Niger River Project

With our plans to get to the Delta thwarted by circumstances, my ambitions for a grand climax to the trip – the Niger, source to sea – fall flat. Not to be entirely defeated, however, we come up with a plan B – not quite the exclamation mark at the end of the story I’d hoped for, but an ending of sorts.

Lagos is located on a creek that runs parallel to the Atlantic shore – and in some places only separated from the ocean by a narrow sandy bar – to a town about 50km to the west called Badagry. Much like Lokoja further up the Niger, Badagry little more than a small market town now, but it has a long and turbulent history as a slaving port, one that with the abolition of the slave trade approaching its bicentenary is of huge significance.

We secure a motor boat for the afternoon, and speed off across Lagos harbour. This is a vast, sprawling complex covering several square kilometres of towering piles of cargo containers and huge tankers ready to take their loads to distant lands. The enormity of the place really brings home the fact that we’re in the world’s third largest city; it just feels like a powerhouse.

The boat scythes its way through water hibiscus plants that choke the creek and every few minutes catch in the outboard, forcing the skipper to stop and poke around in the engine to unclog the offending weeds.

The landscape here is dominated by palm trees that cluster along the low lying banks to our left and right. Other than these, there’s little to see other than occasional groups of flat-bottomed barges used by young men who scratch out a laborious living by diving to the river bottom to dig up the sand, which they then sell to construction firms. That there isn’t easier work for them is as clear a testament as any to the desperate economic plight of many Nigerians. There’s black gold being sucked out of Nigerian soil only a few hundred kilometres to the west, while these impoverished souls are left to dig around, quite literally, for dirt.

After a couple of hours we make Badagry. Our boat drops us at a surprisingly neat and litter free public garden shaded by palm trees and guarded by two heavy old cannon. This, it turns out, was the point where slaves were taken, manacled to one another in great conga lines of human misery, to waiting ships that then whisked them off to death or a life of toil in the New World.

We hire a guide to show us the relics of Badagry’s heartbreaking history. Our first stop gives us a tantalising connection with the same explorers whose trails we have been following along the Niger. On his first journey to West Africa as servant to another great explorer, Hugh Clapperton, Richard Lander passed through Badagry. He had just witnessed his master’s death in northern Nigeria, and was looking for a boat to take him home.

Encouraged by French and Portugese merchants who despite Britain’s attempts to ban it were still engaged in the slave trade, the king of Badagry tried Lander for being a spy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. The chosen means of execution was poisoning, and Lander found himself in a position where he had no choice but to swallow a deadly concoction made from the bark of the toxic red water tree.

Somehow, while the potion was taking effect, Lander managed to escape from watching eyes, and was able to make himself sick. This saved his’s life, and instantly he became revered as some kind of white magician who could cheat death. The king set him free, and he lived to see another two expeditions to West Africa and become the first European to reach the river’s mouth from the interior.

The first place our guide takes us to is the same spot where over 150 years ago, Lander was put to death. Somehow appropriately, right next to the strange shrine marking the spot stands a well from which slaves bought in the nearby market were able to drink. Despite the happy outcome events here had for Richard Lander, its gloomy past as a shop floor for human merchandise is overwhelming and we ask our guide to take us on.

The next stop is scarcely more heart-warming – a museum charting Badagry’s history as a slaving port. Fittingly, the museum has no power and thus no lighting or air-conditioning, lending it an air of stuffy oppression that befits the subject matter.

It’s a shocking display of relics, photos, paintings and articles. Apart from the well-known – but always horrendous – diagrams showing how slaves were packed like cattle into ships, the exhibits include barbaric pieces of ironmongery used to punish willful slaves by thrusting a large metal spike through their hands, making any escape all but impossible.

We emerge blinking and dazed from the dingy museum feeling like we’ve just stepped off one of the slaving ships ourselves. It’s hard to imagine that on this breezy, palm-fringed shoreline, millions of human beings were snatched from the lives they knew and traded like farmyard beasts for the good of capitalists thousands of miles away.

As we leave, deep in our own thoughts, our guide asks us if we know of any sources of funding in the UK to help preserve the relics of Badagry’s past. “There’s no money available here,” he says. “We need more to keep this history alive for future generations.”

