

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“Not today, Umar. I haven’t got any letters to post. I’m just going to see if there’s anything in my post box.”

Speaking my words conjured up a vision of an empty post box. A long walk in the heat, only to find my post box empty, would be a major disappointment. It would make the journey home seem twice as far as it actually was. I leant against the counter, absorbing some of Umar’s contentment. Outside the door a figure crawled into view. It was a man, his legs wasted by polio, his arms doing service in their place. In each hand he gripped the handle of a wooden block, each block served as a shoe for its respective hand. He caught sight of me through the doorway. He saw a figure of wealth and gazed hopelessly. A wide ditch separated us.

“Mr Mattu, I think you are on holiday soon, yes?”

“We are on holiday now, starting today.”“You stay in Hadejia?”“No, I’m planning to travel to Bama, to visit

some friends.”“Where is Bama?”“It’s near Maiduguri, near the border with

Cameroon.”“Ah, hmmm.” Umar nodded and smiled

approvingly. “I have a brother in Maiduguri, Mr Mattu. I see him there in 1983, for two weeks. Maiduguri is a nice city. You will enjoy, I think.”

Another person entered the shop, a man dressed in the ubiquitous white baba riga. It draped his body like a parachute. I had learnt what differences a riga can signify. Individual wealth was denoted by the quality of the fabric in

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tandem with the visual opulence, quantity and intricacy of the embroidery on the breast and the back. A good-quality fabric was thick, enlarging the size of the man with voluminous folds. In this north Nigerian culture, a ‘big man’ was synonymous with a wealthy man, because a big man could afford the food to make him big.

I was in no hurry. I watched the new customer make his purchases and further examined the goods on sale. Then I heard a voice behind me. I turned only to see the bloodshot, yellowing eyes and stubbly chin of the polio victim. He was muttering something. Prayers from the Koran? Arabic quotations? He stared at me. Evidently he had followed the ditch until he came to a suitable plank to cross by, making all that effort to come and importune me. Umar and the other customer watched me with casual interest. Obviously as a wealthy white man, I would give him more than the smallest coin. I felt in my pocket. No ten-kobo pieces after all the fun and games earlier on. In my back pocket were some notes, all the money I had in the world, pay day being a week late already. I fished them out – seven naira fifty in all. Changing a note was out of the question, so I solemnly handed over the precious well-worn fifty-kobo note. The man, with only pity for an income, was delighted and my honour was satisfied.

Of the four people in the shop, probably only the beggar had less cash than I. I felt very poor but, with all my relative wealth and privileges back in the UK, I couldn’t claim to identify with poverty. Even though I had a bank overdraft and, were I to die the next day, I might have exploded the myth of the wealthy white man, I knew that while I lived, I could reckon to see more wealth in my time than these people could dream of. Or so I

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hoped, firmly shutting the lid on the grim spectre of unemployment. In a society where wealth determines position in the social hierarchy, be that country England or Nigeria, where was I?

I paid Umar forty kobo for my Coca-Cola, and stood for a moment in the doorway to let my eyes adjust to the glare. Then I forced my legs to re-engage with the task in hand and stepped into the heat.

Back in the UK I am a brisk walker, striding purposefully. Here, in the heat of the sun, I had developed a steady plod, minimising any increase in metabolism. The Nigerians, with their elegant postures, no doubt developed from years of carrying heavy articles on their heads, never plodded. They simply glided effortlessly. Nor did they ever seem to hurry. What was the point in hurrying when you were working to African time? Instead of the twenty-four-hour clock, the day was simply divided into four time zones: morning, afternoon, evening and night. There was little seasonal variation so the morning started when it got light at 6.30am, the afternoon at noon, the evening around 4.30pm and night when it got dark around 6.30pm. Of course, this initially infuriated my European sensibilities, but after a time I came to realise that I wasn’t the only person who spent half their life waiting. It was just that I was the only person who minded. I stopped minding.

After crossing the Nguru road marking the northern edge of town, I had to pass the Malamaduri motor park, with its usual group of young men and their 50cc motorbikes parked outside. It was one of two motor parks in Hadejia, where you could get a taxi or a minibus. The taxis were almost always Peugeot 504 ‘station

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wagons’, estate cars to you and me. They only plied their trade between major population centres. The minibuses were slower, cheaper and uncomfortable. They served the shorter routes between Hadejia and the surrounding villages hidden in the bush. Neither would leave without a full complement of passengers: five to seven in the case of the taxis; as many as could be crammed in plus goats, chickens etc. in the minibuses. The men with the 50cc ‘machines’ were Hadejia’s internal taxi service targeting individuals. When I was still new to the town, they hurtled towards me whenever I appeared, racing to get my fare. Now they just shouted “Baturi!”, and I shook my head and smiled. I was the enigmatic white man who liked to walk. Even with the disposable cash, I wouldn’t have given them my trade. Riding pillion on those machines struck me as highly dangerous, especially without a crash helmet.

All the same, it was a long walk. For reasons best known to themselves, perhaps working in collusion with the taxi service, the Hadejia authorities had placed the post office about a mile out of town. From the motor park it was an endless straight asphalt road, built along an embankment and thinly lined with trees. The view featured the dramatic, towering, red and white structure of a radio mast. At its base was a new building, which the planners hoped would one day contain telephones to connect Hadejia with the rest of the world. But it stood unfinished and unmanned. It was also the post office, insofar as it hosted a hundred or so post boxes on an exterior wall.

It was another sad reminder of the high expectations that were generated when Nigeria rode the crest of a crude oil wave. Government

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US dollar revenue was less than a half of what it had been. Now, on the black market, the naira had slumped to the point where it was worth one sixth of what it once commanded on the foreign exchange. The black market was the only market available to the average Nigerian, as the Government had limited access to the official foreign exchange to those lucky enough to obtain a license. The tiny percentage of Nigerians who had managed to hitch a ride on the gravy train were gradually losing the status symbols they cherished. Imported luxuries were now very expensive to repair and the cost to replace them many times greater than their original cost.

Walking towards the imposing finger of red and white, my eyes found a much more interesting aspect of the view: five Fulani women on their way to market, calabash bowls full of nono (fermented milk) stacked on their heads, four or five bowls high. They looked like slender chess pieces. As we drew closer, I could make out the colourful patterns in the cloth that formed their two-piece outfits, the lower half a wrapper finishing halfway down the calf muscle. They may have walked a number of miles, their heads supporting that swilling weight in the hot sun, yet they looked fresh and beautiful. They were tall and thin, with long necks and an enchanting elegance. They had a posture which, before I arrived in Nigeria, I would only associate with the catwalk models of the finest haute couture.

At the point it was possible to make eye contact, they cast their eyes downwards and adopted expressions of quiet inward contemplation. I greeted the first in the line.

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“Sanu ku,” I said politely. Simultaneously the women lifted their eyelids, lighting up their eyes.

In unison they replied, “Sanu, Baturi.” If I hadn’t greeted them, we would have passed with a silent and solemn indifference. They weren’t expecting me to greet them, so when I did, it made their day. Delighted by my attention, coy smiles leapt to their faces, as I knew they would.

Looking at me, one of the older women began speaking rapidly. I heard a reference to the word ‘Baturi’. During her dialogue she pointed to one of the young girls. There followed an outbreak of giggles and excited chatter. Experience told me I was being offered a wife. I didn’t want to imply the girls weren’t sufficiently attractive to be my wife, so I smiled with innocent incomprehension. Nonetheless, sixteen months of determined celibacy served only to amplify the carnal allure of the curvaceous young Fulani on offer – an allure that would raise the eyebrows of Sirens.

I remembered Reakay, a charming trainee nurse who visited me when I first arrived in Hadejia. She developed a habit of just turning up and giggling a lot, even though she spoke respectable English. She would ask me about home, and in particular about my girlfriend in the UK. Once or twice, she brought some of her friends. There would be much giggling and whispered Hausa. Her visits were short and infrequent, because, as I was to discover, a lot of the time she and the other nurses were locked indoors, to reassure their parents. It was difficult not to acknowledge how exceedingly attractive she was – had become. But, my body and soul were resolutely determined to remain celibate. I

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enjoyed her visits, as I enjoyed any opportunity to engage with a slice of life outside of my work – or so I was happy to believe. On parting she would always ask me for something, or make me promise to buy something for the next time she came.

