KANO, NORTHERN NIGERIA, THE COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS OF THE WESTERN SUDAN
Twice a week a mixed passenger train runs from Lagos to Kano, which,
despite its crude discomfort, must serve the traveller who wishes
to go north, for there is no other way for the present.
When the time came for me to set out upon that journey, to say I
was astonished at the crowds of natives at the station and at the
confusion would be to put it very mildly. Drowning the sound of
clanking trucks and blasts of engine whistles in the station, arose
the deafening cries of instruction and abuse of a highly excited,
hustling mob about to board the train, after bidding demonstrative
farewells to two or three generations of relations and friends. Din
and confusion reigned supreme; there was no calm eddy there, no
steady head or hand to order silence or orderliness. One might be
forgiven if, for the moment, one thought, as I did, that I had
mistaken my direction and had entered a native market-place, in
which a great sale was going on and the bidding eager and heated,
in a volcanic atmosphere of excitement.
Patience was necessary, I assure you, to carry master and boys and
baggage through the jostling of some hundreds of people, past the
ticket-desks of distracted native clerks, who were being overwhelmed
by a fiercely gesticulating, clamouring mob, that know, by force
of primitive environment, only their rude desires and nothing of
manners. And when the train had finally been boarded and the journey
begun, I found it was necessary to keep hold on patience throughout,
for many stations on the way held something of the same fearful
din and disorder.
Much could be done by strict measures on the part of the railway
authorities to “tone down” and regulate such native shortcomings,
which white men would surely welcome, for it is little less than
unchecked raw exuberance that is prevalent among them—perfectly
good-natured, as a rule—which interferes with the quick and
systematic disposition of the service, and which is not in keeping
with the fitness of things in modern travel.
But such circumstances are among the drawbacks which unprecedented
prosperity has brought in its wake. Nigeria, rich beyond all possible
estimate in natural resources, has come, and is coming, into her own;
no longer gradually and steadily as cautious and perhaps wise men
might wish, but by leaps and bounds in keeping with the impatient
spirit of the age. So that laggards are apt to be left behind, or
things which are primitive become out of date; and that is what has
happened with the Nigerian railway, which was built, no doubt, and
run for the little needs of the colony as they existed a few years
ago, but which is not now an adequate nor well regulated service,
and fails sadly to fall in line with the astonishing progress of
present-day commerce. Hence, in part, the cause of the congestion
and confusion at the stations which is so prevalent to-day.
Nigeria urgently needs more railways, more railway facilities,
throughout the width and breadth of the land: a land that
has few equals in untouched natural wealth; _a land of immense
possibilities, provided wise laws conserve its native labour_ and
cease to over-educate and over-wean it, and bring it back to the
natural conditions from which it has been swept in a whirlwind of
haste to clutch Prosperity and let everything else go by the board.
Meantime it is bottled up in its vast interior for lack of outlets,
while it is struggling like a thing unborn to break loose from
bondage.
It is only a very little of the awakening, of the struggling, which
one sees at almost every station “up the line,” but every sign,
little or great, is a sure forecast of a dawning and, perhaps,
wonderful new era in West Africa.
The three days’ wearisome journey to Kano need not be dwelt on
at length. Throughout it was through a country rich in forest and
bush, with no great change in geographical aspect or in altitude.
The change in appearance begins in the Kano region, at the end
of the railway, where the sub-deserts of the north come down
in places to the fringe of the bushland and grade one into the
other. The elevation of Kano is 1,700 ft., and this comparatively
small change in altitude over the long distance from the coast to
Kano—a distance of 704 miles—takes place gradually, so that
the country, with small exceptions, appears flat throughout. There
are great dense belts of oil palms and coco-nut palms in from the
coast, which in time, as you proceed up-country, give place to more
varied tropical forests of tall stately trees growing from jungle
undergrowth; while further on again, toward the north, the growth
is less prolific, and there is much acacia bush, which is open or
dense in patches, and of no imposing height.
To step from the train at Kano and shake oneself free from the
discomforting heat and dust of the carriage and know that the journey
was at an end was a cause for rejoicing with me. Civilisation now
lay behind; here would I gather together my caravan of camels and
natives and set out on the open road with all the freedom of a nomad.
