Camel Meatloaf

The first camel I ever saw up close was in my backyard.  It was in my backyard every day around 4 PM, grazing.

The camel had an attendant, who always greeted me as if it was OK for the camel to be in my yard.  I eventually found out that it was the sultan's camel.  Yes, it was OK for the royal camel to graze in my backyard.  

The royal camel was regal: tall with fur a uniform color, a paler version of the camelhair coats I used to see for sale in department stores back in the United States.

In Kano, Nigeria, camels were a fairly frequent sight.  They were used as beasts of burden - carrying goods or carrying people.  (The sultan's camel, however, was for ceremonial purposes.)

Then I found out that camels were edible.

An American told me that camel meat was sold in the Kano market.  Being an American, of course, he had to tell me which part of a camel is best for making hamburgers: the hump.

Isn't a camel's hump full of water?  No, that idea was from some childhood fairy tale.  A camel's hump is full of fat, which makes it ideal for grinding into hamburgers - or meatloaf.  Camel meatloaf - food for a special occasion.

Betty Daniels was coming to visit.  She lived in a part of Nigeria that had no camels - and no horses - because it was in the zone where tsetse flies lived.  When tsetse flies bite an animal, they transmit trypanosomes.  Horses and camels are not resistant to trypanosomes; so, they die.

I told my cook that we were having a dinner guest, and would he please go to the Kano market, buy some meat from the hump of a camel, and make camel meatloaf.  When Betty arrived at my house, I told her, "Betty, we are having meatloaf for dinner".  I planned to wait until she had eaten half her dinner and spring the news on her: it was camel meatloaf.  I was eager to see whether Betty would be horrified or fascinated.

The moment came, Betty was halfway through dinner, and I told her she was eating meatloaf made from the hump of a camel.  Her reaction: "Oh” and she kept on eating.  No horror, no fascination, just a plain "Oh", as if there was nothing remarkable about eating camel hump.

The abattoir, where all the meat for the Kano market is slaughtered, sits on the outskirts of the city.  I went out to take a look at it, and I observed the animals tethered outside, awaiting their destiny on the inside of the abattoir.  There were cows and there were camels.  The camels looked especially scraggly and worn down; I realized that these camels were no longer able to function as beasts of burden.  The abattoir was the end of the line for them.

After seeing these decrepid animals, I never ate camel meat again.  And the camels thanked me by putting on a special show one day.

It was the day I was taking some Swedish friends to the Kano Airport, to catch a jet plane back to Sweden.  But traffic on the airport road had to stop: there was a camel caravan crossing the road.  Camel after camel trudged past us, taking their own sweet time.

I savored the irony that my Swedish friends' trip to the airport to catch a twentieth-century mode of transportation had been slowed down by an ancient form of transportation.

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If you would like to know how to train a pet camel, here is a 12-minute video from Arizona:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvkoloNYZE4

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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

The Dewey Decimal System Is Not Kind To Africa

I worked at The School For Arabic Studies in Kano, Nigeria, for a number of years.  The school was like a Muslim seminary, turning out religion teachers.  However, Nigerian law said that you could not teach unless you were proficient in English, principles of education, and mathematics.

Mathematics – that is why I was on the staff of The School For Arabic Studies.

I volunteered to help out in the library, which had books in English and in Arabic.  Many of our staff members had graduated from al-Azhar University in Cairo, and they told me that our school had the finest collection of Arabic literature in West Africa.

I helped the librarian with the books in English.  I quickly discovered that the Dewey Decimal System is not kind to Africa.  American literature gets a whole range of Dewey Decimal numbers:  going from 810 all the way up to 819.  Nigerian literature, however, gets a little slice of the one Dewey Decimal number that all of Africa has to share: 896.

I was a little grumbly as I helped process the new books in English.

When not processing books, I wandered through the library stacks, where I noticed books that were irrelevant to the students at the school.  I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw The Yachting Handbook on a shelf.

