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JANGALI: 1947
EVERY YEAR, about October/November a cattle tax of one-shilling-a-head was levied on every bull, steer, cow or calf throughout all the cattle-holding provinces of Northern Nigeria. This was in accordance with the principle that in order to establish sovereignty of the Crown, every adult in the territory had to pay an appropriate yearly tax to the government. Each Native Authority was responsible for collecting the tax in its own area. The greater part of it was retained by the NA that collected it, and this paid for the salaries of its servants and for the public services that it provided, but a small portion each year was directed to the central government and was then paid into various local government treasuries, thereby maintaining the principle of an appropriate tribute.
Farmers, craftsmen, and employees paid haraji (general tax) set at around ten shillings a head each, while traders, entrepreneurs, and the wealthy were assessed by the NA at sums that could go as high as 10% of estimated profits. (Complaints were heard through a formal review process led by the District Officer, and could result in the tax being decreased or, in rare cases, increased.) In really primitive areas things were simpler, with living-huts being made the basis of taxation and assessed at one shilling each per annum. Nomads, however, who were never settled in any one place, created their own problems and chief amongst these was the question of what to do about taxing the Bororoji (wandering Fulani).
For centuries, the Fulani people had been regarded as an elite. By the eighteenth century, they had fully emerged all over the Western Sudan as brave, resourceful, learned, competent, and capable, with a bent for religious orthodoxy and proselytization, as well as for administration and government.
About this period, or a little earlier, there also arose a divergence of sorts amongst the Fulani themselves, with some clans opting to become settled and becoming known as Filanin Gida (Fulani of the House), while others continued in the old nomadic way and remained identified as the Bororoji.
The language of both Fulani groups, however, remained Fulfulde, though it is true that among the settled Fulani, by the time I arrived, Hausa had largely replaced Fulfulde. Relations between the two branches were meticulously and cordially safeguarded and there was considerable intermarriage and cross-movement especially when, during the dry season, clans of Bororoji (related either by tradition or by blood) and their cattle camped on their patron’s farms, eating the parched grass and returning a good dressing of dung.
With the large numbers of cattle that they owned, many an Ardo–a family or clan head–of the Bororoji was a very wealthy man indeed. It was reckoned that if one had, say, 4,000 cattle in his herd (worth anything between £20,000 and £50,000 at the time) then he could well afford to pay £200 a year as a grazing fee and for his call on the veterinary and other resources that were available to him.
Unfortunately, a Bororo did not always see things in that light and every year there was a tug-of-war between them and the NA, on the one hand, to minimize the collection of jangali, and on the other, to maximize it. Over the preceding decade, and with virtually no government oversight during the war years, there had been a considerable drop in the amounts collected year by year and there was suspicion that there might have been a few ‘fingers in the till’ as well.
As of 1947, it had been decreed from on-high, things were going to be different, efficient, and effective, and this was the task that I was set to accomplish in Yelwa.
I went to Yelwa in the middle of August and set myself up in the government rest-house, which was a large mud and thatch roundhouse high on a hill about two miles outside the town. I sent word to the Emir that I had arrived and that I proposed, if it was convenient, to make a formal call on him at 10 o’clock the next day.
Then I sat outside on the patio and had a cup of tea.
As I was admiring the view, I saw a secretary bird stalking about in the low bush looking for snakes, which form a principal part of its diet. Much later I looked him up in Bannerman to check identification and was amazed to see that there was a record of the same species being observed in that same spot in 1928. My wife and I saw another one there, four or five years later.
Before I had finished my tea, the Emir arrived with an enormous basket of fruit and vegetables and, believe it or not, a small kerosene refrigerator which he insisted on lending me.
We had never met before, but we hit it off from the first moment, and we remained firm and affectionate friends until he died.
Abdullahi, Emir of Yauri, was a legend in his own time. He had the most beautiful handwriting; he was a big man of enormous presence; he ruled his Emirate firmly but fairly; he was very conservative, but nonetheless, he passionately advocated education for both sexes; he loved ‘gadgets,’ and he smoked like a chimney. In our case, Kipling was right. There was neither “East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth”** to divide us. I had many good friends in Africa, but only one ever surpassed Abdullahi, Emir of Yauri, in mutual affection and that was Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto.
I waited some time before starting on the jangali, in order to let the local district heads get used to my being around, and so they could start to get an idea of the approximate counts and locations of the cattle for the year. And it was during this period of watchful waiting that I learned of one of the Bororoji’s favorite tax-avoidance ploys.
