Tales from Nigeria
Labour Codes
He was teaching at a boarding school in the town of Kontagora which lies along the Lagos-Kano route, in a small bungalow with leaky roofs. His school was a five minute cycle ride away, so he would usually leave home a few minutes before classes started at half past eight.
Mamman was a Hausa, but he sported a Fulani hat, a wide-brimmed helmet with a slightly conical body, with a red strip of leather around it. He invariably wore a blue robe which went all the way down to his ankles. One could spot him from a distance.
His timing was perfect. He would turn up every Friday almost exactly as the teacher was getting his bike ready.
He had an austere appearance which made his volubility unexpected. He would begin his lengthy and verbose greeting in a mixture of English and Hausa, extolling the virtues of the teaching profession, and people who crossed oceans to being education to those who needed it. He ended with the formula, “When you open your purse, do not think you are giving alms to me, but lending to Allah who will pay you back a hundredfold on the day of judgement.”
One day, the teacher was buying fish opposite the post office, where a number of hawkers operated, when he saw Mamman. As he had just received some loose change, he approached the beggar and offered it to him. Mamman scowled and shook his head.
‘It’s my day off today, teacher, I am not working today, I can’t accept your alms. We have labour laws in this country.’
When Trains Are On Time
The teacher needed to go to Kaduna, about three hundred kilometres from Kontagora, and although there were reasonable means of transport by bush taxi, he had decided that he wanted to sample the railway experience, and catch a train running from Minna. All his colleagues shrieked with laughter. He needed his head examined, was the consensus. The train is from Lagos, and with the state of repairs of the lines, the age of the engines, and a variety of other factors, it may take you days to get there, they told him. But his mind was made up.
He had consulted an old time-table, which might well be out of date, and found that there was a service from Lagos, leaving at 10.25 every day.
He got up before dawn to catch a bush taxi in time to get to Minna before 9.00. The road is full of potholes, and the drivers pretty reckless, but it is fairly dependable. The station was fairly impressive, having been built by the Brits in the early twentieth century. He went to the booking office, and ended up by buying the appropriate ticket. When is the train leaving, he asked? Shortly after it arrives, was the answer. He asked the same question to the trickle of would-be passengers, and no one was better informed than him. Someone suggested that what he needed most of all was a strong dose of patience. He took this philosophically. If he had to wait, so be it. It was half-term holiday.
To everybody’s amazement, the station clock had just chimed ten o’clock, when the faint chugging of a train engine was heard, and their surprise turned to wonder when the Lagos-Kaduna Express materialised along the platform.
Everybody rushed in, there were plenty of free seats, and he found a corner seat and settled down. At 10.24, the train seemed ready to depart. The station master blew his whistle, and at 10.25 sharp, the train started pulling out.
Then on the intercom, the train manager’s deep bass voice boomed, ‘We apologise for the twenty-four hour delay, but hope to make up for lost time, it’s all in the hands of providence.’
