Chapter V: Zinder

Zinder is a very strange town: strange because of its great size in so isolated a position; strange because of the nature of its site and old-world obsolete composition.

Kano, though it is the commercial metropolis of the Western Sudan, is first and foremost the capital of the province of the same name by reason of its large population and importance; and in like manner so we find Zinder, the capital of Damagarim, vastly larger than any fellow-village in the territory—a unique and imposing place, lost in a wilderness of great spaces and little peoples.

It is difficult to give those “back home” a fair conception of the solitude of Zinder. But let us suppose for the moment that England and Scotland are wilderness—without “made” roads, without mason-built houses or cottages—and all England covered with scrub-wood of a great sameness, wherein, concealed among the foliage, a few natives have settlements of primeval gipsy kind, while Scotland, we picture, in fancy, as a mountain-land of barren rock, with lowlands of desert sand, and almost no inhabitants at all.

Zinder is 140 miles from Kano, and Agades, at the southern foot of the Aïr mountains—and the only other old-world town on my route—is 257 miles north of Zinder. Suppose we take London to represent Kano, and set out to walk with a caravan of loaded camels toward the north of England. Days pass, and we see a few gipsy-constructed villages by the wayside—nothing more; but when we approach Sheffield, we are surprised to see a large fortified town appear before us, in the distance, standing in the great wilderness alone. This we can take to represent Zinder, for from London to Sheffield is about equidistant as from Kano to Zinder. If you would continue the journey as far as Edinburgh or Glasgow, you should imagine that you have passed from the scrub-wooded land into desert, and that either of those Scottish towns may represent Agades, for from Sheffield to Edinburgh is about equidistant as from Zinder to Agades. Therefore, to realise the solitude of Zinder, you require to imagine that Sheffield stands alone in her dignity in all the land between London and Edinburgh; and if you would picture even greater solitude, such as invests isolated Agades, you may imagine Edinburgh as a straggling town, not large, but steeped in ancient history, and that it is the only town in the length and breadth of Scotland, the earth’s surface of which we have imagined to be barren as sea-shore which the tide has left, and containing but a mere handful of inhabitants. By such comparisons, by likening with bold sweeps of the brush the home geography to that in the territories of Kano, Damagarim, Damergou, and Aïr, we arrive at the conclusion that there would only be three towns throughout the length of England and Scotland, which we have called London, Sheffield, and Edinburgh for convenience of comparative distance at which they are set apart, and nothing intervening excepting a number of diminutive hut-villages of natives among the scrub-wood of the land. By this time, if your imagination has run free, you have shovelled the countless towns on the map of England, Scotland, and Wales into the sea, so that you have just the three you require and the requisite solitude surrounding them. But that is not all you do: trains must vanish, and ships that visit your shores, and the ocean around you shall be deserted, and no strangers shall come to the land. . . . Then is the picture of Solitude such as it is in the Western Sudan drawn to completion, and you may realise something of the ever-present weight of seclusion that hangs over ill-fated places that lie remotely out of the world and seem to soliloquise of Eternity, since they are so much alone and so near to the earth.

“Ah, it is a sad land!” is an exclamation I have oftentimes heard escape from the lips of Frenchmen who hold appointments in the country, for their vivacious natures feel most keenly the solitude of the barren land which envelops them with a grimness akin to the bare walls of a prison, and holds out no hope of escape until the date of release decreed, the while many a homesick heart has passionate longing for freedom of expression in convivial and comprehensive surroundings. I have been informed by officers that the depression of solitude—no doubt combined with the unnerving influence of malaria—is so great, that some men cannot stand it, and have to be prematurely sent from the territory in a state of total mental collapse; especially is this the case, it is asserted, among the N.C.O.s, who have naturally a narrower field of interest outside their military duties than the officers.

Zinder, like Kano, is surrounded with great earthen walls of similar height and strength, and they are so prominent that they may be sighted at a long distance off, whether you approach the place from the south or the north, for the nature of the landscape is such that you descend to Zinder (altitude 1,640 ft.) from the south, and look on its imposing bulwarks whenever you top a distant ridge which lies about two miles away; while you ascend to it from the north, where, perched on the crown of a rocky ridge, it has the pleasing appearance of a fortified castle. Kano has no view equal to this northern aspect of Zinder, which is of charming outline, and which looks particularly picturesque in the shades of evening, and fantastic in the moonlight, for then are the barren, unsympathetic surroundings almost forgotten under the softening influence of night’s enchantment.

