Don't go near the baobab at Nigerian heritage site

By Estelle Shirbon

SUKUR, Nigeria (Reuters) - Visitors to Sukur are warned not to approach a certain ancient baobab tree because, villagers say, it turns people into hermaphrodites.

It is an atmospheric introduction to this Nigerian World Heritage Site for the trickle of outsiders who come, but villagers who trek up and down from the remote hillside community are ready for an injection of modernity.

A road would be a start.

As the outside world starts to take a greater interest in the hilltop outpost, which earned its World Heritage label from UNESCO in 1999, the people there would also like to see more of the outside world.

"Can you take me to your place?" asked Hadanina Ajesko, 29, joking with a foreign visitor as she bent over to harvest groundnuts from a terraced field, her baby strapped to her back.

A wide gash in the hillside is still visible from where the village men started digging a road before the government of Adamawa state, where Sukur is located, told them to stop.

So the farms and stone dwellings perched in lush mountains near the northeastern border with Cameroon are accessible only by a steep footpath, paved centuries ago with slabs of local granite.

"I have never been further than Madagali," said Ajesko through a translator, referring to a tiny market town about 15 km (9 miles) away where the women of Sukur sell their produce.