For the good of humanity, so such a terrible abuse of human being by human being is never allowed to happen again, Badagry’s legacy must be kept intact. It may only be a few small relics in a stuffy museum, or an old well crumbling in a dusty yard, but these are living pieces of a history that must never be allowed to repeat itself.

After Lokoja, we get as close as we’re going to get to the mouth of the Niger, a town at the very northernmost tip of Delta State called Asaba. Here there’s another monument to Richard Lander, but it’s unimpressive to say the least.

After Asaba we make our final long road journey in Nigeria, a terrifying five-hour game of chicken along jammed up roads full of suicidal Nigerians to Lagos. I formulate a theory in attempting to explain why Nigerians are not just bad drivers, but seem to have no idea or no respect for rules.

The main problem it seems with Nigeria is that for several decades now, corruption has been rife at every level of public administration. Apart from lining the pockets of a lucky few, the effect of this has been a general disintegration of public institutions of all kinds and a consequential erosion of society’s faith in rulers and the rules they put in place to keep the country together. In short, Nigerian society is falling apart, and to my mind the flagrant flouting of road rules is symbolic of this.

Wedged in the bus seat next to the inevitable big fat mumma, I drift off. I awake as Lagos is beginning, but it’s such a vast city that it takes more than half an hour from reaching the suburbs for us to get to our final stop, and even then we’re still only on the edge of town.

A taxi whisks us to our final destination, the home of two Canadian expats we’ve been invited to stay with in an upmarket part of town on one of Lagos’ islands. The ride gives us some insight into what the fearsome Lagos is like – a huge, steamy, dirty ants-nest of a place, crawling with life and seemingly never still for a moment. Today is Sunday, but still the roads are choked with traffic and the air thick with pollution. It could take a long time to get a feeling for this place, but sadly we’ve only got two short days.

The ride takes about 15 minutes, and then we’re out of the mayhem and into the quiet of Victoria Island to a district where ambassadors, businessmen and Nigeria’s trendy set rub shoulders in slick winebars. We’re suddenly removed from the chaos and hubbub of African life as we step in to the air-conditioned comfort of our hosts’ waterside apartment.

“It’s a bubble really,” our host observes, as we take in what to us is now an alien scene, a plush living room with white sofas, TV and coffee table. Compared to what’s just outside these four walls, it’s hard to argue.

Before the River Niger ends its long journey to the Atlantic, it splits up and runs like spreading veins through a vast swampy delta. Having followed the river all the way from its first foray into the world in Guinea, it’s in the Delta at one of the river’s many mouths into the sea that we’d hoped to bring our journey to an end. For reasons beyond our control, it seems we’re going to be out of luck.

Readers with a little knowledge of current affairs will probably know that the Niger Delta is and has been for a few years an international security hotspot. The Delta has always been a hotbed of international trade, first for slave merchants, then, under the Brits, for palm oil, then, more recently, for oil of a different kind – the black stuff.

Sadly, the discovery of black gold in the Delta, and its exploitation largely by big foreign multinationals, has driven the region to the brink of anarchy. It’s a familiar story: valuable commodity is discovered in impoverished area, large foreign company with the resources and wherewithal to extract moves in and begins doing so, locals get shafted. It was the same in the days of palm oil trading, when the Brits ran their monopoly in the Delta and on the Lower Niger with a rod of iron, and it’s exactly the same today.

To be fair, the oil companies are not fully to blame. By all accounts, most of them are ploughing fairly large sums of money into the communities from which they are taking the oil. What’s exacerbating the problem are the corrupt local politicians and officials who are taking large kickbacks, and siphoning off money that should be going to the Delta’s poor. Whatever the full story, though, the result is the same: Westerners are getting kidnapped and even killed in the Delta, and today the region is a simmering pressure-cooker of discontent that for people with white skin is best avoided.

Despite all the Delta’s well publicised problems, we still want to get there, and since before arriving in the country I’ve been talking with a contact who says he can help us in our mission. He’s a British expat working in community development and conservation all across Nigeria, but crucially he’s involved in a project in a village called Akassa, right on one of the Niger’s many mouths. Although there are security risks in the Delta, Phil seems confident that he can get us to the end and back safely.

In the end, it’s timing that lets us down. One of Phil’s people who he’s sent on our behalf to one of the local Delta officials to seek permission for our visit reports back that we couldn’t have picked a worse time. Local authorities we’re told are in the middle of sensitive negotiations with kidnappers to secure the release of ten Chinese hostages. The last thing they want is two more white guys coming into the area and potentially stirring up an already volatile situation.

