White Man, Where Do You Live?

I had been living in Kano, Nigeria, for three years and I thought it was time to go see what traditional African boxing was like.

I went to Kano City Stadium, which was used for soccer, prayer gatherings, and boxing.  The stadium consisted of a large grass-less field with a single cement grandstand.  The field was grass-less because it was the height of the dry season, and it had not rained in Kano for the last seven months.

I bought a ticket at the window and gave it to the ticket-taker to enter the stadium.  I was surprised when he asked, "White Man, where do you live?"

"I live in Tudun Wada."

The ticket-taker told me that I had to sit at the far end of the cement grandstand.  I did what he said, even though I did not see any difference between one end of the grandstand and the other.

I sat down.  A couple dozen boxers took the field.  Each boxer had one fist tightly wrapped up in cloth strips.   

There was no ring, no ropes.

I turned to the people sitting near me for some help.  First question, of course, was why did the ticket-taker make me sit at this end of the grandstand when I told him I lived in Tudun Wada?

I found out that Kano was divided into north and south.  I was not sure where the dividing line was, but Tudun Wada was definitely north.  All the north city people sat at this end of the grandstand while all the south city people sat at the other end of the grandstand.

The boxers on the field were also divided: north city boxers would be fighting south city boxers.

There was no schedule of matches.  The boxers themselves determine the schedule.  Someone challenges an opponent by tapping him on the chest with his wrapped fist.  If the opponent thinks the match is fair, he returns the tap, and they start to box.

A match ends when a boxer touches the ground: knee or hand or shoulder or body.  The match would also ends if one boxer decides to call it off.

I was impressed.  Traditional African boxing seemed less brutal than American boxing where they try to knock each other unconscious, and where boxers are paired by promoters, without regard to the fairness of the match.

A sudden gasp rose from the grandstand.  The primo hot-shot south city boxer had just tapped a north city boxer on the chest.  The crowd knew that the north city boxer was clearly outclassed, but he tapped back.

The lopsided match was on.  Punch; Punch; Stagger; Fall.  It was the hot-shot south city boxer who had touched the ground. 

The match was over in about two minutes, and everyone around me stood up and cheered. 

Then people stopped cheering and started leaving.  What?  Why are they leaving?  There are two dozen boxers on the field; surely there are more matches to come?

Someone explained it for me: The north had triumphed, and nothing can be sweeter than having an ordinary north city guy defeating the primo south city guy.

 

I lingered there while the grandstand emptied out.  Instead of feeling triumphant, I felt a little bit cheated.  I had come all the way from Tudun Wada to Kano City Stadium, and only got to watch two minutes of boxing.

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A 2-minute video of traditional boxing in Argungu, a much smaller city than Kano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUp1D81kLW8

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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

Find A Good Mother And Take Good Care Of It

When I moved to Sokoto, Nigeria in 1975, I had to choose between Mrs. Datta and Mrs. Kohli.  People told me that Mrs. Kohli was sweeter than Mrs. Datta.  However, I chose Mrs. Datta.

These two women were from India and they had yogurt mothers that they were willing to share.  I needed a yogurt mother to make my own yogurt, which turned out to be pretty easy in Sokoto.

Dairy products were hard to come by in the tropics.  There was one herd of dairy cows in all of Nigeria, and they lived on the central plateau under the careful eye of an Agricultural university.   They did not ship their cow's milk because milk spoils quickly in the tropics.

There were herds of camels all around Sokoto.  Camels were milked and the milk was turned into a form of cheese: solid white disks that were for sale in the market, but did not look at all hygienic to me.

So, almost all dairy products had to be imported.  Nigerians were fond of small cans of evaporated milk and condensed milk from Holland, which they used in their tea.  Another popular imported item was powdered milk, which Nigerians turned into baby formula.  

I needed powdered milk to make yogurt, and my favorite brand was KLIM. 

KLIM was produced in America; it was originally used by explorers; it was a staple in the rations of US soldiers fighting in the Pacific during World War II. But it was not my favorite brand because of its pedigree --- it was my favorite because KLIM is MILK spelled backwards, and I like things that spell backwards.  

(No wonder that my favorite Nigerian detergent is OMO, which spells its own name backwards.)

Once I got my yogurt mother from Mrs. Datta, I began to make yogurt on a regular basis.  I would add water to KLIM in an enamel bowl.  Sokoto had wonderful colored enamel bowls imported from Czechoslovakia.

