adventure (finally)

Today was a v. good day. Well, morning had bad dreams etc., so not a good night of sleep, but around noon I proposed to Rashid that we go out to Kano on our own. Because the cars were all in use or in the repair shop (Kano roads eat cars, and the parts have to be imported usually), there was no one to drive us, tragically ; ) So we had no choice but to go out and actually travel.

Of course, as soon as we got started, it started pouring, the first sustained downpour of our time here. Nevertheless, we ventureed to the muddy side of the road, both sans rainjackets, and contemplated the taxi-hailing procedure. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Rashid's brother came biking up to us, worried. He had second thoughts about us going out by ourselves, and wanted to have Rashid talk to his dad, so that if something went wrong, the brother wasn't going to be responsible for letting his american cousin and friend get lost/robbed/etc. The brother had been extremely skeptical about taking a taxi (I think he was trying to say that they are below us and we should instead wait for a car) but Rashid's dad was cool with it and back to taxi-hailing we went.

The first three guys who came buy already had 4 or 5 people in the car, but they weren't going our way anyway. Finally we managed to ge a guy who only had three passengers already, and we piled in. Because we only started negotiations once we were in the car (due to our eagerness just to get a taxi that was going our way), we got robbed for 200 naira (1.5 dollars).

Once we got to the Sabon Gari (foreigners' quarter), where we were going to look for books. By we I mean, I was going to look for books, rashid just joined it. A bit of running about lost in the rain/mud streets, we eventually found the bookstore we were looking for, and I bought a couple shakespeare books that I had always meant to read (Lear and Tempest).

Then we took another taxi, which we really got ripped off for (shorter distance, 150 niara). But with Rashid's last-ditch negotiations, we decreased the cost from 'humiliatingly high' (200 naira) to 'just got gouged'. Anyway, we wandered the street looking for food, but by the time we got there everyplace was closed because it was the break between lunch and dinner (4pm). So we just got Lebanese soft-served icecream (v. good) and took another taxi to the western-style French cafe, where we ordered Western food at Western prices. It was quite satisfying.

And finally we returned home. Rashid's mother had been worried sick the whole time, terrified that we didn't know what we were doing, so she breathed a sigh of relief. All in all, we didn't do much, but achieved what we had set out to do (books). Would have done more exploring, but the rain put a damper on things. Perhaps tomorrow...