Disappointing though it is, in some ways I’m relieved. The prospect of getting safely in and out of Port Harcourt, the great oil city and epicentre for much of the Delta’s strife, not to mention the boat ride through the region’s lawless swamps to Akassa, seemed remote. To have the decision of whether or not to go for it taken out of our hands makes our failure in reaching our ultimate goal easier to stomach.

Another hot, sweaty ride from Jebba brings us to about 300km south to Lokoja. Like Jebba, Lokoja isn’t much of a place, bigger, but just as decrepit. However, its location on the confluence of the Niger and Benue, one of the larger Niger tributaries, means it has a history that belies what’s on show today.

The town’s strategic location made it a perfect base for the increasingly penetrative forays of British merchants. In fact, after acting as home for Baikie during his years in Nigeria, the town became the headquarters of the Royal Niger Company, which until 1897 ran a virtual monopoly on the trade of palm oil on the lower Niger. Then, when the Company was decommissioned in 1897 and British colonial rule first came into being, Lokoja found itself the capital of Northern Nigeria and home to Britain’s High Commission.

Shortly after her coronation in 1952, Queen Elizabeth paid a visit to Nigeria to survey the relics of the British empire. What she’d have seen then would doubtless have been in far better nick than it is today, but, if you’re prepared to look for it, Lokoja still has hidden away a wealth of treasures from its rich history as a major colonial outpost. It’s to squirrel out some of these that we’ve made the trip.

On our first morning in Lokoja, we strike gold without even trying when we pull back the curtains of our hotel room and are confronted by one of the first things we’d hoped to find. A squat, unimportant looking building across the yard from our room has a small sign above the door, that says, ‘The first prison in Northern Nigeria’. This is exactly what it was – the first prison established by the British to punish miscreant locals. It’s used as the hotel’s laundry room today, and is nothing much to look at, but as with all these crumbling relics, it requires a bit of imagination to fully appreciate their significance.

Buoyed by our success without even having tried looking, we strike out to find the former residence of Sir Frederick Lugard, Britain’s first commissioner of Nigeria. We have only one rather badly drawn map of the town, which shows our hotel to be within a stone’s throw of the residence, but it soon turns out the map illustrator in our guidebook has got it hopelessly wrong.

We wander aimlessly around in the gathering mid-morning heat, but we’re getting nowhere. A couple of people we ask send us back in the direction we’ve come, to Government House, the local administrative headquarters. Lugard’s residence is in the compound of this, they tell us.

We talk to the guards at the gate of Government House. Yes it’s here, they reply, but you can’t come in now. You’ll have to come back this evening when business has closed for the day.

Dispirited and frustrated we trudge back to the hotel. It’s then we notice there’s actually a tourist office located within the hotel. A tourist office. In Nigeria! This is like finding a pub in Mecca!

The friendly boss of the office confirms that, yes, Lugard’s residence is in the Government House, and that to persuade the guards to let us see it we’ll probably have to part with a hefty bribe. “But there’s plenty more to see in Lokoja if you’re looking for history,” he continues. “For a small fee, I can show you around. You won’t find any of it on your own.”

Not for the first time on this trip, we find ourselves in a position where ‘yes’ is the only real answer. If we don’t, we’ll probably spend the day walking around town trying to find what’s probably tucked well away. Better to shell out than spend getting hot and cross because we can’t find anything.

Later that afternoon, we’re met by our guide and a taxi we’ve chartered for a couple of hours. We set off on a whistle-stop tour of colonial Lokoja. First, we head up the hill behind the town to the vantage point where Lugard used to come after his day’s work to survey activity on the river. Then it’s back down the hill to the Lokoja Club, the haunt where expats would come for a whisky and soda and a game of billiards. Amazingly, the original table is still there, as is the – now very dusty – library, whose books don’t look like they’ve been touched for years.

Scruffy Lokoja proves to be a trove of hidden treasures. In one derelict courtyard, our guide shows us the first bank in northern Nigeria, a small stone box of a building that still contains the same metal safebox used to stash what was then the currency in West Africa, the cowrie shell. Around the corner from this is the European cemetery, now choked with litter, but with its many gravestones still a poignant reminder of the human cost of colonialism. More moving still is the so-called Iron of Liberty, the point where freed slaves walked through a gateway in a symbolic demonstration of their liberty.

