Going Walkabout- Abuja, Nigeria

 

The hike to Dewaki hills on the outskirts of Abuja started at 7:00 am.  I imagine this was to beat the heat, but being the dry season, or winter, that wasn't a problem. The sun was barely up as we walked past the construction site being used to house cattle at night, and up the hillside. If I had been with my late father, I would have been on the look out for birds. As I grow older I am increasingly aware of my natural surroundings. I travel with only my phone in order to capture that rare sight, anything of interest that is new to me and might need further study.

Most of this area is new to me. Abuja lies in a flat savanna region of Nigeria, with outcrops of rounded igneous rocks left over from another age. These 'hills' provide interesting hikes to get out of the city and catch a glimpse of some wide open views.  Unfortunately harmattan has brought dust and haze, obscuring the views, and most of the bush is dry brown. A wild fire has passed through, scoring the land, but revealing the termite hillocks which are everywhere.  This made each find a pleasant surprise. 

There is an abundance of flowering cashew trees along the path. The delicate pink flowers will eventually grow into bulbous green fruit with an external nut. The nut is said to be poisonous, and only the fruit is edible at this point. How strange they look before they fill out, a huge nut hanging beneath a fleshy stem.

I catch a glimpse of a cluster of larger round fruit hanging from a plant with fuzzy leaf. A quick run of the picture through Google reveals it to be a giant variety of milkweed, often called Sodom's apple. There are stories galore of this 'apple' which is quite toxic and not at all edible. There is reference to this plant in the book of 2 Kings, where Elisha nearly poisons a group of prophets by adding it to the cooking pot.

The dusty ground is red in tint, due to the abundance of iron in the soil. There is also clumps of milky white and rose quartz strewn about. It is easy to see how these hills were formed.  All the ground around the rocky outcrops shows signs of erosion in the deep gulleys washed out by the last rainy season. 

The Lotus Bean tree fascinates me. This is a big tree whose flowers are pompom balls full of fluffy seeds. They appear during the dry season, which is winter, before the leaves come in. The individual seeds then mature into long broad bean pods that hang in clusters, or hands, from the end of the branches. 

Another tree was in bloom, with light creamy blossoms. I had to look this one up, and found it to be the Shea Butter tree. After the blossoms drop off a round green nut will grow in, which contains the material for shea butter. 

There were a large number of various seed pods strew around and hanging from the bare tree branches, as pretty as any flower. I started collecting them and filling my pockets, before I realized that most seed pods were much too big for my pocket. Although large in size, they are delicate and papery thin, with the seed lying between two sheets of cellulose... waiting for the next rain.

On the way down we passed several large trees in full leaf and some palms. A small dribble of water made a pool, a tell-tale sign that this is not a desert. The trees and shrubs are perfectly suited to this dry environment, and produce blossom, fruit and seeds. 

Once you start looking, you notice budding life everywhere.  A tree bare of leaves held bunches of berries that later turned out to be crow fig from the mulberry family.  I was not tempted to try eating one of the berries, as I am learning that toxins are a natural defense for these plants in the bush.

I saw another plant I recognized from gardens, the castor bean plant.  These beans, if ingested, are poisonous to humans. However, the castor oil has many usual applications, ethanol production for automobiles being just one.

I am in Africa, midway between the tropical forests to the south and the great Sahara in the north. This dry and parched land, in a few months, will receive more rain that it can absorb.  I marvel at the plants that have adapted to this harsh environment and continue to bloom.