Place name · 1908 to present
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Above Enugu, past a colonial pine forest, a stream runs into a dark gap in the rock. Inside, a waterfall drops through a hole in the roof of a cave.
Enugu is called the Coal City, and the coal story starts on a hill at Ngwo, in what's now Udi. According to the travel writer Folarin Kolawole, who wrote about it for Naijatreks, a British expedition was passing through in 1908 on its way from Awka towards the Middle Belt. They saw the hill at Enugu Ngwo and reported it back to Lagos.
The colonial government was interested in what might be under it. In 1909 it sent a team of mining engineers to look. They were hoping for silver. They didn't find any, but they found coal, and that was the discovery the city grew out of. The Europeans who came with it settled on top of the hill, in the spot still called Hilltop.
Once the coal was found, the hill needed a road. The Milliken Hill Road runs for 4.8 kilometres and winds up the slope through a series of sharp bends. It's named after the head engineer who designed it. Drivers in Enugu know those bends well. Few of them know the road is named after a person.
The government also set aside forest on these hills. Wikipedia notes that the Ngwo hills sit at the southern edge of Africa's Afromontane forest belt. In the early twentieth century the colonial authorities made part of them a forest reserve, partly to stop deforestation and partly to make sure there would be timber. Inside that reserve is the stand of pines people now call the Ngwo Pine Forest, and it's a strange sight in the South East.
The real secret is below the pines. Kolawole went down with three Ngwo guides who kept promising him the walk would be worth it. They went through the trees and then onto a stone-paved track. It twists, sometimes gently and sometimes sharply, as it drops towards the valley floor. He described the slopes as daunting, with cold gusts of wind coming up at him.
After about twenty minutes they reached the bottom. The valley floor was covered by a gently flowing stream of clear spring water. Here everyone takes their shoes off. The way on is up the stream itself, barefoot in the cold water. Kolawole wrote that it felt good on his feet, but he wanted to get to the cave.
The stream leads into a dark cleft at the far end of the valley. The opening is narrow but tall. As they splashed in, the noise of their feet in the water announced them, and then the sound of falling water took over.
Inside is the thing people come for. The cave has formed naturally in limestone. Through a small opening in its roof, a waterfall of clear water pours down into the dark. It lands in a shallow pool on the cave floor and then flows out as a small stream, the same one they'd just walked up. You come in out of the bright hillside, and there's a waterfall inside a rock.
The main cave isn't the only one. Behind the big rock that holds it, Kolawole and his guides found more caves tucked into the stone. Some were easy to reach. Others needed a proper climb. The forest around the rocks was so thick it stopped them going any further, so there may be more that visitors haven't explored. The climb back up, he wrote, was harder than the way down, but he thought it was worth it.
These days the pine forest is used a lot. Wikipedia says families come for picnics and outings, and the area also gets pilgrimages and school trips. It's one of the easiest wild places to reach from a busy state capital.
But the hills have also been shrinking. Wikipedia says farming, logging and mining have taken a large share of the hill forest over the past fifty years. The reserve was set up to stop that kind of loss, and it hasn't fully managed to.
The surprise at Ngwo is how close it all is. The coal that made Enugu, the road with the bends and the pines are all within reach of the city. Twenty minutes down a stone track and a short walk up a cold stream, there's a waterfall falling through the roof of a cave, and the noise of the city is gone.
