But along the trip, I took notes in my new "blog notebook," so here are some of the things that interested me along the way:
- rocky hills through a haze of powdery red dust
- roadside market stalls, all identical and selling the exact same produce
- 9 gutted filling stations and 8 working filling stations
- fields littered with plastic bags of all colours and sizes
- brown plains atop the plateau, with hardly a tree in sight
- stick shelters--four sticks at the corners and a roof of more sticks--makes me think of Jonah
- a barren concrete foundation abandoned in the middle of a field
- red mud brick houses with corrugated tin roofs
- cacti surrounding little farm plots
- black charred fields--remnants of slash-and-burn
- goats, including the one we almost hit while it crosses the road
- lots and lots of Fulani cows
- 19 chuches and 6 mosques (I'm not sure if this is because I wasn't paying attention or because churches are just easier for me to spot than mosques. The fact is that the number of mosques and churches should be about equal.)
- people making mud bricks in a streambed
- concrete houses with tin roofs
- trees--flame, mango, eucalyptus, papaya, lots I don't recognise
- a nice-looking house with no windows, blue walls visible inside, and a missing roof
- primary school children playing in the schoolyard at recess
- young boys at the railroad crossing selling cabbage
- young men playing pool at an outdoor pool table on the far side of the railroad tracks
- turkeys for sale
- 12 wrecked cars
a "no passing" sign when we descend the plateau- 5 signs that eloquently ask you to slow down (Ironically, we were going too fast for me to read what they actually said.)
- "PDP" written on rocks in white paint
- 2 skull & crossbones signs along the right side of the road along a steep dropoff
- bougainvillaea
- bundles of drying hay leaning against buildings
- mud brick houses with thatched roofs
- forest of teak trees growing in rows
- road checkpoint with men in t-shirts and orange vests
- police checkpoint
- palm trees once we're off the plateau
- a small flatbed truck full of men
- government schools with shuttered windows
- a pick-up truck with blankets piled 4' high on top of its roof
- a bright pink concrete house
- a tree with bright yellow flowers overhanging the road shoulder
- a man in a long white kaftan and red cap riding a bicycle
- white cassava drying alongside the road
- high school boys out running in a huge pack
- a woman carrying a large bag of water on her head
- a 3' high termite mound
- 4 adult men on a motorcycle
- a woman backing a baby and carrying 3 calabashes on her head
- a gate standing lone in the midst of a barren field
- 42 filling stations on the inbound Keffi-Abuja expressway (in 34 minutes)
- cattle crossing signs
- big white bags of charcoal for sale on the side of the road
- a tarp-covered truck with a fluorescent yellow cab
- a black chicken surrounded by white chicks all pecking in a garbage heap
- 2 beggar boys come to bless us in Hausa when we stop for a moment in a small town
- 2 women carrying large metal bowls on their heads, topped by long sticks of wood
- dry brown fields of furrowed earth waiting for the rain
- 4 men sitting on the ground under a mango tree
- 2 red Mack trucks
- women washing clothes in a stream
- colourful clothes spread on bushes to dry
- a white van with its back doors open and 5 men standing on the bumper, hanging onto the back
- a blue canvas tent held up with strings
No comments:
Post a Comment