Zinder
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.
Tags: Travel
djnorwood