Tag Archives: Lake Chad

Under Control: the Beauty of the Traditional Way

Posted on by
Reply

Channel on Lake Chad near Baga

The village head, a tall powerful man dressed in rich robes, sat in a room lit by one dim bulb, watching the news in English on Al Jazeera. His younger brother, clearly subservient, timidly introduced us and our situation. The big man listened without expression, then indicated that I should sit in an easy chair next to the couch where he presided. The two Nasirus sat on the carpeted floor, staying below him as a sign of respect.

After a few minutes of polite back-and-forth, Nasiru Wada broke the ice with some Fulani/Kanuri slave banter, which made the head man smile and reciprocate Nasiru’s threat of slavery. I was tired and hungry, which accentuated my direct American mindset; I assumed that we would ask the head man for accommodations and be on our way. After 10 or 15 minutes of relaxed conversation between the head man and the two Nasirus, my miscalculation became apparent. Protocols had to be followed, which I should have expected from Barth’s account. The two Nasirus and the head man, whose name was Lawal Bana, were settling in for a long palaver in Hausa.

Lawal Bana mentioned that his second wife was from Zinder, an old Sahelian city now in Niger. Ah, said Nasiru Wada, I am thinking of marrying a second wife who lives there. Are marriages to Zinder women expensive?

Oh yes, said Lawal Bana. For the dowry, wedding, and gifts, I spent $2.3 million naira. (About $16,000.)

Nasiru gasped: No!

Oh yes, said Lawal Bana, smiling ruefully.

Eventually Lawal Bana offered us an abandoned house of his on a nearby army base. He rummaged among his couch cushions for the key, unsuccessfully, so he ordered his younger brother, Mina, to pick up a hacksaw and some drinks for us on the way there. “Everything has changed,” said Nasiru Wada as we were en route. “We are no longer in control. We are under control. That is the beauty of the traditional way.”

Mina hacksawed through a padlock and opened the door to a room in a concrete house, in disrepair but snug. Someone soon brought a container of food from Lawal Bana. I bounced the beam of my flashlight off the ceiling so we could see: red stew afloat with globs of white cornmeal. Delicious. To thwart the majority of the mosquitoes, we left the door and windows closed, which turned the room into an oven. Barth often made the same choice. Lying in our sauna, slapping at the occasional skeeter, living under Lawal Bana’s control, I was getting a small taste of Barth’s routine for five years—reach a new place, visit the head man, get assigned quarters, hope that food arrives, spend a semi-sleepless night, move on.

Abdul and Nasiru Datti at our accommodations in Baga

At 5:00 roosters began crowing, followed by goats bleating in the bushes and the weird cries of guinea hens. Breakfast appeared: egg sandwiches, tea with butter, sugar, and condensed milk. Lawal Bana also had arranged for a boat to take us onto Lake Chad. But protocol required another audience at his house first.

Today he wore a lustrous brocaded robe. He was expansive, with a big laugh and fluid gestures. Two cell phones lay on the cushion next to him. The two Nasirus took their positions on the floor. There was no hurry. Several times the languid conversation was interrupted by men entering to do business with our host.

After a while he handed us over to the driver of his SUV. We roared over to the lake, glazing clusters of huts with dust. Our dramatic entrance drew a crowd. We boarded one of the painted boats, accompanied by Mina and two dignitaries–the chairmen of the water board and the boat owners’ association. Our boat ride had become an event.

In front: Nasiru Datti and Mina. Behind Mina, Nasiru Wada

The channel widened slightly, but the excursion strengthened my impression of Chad as a lake impersonating rivers and creeks. Fishermen in dugouts or larger boats disappeared into the reeds, following passages visible only to them. One fisherman floated in the water, draped over a hollow calabash the size of an exercise ball. His belly covered a hole in the top, trapping the air that floated him. His arms and legs dangled in the water, one hand holding a small net. When he caught a fish, he put it in the hollow gourd.

The two Nasirus rarely got the chance for a boat ride. Nasiru Wada paid the boatman an extra 200 naira, about $1.50, to do some fast spins. Nasiru Datti, landlubberly stiff, shook his head in disapproval.

