Servants

There are practically no free photos I can find of Kaduna or the things I describe there from the late 1970s or early 1980s and as I said previously the family photos of that time have been appropriated but I did manage to find this Wikipedia photo of the Kano fruit market, which is not disimilar in terms of the goats and the fruit I mention. 

Kaduna outside the military "patch" and school, as I remember it was a place of much dirt, confusion, ramshackle huts, rubbish, goats, poverty, disease, disability, storm ditches, potentially snakes and sugar cane fields. It sounds awful and the people living affected by those things must have found life difficult but there was a lot more to life there than this.

In Nigeria, from about 1979 to 1981, dad employed, or the army employed, local people to help manage the house.  We didn't call them "local people".  Like the two ladies who came with the Berkshire farmhouse, as far as I know, the servants - because that's how they were referred to - may well have come with the house too. 

I asked the lady I met at the concert (see previous post ) who I didn't know at the time as she was away at school, but whose parents knew mine there, whether they had servants living at the bottom of their garden too. No, she said, archly, our servants lived out, as if this was sign of social betterment - though for whom I'm not sure. She was sitting next to an English friend at the time, with a pubescent daughter. This woman was obviously somewhat taken aback at the sudden mention African servants in a Perthshire village hall.  No one I know talks about servants nowadays, so it required some explanation on the part of my friend.

 I am not sure if the servants did come with the house though because apparently this bungalow was in such a state when we took it over that we couldn't live there and had to stay in the Durbar, a well known hotel in town for what felt like ages - a month or two maybe, while it was sorted out. This was fine because the hotel had a large pool, with a snack bar in the corner that sold spring rolls, even if I disliked the restaurant proper's food. The Durbar, according to a newspaper article I read of 16 years ago, was extremely swish.  It was only about two years old when we lived there and had been built in 1977 for the durbar a two day horse racing event.  A local man interviewed for the article said he met there chiefs, lawyers, the national chairman whoever that was, generals, ministers.  He deplored that it had fallen into a ruin and an eyesore from the 1990s.

A delay in moving in was unusual because military quarters (the name for a house) were required to be handed back in tip top condition so perhaps it had been derelict for a while, or maybe civilians, an easy scapegoat for the military, had had it previously.  

On "marching out" as I think it was called, there was an inspection and it was apparently always quite a stressful process for my parents.  My mother was a past master at getting houses sparkling clean for handover. Come to think of it, the bungalow probably had been inhabited because it also came with a tubby, orangey, mild-tempered, coarse-haired mongrel that looked  something like a cross between a Corgi and a sausage dog.  It wasn't young and God knows who looked after it before we moved in. It didn't seem to have a name either, so we called it Topsy after Bimbo and Topsy who were cat and dog friends in an Enid Blyton book I'd just read.

Like the servants and cleaners the dog was also passed on to the next people.  These properties were always furnished so while families acquired furniture over the years, there was no requirement to do so.  You would become familiar with a particular ugly print of army curtains.  Army furniture, and study chairs in particular had a look to them. It was also solid and good quality though.  Army bedsheets were second to none.  They were cotton and never wore through.  I have never found such good sheets again.

Somehow we also acquired a savage black kitten who was only ever half tame.  Obviously, my plan was to call it Bimbo, to match the dog, although it looked nothing like the Siamese, on the cover of the book.  My four year old sibling however insisted on "Timothy" for the cat, it being his favourite name at the time.  I stood up to this defiantly: it would unbalance the meant-to-be partnership of Topsy and Bimbo.  I don't know my parents didn't let him choose the second animal's name, but the kitten ended up as Timbo, which sounds like a diplomatic intervention by my mother. 

I remember seeing a picture of it before or shortly after we moved in - the whole veranda draped in some kind of vine that had taken over. I vaguely, and possibly falsely remember saying to dad that we should keep it. I suppose I thought it looked romantic or adventurous in some seven-year-old way - I was reading the Enid Blyton Faraway Tree series at the time. Anyway, the straggly vine was chopped back and, to my adult eyes remembering that bungalow before and after, was much improved by that action.