I stirred the mother into the milk, put the lid on the bowl, and set the bowl out in my yard.  Sokoto is the hottest large city in Africa, so, the sun did the rest.  After one hour, I would bring the bowl into the house: there was a batch of yogurt inside, all properly cultured.

However, if I lost track of time, and fetched the bowl after two hours, there would be a batch of very thick yogurt inside, almost like cream cheese.

Chill the yogurt, and consume…making sure to set aside some as the mother so I could make another batch. 

But sometimes, I would lose track and eat all the yogurt in the fridge, including the mother.  So, I was back where I started from: I would have to choose between Mrs. Datta and Mrs. Kohli.

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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is another country without dairy cows.  You can watch a one-minute video where KLIM tells Saudi women that they can realize their dreams – being a TV reporter, piloting a jet, climbing Mt. Everest – if they drink KLIM powdered milk.  (You can't realize your dreams without calcium.)  Saudi Women of Strength

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

Bob, Quid, Guinea

When I arrived for the first time in Nigeria, there was a lot of adjusting to do.

I had to adjust to an unfamiliar climate and unfamiliar food.  I had to teach in a school system based on the British school system, and I had to very quickly learn how to deal with a non-decimal monetary system.

Nigeria --- just like Britain at the time --- used pounds, shillings, and pence.  (Pence if you are talking about an amount of money, but pennies if you were talking about the metal coins.)  They also had a half penny, sometimes called a ha’penny just like in the old folk song. 

This system was an arithmetical challenge: there are 12 pence in one shilling.  And 20 shillings in a pound.  Stop --- multiply 12 times 20 in your head --- that makes 240 pence in a pound!

To make things interesting, there were nicknames --- A pound was called a quid, and a shilling was called a bob.  Even more interesting: the abbreviation for a penny was “d”.

Plus, there was a unit of charity.  One never donated a pound; one always donated a guinea to a charity.  A guinea equals a pound plus a shilling, which would make it equal to 21 bob, or maybe 252 pence, or 504 ha’pence.

As an American who grew up with a decimal monetary system, learning all this was formidable. 

I once saw a Nigerian elementary school arithmetic textbook; it contained page after page of currency problems.  I pitied the Nigerian kids in second grade who spent an enormous amount of time multiplying 12 times 20.

Physically, the Nigerian pennies and ha’pennies were quaint: they were circular with a hole in the middle.  I made fun of these coins until the day I saw someone carrying a bunch of pennies on a string.  Then I realized that the hole in the coin is not quaint; it is practical.

Design-wise, the Nigerian pennies and ha’pennies had the Star of David on them.  The Star of David was ideal for a coin with a hole in the middle.  However, the design did make me wonder if I was living amongst one the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

I loudly proclaimed the superiority of decimal currency to my Nigerian friends.  They did not believe me when I said that decimal currency was simple.  Pounds-shillings-pence was second-nature to them.

Luckily, the Central Bank of Nigeria believed that decimal currency was simple.  They switched the country to a decimal currency in 1973.

Now I no longer need to pity the Nigerian kids in second grade.


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SONG: If you haven't got a penny, then a ha'penny will do.  A young woman plays guitar and sings the old folk song (1.5 minutes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbIbjLGEas8

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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

She Would Rather Smoke Crack

When Gwyneth Paltrow announced that she would rather smoke crack than eat cheese in a can, I wondered why she thought cheese in a can was so horrid.

I like cheese in a can.  

In 1975 I lived in Sokoto, Nigeria, near the edge of the Sahara Desert.  There was only one kind of cheese produced in Sokoto: camel milk cheese.  There must be something special about camel milk because this cheese was very hard.  It had grooves in it and reminded me of white shingles that Americans use for siding their homes.

In a city where temperatures have been known to hit 117 degrees Fahrenheit, you need a cheese that is going to survive without refrigeration.  Camel milk cheese fit the bill, but it did not fit my idea of dairy sanitation.

If you stopped at a little neighborhood shop in Sokoto, you would find cigarettes, soft drinks, bread, laundry powder, and umbrellas.  You will also find Kraft cheese in a can --- a blue can from Australia.

I bought cans of Kraft cheese.  I made grilled cheese sandwiches.  I found that Kraft cheese pairs nicely with Nigerian beer.  I liked knowing that being geographically remote did not mean being cut off from cheese, even if it did come in a can.

Now I see that Kraft has started a campaign to import its blue cans of cheese into the United States.  The United States has plenty of cheese produced in nice sanitary conditions.  Who would buy these blue cans?

