Breakfast in Kaduna: the Heart of Nigeria by Pelu Awofeso

Abdullahi makes real great Shayi in southern Kaduna. His shed is as pedestrian as nearly all such ‘eateries’ come, but Abdullahi makes every effort to keep his little corner of Maiduguri Street tidy. And what’s more, the six-footer goes about his business serving customers with a pleasant banter and a warm smile.

Having spent the past few days in the city, I decide to go have a sip of Abdullahi’s brew and reflect on my encounters. It’s just gone past seven in the morning and at that time of the day, it so happens that I am the only customer seated on the bench; the red-painted kiosk a few feet away, manned by another Mallam, is also just opening for the day.

Kaduna Breakfast

And while seated there, munching on bread and plain fried egg, the conversations that stand out in my mind were those I had at the breakfast table yesterday with Laura and Veronica. Laura is Welsh, a teacher and she has been in Nigeria only eight weeks, Kaduna being her first exposure to the country. She has 16 more months to go on her teaching contract. “I am amazed how quickly I have settled in this place,” she says a moment after she joins Veronica and me in the dining area of a guest house, as the fruit juice is being served.

If she had experienced any serious culture shock on her arrival, which is very likely, she made no mention of it. But her earlier days were rather Inconvenient – she literally had to endure Kaduna’s heated air. “I was always sweating a lot,” she recalls, sipping from her glass of orange juice. “But now I am pretty much adjusted to the weather.”

Much of that adjustment is evident in her clothing: a simple sky blue singlet over a light, matching cotton skirt. And much to her satisfaction, she is so well attune to the environment that she can now tell what the weather is going to be like, hot or cool, the next day, simply “from the air I feel coming into the room the evening before.”

Feeling at home

Just recently Laura has had to bother about getting water supplied to her apartment, occasionally having to use her own money to sort out some utility challenges and living through intermittent blackouts, but these don’t seem to be much of a trouble to her. If anything she feels just at home with it, even when she’s never had to worry about those basics back home.

The coffee-and-tea ensemble arrives and the conversation is interrupted for a moment. It’s my opportunity to look around the dining room: two neatly laid tables are all there is in the sparsely furnished room. From the open windows, covered by white transparent curtains, I can see the guest house’s interlocked compound and front gates. Everything is just as cosy as can be and the terrazzo floor reminds me of the dining rooms of some of the guest houses I have eaten in in Jos.

Then with the passing of time we start to feel the dining room get warmer. The generator is on but the air-conditioner is not. “You see, this is the one thing I keep telling you,” Veronica chips in in-between bites of home-made toast bread, slices of onions and tomatoes. “If the light situation can be solved then everything else will fall in place.”

Nigerian Experience

Veronica is Filipino and she has lived in Nigeria for 18 years with most of that time spent in northern Nigeria. She speaks Hausa fluently and has a chieftaincy title from Imo State. If I have met any expatriate who loves Nigeria and wishes for the domestic tourism sector to measure up to universal standards, then it must be Veronica.

And she has played a pivotal role in bringing Laura to Kaduna. So far Laura has been to see a Durbar ceremony, which she thoroughly enjoyed, and she is thirsty for more of the Nigerian experience. “I would like to visit different parts of the country and get to see what is unique to each place,” she says. “It would be great to be able to do that.” And she has registered at the famed Zaki Club, a multi-purpose recreation spot owned by the Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) and thronged by the expatriate community in Kaduna since the 1970s.

“I have five weeks to get a tan,” she says excitedly as the conversation winds up. Before we rise up and leave, I ask Laura what she felt when she made up her mind to come to Nigeria. “Well, people were like ‘Nigeria – are you mad? Don’t worry, we give you a month or two, you will run back’. That was disturbing, to tell the truth.”

And what does she feel now that she’s had a feel of the country for two months? Would she ever consider staying beyond the two years on her contract? She didn’t have to mull over the question. “I don’t know what will happen after the contract expires,” she says, cuddling her cup of tea with both hands, “but I can tell you that whatever happens, I will always want to come back to the country, even if it is just for short visits. Nigeria is not a place, I am sure, I would leave forever.” And off she goes to lounge by the Zaki Club swimming pool.

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