Introduction:

In 1977-1978, sponsored by a Canadian NGO, I taught in a boys’ boarding high school in northern Nigeria.  Looking at my grainy 110 photos of that era, I am struck by just what a wildly colourful place it was. Nigeria, at that time, was in the midst of an oil boom. That boom financed massive growth and even more massive corruption. Yet amid the near anarchy was kaleidoscopic vitality. Living there was like being in the midst of an explosion with pieces flying around. With twitching antennae–– I tried to spin along with it all…

Just a year after completing that stint at a boys’ school in Islamic Nigeria, I was posted at a girls’ school in Tanzania, overseen by Catholic nuns. Despite the spectacular setting of Mount Kilimanjaro, it seemed as though I had catapulted from a rowdy roadhouse into a Sunday school…  

No less jarring was the contrast between an African country on petroleum-fueled hyper-drive and another in near economic collapse. The previous year, the Tanzanian military had overthrown the brutal Idi Amin regime in neighbouring Uganda. That incursion was not only condemned by the Organization of African States but it all but drained the Tanzanian treasury. Added to that misery, the severe shortages of basic goods and near-worthless currency was severely testing support for the official policy of ‘Ujamaa’ [Tanzanian socialism].

Still, Tanzanians as I came to know them, were proud and patriotic. Yet quite in contrast to the lengthy chats I recalled with Nigerian colleagues on any topic (especially political) without restriction, Tanzanians often seemed wary. Their guardedness in the presence of ‘wageni’ [foreigners] sometimes verged on suspiciousness. Any hint of disfavour for the policies of President Julius Nyerere, AKA ‘Mwalimu’ [teacher], was especially risky. Despite these strains and the relative austerity, my sojourn there was poignantly memorable.

 I was privileged to encounter both in Nigerian in 1977-1978 and Tanzania in 1980-1981, some of the most remarkable people I have ever met. The following excerpts from (now discarded) notebooks are a sampling of indelible impressions of that era…

–2025, Sept. (Revised)

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1 Vignettes from Nigeria (1977-1978)

Inspection at Dambatta House

Sharia, light?

Of an ever-present danger

A traditional healing

Down by the river

First visit of the student nurses

Of the delicate and the ‘rough’

With the student nurses in the first rain

Asabe with knife and fork

Of western vices

More guy-talk in the idle staffroom

Gathering wild honey and pacifying evil’s maw

Tidbits from Igboland

The Audu issue

Horrific glimpse of the Biafra war

Slaughter on the roadways

From Ibadan to Onitsha–– heart in mouth

Of an unchosen sacrifice

Kano abattoir nightmare

Visiting Captain Philips

My Proustian image for Nigeria?

OPEN:

2 Vignettes from Tanzania (1980-1981)

Of Warring European Monkeys

Barbed Cordiality

Snippets of ‘Uchawi’

Kilimanjaro Robin Hood

Détente in Weru-Weru

OPEN:

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