Standing on the edge
of a sun-scorched ridge overlooking her broken farm, 68-year old
Philadelphia native Norma Perchonoc–who has lived in Nigeria for all of
her adult life–sums up the personal impact of the ongoing political,
religious, and economic strife in the country’s heartland.
“Life is not easy,”
she says simply, in one of many understatements during a tour of her
farm, which she says has gone virtually bankrupt in the aftermath of
terrible intercommunal violence in January 2010 in the once-thriving
“Middle Belt” region of Africa’s most populous country.
The farm is tucked
between outcrops of stones and squat hills on an elevated, table-like
plateau that resembles the southwestern deserts of the United States but
boasts a Mediterranean-like climate. The tan soil is sandy and
stubborn, but the weather and a good water supply left over from
extensive industrial tin mining in the area made central Nigeria’s
Plateau State a veritable Eden where farmers and traders, locals and
expatriates, coexisted in what some called the “microcosm of Nigeria.”
Local farmers generally supported themselves growing Irish potato and
other subsistence crops. Perchonoc’s Zamani Farms grew a cornucopia of
specialty produce, from Chinese cabbage to butternut squash to rocket
lettuce to strawberries and mulberries, catering partly to the wealthy
diplomatic corps in the capital city of Abuja. The harsh soil somehow
sprung to life under the tender watch of Perchonoc and her dedicated
staff, yielding fresh produce the staff could be proud of–and earning
salaries they could support their own families with.
Now, on the brink of
bankruptcy, Perchococ’s farm–her “retirement project” after she spent
decades teaching anthropology at two universities in northern
Nigeria–is one of several commercial farms overrun with financial and
logistical problems–not to mention trauma–that have ensued in the
aftermath of the bloodbath that occurred on its doorstep.
“We have many
problems since the crisis. Things are not the way they are supposed to
be,” she said, leathery-skinned, work-weary hands on hips as she
surveyed the scenic and haunted landscape.
A bloody crisis
Locals use the vague
euphemism of ‘crisis’ to refer to a series of brutal tit-for-tat
massacres across the verdant plateau region early last year. In the
village of Kuru Karama, a five-minute walk from Zamani Farms, a gruesome
day-long killing spree left more than 150 Muslim residents–including
babies and women–dead, according to initial reports by Human Rights
Watch. The Red Cross later removed scores more corpses, some of them
burned or buried alive, from wells throughout the village.
Not a single Muslim
from the Hausa ethnic group remains in the village today, which was
formerly home to around 3,000 people, both Christians and Muslims, from
several ethnic groups. It is now little more than a burned down ghost
town where artisanal tin mining done by new migrants to the area has
sprung up on formerly residential land. Subsequent reprisal attacks by
Muslims on Christians rippled throughout the Plateau region, with
hundreds of Christians deaths between January and March last year.
It is another
understatement to say that the violence struck close to home for
Perchonoc and the 30 Nigerians who worked on her farm. About half of the
workers and their families were murdered or are now unable to live or
work in the area because of their religion or ethnicity.
Zamani Farms is a
half-living memorial to the violence, a hollowed out shell of a
once-prospering and promising business. The starkly beautiful land that,
though challenging, once held the promise of good crops and good
business, now harbors disturbing memories of massacres and family
members turning against each other, suddenly split along sectarian lines
too deadly to cross.
The farm’s only
van–used in the past to transport crates of fresh fruits and vegetables
twice weekly to customers in the Nigerian capital of Abuja–fell into
disrepair earlier this year. Perchonoc does not have the money to get
the vehicle fixed, and besides, she says, the car mechanics in the
nearby city of Jos have either fled the city or been killed. She
struggles to get manure to organically fertilize her strawberry fields
because the cattle herders that used to move through the area refuse to
come near the farm after their cows were slaughtered en masse during the
wave of violence, killed by the same armed young thugs rumoured to have
been hired by the local government to execute a planned assault on
minority populations in the state.
Ethno-religious rifts
Perchonoc says she
is unable to employ farm workers of the same caliber as her dedicated
staff who were massacred or forced to flee and, more than a year later,
fear returning to the area. “Some are in hiding from their own family
members, who have threatened to kill them,” she says, evidence of the
apartheid-like split between formerly integrated Muslim and Christian
communities that caused displacement and migration of whole communities
after last year’s violence.
“Before the crisis,
there were Hausa and Fulani workers on the farm, both Muslims and
Christians, and we had no problems,” says Abdullahi Hashimu, 46, the
short, muscular marketing manager of the farm whose house was burned
down in the violence and whose family ran for their lives. Hashimu had
been in Abuja delivering produce for the farm when the killing sprees in
the nearby city of Jos erupted and spread to villages including Kuru
Karama. “We are now living in an environment where Muslims don’t go to
areas where Christians are, even the markets,” he said quietly.
“Since [the
violence] last year, we are not back to normal on the farm,” Perchonoc
says. Work stopped completely at Zamani Farms for three months after the
massacre in Kuru Karama, as Perchonoc first attempted to help her
traumatized workers seek treatment for their machete-wounded children,
among other problems. Some of the crops such as the farm’s specialty
lettuce, which require daily watering and a labor-intensive irrigation
system, fell fallow in the meantime. In order to keep her customers, who
include the British High Commission and other embassies and the Hilton
and Sheraton Hotels in Abuja, she bought tomatoes and other produce from
other local farmers while she tried to pick up the broken pieces of her
own business. She remains in debt to these farmers, unable to pay more
than the salaries of her workers and petrol for her decrepit 4×4
vehicle.
Perchonoc and her
staff rightly call last year the worst of their lives. She and Gumbo
Adamu, the man she calls her “right hand” on the farm, were briefly
kidnapped in an incident related to the ongoing insecurity and local
tensions in the area. Everyday brings new challenges that did not
afflict the farm before violence began blazing through the Middle Belt
and tearing it asunder. Everyday brings rumours of “silent killings” or
planned attacks or new deals between selfish politicians rumored to be
perpetuating the crisis for their personal gain.
Adamu is a tall
gentle-looking man who saw his community and his years of hard work to
build Zamani Farms fall apart in one fell swoop. He blames the local
religious leaders for fanning the flames of the now intractable problems
between former neighbours.
“The pastors and the mallams are causing this crisis,” said Adamu. “When this crisis is over, we’ll prosecute all of them.”
