John R. Raphael

“ What wonder that where Europeans are concerned misunderstandings arise, and naturally nobody is more surprised at them than the bland, ingenuous builder. He made sure everything was so perfectly clear.
I knew a European who contracted to have a house built, of course outside the city. He would leave no backway to any individual to get the better of him, so he carefully stipulated for every detail, and emphasised them all. ”

“ Strengthening the medical service in Northern Nigeria is a measure which should be well pondered over by the Government at Zungeru. The value of a hospital can be gauged from what is done by the establishment at the Capital of the Protectorate. The necessity of a hospital is not to be estimated by the fatal cases which come under its roof. An overwhelming majority of sickness among whites is that of fever. The great chance of a cure is taking the indisposition in time and nursing, and no nursing on this earth equals the nursing of a sympathetic woman. ”

“ Langslow-Cock is too good an official, too loyal a subordinate, to even suggest or infer that he should not be blamed for what he has to carry out or for that at which he must hold his hand. If people blame him let them, he seems to say mentally. His temperament enables him to receive the slings and arrows of criticism with equanimity, and his personal popularity stops marksmen from dipping the points of their shafts into bitterness. ”

“ In hurrying over the narrow plank to the boat, occasionally bearer and load will overbalance and topple into the river, at which the noise of shouting with which the work is carried on will be heightened by loud laughter, whilst the fallen warrior collects basket and contents from the running stream and completes the task of depositing his charge at its proper destination. ”

“ People who wear no clothes by day are not likely to don pyjamas or fancy bedgowns. Civilisation has not touched them to the use of a blanket, like the Hausas.
When sleeping huts are built a broad shelf of mud is made to the wall. This is the couch of repose. Under it a fire is lit, and, every crevice of the doorway being closely covered, temperature soon rises. There is no ventilation whatever, so the smoke disposes of any mosquitoes and other insects, though I should say that the carbonic thickness of the atmosphere would alone effect the purpose. The marvel is for any soul to emerge alive. ”

“ When travelling in Nigeria never depend on supplying from another’s provisions that which you have wilfully neglected to provide for yourself.
At Minna Station one may also meet Mr E. H. Biffen, Traffic Superintendent of the Baro-Kano Railway, uniformly genial and courteous, and ever ready to do all in his power to help a traveller; and on the platform there will probably be Mr J. Oldfield, Traffic Assistant, who seconds the manner of his chief.
On waking up at Minna Station one realises more fully than on the previous afternoon what it is to be on one’s own resources for bodily needs. ”

“ You who have had experience with carriers on the Coast, in other parts of Africa, or in the Far East, must not think of putting into operation methods which obtain there. You will find that the natives here are entirely different, have different ideas, and require different handling. You must begin learning knowledge of carriers and other labour afresh. That is not the product of my own philosophy. The words were said by a man who had been mining all over the world and whose years of observation probably doubled those of anybody now actively engaged in Northern Nigeria. ”

“ Formerly no Hausa would dare to penetrate so far into the Pagan country or within a week’s march of this part. Now there is a Hausa market established within sight of the highway, for the convenience of caravans passing through.
About half-a-mile away is the Residency, a ramshackle mud dwelling not nearly as good as a farmer’s stable in England. Living in such places, out of sight and out of mind of the public at home, badly housed, these Residents are paid immeasurably less than the value of the service they render the nation. ”

“ To me this form of locomotion is ideal of its kind. The barque is sufficiently large to give one the impression of being on an ocean-going ship, whilst the uniform smoothness of the stream sets the mind at rest. I am not oppressed by the uneasiness which ever haunts me on a liner and which prompts anxious looks to discern if there are signs of the wind freshening and enforcing a hasty retirement and abstinence from food. Whatever befalls on the Niger, there is no mal-de-mer. The most sensitive internal organism will not be disturbed. ”

“ We rule through the native rulers, the leaders of the people. A very brief survey of its operation in Kano City may not be out of place.
The entire administration of justice has been placed in native hands, except where a European is involved. The Alkali, as the Judge is called, decides cases civil and criminal, framing his decisions on custom and usage based on the Koranic law. That, purged as it has been of corruption and inhumanity, is approved by the population, who are overwhelmingly Mohamedan, as being right and just, much more than would any application of English forms and methods. ”

“ There is not sufficient demand to maintain even a single little store for Europeans. The number of white people, officials and traders, does not exceed 30, and all bring their requirements, except fresh food, for the term of service.
The stores started only a few months ago, when the railway was completed. They are not in working order and he is wise in his generation who does not rely on them. My stay in Kano has been longer than planned, with the result that for a week I had no bread; hard, thick biscuits—euphemistically called cabin bread—having to be a substitute. ”