How could The Yachting Handbook ever be relevant?  In order to sail a yacht, you needed a body of water.  Kano is a-hop-skip-and-a-jump away from the Sahara Desert.  Kano has no lakes.  The Kano River appears on maps, but it has water in it for three months a year during the rainy season (see photo of the river below).

So, somebody must have donated this book, and the school library took it because "an irrelevant book in English is better than no book at all".

I discovered an obscure storeroom in a corner of the school campus.  I gathered all the irrelevant books and stashed them there. 

As I stashed them, I wondered who brought the book about yachts to Kano --- probably a yacht enthusiast from Britain coming to work in Kano for a couple of years.  What a surprise when that person found a landscape of sand and camels instead of a landscape of sand and beaches.

When I moved back to the United States, I got some disturbing news.  The library at The School For Arabic Studies had caught on fire one night.

When the students heard about the fire, they flocked to the school, with one goal in mind – they wanted to save the finest collection of Arabic books in West Africa.   The Fire Brigade kept them at bay, and the books all turned to ashes.

Then the school had to rebuild its collection both in Arabic and in English. 

I had a nightmare:  someone stumbles upon that obscure storeroom in the corner of the campus.  That person would see books in English, and think “an irrelevant book in English is better than no book at all”.

In my nightmare, The Yachting Handbook winds up back on a shelf in the library of The School For Arabic Studies in Kano, Nigeria --- just a-hop-skip-and-a-jump from the Sahara Desert.

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Here is a 5-minute video about Kano's history, architecture, and government.  The soundtrack begins 18 seconds into the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_dMOYjmSS0

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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

The Brewmaster And The World's Largest Pig Farm

Nigeria had a newspaper that was the equivalent of The National Enquirer, and one week it ran a sensational headline: “I SMOKE, I DRINK, I EAT PORK”.

The newspaper interviewed a popular female singer who is Muslim, and she shocked the country by publically admitting that she breaks three Muslim taboos: cigarettes, alcohol, and pig meat.

I lived in Kano, deep in the heart of the Muslim section of Nigeria.  Kano was the site of the largest pig farm in the world.  It puzzled me why a huge pig farm would be located where most of the people never eat pork.  Then I realized: the pig farm did not have to worry about livestock disappearing.  It only hired Muslims and no Muslim employee would ever sneak a pig out of the farm to take home.  The pigs were shipped 450 miles by railroad to be slaughtered and processed in the Christian section of Nigeria.

So, when a beer brewery was built in Kano, there was a similar logic: hire Muslim employees because they would not sneak bottles of beer out of the brewery. 

The new brewery used the same advertising approach as American breweries: drink our beer and attractive females will flock to you.  This new beer was named Double Crown, and the gimmick was that if you drink Double Crown beer, attractive female twins will flock to you.  “Double your pleasure with Double Crown Beer”.

The brewery hired a brewmaster named Dieter from Germany.  Dieter noticed that Kano had the largest pig farm in the world and, being German, turned part of the brewery into a small sausage making facility.  This was the only sausage within 450 miles.

When Dieter heard that I gave evening Hausa lessons for foreigners who wanted to learn the local language, he started coming to my lessons.

I was hoping that my friendship with Dieter would pay off some day. 

I was hoping to get invited to the legendary Friday Beer Evaluations at the Double Crown Brewery.  The Evaluations were famous for providing a wonderful spread of food, including sausage, while soliciting judgments about the latest batch of beer.  A select group of brewery employees attended and a handful of outsiders were invited.

I finally got an invitation.  Two friends from California were visiting Kano at the time, and I talked Dieter into three invitations.

That Friday came, and I felt so special.  The Double Crown beer makers wanted to hear my opinions, and they wanted my opinion so much that they would serve me some sausage. 

There were 2 Germans, 5 Nigerians, and us 3 Americans at the Friday Evaluation.  At the start, we were each given three glasses painted black so we could not determine the color of the beer inside them.  The glasses were labeled A, B, C.  Two glasses contained Double Crown and one contained a competitor’s beer.