The servants, or some of them, lived in a sort of communal hovel of one level breeze block buildings at the end of garden, which I think was shared with at least one other military bungalow, if not three or four.  Everyone had servants and there were houses on either side of us and on a row behind us.  So there was a constant stream of unknown people walking through the garden. The house behind hours had a gap in the fence too so there was an unofficial path through the military gardens for the servants from the various houses to and from get to their accommodation - or for anyone else for that matter who fancied a shortcut. We never went to their accommodation. It was out of bounds, what it was like, what went on there remained a mystery but it was extremely basic. I seem to remember a constant smoke from fires there which I surmise is where they cooked.

I just accepted this gross social inequality as the order of things. We played with children of all nationalities and colours at the school.

What makes somebody a servant rather than a cleaner? Is it the designation? Is it designation and acceptance? Is it exploitation? Are they servants only when collectively? How did our servants describe their role to others in their language? What did they think of us? Did they resent us? Were they glad of the job? Were they paid comparatively well or not? I don't know the answer to any of these questions. 

There was a maid, Asaveto - I am spelling phonetically - who I recall as a solidly built. She worked with her baby on her back, as all the women did - it was a proper baby not a toddler. I don't know when she fed it because I don't remember seeing that baby being fed. I don't even know how long the servants worked. It was only a bungalow, and we didn't have many possessions, that is to say, we didn't until we had bought from all the visiting traders.

Asaveto came to the house in the night desperate about this terribly sick baby with a raging fever which they had rubbed with oil. Mum took it to the hospital. Dad said this probably saved its life.

Dauda, her husband, was a man with a dark look who seemed to simmer with silent resentment, probably because he did the family washing and ironing, a job he nevertheless he seemed to do well. I don't really remember the food we ate but Ezekiel was apparently a very poor cook, so he was regularly fired. But he would turn up soon after asking if my parents had found anyone else yet. As they never did, he was always rehired. I find this story difficult to integrate with my memories of my parents as both organised and tolerant. I took an instant and persistent dislike to Ezekiel. I would hang on to the standing fan and glare at him while he would jut his chin at me in distaste and to my parents refer to me insouciantly as “dat girl”.

Dam Dam Sambo (yes, really) was the gardener. A tall, lanky, man of nineteen or twenty with a huge, open smile, he in contrast was beloved by all. Mum still remembers Dam Dam with affection.  He was a kindred spirit to mum.  The trouble is she keeps adding "Sambo" to his name in a not particularly "indoor voice" when we are out in a cafes and has to be shushed, something she either doesn't completely understand, or does, and thinks our embarrassment, quite funny, the inhibitory part of her brain having been possibly more impaired by Alzheimers.

One night, my brother despite, his mosquito net and paladrin tablets was sick apparently with malaria. I thought malaria returned again and again but this didn't. Anyway, he had a fever and he was about four. Dam Dam was babysitting while my parents were at an inevitable party somewhere on the military “patch”. I don’t remember if he woke me to tell me he was going to get my parents or whether he just left but the upshot was he took my bike, which, luckily, was adult size, having belonged to a friend of my mum’s. I’m not sure if he’d ridden a bike before because he came back slightly injured after some kind of crash, but had found my parents.

I remember being surprised at how pink black people's skin was when it was broken, that the insides of their hands and the underneath of their feet were a different colour to the outsides and that the white of their eyes could be yellow. No one ever explained this but it can be natural or it can be a sign of malaria or other illness. I didn't think anything about any of the things I saw: I  noticed and accepted the difference.  With people who had lost limbs and were begging it was different. I felt very badly for them. 

There was a lot of untreated disease.  Many children had pot bellies, which I didn't know then was a sign of malnutrition.  I seem to remember most black children I saw wore rags or very poor quality, dirty clothing, whether in the bush or in the town but I don't have the photos to verify.  It was only really around the Durbar hotel that I saw people in smart Nigerian traditional dress.  

Tor the men these were matching trousers and tunic, often in a two tone print that you don't find in Europe, often white and blue or white and lilac, but it could be any colours and it almost always embroidered.  There was a matching hat, in what, in the UK would be unfortunately described as a pork pie style, also featuring embroidery. The men wore these with great regal elegance. The women wore shoulder to ankle wraparound material to make a dress and head-dress for a special occasion.  Most country or village women I think wore some kind of handkerchief or scarf on the head, but girls and young women might have their hair not in the very fancy styles you see today but often into geometrical segments like a map, each one with a twist of hair in the centre.  There were other styles but I can't remember them all.  

