Looking for Transwonderland

by Noo Saro-Wiwa

  The nationwide cable channel still broadcasts Nollywood movies, however. A film called Long John came on, the best and funniest Nollywood film I’d seen. The eponymous central character (played by my favourite actor, Nkem Owoh) storms around his village, raging at the immorality he witnesses around him.

  In one scene, Long John encounters a member of the village committee canoodling with a woman by a tree. When the couple realise that Long John is approaching them, the woman hides in front of the man.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Long John enquires aggressively.

  ‘I’m just urinating,’ the terrified man tells him, keeping his back to Long John. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll see you at the meeting.’

  But Long John spots a piece of the lady’s clothing dangling between the tall man’s legs.

  ‘Are you wearing apron?’ he sarcastically asks the man. ‘Are you urinating white silk? . . . Ah, I go see legs, o! You are urinating a whole human being.’

  The tall man bribes Long John with alcohol to keep quiet about this sexual indiscretion. Long John accepts the bribe, then says he’ll still report the incident to the village elders. The next we see of him, he’s drunkenly complaining to a goat about how rogues, his ‘fellow goats’, have entered Nigerian politics.

  Long John brilliantly captures the archetypal mouthy Nigerian who hollers pious, rapid-fire invective, reducing his victims to quivering little children. His rage, his hypocrisy, and the dialogue – delivered in typically starchy, vernacular English – was hilariously authentic. He reminded me of Michael Douglas’s character in the Hollywood film Falling Down, whose frustration at society sends him on a wanton, self-destructive warpath around the city.

  Long John later catches another couple canoodling. He accuses the man of being too lustful (‘Even a she-goat is in trouble with you’) and advises him to ‘offload the burden around your waist and discharge it’ by the tree. ‘I can see you want this place to be germinating ground for bastards,’ he spits disdainfully.

  Next, Long John staggers drunk into a meeting of the council of elders and demands that from then on everyone should speak to him in ‘Queen’s English’. He turns to the chief. ‘You have no manhood between your testicles,’ he tells the old man before accusing him of embezzling public money. The other elders agree, and accuse the chief of living a rich lifestyle: quaffing only expensive bottled water, and ‘masticating fruit like mad’.

  The film goes on like this, a series of scenes covering everything from the sexual indiscretions of church members to theft (increasingly on Long John’s part). We see him capitulate further to his own vices when he tries to seduce his friend’s pretty niece. Long John steals his own wife’s clothes and offers them to the niece as ‘brand new’ presents – at which point, the film suddenly ends.

  Nollywood movies are notorious for dividing themselves into three one-hour-long instalments, designed to create more money for producers. Unless one watches every segment, it’s not always possible to understand the plots and overarching messages. Not once can I remember completing a Nollywood film from start to finish. I could only guess what message Long John’s director was imparting. Even so, the brilliance of the script and relatively high-quality cinematography gave me another glimpse of what Nigerian cinema could achieve one day. Uplifted, I fell into a deep sleep.

  When the British overran Kano in 1903, they took over Gidan Makama, the home of a member of the Hausa aristocracy (‘Gidan’ means ‘house’ and ‘Makama’ means ‘heir apparent’ to the emir). The colonialists used the building as their administrative headquarters. The Malian-style edifice had cool interiors and rounded turrets protruding from sloping, sturdy mud walls, its exterior printed with the interlocking Hausa-Fulani symbol. Today, Gidan Makama is used as the city’s main museum.

  I met my guide inside the dark, cool interior. He was a lovely Hausa man who spoke broken English. I never asked him his name, so I’ll call him Amadu. We walked through the first room, which contained black-and-white photos of old Kano, still walled, still separated from the outside world by wooden doors, also decorated with carvings of the Hausa-Fulani motif. The museum’s collection of artefacts demonstrated Kano’s early sophistication and connections with the outside world: arrow-proof battle shields made from elephant hide; wooden guns manufactured by Kano citizens in the sixteenth century; horned animal masks used as decoys for hunters; various examples of Mali-style, turreted mud-wall architecture.

