AIMING TO AID THE ALMAJIRAI

The INTERCEP office in Borno State is located near the city center of Maiduguri with a lot of daily traffic. This includes a daily parade of the almajirai (Hausa for “disciples”) stopping in front of our front door. They stand momentarily to view themselves in our sliding glass door that serves as a mirror. They hold their plastic bowls making faces, dancing, and cleaning themselves. Most guests get quite a kick out of observing the behavior of these boys pausing to have a little fun.



Nevertheless, there is really nothing funny about the life of these boys between the ages of 5 and 15. During our first 4 ½ years living in Jos and Maiduguri, we failed to even recognize the plight of these lads by psychologically lumping them in with the “beggars.” It took the February 18, 2006 Maiduguri crisis where people were killed, church structures were burned, and businesses were destroyed to inquire about the cause. As I was beginning my course work at the University of Maiduguri in sociology (criminology), the dilemma of the almajirai was often highlighted. During this time, Jen would casually employ these youngsters in our home to watch with shock as they would “inhale” any food given.

As my master’s thesis professor connected me with the premier research on almajiranci (Hausa for “discipleship”) in northwestern Nigeria, the themes of itinerancy, seasonal migration, and dry-season idleness kept recurring. At the same time, we were struggling to mobilize the INTERCEP drip irrigation farm at Pompomari. This created a passion to reduce the level of migration among these migrant malamai (Hausa for “teachers”) followed by their seasonal almajirai. This concept caused me sleepless nights as I pondered over the agricultural roots of this entire system. Rather than creating a greater burden on the teeming urban centers, it merely appeared logical to relieve this load by encouraging the malamai and almajirai to remain in their villages through dry season farming.

The events rehearsed above led to the recent drip irrigation workshop for Borno youth on February 18-22, 2008. In 2007, the Borno Youth Empowerment Forum (BYEF) invited me to participate in their new NGO coalition further requesting me to be their president. Thus, when the difficult challenge of courting the malamai to bring their almajirai for drip irrigation training, two prominent educators serving with BYEF proved to be our greatest recruiters. The skepticism of the malamai was blatantly obvious on the workshop’s first day but their uncertainty turned to joy as we constructed our first compost. Each malam personally met me to emphasize how grateful they were and how much they hoped for this training to continue in their tsangaya (Hausa for “Quranic schools”).

Nonetheless, the highlight of the week was the participation of 2 almajirai: Abu-Bakr and Muhammadu. These 2 boys worked tirelessly each day, ate heartily during lunch, and listened intently to the Hausa translation to pick up every little bit of insight on drip irrigation. Each of these lads wore the same clothes every day showing up promptly at 8:30AM to receive the day’s instruction. INTERCEP really hopes to visit these 2 youngsters in their tsangaya to monitor their progress in not only drip irrigation but life. As the Messiah intimated, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all---he is the greatest.”

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