pictures, finally

My internet is fast (for now) and I can finally upload some pictures! They are all at this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/ScottBrReed. Many of them were taken by Eugene, you can see his flickr page at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eekim/

I wish I could write the story behind each picture…but, that would take forever. Hopefully I can be better about uploading pictures a little bit at a time.

treats

Last night I had goat’s head soup.

Everyone has their “school” where they go for what, in their opinion, is the best version in town. Yahiya and Judith took a couple of us to a part of town we hadn’t been to in the past week, and one that I never would have expected to exist. Because Kano is predominantly Muslim and under Sharia law, alcohol is either not available or illegally sold, usually in restaurants and hotels. Judith told us of a time when a previous governor walked into a hotel with a group of thugs and smashed all the beer bottles they had.

Most if not all the restaurants we’ve visited in the past week have been in the hotel district and serve beer, and most were more or less what you would expect of a restaurant anywhere (except one Chinese place served Cow Penis Soup, not really sure how that is possible or what it really is, but there you have it).

But last night we ended up in an area that has an unspoken rule of freedom to consume alcohol and have a good time. Beer gardens lined the streets and people, cars, and bikes were everywhere. This area brings in a lot of money and its off limits to police intervention. We sat around a small outdoor table with crowd of other groups around us transfixed on the final EuroCup game playing on a few small, old TVs. We ordered our beers (Gulder is Nigerian) and waited for our meals. Behind us a women smashed the cooked goat heads into small pieces before they were spiced and and made into a stew like dish. Apparently she is there every night, and her skill and smashing makes this “school” the best.

Luckily, it was dark out with little lights around us, so I couldn’t exactly see what was in front of me, but an entire (small) head was there every part, in little pieces mixed up in a spicy sauce. Of course you eat it all with your hands. So, I picked it up part by part, unaware of what it was exactly (but you could sort of guess by how chewy and how much cartilage was in each bite).

….I liked it! The taste wasn’t outrageously different than anything I’ve had before, and I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of an intelligible animal head that was sitting in front of me. YZ apparently has his own school, so I’ll definitely ask him to take me so I can compare and choose my own “place”.  It was really the entire experience that made it enjoyable, though. Everything is so ironic and contradictory here. There is so much rules and religion, but at the same time, so much chaos and freedom. I feel lucky that I have local connections here that can show me places that I doubt many tourists visit, not that Kano is much of tourist destination.

Until next time….