It certainly wasn't the starving Africa my children had expected. Cassandra asked questions. Kate chuckled and cleared her throat, "There are two breeds in Nigeria: the few have-a-lots and the many have-nots." Suddenly the lights went off and the whole city plunged into darkness. It was more than an hour before the houseboy turned on the private generator.

On our second day, we visited Wuse market: an immersion in color and chaos. Natives wearing fabrics of intoxicating designs, stores bright with fruits and vegetables, traders rushing out, with their wares — batik fabrics, Swiss voile lace, and Dutch wax — toward any potential customer. Music blared. We were butted by goats and rams and knocked sideways by passing wheelbarrows.

And then we saw a demure group of beggars, some with missing limbs, others with no limbs at all, sitting on their bare buttocks on the sandy ground. We saw a crippled, blind old man being led by a youth whose ankles were twisted. All had their hands outstretched, chanting greetings to any potential benefactor. One told us that his wrist had been sawed off for stealing a bean cake. Blake looked away. Cassandra, with her arms folded across her chest, stared in horror.

We left in silence. And then suddenly Cassandra shook her head. "Aunt Kate, isn't there a soup kitchen or homeless shelter where they can go and get help?" Kate shook her head no. "We don't have welfare here, it's survival of the fittest."

"But isn't Nigeria an oil-rich country?" Cassandra asked.

Kate stopped in front of the SUV. "Oil boom can be a curse, not a blessing, you know, especially when the leaders are corrupt," she began, holding her fingers cupped as she usually did when arguing a case in court. "The world energy crisis and high oil prices in the late 1970s had flooded the country with petrodollars for construction projects like modern schools, housing developments for the masses, highways, and the new federal capital. But because there is no Honest Earnest in Nigeria from top to bottom, most of that money was embezzled by corrupt politicians. Therefore, despite its large oil production, Nigeria is the second-poorest country in the world."

We came back to the market square on Christmas Day with our bags of clothes. A line quickly formed — at the very end, a young girl of 5 or 6 with a very large head and a distended stomach sat, naked, on the ground. Suddenly she began to crawl desperately toward us on her hands and knees. When she reached me, she sat down and slowly raised her head. Breathing hard, sweat glistening on her forehead, cheeks puffed like a squirrel's, she stared at me, at Cassandra to my right, at Blake to my left. Blake looked back at her, his face an expressionless moon. Her eyes lingered on Cassandra, and then she gestured in imitation of eating and opened her outstretched hands in the air.

I smiled: "He-llo-o."