But perhaps the most striking of Lokoja’s relics of empire is also its least impressive. By the side of a busy main street, so insignificant you could easily walk past it without noticing, is a small stone obelisk marking the spot where, in 1897, the flag of the decommissioned Royal Niger Company was lowered and the Union Jack raised. It was here, over 100 years ago, that one era of African history ended and another quite different one began. Whether they liked it or not, it was here that Nigerians found themselves with a new master – the British.

The Journey from Hell Part 2 brings us to the town of Jebba. Frankly, there’s very little reason to come to Jebba. It’s a small industrial town on the banks of the Niger, with a now closed paper mill and a hydro-electric dam that seems to do very little to ensure Jebba, only about a mile away, has anything resembling a constant supply of power; like almost everywhere else in Nigeria, power blackouts are frequent, lengthy and, much to the dismay of most Nigerians, tends to come during crucial televised football matches.

From our point of view, the only thing that puts Jebba on the map is the fact that it’s home to West Africa’s most significant memorial to Mungo Park and Richard Lander, the Cornishman who around 20 years after Park picked up where the Scot left off and successfully traced the Niger all the way to its termination in the Gulf of Guinea.

The morning after we arrive in Jebba, Victor, a 15-year old from the dingy little hotel where we’re staying, offers to take us to the memorial. First, though, and for a reason I’m unclear about, he insists we visit the nearby paper mill. I’m not particularly interested in looking at the huge behemoth factory that dominates Jebba’s skyline. But there seems to be no turning Victor, so we fall in step.

Our route to the mill takes us along Jebba’s now almost totally unused rail lines. Like most things in Africa that were built with one purpose in mind but no longer fulfill that purpose so are used for something else, the tracks are today used as a handy footpath by Jebba’s locals. Even motorbike-taxis manage to bump and bounce their way over the sleepers.

Wandering down the lines trying to defy the stultifying humidity that now prevails, we come across the hulk of an ancient looking steam train. Now gathering dust and weeds in some siding, the engine clearly hasn’t been used for many years, but I have a weakness for old steam trains, so we stop for a look.

As we’re poking around, I notice a fenced enclosure next to the train, overgrown with a tangle of bushes. It barely warrants a second glance, but my eyes are drawn to a sign hidden behind the bushes on which I can clearly see written “Mungo Park”. I peel back the foliage. Behind is a hand written sign bearing a message, most of which is incomprehensible except for a reference to Mungo Park and the SS Dayspring.

I pull back more of the foliage next to the sign and find a group of strange metal objects. Most of these are unrecognisable except for one, which is clearly the propeller screw of a ship.

Suddenly, the significance of what I’m looking at becomes clear. The SS Dayspring was a steamer brought up the Niger to Jebba by James Baikie, a Scottish doctor who led the first successful trip up the river in so far as none of his crew died. Baikie had recognised the value of quinine in combating malaria (though malaria was still an unidentified disease at this stage) and ordered all his men to take it twice a day. Baikie’s discovery meant that the curse of the White Man’s Grave was finally broken, and as a result the British conquest of the Niger – and eventually Nigeria – gathered pace.

Sadly Baikie didn’t have so much luck with his journey from Lokoja, his base downstream, up to Jebba. When he and his crew reached the town, their boat hit a hidden rock and sank. Everyone escaped and made it to dry land, but they had to wait one day less than a year for another boat to come and pick them up.

I find it sobering to thing that it is a relic of this ill-fated journey that I have uncovered in a group of bushes behind a fence in an anonymous town in Nigeria. Ok, so it’s just a propeller, but it’s a real, tangible link with a piece of British history that has largely been forgotten.

This sense mounts when, after a largely pointless attempt to visit Victor’s paper mill, which is shut, we hop on moto-taxis across town for the day’s main act, the Park/Lander memorial.

I’m half-expecting this to be in a similar vein to the SS Dayspring relics, shoved in a forgotten to gather dust. But quite the opposite is true: the memorial turns out to be a huge stone obelisk on a hillside overlooking the Niger on the way in to Jebba.

