What Holiday is This?

Do You Know This Holiday?

In honor of the Muslim holiday of Id El Kabir I share with you an excerpt from Chapter 2 of my memoir during my first year in Nigeria. It starts when I had planned to travel with my friend Art to northern Nigeria. At the last minute he decided not to come.

“The next day I continued the trip alone and disappointed. But it turned out to be a fortunate choice, for at the Government Rest House in Kaduna, I met an English woman and struck up a conversation. I must have seemed rather curious to her. I looked my age of 22, was on my own,and carried little luggage.

“I told her that my friend had been unable to come and that I wasn’t sure of my next step, but I did want to see other cities in the North. She suggested that I join her, her husband, and their traveling companion to go to Zaria, a couple of hours north. I accepted her offer without hesitation.

“John Harris, their traveling companion, was the librarian at University College Ibadan and had made Nigeria his home for years; he had become an expert on the country’s history and culture. I think the woman who invited me along may have been eager for female companionship or thought John would welcome another woman, especially a young and naïve one, to whom his stories would be new.

“I spent a fascinating week with them. In Zaria, I was introduced to the old city walls and the dye pits where men embroidered the newly dark cotton fabric with intricate Arabic-style designs. We went on to Kano, an ancient Hausa city like Zaria but larger. More of its old city wall was standing. John told me it was started in the eleventh century and finished hundreds of years later.

“The emir’s palace was a sand-colored adobe building occupying a whole city block. The guards were striking in heavily embroidered red robes and red turbans, mounted on richly decorated horses. John asked for an audience, and we were escorted to the throne room, where the emir sat on a heavy wooden throne, surrounded by courtiers and petitioners. John exchanged a few sentences with the emir and introduced us before we bowed our way out.

“I marveled at the costumes, the people, and the traditional buildings. I liked best the impressive Kano Central Mosque with its gold turrets. I took a photograph that I sent as a greeting card the following Christmas.

“We started our return to the south but paused on the Jos Plateau in the Middle Belt region. John had his driver take us to two villages, not more than five miles apart, with two different languages. He wanted me to understand that Nigeria really did have more than two hundred languages, as I’d read. These spots in the hills had barely been touched by Western changes.

“The men in the second village, where we stopped to take pictures, wore nothing but penis sheaths made of gourds fastened with raffia. The women had on loincloths, beads around their waists, and long earrings. The villagers didn’t seem curious about us or mind our observing.

“Our last night was in the Government Rest House in Jos, a comfortable colonial structure with wide verandas sheltered by deep thatched roofs with extending eaves. After dinner with wine, John came to my room. “I am so happy to have met you,” he said as he stroked my face. “Will you come see me sometime?”

“I will. And thank you for bringing me along.” I realized with a start that he wanted intimacy that I wasn’t prepared to offer, and I moved his hand away. He quietly withdrew as he wished me good-night. Next morning, it was as if it had never happened.

Back in Ibadan, I boarded a train to Lagos with a much deeper knowledge of the North than I would have gained with my friend Art or other Peace Corps volunteers.”

“The spring of my first year was busy and exciting. I became more confident and a better teacher. The students at Ojo were progressing well, though the girls were still reluctant to speak. For the English and literature classes, there was a syllabus provided, so lesson preparation was fairly straightforward. African history was more challenging. I remembered some of what I’d learned in Peace Corps training, but to teach it, I had to read further and decide what would be most interesting to the students.

“I became ever more captivated as I read. Starting in the seventh century AD, just decades after Mohammed’s death, newly converted Muslims from North Africa crossed the Sahara on trade and religious missions. They extended their influence southward into the semiarid lands of northern West Africa. But with forbidding tropical forests and mosquitoes barring their way, they never reached the coast.

“There had been powerful Muslim kingdoms in West Africa—the Songhai Empire was a name I loved. Timbuktu had been a center of learning and trade in the 1500s. Kanem, Borno, Oyo and Benin were all names I knew in modern Nigeria that had once been kingdoms on their own. But by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these empires had disappeared.

“European explorers, then traders, approached the southern coast. Slaves were seized and shipped to Europe and the Americas. Catholic, Anglican, and soon other Protestant missionaries followed. The Middle Belt in Nigeria was largely untouched by explorers, traders, or missionaries from either the North or South, as I had seen for myself.”

I conclude this part of the memoir by talking about the slave trade, not well known to the students at Ojo. When one of older boys described seeing the slave trading post at Badagry, only a few miles away, it became real to them.

I Put My Knowledge to Work in Westport

At the gym on Monday morning I overheard two women discussing traffic in New York City. One said, “It must be some holiday.” The other said, “Isn’t the Jewish holiday over?”

I couldn’t resist speaking up. “It’s Id,” I said. “What?” They turned to me in surprise. “It’s Id el Fitr, a Muslim holiday,“ I continued . “I don’t know if it has anything to do with New York traffic. But it is a major event celebrating the end of Ramadan.”

“You seem to know what you’re talking about,” one of the women said as she left the dressing room. A few minutes later I saw her on the way into the Pilates class that all three of us were attending. I apologized for interrupting their conversation.

“No, that was fine. It was really interesting,” she said. I asked her name – Ricky – and explained that I had lived in Nigeria, a country that was nearly half Muslim, for many years.

She then surprised me by saying her ex-husband used to bring Yoruba students to their home.

“I loved hearing them speak their language, so different from any I knew,” she said. “Do you speak Yoruba?”-

I told her I had learned Yoruba, one of Nigeria’s three major languages, during Peace Corps training a long time ago. “But my husband is Igbo, so I’ve learned his language. It’s also tonal.”

What fun to learn other people’s stories. But when I came home I checked on the holiday – I was wrong! It was Id El Kabir, not Id El Fitr.

New Challenge

Here’s a new challenge for you. What occasion does Id El Kabir, also called Id or Eid El-Adha, this holiday celebrate? (You can choose your favorite spelling; there are many variations.)

Speaking of challenges, Lynda and Lowell answered what October 1 signifies for Nigeria – independence from Great Britain, when Nigeria ceased to be a colony.

But no one answered why the date of October 1^st was chosen for Nigeria’s Independence.

Usually when I give you a challenge question, I know the answer. But I don’t know this one. I’ve searched and still not found the answer! So I’ve posted the question on the Nigeria Nostalgia page on Facebook. I’ll let you know when I find out.