  Beyond the courtyard, in a second set of rooms, a cabinet displayed the emir’s clothes, including a pair of ornately designed trousers that must have been 2.5 metres wide between the legs. Amadu laughed with me. He explained that the emir used the excess fabric as a cushion to prevent saddle-soreness during long journeys on horseback.

  Another room showed two sacks printed with the Barclays Bank logo and filled with groundnuts. Until fairly recently, groundnuts were used as a form of currency in Kano, each bag representing the equivalent of £100.

  ‘My mother could not adjust to the use of notes and coins,’ Amadu told me. ‘When I told her something cost 1,000, she asked me, “How many bags is that?” Groundnut was our cash crop in those days. In the south you had palm oil and cocoa. Now it’s all oil. I think the government do not take an interest in tourism because of oil.’

  Across town was a camel market. In a cavernous warehouse several men were standing and watching a carcass being cleaned. When they saw me they ushered me in with startling readiness. None of them questioned why a random woman was sniffing around an abattoir. Instead, they offered me an impromptu tour.

  ‘You know, nothing comes for free,’ the tallest man announced, grinning coyly.

  ‘I know,’ I replied, grinning sourly. In Nigeria, even curiosity has a price; people seem permanently poised to turn any situation, no matter how banal, into a profitable one. The tall man was called Ibrahim. His friend, also called Ibrahim, was a congenial older man whose teeth erupted from his mouth at all angles. The two of them guided me around the abattoir, casually treading in the pools of blood on the floor. Toothy Ibrahim laughed at me as I held up my trousers and minced along in distaste. In the room next door, water bled from a pierced hosepipe and seeped beneath the head of a cow. The cow’s head lay next to its chopped legs and a chunk of its neck, which had a huge artery sticking out of it. Just a few metres away, a man maintained superhuman stillness while getting his hair cut inside a cloud of buzzing flies.

  The Ibrahims led me out of the door towards the back of the warehouse. We entered an open space where twenty-odd camels stood or sat on the straw-strewn ground, a haughty yet foolish expression on their faces. I wanted to know where the animals came from, but the camel dealer, an old man, refused to answer my translated question. He murmured something to Toothy Ibrahim in terse Hausa.

  Ibrahim turned to me. ‘He is thinking that you want to start your own camel business and compete with him.’

  ‘No, no,’ I reassured him. ‘I’m just curious.’ Toothy Ibrahim explained that the animals are imported by foot from Libya or Cameroon at a cost of 100,000 each. ‘What do you do with them?’ I asked.

  ‘They are for eating,’ Toothy replied.

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘The whole camel.’

  ‘Do you eat the eye?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The ears?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded vociferously.

  ‘The tongue?’

  ‘We eat everything.’

  In Northern Nigeria there is no animal more useful than the camel: they’re edible, biddable, strong and can be rented out to other farmers to transport their produce. As the Sahara encroaches, many farmers in the north are using camels instead of oxen to plough their fields. Camels are cheaper to feed as they’ll eat shrubs, herbs, leaves and fruit of any quality, and the kind of semi-desert vegetation that other hoofed animals won’t sniff at.

  The camel dealer stood behind a table piled with brown oval-shaped camel droppings. Tall Ibrahim explained that people mi
x the droppings with water and pour the mixture into their their ears to treat infections. Camel urine is also drunk to cure coughs. Traditional remedies are still popular here because modern medicine fails people so often; Nigeria is awash with placebos and chemically dubious medication. There was a logic behind our traditionalism, I realised – cultural stubbornness wasn’t always the reason.

  But a lack of progress and education, evidence of fallow brain power, was evident all around me. On the way back to my hotel, I stopped off at one of the many bookstalls lining a busy main street. While I examined the book spines, the English-speaking stall owner thrust a random selection of books in my direction: self-help, psychology, statistics. Oblivious to the subject matter, he offered me each book as though it were a piece of fruit.

  ‘I’m looking for a novel,’ I explained. He pointed me to the children’s section. ‘No, that’s not what I’m looking for,’ I said. ‘I want a novel.’