We tasted, and wrote down which glass held the competitor’s beer.  Then we were given a clear glass of Double Crown from a recent batch and we filled out a questionnaire about that beer.  Then we had some food, and then they announced which black glass held the competitor’s beer.

It was glass B!  All the Germans and all the Nigerians got it right.  All the Americans had gotten it wrong.  I had chosen glass A; my California friends had chosen glass C.  We had humiliated America in the eyes of the beer world.

I am pretty sure it was the last time that Americans were invited to a Beer Evaluation at the Double Crown Brewery.  It was certainly the last time I had sausage in Kano, Nigeria.

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In case you haven't seen it before, here is an 11-minute YouTube video of Doug telling how he came to buy a mud house in Kano -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw16p1HQnc8

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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

How Silly Of Me To Write A Letter

I was fond of Virginia Blakeslee, who was the mother of a high school friend.  When Virginia died, my high school friend went through her mother’s belongings and found a letter that I had written to Virginia when I was living in Nigeria.  Virginia had kept the letter for forty-five years:

DEAR VIRGINIA,

How silly of me to write a letter; all the post office employees were killed last night. 

I live in the North and many Ibo people have moved up here from the South to take skilled jobs because they are generally more educated than the Northerners.  But last night a massacre targeted people of the Ibo tribe.  

I was lulled to sleep by the rhythm of gunfire, and woke up to hear the homes across the road being ripped open and looted.  My dog and I spend the day watching furniture being carried through my back yard. 

Only now have the cheers stopped --- it seems that the arrows and stones finally reached the five Ibos hiding on the roof of a building down the street from me. 

Many are dead now, and some streets are so slippery with blood that cars cannot pass.

Back home in the United States: leaves are turning color and falling, houses stand to face another winter, and the wind is cool and reminiscent of your frailty.  And I wonder why I came five thousand miles to confirm that mankind is rotten. 

One by one, man is a marvelous thing; in groups, as he is prone to be, mankind is pretty dumb.

                                                                                         Sincerely yours,

                                                                                         DOUG SCHNEIDER

I look at my letter now and remember that I wrote it to keep my mind busy while so much was going on around me.  I look at my handwriting and remember that I was twenty-two years old when so much was going on around me.  I see that I addressed my letter to Virginia, and remember that I deliberately did not tell my parents about what went on around me.

Mostly the letter reminds me about how utterly powerless I felt that day in 1966.

The events did not happen in a vacuum.  In 1965 I lived through a coup d’état where the democratically-elected prime minister of Nigeria, who was a Northerner, was shot and his body was left by the roadside --- and an army general, who was an Ibo, declared himself the head of state.

Things were tense but calm until the Ibo head of state declared that the regions would no longer have their own civil service; there would be a unified national civil service.  In Nigeria, this was an inflammatory proclamation.  The Ibos were much better educated than the other tribes in the country; under a unified civil service, the Ibos would dominate the entire nation.

Once a unified national civil service was announced, the killings began.

Many Ibos moved back to the South, to their own corner of the country, and declared themselves to be the independent Republic of Biafra.

When I arrived in Nigeria, it was a stable country under a democratically-elected Prime Minister.  Within a year of my arrival, I was about to see the country I was living in erupt into civil war.

-.-.-.-.-.

The three photos above were taken by me.  

Photo #1 shows an Ibo's shop in the Sabon Gari Market after the massacres of 1966.  

Photo #2 shows General Ironsi's entourage (he was the Ibo who declared himself head of state) rolling past a line of horse guards when Ironsi visited the palace of the Emir of Kano in 1965.

Photo #3 shows me at age 22, standing by an anthill in northern Nigeria in 1966. 

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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

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

The Africa Moment In The Book Of Mormon

I had doubts as I settled into my seat at the Fox Theater for The Book of Mormon (the play, not the book).  I have never watched an episode of “South Park”; was I really going to enjoy an entire musical written by the South Park guys?

