The Coldest Region In Whole Nigeria: My NYSC experience

Interesting read. This thread was motivated by a previous thread that bears similar name


If you like wear 20 cloths you will still catch cold.

Part One (see part two in the next comment section)

My National Youth Service NYSC Experience in Mbamnga, Taraba state (October '15 to March '16)

Brief Description of place:
Mbamnga is a remote community located directly on Mambilla plateau, Sardauna Local Goverment of Taraba state. Tribes in mbamnga include majorly the mambillas and Fulanis with preponderance of the Mambilla people. Other tribe include Kaka, panso and Kanbu.
Two distiguished feature of mambilla plateau is the hilly landscape and the temperate weather which makes it the coolest area in nigeria.

Facts:
1. Mambilla plateau has an Altitude 2419 meters, 7936ft above sea level (height of about a 900 story building in Lagos) making it the highest peak in Nigeria.

2. Weather is temperate, with highest Temperature of 25 degree celsius (77 degree F) during a sunny day. The coolest part in Nigeria. You sweat less.

3. Major languages include Mambilla, fulfude, kaka and Hausa.

4. Have you heard of mambilla beans? That strong beans that takes days to cook, It is from there.

Advantages:
1. Temperature: weather in mbamnga is always cool, sunshine is moderate, fill with chilling air.

2. You save money: in mbamnga, their is no bank and market is after 10 days intervals. As a corps member you save money with a budget plan because of the difficulty involved in accessing your banked cash.

3. Abundant of fruit: fruits expecially african pear and banana are in abundance in mbamnga.

4. Good quality bread: If you want a very quality bread mbamnga is the place you can get it.

5. Cheap meat: meat is in abundance here, with little cash you can buy meat quantity that doubles what you can get in Ibadan

6. Communication: Due to language diversity and need to communicate with other tribes, children at tender age learn, understand and can communicate in English. Their is no language barrier in reaching out to people.

7. People in mbamnga are accomodating and friendly, they love to entertain visitors with corps members inclusive (although bad eggs can't be found wanting in every society). They are peace loving and are alway ready to help.

8. Cross-country? Yes, Mbamnga community is located where nigeria borders with Cameroon, to enter cameroon boundary take less than 40 minutes on byke.

9. Mbamnga is mosquito and tse-tse fly free, so their is little or no recorded case of malaria of night blindness.

Challenges:
1. Distance: mbamnga is far away from town, one and half hour from Gembu the local goverment secretariat, 10 hours journey from Jalingo the state Capital and 34 Hours from Ibadan.

2. Water supply: been on the hill, only source of water is government supply which is not evenly distributed. Many people even corper use spring water channeled into gutters to for bath and cooking.

3. Market: their is no proper market in mbamnga, the only farm product market is 10 days intervals where some farm product are even wanting

4. Transportation: due to lack of road network and presence of an unbridged river, major means of transport is through motorcycle which need to be carried in canoe while crossing the river. Also some manbilla vehicles are carried using big canoe carrier.

5. Harsh weather: air can tend to freezing cold at night and disturb sleep at times. Water needs to be heated before use in the morning.

6. Security: although the people are cool, don't engage in violent act, no theft, but for politics and tribalistic herders/farmers clash. A Police station present is poorly equiped with only two officers and zero ammunition.

7. Network coverage: Their is no coverage in mbamnga. To make or recieve call, one will need to travel far and climb montains and at time you cannot use local network but roam with cameroon network which charge double.

8. Bad road: paths created up and down hill serves as road. It's tressfull to travel hours on such roads. No tiled road and those graded are erosioned. Most kids, even some adult have never aeen tiled road.

9. Electric Power supply is a no no. some of their children never know government provides elctricity. People in mbamnga uses individual power generators and get their premium motor spirit from black market alone. No filling station.

Opportunities:
1. waterfalls for power generation
2. Cool weather favours some type of crop not grown in nigeria
3. abundant of raw materials for animal products e.g skin, hoof...
4. Good soil for agriculture e.g tea and coffee cultivation
5. Nearby game reserve (Gashaka game reserve)
6. Mbamnga is an international boundry
7. Population favour labour availability
8. Limestone
9. Abundance of Timbers

Personal Opinion:
The other day in Lokoja, while I was watching a NTA broadcast, my mind told me where they were showing was mbamnga and voila, it was. They were talking on possible investment due to the cool weather condition (Tea and coffee cultivation). I love the people in mbamnga, I will like to go back to mbamnga to do some business there.

