The houses in the City are numbered to facilitate taxation. ([See page 93.])
Presently one of my boys ran in dripping, his face—as much as a black skin can be—pale. He gasped, “Massa, the wall he be fit for fall!” and at the same moment the friend who had placed the house at my disposal came and begged me in emphatic language not to make a fool of myself and to clear at once. I did, for the next worst thing to not doing his duty to his paper is for a Special Correspondent to get killed in trying to do it extra well. Sure enough, seen from outside, the thick wall had cracked from top to earth and the perpendicular had distinctly shifted from its original alignment.
The larger houses, in or out of Kano City, are not home-made. There is a recognised trade of builders. If you are ordering a house do not fix the price by contract. You will probably be able, especially if you pride yourself on your astuteness, to beat the builder’s estimate down to almost any figure you care to push it, but refrain from reflecting afterwards that you are an exceedingly clever fellow who has prevented somebody from making a fair profit, which you have saved for yourself. The builder will make the profit he calculated from the first. Your house, or rather you, will be the loser.
It is infinitely better to pay the contractor so much a day, or per week, as long as he and his assistants are building. He will certainly keep the job going as long as he can; it may run into months where days would easily cover from start to finish, but if you keep visiting the busy bees you can be satisfied that more and more is being added to the house, and when you feel content that it suffices for your purpose you cry out, “Hold! Enough!”
Should you, however, decide for a contract payment, be careful that it is comprehensive. Contracts are not sealed, signed, and settled portentous documents. They are verbal and made in the presence of an interpreter. What wonder that where Europeans are concerned misunderstandings arise, and naturally nobody is more surprised at them than the bland, ingenuous builder. He made sure everything was so perfectly clear.
I knew a European who contracted to have a house built, of course outside the city. He would leave no backway to any individual to get the better of him, so he carefully stipulated for every detail, and emphasised them all. He went to bed content that he had made a good bargain. No other Englishman, he was sure, had concluded so cute an agreement.
The walls grew, and as they did—the requisite thickness never lessening—his complacency rose in corresponding degree. The agreed height was reached, and the builder asked for payment.
“Pay you!” cried the indignant recipient of the request; “certainly not; not until the job is finished.”
“It is finished,” was the polite retort.
“Finished! How can it be finished with no roof? Put on the cement roof I said I wanted and you can have your money.”