The formal process of collecting taxes consisted of 1) ascertaining the number of head of cattle, 2) the Bororo and the representatives of both the Crown and the Emir (an Emir’s representative traveled with me everywhere) agreeing that was the correct number, 3) the handing over of the correct tax, and 4) the provision of a proper receipt written up by an NA scribe, stating how many cattle had been paid for, the date, and the total monies handed over.
So let’s say that an Ardo had 500 cattle in his ruga (encampment). He might divide his herd into five, with exactly the same number in each division. One division would be kept fairly close to the ruga. The other four would then be dispersed into the bush, a mile or two away, in various directions.
When a tax collector visited the ruga, the decoy division would be there, close to it, either with a receipt for the tax already paid for that year for 100 cattle in that Ardo’s name or with the money already counted and waiting to be handed over, with many a protestation of willingness to do so. Sometimes, if you chanced upon one of the dispersed divisions first, then one of the herdsmen would offer to guide you to the ruga, where the Ardo had the receipt in safekeeping and would be only too happy to show it to you.
You could be very sure that while you were being led through the bush by a roundabout route, a small boy was on his way, in a straight line and fast, to the ruga to get the cattle present there driven off so that the place would be bare when you arrived, save for the odd cow with a newly born calf, and that the receipt would be very ostentatiously produced for examination when you arrived at the door.
I am sure I fell for this quite a few times before I realized that it was standard operating procedure, and decided to do something about it. It was about that same time, too, that I realized I had an ally, and one that the Fulani, for all their tracking and herding skills could do nothing to counter. Its name was bubulcus ibis–the cattle egret.
These birds are very gregarious roosters. They are also very tame and they like roosting near human habitation and do so in great numbers. I once stopped counting at five hundred on one tree near my garden in Numan. But in the morning light, they fly off in groups to find the cattle, for they feed on the insects that congregate on, and around, them.
This is how I found the missing cattle: Get up early, locate your ruga (but do not enter it), certain that the Fulani will have got up earlier than you and that they will be there with their cattle, and then wait for the groups of egret to show you exactly where the rest of the cattle actually are!
After that discovery, one day’s jangali was much like any other.
And that is how Yelwa almost quadrupled its jangali proceeds in 1947.
One event in particular stands out in my memory, even though it has nothing to do with jangali. I was in Rijau district, around a village called Bakin Turu. We had had some success and were, in fact, working our way down to Yelwa as it was by now getting very nearly the end of jangali and I was due back in Birnin Kebbi within not much more than a week.
Late in the afternoon, we came upon a considerable ruga of about 600 cattle, all penned in. As expected, the Ardo had only got a receipt for a hundred, so it was a fair cop and he paid up his twenty-five pounds in shillings without a murmur. Then he asked me if I had got any aspirin with me. As it happened, I had, but I was not going to hand the bottle over without knowing why.
I asked him, and he told me that his daughter had been in labor for nearly two days and was in sore need of maganin Turawa (medicine of Europeans). What can you do, miles from anywhere, when you have a couple or three dozen aspirin tablets in a bottle in your pocket and you are asked for help like that?
I was assured by Frank Budden, the doctor in Sokoto (who at the time was the only one in the province apart from the one who ran the hospital at railhead in Gusau) that what followed was utter (even culpable) stupidity on my part; that I had acted irrationally and ignorantly; that I should be ashamed of myself; and that I could have been held criminally responsible if there had been any adverse consequences. As I said to him “My only defense is that it worked!”
I told the Ardo that I would give his daughter six aspirin tablets, but they were for her alone and nobody else. Quite touchingly, he took me by the hand and led me to a wigwam on the other side of the ruga. In it were three old women and a young girl, obviously in a very bad state indeed. She was being supported in the birthing position and they had whipped her flanks and belly in order to try and induce contractions.
I think she was appalled at my presence, for she struggled with those who were holding her. It was at that moment that one tiny foot appeared. Looking back, why I did what I did, I cannot possibly imagine, but I had once seen a calf delivered feet first and the farmer had pulled. So I pulled.
The baby came out like a champagne cork! I caught him and hurriedly handed him over, umbilicus and all, to one of the aged crones. I gave the Ardo eighteen aspirin, saying she was to have six, in twos, overnight, with the last two at dawn and the rest throughout tomorrow and the next day, with the last two at dusk on the second evening.
Then I fled! The next day, we made our way back to Yelwa. Quite frankly, I was too scared to enquire further, for fear of what I might have done.