Inevitably, the day came when reality tore the cloak of innocence from the clutch of my determined ignorance. Out of the blue, one of my neighbours asked, “How is your girlfriend, Reakay?” I explained I only had one girlfriend, and she was back in England. Undaunted, my interrogator demanded to know if I had ‘sexed’ her. My disclaimer was greeted with “Haba!” This was a universal exclamation of astonishment and disbelief. For too long, I had dismissed Reakay’s increasing flirtatiousness as harmless fun. With a sudden wave of guilt I realised my curiosity didn’t share the innocence of my ambition. The next time Reakay came to visit, I told her I was to marry my girlfriend from home. She was quick to leave and never to return. I felt bad from guilt and sad from loss.

I had been so sure then that temptation was merely something to be overcome, to put yourself far above. If you loved someone, as I loved Clare back in England, it should be easy to remain faithful. But England was receding at an alarming rate, taking everything I loved with it. My body was here and now, and growing heedless of my good intentions. Now it was up to me to live by my principles and not by allegiances to my memories. If there was any doubt, all I had to do was think about this new and frightening thing called AIDS.

At last, I reached the gravel forecourt of the post office. As I scrunched my way across to the

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post boxes embedded in the wall, I stared at my box and willed it to contain a letter, anything that would qualify the long hot slog. I married the key to the lock, and braced myself for the event I found nothing inside. Which was the best method to use? To put my hand in and feel slowly or to hold my breath and take a sudden look? I went for the latter. It worked, for there was the satisfying shape of a letter. It was brown, with a Nigerian stamp, not a variety commonly found in my box.

I closed my portal to the rest of the world, and scrunched back across the gravel the way I had come, deciding to read the letter as I went.

Dear MatthewJust a bit of scrawl to let you know I’ll

definitely be turning up Saturday 24th June bright and early and ready for a big breakfast.

Be there or be dead.Bob

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Chapter 2Hadejia

Bob was a British expat who flew helicopters for KNARDA, the Kano Agricultural and Rural Development Agency. This was a World Bank organisation, which tried, with almost inspired inefficiency, to perform the task its name suggested. I had bumped into Bob in Hadejia’s market, maybe eight months ago, while he was working in the area, spraying Quelea birds on the Hadejia Nguru wetlands. I had visited him a number of times in Kano. I found both the man and his work fascinating. He told me how the Hadejia Nguru wetlands were of great importance to ecologists, being the last place that millions of migratory birds can feed and drink before the long haul across the desert and Mediterranean, en route for Europe. They were also of great importance to the local populace who farm rice and vegetables on their fertile flood plains, where the water from ‘the rains’ lingers on the high water table instead of just soaking away. Much of the food grown on these wetlands, known as Fadama, was exported out of the area to feed the towns and cities. The higher surrounding land was extremely arid, best described as desert. The fly in the ointment was the destructive effect of the Quelea bird. I should really say Quelea birds, because if you get one, you get a whole swarm, like locusts. Like locusts they are a pest, capable of stripping tons of grain from the landscape in a single frenzied murmuration.

So people like Bob are employed to spray them with highly toxic poisons. It’s brutal, but reasonable, given the necessity for some sort of control. Or it would be reasonable, if it worked.

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The trouble is, a helicopter is a noisy beast, and your Quelea bird is of a nervous, if not to say, a flighty disposition. By the time the sky above him is filled with the sound of rotary mechanics, he’s long gone, and no doubt laughing somewhere on the sidelines. It’s not so funny for the larger birds like egrets, or the four-legged inhabitants of the Fadama, who are left to receive a toxic dose of poison. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the two-legged inhabitants didn’t find the joke turning a little sour. There is a more effective way to deliver the poison, Bob told me. You need a fixed-wing aircraft, with its engine cut, or idling, to fly over the Quelea at dusk when they come to roost in a clump of trees that has been previously identified and marked with a flare. Maybe not so sporting, but efficient.

I once asked Bob what he got out of his work, knowing, as he did, that it was so ineffectual. He told me about the lawlessness of the African skies, the only place, he said, where a real flying man can still really fly. He had been an ‘ag-pilot’ for sixteen years, always in Africa, mainly doing fixed-wing crop dusting in Kenya and the Sudan. The man was a fear merchant, an adrenaline addict. Full of crazy stories about the kind of antics that sort out the men from the boys: competitions with fellow pilots to fly under low bridges; ‘water-skiing’, which meant the wheels of your plane had to skim the surface of a lake or river. He had even flown at very low level into war zones, taking war correspondents in beneath the radar, not for ideological motives, nor for financial gain, but just for the sheer hell of it. It must have been a hell of a high, but while he couldn’t live without it, neither of his wives had been able to live with it. Though I know he could

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have done without two lots of alimony, I rather suspected he was happier as a solitary being.

The last time we had met, we agreed to go to a birthday party in Bama. Unfortunately I wasn’t so enthusiastic now. However, I had said I would go and there was no way now of telling him I had changed my mind. My big problem was cash. Bob would have to lend me some. It wasn’t just cash though. I was also feeling very apathetic, even though it still sounded like a ‘fun’ idea.

Returning home from the post office, I chose to walk into town to buy some food. I took a short cut across some scrubland baked hard by the sun. It was a relief to get off the road, what with the dust thrown up by the speeding traffic having a tendency to stick to my moist skin, and the constant risk of being mown down. The footpath from the road led past a very grand, newly built house which was owned by some state official or other. Being a government official was a good job, if you could get it. There was plenty of opportunity for those dedicated to lining their own pockets. Nobody had forgotten the good old days, when true exponents of corruption, like Umaru Dikko, filled their pockets with oil money.

Not everybody tried to aspire to the dizzy heights of Dikko’s three billion pounds, especially in these days of tight money. Gratuitous bribery was deemed highly immoral these days. There wouldn’t be enough money for everybody else – well, at least everybody else that mattered – though even now, there were those thoughtless few who took ten, twenty million, when two or three million would do. Unfortunately, it was still all too easy to sign a contract for a job that cost only half as much as the cost shown on the

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receipt, and to split the difference with the contractor.

Corruption is the name of the game, and the game is played by nearly everyone who can join in and nobody visibly objects. A big man should be on big money, and should expect respect by definition. Egalitarianism isn’t a prominent feature of the culture. One man told me a man’s fingers are unequal in length, and therefore men should accept inequality in wealth. If you didn’t join in with the status quo when you could, then you made no progress. If you weren’t prepared to pocket money, to make up for your undeniably paltry salary, then you weren’t prepared for promotion. No one could be accepted into a higher echelon of achievement unless they were demonstrably corrupt. Only then would they be safe to accept, as only then would they be unable to point an accusing finger, which would naturally be very disagreeable.

Money, the curse of man, or is man the curse of money? My long lonely walks and lonely evenings left me with more time to think about life, the universe and everything than might otherwise be advised. My surroundings wouldn’t let me forget that there are so many people so much worse off than myself. Even though I had only a few naira in my pocket I was rich, rich by the fact that I was insulated from the harshest reality of life by the womb of British citizenship. If things got too rough, I could flick a switch that would recoil my umbilical cord and whisk me back to a life blissfully immune from the challenge of naked existence.

I was rich because I had that choice. What is money if it isn’t the power to choose? But what of greed? What of Umaru Dikko’s three billion

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pounds? Why big diamond rings? Is materialism the fount of greed or is it simply a manifestation of greed? Is greed a basic human instinct or a component in the structure of society, with materialism the marker of one’s status within that society?

Did I think my philosophising would eventually bring me to the brink of a great epiphany which would reveal a single formula describing all human behaviour? No. But walking through Hadejia always presented me with new perspectives, new contrasts and new puzzles to ponder. With so much time on my own, I relied on my thoughts for companionship. The walk from the post office was long and soaked in the heat of a sauna. Like a good companion, my thoughts would shrink the journey time and distract me from the discomfort of the heat. Without this companionship, such a trek would be unbearable.

I decided greed had to be an instinct and like all instincts it therefore had to be related to either sex – furthering the species being the central purpose of our individual existence – or survival, a prerequisite for sex. I was sure Freud would agree. Why would a man want to buy an incredibly expensive car that wasn’t visibly incredibly expensive? What wealth is to a man is what a resplendent plumage is to the male bird of paradise, something that requires flaunting, something to demonstrate the genetic superiority that acquired it and something to attract the best genes with which to equip progeny of the womb.

And, as for large diamonds, gold, ridiculously expensive jewellery encrusted with precious gems… Price tags for suitors? Symbols of fidelity? Financial security for the harbingers

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of life? Guardians of the vulnerable conception? Defenders of the young?

