The changing world (33) Jan 1975

1st By Landcover to Maiduguri despite a burst tyre leaving Jos. To Molai by 8:30 pm.
   2nd shopping in Maiduguri and bargaining in the market.
   3rd back to Limankara. All is well except cows have brought down the radio aerial.We have daily short wave contact with the mission. Brian Boddy with us. He was to spend all his working life in agriculture from Molai.Brian had been with me on the Lake Chad trip. On the edge of the Sahara it gets cold at night in January. We had sleeping bags. We took off our trousers and kipped down. I heard Brian up in the night. In the morning I asked what he was doing. he had got up to put his trousers back on and return to his sleeping bag he was so cold.
   4th Gwoza elders. Distributed Scripture Gift mission literature.
   6th. Spent all the day with Brian servicing the Landrover.
   10th Three men and four women started Bible School term. When I take them up to preach in the hills I hope all will be able to come. Last yearn student begged to be excused as their was a blood feud still between his people and those to whom we were to preach.Before independence, under the British, this was all a closed area due to inter-tribal fighting. When the chief of Gwoza had been healed through Dr Chandler he asked the government permission to allow Chandler and others to settle in Gwoza and build a hospital. When I visited former District Officer Stanhope White in Yorkshire he showed me wanted posters for Gwoza murderers. I cane across him through the salesman magazine when he was retired and I had read several of his books.His salesman story was of wartime Kano during the blitz on England. He had a drink every evening at the club. His companion was a taciturn Yorkshire man and they listened to the reports of blitzed cities in silence until a report came of a road on York. His companion exclaimed, 'If they've hit minster there'll be 'ell today.'
   His other famous Kano tale was about turkeys. White was responsible for supervising the cleanliness of the large Kano market. Things were getting messy. I seemed there was a diminution in the large numbers of vultures scavenging the waste. Enquiries were made. It was late November 1943 I think. The USAF used Kano airport as a staging point for flights from USA to the Pacific theatre of was. They had asked for turkeys for thanksgiving. The Hausa butchers were used to providing turkeys for the British in December, Christmas birds. How to find birds in November? The answer came from the missing vultures. It is not recounted if the Americans ever found out.
   11th Thick harmattan. Preached at Pulka. Akila the missionary evangelist presented literacy certificates and gave an unforgettable exhortation to the illiterate.He told of an illiterate from the bush who went to the big city and swatted down beneath a big sign to do his business. A policeman approached and told the man tread the sign."I caanot'
"READ it" 'I can't read'.
"That sign says don't do that here. Pick it up. PICK IT UP.'
And the poor man had to pickup his excrement in his hand and take it away. That could happen to you if you don't learn to read.
Brian asked me if he was understanding this correctly. He was. We would have spoken about the benefit of being able to read the Bible for yourself. Akila was much more down to earth and memorable.
   12th Five Bible school students started term.
   13th To Bama to pick up Dr and Mrs Chandler. Took Chandlers to Mbuliya, Pulka and Gwoza where they were the pioneer missionaries before 1960 independence. All expats had been kept out of the Gwoza area until Chandlers came.Of course the British had kept all missions out of the Muslim north after the 1900 conquest.They were only allowed gnat first to treat leprosy as no-one but missionaries would leprosy work. Keeping missions and therefore education out of the north with indirect rule favoured Islam's spread and exacerbated the north south divide. This led to problems after independence, even to civil war.
   14th. Brian had Cubitts repair the landrover oil leak. We then visited Dabo, Isge, Gomolu and Kwamda.
   15th. Taking Chandlers to Pulka, Ngoshe, Gaza and Kerawa. It was like taking royalty on tour. Mountains of food heaped upon us.
   16th Took Chandlers to Dure, Balazala, Ngabara, Wala and fadagwe. Meals at two places.
   17th Chandlers escorted to Gagarawaje, Mbuliya and Bama where we greeted the Shah (Chief). Then to Dikwa and Gomboru Ngala. At Dikwa we greeted the emir.I was taking off my shoes entering his place. he said not to bother. He asked me where I was from. When I said North Yorkshire he told me he had stayed at Harewood House. Did I know the Earl of Harewood? I said I was not acquainted with the queen's cousin. The emir had stayed with him before independence when the British government took top emirs to see how democracy worked in the House of Lords for therse men were to comprise an independent Nigeria's upper house of chiefs. The emir remains the person of highest social standing with whom I have conversed except for Lord Mackay and Selwn Gummer, both in Thatcher's cabinet.
   18th To Jagarawage, Wulga, Gomboru Ngala and Maiduguri. Back to Limakara with Brian again.
   19th With Brian and the family to Isge where I preached and took the communion service, Came back with a policeman, four prisoners and a goat.
   20th Climbed to Ngoshe in 100 minutes. Examined marked plot for the dispensary. Descended home in 75 minutes only.
   21st. Two hour drive to Maiduguri. Came back with Aussie Graeme Rule and his wife and children.
   22nd. Bible School lectures on Life of Christ, I Timothy, doctrine and Islam.
   23rd Took Rule family to Limankara market.
   24th. Took boy with haemolytic snakebite to hospital. He died, antivenin not having been sought until too late.
   25th. Took Rules back to Maiduguri rearing with 90 gallons of petrol. Limankara elders.
   26th Preched at Gwoza in English.
   28th Very depressed with repairs to the Landcover dominating and my practical inabilities. Took too much medicament. Vomited. Slept all the rest of the day.
   29th Doreen Collingham and Margaret Howells visited and I confessed about my overdose.
   30th Unexpected visit from the Blacks. He says not to worry. In six weeks time we are to leave and be at Vom for two months.
   31st. Much better spirits.
On reflexion the moral of this is that problems loom large at a given time and seem insurmountalble. But they are a storm that will pass. The view in the storm is very different from the calm afterwards.