Dispatch
The camels still come to Maiduguri
A trade route older than the border it crosses, and a market that has quietly kept working.
North-East
Maiduguri
Borno State
11.8311° N, 13.1510° E
The capital of the old Kanem-Borno empire, and a city that absorbed a region.
About this place
Maiduguri is the largest city in the north-east and the seat of a state with a thousand-year written history. The last fifteen years have made it, involuntarily, a city of arrivals: its population has swelled with people from across Borno. It is a place that is usually reported on for one reason, and it is much older and more ordinary than that reason suggests.
Everything from Maiduguri
1 story, newest first.
People in Maiduguri
Dispatch
The camels still come to Maiduguri
A trade route older than the border it crosses, and a market that has quietly kept working.
Field notes from Maiduguri
Fatima Modu
Keke fares in Maiduguri are quoted by route rather than distance, and the routes are not written down anywhere. A newcomer pays roughly double for a week and then stops paying double, which everyone treats as a reasonable arrangement.
Where to go next
Editorial adjacency rather than distance — somewhere it makes sense to go from here.