We scramble up the hill to the tower. It’s about 50-75 feet tall in a pale honey-coloured sandstone. Despite its size, the monument is unimpressive, plain save a plaque on one face bearing the inscription: “To Mungo Park, 1795, and Richard Lander, 1830, who traced the course of the Niger from near its source to the sea. Both died in Africa for Africa.”

This last sentence has a great impact on me. Explorers, particularly those of Park’s ilk, are generally remembered for their glorious triumphs over adversity. In truth most probably were driven by a certain amount of hubris, a desire for recognition and fame, but it’s easy to overlook other more modest motivations.

Park’s diary, for example, is an essay in humility, the author’s ego never getting in the way of his objective, unsensational reporting of what he found. The lasting impression is that Park had a genuine passion for what he was doing and for the Africa that he was revealing to the world; the inscription on the obelisk overwhelmingly cements this feeling.

The only aspect of the memorial that doesn’t quite fit is its location in Jebba. Park only made it as far along the Niger as Bussa, about 150km to the north. This was where Lander picked up the trail, so there’s no real reason for the monument to be where it is.

We get to the bus station around 0930 and identify the beaten up vehicle going to Lagos. We wait for the two remaining passengers to turn up. This takes two hours.

Meanwhile we shelter from the sun on a bench owned by a general store shack and watch juggernauts and goats mingle on the highway.

The vehicle is a Toyota people carrier – fit for 14 at a push; we manage to cram in 19. Us three together with a seemingly old man (who could in fact be 45 or younger) were the last to turn up, so occupy the cheap seats on the back row. I find myself over the wheel arch, a fold down seat in front pins my knees near my chest leaving one of my feet toeing the air for somewhere to rest.

It’s a war of equal forces – my fists and knees against the back of the seat versus the lad in fronts’ body weight. I let my mind wander over the highs of the past few weeks; it’s the only way negate the pain.

Three hours into the battle and the chance to swap with the comparatively diminutive Youssef cannot be turned down. I manage to wedge a knee under the seat in front, the other invading Youssef’s space, but he forces a smile and a ‘No pfroblem’. Youssif’s got a strange habit of pronouncing all his ‘p’s as ‘f’s. It makes understanding him sometimes an impossible feat.

We continue for over five hours without a break, everyone hunkering down in the cabin, fumes from the open back door (our ruck-sacs more out than in) contributing to the general malaise. The driver weaves a route round potholes and seems to be playing a game of ‘smooth-road-chicken’ with the oncoming traffic, most of which is heavy road freight.

It becomes evident that our fellow back seat buddy has been conned into joining us: they told him we were going his way just to get his money. It’s a fine homecoming for someone who’s just returned from the arduous 1,500-mile pilgrimage to Mecca and back.

At dusk we come across a convoy of stationary vehicles – mostly tankers – a crowd of jumpy looking bystanders, and an incongruous cafe/shack doing swift trade in coffee and cigarettes.

There’s been an armed robbery a short distance up the road: nobody knows exactly where, but until traffic’s seen heading our way, we’re all going to sit it out. We still have camping equipment if needed and we contemplate an unplanned night under the stars. It’s an apt time for many to wash and pray, but we search the heavens instead with our GPS and plot our co-ordinates. It’ll be interesting and, who knows, potentially valuable to know where these robbers, allegedly from Chad, were hiding out.

After about 40 minutes there’s general clamour and adrenalin induced action, and it’s clear that we’re going to make a dash for it. Moonlit shapes and shadows are vapourised in the flood of lights, the sickly palour of the beams seeming a symptom of the asphyxiating fumes with which we are suddenly engulfed.

We weave again through the potholed road; bushfires in the distance and then close-by, add to the post-apocalyptic feel. “This must be what a gun-run through the steets of Baghdad must feel like”, I say to Ben handing him my digi cam and he shoots a great image of the fires reflected in the bus’s glass while leaning out the side window.

It’s not long till we reach the sanctuary of Jebba, and we’re grateful for the proximity of the hotel. We both spill out from the vehicle’s interior, staggering as muscles try to operate without blood. It’s been a ten-hour slog in severe discomfort through notorious bandit country, but we’ve made it. As we’re frequently reminded, whether prompted or not: “that’s Nigeria for you!”

