A number of volunteers told me that they were interested in coming to Maga around the middle of March so I consulted with Grahame, the other Irish volunteer, and we decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s day on Saturday 13th March in Maga. We spread the word around and got a very strong response. Over 25 volunteers and their friends came for the week-end, most of them sleeping on the floor of a (carpeted) reception room in the sultan’s Maga house.
Aicha and two of her friends came to prepare the evening meal, bringing large quantities of food from Maroua since very little can be bought in Maga. I travelled with them and I told the other people in the bus that they were my three wives. A friend had promised me a goat so I asked him for it, and in fact he brough a very fine sheep whose throat was duly cut in true Muslim fashion by a couple of my local assistants. I had kept the sheep in an out-house for the night and when I put him in there I discovered a kitten, which I decided to call “Patrick”.
It was a great night. My night watchman took his duties very seriously and weilded a large machete towards anybody he took to be uninvited. Grahame prepared a quiz with questions like “who drove the snakes out of Ireland?”.
Early the next morning I hired two pirogues to bring the volunteers out onto the lake to see the hippos. To my surprise 25 volunteers surfaced on time, maybe because the sultan’s floor was not very comfortable. On the way out we passed a number of large pirogues packed with local people and their produce on their way to the weekly market in Maga. We duly saw the hippos but they stayed down in the water and at a distance. However although I have done this trip a number of times I do not tire of it due to the landscapes, the birds and the flimsy huts built precariously on islands for the fishermen and their families.
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