Yet again, I thought I might be en route to a great philosophical breakthrough. Yet again I had managed to let my thoughts meander and obscure the physical effort of walking in the heat of a blazing sun. I was so successful this time, I was quite startled to find myself climbing the embankment of the Hadejia bypass with so little awareness of the elapse in time. By the time I reached the breeze-block houses on the edge of town, the fact Eve was the one who took the apple in the Garden of Eden was a logical consequence. I smiled at the strange things I found evolving in my head. Clearly my sentient being was bereft of the day-to-day challenges set by life in the UK. Hunting for tasks to engage in, it was as if my mind had found a mirror and become intrigued by its own image, its function and its purpose.

The day was growing hotter. The sun was a blazing conflagration in the sky. My body was baking but thankfully there was a breeze of dry air to cool my sweat. I ran a hand through my scalding hair to expose my forehead to the flow of air and fingered the sweat away from my eyelids. I grimaced at the brilliant surroundings. Another cold drink was in order but I couldn’t spare the expense. I would drink them all day if I could. I plodded on into town, through the back streets towards the market. The technique to survive the heat was to relax and ignore it – enjoy my surroundings, enjoy being in Nigeria, value the compelling experience.

The road leading to the market was sandy and striated with the wavy lines of bicycle tracks. To unaccustomed eyes the area would have

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looked incredibly grim, drab and run down. Many of the buildings in this area were of the concrete, breeze block and plaster variety. Some of the buildings were built during colonial rule and must have looked quite grand in their day. Occasionally buildings had balconies with ornate balustrades. Alas, now a lack of money had seen them decay. Much of the plasterwork was chipped and the paintwork old and dirty. A common feature was corrugated iron roofing, weighed down at the edges by concrete blocks. Most of the buildings here were shops, selling more or less the same as every other shop lying outside the market.

One of the marvellous features of the shops was the fact that much of the merchandise could be bought in any quantity. Any trader would give you a price on a single item down to a one-inch nail. In this free and efficient economy everything had a price, including my household rubbish (a lot of it would disappear by morning). It was just a question of haggling, which I had grown to enjoy as much as the traders.

On my route I passed the cinema. It was essentially a walled area, one wall of which was painted white and doubled as the screen. Judging by the occasional sighting of two men cruising around on a motorbike advertising ‘what’s on’ via a placard held by the pillion passenger, the diet of films consisted of mostly cheap budget Indian and Kung Fu films. This explained the presence of ‘wannabe’ Bruce Lees playing by the roadside. I never ventured into the cinema but from what I heard the ‘filum machine’ was always breaking down – the corresponding groan I had heard more than once. Nevertheless, Hadejia’s cinema and disco – the disco clientèle were mainly men to whom dancing was naturally more of a sport,

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given the lack of women – were features that put Hadejia on the map and we were proud of them.

No two navigations of Hadejia’s capillary backstreets were the same. Today’s distinguishing event was priceless. Two elderly men, seated in front of a mud house some metres back from the wayside, beckoned me over to talk with them. I didn’t hesitate to obey their request. I had never spoken with anyone from their generation. I couldn’t imagine what they had to say. Between the men was a large bowl made from the dried skin of a calabash. On approach I could see it contained a rice-based mixture. I came to a stand and respectfully engaged in a short Hausa greeting with the man who had beckoned me. As we spoke I observed the wizened weather-beaten skin clinging to his face. Muscles that had once supported a complex lexicon of facial expressions were now too weak to engage in any unspoken communication. There was nothing in his face to indicate the polarity of his welcome. With confident English, he asked me where I was from. I said, “Britain”. It was as if I had provided a secret password that authenticated my membership of an elite club. The man nodded with approval and I was cordially invited to sit with them.

I was offered a bowl of water and requested to eat from the calabash. I rinsed my right hand in the bowl of water and dipped my fingers into the rice. I was ready to savour the moment but I wasn’t ready for the scalding heat that burnt my fingertips. I felt no less pain than I would expect from dipping my fingers in boiling water. My autonomic nervous system snatched my hand from the food and made me yelp. The two men laughed at the white man and the white man

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joined in their laughter. To laugh together was to bond together. It was a moment for all to relish.

Life expectancy for a Nigerian man was well short of fifty. If these guys were over seventy years old, they were members of a select few blessed with twenty years of injury time. I knew I would never forget this occasion. I knew this meeting would be one of the rarest privileges I would ever receive and one most rare for anyone from my world. I also knew they wanted to share more than their food. With quiet, earnest voices, they explained how much better life had been under British rule. They shared an opinion, which in my world of collectively assured enlightenment, was a shining totem of political incorrectness. Nevertheless, I nodded in agreement. I had to; next to these guys I wasn’t qualified to disagree. Did this mean I was condoning British colonialism? It sounded like I was, even though I don’t. Thankfully there was nobody in earshot who might judge me a closet colonialist.

I was deeply touched by the offer to sit with these old boys and partake in their valuable food. Listening to their hushed voices, I realised they were no more willing to broadcast their opinions than I was willing to broadcast my agreement with them. They knew what they had to say was no more palatable to my kind than it was theirs. But truth is immutable and keeping it secret can be a burden of guilt.

As I listened to anecdotes in praise of the good old days under the British, I detected a second purpose for their recounting. In parallel to their applause was a counter charge of moral dereliction. The British had just upped and left. Why had the British left Nigeria so poorly

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equipped to maintain the rule of law, so poorly equipped with the democratic institutions required to support a democracy accountable to its people? At least now there was a vehicle to satisfy my desire to admonish colonialism. The sudden haste with which the British abandoned its colonies indicated the speed with which the colonies had transformed, from a source of wealth to a source of embarrassment. The rapid departure from Nigeria was the result of a Fisher Price politics swiftly compiled to quell the growing tantrums of a binary righteousness. When I bade farewell to my new friends I walked away with a precious new possession. Our dialogue had been less a conversation between three people, more the transfer of messages between two generations from two nations, nations that had once shared many bonds and undisclosed affection between individual representatives. Messages of affection, hurt, respect and apology, messages that nearly didn’t make it through.

Walking on sand and dust is very tiring and makes flip-flop feet very grubby with a mixture of sweat and dust. So I was glad when I reached the asphalt road that formed a boundary with the market. The market came in two distinct sections: the old and the new. For a long time I thought the old was the new and vice versa because of their appearance. The new market comprised banged together wooden stalls and shelters with roofs of loosely thatched palm leaves. The goods on sale were mostly traditional handicrafts, vegetables, fruit and meat. This section sat behind the old market and backed onto open land next to the Kano road.

I crossed the road and entered the old market along one of the main arterial paths.

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Again the path was sandy but its impeding effect wasn’t noticeable compared to the jostle of the human traffic. The old market had at one stage been like the new market. Now it consisted of terraced shops built from breeze blocks and mounted on large rectangular concrete slabs over a foot thick. They all had corrugated iron roofs, sheet metal doors padlocked at night and plaster cladding painted pale blue or white. The concrete slabs were arranged in an even grid, each the foundation for maybe ten shops in two rows back to back. The foundations extended beyond the shop fronts to make a veranda sheltered from the sun.

The contents of these shops exuded onto the verandas in the form of tables topped with tall displays, chairs and benches. The shops tended to be more diverse in what they sold, and what they sold was largely borne from imported technology and design. There were the specialist shops: motorbike mechanics, chemists, tailors, plastic hardware, radio repairs and cloth merchants. There were boxes of washing powder in towers, pyramids of tinned food, stacks of cigarettes, packets of Maggi cubes and all manner of mass-produced products that defined a leap from a monotonous past to a dynamic future. The old market also had electricity, thus many of the shops had fridges dispensing cold drinks. If you couldn’t afford a cold ‘mineral’ (fizzy drink), you could buy a less expensive bag of cold water, sink your teeth into a corner and show your appreciation for the pioneers of refrigeration.

I weaved in and out of the percolating throng. I always attracted the attention of those around me. I was highly unusual and naturally warranted study. Bobbing brown heads looked me in the eyes as I navigated my way around

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them. Drat! There was a face I could see coming towards me that I didn’t want to see. I considered some futile evasive action. Alas, we were on a collision course. The strong Benue features were wearing shades, the approaching body beneath wore European clothes. A bright moon-shaped crescent lit up beneath the flared nose. Inevitably Sergeant Luke spotted me. I forced a smile.

“Mr Matthew, how go day now?” This was a typical greeting from a southerner, for Benue State was in the Christian south. The southern states were those penetrated by the missionaries bringing Christianity and selected highlights from British education in return for lost souls. He spoke good English. It came with his native territory.

“I am tired, Luke. It is too hot today. How are you?” I asked, not that I was interested.

“Actually I am having many problems at the moment.” Surprise surprise, he wanted money.