On shore, after distributing “dash” all around (I’ll say more about dash in another post) we headed out in the SUV. Within a few hundred yards, a soldier gestured angrily for us to stop. He began shouting that the driver had sped past him on the way in, instead of stopping at the checkpoint. We could have been shot, he shouted, and if it had been nighttime, we would have been shot. The driver said that Lawal Bana had cleared everything beforehand. No one told me, shouted the soldier, who was soon joined by his shouting superior. Mina announced that he was going over their heads and calling his brother, the head man. OK, bellowed the superior, I’m calling my commander.

Nasiru Wada tried to calm things by offering the superior some dash. The man acted shocked. Are you trying to bribe me, he shouted? No, said Nasiru, it’s just for you to eat kola. Euphemism for dash. The suspicion resurfaced that I might be a foreign agent. The superior ordered his men to search the SUV for signs of spycraft. They overlooked my exploding pen and hollow heel.

Eventually we were ordered to report to the same military base where we had spent the night. The superior assigned a soldier with a rifle to ride with us, ostensibly to prevent us from bolting, but really just because he could, for intimidation. Mina said Lawal Bana was en route to vouch for us. As we prepared to leave, the superior decided that on second thought he could accept a wad of dash, but did so with huffy disdain, as if he were above such venality. This all would have been amusing farce if it hadn’t gone on so long in the intense heat.

At the base, an official welcomed us and questioned me about the purpose of my visit. He chided me for not checking in with military security yesterday. I said I thought I had, by answering questions from various alert agencies at the lake. He shook his head and said he had to check with the deputy commander about how to proceed.

Another soldier with a fancier uniform, probably the deputy commander, appeared and repeated the entire routine—same welcome, questions, admonishments. Lawal Bana showed up and smoothed feathers. Everyone relaxed. One of the officials probed me about my impressions of Nigeria and what I’d heard about his country in the U.S. My description of Barth intrigued him, and he wrote down the explorer’s name and the title of his book. We were now all friends and no one was in a rush.

After exchanging information for an hour under the shade trees, I made a few last disbursements of dash and we hit the road for Kukawa–once the capital of the mighty empire of Bornu, and Barth’s base for a year and a half.

Drinkers, Traders, Soldiers, Spies

Posted on by
2

The nomads at the muddy pond were Arabs from Agadez, an old Saharan entrepot in present-day Niger. Their 60 camels drank and looked supercilious.

A boy and a small girl in a multicolored robe stood behind the herd. The girl was a dynamo, scolding the camels in a shrill voice and whacking their legs with a stick if they tried to stray.

Nasiru Wada said it would be OK to take her picture, but to give her a small gift of money. She stared at the bills in her hand in amazement. Nasiru, a joker who favored ironic teasing, said to her, “You will be”—he hooked his little finger—“my wife.” Instantly, the wonder on her face turned to disgust. She dropped the bills as if they were turds. “Forgive me,” Nasiru said quickly. “It was a joke.” She studied him, picked up the money, and spun away.

Long stretches of this road toward Lake Chad were undrivable because of craters and broken asphalt, so we followed the dirt track alongside it. In the middle of nowhere, a huge crumbling billboard featured the gigantic name and photo of some politician advertising himself as the “Lion of the Desert.” Sometimes many dirt tracks converged in a village and then scattered, so we had to ask for directions.

The thatched roofs changed from the bowl-shaped design of the Fulanis to the triangular twists of the Kanuris, echoed by the stacks of guinea corn in flat fields that went to the horizon. The flatness conspired with the intense heat to play visual tricks. Distant trees shimmered and floated on the horizon, creating the mirage of a lake shore. But Lake Chad doesn’t reveal itself so easily.

At 5:00 we reached Baga, a freckle of a town on a finger jutting into the lake. The water itself remained invisible. Baga’s only hotel was part of a walled open-air bar with a shed roof. At the back stood a row of  metal doors set into a windowless bunker of concrete—the hotel portion of the establishment. Men and women drinking beer turned to examine us, then resumed their conversations as a soccer game played on television.

The two Nasirus consulted and said we were leaving. I assumed that, as Muslims, the drinking offended them, but their concern was security. “People see a white person and might think you have money, and want to rob you,” said Nasiru Datti. We later learned that Baga’s few visitors had stopped taking the hotel van because the driver had been tipping off his buddies when white people were coming; the buddies would ambush the van and plunder the passengers.