Part Two


My National Youth Service NYSC Experience in Mbamnga, Taraba state (October '15 to March '16) **continued** pt. 2

You will like reading our coping strategies

But I don't want to forget to let you know that:
1. Monthly clearance was always done in the corpers lodge. The LI put it upon himself to travel monthly to prevent any touching story of capsized canoe carrying corps members for their monthly clearance or accident on the mountanous road.

2. No CDS meeting or activities; all community activities perfomed by corps member posted to Mbamnga were agreed on at corps members discretion.

3. Enrollment into any Certificate programme while serving was a no no.

Briefly about religion of people:
People in Mbamnga are quite religous. About 80% of people are church goers while 18% of people are muslims and remain 2% tradional worshiper. Generally, Taraba state has 60% population as christians and 40% as muslims; contrary to general opinion that northerners are muslim majority.

Coping strategies
1. For warming and boiling of waters, students helped to gather sawdust from carpentry shops. With a big metal cylinder and a bottle, we set our fire using the saw dust and firewood. Use of sawdust helped to conserve kerosine for food cooking.

2. Cold: At night, we used to put on doubled pair of socks and two more cloths to keep warm agianst the cold weather in mid night. Sometimes one would get waked up by cold to add more cloths. I was suprised to read online during my stay that people are dying of heat while the opposite is our case in the same nigeria.

3. To make calls and use the internet, we had to go to next community (Mbara), where local calls could be made at local charges. Other places nearby showed no signal and some hill top showed roaming network with which call can be made at international call charges and message could be ricieved. We frequented Mbara as if a fiends house.

4. To charge our electronic gadgets, we took them daily to nearby phone charge shop for charging at corps member subsidised price and to the police station which is a thrown stone distance form the corpers lodge for free. Their was no generator made available for corps members.

5. To reduce boredom, we made friends with and visited our neibours and community leaders, played cards, Ludo and mobile games, read novels, listen to music and audio podcasts, visited officers at police station and went frequently to call centers for calls and internet surfing.

6. To get clean water we woke and went to the gutter daily as early as 5 AM to fetch water before anybody disturbed the water. Also we had a lot of bucket to keep clean drinking water gotten from distant government source.

7. Money & Feeding: we ensured we withdrew enough money and stocked up enough food stuff for two or more months whenever we traveled to Gembu, the local government secretariat (an one and half mountanous journey on byke) where we could have access to bank and market. We also bought suplements on market days where their tomatoes and potatoes were very cheap.

9. News? We depended wholy on the internet for our news source. The transitor radio we had could not pick any signal except for cameroonian french speaking stations and some desert SW stations.

10. We leveraged occasionally on corps member(s) whoever volunteer to travelled to buy our market needs, food stuffs and to withdraw money from bank. This was done to prevent all others from the stress of transportation on the hilly road.

Excerpts from my Mambilla language class.
(Thanks to Geofrey my 10 year old neigbour, who helped with learning of mambilla language).

Nana: how are you
Jam: fine
Ochajiama / ochaloma: good morning
Yirji imana: what is your name
Sanu: weldone
Ben da leya: where are you going
Nda bani: welcome
Nda ol: good bye
Da wii may kofii gomie offisa: go and bring me cup from the office
Ben gua je bo mejualene: listen to me carefully
Ben kili foshi: keep shut
Nana terchibo / merchibo: how is your father / mother

E go be pleateau state or taraba

You don go shandam for plateau? I heard there was a certain year the temperature recorded all time low of around 10degree.
The cold just dey kill mad men for street that year.

DubaiLandLord1:
E go be pleateau state or taraba

Taraba state ofcourse

UncleAyo how ina take dy razz babe for that kind plaz,abeg tell us o na dat one some OG want to hear.

Serve in pantisawa ,Taraba state.

I loved it.

