Nigeria go teach you?

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From Maroua we took a full van to the border town of Banki. Shortly after Mora, on the Cameroon side, the van took a turn off the patchwork pavement and we arrived by dirt roads, avoiding herds of cattle and acacia trees along the way. We crossed the border easily and exchanged our money from CFA to the Nigerian currency, the niara.
We took two taxis before arriving in Maidiguri, where we would spend our first night in Nigeria. Along the way the road was terrible with many potholes, until we arrived in Bama, where we were presented with a smooth black snake of a pavement; a very rare site in Africa.
The landscape was full of baobab, acacia and the occasional planted neem tree. The first official language of Nigeria is English, but we found very few people actually could speak English and in northern Nigeria, Hausa was the most common language, with Yoruba and Ibo dominating in the south.
The next day we headed to Kano and along the way saw that Nigeria was in many ways much more developed than Cameroon, in terms of roads, buildings and the size and apparent capacities of the bigger stops. We stayed at a baptist mission in the christian district, or sabon gari, of Kano. Kano is by far, the most crowded and polluted city I have ever experienced. There were traffic signals, which is an upgrade from Cameroon, but seemed to be no regulation on the amount of vehicles on the streets. Herds of motorcycles, rickshaws and peugeots idled at every corner, competing for the next square inch of asphalt. Constant power outages also means that this part of the country relies heavily on generators, which burning adulterated Nigerian gas add to the thick air pollution of the city.
As sharia law rules and Islam is the most prevalent religion in northern Nigeria, all of the school girls were dressed in full head scarves and long sleeves and skirts. The boys also wore traditional Muslim apparel.
We took a trip to the old city and saw where a giant eroding wall once protected the city from invaders. Kano's history is rich as it was once a major point on the trade route across the Sahara and is still referred to as the 'centre of commerce' on their licence plates. In the old city we received a tour of the indigo dye pits and walked past the sultan's palace, but were not allowed to go inside. Our visas to Niger were ready after one day, so we did not spend more time than necessary in Kano.

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Photos

antimalaria man
maiduguri signboard

motos
traffic and smog in Kano

school girls
girls in school uniforms, Kano, Nigeria

market
market in Sabon Gari Kano