Inside Kafari slaves hideout

The struggle to escape from slave merchants marked the beginning of  Kafari community which is now about 200 years old.Every child born in the community is  told the story of the hill within the community, and how it saved  countless  generations  and served as a preserver of  their culture.The hill which also has  a cave […]

The struggle to escape from slave merchants marked the beginning of  Kafari community which is now about 200 years old.
Every child born in the community is  told the story of the hill within the community, and how it saved  countless  generations  and served as a preserver of  their culture.
The hill which also has  a cave served as a refuge for the people, during tribal wars that ensued. Today, the oldest man living in the quiet community of Kafari, Buba Janukwai, 85, will wake up, walk to the cave and sit at the centre of the hill.
“Taking time to climb the Kafari hills is not just  fun, but whenever I am here, I am always reminded of  the stories recounted  by our grandparents, about the significance of this place during the slave trade, and the inter-tribal war that ensued,” the old man said pointing at the remains of the wall erected by his grandparents that saved his community.
“I will not forget in a hurry, the stories told by my grandparents during and after the slave trade,” Janukwai said.
“Our parents’ climbed the hills to save their lives and those of the children from slave raiders. People were coming on horses to either kill  or abduct some of them. They moved to the  top of the hills, and built walls round the hills. When the slave raiders  came, the horses could not  pass through the wall they erected, and that gave the soldiers an opportunity to shoot at the enemy using bows  and arrows,” the 85 year-old man said.

At the end of the slave trade, he said his ancestors moved down to the valley where they settled. “The valley was still covered with hills, but a European came and asked our parents to move to the plain, and this is where we have remained up to the present day,” Janukwai said.
He said he always walked to the  top of the hills , because four of their early rulers are buried there.
“It’s only our kings that are buried on top of the hill .It has a big significance which I will not mention. Every other dead person was buried down the hill even during the slave trade, and we have four Kings graves on top of the hills. Our people built houses on top of the hills. Like this place, they were using it to dry their farm produce, but the other sites housed the people,” he said.
26-year-old Santos Garba said both the old and the young knew about the history of their community, as they were immediately told when they  reached the age of  maturity.
“The great-grand-father of the present Esu, was one of the rulers that were buried here on this hill. Jatau, the first ruler was also buried at the hill top. If you look very well, here are some artifacts of the houses,” Garba said, showing this reporter the remains of some traditional pots.
“At that time, as we were told, the inter-tribal wars did not affect our people, because they fled to the hills and built a wall with a set of soldiers  manning the gate.
“There were men who could fight but they decided to climb the hill because they had no horses. If someone is on a horse, you can’t defeat him ,so, they climbed the hills so that if anyone  approached them on a  horse, they instantly shot at him with their bows and arrows which are normally mixed  with traditional medicine,” he said.
Garba said many people in the community were taken away before the  idea of moving to the top of the hill occured.”But moving to the  top of the hill saved  the people,” he said.
“They will come, take away our food, and in most cases, take our people away. It was a normal tradition at that time. I was not around during the slave trade, but my grandfather told me a lot about it and the story of the  hill which we value so much,” a resident of the area, Bala Musa said.

Speaking further, he said: “The walls they built were to prevent the enemies from entering the hills. Many of our people who were taken as slaves ,are now influential people in other parts of Nigeria.” Musa lamented that despite the fact that development has come with the discovery of Kaduna many years ago, their  200 year old   community still exists  without water and electricity. We contributed to the growth and development of Kaduna state, the centre of the Northern region. We have primary schools, but there is not a single Secondary school here.We have communities very close  to us that have power, but we do not have electricity, neither do we have drinking water. Our community has a population of about 10,000 people. Our women have  to suffer before we get drinking water. We have only a polling unit without a ward,” Musa said.
70-year- old Audu Abashya said their grandparents came from Kwachi, a community not far from Kafari.
“When  they came, they saw that this place is   an attractive place, and decided to settle.
“They never knew they will  live again on the plain until the Europeans came, and asked our people to come down from the hill to the plain. I grew up to meet my grandfather, Kamacha who was very old. He told me the story. He was also young when all these incidents happened.
“My father died at 120 years but my grandfather who always told us these stories, lived  beyond that age,” he said.
Abashya said since they finally settled on the plain, they’ve not had any problem. “My grandfather told me that they were the ones that served as labourers during the construction of the rail tracks. There was no place called Kaduna as of that time, and people always moved round with bows and arrows, not just for protection from the slaves masters, but from wild animals alike,” he said.
“We are crying to the government to give us power and water. We suffer a lot  before we get water,” Abashya added.