The site upon which Zinder stands is a curious one, insomuch that it is on a rising grade, which extends to the upper or most northern section of the town, which is on a low-rugged ridge extraordinary for the outcrop of giant boulders thereon, some of them many times the height of man, and lending an uncommon character to the surroundings of the habitations. The huts are built of clay-soil in the same manner as at Kano, for the community is, as there, largely Hausa, but the town in general, since it is smaller, is less bewildering in its narrow street-lanes, while there are markedly fewer inhabitants and less commotion. There is a circumstance in Zinder which is sad to relate: many of the dwellings are forsaken, and stand to-day in disrepair or in ruins, and a certain melancholy atmosphere of decline is there. Doubtless there are many causes for this decline, but those that are apparent and presently prominent are: firstly, that the lure of the rapidly ascending prosperity of industries and commerce of Kano has influenced many to desert the old town and go to settle in the great metropolis; and, secondly, that jurisdiction under military rule would appear to contain some element that is irksome to a certain number of natives, and so those who are not content, depart from under the immediate eyes of the administrative to seek, perhaps, a greater freedom in some distant bush-village, or in Hausaland in Nigeria. Natives of primitive environment are very easily influenced, and the act of changing abode an undertaking of small consequence, so that once a movement commences, others quickly follow the example of the leaders. My boys, Sakari and John, I fancy, expressed something of popular Hausa opinion when they quaintly proffered the conviction that “Kano is _sweet_ past Zinder.”

On the high ground just outside the western walls of Zinder there has sprung up, since the date of French occupation in 1900, an extensive European cantonment which is altogether modern and in strange contrast to the old town, to which it is distinctly foreign. Herein are the headquarters of the military administration of the Territoire Militaire du Niger. Here, laid out on broad lines, there are spacious buildings of creditable French colonial design—long flat-roofed, one-story bungalows in type, with pleasant balustrades that shelter cool verandas. The thick walls of the buildings are constructed by natives, with bricks which are baked with clay mud, obtained, strangely enough, by breaking into the ancient wall fortifications of Zinder, and kneaded, with the addition of fibrous straw, and baked or dried in the blazing sun. The domestic quarters or the administrative offices within the bungalows are delightfully cool, and it is pleasant indeed to have occasion to go inside out of reach of the hot sun of day which strikes down perpetually and without mercy on the scorched, expressionless sand of bare streets and compounds. (In the month of February the thermometer registers about 80° Fahr. in the shade at 8 a.m., and about 100° Fahr. at noon, although the hottest season is not reached until June and July.) The cantonment, which might almost be called a town within itself, is unique in the territory, there being nothing but outlying forts to compare with it; indeed, if we go outside it, not even the segregation at Kano, which contains about an equal number of Europeans, can compare, in my opinion, with the general planning and architectural appearance of Zinder. Which may be due to the fact that Kano is principally a township of trading stores, with domestic quarters overhead, whereas at Zinder there is not a shop in the place, and all the buildings are laid out on a well-conceived plan to accommodate the military administration, with due consideration to comfort and their exalted rank.

For the white traveller to come unawares upon the imposing buildings of Zinder, in such isolated surroundings, is naturally a great surprise, and a totally unexpected pleasure; and to the natives who arrive from the distant bush, or stop in the passing of their caravans, they must be a constant source of wonder.

In Zinder or in Kano, or, in fact, anywhere south of Aïr, you never hear “Zinder” given its official name, for, without exception, it is spoken of among the Hausa people under the designation of “Damagarim.” Their explanation is that the name “Zinder” is not of Hausa origin, but is an old Arabic or Tamāshack name belonging to ancient rulers of northern race whose tribes have long ago been driven back, though the name still remains in use among the Semitic races in Aïr and other distant places on the old caravan routes to Tripoli and Algeria.

Zinder came under French rule in 1900.

It was in 1898 that large military missions were organised with the purpose of entering and occupying the country now known as the Territoire Militaire du Niger in the Western Sudan. The project was supported by a treaty between Britain and France which had been agreed on and signed in 1890—eight years before the undertaking was actually set afoot.

There was, in all, three separate missions, which started from Algeria, from the Niger river, and the Congo of French Equatorial Africa; and the scheme was that all would converge on Lake Chad, which was to be the rendezvous should each column meet with success. An object ultimately attained—and the Territoire Militaire was created in 1900, under the jurisdiction of a commandant, with headquarters established at Zinder. In 1901 a second mission was organised to stabilise the position, and this mission was a powerful one in strength of arms, so that an imposing and awesome impression should be made on the minds of any disaffected native inhabitants, should such be encountered. During that year complete occupation of the Damagarim Region was peacefully carried out.

Below are statistics kindly furnished by the commandant, in September, 1920, of the native population in the region known as Damagarim, of which Zinder is the capital:—

Hausa 116,104
Beri-Beri 33,680
Fulani 5,969
Tuareg 1,520
Bellahs (Captive slaves
and their descendants, of no caste) 4,564
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Total Native Population 161,837
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It will be seen that the Hausa race predominates, but the northern quarter of this region is near to the limit of their range, for they extend but little farther into the Damergou region, where they are only twenty-three thousand all told; and those principally in the neighbourhood of Tanout.