Not London Fashion Week!




and the winning contestant is...

My wife and I often know what we don’t like in the clothing line as opposed to what we do like. In recent years, with maturity, clothes buying has lost the excitement that it once had. However since I have been in Nigeria, I have been struck by clothes envy! The Abuja (Christian) Man has the wildest African print on a shirt and draw string pants, They are the colours that only a black guy can wear. Well actually a black person seems to look good in any colour. Pale white skins need to be more careful. What colour you wear draws comment from those around you – at least behind your back at any rate. Abuja Man looks cool and hip!

The Kano (Muslim) Man looks elegant in his plain long shirt with understated embroidery around the neck with matching pants underneath. An embroidered Nehru hat finishes the ensemble. The sight of tens of thousands of muslim men attending Friday prayers, forming an ocean of billowing material of every hue under the sun, is something to behold. Nigerians are not colour prejudiced in the way that we are regarding clothing. What I mean by this is that a burly 6 foot Nigerian male would not think twice about wearing a bright pink ensemble, with contrasting baby blue accessories. From a distance it could be Barbara Cartland, though closer appreciation proves this to be far from the truth. So who gets top prize – the Christian or the Muslim?

I need to put this to the test so having been assaulted by the masses at Kurmi market, I have chosen the most outrageous material I could find for ‘Abuja Clements’ and a neat grey/blue material for ‘Kano Clements’. £7 for around 12 yards in all... call the tailor!

Wearing a full face crash helmet in 40 degree heat is not something I relish at all. Having got the opportunity of riding on the back of Khalifa’s bike into Kano City to attend Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Cathedral, I weighed up the possibility of being involved in a crash with or without a helmet. I could wear the helmet, faint in the heat, and fall off the bike that way, or not wear a helmet and be prepared for any eventuality. I thought in my infantile wisdom that God would not want me to crash when I was going to mass anyway, does he do irony? An hour and ten minutes later, we arrived helmetless. I almost thought it pointless going in to the church as I’d spent the majority of the journey in prayer. But buoyed by the achievement of actually arriving, I settled into a really memorable experience. The Christian women were a sight to behold themselves, wearing the most gigantic and elaborate head-dresses. The prints were so fanciful, decorative  and utterly fantastic! Abuja Man was everywhere to be seen so the place was a riot of colour – well apart from me in chinos and a shirt from M&S.

The choir master and choir were amazing and people danced in their pews to the music of praise. Each bench had to process to place your offertory envelope in a sack and then the offertory procession itself starts. Hundreds and hundreds of people brought a crying child first; then it turned into the Generation Game conveyor belt. The offertory included sacks of oranges, boxes of bottled water, electric fans, a bicycle(!), a projector stand... and on it went for nearly twenty minutes until the back of the altar looked like a warehouse. Another hour was to go by before the end of mass. Just as everyone was ready to leave, a child threw up in the doorway. And as Nigerian women hitched up their prints to tread carefully away, it seemed to me the Christians had swung it their way. However you will be the judge...

We popped in to the tailor on the way back from the city. Abuja Man will stand out a mile. In fact you’ll see me coming from as far away as Morocco at thirty thousand feet! The outfit is literally blinding! Kano Man is still on the sewing machine, so wait and see.

The irony would have been complete if I’d had an accident on the way back from church, but I’m pleased to report there were no incidents!

(Since going to press, I can report that we were assigned by the inspectorate to join them on a routine inspection of a secondary school. Our driver pulled out too sharply from refuelling and a motor bike rider ploughed into the side of us! Who on earth would want to go on a bike without a crash helmet? Cyclist shaken but not stirred!)