A strange sight this morning; a boy riding a ‘flying pigeon’. Now I suppose you have a mental image of a little lad sitting on the back of an enormous pigeon. Well, you are wrong. A flying pigeon is a heavy weight bicycle with no gears that’s imported from China. He rode over the rough ground balancing a one metre diameter enamel bowl on his head, filled with his laundry and a radio. He got off his bike, turned it around and headed in the opposite direction without even giving a thought to what was on his head.
I wish I had that kind of balance. The children start practicing at a very young age; the smallest children are often walking up and down outside their homes with a glass pop bottle balanced on their head.
We had a sports afternoon and students came from the Federal College in Kano to play football against our school. The boys at the college come from all over Nigeria so many of them don’t speak Hausa. Our boys were shouting instructions to each other in Hausa and so our opponents had no idea what they were saying. This really frustrated them and they kept shouting to tell our boys to stop doing it. During the match, one of their teachers marched onto the field, picked up the ball and declared the game was over. It was a wonder there wasn’t a riot; there was plenty of whistles and howls coming from the students.