  The man reached across the cabin and pulled out The Gynaecological Guide for Women.

  That evening, I checked my e-mail at a Lebanese-run Internet café opposite the desiccated lawns of the Kano golf club. I was still dressed in my hijab and headscarf, but it didn’t stop the Indian man sitting next to me surmising that I was a diasporan. His name was Ravi. He was a restaurateur, born and raised in Kano, a descendant of Indians who migrated to Nigeria in the colonial era to work at the tin mines in Plateau State.

  Ravi showed me online photographs of a restaurant in London. He had plans to refurbish his own Kano eatery in the same style. After chatting for a few minutes, we drove across town to have a drink.

  ‘Nobody makes rogan josh like me, if I may say so myself,’ Ravi smiled, a flash of humour penetrating his general dourness. He was jaded, he said, on the verge of ‘burning out’. Running a restaurant six days a week was taking its toll, and so was life in Nigeria. ‘I was considering getting Nigerian citizenship in 2001 but I changed my mind. This country is going down,’ he said, his fingers itemising the decay, overpopulation and corruption.

  ‘People tell me that if they went into government they would go chop [steal government funds]. Everyone is corrupt. Even that Ken Saro-Wiwa. I’ve heard he wasn’t honest either.’

  ‘Ken Saro-Wiwa was my father.’

  Ravi’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. My father left everything he had to his children. If he were rich, then I’d be rich. And I’m not.’

  ‘OK, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise . . . sorry.’

  We sat in silence for a while. Ravi’s cynicism trawled across all things Nigerian, snagging everything in its net, including my father. I was irritated but unsurprised – Nigerians have very little trust in our public figures.

  ‘I hate driving in rush hour. It’s so stressful,’ Ravi sighed, resting his arms on the steering wheel and staring at the bedlam of traffic. ‘Everyone is on a mission. Look at that woman on the okada. She’s on a mission to get home without falling off that thing . . . her driver is on a mission to get her there as fast as possible and then find another customer . . . everyone is on a mission.’

  We parked outside the members-only Kano Motor Club, a colonial vestige frequented by foreign expats and older Hausa men. The club’s interior had burnt down two days earlier, ‘Probably because of some shitty, cheap Chinese appliance,’ Ravi grumbled. We took seats by the undamaged bar looking out on to the gardens. Ravi introduced me briefly to a big Scotsman, the club’s manager. Surrounding us were blue-collar English men drinking beer, and a beefy Italian with a vest and gold chain nestled in a forest of chest hair. Colonial exclusivity isn’t what it used to be. A couple of silent, heavily made-up Nigerian women sat by the men, while several Hausa men chatted and sipped beer at a nearby table.

  ‘Sharia law is just a political gimmick,’ Ravi said, staring into his whisky. He freely sold alcohol at his restaurant.

  ‘You don’t get caught?’ I asked.

  ‘The police come round sometimes.’

  ‘And what happens?’

  ‘I tip them,’ Ravi replied.

  I asked him if there was anything interesting that I should see in Kano. He shrugged his shoulders. He’d seen it all, done it all: the Durbar festival, the wrestling, the museums. He wanted to go to India or Pakistan on holiday.

  ‘I haven’t been abroad on holiday in seven years. I can’t afford it.’ He told me he had run out of money after reluctantly paying for his wife and children to fly to the US to visit his mother-in-law.

  ‘Why don’t you go somewhere nice within Nigeria, like that bird sanctuary up in Nguru?’

  ‘I’ve heard it’s not very good.’

  ‘What about Obudu Ranch?’

  ‘It’s too expensive.’

  ‘It’d be cheaper than going to Pakistan or India.’

  ‘I need a break from Nigeria,’ he sighed, a rush of blood rouging his tired eye whites. ‘I want different food, different mentality, different lifestyle.’

  Perhaps being Indian enhanced Ravi’s sense of entrapment, his foreignness making him less stoic than indigenous Nigerians in his predicament. I shuddered at the thought that I might end up like him if I lived in Nigeria, unable to leave, unable to achieve financial security or simply satisfy my cravings for foreign cuisine. Western prosperity had made me less hardy, and given me a sense of entitlement to easy mobility that I was terrified of losing. I felt a renewed gratitude towards my parents for giving me the life that I had.