Between the border and Kano can’t be more than 150km, but on the way we pass through at least 25 roadblocks. It’s not just the police manning these; the army, immigration and various other enforcement agencies are out in force seeing what bribes – or ‘dash’ as its known in Nigeria – they can extract from passing traffic.

There’s a routine to this that our driver seems well accustomed to. We approach a roadblock; the men manning the roadblock put out their hands to signal to the driver to slowdown; the driver slows down, in the meantime getting ready his dash; we get to the men at the roadblock; in one smooth movement, the hand raised to stop us becomes one outstretched to receive the dash money.

In one fluid movement, without even properly stopping, the driver has passed the note from his hand to the official’s, and we’re on our way again. It looks like a well rehearsed routine,.

Comparatively little money changes hand, but that’s not the point. Clearly, judging from the number of roadblocks in force here, this is a good way of supplementing meager incomes. This must one the easiest places to get by if you are a genuine criminal; not once did we actually see a policeman pull a car over to search it. If the money’s right, no questions are asked.

Kano bursts on to the scene. After the laid-back and sleepy air of Niger, it’s rather a shock to the system.

Kano is about Nigeria’s third largest city, but given Nigeria boasts the second biggest city in the world – Lagos – Kano is still a giant in its own right, home to about 10million people.

Our taxi drops us right in the middle of the mayhem of central Kano. Laden down with our heavy bags, and the only white people visible in the sea of black humanity swirling around us, we feel exposed and slightly vulnerable. Nigeria carries a fearsome reputation for – literally – daylight robbery, so we’re keen to get out of the crowd and put our things somewhere safe.

A young man shows us to a taxi, expecting, naturally, a ‘dash’ in return for the favour. Dashing is a way of life in Nigeria, and it’s something we’re going to have to get used to.

The taxi carves its way through Kano’s unrelenting traffic. Everywhere there are vehicles, and a palpable haze of sickly brown pollution from the thousands of exhausts kicking out thick fumes into the atmosphere.

There’s no order. As we’ll quickly discover, in Nigeria, any rules that exist for road traffic appear to be wholeheartedly ignored. Motorists weave circles around each other, paying no attention to what little road markings there are. And around the cars swarm scores of little ‘okadas’ – motorbike-taxis for passengers with sufficiently large balls. I come to formulate the theory that with just about every public institution in Nigeria in the process of falling to pieces, the Nigerians’ reckless driving is symptomatic of a general disregard for rules – mainly due to a lack of faith in a system that, on every level, is letting the country down. It’s a tragic state of affairs and seems so unjust to a people who, aggressive as they may seem, on an individual level are some of the kindest I’ve ever met.

Beside the traffic, the staggering thing about Kano is the sheer crush of humanity. There are people selling, people begging, people walking, running, eating, sleeping, arguing – Nigerians like to argue, over anything.

Sometimes the view of mankind on display is a harrowing one. Worst of all is the profusion of lepers that abound in Kano, looming out of the shadows with bandaged stumps for hands, begging, pleading. It’s impossible not to recoil in horror at the sight of these wretched people.

But the immediate impression amidst all this madness is one of warmth. We’re met with nothing but friendliness and respect. One or two of the men we encounter initially treat us with suspicion, but this soon turns to smiles when they learn that we’re not, as they presumed, American, but British; Americans clearly do not get good press out here, particularly in this overwhelmingly Muslim area of Nigeria. Mainly I think because of the steady diet of Premiership football consumed by the average Nigerian rather than any lingering respect for the old colonial master, Brits are held in high regard in this part of the world.

In Kano, we meet up with Yusif, a local who I first befriended in Niamey where he was on business. Yusif agrees to be our guide around Kano, something for which we’re extremely grateful considering the chaos that seems to prevail.

Our first stop is Dala Hill, a sandstone outcrop to the west of central Kano that offers great views over the city. To get to the hill, we must first negotiate the inevitable pile of filth. From the top, however, Kano is a staggering sight, an endless urban patchwork spreading out below us and disappearing into the smog of pollution that obscures the true horizon. The mind boggles at what Lagos is going to be like.

After the hill, we head for the town’s central market, a vast and sprawling quarter of town that covers 16 hectares. It’s more of a small town in its own right than a single market, a twilight world of winding alleys, booths, stalls and open drains. When we arrive, it’s still comparatively early, and the traders have not yet got into full swing. This is something of a relief, as it offers us the opportunity to wander the market relatively unmolested and soak up its atmosphere without having to battle against an incoming tide of people.

