A Gift from Darkness Read online

  “Paid for already?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But the numbers don’t agree with our system.”

  Oh, great, I think. What’s that supposed to mean? Is he trying to tell me that the tickets I bought in Germany are invalid? “That’s impossible,” I protest helplessly. “Please look again!”

  My phone wanders from hand to hand all around the airport, with me running after it. At least a dozen men stare at the document from abroad that’s stored on it. It feels like hours until at last they find someone who’s able to convert the international booking code into a local one—and who demands a healthy sum of money in return. I pay up.

  But by now it’s almost half past ten. Do we even have time to postpone the flight for another day? Just as I want to ask this awkward question, Renate hobbles up on her crutches. She is beaming. “The lady from the luggage office came,” she cries, “and the suitcase is there too!”

  “So I don’t need to rebook?”

  “No, it’s all fine!”

  She points to a young man who’s come behind her to the counter with a trolley: all our luggage is stacked up on it. He zealously heaves our cases on to the scales, and wants to be rewarded accordingly. A hefty charge is also leveled on our excess baggage.

  This is the first personal lesson that I learn about Nigeria, which enjoys the dubious reputation of being the most corrupt country in the world: there are lots of problems and there are lots of people who make money from solving those problems. Everything costs money. That’s how the system works.

  Then we’re on the Medview plane. I haven’t a clue why the company should be called “Mediterranean view.” From the window I see the skyscrapers and the mosques of Abuja, whose domes gleam in the distance. And the vast outskirts of one-story houses that twist around the metropolis and spill further and further into the bush. The houses become increasingly humble the further they are from the center. The huts of the people who have moved from the country form the outermost ring around the city.

  When we’ve left even those behind, the land is more sparsely populated. Near Abuja the soil is still fertile and many of the fields grow maize or cassava. But the further north we fly, the sparser the vegetation. Soon there are only very scattered trees in the steppe-like landscape, through which the Fulani nomads drive their herds of thin cattle. The lack of rain has dried the ground out—even though the dry season has only just started. Everything seems to have the same earth-colored tone.

  At last it becomes hazy. It looks as if a veil has settled over the earth. At first I think it must be clouds. But strangely they don’t part even when the plane begins its descent.

  “That’s bad luck, the harmattan has started already,” Renate says.

  “The what?”

  “The desert storm.”

  I look out the window again. What to European eyes looks like mist or fog is really very fine particles of dust. They give even the strongest African sun barely a chance to reveal its power. “And how long does it last?”

  “About a month. It’s a phenomenon that occurs all over Africa. During the dry season the wind stirs up sand from the Sahara, which is then suspended like this over large parts of the continent. But it also helps to fertilize the fields with good loessic soil,” she explains. So the harmattan will come with us on our journey.

  The plane judders as we approach the ground. A herd of goats on the edge of the runway flees. The asphalt is warped or burst in many places. Still the pilot manages to bring the plane down safely. Renate and I look at each other.

  “So, we’re there,” she beams.

  We climb down the gangway, Renate still on crutches. We look around curiously. The airport building is right in front of us: a charred structure scattered with bullet holes, all its windows gaping. These are the traces that Boko Haram left in December 2013 when the group tried to overrun the town. I’m shocked by the destructive frenzy revealed by the serious damage to the building. You can’t even get inside it. Instead we collect our luggage from a container that has been set up next to the demolished airport building.

  While I trudge across the steaming airfield in the midday heat I become aware that Renate and I are actually the only foreign and white passengers who have strayed here: for that reason we are the only ones asked into a tent beside the container. Two Nigerian army officers want to see our passports. The officers ask us very seriously who we are, and what we plan to do here. Renate refers to her charity work in the EYN church, the “Church of the Brethren” that missionaries founded in 1923, and which now has around 350,000 members. The younger officer is clearly unimpressed. But the eyes of the older one begin to gleam. He assures us that we are most welcome.

  Here in the north, where Muslims are in the majority, Christians form just fifteen percent of the population. Most of them only gave up their traditional beliefs a few generations ago. They are members of smaller tribes, who were chased by the more influential Kanuri. The Kanuri, whose kingdom was formed in the ninth century, ruled the Lake Chad basin and the north of present-day Nigeria for almost a thousand years. The pious emirs, who celebrated public prayer and Qur’an readings in their empire in the eleventh century, did a brisk trade across the Sahara. Their most important commodity was people who belonged to different ethnic groups and worshipped other gods. The Kanuri felt superior to them, and sold them as slaves to rich tribes and the Middle East. So it wasn’t difficult for the Christian missionaries to persuade groups who had previously been hunted to adopt a different religion from their pursuers and oppressors when they came into contact with the modern world. In many places elements of traditional belief were preserved.

  “He’s probably a Christian himself,” Renate whispers to me in German as our names are recorded by hand in a large book.

  Then we step outside. Waiting behind a chicken-wire fence are Renate’s friends and their companion: two women in tight, brightly patterned dresses and a young man in a white shirt and well-ironed flannel trousers. They have come to the airport with the police to collect us.