“ The Rahama branch of the Niger Company is in charge of Mr Percy Garrard, who had Government experience in South Africa, East Africa and India. His post is far from being an enviable one, especially on the arrival of a train, when perhaps several men who have given no notice of their coming want to be horsed, equipped with carriers and away in a twinkling. Though his position is one where many of us would turn savagely on folks harassing us to death, or at least to distraction, Mr Garrard does nothing of the sort. ”

“ Those of us who have seen men stricken with fever in some out-of-the-way spot in the bush, lying on a camp-bed in a mud hut many miles from the reach of a doctor, ourselves doing in a rough way all the nursing we could, we know what a relief it would have been to welcome the appearance of a skilled man versed in the art of healing. ”

“ Disagree as one may from the outlay and the result of missionary efforts in West Africa, one must admire and honour the spirit shown by the noble men and women who give health and life for the cause, sacrificing these precious possessions in silent and obscure countries as freely as a soldier dies in a blaze of glory and renown. ”

“ They are occupied by men holding high posts whose work is essential to the administration, the finances, and the peace of the country; yet we make them live in dwellings—there are none other—which are a daily challenge to health and provocation to disease. This is not economy; it is gambling with men’s lives for the sake of a miserable few shillings capital outlay. Sanitary housing—houses of the proper material and with ample air and protection against the insect and accompanying pests of the land—is second only to good food in keeping “fit.” ”

“ I am sorry the matter slipped my memory when speaking to Mr Byfield. In maintaining our rule in Northern Nigeria we depend so much on the cordial co-operation of the native, natural leaders of the people that it would [328] be a great pity to jeopardise our good name for fair-dealing towards those whose supreme functions we have taken over by failing to be not only strictly just but somewhat generous in a case where that would be no more than discharging an obligation of honour, for Abigah has always been a staunch friend of the British. ”

“ A widely-prevalent practice at home is to speak of West Africa comprehensively, as one would of Europe. There are greater differences between peoples in the former regions, though of the same race, than there are between the Scot and the Turk or the Celt and the Circassian. Neither the West India Regiment—one battalion of which is usually quartered at Sierra Leone—nor the Gold Coast Regiment are Northern Nigeria men, notwithstanding that representatives of the first two sometimes figure in London picture-shop windows as “Our Army in West Africa.” ”

“ To other parts of the beach come and go native canoes of infinite variety in shape and size, some as long as vessels seen on European canals, and decreasing by degrees until there is the plain dug-out made from the trunk of a tree, in which the perambulating trader, with wife and child, makes his peregrinations perhaps 500 miles up the Benue, buying and selling and exchanging at the stopping-places, and at night sloping his mat on a pole fixed horizontally, thus providing a house and shelter for sleep. Lokoja is the great centre of them all. ”

“ Still, power is seated at Zungeru—power strong, clear, absolute. The Governor of Northern Nigeria is given fuller authority over the people and the country than is in the hands of the Kaiser of Germany or the Czar of Russia. Without giving a reason he can decide questions of life and death; cancel a lease held by European or native; deny entry of or expel white or black; make law by simply issuing a Proclamation. He has not even a nominated Legislative Council, as in Crown Colonies. The form of government for natives in Northern Nigeria will be dealt with in a separate chapter. ”

“ The larger houses, in or out of Kano City, are [98] not home-made. There is a recognised trade of builders. If you are ordering a house do not fix the price by contract. You will probably be able, especially if you pride yourself on your astuteness, to beat the builder’s estimate down to almost any figure you care to push it, but refrain from reflecting afterwards that you are an exceedingly clever fellow who has prevented somebody from making a fair profit, which you have saved for yourself. The builder will make the profit he calculated from the first. ”

“ It is no reflection on the men in charge of the other stores to say that they have a very difficult task indeed in competing with the Niger Company. In the first place, it is known, and was well known before its present competitors were heard of. Ask anybody in Kano of the Bature Company—the White Company—and, if he can, he will direct you to the Niger Company’s store. European firms may comment as they will, the Niger Company is liked by the population. “In the days of the Company’s rule,” I was told in the southern part of the Protectorate, “we paid no taxes.” ”

“ Railways, roads—where there were not so much as bush paths—and transfer of thousands of men from one occupation to another are not evolved in a day, or a year, by the mere want of them. They cannot be produced by a Governor’s proclamation, the most potent document in Northern Nigeria. They take time; and attempts to do things too hastily, regardless of special local difficulties, mean courting a complete breakdown.
Decidedly it would not do for men to come to railhead and bid against one another for carriers. ”

“ The Niger is tideless, in expression of ebb and flow; it is always running seawards. The rise and fall of the water are reflections of the rainy and dry seasons. But so long a distance have the floods to travel from the higher lands and so many tributaries empty themselves into the Niger and the Benue in the upper reaches that the wet season of one year does not make itself felt on the navigable parts of the rivers until 12 months later. ”