Kano Durbar write up

Kano is the second largest city in Nigeria and lies about 2 hours North of Kaduna, we were off there for Salah which is a Muslim festival celebrating the Abraham not killing his son and thinking perhaps god might be a bit more into a ram bbq instead. One of the advantages of being in a 50/50 country is that there are public holidays for both religions holidays, which actually means there are a ridiculous number of public holidays, not that i’m complaining.

In honour of the salah there is a Durbar in Kano, which is where all the local tribes surrounding Kano show their loyalty to the Emir by staging a mounted parade and having a quick charge at his palace, as you do.

The were two days of Durbar, the first day is the Emir going from his palace to the mosque to say a Salah prayer, a distance of about 10 yards, but in the spirit of celebration he makes a short diversion around the rest of the city first. He is preceded by the mounted massed representatives of the tribes in their traditional ceremonial get up of colourful armour and the occasional spear. Once these guys get to the mosque they have a bit of a charge at the Emir’s palace’s back gate, which is quite amusing as its a lot of people charging at a brick wall. Bearing in mind the organisational level is pretty low and the health and safety officer is on his day off there are obvious issues with the charge as fast as you can, then pull up at the last moment approach to paying tribute, and a number of times the guys at the back of the charge cannoned into the slowing horses in front smashing them into the wall. After every tribe has had its go at having a bit of a charge the Emir rocks up with his entourage and says a bit of a prayer. The entourage featured amongst other things his personal umbrella man who seems to have gone to the local pub beer garden, nicked one of the shades then sowed some sequins on it to make it a bit classy and manly.

Being White and a man with a camera i was allowed to walk almost where i liked, which was amazing if a little scary. The atmosphere and energy created by being completely surrounded by horses, crazy music and people who think that playing chicken with a brick wall is a fun Friday morning activity was brilliant. When the Emir turned up I got pulled out of the crowd and put on the end of a line of traditional bodyguards about 5 yards from the head honcho, this was slightly awkward as i couldn’t help but feel i was ruining everyone else’s photos of a traditional Nigerian cultural festival, but i just snapped away happily.

On the walk from the volunteers house to the Mosque amongst all the horses were a large number of rams (see what salah is celebrating above). The rams can only be slaughtered after the salah prayer... the walk back with a 3 quite squeamish girls, featuring one vegetarian was a giggle. There was a lot of dead ram everywhere, every household tried to find a bit of street that wasn’t too covered in rotting rubbish and the used this area as their impromptu abattoir. The smell was pretty bad at the time, what it must be like a week of hot weather later i am trying not think about.

The second day is the main event, at the palace itself. Apparently there are around 2000 horsemen (probably no horsewomen i’m afraid) involved. Im not sure if you’ve ever seen 2000 horses before, this is a lot of horses, which take up a lot of space. Parading these horses is a bit like watching the London marathon, quite exciting at the beginning, but they just kept coming and coming and coming and pretty dressed up horse fatigue kicked in. We were very fortunate in that the Kano volunteer’s work colleague, knew someone, who knew some one, who once had dinner with someone who’s mum rant the event (or something like that). This was enough of a connection for us to be sneaked in for free to the VIP bit, which gave a great view (see photos) .

Eventually the emir, still followed by his pub umbrella twirling sidekick, turned up. There was more charging, some chappy’s in red turned up and let of what sounded like portable cannon’s off in some horses faces, which had a suitably calming effect on them. The things these guys were wielding were humorously described as muskets, but these things had barrels a couple of inches thick and had enough gun powder in them to start a November the 5th style plot. Once the Emir had showed his face and everyone had a bit of a charge, it was everyone back to their houses for a bit of yesterdays burnt offering let over curry (i assume).

The event was really amazing, it was the first properly cultural type thing i had seen in Nigeria and it was nice to see something that was a spectacle, but not something artificial. I can definitely recommend coming to see this if you can handle Nigeria’s crazyness and don’t mind a someone less progressive attitude to animal welfare.

We met a guy from the British high commission in Abuja on the second day, being volunteers we instantly asked for a lift home. Being nice i let the girls have the 3 spaces in the back and went to the motor park to get a bush taxi, only when i got back to Kaduna did i find out that they got a police escort all the way, dammit.

On another note, my laptop has had its first malfunction, the left click key on the tracker pad is bugger up... grrrr. Anyone knowing of a fix or how much i would have to replace to get this fixed please leave answers below.