  The younger of the two women, small and plump, in her thirties, waves to Renate from a distance and starts crying when she sees her limping. “Mamiiii! What happened to you?” Rebecca calls at the top of her voice.

  “Not to worry, I can walk just as well without crutches,” the vicar says, trying to reassure her. But Rebecca, Renate’s closest colleague in Maiduguri, is inconsolable. And she gives free rein to her emotions. As we load the luggage onto the little bus, she sobs noisily. It’s only when Renate throws her crutches in the luggage space and skips around the car park unaided a couple of times that she stops. “I only brought them along because I thought they might be useful to you,” Renate says with a smile. Rebecca stares at her in disbelief for a moment, then laughs as well.

  We sit in the back of the bus, another security measure. Because the windows are darkened, no one can see us from the road. As few people as possible are to get wind of our stay in Maiduguri. Curious, I look outside as we drive into the city through a big concrete gate. WELCOME TO MAIDUGURI, it says at the top of the arch. It’s only at second glance that I see that it too is riddled with bullet holes. The frequent battles fought here between Boko Haram and the army have left their traces everywhere.

  There’s not much happening in the streets. Curious for a city whose inhabitants have trebled in number over the past few years to around three million because of the internal flow of refugees. There are hardly any street vendors, and there’s very little traffic in the streets, but there are lots of military checkpoints: soldiers barricaded behind sandbags observe the traffic.

  Occasionally they beckon a car out, demand to see the driver’s papers and examine the chassis for explosives with their detectors. They’re trying to filter out any possible suicide bombers. But in many cases they haven’t managed to do that: here, on the wide boulevard built by the British, the Islamists bombed their way into the city only a few months ago.

  Apart from
these wide roads, however, there’s little to remind you that the British, after their victory over the northern caliphates shortly after the end of the nineteenth century, extended their influence all the way here. Officially, in 1914 they united the protectorate of Northern Nigeria with the protectorate of Southern Nigeria into a single colony called Nigeria. Even so, until 1946 the north and south had separate de facto administrations. It was only in the last few years prior to independence in 1960 that the central administration became more heavily involved in the affairs of the north.

  “But Boko Haram could never hold Maiduguri for long,” says the young man sitting beside the driver and holding a walkie-talkie: Daniel feels responsible for our safety. He’s an official of the Nigerian state and responsible for the refugees from the Christian villages.

  We leave the boulevard and turn into a dusty side street. The road is uneven, and there is rubbish all over the place, plastic bags and bottles. The middle-class houses are behind high walls; they have carefully barricaded themselves in. A wall is going up around a school building, in front of which a group of little boys is playing soccer: parents and teachers want to protect their children from attacks. Boko Haram has particularly targeted churches and schools.

  But then we pass by a school that hasn’t succumbed to fear. Boys with white embroidered praying-caps and old-fashioned slates sit under a tree. The Qur’an students are writing suras on their slates and trying to learn them by heart. Beside them a teacher in a white robe with a stick in his hand keeps an eye on their progress. If they don’t come up to scratch, it would seem that he probably sometimes resorts to the stick as well.

  The boys are barefoot; their clothes are unwashed and threadbare. Many of them come from the countryside, from very poor conditions. Their families send them to the Qur’an school, but they aren’t fed there and have to beg for their own meager subsistence. Some of them stand by the side of the road, pleadingly holding out their tin bowls. They ask for alms, something to eat. At first glance they look as harmless as all children. But it was here among the madrasas of Maiduguri that the Boko Haram movement formed and radicalized a few years ago, and it is here that it continues to enjoy its strongest support. Some of these boys in the threadbare shirts have, indoctrinated by their teachers or other radicals in the more extremist madrasas, already set off bombs in the market and killed all the bystanders. Their poverty makes them willing instruments of the Islamists.

  The boys with the tin bowls look curiously after our bus as we continue on our way. At that moment I’m very glad that we’re sitting behind darkened windows. We don’t want word of our stay in the city to reach the Qur’an schools under any circumstances.

  We pass by a residential estate for police officers and drive across an urban millet field piled high with rubbish. During the rainy season all of this land was under water. That was only a few weeks ago and may well explain why no one has built on the land.

  Beyond the field begins the district known as Jerusalem, the Christian quarter. It’s a poor, run-down part of town. We drive over a dusty field where several families are camped under the open sky, and head toward a big wall. We stop by the barrier. Daniel talks to the guards, who eye us with interest. A man with a detector looks under the vehicle for explosives—luckily he finds nothing. Then he lifts the barrier. We drive into a square enclosed by walls on all sides, at the middle of which stands a big whitewashed building with a tall spire at the side. This is the EYN church, the biggest church in Maiduguri.

  We are staying at the home of the vicar and his family. The one-story building, with chickens and turkeys pecking in the sand in front of it, is right next to the church. Rebecca has arranged a room for us, one that the family doesn’t use: she has had it painted and has brought a second mattress for me to sleep on while I leave the bed to Renate. In the adjoining bedroom a bucket with a ladle stands ready for washing. If we need hot water we’re just to let them know in the kitchen.

  “Do you think you’ll be all right here?” Rebecca asks anxiously.