“You see, we still haven’t received our money,” he said laughing as if it were a joke. I suppose now I felt sorry for the man. He did have problems but they weren’t purely financial ones. His attitude to life was a problem. It was largely responsible for his financial difficulties. He was an ex-sergeant in the Nigerian Army. He had spent many of his army years based in the Kaduna army barracks. Kaduna was the state capital of Kaduna State, a northern state bordering with Kano State to the south. Now he worked for the Government Secondary School (GSS) in Hadejia and had done so for about five years. For a long time I thought he was the physical education master because that was how he described himself. But after talking with a couple of GSS teachers I discovered he was

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generally considered to be the physical punishment master.

The application of pain was rated highly as a method of instilling discipline in schools. As the GSS catered for over 400 students, many of whom were boarders, it was deemed necessary to have a master (often an ex-army man) to dish out punishments. To be fair, he also trained the small army corps belonging to the school and spent quite a lot of time putting the students to bed. It was only Sergeant Luke who considered himself to be one of the teaching staff, and this was how he portrayed himself outside the school. It was tough for him. He spoke very acceptable English and would thus appear to be an educated man and worthy of some respect.

Sergeant Luke took a lot of pride in himself, particularly his military background. I thought retirement had forced him from the army. Whatever it was, he still hankered for the status he once held, and he still hadn’t accepted that that status was no longer his. Sergeant Luke often made it clear he considered himself worthy of better things. After all, he had been a sergeant in the army. He seriously thought that one day he would get some extremely well paid white-collar job and give his children a ‘proper’ education in the UK.

“I need to buy fish for my children,” he said still smiling. He knew the buttons to press: the one marked ‘children’ and the one marked ‘food’. This was bad news. I couldn’t just lend him five naira, I was almost skint. Now I had the mental image of his children in hunger. I knew his children weren’t living on an ideal diet. Sometimes he brought them round to my house when he was looking for a loan, a form of moral

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blackmail. He was a divorcee. In his culture if a man gets a divorce he automatically gets custody of the children – not an ideal situation. He had been trying to get another wife for some time, in fact he was supposed to have a new one coming up from Benue State – a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old, he didn’t know her exact age. She was supposed to have come up as soon as she had finished school. He had paid the dowry of 1,000 naira. It was all arranged, they had even gone through the family ceremony but she hadn’t materialised. I could easily understand why. She must really have balked at the idea of marrying this man more than twice her age who she had only met a couple of times. By her absence she seemed to be successful in at least delaying her fate. It was really gross to me. It was obvious that she was required only to look after the kids and service his desires. There was no way he could love her or vice versa. To me it was gross, but I am prejudiced by my culture to think such things. I tried to prevent it prejudicing my respect for the man.

“Okay, I’ll walk with you. I’m going that way anyway and I’ll buy you some.” I could see he was disappointed I hadn’t been willing to lend him some money straight up. I knew if I did, a large portion of it would end up in a bar on the edge of town. It wasn’t as if he was an alcoholic but he did have appearances to keep. Besides, I couldn’t afford it and he already owed me an overdue thirty-five naira, which I was beginning to think I would never see again. Luckily though, I had plenty of beer in the fridge to see me through and I only needed to buy a few things now.

We wandered back towards the fish sellers, casting our eyes over the produce and products that laced the route. One of the shops on the

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right was my tailor. I could always be sure to see him sitting behind his foot-powered Singer sewing machine. I looked in. He looked up sensing the stationary figure outside and gave me a great smile, which I returned with a cheery wave. He was a marvellous character. He ripped me off but I didn’t mind, he was good. I thought the idea of having one’s own tailor very civilised and I was pleased to be a customer of his.

Through the crowd of shuffling people we dodged. Looking at the people dressed in rigas and clothes resembling baggy pyjamas, it occurred to me that I could probably wear my pyjamas and nobody would bat an eyelid, whereas if I wore shorts I might offend someone. Wearing shorts was akin to walking around in a pair of Y-fronts back in the UK, so naturally I always wore long trousers in respect. I was keen to comply with local decorum but it wasn’t always obvious. On one occasion, when I was in the market with Sergeant Luke, he told me that it was bad news to carry a pot, especially a black pot such as mine. I would occasionally take it to market to carry tomatoes and onions after they had been liquidised by one of the grinding machines in the market. Apparently this made me look an idiot or something similar, he really couldn’t explain. Suffice to say it was embarrassing for him to walk by my side when I carried it. I couldn’t understand the issue. Abdul told me I shouldn’t let people see what I was carrying. One should always carry things in a bag, which explained why I saw people carrying their liquidised vegetables in a bag. No doubt this explained why Garba, the little shopkeeper near where I lived, always wanted to put my purchases in a bag. Carrying liquidised vegetables in a bag seemed

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rather messy, so I settled for chopped vegetables in my stews.

The path took us past the slaughterhouse on the boundary between the new and old markets. The slaughterhouse wasn’t a pleasant place, unless you were into seeing goats and sheep having their throats slit and bleeding to death. Round the corner, past the flip-flop stalls and into the new market we walked. The new market had, at one time, been one of those areas used as a public convenience, but by now such things had little effect on my outlook. I was quite happy to buy my food from the piles of produce that sat on grubby mats lying on the ground. I needed to buy some egusi. Egusi is a powder made by grinding watermelon seeds and used for thickening stews. First off, however, we would buy Sergeant Luke his fish.

I loved the market. There were so many colours – the fruits and vegetables, brightly patterned wrappers, rich embroidery, elaborate damask dyed in a myriad of hues. There were garish coloured plastic containers and coloured polythene bags, a kaleidoscopic juxtaposition, a cacophony of clashing colours from across the visible spectrum. The buzzing atmosphere was a delight. It was the heart of the town and it throbbed accordingly. The market was where it was all at. If you didn’t like the markets of northern Nigeria, you didn’t like northern Nigeria.

Sunday was the main market day in Hadejia, when the human throng became a dense swarm swollen by traders from the surrounding villages. It was the day when the cattle market would convene behind the new market, the day when one could buy a whole gamut of handmade goods,

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from grass baskets and mats to handcrafted scissors moulded from scrap metal. Sunday was the day when everybody coughed and sneezed from the extra dust kicked up into the air, when it sounded like everyone had tuberculosis.

Much to my annoyance, Sergeant Luke kept on stopping to talk to people. I had the distinct feeling his ego only appreciated as many people as possible seeing he was friends with the white man. We stopped next to the Juju sellers while he spoke to yet another acquaintance. I stood and stared at the Juju hardware. It fascinated me every time I went past. To people of my kind Juju is another name for black magic; to the people that surrounded me it wasn’t magic, it was for real. It was purported to have great powers. By wearing small pouches of a Juju preparation, prepared by the Juju man from a wide variety of animal parts and plant material, a person could ward off ill health, affect the ways of those around them and perform super-human acts. For instance, Juju could make you bulletproof. I was told it was widely used in the Biafran war for this purpose. With it you could walk through walls or make yourself irresistible to the opposite sex.

In front of this Juju man was a spread of wings, legs, heads, feet, skulls and assorted animal appendages. I remember one such Juju vendor handing me an object for my inspection. After close examination, I was told it was a monkey’s penis. Juju was strong stuff but there was a flaw: its powers could be neutralised by the close proximity of a menstruating woman. The subject fascinated me. My mind has never been closed to the possibility of powers in our universe as yet not understood or discovered. However, this bit about menstruating women seemed like an inspired excuse for failure, brilliant small print

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and evidence that in-built obsolescence is nothing new.

Sergeant Luke was a firm believer in these mystic powers. When I refused to accept that Juju could enable a person to walk through walls he became quite upset. To me it was just another example of man’s sheep-like mentality, exemplary of his gullibility; to Sergeant Luke I was just ignorant. It was difficult to contain myself when he inferred that it was superior to anything the white man had invented, but it had to be done.

When we arrived at the fish stalls, the smell was nauseous. The fish came from the river Hadejia, in a variety of sizes, all being cooked either at or before market. They stood in stacks with wooden skewers fastening their mouths to their tails. Sergeant Luke selected his fish and I paid the price. I was becoming tired and increasingly hungry. If I had the money I would have succumbed to the risky business of eating in a chop shop. I wanted to go home and collapse in my favourite chair. I prayed the electricity had come back on by now. A twinge from the base of my bladder told me that I had to get home and drink lots of water to stave off the urethritis that came on if I didn’t pee enough.