I should not have worried. I had not been at Yelwa three days, when the girl herself arrived, with her baby, sent by her father to say thank you. She asked me to name the child–a boy. I said Dauda, for that was the Hausa for my own name. She was delighted with that, and with the five pounds that I gave her, saying that it would buy the bull-calf that every Fulani boy is reared with and which, as his ‘birth-bull,’ would come to answer his every beck and call, as a pet dog does–and which would lead his herd throughout its life.
She had walked the sixteen miles to Yelwa and was unconcerned that next day she would walk the same distance back. She was not worried, she said, for her father had accompanied her on the journey and would do so on her return.
As she strode off down the hill with her baby swaddled against her spine on her way to the town and to her father, I watched her for a long time. She had taught me a very great deal that day; about society; about gratitude; about fortitude–and about plain good manners. I felt very humble.
David Muffett: March 6, 1919–September 30, 2007
Published in General**Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face. though they come from the ends of the earth!
–Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West
Great story. Thank you for sharing more of your father with us.
Oops. Got a phone call and posted before finishing.
When west African leaders gathered not long after independence, virtually all spoke the same language because both the British and the French chose leaders from the Fulani/Fulbe/Sudanese group.
Another interesting dynamic at least in Cameroon was that the President was far from being the top man in his village.
Gratitude, fortitude, good manners. What a welcome message for today. Clever of your father to be watching the birds for signs of the cattle.
Tales of the Gagara Yasin!
Excellent again, She … as usual.
And here I was, figuring out what Grandpap’s tax bill would have been. 30-60 head on a farm .,,
When I read that passage about the cattle egrets, I’m reminded of one of my favorite actors in what is my favorite role of his career (James Bond notwithstanding)–Sean Connery as the other “Doctor Jones” in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (although I think the Charlemagne attribution is completely spurious):
I can forgive Sean Connery almost everything. Even the fact that he campaigned for Scottish independence. I do love a man in a kilt (as long as he has the legs for it.) @arahant, over to you!
Would this be what you’re looking for?
However did you guess??
[Stage Direction]: Elderly Swoon
LOL
In the interests of full disclosure, I feel obliged to mention this:
Dad neglected to point out, in his account of his jangali-collecting efforts (he probably didn’t consider it all that exceptional), something that others found striking, and which is recounted by Sir Brian Sharwood Smith in But Always as Friends–Northern Nigeria and the Cameroons 1921-1957 (emphasis mine):
(I have no idea what Sir Brian’s evidence for that last statement is, but it does indicate that perhaps the odds at some point evened out again following Dad’s spectacular initial success.)
It is a misattribution, according to Wikiquote. It may be based on a quote from Bernard of Clairvaux:
Bernie sounds like he was a trip:
I saw a Saint Bernard yesterday in PetSmart.
Same guy!
Psst!
I’ve never owned a St. Bernard. A couple of Old English Sheepdogs, for sure. One was a rescue, who came with the name “Harry.” The other, I got as a puppy, and named “Wulfie,” after OE St. Wulfstan, eleventh century bishop and patron saint of the feeble-minded. The choice of name was, as I found out, appropriate. But what an affectionate lovebug he was.
At the moment, my ‘large dog’ itch is scratched by Xena and Levi, two Great Pyrenees who are both rescues. About 3oo pounds the pair. A little while ago, I came home to find that the power was out, the (noisy) generator had come on and the two of them were holed up in the bathroom in the dark, with Levi lying across the door so I couldn’t get in, waiting out the apocalypse.
Brave dogs.
I might have to re-think this strategy when the awful day comes (Xena and Levi are 10 and 11 respectively). I’ve always wanted a Newfoundland, but perhaps I should look for a more assertive breed.
Bah. One St. Bernard is pretty much like the other.
Quite a handsome one, at that.
What a great story! Your father was amazing! Thanks, once again, for sharing one of his stories.
Great story. I did notice that the cattle in the picture looked well-fed, unlike some other African cattle I have seen pictures of. The Fulani lived where the grass was good and took good care of their beasts.
It appears that when you were a child, you were “Little Miss Muffett”. I’m pretty sure the nursery rhyme was not referring to you, however, as it is probably much older.
Thanks, @susanquinn. I was blessed. My mother was an extraordinary difficult woman–even-tempered, kind, open-hearted, and generous on the one hand, and volatile, mean-spirited, greedy, and irrational on the other. Dad loved her until the day he died, and he hung in until the end. It wasn’t always easy for us kids, but in the long run, I’m grateful that we all stayed together as a unit, and that we found ways, or, in cases of occasional breaks, re-discovered ways, to maintain affectionate relations throughout. I’m not sure that a father can give his children, perhaps especially his daughters, a better gift, and a better life-lesson, than that. It’s a source of enduring sadness to me that, absent behavior that makes such a situation completely unsupportable, so many parents (of both sexes) these days bail on their spouse and children for what often seem to me to be rather short-sighted, shallow, and selfish reasons.