Next to the market are Kano’s famous dye pits where colourful indigo cloth has been produced for the past 500 or so years. The pits are privately owned, and have been under the control of the same family throughout their entire history.

They’re a fascinating sight, a series of huge clay-lined vats sunk into the ground. Each one holds several gallons of the dye, a solution made of water, indigo, ash and potassium. The cloth is dipped in the vats and left to ferment for up to three days. Once the dying is complete and the cloth dried, it is then pounded with heavy wooden mallets to soften the fabric and leave it with a light sheen.

On the evening of our first day in Kano, Yusif takes us back to Dala Hill to get some sunset shots of the city. As our okadas pull up at the foot of the hill, two boys sidle over, tugging at our sleeve, telling us to follow them.

‘They say we need permission to go up,’ says Yussif. This sounds to me like a scam to a bit of money out of a couple of white blokes; you get this kind of thing all the time in Africa. We ignore the boys and carry on towards the hill.

‘No stop,’ says Yussif. ‘They say there have been some Area Boys in this part of town who’ve been causing us some problems.’ This stops us in our tracks.

Area Boys are a particularly Nigerian phenomenon. They’re basically urban thugs, unemployed youths who roam the streets of big cities extorting money out of passers-by through threats – and administration – of violence. Area Boys are a particular problem in Lagos, but it seems they’ve made their way north too.

As a safeguard, we agree to be accompanied up the hill by an elderly man who it seems is its unofficial guardian. At the top there doesn’t seem to be anyone around, other than a couple of inquisitive teenage boys. They approach us and, probably more for effect than to avert any real threat, our guardian shoes them away with a stick.

I ask Yussif about Area Boys. ‘They’re a problem because so many people in Nigeria are poor,’ he replies. ‘They’re young boys, sometimes as young as 14, who haven’t been to school and haven’t got jobs. They are violent and try to take small money and phone handsets from people. Sometimes they’re into drugs.’

Yusif explains that the state government in Kano is trying to tackle the problem. ‘They’re arresting people but they’re also trying other things, like finding jobs for these boys, even giving them money so they won’t attack people.’

Unfortunately the government’s efforts weren’t enough to help one European girl whom we learn was the victim of an Area Boy attack on Dala Hill only a couple of weeks before we’re there. ‘She came up here on her own,’ says Yussif. ‘She came up without a guide, just followed the path, and when she got up here to the top, some guys approached her and stole her money and camera. The police arrested some boys, but they’re probably innocent and not the real attackers.’

Yusif wears a look of disgust on his face as he tells us about the Area Boys. ‘This is Nigeria’s biggest problem,’ he continues. Some people are rich but they’re often currupt, so it means many people are living in abject poverty. They don’t have jobs, so they think that they only way they can get money is to rob people. It makes me angry.’

Zinder is our last stop in French-speaking West Africa. Next up is Kano, the principal city in northern Nigeria – where, apart from the hundred-plus local languages, English is the main tongue.

I have mixed feelings about going to Nigeria. Part of me is full of trepidation at the prospect of plunging myself into a country about which one only tends to hear negative things – crime, overcrowding, corruption, kidnappings…

But, equally, in the planning of this trip I spoke to many people who cast Nigeria in a different light to the media-driven image of murder and mayhem, and had only good things to say about Africa’s most populous nation: that it’s a place of warmth and humanity. There’s only way to find out who’s right.

We manage to find two seats in a car heading south from Zinder to Kano. The road is good and the going quick. After only about an hour and a half, we arrive at the border.

My stomach is beginning to turn at the prospect of the border formalities. Stories are rife of travellers having large bribes extracted from them as they try to pass into Nigeria. Will we catch the guards on a good day or a bad day? I’m pinning my hopes on one vital factor: today is Friday, Islam’s holy day; about 95 per cent of northern Nigeria’s population are strict Muslims. Hopefully they’ll have their minds on pleasing Allah and not on giving two young white guys a hard time.

We pass through the Nigerien border control post without problem. Next up is the Nigerian border; it’s here things could get tricky.

We’re ushered into a little room full of large, gleaming black men in uniforms. The only two whites in the place, we’re taken to one side. A big man with a moustache sits down and studies our passports. ‘British?’ he eyes us. ‘You are welcome to Nigeria.’

