Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts below.

We had understood that West Africa couldn’t hold a candle to what the eastern and southern parts of the continent offered in terms of hiking, scenery or game. Its forte, we knew, was cultural riches. And, boy, did Nigeria deliver. 

10 August 1976: “Hooray for Kano! This morning we rented two clunky bicycles and peddled into this ancient walled city — and the scenes before us made us feel we’d arrived in the Old Testament. Just inside the gate that we entered are indigo dye pits, amazingly deep — some down to 10 feet. Here, men in flowing white robes were dying fabric tied together in preparation for tie and die by a woman in a little house nearby. Also nearby was a hut where a man with a huge mahogany mallet was beating the dried fabric to soften and ‘press’ it. 

“We cycled on under the huge mosque and past the 900-year-old emir’s palace to find a small but interesting museum highlighted by ornate coats of mail decorated with ostrich feathers.

“But best of all was the Kurmi market — the most extensive, bustling, smelly, exciting and varied one we’ve seen. It was full of beautiful materials, leather, tin and beadwork, not to mention the thousands of other items sold there by Muslim merchants. We sat inside the mud-walled stalls to eat a fried meat pie and some fresh coconut as the men all began their prayers.

“Tonight we are going to the home of a Nigerian businessman whom we met yesterday. He has promised us some specialties such as pepper chicken, melon-seed soup and bean cakes.”

Next came the town of Zaria. “One marvelous thing about this area is the horsemen. Here in Nigeria, we’ve noticed what a mark of pride it is to have a horse. The men in their flowing robes are greatly outshone by the splendor of their mounts, with their colorful saddle blankets, and dyed leather reins with all manner of baubles hanging off them.

“Now in Jos, we have spent the afternoon at a fine museum. I had been ignorant of the beautiful artwork of the peoples of Benin and of the Nok empire: extraordinarily fine brass and pottery heads. It was interesting, too, to sit in the courtyard of the museum and watch the museum-goers — crowds of fine-looking Nigerians, all dressed in Sunday finery. 

“We spent an interesting day yesterday in Bida, a small city swarming with artisans: The metal workers pounding brass plates out of flat oblong sticks, etching designs on them with their Number 1, Number 2 and Number 3 nails, rubbing the brass with lime juice and putting it over the fire. 

“Then the bead makers, circling a roaring flame pumped through hard bellows by a young apprentice. Each artist with his glob of melted glass on a stick like a torch in the fire. In front of me was a man whose glob consisted of a former Star Beer bottle, backed by a smaller clot that was once a Mentholatum jar. He circled the large glob with the small one in order to stripe the brown with green, then smoothed it all with a spatula-like tool and dropped it orange-hot into his basket. We saw, as well, women weaving cloth strips, brightly colored, and men carving Koranic writing slates and small wooden stools.

“In a nearby village we saw pottery makers and basket weavers, whose homes we reached by winding among one small compound after another, and entered through woven reed doors. We saw that the Nupe women have a sizable wall stacked high with pots — a must before they are marriageable. 

We had seen too the men with their horizontal foot-operated looms, (the women use smaller vertical looms), a blacksmith beating out a tool, leatherworkers and calabash carvers.

“What a wonderland of craftsmanship and artistry Nigeria is. It makes you yearn to go and create something fine.”

From Jebba, we drove all day to Oshogbo. There we saw the shrine to Oshun, the River Goddess, more wonderful craftsmen at work and a funny little old museum, then drove to Ife to see an exciting and brightly designed university.

Sunday, 22 August, 100 kms from the border with Benin: “This is the final night of our two weeks in this huge, bustling, progressive, education-loving, artistic, hassle-filled country. Here we reached the two-year mark of our time in Africa, in the same nation where we first touched down on this mind-bogglingly multi-faceted continent.”

One way the continent was multi-faceted was its wide variation in road conditions. My first journal entry about Nigeria noted that someone had called it “the country where all the roads are paved.” But, I added, “Unfortunately, it is often true that only HALF the road is paved — one strip. That is, you get two wheels on the pavement when you meet a car. Nerve-wracking system, at best, now that the traffic is substantial.”

Two weeks later, the last entry from Nigeria returned to this topic — with greater vehemence. After carrying on about how much we’d enjoyed the country, I added: “But a very real detraction is the grisly nature of traveling Nigeria’s highways. At every curve, every summit, are wrecks from all decades. Every bridge gapes where the side rails have been busted through by the hulks lying below. Huge trucks lie bashed down and overturned along the road: At one corner, we saw three altogether. Yet these prolific reminders of the dangers of highway travel are no deterrent to Nigerian drivers, who pass across solid lines, before curves and hills, and right alongside wrecks. We saw a horrible accident two days ago involving three vehicles, one of which had passed us minutes before. We will feel lucky as hell to cross the border alive and with Miles in good shape. The roads here are paved, it is true, but I’d rather be in a mud hole than an accident.”

