Miscellaneous: Enjoying Ourselves

Here is one of the dainty Nigerian goats we admired so much during our visit. Small, sleek, glossy-brown and fastidious in their habits, with high fluting voices, they were a highlight of our trip in the fauna department. The sheep, on the other hand, were big, dirty and stupid, a constant traffic hazard in our neighborhood.

This is the indigo cloth Bill produced during his apprenticeship at the Kofar Mata dye pits. Yusufu, the old man in the pictures from the dye pits, named Bill's design for the dyeing "Mai Abarba" ("(with/has) pineapples").

Here's Bill doing the laundry with his feet--a trick taught to us by one of our housemates, who had spent several summers on an archaelogical dig in Crete.

This is me with a grinding stone, on one of our field trips.

One of our Hausa teachers took a few of us to visit his older brother's household. Men and women ate separately; I think we gals had more fun. The dreadlocked woman second from the left went on to write her dissertation on female Hausa Islamic scholars. That's me second from the right (I went on to write no dissertation whatsoever!).

This picture is here mostly to show you the view from Fankisau Hill, where the emir has a summer palace.