Suddenly, shouting broke out behind us. I turned to see a dust devil twisting and twirling towards the stalls on the edge of the market. It lunged and tore into some stalls with a malevolent indiscretion. The angry vortex of sand and dust lashed out as it broke up against the objects that impeded its path. The men on the stalls disappeared in the turbulent brown twist, their clothes thrashed and flailed with the pugilist plume of grit and grime. There was nothing to do but cover our faces as we too were engulfed by

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the devil in the dust. It was one of the biggest I had ever seen, giving full justice to its name. The dust devil careered on into the market leaving my clothes and dampened skin coated in dust and sand. It was the most unpleasant encounter with a dust devil I had ever experienced.

“Well, I have to go on home now,” I said, with absolutely no concern for what the reply might be.

“Let me accompany you back to your home, I have to go also,” Sergeant Luke replied.

“Sure,” I said, meaning quite the reverse. Whatever, I was going to dictate the pace. He would just have to keep up regardless of the friends he might encounter. He would also have to do the talking. I wasn’t feeling very communicative. I just wanted to get home and have a bucket shower. I started to walk.

“Er, Mr Matthew, I think this way is best,” he said in his clipped Benue accent. This really got up my nose. He always did this.

“There is just one man I want to see who is making me a pair of trousers. I think I must have another new pair and I have to tell him which material I want.” Sergeant Luke spoke persuasively and pointed vaguely behind him. My course wasn’t going to be altered, and somewhat to my companion’s surprise I rejected his plan.

“Well, I don’t have much time, I want to listen to the radio news broadcast and it’s coming on soon,” I said, lying.

“Okay,” he said, looking almost cross, then he walked towards me and I resumed my initial course.

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I led the way out of the market complex and onto the main road, Sergeant Luke taking up my side.

“Mr Matthew, you said before that you would be travelling back to Britain. When exactly do you anticipate you will be going?” Sergeant Luke asked with his coarse, almost rasping, voice.

“Well, I’ve decided not to go back. My holiday plans have changed somewhat. Besides, I don’t think I can really afford it. It would mean trying to raise some money from home.”

Some time ago I had told him I wanted to go back to the UK for a holiday. I had desperately wanted to see Clare, the girlfriend I had let VSO tear me away from. Not only had I wanted to see Clare, I had developed a mad craving to guzzle vast quantities of chocolate, cream cakes, strawberries and cream. Food! I was dreaming about, hallucinating about it. I would have done anything for some of my mother’s cooking. I would have loved to have gone home just for a weekend. Now though, it was no longer a matter of money. Clare, my primary cause to go home, had let go of our emotional tie. There was little point to my planning a trip home now. I was content with where I was.

“Well, if you at some time decide to go, please do you think it might be possible to bring me a very nice pair of shoes? You know, we can’t get good shoes here and I know they are very much cheaper in Britain.” Sergeant Luke’s plea was irksome in its repetition. I was just about to go through the all-too-frequent and complicated rigmarole of explaining that British shoes weren’t really cheap, being as it was impossible to actually buy pounds at the official exchange rate, and even if he did have the cash, how difficult it

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would be to get money out of the country, when a voice said: “Mr Madtiew, hi, howsit going?” I turned to see Winston Churchill.

“Okay thanks, how are you?” I asked, pleased to see this amicable fellow.

“Fine,” said the effusive face of the Ibo man (the Ibos were another southern tribe that had constituted a large part of the Biafrans). Winston, who was a ‘real’ teacher at the GSS, greeted Sergeant Luke as a colleague, rather than a friend. We talked of our plans for the holidays. He was looking forward to travelling south to see family and friends. In many ways he must have felt as far from home as I did.

“Madtiew, would you do one thing for me?” he asked.

“What?” I enquired.“Next term we are trying to arrange a

speaker to come and give a lecture to the school, as myself and some other teachers have to organise a technology week. Would you come and lecture for us?” I couldn’t refuse the keen look in his eyes even though I knew I was about to say yes to something that would require a massive effort – a lecture to the whole school!

“Yes, of course. What would you like me to lecture on?”

“The importance of technology in a developing society like Nigeria,” he said smiling innocently. Oh God! I knew it. A talk on single-stage transistor amplifiers, anytime, but not this, a subject that pressed hard on the bruise of a painful dilemma. I didn’t know the answer, not anymore. Now I had just agreed to deliver a lecture on it! It never ceased to amaze me how every day could leave me with so much to think

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about at the end of it. Winston left us at the Emir’s palace and left me with another hassle which had to be filed under ‘Things to dwell over, no immediate panic’.

Home was bearably close now. Thankfully the conversation didn’t return to the question of whether or not I would promise to bring back a nice pair of shoes from some hypothetical holiday in Britain that I had no intention of going on. Instead, we just walked on in silence, perhaps already aware of an air of excitement in the street. Some children, quite a way off, were rushing towards the edge of town where there was a large expanse of land bare of any trees or scrub, which people would often refer to as ‘the desert’. I noticed a disproportionate number of cyclists passing us from behind. Some more children ran out from the adjoining alleys and sped towards the desert.

“What’s going on down there do you think?” I asked, just as a large cluster of cyclists hurtled past.

“I don’t know, let me ask.” Sergeant Luke shouted to a boy in a white GSS uniform passing on a bicycle. The bicycle had no brakes, so the boy had to let down a flip-flopped foot to scrape the ground. Sergeant Luke exchanged some Hausa with the boy and declared, with a good deal of jubilation, that the army had arrived.

“It is the army on bush manoeuvres, it is called operation vulture,” he said. I didn’t ask him how he knew. It could have been in the papers for all I knew. I was willing to believe anything he told me about the army, what with his godfather being high up in the military command somewhere and the fact that he still had friends in the Kaduna barracks. I couldn’t but believe

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him. Our pace quickened while he told me of how the trials were to begin in about two weeks’ time. There were going to be tanks and soldiers from several northern states all crawling around between Hadejia and Malamaduri.

We soon arrived at the desert, joining a small clump of mainly young men and boys by the side of the road. Obviously what everybody had been watching had just disappeared into the bush, away in the distance. There was nothing to see by the time we arrived. Most of the children that had run onto the desert were walking back towards the road, their figures small against the hard flat sun-baked tract of land.

It had been a major event in Hadejia’s sleepy diary. Quite a few people were standing around talking and occasionally looking and pointing towards the horizon. Sergeant Luke had again found someone else to talk to. I stood and listened but I couldn’t understand a word of their Hausa. I looked at the milling people and spotted Koli standing with a couple of other blokes. He was wearing his lovely white riga with golden embroidery down its front. It was amazing how those things could make someone look so majestic. Being Friday, this was one of his posh rigas, as compared to the more casual rigas he would wear to work. To complete his dignified appearance he was wearing one of his Hulas, a hat roughly similar in shape to those worn by McDonalds staff but completely covered in a hand-embroidered pattern.

I went across to Koli and started my Hausa greetings. As usual he was instantly pleased to see me, his face leaping into its boyish grin as if someone had just farted indiscreetly. My face did the same, as it does with such people. I joined in

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the conversation, which centred on the tanks. By now we were just one of a few small groups discussing this topic in the shade of some trees. Everybody kept one eye on the desert in case there might be more to see. It was like watching a cricket match that didn’t exist. There was no doubting the importance given to this event. The glimpse of the army was a glimpse at the unelected government that so many people knew so little about.

We were joined by three young staff from the STC who were often to be found playing table tennis in the male nurses’ quarters next to my house. For a second time I witnessed a debate as to whether Nigeria was about to go to war with South Africa. All this tank business had to be part of the preparations. I heard the idea previously in the staff room. The same three were then trying to decide if they would join up or not – assuming there was going to be a war. I had no wish to share my thoughts, even though I firmly believed it was logistically and politically impossible. I found the protocol used in their arguments difficult to master and I didn’t want to offend anyone.

I invited Koli back for tea. Thankfully Sergeant Luke had vanished. We had been standing more or less at the end of my road so it was only a minute’s walk to the comforting sight of my house. Luckily the electricity was back on so it was actually possible to make a cup of tea and collapse under the cooling breeze from the ceiling fan. I would have been seriously peeved if the power hadn’t come back on. Really though, it was incredible I had electricity at all, what with all the piracy that went on with people connecting themselves into overhead lines. The police didn’t do much about it, but then according

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to a NEPA pamphlet the police were the worst offenders. If piracy wasn’t enough to overload the system there was also a problem with people draining off the cooling oil in the substation transformers. For a few nairas’ worth of oil they would cause the thermal destruction of a transformer costing tens of thousands of naira.

