musings from Kano

At the request of Nigeriandramaqueen, I hereby update my blog with this post that I wrote a few days ago but didn't feel quite satisfied with... Perhaps i will edit it later.

There are moments that I love it here so much that I ache. Walking along the wall to the old city to the taxi stop, both the a man fingering his carbi and the old man in the sanitation uniform picking “pure water” bags from the gutter say “Good morning” in English; the boys selling petrol laugh and nudge each other when I say “Ina kwana.” I climb into the back of a taxi with four other women (one of them a young girl—so we squeeze) and lose myself in the Hausa film music. Sound track to my life right now.

In the bus to the new site, I sit beside an old woman with a tattooed face and three bangles on each arm. She fishes her N20 fare out of an old cracked purse, but when she goes to pay, the girl beside her with the silver satin and lace waves her aside with a kumshied hand, flowers and leaves twining up her arm. She paid her fare for her. (I mentally slap myself, wishing I had done it). The old woman thanks her several times over. She sits hands cupped in prayer, then runs her fingers down over her face. She glances over at my notebook, which I pulled out of my bag to write these things down, old tampa slipping down her chest, gold earrings dangling, hands folded in her lap. As we enter the gates of BUK, past the shaped bushes and the billboards admonishing the students “Look fashionable and decent.” “Look responsible. Dress Decently,” I wonder what brings her to the university, this very old woman. Does she have a son or daughter who is a lecturer? A staff worker? A grandchild in the hostels? She seems new to the city. Hausa film stories play themselves out in my head. I’m still thinking of them when she exits the bus near the gate, and we leave her behind. I suppose I, baturiya, cause some curiosity myself.