The Guinness Is Good For You Suitcase

When I first moved to Kano, Nigeria, I was looking for opportunities to learn how to speak Hausa - the language spoken by most of the population of northern Nigeria.

So, I would head to the City Market at the end of the day, as business was winding down.  I would talk to various vendors, noting which ones seemed willing to listen to an American mangle their language.

I would stop and talk with a money changer in the market named Aliyu:

I would stop and talk with a hat cleaner in the market named Danladi (in the red shirt):

I would stop and talk with a whitesmith in the market named Nasidi.  

African whitesmiths work with metal.  However, they do not use fire like blacksmiths do.  They basically beat metal into shapes.

Nigerians do not throw metal away.  Instead, scrap metal is turned into everyday objects by the whitesmiths.  Metal barrels become woks or they become rainspouts.  Metal scraps become knives. 

On a smaller scale, evaporated milk containers are turned into kerosene lamps.  I was always impressed that my students managed to do their homework at night by the weak light of these small lamps.

 

Kano’s extreme climate was not kind to paper or to wood.  So, breweries that wanted to advertise their products used metal signs to put their ads on the walls of Kano’s pubs.  Guinness had signs that proclaimed how their product would enhance your health “Guinness is good for you” and how their product would enhance your sex life “Guinness gives you power” --- where 'power’ is a thinly veiled reference to 'virility'.

Many of these metal signs did not make it to the walls of a pub; they wound up in the hands of a whitesmith, who would ingeniously turn the signs into suitcases.

The Guinness signs were beaten into the shape of a rectangular box.  A clasp and a handle were added.  Then the suitcases were painted.

One day I saw a whitesmith about to paint a suitcase.  I asked Nasidi to make him stop.  Nasidi told the fellow that the American who is learning Hausa wants to buy a suitcase that is unpainted.  The fellow probably thought I was a bit crazy, but he sold it to me as is. 

I got a thrill out of owning a Guinness Is Good For You suitcase.

Nowadays, the suitcase sits in the back of a closet in our house.  I think I need to display it more prominently.  It is not a work of art, but it is a tribute to African ingenuity: a clever handmade African object from the 1960s --- a suitcase that proclaims you can improve your health and your sex life simply by drinking a beer.

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To view a current 2-minute ad for Guinness in Africa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoB_YPIFr0

Here is the LANDFILL HARMONIC, showing what whitesmiths in the slums of Paraguay can do.  The video is 11 minutes long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJxxdQox7n0

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com