Another local with an evocative name used to cycle round the houses with an enormous, heavy black bike piled high with fruit and vegetables. He was a great character who wore a perennial purple all-in-one flared purple cotton jumpsuit and introduced himself as Rock 'n Roll. Mum said to him one day, “Rock n Roll, why do you cycle your bike round the houses in the hot sun? Why don't you set up a shop like everybody else?” Shop was a bit of a misnomer. These were corrugated iron shacks setup by roadsides. So Rock n Roll surveyed the 50 metres or so of ground between our row of houses with well paid officers and did just that. He set up a shack under a mango tree and was a useful asset to the row not to mention that we, pocketmoneyless, would regularly wander of there to rudely beg him for dash (free sweets) while he was performing his prayers to Mecca, not understanding this to be the case nor why he paid us not the blindest bit of attention at such times.

It was true, dad said he was extremely well paid on that posting.  The was generally an overseas allowance but this was handsomely bumped up, because it was Africa,  It was for that reason that we were able to buy a very small and very basic two bedroom flat in Spain in 1982 a year or two after they returned.  

There was also a m’gaurdi who turned up in the evening to stay on the veranda at night to guard the house. I never knew their names and there seemed to be more of a turnover of them than the house servants. 

 We accepted there were “other” Nigerians, with better jobs, who occasionally came to my parents' dinner parties in traditional dress. At least one of them only ate with one hand, I was told for religious reasons.

There was never pork on the menu at these times. Only once, mum offered someone, I think a cattle herder who passed by when we were out in the bush on a “breakfast picnic” a bacon sandwich. The look on his face signified a heavenly experience. I think dad had realised that mum had accidentally given pork to a Muslim but at that late stage, no-one felt they could snatch it away from him with an explanation.

We had a few photos of people in the bush, but not many because they feared cameras. The word was they thought it would steal their soul, though how true that was I’m not sure. We encountered these people, usually young, and ragged, herding the ubiquitous great horned white cattle around the bush. Sometimes there were girls with beautiful posture balancing trays of things to sell on their heads like green skinned guavas with pink flesh or ground nuts which were measured out in small tin cans. Oranges in Nigeria were always picked, sold and eaten green. It was a long time before I could accept, back in Germany or the UK, that orange oranges were what passed for normal and I never thought they tasted as good. I was used to the sharper, fresher taste of the green ones, which I never saw again.

Dauda once upped and disappeared for ages. Apparently he’d gone back to his village. He came back eventually and resumed his position. I suppose Asaveto must have filled in. Dam Dam once memorably returned from a trip with a gift for mum - a live cockerel intended for the pot. This off-white lord of the enclosed patio, strutted around the above ground, framed circular swimming pool in which we charged around in one direction to make an exciting whirlpool which, if we lifted up our feet would hurl us around the pool. But a visiting child nearly drowned and we weren't supposed to do it any more.

The cockerel was eventually removed to a country farm by my mother after the neighbours complained about it’s dawn crowing. It was annoying.  I can hear it now nearly fifty years on. I didn't much like the cockerel.  It just made noise, not eggs and it wasn't particularly friendly, but I did guard its life.  Mum promised he would be well looked after, but I didn't completely believe her.  The slaughter of animals, especially goats and chickens was no secret in Nigeria, the way it's all hushed up here.  I remember the feeling of dread as we drove it to its new home.

I remember, too, even at seven, being shocked at the poverty in Nigeria: the piles of rubbish, topped with goats which had a particular acrid smell that I can’t remember now but would recognise. I do remember, suddenly, the smell of burning that rubbish that caught in the back of your throat.

There were many beggars in Kaduna where we went for a supermarket to get things like powdered milk. There were people without legs or wheelchairs who shuffled around on the floor in rags or on wooden props. There were many deformities, no aid, no crutches, much begging. Dentistry seemed almost unknown, eyes could be discoloured. I never thought of it then but in comparison, our servants seemed to be in a better situation. I found these trips to the town distressing and stressful. The inequality, the wrongness of it struck me forcefully but such sights were everywhere and I was powerless.