Koli and I sat with our tea, which I had made with condensed milk, a real luxury. He worked as a carpenter in the workshops behind the STC, making things for what I assumed contributed to the Principal’s ‘private’ endeavours. He sometimes worked weekends as an odd-job man at the Bereque compound about seven miles west of Hadejia. Bereque was a French company commissioned by the Federal Government to build a multi-million-naira irrigation project on the River Hadejia. The project was meant to have lasted about four years but the money had dried up after only two. The Government promised to fund the completion of the project when it could find the money and in the meantime pay Bereque a retainer. This had been the state of play for the last two years, with the compound kept alive by two expatriates: one English and one French. Not surprisingly the grubby hands of the World Bank were assisting in this economic and ecological farce. The compound could hold about fifty expats and their families, housing them in nice air-conditioned chalets, supplying them with recreational facilities such as a swimming pool, and squash and tennis courts.

Inside the very large compound were millions of pounds’ worth of heavy plant equipment. There were rows of bulldozers, lorries and earth movers. There were workshops, large warehouses and offices, not to mention a restaurant. There was everything you need to

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mould 25,000 square hectares of land into a simple-to-use irrigation system but almost totally devoid of the necessary people.

The Englishman, Peter, sometimes invited me to the compound for lunch, giving me the chance to use the large swimming pool to rediscover the meaning of invigoration. The first time I had met Koli was at the compound. Even though he worked around the back of the STC, I had never actually met him before. He was cleaning the swimming pool area and recognised me. From then on we became firm friends. His English was really quite good, a virtue of two years in Lagos working for his brother. Straight away I liked his easy-going manner and the way he communicated with me as an equal.

From that day onwards we got to know each other well, as it turned out he lived in the same Hadejia ‘quarters’ as me, only a two-minute walk away. Initially he came to see me a couple of times purely to give me invitations from Peter to come round for Sunday lunch and relay my reply. Wow, I remember those lunches! Excellent French cuisine and loads of it served up on a clean tablecloth by a steward in an air-conditioned chalet. It was luxury to me. Peter seemed to enjoy the pampered but lonely existence. It must have been like being a king in a castle with minions at hand. I don’t think I could have done such a job, even for that large tax-free salary. I wouldn’t have been able to handle the loneliness for one thing.

My house became a sort of sanctuary for Koli, somewhere he could smoke without his wife hassling him and occasionally partake in a small glass of beer without judgement from his peers.

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Koli sat confidently in his chair and told me how the Bereque compound was going to be used as a billet for the army big men while military exercises were taking place in the vicinity. He was proud of this insight and my obvious curiosity in it. He found it quite amusing that all the officers were going to have nice beds in nice air-conditioned chalets while the soldiers were all going to sleep in tents stuck out in the bush. Koli was convinced that there was no coincidence in the location of the exercises. All the big men fancied a couple of weeks in what was tantamount to a luxurious holiday camp. I knew Peter wouldn’t be happy about it. It wasn’t the first time Bereque’s top man in Nigeria, from his office in Lagos, had offered the company’s facilities to various Nigerian dignitaries. It made a lot of work for Peter. He would have to organise everything, as if he were some kind of hotelier. He would be pulling his hair out after a couple of weeks. He did so cherish his peaceful existence. Poor Pete.

“Matchew, there is a new man at Bereque now. People say he is from Britain,” Koli announced. He looked at me with curiosity, hoping I might supply an explanation. I had no idea.

“What does he do there? Does he work on any of the equipment?” I asked.

“People say he works with the radio,” Koli said as if it would jog my memory. It didn’t. It was very strange. Peter was the only Englishman there, purely so he could deal with the authorities in the role of a French-English translator for contracts and for everyday translation on the interface with the local authorities. He was also a qualified engineer, which was necessary for the

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contractual negotiations and management of the compound. Working or not working, it still required a lot of work looking after the maintenance and a payroll for about forty Nigerian staff. The only other expats that ever came out were always French. One possible explanation was that this new guy was an engineer, seconded for a while to do something with a piece of equipment that was perhaps British made. Even that seemed unlikely. I just shrugged my shoulders.

Koli stayed for a while. I remember we had a chat about malaria during which I suddenly realised I had forgotten to buy my egusi at the market. I was annoyed with myself. Forgetting this made me remember I hadn’t taken my malaria tablet, Paludrine – one of two a day. I remembered this because it was generally considered that Paludrine affected one’s memory. Nobody doubted the toxic nature of the prophylactic regime and nobody liked taking fourteen Paludrine and two Chloroquine a week. I always kept my Paludrine on the coffee table so that they would keep reminding me. I took one straight away. Koli looked on.

“Whenever it is possible for me to come England I will take this tablets. Also I am thinking this tablets are good tablets, yes?” I told him they were to stop me getting malaria.

“This tablets give you energy and make you feel more powerful,” he said, refusing to believe they weren’t a tonic for all ills of which malaria was just one. “I will have to take them in your country, yes?” Koli asked with expectation in his voice.

“No, it’s okay, we don’t have malaria in England,” I said, going on to explain that these

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were preventative tablets not curative. I think he was disappointed. It was a classic example of the immense responsibility the West has in controlling where and to whom our drugs are dispensed, a responsibility the West often shirks with financially crippling and potentially lethal consequences. There are Western companies thrusting tons of largely useless expensive vitamin tablets on these people, using lies in their adverts, corrupt doctors for their distribution and unscrupulous money-grabbing as their motive. There are some companies actually advertising brain tonics. In countries that lack enforcement of rigid standards and controls, evil cowboys from the West run freely. On this subject I was amazed to find examples of nil morality. I was horrified that some of the most ferocious animals in this dangerous landscape came from the peaceful sitting rooms in Europe.

In Hadejia I could buy any number of drugs over the counter. There was nothing to stop me buying some very mind-expanding ones. I remember a football match I played in between the male nurses from the local hospital and the staff and students of the STC. As I was a great disappointment to the STC, giving a graphic display of the fact that just because you’re white it doesn’t necessarily mean you can play football like Gary Lineker, or indeed that you can play football at all, I found myself in a conversation about what it was to be incredibly unfit. I was told of a tablet one could buy on the market, colloquially called ICD. This, I was informed, could enable a man to run the thirty miles from Hadejia to Malamaduri and back before breakfast. It could do for your stamina what a cup of boiling water does for a cup of tea. Amusingly ICD was an acronym for ‘I Can Do anything’.

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“Do you not have this in your country?” I was asked.

“Yes we do, only we call it speed and it’s against the law to buy it,” I said and they all laughed at the illustrative nomenclature.

Koli left as it was getting on for four o’clock prayers, so I set to the arduous task of making a stew. The task felt monumental as I was so weakened by hunger. I got no further than preparing a bowl of water to wash some vegetables in, settling instead for bread, pilchards and half a packet of pseudo McVitie’s Digestives with a view to going to a chop shop later on if hunger returned. I would have willingly learnt the Koran for a decent chicken tikka masala takeaway.

After that, like virtually every other day, I had the rest of the day with nothing to do except read, do a little drawing or write a letter back to the UK. I lamented the day when I had sold my stereo cassette player and radio. I was totally cut off from home. I knew nothing of what was going on except the precious little I received in letters. It wasn’t exactly Reuters. For the first time in my life I simply hadn’t got a clue about the politico-socio-economic debates going on in my homeland. The last I had heard everybody was freaking out about AIDS. I remember the stories of Chernobyl. The first impressions I received were very frightening. For a while I had seriously considered that a nuclear catastrophe had devastated Europe and I would never see friends and family again.

I wrote a letter home to Mum, a bi-weekly effort to let her know I still hadn’t been bitten by a snake, stung by a scorpion or died from some tropical disease. I omitted to tell her that I had

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recently been laid up for four days feeling like I had been about to die. I had had a temperature of 103.5, violent stomach cramps, vomiting, endless retching and diarrhoea at 15–20-minute intervals. The major problem was trying not to pass out while dispensing the vile-smelling stuff, at the same time trying to lessen the effects of explosive intermittent farting that tended to blast the grim discharge everywhere, like a muck spreader. My VSO medical book had been a great help. “See a Doctor”, it said. I could hardly sit up long enough to see out of the window. The book contained some diagrams of the human abdomen showing areas of pain. According to these I was suffering the pains of menstruation.

I had a mirror in my bedroom that was big enough to tell me I looked like a victim from Belsen. I knew I had to drink lots of water, take salt and sugar. It was all I could manage. I used up the stock of gut tablets I was assured would fix any stomach bug, but with no effect. With the knowledge that Chloroquine was a good cure for infections of the blood in its own right and the thought I might have malaria, I took the emergency dosage for malaria plus a couple more on the basis some would get washed straight through. Whatever it was subsided over the next forty-eight hours and I was left believing that no amount of money would ever persuade me to go through all that again, at least not without medical supervision.