The next closest lodging was in Kukawa, 20 bumpy miles west. I wanted to see the lake, so we put our plans for lodging on hold and asked some men sitting on a bench in Baga for directions to the water. You’ll never find it, they said. One young man offered to get in the car and guide us there.

Many twists and turns later, a couple of miles out of town, we reached a row of boats painted with geometric designs, on the shore of what appeared to be a river about 50 yards wide. In fact it was one of the myriad reed-flanked channels that constitute Lake Chad. When Barth saw the lake’s marshy waterways and tall reeds, he realized that one of the mission’s tasks would be impossible: to map Lake Chad’s borders. The boundaries between land and water were indistinct and changed each season. He saw large numbers of waterfowl, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses.

He also glimpsed the mysterious people whom the Kanuris called the Budduma, “people of the grass,” who lived on islands in the lake, where they raised cattle. They called themselves Yedina and spoke their own language. Notorious pirates, they raided shoreline villages and vanished back into the lake’s wilderness of reeds and channels. Neither of the Nasirus had heard of the Budduma. “Barth is teaching us,” said Nasiru Wada. I asked our Baga passenger if the Budduma still existed. Oh yes, he said, on the islands. At the lake, he pointed out a Budduma woman speaking the language.

Lake Chad’s labyrinthine channels still provide excellent cover for smugglers and illegal immigrants–the lake touches Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad–so entry-points like Baga are filled with security personnel. Though the shoreline was crowded with people selling and socializing, our arrival immediately drew the attention of the marine police, the regular police, soldiers, customs officials, and immigration officers. To deflect suspicion, I presented myself as a historian, not a journalist. Their questions soon moved from wary to curious and friendly. The Nigerian “underwear bomber” had recently been nabbed while trying to blow up a U. S. airliner, igniting dark mistrust of Nigerians in America. The paranoia went in both directions: Nasuri Wada later told me that the lake authorities at first suspected me of being a CIA agent.

Night fell. We still needed a place to stay. Our Baga passenger overheard our dilemma and insisted on taking us to see his brother, the village head, who had authority over all such matters. Having no alternative, we agreed.

The Complicated Energies of Kano

Posted on by
Reply

It happened fast. A motorcycle spurted from behind a truck and hit Nasiru Wada’s car head-on. The airborne rider thumped into the car’s windshield and rolled off the side. His passenger sprawled on the hood.

Nasiru jumped out. He barely glanced at the two abraded young men slowly getting to their feet. He was focused on his prized Corolla, now blemished by a smashed headlight and dislocated fender. The headlight would have to be repaired before we started our trip the next day towards Lake Chad. Nasiru shook his head, exasperated. The young men, looking chagrined but intact, were inspecting the motorcycle’s crumpled front end. As we left, they were pushing the bike towards the side of the road. Few words were exchanged, and no information.

Considering the anarchy of Kano’s traffic, we would be lucky to get out of town after only one collision. The roads, no matter how wide, had no lane markings or stop lights. Right-of-way was earned by nerve and loud horns, both of which every driver in Kano exercised freely.

Okadas in Kano, by Andy Waite

Two-thirds of the vehicles seemed to be motorcycles and scooters. Many were okadas (taxis).They swarmed and buzzed like hornets, darting into the smallest gap, their side mirrors pushed in to create an extra few inches of clearance. They often surrounded Nasiru’s car, only inches away no matter the speed, before his insistent horn parted them like a shark charging into a school of baitfish.

Sometimes this seething chaos congealed like quick-drying cement. Progress was measured in fractions of inches. We once needed 30 minutes to gain one car-length. The blockage was caused by a taxi-van that had stopped in the middle of a crowded intersection, a perfect spot that the driver refused to leave until all his seats held paying customers. I spent the lull watching goats pick through a hill of garbage on the roadside and breathing in Kano’s bouquet of exhaust, dust, and wood smoke.

Barth was invigorated by Kano’s crackling entrepreneurial energy. That aspect of the city hadn’t changed. Most roads were lined with small businesses, some of them nothing more than ramshackle sheds. Mechanics hung auto parts from trees, women displayed colorful cloth or vegetables on the ground. Everyone seemed to be selling something or haggling to buy.

