I got the call to switch work projects on a Friday. The next Monday I was scrambling around Dakar, trying to buy, beg, or hustle some visas to Nigeria.
By some act of the gods, we managed to get the visas, and a week later we were in Lagos, meeting the leaders of a big agricultural program that works in the Muslim, Haussa-speaking, near-desert north of the country. The goal was to learn everything about the program in two weeks, and kick-start a project that would last two years. After a few days of meetings in Lagos, we headed North and hit the road.
This season- late October, early November- was harvest-time, and the perfect time to pass through that land. There were kilometers of bright red chili peppers drying on the road, groups of men and women threshing grain by whacking it with long sticks, eight-foot-tall sugarcanes being sold at every road junction, big truck convoys laden with grain headed to the cities, bustling market days in dusty district capitals, rings of sorghum lining the fields like guards, waiting to be harvested last of the season.
There was greenery everywhere, and an unmistakable sense of hope.
I took the header photo in Ikara, Kaduna.