And as a starting-off point, I learned, on close acquaintance,
that Kano was ideal, for it proved to be a place of the frontiers
and of the outdoors that harboured a host of wayfarers that passed
to and fro from the great and historical market-centre of the north.
The ancient city of Kano is situated on an extensive plain
of cleared and cultivated bushland, which is not completely
bare and waste nor treeless, but which, nevertheless, bears a
distinctive change from the country further south, and has much of
the appearance of sub-desert in the dry season, for it holds the
palest of colouring—that true buff shadeless neutral tint common
to desert lands which oceans of wind-lain sand and ranges of dry
prairie grass give to a sun-parched, rain-thirsty country. But only
in colour and sand-winds of the Harmattan has it great resemblance
to desert, for, beside the scattered trees and bush, the level
stretches on closer inspection are found to be largely lands that
have been cultivated during the short rainy season and are now
waste-grown over a very sandy soil, which is dry and cracked and
powdered to fine dustiness on the surface. One of the common and
best-known ground plants amongst the dead vegetation on the sandy
soil is that named “Tafasa” by the Hausa people (_Sesbania sp.
Leguminosæ_). It is a straw-yellow, long-stalked underbrush,
with long thin bean-pods, and known to everyone about Kano, for it
grows about 2 ft. high in considerable extent, and crackles noisily
in brittle dryness as one brushes against it in passing. Another
well-known plant there, and everywhere in the bushland, is that which
the natives call “Karengia” (_Pennisetum Cenchroides Rich._),
and which is a very annoying burr-grass that adheres to any part
of one’s clothing, and which is a terrible pest to the hunter.
It was the season of the Harmattan when I reached Kano, for it was
the month of December, and the driving winds from the Sahara had
already set in. The Harmattan (often designated “Hazo” by Hausa
natives, which means mist) is a season of hot, dry, dust-filled
winds that blow from the desert interior steadily day after day,
but seldom with the abandoned fierceness of a sandstorm. At that
period the early mornings are cool even to coldness, and fresh and
vigorous with the stirring of strong wind, which bears down with
the coming of day, and brings with it a fine mist-like haze which
envelops the whole country. But the haze is not an atmosphere of
laden dampness, such as is familiar to England; quite the contrary,
for it is dry with the intensity of a white heat, and mist-like
only because the wind is so full of fine sand particles from the
tinder-dry desert in the north, which it carries and lays in a
carpet of fine penetrating dust wherever it passes.
The dryness in the land at this season is unbelievable if you
have not experienced it; moisture is dried up as if the flame of
a furnace was licking at it; ink, for instance, dries as fast as
each letter of the alphabet is penned, and the clogging pen-nib is
almost unmanageable: writing-paper, books—even the stiff book
covers—everything of the kind curls up and becomes unsightly;
boots that fitted with comfort in England shrink to such an extent
that they are useless; nothing escapes, not even one’s person,
lips crack, and nostrils and eyes sting; and altogether one has
days of intense personal discomfort. Moreover, the fine almost
invisible sand-dust searches into everything, and very soon both
my watches were affected; next my camera shutter went wrong, and
later on a rifle and gun. These latter were the greatest mishaps
to befall me during Harmattan, and they were serious enough at the
onset of an expedition.
Thus it will be seen that at Kano there is already something of
sand and bleakness, and, to a considerable degree, it is therefore
relative to the boundless Sahara to the north, while the advent of
the Harmattan and driving sands bring to one the very atmosphere of
the great lone wastes of the hinterland. And in keeping with such
impressions, and enhancing them, stands the strange, and ancient,
and powerful city of Kano, which in its unique earth-built aspect
has all the character of a city of the mystical northern desert
and little or none of the character one is accustomed to see in
Nigeria. Perhaps, most of all, Kano impressed me with its atmosphere
of age: the gigantic ramparts around it, and many of the quaint
mud dwellings were obviously time-worn, in that inimitable manner
of things that are unmistakably ancient, and carry about them for
ever the rudiments of the craftsmanship of strange races that have
passed and gone for all time.
