It is a matter for great regret, this difficulty of keeping cows alive in Lokoja; many a ‘bad case’ in hospital longs for fresh milk—as unobtainable, unfortunately, as ripe strawberries or blocks of ice.
Possibly, one fine, very fine day, when, in our wisdom, we remove our cantonment to the breezy heights of the Patti plateau (six hundred feet above, and perfectly accessible), all these good things may be ours. Meantime, unless you are going to the Hausa States, and away north, the only dairy equipment you will need to bring is—a tin-opener!
CHAPTER IV
The Garden
I remember that my opinion of the possibilities of gardening successfully in Northern Nigeria expressed itself in three stages: first, on arrival, with joyful confidence: ‘I am certain anything will grow out here!’ Secondly, after six months, in despair: ‘Nothing will grow out here!’ Thirdly, after a year, with renewed but chastened cheerfulness: ‘Some things will do all right!’
The subject was more or less unexplored ground when I arrived in the country five years ago; I could get little or no gardening information, except that one or two enterprising spirits had tried—and failed. Perhaps the chief reason for this was that the amount of work to be got through in each day makes it practically impossible for any Government official to give the personal attention absolutely necessary to the making of a garden.
The country produces no native gardeners, similar to the mali of India; the utmost one can extract from the local artist is that he will scratch up weeds and grass, and faithfully water everything daily in the dry season. The tour of service of from twelve to eighteen months, followed by leave home and an uncertain prospect of returning to the same station, has, I suppose, prevented any attempt at all being made in the majority of cases, and the very few spots that have been started as gardens seem to have flourished until their owners left, when they were utterly neglected, the bush claimed its own, and all traces of cultivation vanished far quicker than they had appeared.
But now that things are progressing generally in Nigeria, life conditions improving somewhat, and each station containing a larger number of white men, willing to carry on each others’ labours in this line, the gardening problem comes nearer solution, though I fancy that, for all time, it will need a stout heart and endless perseverance.
The Flower Garden
The first ‘don’t’ that occurs to me under this heading is on the subject of English out-door flowers. One’s natural instinct is to try and surround oneself with the old favourites, sweet-peas, mignonette, poppies and pinks, but the attempt, I fear, is sheer waste of time and trouble; hardly any will come to maturity and blossom in the verandah; they will grow up cheerfully to a certain point, then wither off, and transplanting seedlings in the open is out of the question, unless permanent shade can be given.