I expected a show filled with raunchy mocking of the Mormon religion.  

The first act delivered plenty of mockery: pointing out that Mormons believe that President Thomas Monson speaks directly to God, they believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America, they believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri.  This last belief elicited a lot of guffaws from the St. Louis audience, most of whom have been to Jackson County.

In the play, two young American men are sent to Uganda by the Mormon Church with a mission: to teach about The Book of Mormon.  They are clearly out of their element in Uganda.  More mockery ensues.  Then the curtain falls for intermission.

I was dissatisfied.  I saw that something was missing from the play: the Africa Moment.

I knew what was missing because I was a young American man, sent to Nigeria by the United State Peace Corps, with a mission to teach mathematics and to show Nigeria what America and Americans were like.

I remember my Africa Moment.  I arrived in Nigeria with weeks of training behind me.    But then I stepped into an African classroom for the first time.  I was unsure of what these students needed.  I was unaware of what they knew already. I was overwhelmed by the fact all the students had black skin and wore identical white school uniforms. And I was uncomfortable by the fact that they all had Muslim names and I didn’t know how to pronounce their names correctly.

I stood there in my white skin in front of the blackboard, 36 pairs of eyes looking at me, waiting for me to teach them mathematics.  That was the Moment: I was face-to-face with Africa.

Africa always wins.  I had to adjust, scramble, experiment, until I finally hit my stride.

When I hit my stride, there came another moment.  I began to identify with my students.  We were all part of the same school, working toward a common goal of getting everyone to graduate.  And I knew how to pronounce all the students' names correctly.

The curtain at the Fox Theater rose for the second act.  Those South Park guys must have known what I was waiting for. 

Elder Cunningham is preaching about The Book of Mormon.  This is his Africa Moment: the Ugandans are not interested.  Africa wins --- Elder Cunningham starts making things up and pretending they are in the book to get the interest of the Ugandans.  Elder Price goes to confront a warlord.  This is his Africa moment: his religious teachings have no effect.  Africa wins --- he must find some other way to influence the warlord.

As the second act goes into full swing, the play focuses on how the missionaries adapt and have some success.  The missionaries, to show that they now identify with the Africans, sing a song called “I Am Africa”.

I was amazed.  The South Park guys somehow knew what I went through, and they replicated here on stage. 

Towards the end of the second act, there is no more mockery.  Things become so warm-hearted that the finale is actually a tribute to The Book of Mormon (the book, not the play).

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In this YouTube video you can listen to “I Am Africa” from the Broadway show soundtrack (2 minutes long)

I Am Africa

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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

I Need A Drink

                Doug's students at historic house in Kano

My elementary school teachers took us on field trips.

In 4th grade, we went to Lollipop Farm.  The “farm” had animals you could pet and even hand feed.  For us suburban kids, it was the first time we came face-to-face with a cow.

In 5^th grade, we went to the Saddle Rock Grist Mill, perhaps the oldest tidal grist mill in the country.  This was not the first time I had been to the mill.  The stables there had been converted into housing, and my parents were thinking of living in the stables, but we wound up in a suburban split-level house instead, much to my disappointment.

In 6^th grade, we went to the Museum of Natural History in New York City .  The focus of the trip was the fish exhibits.  After looking at models of fish, displays of fish, photographs of fish, and dioramas of fish, the class went to the museum cafeteria to eat the lunches that our mothers had packed.  I opened my lunch bag and found a tuna fish sandwich inside.  It was impossible to eat a fish after looking at fish.

I saw the other side of field trips when I became a teacher in Nigeria at a girls’ boarding school. 

We did a nice daytime field trip to a historic house.  The house was built around 1720, and had artifacts from everyday life.  I liked seeing the students light up when they recognized an object their grandmother had.

But I cut back on field trips after we went to a play at nighttime.