Happily, we did cross the border in good shape — and spent the night on a palmy beach in Benin, enjoying a lovely breeze off the ocean.

Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts on this site.

Three weeks after leaving Zaire, we’d made it to our first new country in this long drive out of Africa — the Central African Republic. About its capital, my journal reports that “Bangui is more ‘civilized’ than Kinshasa. The shops are full of goods. There’s a nice small museum. We’ve been able to take care of lots of errands, including getting our tires fixed. We had scotch and soda with a Frenchman this afternoon as his staff wrote up our third-party insurance policy. We met a South African refugee, Collin, who is hitchhiking to Liberia to study. We’ll take him along to Cameroon.

“The next night we camped by a waterfall and shared a beer with a 71-year-old Yugoslav engineer. He told us, ‘You’re doing what you must do.’”

We liked Cameroon immediately, finding it “a bright and pretty place, extinct volcanoes scattered around, hills covered with grass, yellow flowers on fat bushes. Gigantic rock formations in the mountain country.”

We were struck by the remarkable costumes, including “men who look like a cross between an Oxford don and a beefeater, with gorgeously colored flowing robes and huge-crowned hats.” We liked the “neat villages with peaked thatched roofs with dried grasses flowing down from them.”

In one village, we got a fine tour from a chief we had encountered. “We walked all over, asking questions as we went, about how this society is organized. We found that the gatherings of men, which we saw earlier today, are court sessions, with a scribe sent out from town and the chief and his representatives acting as judges. We saw the chief’s ‘concession’ — this is what the enclosures are called — and toured the concession of the chief’s brother. He has a building for each of his two wives, a building for the children, a separate kitchen, and a building for two mother goats and their five little kids along with many chickens. (The brother tried to give us a chicken, but we squirmed out of it as graciously as possible.) There was also a hut for storage and a building for his horse. We saw various crops — tobacco, peanuts, corn and cotton — and we heard about SODECOTON, the society which gives out cotton seeds and buys back cotton. Land ownership is forbidden here; the chief assigns you a plot to use for farming. Evidently the soil is very rich, and once you can afford two cows and a plow, you’ve got it made. They rotate the crops and let the land rest as well. Teachers are sent out by the state, and they live in the chief’s concession. Most men have two wives. A chief may have as many as 20. Once a man gets to three wives, he must take another, because wives come in two’s.

“We are impressed with how organized things are. Consider the rain-barrier system: Large trucks are not permitted to pass through the barrier until 12 hours after a rain. Rain-barrier chiefs are paid by the state to manage the system. It is effective, and truck drivers go along with it. Big contrast with Zaire!

“Now for a bit about daily life in Miles. A typical evening so far involves finding a fairly secluded spot on firm ground off the road (though in Zaire we had to stay on the road, asking permission from village chiefs and playing Barnum & Bailey for the crowd for an hour or so). We have perfected a mosquito-net setup which covers the open roof and sliding door and provides headroom, as it is suspended across cords strung between the roof racks. It covers the rear door as well, which swings up, and we thereby have a lot of ventilation.

“We have a lantern as well as a radio, which is most entertaining and exotic, and a small cassette player. Both of these operate off an electric outlet connected to a second battery, in a system installed by a friend. He also wired a burglar alarm which goes off when the front doors are opened. We have folding chairs for outdoor evenings.

“As for laundry, we have a big blue bucket in which we do a wash by loading clothes, soap and water and permitting it to bounce throughout the morning as we travel, followed by two separate rinse bounces in the afternoon. The following day, Miles Motuka becomes quite an effective dryer, as the clothes hang from a bungee cord strung across the open roof.

“Our sink is fine for washing dishes, as well as for sponge baths. We shower by using a plastic siphon complete with pump and shower attached. We have a big plastic tub as well. We generally keep one 25-liter can of drinking water (boiled) and another for washing in addition to the 20-liter jug above the sink. We have good food supplies, thanks to the U.S. commissary in Kinshasa, supplemented by fresh local produce.

“We usually stop by 4:30 or so in order to have time for radio news and for reading. One evening, still in Zaire, we listened to the Democratic National Convention, and heard Jimmy Carter for the first time. He was informative and sounded good to me.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the U.S. lately. It’s remarkable, listening regularly to Carter’s singsong tones on Voice of America, way over here in Africa.”

Our next destination was Chad: A terrible bust. We dipped in, hoping to be able to drive up the river to Lake Chad. No such luck: They said it would take two weeks to get a permit. Meanwhile, in the space of four blocks, our car was stopped and searched four times. The last time, they literally ransacked the place, throwing all our stuff around and ripping our closet door off, then stopping in the middle of it the moment their chief told them it was noon.

“We’ll be glad to be back in Cameroon tomorrow — and on to Nigeria, a country we are eager to explore.”