Survivalists.  

Kraft is marketing this “previously unavailable” cheese for disaster preparedness.  Any cheese that could survive sitting on a shelf in a neighborhood shop in Sokoto, Nigeria, can definitely claim to be survival cheese.

Cheese in a can made my life in Nigeria better.  Cheese in a can could save someone's life in post-Apocalyptic America.  So, why does Gwyneth despise it?

Oops, wrong cheese in a can.  

I think Gwyneth was talking about aerosol squirty cheese in cans, not my beloved blue cans of Kraft cheese.  OK…maybe crack is preferable to Easy Cheese squirted on a cracker.

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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

Enticed At The US Embassy Garden Party

The photo above shows a traffic jam in Lagos, Nigeria, one of the most chaotic cities in the world.  So chaotic that the Nigerian federal government abandoned Lagos and moved 450 miles away.

When I visited Lagos for Christmas in 1972 it was still the federal capital.  A friend of mine who worked at the US Embassy got me invited to a garden party at US Ambassador’s home.  The party was not a diplomatic affair; it was a Christmas gathering for the Embassy staff.

When I arrived at the party, I started mingling with the other guests.

I was in a group of five standing by the swimming pool, when the Ambassador’s wife came up to us and started talking.  She talked about the Kennedys.  She got a wistful look in her eye as she mentioned that whenever the Kennedys had garden parties, fully-clothed people would get pushed into the Kennedys’ pool.

I looked around.  All of her party guests were fully-clothed.  Five of her guests were standing by the pool.  Was she hoping to achieve some glamour by mimicking the Kennedys?  Did she think that the success of her party would be measured by the number of guests that got drenched in the pool?  Was she inciting us?

A little later, I was by myself when the Ambassador’s wife came up to me and started talking.  She repeated her wistful-eyed spiel about fully-clothed people getting thrown into the Kennedys’ pool.  I realized that I was the only non-Embassy employee at the party.  I was the only person who would not jeopardize his job by throwing someone in the Ambassador’s swimming pool.

Did she want to be thrown in?  Was she inciting me?

I wavered between granting her wish and behaving decorously.

Decorum won out.  The Ambassador’s wife stayed dry.  Everyone stayed dry.

But the Ambassador’s wife may not have been looking for glamour.  She may have been looking for levity.  She knew that the newest Embassy official and his wife would soon arrive at the garden party.

The new official had recently finished his training at the Foreign Service Institute, apparently an honor graduate with a promising career ahead of him.  His first assignment: Lagos, Nigeria.  He and his wife had just flown from Washington DC to Lagos a few days before the garden party.  

An Embassy van met them at the airport and drove them to their new home.  On this short drive through the streets of Lagos, the new official’s wife flipped out.  The chaos was too much for her.

The new official and his heavily-sedated wife arrived at the party.  The tone of the party turned somber.

People stared at the woman who could not bear the chaos of Lagos, a chaos everyone else had adapted to.  People stared at the man who, because of his wife, could no longer look forward to a promising foreign service career.  We all felt sorry for the unfortunate couple.

Maybe we should have pushed people into the swimming pool.  We would be standing around in our wet clothing, joking about being drenched.  

The Ambassador’s wife knew that would have been a lot nicer party than a group of people in dry clothing staring somberly at an unfortunate couple.

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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 Color Of Death

As a teacher in Nigeria, the tools of my trade were chalk and red ball-point pens.

The red ball-points were for grading papers. One day, I sat down to write a letter to someone in another part of Nigeria.  There were no blue ball-point pens nearby, so I used a red ball-point pen. I mailed the letter, and got a response back.

“Please do not write letters in red.  Red is the color of death.”

I had never thought about the color of death.   As an American, I probably would have chosen black as the color of death. 

After getting a scolding about colors, I made a point of carrying both a red pen and a blue pen in my pocket.  Red in case I needed to grade a student homework assignment; blue in case I needed to write anything else.

Nigeria underwent a Civil War from 1967 to 1970.  Before 1967, there were basically no guns in Nigeria and it was a peaceful place.  The Civil War changed that.

After the War there were a lot of weapons floating around.  Suddenly, Nigeria had to face an unheard-of crime: armed robbery with guns.  The Nigerian public was scared and outraged.  Laws were passed: if you committed a crime with a gun, you were to be executed.  The country was so outraged that they decided to bring back public executions.