  “Of course,” we both reassure her. Inside the church compound we are guarded around the clock, which means that we’re quite well protected against kidnapping, our hosts say. That’s why they wanted us to stay here.

  And for now we’re glad we’ve arrived. We slump exhaustedly onto the mattress, and for the time being ignore the fact that we’ve crept into the eye of the hurricane.

  We have an early start the next day. Shortly after sunrise there’s a lot of activity outside the church. Goods are being unloaded, people are hurrying back and forth, and the women are busying themselves in the kitchen with big metal cauldrons. “It’s harvest festival,” Renate tells me as we sort ourselves out in our room. “Here it’s celebrated after the end of the rainy season.”

  At that moment there is a knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer Rebecca storms in. She has smartened herself up and is wearing a bright orange dress. “Good morning, did you sleep well?” she says and sets a plastic thermos bowl down on the table. “Breakfast,” she says, and opens the container, revealing a steaming white liquid with an aroma that is both sweetish and sour.

  “Thank you!” Renate says, delighted. “This is kunnu, the breakfast here,” she explains to me. “You really must try it.”

  “What is it?”

  “A kind of porridge made of peanut butter, sugar and millet.”

  “Hm.” I try not to pull a face when Rebecca holds the bowl under my nose and gives me a challenging look.

  I hesitantly take a spoon. “It’s good!” I lie.

  “It gives you strength and keeps for ages.”

  “Hm.” I’m secretly wondering how I can avoid having to eat it all. Renate guesses my thoughts.

  “At least have a few spoonfuls,” she commands. “Rebecca got up specially this morning to cook for us.”

  I nod. I bravely continue devouring the indigestible meal. My friend the old Africa hand seems to have no trouble eating this breakfast. “Hm,” says Renate, but in a different tone to the one I just used. She actually enjoys this mush.

  Then the celebrations begin. I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, just like yesterday, and I notice I’m getting disapproving looks. “Are you going to go to church like that?” Rebecca asks.

  “Normally you would dress a bit smarter,” Renate explains. She herself is wearing a colorful African dress that emphasizes her cleavage and her figure. “And you may have noticed that women here always wear dresses. Only prostitutes wear trousers.”

  “What?”

  Rebecca starts laughing. “I’ll have an African dress made for you,” she suggests.

  “Good idea,” says Renate. She rummages around in one of her two enormous suitcases and takes out a beige and brown patterned top with a matching skirt. “And today you can wear this.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely.” I put the clothes on and the two women applaud.

  “Properly African,” says Rebecca. “Now you just need to have your hair done.” She insists on plaiting my hair. Soon I’m wearing my hair in the kind of braids that would have been considered the height of modernity in Germany about eighty years ago. And we’re ready to go, as far as she’s concerned: we stroll across the yard in our party frocks to the church, from which the sound of rhythmical pop music is already emerging. The room is full to the rafters. People are even sitting outside the doors.

  Some of the women recognize Renate from her time in Africa and wave to her. They clearly come from the villages that she looked after as a missionary. Now I understand why she chose this place as the base for her work with the Boko Haram widows: the EYN church in Maiduguri is the most important meeting point for Christian refugees from the whole region.

  The service begins with the ringing of bells. When you bear in mind that the building is surrounded by mosques and Qur’an schools, the sound of the bells over the city is particularly loud and penetrating. The service lasts a whole four hours—and puts my patience sorely to the test. But the con
gregation shows no sign of tiring. People sing, pray and dance with an abandon that would hardly make you think many of them had recently lost family members, and had had to flee their villages to get away from the murderous gangs of Boko Haram. Even if many of them completely lost this year’s vital harvest, worship still seems very important to these people.

  Afterward the members of the congregation group together in the yard. Long queues form outside the kitchen. I recognize this morning’s sweetish smell: the women of the congregation have made nourishing kunnu, a big bowl of which is handed out free to everyone as part of the day’s celebrations. For many it will be the only meal they have today.

  I notice a tall, very slender woman who is sitting all by herself on the vicarage steps and daintily eating her portion of kunnu. It’s almost as if she has to force herself to eat. She wears a green floral dress and a headscarf in the same fabric. In a cloth tied closely to her back a baby sleeps. Rebecca calls to her in her language.

  “That’s Patience,” she says, introducing the young mother. “She’s a refugee and comes from the same region as I do: her village, Ngoshe, is only a few miles away from Gavva.”

  “Did they drive you out?” Renate asks.

  “Worse than that. She was kidnapped,” Rebecca answers for her. “Patience has seen terrible things.”

  The girl looks at the ground. “No good English,” she murmurs apologetically.

  “But now it’s over. I’ve told her she must eat well,” Rebecca says. She signals the women in the kitchen to give Patience an extra portion of kunnu. “That’s important. Otherwise the breast won’t produce enough milk to feed the child. Last week we had to take them both to the hospital because they were so weak.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” I say. “Does Patience have no relatives?”

  Rebecca shakes her head. “No,” she says. “She has no one now. No one but her little daughter.”

  The baby on the woman’s back begins to giggle. She loosens the cloth and draws the little one tenderly to her. Two little hands reach hungrily for her breast—and for the first time I see the mother smiling.