November In Nigeria

Mind’s Eye Radio, 2000. Copyright(c) R. Elena Tabachnick. All rights reserved.

       I was ten when we moved to Zaria, Nigeria from Wisconsin. Zaria is an old, old city. It has a wall with seven gates and was named after the most beautiful Princess Zaria. How cool is that, to live in a city with walls? Except we don’t actually live in Zaria, but outside it on the campus of Amadu Bello University. The university campus is like it’s own little town. But it is not old and there is no wall, just fields of guinea corn stretching off towards the bush.

        Just down the main Zaria road is Samaru village. Samaru is a real Nigerian village with mud huts in compounds surrounded by mud walls. There is also part of Samaru where expats live. ‘Expats’ are what they call people who come to Nigeria from other countries. In Samaru, most of the expats are English and work at the Experimental Agriculture Station. There houses are sort of old. They are not mud huts, but houses that the English build before Nigeria was an independent country. Ruth is English and her dad works at the Agriculture Station. Her mom is one of our our teachers.

        Ruth is my best friend. We are in the same class, the Top Class. There are eight girls and two boys in the Top Class. One of the other girls is my older sister, Susan. It’s pretty weird to have to share a class with my sister. The oldest kid is fourteen. Ruth is the youngest. She is nine.

        The Top Class is not a real class. It was tacked on the regular school so kids who are too old would have some place to go.

        None of the teachers in our school are paid. They are expat moms like Mrs. Caswell. The Top class has three teachers. Mrs. Caswell teaches Nigerian history and English. Mrs. Gotobed teaches math and science and scripture. In America, we never had to learn scripture in school because Americans have freedom of religion. English people don’t have that, so they teach scripture in schools. And we have to say the Lord’s prayer everyday in assembly.

        Our last teacher is Dr. Price. He teaches geography. We have school every morning, but only go to school in the afternoon on Tuesday and Thursday. When Dr. Price first said he’d teach geography to the Top Class, it was on Monday and Wednesday. Then the army changed the days when they clean their pool. The army uses the pool to teach Nigerian soldiers how to jump off the sides of ships. I guess they don’t need to learn that much because the arm pool is open to anyone in the afternoon. If you are blond, though, your hair will turn green from all the chemicals in the water. They need lots of chemicals because the water is piped in right from the Zaria River and is full of diseases. The river is also full of frogs and those frogs get piped into the pool.

        Lisa Klein’s parents said it was wrong to make us have school in the afternoon so she is boycotting our geography class. She doesn’t know what she is missing. Geography is mostly Dr. Price telling stories, though sometimes we watch movies. Dr. Price has lived everywhere in the world, even Timbuktu. I thought Timbuktu was just a joke until we moved here, but it’s a real city in the middle of the Sahara desert.

        Turns out, I’d rather live in England than stay in Nigeria.  I found this out on a hot, dry Saturday in November. I went to visit Ruth Caswell at her house. We walked through her bedroom and I saw a book that I hadn’t read. It was called The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

        “Can I read this?” I asked.

        “All right,” she said, “but not now. I want to work on the house.” 

        We were building a lean-to playhouse under her baobab.

        Her baobab was a royal tree. Its trunk was huge, bigger around then a Nigerian mud house and as tall as the sky. Flying buttress roots like thick, grey wings ran down to the ground from up where its huge branches started. Two flying buttress roots made a space big enough for three or four kids to play in. During the rainy season, it grew fruit like green footballs on twisting green ropes. But in November, the rains were long over.

        Just then Ruth saw her brother near our baobab house. She ran out and began to chase him away. I followed, but was already reading as I walked. At the edge of the veranda, I sat down.

        Ruth chased her brother around for a while. Then she called, “Leave that book and come over.”

        “But I want to finish this chapter,” I said.

In England, fall meant rain all the time. People wore cardigans and magic could take you through a wardrobe to a place where animals talked. In Wisconsin, there’d been some rain in the fall, but no wardrobes - magic or not. Maybe someone in Zaria had a wardrobe, but fall meant the dry season. it got drier and drier and drier while Harmattan winds filled the air with dust blown off the Sahara.

        When I read, it was frosty winter with crisp, cold air that squeaked in my teeth and pine tree smells. I wore a heavy, fur coat and a mug of milky tea warmed my cold hands. But when I looked up, I had to wipe sweat out of my eyes and a hot breeze teased the edge of my short, cotton dress. Under me was the veranda floor of baked, red clay. I wore sandals and shuffled my feet in red, Nigerian dirt, while the dusty air made me sneeze.

        Ruth and her brother turned their chase into hide-and-tag around the baobab. 

        At least Ruth had a baobab. And a veranda. It wasn’t fair. The Caswell's bedrooms opened directly outdoors, onto their veranda. Ours opened into a big hall. Our house hugged a lame, little garden of hibiscus, bougainvillea and flame trees. The Caswell’s had a big, dirt yard around a baobab.

        It just wasn’t fair. If I had to live in heat and dust, I wanted a veranda and a baobab.

        Looking down at my book, leaves turned color, people put on coats and snow fell. Looking up, the sky was a hazy, white-blue and the yells of Ruth and her brother sounded thin in the dry, hot air.

        “You said you’d play a long time ago and you’re still reading,” Ruth stood at my side. She frowned at me in her best, schoolmistress imitation.

        I sighed and marked my place. Some day I’d get to live again in a country with fall. Just then, though, I might as well play tag around the baobab.