One day, I was in the Principal’s office, when he said: “Mr. Schneider, here is a wasifa.”

The word wasifa does not translate handily into English.  Wasifa means “misfortune”, wasifa means “this is what we are up against”, wasifa means “this is our suffering.”

He handed me an envelope.  Inside was an invitation to a public execution.  My Principal was clearly upset.

I could not tell if he was upset about guns, or upset about armed robbery, or upset about public executions, or upset about being considered important enough to sit in the VIP section to view an execution.

I looked at the invitation; it was printed on nice paper with nice script.  Nigeria was not used to inviting people to executions.  It was clear that the government had used a printing company that printed wedding invitations.

This, however, was not an engraved invitation to witness someone’s wedding.  It was an engraved invitation to witness someone’s death.  

It was printed in red.

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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

This Is Not The Congo

When I arrived in Nigeria to teach mathematics, I had only done two weeks of student teaching back in the States.  I was still wet behind the ears.

As a new teacher, I wondered how to maintain discipline in a Nigerian classroom.  However, when I started teaching, I found the Nigerian students to be polite and attentive. 

I forgot about my concern about discipline --- until the second month, when one class got a bit talkative.  I was about to ask for quiet, when a voice boomed out from the back of the classroom: “This is not the Congo!”  Immediate silence.

I pieced together what had happened.  In 1964, Nigeria had sent peacekeeping troops to the Congo, which was in the midst of civil unrest.  For Nigerians, the Congo became a symbol of chaos.  The mere mention of the Congo had shamed the class into silence.

There was something deeper going on.  I had not disciplined the class – the class had disciplined itself.  I had learned a lesson.

Many years later, when I was in the Army, I taught at the Fort Lewis School Command.  I recalled the lesson I had learned in Nigeria: a class should discipline itself.

I put a plan into action, with a little help from my brother, Richard Schneider, and from Quick Draw McGraw.  My brother had put a sponge-rubber ball on the end of a three-foot dowel, and called his invention: “The Kabonger”.  He named it in honor of El Kabong, who was Quick Draw McGraw’s alter ego: an awkward and inept superhero, who swings from a rope and bops evildoers on the head with his guitar. 

My brother used his Kabonger to playfully bop his kids on the head to remind them to calm down.

I scoured Fort Lewis and found a sponge-rubber ball and a three-foot dowel. I made a Kabonger, and took it to my class.  When a soldier acted up, I did not hit him.  Instead I gave the Kabonger to a soldier sitting next to him, and had that soldier bop the offender on the head.

It worked.  In fact, the Kabonger worked so well that soldiers in the class would recognize when someone was out of line and would ask me for the Kabonger.  They would then proceed to bop the offender over the head. 

The Army class was disciplining itself.  And, I, of course, would never get court marshaled for bopping a soldier over the head.

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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

Change My Climate And My Soul

I looked forward to arriving in Africa.  Africa was an entire continent where no one knew me.  I would be able to re-invent myself by putting an ocean and a long plane flight between me and my awkward old self back in America.

A new self!  I planned on having a wonderful new self.  I would set foot on the African continent and instantly be suave and quick-witted.

The United States Peace Corps flew me across the ocean to the capital city of Nigeria, where I was housed in a college dormitory for a few days of orientation.

At the first opportunity, I went out to take a walk.  I wanted to test out my new self.

I spotted a Nigerian man, who broke into a big welcoming smile when he saw me.  Aha, my suaveness was readily apparent.

I greeted him: “Good morning!” --- I was getting ready to show off my quick-wittedness.

He responded: “Good morning, Sir!  Would you like to buy a copy of The Watchtower?”  The man proceeded to show me an array of pamphlets.  He was a Jehovah’s Witness.

I thought I was a new man with a huge amount of suaveness and quick-wittedness.  Instead, I heard myself saying: “Yes, I will buy a copy of The Watchtower.”

I walked back to the dormitory, Watchtower in hand.  My first encounter with Africa had shown me that I had not become suave or quick-witted.  I had simply been my old self, meekly spending a couple of shillings for a pamphlet I did not want, in order to avoid disappointing someone.

During the six years I spent in Africa, I no longer pretended I could re-invent myself.  I must have changed in some ways, but I remained fundamentally the same person.

Recently, I came across a quote from Quintuus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace, the poet who lived in ancient Rome.  He had summed up my folly some 2000 years before I arrived in Africa.

He said: “They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea." 

Horace was right.

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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