After the writing the letter I had a bucket shower and settled down to read for a while. When hunger finally got the better of me I went off into town for some ‘chop’ in one of the chophouses. These were eateries that served up a very limited menu in premises that would leave a British health inspector mentally scarred. I

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always tried to eat the food that looked the hottest or the most recently cooked. I thought it would be least likely to disturb my bowels. I always had problems with the consistency of my stools but most of the time I could reach a commensal agreement with the offending bacteria and most of the time they didn’t upset my daily routine. It didn’t matter how careful I was about what I ate, my guts could just take off without rhyme or reason. I threw caution to the wind and went into town to fill my depleted stomach.

Nine o’clock came. I was bored and a little tired so I went to bed early to make sure I would be up bright and early for Bob the next day. It had been a usual day in that its unusual events had left me with a lot to ponder as I lay naked on my bed under the soothing breeze of the noisy fan. I listened to the incomprehensible babbling of people as they passed outside and the occasional rasping of a motorbike. I thought about the two old boys I had met and how they persuaded me to acknowledge their belief in the ‘better’ days under the British. I reconciled my apparent hypocrisy with the idea that what is best and what is better don’t necessarily lie on the same trajectory. I remember feeling uneasy about travelling the next day; not being paid on time was a drag. Bob would have to lend me some cash. Surely he would have plenty. I contemplated not having enough money.

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Chapter 3Bob

I didn’t manage to make the blissful transition into sleep. I was alarmed by a sudden loud bashing on my front double doors. I leapt from my bed, threw on a long Nigerian shirt and went to see what all the commotion was about. There was the dark silhouette of someone trying to look in through a pane of glass in the door.

“Matthew, is that you?”“Bob, you bastard, is that you?” I opened the

doors.“It’s a bit early to be going to bed, isn’t it?”“Listen, you don’t stay as good looking as

me without getting some sleep from time to time. Anyway I thought you said bright and early not dark and late.”

“Ah yes, that’s what I’ve come to see you about. I’m sorry to say I can’t come with you tomorrow. Something’s cropped up on the work front. There’s a crisis meeting first thing Monday morning with some chief accountant or other from the Ministry. It looks like I may have to present all our records and accounts. And, unfortunately, as most things concerning pen and paper get right up my nose, my responsibilities in the paper work department have been rather neglected. I suspect it’s going to take most of the weekend to sort myself out.”

“That’s a shag. What’s the problem? The cash dried up again?” I asked, almost sure of the answer.

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“Yeah, I think this might be the big one, we’ll just have to see.” Bob was very matter of fact in his tone.

“Oh dear, bummer,” I said with concern. It was sad news, but far from surprising. On the upside at least, I no longer felt obliged to go to the party in Bama.

“Well, it’s about time I moved on – I’m sure there will be a bright side. Come on then, put your clothes on and let’s get a drink down our necks, I really feel like hitting the town. Ah, I’ll give you a ride on my new bike, she goes like a bomb. I’ve just had a truly excellent trip over here, absolutely superb. The roads are almost empty with this petrol shortage. It’s like having your own private race track – outrageous. You’ll have to speak loudly, I can hardly hear a thing, my ears are still ringing,” he said hanging his goggles over the side of a chair like a Sopwith Camel pilot returning from a tussle with the Red Baron.

It was good to see Bob and his normal effusive self, although not until after he took me for a terrifying test ride on his new bike. I swear I nearly fell off the back. I had never been on a very large and extremely powerful bike before. I’ve always been careful to avoid them and had no idea they could accelerate so quickly, or that it was a good idea to sit with your hands holding the little bar along the back behind your bum. We went for a drink at a little bar on the edge of town. Everybody sitting outside was well impressed by Bob’s awesome machine.

We took a couple of seats and quickly knocked back the first bottle. It was the end of term and a few bottles of beer was quite an acceptable proposition, so another couple weren’t

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slow to follow. I had no intention of doing anything the next day.

“So, Matthew, what about this young doctor lady friend of yours? You didn’t say anything about her the last time we met.”

“It’s funny you should ask because I think I’ve cracked it,” I said smiling.

“What do you mean? You think she wants to bonk you but you haven’t asked her yet?”

“Well, er, I wouldn’t put it quite like that myself of course. This is no ordinary woman you know, she’s got style. Well, naturally she would have – it’s a prerequisite of my high standards.”

“Like hell, everyone knows you’ve been stuck out here without a screw for months on end. Anyway she’s a volunteer isn’t she and didn’t one of your VSO friends say something about VSO only recruiting women from the upper slopes of the Himalayas? Where is she anyway?”

“Firstly, she’s not a VSO, she’s a CUSO, Canadian University Service Overseas. Secondly, when you can afford to be choosy, you find you may have to wait a little while until you meet the perfection you’re waiting for. And thirdly, she’s taken a trip to see some fellow CUSOs in Dambatta.”

“This I have got to see. You must bring her with you next time you visit. Sorry what did you say? How about another beer? Well, now you come to mention it I wouldn’t say no,” said Bob with his schoolboy grin filling up most of his face.

“Bob, I would love to buy you another drink but unfortunately you find me completely boracic.”

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“Oh my dear fellow, you should have said. Do you need some money? What about your trip tomorrow?” Saying ‘my dear fellow’ was always a precursor to Bob becoming drunk. I knew his eyes wouldn’t be able to focus on mine soon. It was probably a good time to head back – if we were to get home in one piece.

“Well, I thought I would give it a miss to tell you the truth. I can’t afford it. I had intended to borrow some cash off you. We haven’t been paid for last month yet.”

“No problem, I’ll lend you some. How much will you need?” Bob reached into his pocket and drew out a wad of money.

“No, it’s okay, I really don’t think I can afford it anyway.”

“Look, here’s 130 naira. Take it and let’s say you owe me fifty. No, better still nothing, just take it. I think you should go, it’ll do you good. I don’t think you get away from here enough. You’ll go mad if you stay cooped up here too long. Please take it. It’ll make me feel happier about not coming with you.” Bob was very insistent.

“Nah, I’m okay, but thanks a lot anyway.” “What are you going to do stuck here? Come

on, be adventurous, there’s the whole of Nigeria out there. Go for it, do it.”

“It all sounds a little risky if there’s a petrol shortage.”

“Risk, that’s what it’s all about Matthew! Outside the protective rut of repetitious life walk the chameleons of chance, keen to explore the unknown, free to live as they choose, free from the prohibition of tradition. They change their colours as they wander through fields of

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uncertainty, always trying to match the patterns of their surroundings lest they be spotted by the raptors of ill fate.” Bob had suddenly become very serious.

“What?” I said laughing. “What the hell have you been smoking?”

“That’s a famous quotation and that’s just the way it is. You’ve got to throw some dice in your lifetime if you’re going to get anything out of it. Take a chance! You’ve got to believe that too, otherwise you wouldn’t have got on your plane at Gatwick.”

He was right and I couldn’t argue. I gazed vacantly across at him and marvelled at the guy’s incredible independence. The man was quite simply a hero. His large well-tanned muscular body sprawled on his chair, clad only in a pair of white shorts and sporty vest.

“It’s a famous quotation from what?” I asked sceptically.

“My diary. Well, it’s not famous yet, but it will be one day,” he replied with his schoolboy grin. His handsome brow wrinkled, accentuating his receding hairline as he sucked from his bottle. He had mentioned his diary before. He had maintained it with daily entries since he was seven. I’d never met anyone with such a possession. I felt envious. The idea that he could look back in time and retrieve his thoughts from an age I have long since forgotten had all the magic of a time machine. However, Bob saw it differently. He felt the discipline was almost a curse. The diary contained moments of darkness that were best forgotten and left to heal with time. He had told me, “Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody”, adding that this was a quote from

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Mark Twain. “The problem is a diary shows that dark side to yourself and you are the last person you want to show it to.”

“And you think I might go mad! Here I am disciple of the quiet life and you expect me to wander off into the bush with a serious petrol shortage and if what I’ve heard about the increase in taxi fares is true, a possible cash crisis as well?”

“No problems, it’ll be a laugh… Mate, you’re going, okay, end of discussion, period, full stop.” With that he swigged the last warm remnant of his beer. Then after a badly disguised belch he looked at his watch, put on his sunglasses and with the appropriate pose and accent said, “Callaghan!”

I suppose there was a certain similarity with Clint Eastwood. Anyway he enjoyed his little act. We shared a similar dry humour. I had successfully latched onto his public school sense of the ridiculous. He was always cheerful, always entertaining, always ready to exploit the air of an over-educated oaf for humorous effect.

“Let’s pull out,” said Callaghan.“Eh, excuse me, Mr Callaghan, but I’m ever

so slightly drunk,” I said, as if it had some relevance.