Taraba state is home away from home for me.

...

elpochas:
UncleAyo how ina take dy razz babe for that kind plaz,abeg tell us o na dat one some OG want to hear.

As long as the girls are not your students or married women, corpers are encourage to relate with the ladies but must be ready for marriage in case the relationship result into pregnancy. there was a case like that that they told us about.

The girls over there are are nice generally and approachable.


Some of them (female students) still call me till this year... maybe they were showing interest and I did not notice

This is a great piece.

That's nice

I served in Gembu 2018/19. Mehn, I have never seen a colder LGA in Nigeria than Sardauna in Taraba. Initially I almost regretted going for service when posted to that town but a few weeks after I started to enjoy my service year. The cold temperate climate over there was one I would love to experience again. Beautiful scenery, hails or snow that accompany the start of raining season. I still have lots of pictures on my phone. It's a beautiful region, it's like staying outside the shores of Africa.

Kingsasian:
I served in Gembu 2018/19. Mehn, I have never seen a colder LGA in Nigeria than Sardauna in Taraba. Initially I almost regretted going for service when posted to that town but a few weeks after I started to enjoy my service year. The cold temperate climate over there was one I would love to experience again. Beautiful scenery, hails or snow that accompany the start of raining season. I still have lots of pictures on my phone. It's a beautiful region, it's like staying outside the shores of Africa.

You are absolutely correct about everything you said. I used to spend days at the Gembu corper's lodge too.

Please, post some the pictures for our enjoyment. pleeease!

UncleAyo:


You are absolutely correct about everything you said. I used to spend days at the Gembu corper's lodge too.

Please, post some the pictures for our enjoyment. pleeease!

my lodge was close to the gembu corners lodge beside the stadium at mansur. I will post pictures.

Abeg , as I wan go serve there , how much I fit budget for olosho..


My question is this, can you find olosho in this place because of too much cold?

doctore212:
Abeg , as I wan go serve there , how much I fit budget for olosho..


My question is this, can you find olosho in this place because of too much cold?

As far as I was told, sex is very cheap over there (many sex workers). But a lot of statistics indicates that number of persons with HIV/AIDs in Nigeria is highest in the Mambila plateau.


check out below, the map of HIV/AIDS prevalence in Nigeria.

Was born there

Was born there... Gembu precisely

Just watch how they'll spoil this great thread with sex talk.

Thanks op for sharing, quite interesting & enlightening...

Menh come to think of it, so you guys actually drink or cook with that water??.....

A POS & phone charging business would definitely thrive in this locality.

Cool

Okay

E go be

How person go cun dae bang inside cold like this

Interesting. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Kingsasian:
I served in Gembu 2018/19. Mehn, I have never seen a colder LGA in Nigeria than Sardauna in Taraba. Initially I almost regretted going for service when posted to that town but a few weeks after I started to enjoy my service year. The cold temperate climate over there was one I would love to experience again. Beautiful scenery, hails or snow that accompany the start of raining season. I still have lots of pictures on my phone. It's a beautiful region, it's like staying outside the shores of Africa.

Post some pictures pls

25°C is cold?

Kingsasian:
I served in Gembu 2018/19. Mehn, I have never seen a colder LGA in Nigeria than Sardauna in Taraba. Initially I almost regretted going for service when posted to that town but a few weeks after I started to enjoy my service year. The cold temperate climate over there was one I would love to experience again. Beautiful scenery, hails or snow that accompany the start of raining season. I still have lots of pictures on my phone. It's a beautiful region, it's like staying outside the shores of Africa.

How cold does it get?

Make I settle down read the post wella.....

One of the richest Nigerians alive is from Taraba state. His name is Gen. Theophilus Y. Danjuma(Rtd).

I recall meeting one Taraba indigene some decades ago, he is a brilliant guy who finished from I think Futyola or Futminna. They had a Governor who was a Pharmacist who died from injuries sustained in air mishap. .
It's one of those underdog states in Nigeria but I have no doubt that some day Taraba too will go global. They should be a tourist delight.
@OP, please what is the origin of the word "Taraba " the state is named by ?

Wow nice

Many wonderful places in Nigeria!