#16: The Neighbourhood Watch

June 2, 2008

It is now in the middle of the afternoon in early June, and the temperatures are at a sizzling 105 degrees Farenheit. The NEPA is being good to us lately, more stable because of the harmattan season. Beats me why it’s more stable than during the winter months of December to February or in the springtime when I first arrived. The curtains in my bedroom are open, giving me a good view of the alley beside the house and the other window gives me a glimpse of the road and compound across me.

I live at 81. Abdul Ahmed Road in the Gesse Phase II site. The houses are almost all similar, some in bare view, some behind walls, in secured compounds. Some houses have guards, some don’t. My house, like many, is a 4 bedroom, with a courtyard (mine has a thin, tall palm tree!) in the middle and a walled-in backyard where my water tank and water tap are. There is a spacious living room, garage (where Amadu, my guard, sleeps), a kitchen with a large pantry next to it, and three bathrooms. The house was used by VSO volunteers placed in Birnin Kebbi the past five years, and is owned by the Kebbi State Department of Education. Before me, the house was in a poor condition and fortunately for me, the Dept decided to renovate the house so it would be more safer for me to live in with my intervenor.

I arrived in Birnin-Kebbi on March 13, and welcomed Zach Wineman and Erin Griffin as my temporary roommates. They slept in Bedrooms #2 and #3. The fourth bedroom is empty, with no carpeting unlike other rooms and is very dusty. I use it as a dance studio, blaring “Do Me” by Waji and P-Square, two Nigerian rappers or to the tune of salsa, cha-cha, the waltz or just simply Cocolicious moves.

I went on my travels for three weeks, escorting Zach back to Abuja where he would fly off back to the States, and visiting other VSO volunteers. I worried that my house would be broken into, if Amadu would disappear for days at a time or a fire would occur. I returned home on May 1 to find my house intact, the guard happy and nothing taken. No one had access to the house, even the guard, because I locked every door and put a deadbolt on the back. Anyone could climb the 12-foot wall, but they don’t.

The house next door has no walls around it. It used to house a primary school, using the four bedrooms as classrooms for the neighborhood kids. A month before I moved to the neighborhood, there was an accidental fire that gutted the school and the kids were relocated next-next door at a compound of a man who opened his home to the school by building a tin-roof one-room building right outside the walls of his compound. There was a faulty fuse that set the house ablaze, and it happened during nighttime so thankfully, no kids were in the house. Sometimes I glance out my kitchen window and see activity in the burned-down house. Its walls still stand, but the windows, roof, doors and paint were gone. Black ash shoots up like lightning bolt shapes upwards from the windows. Kids and adults go there to hang out, much to my amazement. I once tried to go in there, but there was no clear path for me to walk and I was using sandals. A lot of soot, gray lumps of whatever used to be furniture and rocks from the crumbling plaster wall were strewn all over the floor.

Right across from me I see two compounds. They share the same front wall, but it is split with another wall between them. There is a door and a gate each compound (the same goes for every compound in the area). Abdullahi, my friend and carpenter, lives in the one across on my right. He lives with his wife, child, his brother and his two wives. I once set foot into his compound door, but saw the yard bare. It didn’t have much – just rocks and sand.

The compound on my left often receives a lot of activity. There are fancy Lexuses and BMWs that enter and depart. The man must be rich. He has several wives, and five sons. His sons come over to gaze admiringly at the deaf-blind batura that sometimes finds herself lounging alongside the guard out front. The sons are aged 9 to 2. The smallest one often shys away from me, the others wave at me boldly.

The compound right next to me, its walls blocking my view from the bedroom is owned by someone very, very rich. He apparently has just moved in, construction trucks are often coming and going during the afternoons. There are piles of gray sand in front of his gate. I can see green, lush trees sticking out of his compound. I once saw a luxury Sedan roll into the compound. I need to learn their names.

One hot day a week ago I was lazily standing by the screen door gazing out at the front yard and watching Amadu fix his radios (he also happens to be a radio mechanic!) when Mira and her baby brother walked on my veranda. She is a devout Muslim, cannot be more than 19 years old. Mira wore a traditional hijab, a Muslim headdress in white symbolizing her singlehood. Muslim women wear white headdresses to let men know she is of age, ready to marry and welcomes courting. Married muslim women wear differently colored headdresses, some in a specific color meaning something to her husband’s lineage, or the more liberal Muslim wives wear colorful headdresses.

Mira asked for water and I gladly obliged, fetched a cold one for her. The child was so thirsty, and so was Mira. It was indeed a hot day, perhaps 115 degrees hot. I could not communicate with her, so I bid her a nice goodbye.

She returned the next day with five of her brothers and sisters. I called Marufat to come interpret, and it turns out that Mira lives in the compound on the next street in the back of my house. Her father is a civil servant and travels the country, leaving the mother and Mira to watch the children. I am unsure if her father has more wives. In Nigerian Sharia states, men are allowed to have four wives. But in certain tribes, like the Yoruba in the Southern state of Oyo, the men value monogamy and pledge their love to one wife only, and this is by Muslim men in the tribe. So it is by choice, and seems that most men in the desert states prefer more wives. The limit is four for each man. It does not matter if the man is a messenger or a Commissioner, he shall have more than one wife. It is said that no matter how poor the man is, Allah would take care of him and his wives, and their large number of children. My principal is getting married next week in Kano to his third wife, and he already has eight children by two.

Back to Mira. Her two young sisters, 7 and 8, are really adorable girls and they have a flair for fashion. Their colorful dresses tell me that they are Muslim but like the liberation of showing more skin (arms and neck) than other devout Muslim girls. Mira’s face, hands and feet are only shown.

They have invited me into their house once, and the house was not a similar design as mine. It had been constructed by the man himself, rather than the city. Mira and her two sisters are keen on learning sign language, so I feel fortunate to have them coming by and putting a smile on my face.

Other than people, the residents are hens, goats, cattle, chicken, wild dogs and turkeys. I sometimes see donkeys carrying straw and camels walking by on the road. Motorcycles and fancy cars whiz by from 10am to 7pm then it becomes very quiet. It is curfew time, it begins when the sun sets.

I go for walks every night at 6pm for an hour before the sun sets. It gives me a good idea of where I live, and to show the neighbourhood that I am a friendly batura. It’s my desire to learn more Hausa so one day I could walk up to the neighbour and introduce myself. On my walks, I pass by big, bigger and the biggest compounds. It’s like a competition. One compound may have three houses, one may have just one. There is a mosque to my East, across where the sun sets. Some days I witness a thousand men walking by my house from the Eastern Mosque to the market a mile away. There is a gas station nearby, and a restaurant I sometimes go for dinner, named Daula. I like their jollof rice.

The market is a mile away, and it is often bustling with people after 10am until closing which is 6pm. I go twice a week to buy tools, fabric, food and supplies. I bring Marufat with me to the market and on walks, so she looks after me while I do my own thing.

With Amadu stretching his toothpick legs and smiling wide like the Cheshire cat, I kneel by the bedroom window every day when the day is coming to an end and watch the neighbourhood. There is so much difference from this neighbourhood to many I had lived in: busy, noisy, cluttered, objects in the way, more strangers than familiar faces. I don’t feel danger here, because the danger I experienced in the ghettos of Washington, D.C. is in stark contrast. Everyone is friendly here, they greet me whenever I walk by, stand or whiz by them on the kabu kabu.

I know they are watching out for me, too.

Tactile love

Coco

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