Nigerians are big fans of Shakespeare; a popular hobby is translating his plays into a local Nigerian language.  However, our field trip was not to a Shakespearian play; I took a busload of students to A Man for All Seasons.  Shakespeare’s plays are filled with activity and interesting characters and awkward situations.  A Man for All Seasons is a cerebral play.  The actors spent most of the time standing still on stage and talking. 

The Nigerian audience made a valiant effort to follow Sir Thomas More’s agonizing about his private conscience while doing battle with his public duties.  Most of the audience gave up and drifted into the dark recesses of the theater.  My students drifted there as well.

Uh oh.  I was supposed to be chaperoning these girls.  I had no idea what was happening in all that darkness, and I grew exceedingly uncomfortable.  I could no longer follow Henry VIII’s agonizing about the burdens of being a king.

Then I got an idea.

When lights came on at intermission, I chased the girls out of the recesses of the theater.  The girls were easy to spot because they were wearing their school uniforms.  I told them that the play was over.  It was time to get on the bus and go back to the dormitories.  Some girls tried to correct me and point out that the play was only half over, but I was adamant.

When the bus dropped them off back at the school, I heaved a sigh of relief.

I was so frazzled from the evening that all I could think was, “I need a drink.”  This was not just some trite line from a black-and-white movie --- I really did need a drink.  I headed for a bar.

I wonder if my 4^th grade teacher had headed for a bar on the day we went on a field trip to Lollipop Farm to hand feed the cow.

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2-minute YouTube home movie of Lollipop Farm, Syosset NY, complete with sound of 8mm projector:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kbxkYKbVV0

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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

In Praise Of Mud

The head of the local chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians knows that I used to live in a mud house. 

So, I have been asked to give a lecture about mud architecture in West Africa.  In my lecture I will be praising mud.  I will start off with a picture of the grandest mud building in Africa: the Friday Mosque in Djenne, Mali (see photo above). 

The mud house I lived in was not grand.  It was one-story and small, but I was fond of it.

Mud is an excellent building material for the tropics.  It is readily available and inexpensive.  Thick mud walls absorb heat during the tropical day, keeping you cool.  At night, they give off the heat they have trapped, keeping you warm ---- warmth is important for the aged and the infirm.

Ceilings were made by laying straw mats across white palm timbers (the only wood that African termites do not eat).  Then a layer of mud is laid on top of the mats to make a roof.

The enemy of a mud house is rain.  In the tropics, the rainy season only lasts about two months; it may rain every day, but it only rains for a couple of hours.

My roof was protected by metal spouts that stuck out over the courtyard, directing rain water away from the roof and keeping rain water from running down the walls.  For extra security, I had all the exterior walls covered in a semi-waterproof plaster made from crushed locust beans.  It was a lovely shade of dark brown. The plaster was applied with sweeping hand motions, which gave the walls an interesting visual rhythm.

An American house is surrounded by a yard.  My African house was the opposite; it was a courtyard surrounded by a house.  The courtyard had flowers and trees and was pleasant.

A 9-foot-high wall went all around the lot, and each room of the house was placed up against the outside wall.  The rooms had only one door, which opened into the courtyard.  So, if you wanted to go from the living room to the dining room, you had to walk through the courtyard to get to the dining room.  Likewise, to get from the dining room to the bedroom, you could only get there by walking through the courtyard.

Some rooms had windows, which all faced the courtyard

There was one entrance room, the only room with two doors: a door to the street and a door into the courtyard.  There was no doorbell or door knocker.  When someone came to visit me, they would stand at the front door and shout a blessing: “Peace be upon you.”

Then I would welcome them with a blessing in response: “And upon you, peace.”

The visitor would go through the entrance room, and then bend over to go through the door into the courtyard.  This second door was purposely built low, so that the visitor must bow to enter the house.

In the courtyard, the visitor would find peace.  The tall surrounding walls kept the noise and bustle of the outside world at bay; the flowers and trees gave off serenity, the dark hand-plaster lent an air of dignity.  

Yes, it was like finding peace.

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YouTube video of me describing how I came to live in a mud house in West Africa (11 minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw16p1HQnc8

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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