A Resident's wife in Nigeria

by Constance Belcher Larymore

But it is Kano itself as a city, rather than as a commercial centre, which stands out in my memory distinct, unique, with a charm all its own, like nothing else in the world. Almost all those who saw the city for the first time that year, when it became the youngest-born of the Mother Government, expressed great disappointment with its appearance; I have heard it contemptuously stigmatized as a ‘glorified mud-heap,’ and it is often complained that the actually inhabited portions occupy so small a space inside the huge area of those massive walls. This, to my mind, constitutes one of the city’s greatest fascinations. There is such infinite breadth and restfulness about those vast stretches of short, crisp turf, surrounding the streets and alleys and humming markets; such a wonderful peace and dignity about those two astonishing, jagged, flat-topped hills, ‘Kazauri’ and ‘Dala,’ standing up abruptly in the middle of the plain, like tireless mighty sentinels, watching ever, in every direction, over the distant line of serrated pinkish wall.

A Kano Street Scene. ([p. 75])

A Kano Mounted Messenger. ([p. 81])

This wall itself is an object lesson to any one who grumbles at the quality of Kano’s architecture. It is fifteen miles in circumference, forty feet high, and wide enough to drive a motor-car round the inside terrace, without much danger to life or limb: at the base it is not much less than eighty feet wide. There are two deep ditches set moat-like outside the wall; from these all the material for the huge fortification has been taken. How many weary days of ceaseless patient labour, how many pairs of industrious hands have gathered that incredible mass of clay, handful by handful, carried it in miserable little grass baskets and calabashes, piled up the walls and gates inch by inch, till Kano became the impregnable fortress of the Western Soudan—why, the very thought is stupendous!

Remember, these simple folks have no tools, save one roughly fashioned implement, shaped like a pickaxe, that can do no more than loosen the soil—beyond this, nothing but ten slim, brown fingers, and that magnificent disregard for time which pervades Africa and makes such marvels possible. As an achievement, I think this plain, loop-holed clay wall compares favourably with any of the glorious monuments and fairy palaces of Indian fame.

The gates—thirteen in number—are on the same scale, massive solid square towers, with a narrow passage and various shadowy recesses. The slaves of Kano in the early days must have been as the sand of the sea, for, inside the city, the buildings are on the same plan and of the same material. In Africa, it is only to the white man that Nature shows a brazen pitiless face; to the child of the soil she is tenderly, munificently bountiful. The clay for building Kano was under their feet; they dug it out, and set up enormous dwellings, almost fortresses, masses of cool dark halls, windowless except for slits high up near the vault of the roof, where the temperature never varies by ten degrees all the year round. And if by doing so they did leave great deep pits everywhere, which, in the rainy season, are filled with water, and even through the six months of deadly drought remain stagnant and smelling horribly—well, of course these are fearful evils from a sanitary point of view, and undeniably odoriferous, but that they add an additional charm can hardly be disputed, the foul surfaces hidden by a carpet of clustering water-lilies, and the softly sloping edges clothed with velvety green grass. There is one in particular, so large that it forms a fair-sized lakelet, once a place of grisly association, for it was formerly the custom to execute criminals on its banks: but now the utterly placid surface reflects, like a mirror, its surroundings—houses, palm-trees, the splendid, branching-horned cattle, sheep and goats cropping the smooth greensward around the brink, and the ceaseless va et vient of the passers-by. Slender, straight-featured Fulani girls come to fill their water-pots, balancing them on their heads with inimitable grace; the whole scene is faintly veiled and shrouded in the milky haze of the Harmattan, and the slow-rising aromatic smoke. Yes—it may spell malaria and miasma to some, but if any one can pass the ‘Jakko’ as it is called without drawing rein, I am sorry for him, for he has missed one of those special moments that come to us all, perhaps only once in a lifetime.

One particular evening, just before sunset, as we rode slowly across one of the great levels, sounds of trumpets and drums, mingled with occasional explosions of gunpowder, came drifting along to us, and presently his High and Mightiness, the Emir, came forth for his evening ride, having duly notified his intention beforehand to the Resident—a piece of deferential courtesy never omitted.

He was a fine specimen of the handsome Fulani, regular in features, full of keen intelligence, and extremely dignified. He wore tobe upon tobe, gowns ample in material, gorgeous in colouring, lavishly striped with crimson, gold and blue—French silks which have travelled from Tripoli, and decorated with silver Turkish embroidery. His ‘fulah’ or turban was immense and snowy-white, the folds drawn over his nose and chin, a necessary precaution against dust. He sat with ease and majesty on a proud-stepping camel, head and shoulders above the surging crowd, caparisoned and ornamented with leather, coloured red, blue, green and yellow—a thoroughly regal figure.