Nigeria for beginners…#002 Kaduna and Fifth Chukkers
Just got back to Lagos from Kaduna. Kaduna already seeming like a distant memory of tree-lined roads and school girls in chadors playing childhood game by the roadside.
The three hour drive from Abuja up to Kaduna is fairly lonely. It’s an indication that you’re leaving the real business of things behind and going to a place with different priorities. The roadside store we stop in has a wartime feel, such is the sparse availablity of provisions and the nihilistic attitude of the cashier.
We share the yawning road with the odd tanker and cars filled to their roofs with fruits and sometimes cattle.
The vista is green and bushy. In the distance, my first experience of mountains in Nigeria begins with Abuja’s Zuma rock and then other, smaller rocks around and then the mountain range blue in the distance.
Humanity dots the roadside selling cheap wares and sheets to be made into abayas and we pass a sign saying HIV. Need Wife with the phone number painted underneath. It isn’t clear whether it’s a question or a statement of fact.
Kaduna is redolent of heady British sunsets and garden flowers that are browning at the edges. The Lagosian we encounter at the museum the next day insists that people from the north don’t want to work they just sit in the sun all day. So it makes sense they don’t have any power (or education he adds). What on earth would they do with it. I don’t know about all that now but people here do have a different pace compared with the frenetic Lagosians (many of whom are northerners).
Our destination is Fifth Chukker, a halcyon polo club along the road to Zaria. It is a place that has more in common with a European resort than something you might expect in Nigeria. Sad to say so many of the places I have visited in this country have rotting boards, taps that have forgotten water, light switches that don’t work, empty exhibition rooms and a general air of malaise.
Fifth Chukker couldn’t be more different. Perfectly manicured lawns, hedges laced with the pinkest Jasmine and perfect brick huts with wrought iron beds inside to look like reins. You can watch the news in various languages or experience sparkling Burlington jet stream piping hot showers and deep pile towels. It’s all a little bit heavenly.
The club merges into the Kangimi resort — endless beautiful savannah. Then there are the stables. Clean and ordered with horses and ponies .
Who is Mr Adamu Atta, the owner? Oh just a business man, say the welcome team. Google is less dismissive. He is the son of Adamu Atta, a former governor of Kwara State in Nigeria. This is his baby and he has spared nothing to make Fifth Chukker into a place you would return to again and again. He should feel proud of his achievements. It’s such a beautiful and well-thought out place. When he appears like magic in the Clubhouse, dressed unassumingly in a tshirt and pants, and gives up his villa for beautiful young journo with nowhere to stay, it’s a great moment.
It’s not perfect. The rooms lack a hotel finish. For example, no beside lamps, rugs to soften the cold tiles. No hangers for the closets, waste bins or coffee making facilities. There’s no room service as such so being able to make yourself a cup of tea is really useful. The receptionist/concierge are often AWOL and there is no way to easily navigate the sprawling resort without a car, it’s a little too big. There are no convenient shuttles or golf carts. Some people use bicycles which are available to rent.
The clubhouse chef delivers a hit and miss menu three times a day. Breakfast is generous and included. Staff stand sentinel in droves but are mostly clueless when asked a question.
The fifth chukker is the last period of play in the game. I guess the last few magic moments when you give your all. It’s the title of the resort and also the biannual international polo tournaments held here. I am lucky enough to catch a few days. The place is teeming with Argentinians and South Africans, some East Africans, a dude from Paraguay and of course some of the Nigerian elite for whom playing polo is a badge of belonging. You don’t have to play polo to be part of the elite here in Nigeria, but it would probably help. Polo isn’t cheap. A good horse costs about $30,000 and many of men here have upwards of 10 horses to maintain through a network of stables and grooms.
That said, polo in Kaduna is different from polo in Lagos. The life of a horseman is closer to northern cultures than in the South where horses appear to be just another status symbol like a gaudy watch. The horses in Lagos look a little more wretched than they do in Kaduna. They don’t gallop quite as freely as they do on the vast plains of Fifth Chukker.
Fifth Chukker is not the only polo club in Kaduna, nor is Kaduna just polo. There’s a lot of history here. Arewa House is the site of a museum which gives a good overview of Northern history and culture. It is also the former home of Ahmadu Bello intact with his posessions and where he was assisinated. The first and only premier of the Northern Region.
There are the potteries of Maraba, 30 minutes down the road in Zaria is the Palace of Amina and a couple of hours to the other side the recently built Kajuru castle which is a popular tourist attraction.
The threat of Boko Haram seems to have receded in the north, leaving cities like Kaduna feeling safe again. As safe as one can feel anywhere these days. It’s time to venture north again —and what a fabulous place to start.
