Show 0 ar AX V UZ 16 S MM 4 3 3 4 I 1 Z Z W L native african dancing girl prepared by national Nat lonal geographic society washington D C service FTER rolling over the thousands of smooth roads of the united states it is a thrilling adventure to mount a sidecar side car equipped motorcycle and three wheel across nigeria from lagos the chief port on the shore of the atlantic to kano hano near the northern nigeria border OS off down the main street of lagos you roar followed by half the black population of the city all craning their necks to see what is going on soon you are popping along through the coastal jungle towering walls of tropic greenery push in on the narrow road from elther either side clasp limbs and tendrils overhead and drop long sinuous tentacles through the gloom southern nigeria is thickly populated and as you jolt along over the trail you know from the sounds that float out from the jungle jangle that back behind those seemingly impenetrable walls are hundreds of little farmsteads and plantations tat ions every now and then you catch a glimpse of one through the matted tangle of ferns and creepers just a squat overgrown grass beehive of a hut surrounded by a patch of cocoa trees guinea corn durra or peanuts with a woolly headed yoruba husbandman grubbing in the mold and half a dozen little black man cubs romping in the sun or occasionally a village of a dozen huts or so whiling the day through in pagan content they are not bad folk these yoruba considering their opportunities ambitious enough 0 for the climate law abiding and quicker at thinking than the average west african they number more than and most of them occupy the country south and west of the niger to dahomey taking tea with the alake on the evening of the first day out from lagos you atit put up with some american missionary friends in abeo abao kuta 64 miles inland and the next nest day go to pay your respects to the alake black potentate of this branch of the yoruba nation and ruler over some souls he serves tea from exquisite china with all the aplomb of an ambassador from the court of st james and speaks oxford english E anglish but his face anthracite black and shiny beneath the ponderous silver coronet given his predecessor by queen victoria is slashed with the tribal marks and his I 1 thick hick lips open and close over a row of filed teeth and across the courtyard you 11 see one of the alakel wives and her f several inky offspring sitting on the floor eating couscous with their fingers out of a big carven calabash some 58 miles inland you come to laadan a pagan metropolis sprawled over a score of hills largest city in tropical africa is laadan people sweating working loving dying year after year back there in the jungle 11 one wonders what life holds for them and yeti yet in strolling through the market place you note that at T least every third citizen is smiling poor benighted heathen they do not k know now any better than to enjoy life as they find it I 1 there are people and not a sewer pipe within the city limits but J theres tap ane sun and the goats I 1 you colic conclude lude before you have been J abadan half an hour that here Is not savagery but civilization a sim pie sturdy civilization well fitted to survive under conditions in which a more luxurious culture probably would have perish you stop to inquire the way in a street which seems to be the manufacturing fac turing center of the town manufactures in laadan on the left is a whole row of coal black silversmiths squatting cross legged in their 2 by 4 mud workshops and tinkling at their little anvils and next to them three cheery chaps in G strings who hammer out aluminum earrings and anklets danklets an klets and there are half a dozen ebony craftsmen who make long barbed spears so esthetically chased that it must be a real pleasure to get stuck with one of them farther down are the potteries you stop to watch three well muscled young wenches rhythmically battering away at a gigantic wooden mortar of clay with mighty G toot foot pestles the market place of abadan Is a bizarre and fascinating jumble of sights sounds and smells of which the smells especially those emanating from the juju section are perhaps the most bizarre and the least fascinating halt half the population of the city it seems to you is selling something squatting cross le legged ged on the ground with the something peppers kola nuts ornaments salt or what not arranged in neat little piles before them of the other half milling about from stall to stall a very few seem to be buying something but the most are just shopping it reminds you of home the jabbering is heterogeneous and terrific here are merchant and matron in heated climax the halt half hour haggle which prefaces every sale in this land where small turnover turn over and big talk over are the rule of trade and over there a knot of chattering young things with their heads together busily slandering in her absence the girl who has just won the most eligible young man in town exactly like civilized people to jebba and beyond beyond abadan the highway soon loses all desire it had ever had to amount to something in this world and before you get to clorin 92 miles farther it peters out into nothing but a thin trail through the tall grass jebba marks the approximate northern limit of the yoruba tribes eighty miles upstream on the niger Is busa where the famous scots explorer mungo park was drowned while trying to escape a native attack bida capital of the people is about 80 miles east cast of jebba as the crow flies on the route to kano beyond jebba are beautiful roads for half a mile then you cross the lordly niger on the railroad bridge A mile the other side of the river you plunge back into the bush and never see those two little ribbons of steel again till you get to bida three days later life in bida seems most bizarre and exotic at first pocket size pot bel lied nanny goats trot up and down the streets on business with their teats dragging on the ground dignified robed patriarchs on bicycles bump into them and swear in six black thick thich lipped heralds blow shrill blasts on 4 foot brass trumpets before the gates of an enormous mud walled palace the emir passes on a stunted pony both wrapped in pomp and circumstance turbans embroidered robes a sunshade and a horsetail horse tail tall for the emir tassels cassels tas sels gold trappings and a high backed red saddle for the tired little pony and the drummers knaves and swaddled courtiers string out behind on toot foot kano with a population of about Is a crossroad of west africa the foremost commercial and manufacturing fac turing center in the wes west t central sudan |