And though we may know from hearsay that great powers in race and
religion have lived within the walls of Kano to fight and struggle
for power and existence through ages of History—as is the destiny
of kingdoms—it is difficult to realise how slowly time has advanced
in this secluded back-eddy, and how very close the past is to the
present, until you have walked within the ancient walls and fallen
under the spell of the old-world character of the people, and their
dwellings, and their customs.
Undoubtedly this atmosphere of the Past which hangs so closely
about Kano remains there because the town so long lay out of
the way of the ever-hurrying feet of that advancing, engulfing
“civilisation” of our age which is the ruling “God” of the
white man in his own land, whereso ever that be, or in any other land
that he has fallen heir to through the honourable, or mayhap—be
it whispered—dishonourable enterprise of a bygone grandparent.
It was as late as 1902 that the white man came before the gates
of Kano, demanding admittance, and since the aggressors were the
great “Bature,” and had many rifles (a few arms collectively
are invariably construed as _many_ by timid, untaught natives),
the Hausa inhabitants, who were at discord with the Fulani, who
were their masters at the time, and deserted by the cowardly Emir
Alieu, forthwith bowed before Destiny with true Negro fatalism, and
accepted British rule without serious dispute, and without making
any kind of stout-hearted defence against the undermanned punitive
expedition that was sent out at the time; a fact to their discredit,
for they were in their thousands.
It would appear, from records, that the pact between conqueror and
vanquished was a friendly one, and of such wisdom that the change
of rule was not a drastic one and brought no tyranny; in fact,
the hands of the Crown’s Trustees were laid so lightly upon the
people in directing their administration, that they (the natives)
lost none of their ancient characteristics or pride of race at
the time of small beginnings of acquaintance with Europeans; so
that almost up to the present day Kano remained to all intents and
purposes completely native and original, and a great and powerful
centre of the Hausa people and of Mohammedanism. It is at the
present time that the careless breath of civilisation has swept
inevitably—for it is useless to expect to gainsay Destiny—in
from the South, and has cast a blight upon the simplicity of the
natives, with unnatural consequences to their frail character.
In 1911 the Nigeria railway was laid down to Kano. In 1914—about
six years ago—there was less than a score of Europeans within
the British segregation about a mile east of the Hausa City, and at
the time of my journey, early in 1920, somewhere about six score;
the former a barely perceptible number amongst the vast native
population; the latter just enough to have started the swing of
the pendulum of commerce and speculation which already promises
to change a fine old world that is rare to a new world that will
grow commonplace. I treasure old things, as I fancy we all do,
and therefore cannot refrain from regret when I see something that
is dear totter on the brink of destruction—so often it cannot be
saved by reason of circumstances or environment, and it goes out
for ever, for the passing of the _Old_ is just as inevitable as
the coming of the _New_ beneath the propelling will of Destiny.
The population of Kano is a fluctuating one, on account of the
nomadic propensities of many of the people, and I think I am right in
saying that there are on that account no exact statistics concerning
numbers. There is said to be an average population of about 80,000
inhabitants in Kano, which dwindles to about 60,000 in the “off
season,” and rises to about 100,000 in the height of the trading
season, when ground-nuts are marketed.
The province of Kano, of which the City of Kano is capital, has
a population of 2,871,236,[4] which is a much greater number than
that contained within any other province in Nigeria, its nearest
competitor having barely half that total.
Those few figures may serve to proportion the extent of the
importance of Kano; but let me lay statistics aside henceforth, for I
would fain wander back in random fashion within the old gaunt walls
of the city and examine the quaintness and the rudeness wherever
dust-lain mysterious lanes may lead me.
Within the walls of Kano the city is composed of thousands of
diminutive hutments, which crouch low and are huddled together as
if to gain each from the other strength, and companionship, and
protection, which is indeed the intention in a land which suffers
from the sting of driving, biting sandstorms, and knew in the Past
the swoop of attacking enemy.
The huts, and the enclosure walls about them, are built with reddish
clay-soil taken from pits in the neighbourhood, and, with the
addition of water and plant fibres, kneaded into a plaster which,
after it has been applied, sets very hard. Dwellings so built are
cool and weather-worthy for the greater part of the year, but at
the time of the Rains some damage is usually wrought by the heavy
wash of water, and repairs are necessary thereafter.