Without further ado he puts the necessary stamp on our passports and sets us on our way. We’re in.

Or so we think. As we leave the room feeling elated that getting into the fearsome Nigeria was so easy, we hear someone hissing at us and indicating that we need to go into another building next door.

Here the officials are not in uniform and there are none of the friendly smiles we’ve just seen next door. The main man is dressed in a bright white robe and Muslim skullcap. He has two large scars on his cheeks, denoting his Hausa background and giving him a sinister air.

He sits me down. ‘What is your job?’

I lie, cooking up the same story I used to obtain my visa – that I work in community sporting projects in the UK and that I’m here Nigeria to visit similar initiatives. That, at least, is what my invitation letter from my Nigerian friend Kayodi says.

‘This Kayodi, what’s his address? Where does he work?’ The official looks like he’s not buying the tale.

My mind goes blank. I’d not expected these kinds of question. How should I know what Kayodi’s address is? I tell him that it’s all written down on the invitation letter Kayodi sent me, which is buried amidst all my gear in the car.

‘Please go and get it,’ the official says. He looks smug, like he thinks he’s just called my bluff, but I run out to the car and return with the letter. He grabs and studies it carefully, looking for holes in my story. He keeps looking up at me as he reads. There’s tension in the air.

Then suddenly it breaks. His face cracks into a big grin. ‘Ok, this is fine. You are very much welcome to Nigeria. Enjoy your stay. I’m sure you will find it a pleasant place to stay.’

We’re really in this time.

After bidding farewells to our Estonian friends, Dan and I head east towards a place called Zinder, Niger’s second city. This is a slight deviation away from the river, but Zinder has an interesting history, and it makes a handy base for our crossing into Nigeria, the next and final country on our journey.

The road to Zinder is long, but, amazingly for such an impoverished country as Niger, the bus is relatively luxurious, so it’s not too painful. Onboard, we watch the countryside slip past. It’s much like Mali, flat, arid and scrubby.

In Zinder, we spend a day and a half soaking up some of the city’s rich history. The town was once a major trading post on the old trans-Saharan caravan route that connected coastal Africa with the interior. It’s also an important historical centre for the Hausa people, one of the large ethnic groups that populate Niger and northern Nigeria.

This is evident in the architecture of Zinder’s old town, where we spend a morning losing ourselves in the labyrinth of winding streets.

Hausa architecture is characterised by elaborate and often colourful relief motifs set into the front walls of houses. Hausa buildings usually also feature a series of spikey crenalations on the parapet that runs along the top of the building’s front wall, giving them the appearance of strange alien spacecraft.

Zinder’s old town is like something from the Bible. We approach the district from a rocky hilltop that rougly divides new from old Zinder.

Here, we immediately draw the innevitable group of small children who are drawn likes bees to honey. Depressingly, some of them have learnt the ‘donnez moi un cadeau’ trick we’ve become so used to in Mali.

Descending the hill to the old town, we have to negotiate our way around a pile of filth that seems to pass for the local rubbish tip. It stinks, but, shockingly, there are people scouring the heap looking for anything useful – or, I wonder, edible. Lack of food is a real problem in Niger.

Beyond the filth, we pass into a shadowy world of mud-brick alleyways and narrow streets. It’s areas like this I find the most timeless and fascinating in Africa. If it weren’t for the occasional TV ariel or passing motorbike, it would be possible to imagine oneself in another era. Life here still goes on pretty much as it has done for hundreds of years. The clash of old and new is summed as we walk down one street: a passing cart pulled along by an ox stops at a red traffic light.

We check out the local museum. It barely qualifies as such, and indeed the curator tells us that most of the displays have been moved to another building on the other side of town. But he happily shows us the few objects still on display, the most interesting being the old door of the Sultan of Zinder’s palace.

This is a heavy wood construction peppered with iron studs about an inch round. ‘These studs represent every local chief who swore his and village’s allegiance to the Sultan,’ says the curator. He must have been a powerful man, as there are about 40 studs in the door.

From Zinder we prepare ourselves for the crossing into Nigeria. We’re headed for Kano, a huge metropolis in the north of the country that is governed by the ultra-strict Islamic Sharia law. It’s going to be quite an introduction to the giant of Africa.