Yes on both counts. Although, being just south of the Sahara, the dry season did have an impact on the pasture at certain times of the year.
Oh, LOL. Indeed I was (Miss Muffett). It’s a terrible cross to bear, especially if you’re a teacher, as two of my maiden aunties were, and I was myself, during my brief tenure as a teaching assistant at university.
Most small girl children in the family were inevitably dressed up as the character at one point or another in their lives. Here’s Auntie Pat (97 last July, may she live forever):
Thankfully, no photos exist (I don’t think) of my own foray into fancy dress, which was probably in about 1958, on the Elder Dempster liner Accra or Apapa (this was a shipping company, founded in the 19th century that specialized in moving British colonials and their belongings between Liverpool and West Africa). I greatly enjoyed the voyages, which took several days, and which, along the way, hove into port at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands for shopping and fine dining. (My mother would take me ashore to buy beautiful hand-made, embroidered and embellished dresses, some of which I still have.)
One voyage featured a fancy-dress party for the kiddies. I went as, well, you guessed it. Wore my pretty new Las Palmas dress, a mob cap similar to Pat’s, probably made out of a washcloth and some ribbon, and the piece-de-resistance, a spider which Dad had concocted by begging a dinner roll from one of the kitchen staff, using toothpicks to attach a couple of olives for “eyes,” and sticking eight appropriately bent pipe cleaners around it, as legs. He finished it off by finding a piece of elastic somewhere, sticking it through the bun from top to bottom and tying a knot underneath, and then making a loop through which I could stick my hand, so I could bounce it up and down.
Thank God no-one (in my family, at least) had a camera handy.
He was quite an inspiration to you and raised one resilient and adventurous woman! I would have loved to have met him.
Was the tuffet provided, or did Auntie Pat have to schlep one along with her?
Further note on the surname “Muffett:” Dad did some research at one point and traced it back to the Scottish branch of the family. (Somewhere in that branch is Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, the last man in England to be beheaded, when he was found guilty of high treason for his participation in the Jacobite rebellion. Fraser had played both ends against the middle–Crown against Stuarts, and vice-versa, for decades, and was known as “The Fox” for his shenanigans, which caught up with him for the last time on April 9, 1747. His jocular demeanor on his way to the block is said to have been the origin for the phrase “laugh one’s head off.” Fans of Outlander will know something of his life and legend.)
The Muffett name comes from two Gaelic words meaning “long field,” or “long acre.”
This web page has some interesting details which support and expound on Dad’s research, and also mentions the Muffett migration to the US. Many years ago (at least thirty), when such a thing was a lot more time-consuming than it is now, I did my own bit of research, and traced several branches, most of which had settled in TN, MO, AR and KY in the eighteenth century. Although I never found a direct family connection, I enjoyed sporadic (snail mail) correspondences with a few of them for several years. Most of them were elderly, and eventually, passed on.
I have bits of video. Maybe one day I’ll get myself in gear and let him speak for himself!
No idea! I suspect she just found a small stool and sat down.
There is a Fraser River in British Columbia, and Simon Fraser University. Diana Gabaldon really does her historical research for her Outlander novels, and I think she was masterful at her portrayals of both the Frasers who appear.
Whoops.
Simon was a very common name among the Frasers. There were several, as I remember it. In fact, they are known in Gaelic as “Mac Shimidh.”
Nigeria, like Cameroun, has the bulk of its population in the south but the cattle are raised in the north. Were there herders who would drive the cattle south in Nigeria as would happen in Cameroun?
I was in Bamenda once which is tall grassland and was driving along a road (can’t drive fast or you’ll lose an axle) when this herd of cows emerged out onto the road all around me. Quite a surprise.
I’m not really sure, but I would expect so (I remember huge cattle markets at various times of the year.) I do know that the climate and open range conditions in the north were more conducive to cattle, whereas people in the south, which was more densely populated, didn’t have so much open pasture and was wetter and more tropical rainforest-y, were more likely to raise sheep and goats. Now, in line with so much other political, religious, and social dysfunction, a few of the northern provinces have shut down open cattle grazing, and the Fulani are being dislocated into other regions and other areas. As I understand it (which isn’t to an extensive degree) it’s quite a mess.
It is a surprise, because they seem to come out of nowhere. When you’re a kid and that happens, it can be gloriously entertaining, but I shouldn’t think it was much fun for the driver of the car. (Pro Tip: Keep an eye out for bubulcus ibis.)