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
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