Wall of old Kano

This energy contributed to the city’s tolerance of immigrants and religions other than Islam. Sharia law wasn’t enforced in the new settlements, said Nasiru Datti, where people could practice their faiths. These new towns also had clubs and places where anyone could go to drink alcohol, prohibited by Islam. The people of Kano believed in peaceful coexistence. The fanatical violence that had rocked other places in northern Nigeria had so far bypassed them. [Update: this changed on January 20, 2012, when the city was rocked by 20 coordinated bombings, claimed by the radical sect Boko Haram, that targeted police stations and certain homes.] “Kano is a commercial city,” said Nasiru. He laughed. “Nobody here wants trouble that could keep them from going to the market the next day.”

Gate into old Kano

Yet if someone returning from the new towns was caught drunk in old Kano, the penalty was 80 lashes. Adulterers got 80 lashes in the market, if they were single. If married, they were stoned to death.

“But we’ve never had a stoning,” said Nasiru, “because you need four eyewitnesses to the act. If you only have three accusers, those three get 80 lashes, to keep people from being accused unjustly.”

We picked up Nasiru’s younger sister at Bayero University, where she had earned a degree in biochemistry. Like most women in Kano, she wore a headscarf but no veil. Some families allowed women to be educated and to work, others didn’t. Nasiru and his sister were two of their father’s 19 children. When Nasiru heard that I had only two kids, he looked sympathetic. When I said they were both sons, he looked concerned. “So you have no daughters to take care of you,” he said somberly.

We left Kano the next morning, heading east toward Lake Chad.

Fanatics, Infidels, and Guides

Posted on by
Reply

Barth’s journey had three key locales, which formed a rough triangle. The triangle’s northern point was Aïr, a Saharan mountain range in present-day Niger, where Barth’s party was pillaged by Tuareg raiders and barely escaped execution. The triangle’s eastern point was Lake Chad, Barth’s base for a year and a half. The western point was Timbuktu in present-day Mali, where he was detained under threat of death for seven months.

Aïr, from Travels and Discoveries

I wanted to see the cultures and landscapes that Barth had seen, to smell some of the same odors, touch some of the same textures, eat some of the same foods. Politics and tight restrictions on travel eliminated Libya from my itinerary. Political unrest eliminated Niger; Aïr, still a stronghold of rebellious Tuaregs, was off-limits to travelers.

That left the stretch between Lake Chad and Timbuktu. I eventually decided to travel east from Kano in northern Nigeria to Lake Chad, about 350 miles as the crow flies. In Barth’s day Kano had been the largest and most important city in north-central Africa, a position it retains, with a population of more than five million. (Some estimates say nine million. Until I read Barth, I had never heard of Kano, despite its size. In some ways Africa is still unknown.) From Lake Chad I would make my way by air to Timbuktu.

In Barth’s era, travel in remote areas of Islamic Africa could be fatal for a white Christian. Christians were evil infidels, odious unbelievers, fit only for slavery or death. Barth heard that a lot. Yet he also found tolerance and hospitality.

North-central Africa still breeds Islamic fanatics. As in Barth’s day, their religious zeal is sometimes a veneer to justify thuggery and greed—for example, the small terrorist group that calls itself al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) plants bombs and occasionally kidnaps Western travelers, whom they ransom or murder. Other factions, such as Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, are more old-school in their ways and religious fervor, simply condemning everything Christian and Western in their sometimes violent quest to force a return to what they consider a purer form of Islam. AQIM and Boko Haram both would be familiar types to Barth.

Like him, I wanted a savvy guide to help me negotiate the complexities of northern Nigeria. The internet made it easy to throw out many lines asking for help. Most were ignored, but a professor named Abdalla Uba Adamu at Bayero University in Kano wrote that he knew the perfect man: Nasiru Wada Khalil, head of IT for the Sharia court of Kano, who had a scholarly bent. In our email exchanges before the trip, Nasiru wisely persuaded me to hire Nasiru Datti Ahmed, a teacher at an Islamic secondary school for girls in Kano, as our driver. These two learned, curious men provided invaluable guidance of many kinds, as well as amiable company and friendship. All this, too, would have been familiar to Barth.

At Lake Chad: infidel flanked by Nasiru Datti (left) and Nasiru Wada (right). Abdul in back.