Its beyond hot, it’s burning hot, very hot. The kind of heat that makes you reconsider life from angles you never expected, the piercing heat that doesn’t draw any sweat from your body but rather picks every pore in your skin and inserts in it, pure white-hot pain, and I’m supposed to be grateful for the sun. In spite of the obvious difficulties like thirst and extreme heat, one could still stand in awe of nature and appreciate that invisible force that is responsible for all life. It makes you appreciate Kano.
Two days before, I bid my parents good bye and got on a plane to Adamawa, yola. What I expected was to land in 2 hours, get to my school, register and sleep till Monday morning. Apparently fate had another thing planned for me. I got on the wrong plane while my luggage was on another (my fist time of boarding a plane) and landed in Kano, Nigeria. My knowledge of Hausa was beyond limited; I lost my phone and landed in the most technologically backward place I have ever seen in my entire life. In two days, I had wandered from street to street and slept in a shack. It had rained on me, I had my wallet stolen, tasted “fura de nono” and “masa” for the first time. I even managed to get chased down the proverbial street, well because I stole something, and shoplifting had even tougher measures here than I expected. To that story shall we?
I was somewhere between an unknown street in an unknown location, but I knew my bearings having contacted my parents and told them I was in Kano. I was walking to what appeared the nearest “boat port” as I like to call it, and I caught the smell of the most deliciously arranged fish I had seen there. I was hungry, beat and really was in need of food. I proceeded to buy from her, but she had no change for my apparently large sum of a thousand naira. So I did the most logical thing my famished brain told me to do, I grabbed one and ran, fast.
I’ve never believed myself to be much of a runner, oh but I ran. Ran like hell was behind me, ran like I would die if I stopped, I was way too hungry to give up that fish and my God, it was good. It had there spices in them that just made me nostalgic for the familiar. Wow, and I didn’t even like spices, but here, in this foreign state, in a foreign, backyard, I savored the moment with a bittersweet feeling.
Needless to say, I got on another plane, looking like something that rhymes with “hit” and got back to
Yola and my school safely with my luggage intact, but before I did, I offered up one last look at the place that had offered me my most exciting adventure, believe it or not. Thank you Kano