In appearance the dwellings are stoutly built at the hands of
patient, careful labour (for the natives are not a little skilled
in their work), and, though they have seldom ornament of any kind,
their simple lines and odd and primitive planning have an attraction,
and a novelty that is peculiar, apparently, to the walled-towns on
the northern borders of negro-land.
Kano, like most native towns, has grown upon no preconceived lines,
with the result that it is to-day a happy-go-lucky jumble of
dwellings that in many cases appear to just save themselves from
complete imprisonment by the number of lanes that provide, by the
genius of necessity, a way of escape to the encompassed dwellers.
Throughout the whole city runs an amazing network of street-lanes,
zigzagging and turning and twisting in every conceivable direction
and holding to no true course for any appreciable distance, which
is the outcome of the numerous den-builders having built their
little dwellings wherever an open space or a corner was available,
without preconceived attempt to form the whole in any kind of
symmetrical plan.
From the outside the openings in the severe lane walls—which are
8 to 10 ft. high—do not invite a stranger to enter freely into
the privacy of these native dwellings, but, not wishing to miss
anything, I one day plucked up courage and asked of an aged woman,
who was squatted on the ground at a doorway in a lane, if she would
show me the interior of her house?
But before making my request I tactfully gave her the long formula
of Hausa greeting:
_Self_:—Sanu sanu! (good day!)
_Aged woman_:—Sanu kaddai! (thank you!)
_Self_:—Sanu da aiki! (blessings in your work!)
_Aged woman_:—Sanu kaddai! (thank you!)
_Self_:—Enna lafia? (how are you?)
_Aged woman_:—Lafia lau! (very well!)
_Self_;—Enna gajia? (how is weariness?)
_Aged woman_:-Babu gajia! (none!)
_Self_:-Enna gidda? (how is your house?)
_Aged woman_:—Lafia lau! (very well!)
_Self_:—Madilla![5] (thank God!)
_Aged woman_:—Madilla! (thank God!)
which formula the Hausa native dearly loves to be greeted with,
since it is the habitual form of friendly salutation; and it now
brought me good-natured bidding to enter.
Across the door-opening in the wall I stepped from the lane into
the yard or compound—a small open space with high walls on all
sides— which was clean, though earthen and dusty, and contained
a few naked infants that played about the hut doors in company with
a pair of young goats of an age to be nursed and nourished at home,
while a few bantam-sized African fowls scratched for pickings where
wooden mortar stools and pestle poles on the ground told that the
industrious women of the house had lately been crushing grain for
the forenoon meal. There was not, contrary to the usual custom,
any tree or bush preserved within the narrow limits of the yard
for sun-shelter.
The yard I had entered contained two huts built of the same clay-soil
material as the outside walls, and, bending almost double, I entered
the low dark doorless opening which gave admittance to the home
of the old woman, and stood then in dim light in a tiny den which
had only a few feet of space altogether. Indeed, such dwellings
contain area of so little extent that if a long woodframed couch
is placed therein, or a grass mat for reclining upon is laid upon
the floor, one full side of the room is taken up. No window lit the
interior—though there are sometimes one or two narrow loopholes
near the ceiling in huts of this type—and but a dim light filtered
indoors from the sun-shadow that fell athwart the low doorless
opening; the hard-baked floor was of the same red clay-soil as
the rest of the dwelling and of the colour of the ground outside;
the flat ceiling— which showed the ant-proof dum palm beams
and the spans of grass matting between, which carried the weight
of earth that composed the roof overhead—was densely hung with
cobwebs and black with the wood-smoke from years of night-fires and
cook-fires, which had also dimmed the rough red walls. There was no
furniture in the hut, nothing that had the purpose of an ornament,
for though the Hausa people are excessively fond of ornament on
their persons, strangely enough no such taste is reproduced in
their dwellings. Upon the floor lay a clean grass mat, whereon the
inhabitants are wont to crouch around the food-bowl at meal-time,
or individuals recline in sleep in the heat of the height of the day;
a few calabash drinking-bowls and bowls for drawing well-water hung
from the ceiling and from the wall, where also a well-used bow and
a buck-skin sheath of arrows hung from a peg.