  I asked Ravi if he was going to the Durbar that week. ‘I’ve seen it a thousand times,’ he muttered, his weariness mopping up my enthusiasm like a sponge. The Durbar was the highlight of the Hausa-Fulani cultural calendar and the highlight of my Kano visit. I’d been counting down the days. Every year, the Emir of Kano invites military chiefs for a military parade at his palace, where finely costumed regiments showcase their loyalty in a magnificent display of horsemanship. The parade goes back to the days when each noble household was expected to contribute a regiment to the defence of Kano’s emirate.

  The day of the Durbar – held on the eleventh day after the hajj to celebrate the culmination of Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-el-Kabir Muslim festivals – was a cloudy one. A jolt of adrenalin woke me up prematurely. The harmattan winds seemed to express their own excitement by throwing up an unusually dusty haze over the entire city. It lent an extra magical air to the day. My achaba cruised towards the Old City on traffic-free roads, flanked by policemen and drummers.

  The Emir’s Palace was an old but renovated green-and-white building with an expansive, sandy courtyard in the middle. I took a seat in the northern royal stands alongside well-to-do Nigerians and foreigners. The expats were mainly diplomats and company workers who fanned their flushed faces and chatted in low voices. They had smartened up for the occasion in suits and hats and dresses, an unusual show of deference to Nigerian culture. The cost of a seat in the royal stands, a paltry 2,000, was enough to grant us privilege over ordinary Kano citizens who lined the streets nearby. In order to get a good view of the courtyard, some of them perched on a wall of the Central Mosque opposite the palace. Dozens of others clambered onto the rooftops of nearby buildings. How wrong it seemed that outsiders like myself should enjoy privileged views of the Durbar while ordinary Hausas and Fulanis couldn’t.

  ‘They know their place,’ said the buxomly elegant, fifty-something woman sitting next to me. ‘They’d never force their way over here. Hausas like protocol and respect.’

  The woman had an American accent. Regally swathed in bright red Senegalese cloth, she looked like she had lived in Nigeria for a long time. Her name was Nadira, she told me, and she had converted to Islam thirty years earlier, back home in Miami, long before she came to Nigeria and met her husband and settled here.

  ‘I never felt that I belonged in America,’ Nadira said. ‘I went to the Caribbean, tried living there for a while, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Something was missing.’

  ‘Do you kno
w what it was?’

  ‘Freedom,’ Nadira replied. ‘I can come and go as I please and do what I like.’

  ‘But women don’t have freedom here. They’re not allowed to do anything.’

  ‘People in the US don’t understand this women-at-home thing. But the women aren’t just sitting there, they’re doing business. They’re selling perfume and fabrics and jewellery. Here in Africa women have it going on,’ Nadira said. She pointed out that Kano women actually owned most of the achaba motorbikes but let their sons or male relatives ride them and earn money. Kano society wasn’t necessarily what it seemed on the surface. But I wondered whether Nadira owed her freedom partly to being American and relatively wealthy. Coming from the diaspora certainly gave me freedom around town – when I arrived at the Emir’s Palace in my trousers and T-shirt, announcing myself as a ‘journalist from London’, the police had bitten back their disapproval of my attire.

  The seats around the courtyard down below us were filling up with hundreds of spectators, most of them connected to the royal household in some way. State TV cameras trained their lenses on the crowds. On the edge of the courtyard, groups of rival political party supporters had gathered. One of the parties was protesting the results of the recent local government elections. As the two groups chanted and waved posters and flags at one another, a mounted emir’s guardsman separated them with a big stick.

  The sound of sirens filled the air as the state governor’s convoy screamed across the courtyard, kicking up a self-important plume of dust in its wake.

  ‘Only the African man does that,’ the woman behind me chuckled to her companion. ‘Can you imagine? Thirty cars, just to bring in this governor!’ The politician got out of his car and took his seat by the courtyard.