“And the problem is…?” enquired the detective. The alcohol washed away any doubts and I realised he was right. Callaghan was right, we had to leave. So we did.

There was no doubt in my mind that Bob was a real survivor, however, it amazed me that this characteristic managed to coexist with an affinity for mishaps. During the following night Bob put on a spectacular display of enigmatic

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ineptitude. It started when he went for a shower. First off he managed to cut one of his toes, on what I’ve no idea. Then he managed to pull the showerhead off its tube. Then about three o’clock in the morning there was a large bang in the kitchen. It woke us both. On investigation we found that Bob had left a bottle of water in the freezer compartment of the fridge, which had exploded virtue of the expanding ice within it.

Later on that night Bob had been unable to sleep in the oven-like temperatures of my house and decided to go to the fridge for a drink. The first thing he got from the fridge was a very nasty electric shock, made worse by the fact his bare feet were wet from just having had a bucket bath. He then tried to open the fridge door with a tea towel and instead managed to pull it off its plinth comprising bits of wood and small tin cans. Like any true Brit when the going gets tough he tried to make himself a cup of tea and received another large electric shock off a control knob on the cooker. Still too hot and beginning to believe the house was booby trapped, he decided to take a cooling walk outside. His troubles were not over. Not having acquired the right technique necessary to open the front doors he only succeeded in breaking the key in the lock. Then he woke me up to see if I had a better idea for opening the doors other than brute force, of which he had an ample supply. With his well-built frame and a good deal of momentum he forced the doors open with the determination of a charging rhinoceros, writing off the lock in the process.

When the morning came I collected all my gear together, but now I wasn’t drunk I had gone off the idea of travelling.

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“I’ve got to be mad,” I exclaimed hopelessly.“You are, so what’s the problem?” retorted

Bob. “Okay, so you’ve got a bit of a hangover and the sunlight’s a bit too bright. What you need is a beer and then I’ll run you up to the motor park, okay?”

He knew after a beer I would let my guard down. I submitted my surrender. “It’s all going to end in tears. I know it will!”

I grabbed a beer for both of us and started walking to and fro, trying to stimulate my head into remembering the things I had to do in preparation for departure. I’ve always hated the act of such departures. The idea that I might have forgotten something always bugs me. That day I felt really bugged. My sixth sense for bad situations was ringing loudly. It could have been a false alarm triggered by cowardice but why was it ringing when I had a beer in my hand?

“Look, for Christ’s sake stop dithering around like some old woman and get your act together!” Bob was all revved up and ready to go.

“Sorry, old chap, just trying to reach escape velocity… okay, let’s go.” I grabbed my blue sausage bag and followed Bob out of the door. He was fully dressed in black T-shirt, green commando-style trousers and flip-flops.

I examined the broken lock on my front doors. “How am I going to explain this to the Principal?” I said, bending down to padlock two metal loops that were fortunately welded onto the opening edges of the doors.

“Just tell him you had a friend round who went berserk during the night,” said Bob helpfully. “On the other hand you could always try him with the truth.”

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“Yeah and make him think I’ve got a rhinoceros as a friend. I think your first idea was more plausible… damn good job I had this padlock, what?”

“Yes, damn good show, old chap,” said Bob, seemingly oblivious to my poke at the manner of his speech.

I felt as though I were locking up my house for good, after all, how many times do you padlock your front door? It’s strange to reflect now but it was as if that little click of the padlock was enough to attract the attention of one of Bob’s raptors of ill fate.

“What the hell is a raptor anyway?” I asked.“It’s a bird of prey,” he said, knowing the

background to my question.We took the padlock key round to Abdul. I

explained briefly what had happened and told him that Chantel would be coming to visit the following Friday. She would come round to Abdul’s, as per the note we had left in the window, to fetch the padlock key – assuming I hadn’t made it back before then. Abdul was, as usual, only too pleased to help and as we parted he bade us farewell with his endearing smile.

Now we were finally off into those fields of uncertainty with not a cloud in sight. Indeed, the sun shone so brilliantly you could almost hear it. Given it was only 10am the heat was tremendous. It didn’t worry us though. The alcohol only let it go skin deep. We were in fine form, laughing all the way to the Malamaduri motor park. It was good to be travelling somewhere. All my previous reservations I put down to lethargy. I do like travelling. It’s the initial effort I can’t handle. I was so happy, smiling and waving at the happy

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faces of the people that smiled and waved at me. Never have I ever felt so welcome in a place and I don’t think I ever will again.

By the time we arrived at the motor park I was ready for a sit down. The recent beer and hangover from the night before were beginning to take their toll. There were people milling around everywhere, although nobody actually seemed to be doing very much. Appearance isn’t everything though. A man might appear to be just sitting by the side of the road but on closer inspection he might be selling something from a tray by his side. He may look as if he hasn’t a care in the world, but then you can’t tell when a man last ate by the look on his face, nor can you tell how many people he might be responsible for. You can’t tell what an arduous job it must be to have so little to do for a living. His apparent contentment may only lie in his faith, the opiate of the people that’s totally free with every packet of adversity.

We walked in the dust, through the sounds of a foreign tongue, looking for my taxi. One of the students from the STC greeted me with a joyful call of “Mr Mattu!”, which I had almost come to believe was my real name. It was Gbenga, otherwise known as ‘Black Man’ by his friends because he really was soot black in comparison. He took my bag and asked, “You want Nguru taxi, sa?” I confirmed and he led us across to the correct blue and white Peugeot estate. Bob was impressed by the loyalty of my minion. It was just my luck that there was only one other passenger. It meant I would probably have to wait quite a while before the taxi had a full complement.

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My route was first to Nguru, which was quite close to the border with Niger, roughly fifty miles north east of Hadejia. Then it would be on to Gashua, roughly the same distance in an easterly direction and then straight to Maiduguri, a further one hundred and something miles. I presumed it would be no problem to get the last forty-odd miles to Bama, which sat quite close to the border with Cameroon.

Bob was in no rush to push on home and offered to stay a while. We took a seat under a neem tree next to the wall surrounding the motor park. It was a lot more comfortable than sitting inside the hot taxi.

“Fancy a mineral, Gbenga?” asked Bob. There was a pause and a puzzled expression on Gbenga’s face.

“Sorry, would you like a mineral?” asked Bob slowly this time. Boys from the STC never said no to anything they could put down their throats; Gbenga was no exception. Bob gave him the necessary cash for three minerals and he duly fetched them.

We sat and waited and watched and waited, drank and waited a whole lot more. Gbenga depressed us with rumours of the petrol shortage. He reckoned its price had trebled and that was if you could find it. It looked as if it could be very bad news. No doubt the taxi fare would go up accordingly. The shortage was supposed to be due to a petrol terminal in Jos undergoing essential maintenance. However, some believed it was a Muslim conspiracy to thwart the attempts of Christian teachers to travel home after the end of term.

“Goodness gracious me,” said Bob.

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“What?” I asked, my head buried in one of the national newspapers I had bought.

“I’m hallucinating,” he said with some surprise.

“What?”“I can see a beautiful woman with an

immaculate figure walking towards me and she’s even smiling at me. This woman just wants to eat my body. I tell you, Matthew, she wants me.”

I had to look up. I too was as surprised. “Well, you’re not hallucinating, but I am afraid your analysis is wrong. She’s smiling at me and that’s because she wants my body.”

The figure in the loose trousers and white T-shirt drew closer. Bob stood up and said firmly, “Stand back, youth. Watch age and experience go to work.”

I stood up too, only I walked towards the woman.

“Chantel…”“Matthew.”“It’s lovely to see you, but what are you

doing here? I thought you were going to Dambatta?” At that point she gave me a hugely satisfying kiss, longer than one would normally suppose would be reserved for just good friends.

“Chantel, meet Bob. Bob, Chantel.” They shook hands. Bob was completely gobsmacked, which was also greatly satisfying.

Chantel had changed her mind about going to see her Canadian friends. Instead she wanted to come with us. Excellent news. I was totally uplifted. Bob explained to Chantel how he was unable to make the journey and following some

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idle chit-chat decided it was time he went on his way.

“You lucky bastard,” he whispered to me as he mounted his bike and put on his goggles. Then with a few hefty revs of his engine, to attract maximum attention to the pulsating metal between his legs, he gave us a little wave, pulled a little wheelie and tore off leaving a cloud of dust.

“So that’s Bob,” said Chantel and we both laughed.

So there I was with the woman who in the last few months had occupied more and more of my thoughts. I felt very lucky she had managed to intercept us. If only she hadn’t.

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