From this room a short dark passage led to the other hut, which
was of exactly the same character and aspect as the first, except
that therein two comely women, in bright cotton garb, had taken
refuge in shyness of the white stranger—wives, no doubt, of the
proprietor, who was not for the moment at home. A few Hausa words
to them in friendliness and a coin to the old woman, and I passed
outside into the daylight again and on my way, followed by the
grateful “Na gode, na gode! (thank you, thank you!) of the old
woman, who was much flattered over the advent of a white man to
her humble “gidda” (abode).
Therein I have described one native home in Kano, and in describing
one have portrayed the type, for, except in minor details, they are
all very similar. They are, in fact, when all is said and done,
but the simple primitive shelters of an outdoor people of an old
world, who are content for the most part to make shift, somewhat
in gipsy fashion, with the rude necessities of life like unto the
wild things about them.
Of course there are, in addition to the mass of dwellings, the
Mohammedan mosque, and Sultan’s Palace, and market-stalls, which
have importance and peculiarities of their own and complete the
city as a whole; but the great novelty of the place lies along the
lanes and about the mud huts of the crowded populace, and upon the
rampart walls that stand stalwart guards through the ages.
In the Past it would appear the natives of Kano lived almost
altogether within the ramparts of the city, as was the defensive
custom of rival centres throughout the territory; for tribal wars
were continual in those days, one group fighting another, one
city besieging another to such an extent that safety was only to
be found behind stout walls and lines of archers, while, in times
of disturbance, the bush outside remained a deserted no-man’s-land.
Thus to withstand siege Kano had more than its crowded streets of
dwellings within the walls that enclosed an area of 7¼ square miles;
there was open ground where goats and cattle and camels could be
herded and fed for a time when threat of attack should drive them in
from the outside; there were ponds and pits of water, even in the dry
season, where beasts could be watered, and deep wells to supply the
people. So that with their herds of animals to slaughter for meat,
and secreted grain stores, and abundant water, the inhabitants were
in a strong position to withstand siege in the good old days of
high adventure—days not long removed so far as they are concerned.
Within the walls, also, are the twin hills Goron Dutse and Dalla,
outstanding though not massive in area, but most notable because
they are the only hills in view on any side over the distance of
cleared land and bushland of the surrounding country, so that they
are like sentinel posts and fortresses to outside eyes.
Lastly, and most striking feature of all in this place of strange
reflection of ancient customs, there are the great ramparts
which completely surround the city. They are the very embodiment
of strength, towering above all else—of great width and height,
and one solid mass of welded clay-soil. Indeed, the whole enclosure
is so colossal that one cannot but be filled with amazement when
endeavouring to conceive an imaginary estimate of the labour and
enthusiasm that the masters and their subjects and their slaves must
have put into the work. At some time or other one can easily imagine
that countless thousands of naked natives swarmed upon those walls,
intent on one great purpose, like so many droves of tireless working
ants. The walls are 40 ft. wide at the base, and rise, tapering to
4 to 6 ft. width at the top, to a height of 30 ft. and more. The
parapet is punctuated with regular openings to accommodate the drawn
bows of archers when kneeling on the ledge or pathway which is on
the inside of the top of the wall. The great wall which encircles
the city is no less than 11 miles around its circumference, while
there are thirteen tunnel-like gloomy entrances, through the great
width at the base, on main roadways that diverge from the city,
so that exit or entrance can be made from any side. In the side
walls of the tunnel entrances there are room-like cavities excavated
which apparently accommodated the guard in time of war.
The hour to enter Kano by one of these gates is in the cool of the
late afternoon, for at that time you will find that the somnolence
which the excessive heat of noonday lays upon the easy-going
inhabitants has lifted and that there is a great stir of joyous
life about the city. The earth streets and lanes are filled with
natives bent on one occupation or another, for Kano is at heart
a regular hive of industry—“the great emporium of Central
Africa,” as Dr. Barth described it on his travels in 1850. It
is the principal hour in the market-place, and women and men pass
thereto with baskets of wares carried with easy grace upon their
heads; laden donkeys, dun-coloured or grey, pass marketwards too;
and long-gaited camels, and sometimes lean-ribbed, big-boned oxen,
all converging into Kano in the one direction, whence issues the
hum of many voices telling where a multitude has already gathered.
[Illustration: A STREET-LANE IN KANO.]
[Illustration: AN ENTRANCE IN THE MUD WALLS OF KANO.]
The market is comprised of long streets of low, roofed-in open
stalls, wherein the wares are exposed upon the ground within an
allotted space, while the gown-clad Hausa merchants kneel behind
them with becoming solemnity and do business. You may see upon
some stalls British cotton, and British ironmongery, and British
cigarettes which have been imported, and a few other things; but
for the most part the wares are native, and you can single out
baskets of raw cotton, bobbins of home-spun thread, and stout Kano
Cloth—which is renowned in Nigeria—the weaving and dyeing of
which is a large industry. Also the sale of hides, and leather-work,
and basket-work, and pottery are local industries of importance that
bring wares to the market; while tailors and blacksmiths flourish
at their trades. There are food-stalls, where such staple foods
as millet, and guinea corn, and maize, and beans (whole or ground
to flour) are exposed for sale in calabash bowls or grass-woven
baskets; and tomatoes, onions, yams, sugar-canes, and the pepper
and plant-leaves that go to make up the local pottage condiments.
The meat market is set apart, which is wise, for it is fly-ridden
and odoriferous, and beef and mutton and choice parts of offal
(of which natives are particularly fond) are there exposed for sale.
The merchants of the stalls are principally of the Hausa race,
and there are a few Arabs. But in the cattle-market, which is also
on one side, the natives are often Fulani and Beri-Beri, who have
brought in cattle, sheep, goats, and camels from distant bush where
their herds roam.
There are some horses for sale in the cattle-market; high-mettled,
Arab-like beasts that are often very attractive, but which, very
unfortunately, are almost invariably gone at the houghs through
the stupid native habit of throwing a galloping horse suddenly
back on its hindquarters on hard ground to make a dramatic halt
before an audience or a king’s house, by means of pressure on
the locally-made cruel bit-iron which projects on to the roof of
the mouth.
It may be gathered at this stage that the local market of Kano is
well equipped to supply the wants of the primitive people. Moreover,
the whole interchange of trading is so extensive, that there is
a very wholesome buying and selling within its own circle which
employs almost everyone and makes the city doubly self-supporting
and self-sufficient.
This market within the old city, in its entirety, is the everyday
mart of the inhabitants and does not greatly concern the white
traders, who buy, at their own warehouses in the European segregation
outside the walls, their stacks of hides and tons of ground-nuts
and beans, which are the rich exports from the place. There is
also some European trade in cattle and sheep, which are railed for
the consumption of people at “down country” stations and on
“the Coast.”
But it is now time to pass on from the market-place and return
to quarters, though the loitering crowd that presses about the
stalls is so dense that it is difficult to pass through it, and
the din of the eager voices is deafening. However, once clear of
the congestion and noise, it is very pleasant walking or riding
slowly home under the spell of a closing day. Hundreds of natives
are still on the dusty roads, arriving joyfully at the journey’s
end with burdened animals, from distant parts, or coming from the
fields or villages near-by when the work of the day is finished;
all gladly and contentedly returning home, or coming to a haven
of rest, while the sound of pounding pestle-poles in their mortar
stools resounds methodically in the still air to declare to all
ears that industrious housewives are preparing the evening meal.
You may hear also, about this time, the monotonous tom-tom of
small drums arising from the direction of a group of hutments, and
the loud voice of a functionary raised in peculiar declaration to
call forth neighbours; from which it may be understood that there
is gaiety afoot in some quarter where a wedding-dance is starting.
Such sounds on the evening air are very pleasant, as are all sounds
close to nature when they are explanatory of familiar living things
and joy of life to anyone who is overtaxed with the silence of the
lone places, as are many men of the caravans and of the bush who
drift into Kano from afar.
Passing through a shadowed gateway, named “Nassarawa,” in the
eastern wall, you may leave the strange old city behind in the dusk
and take the straight road to the white man’s town while snow-white
flocks of Cattle Egrets fly gracefully and softly across the eve-lit
sky to their night grounds, and satiated vultures and kites clamber
heavily to their roosting-perches on gnarled old solitary trees to
gather on each one in colonies.