Freedom!

My day-to-day can make me stir-crazy:  I wake up in a big house surrounded by tall walls and barbed wire, I am driven out of the gate and to work by a driver, I sit in the office, get back in the car, and return to the walled-in house.  On a normal day, then, I see three things:  the inside of the house, the inside of the car, and the inside of the office.  The only green I get is the small patch of grass alongside the house while I play Frisbee at night with my host siblings.

Yesterday, however, I broke free!  With the infamous Chris Thurlow, my SIPA classmate and fellow intern at FATE Foundation, I walked through the gates of the house, trudged through mud-puddles and past cars spitting fumes in our faces, to the popular Lagos hangout Alpha Beach. 

And we went jogging!  We got sunburnt!  We bought trinkets!  We were harassed by little kids!  Ah, it felt good.

Seriously, it was great to get a little variety and a little fresh air.  And parts of the beach were quite gorgeous.  It’s great to know that this place--the perfect antidote to daily traffic--is only a short walk from where I’m living for the summer.  

Above I’ve attached a few pictures of the beach and below are some pictures of a small church next to the ocean.  The pastor was very excited to have his picture taken and shared with others.  

Hustlers

In a conversation last week about the population of Lagos, I heard the same thing that I’ve heard and read before:  “People come to Lagos from all over Nigeria to make a living,” my Nigerian co-worker said.  “Some people come here and they work and work until they die.  Some people come here and they work and work and they never make it.  That’s the thing – Lagos is about the struggle to make it.”

An article published in 2006 in the New Yorker gives a similar assessment of Lagos:

Newcomers to the city are not greeted with the words “Welcome to Lagos.” They are told, “This is Lagos”—an ominous statement of fact. Olisa Izeobi, a worker in one of the sawmills along the lagoon, said, “We understand this as ‘Nobody will care for you, and you have to struggle to survive.’ ”

If this city is impressive for one reason, it is because everyone here is a hustler.  On Thursday, when I had been in Lagos for two weeks, I paused to count how many beggars I had seen since my arrival.  I could think of only four—four beggars in two weeks in the world’s sixth largest city—and each was physically handicapped.  Had they not been in wheelchairs, they would have joined the street hustle like their counterparts, I’m sure.

The New Yorker article continues:

The hustle never stops in Lagos… at stoplights and on highways, crowds of boys as young as eight hawk everything from cell phones to fire extinguishers. Begging is rare. In many African cities, there is an oppressive atmosphere of people lying about in the middle of the day, of idleness sinking into despair. In Lagos, everyone is a striver.

And it’s not just the poorest of the poor who embody the hustle.  I see it among the enterprising, emerging middle class every day at FATE Foundation, where I am working for the summer.  FATE Foundation trains hundreds of young Nigerians how to start and grow their own businesses each year.  The foundation is steadily expanding in Lagos and to other cities in Nigeria as well.

When I told a SIPA classmate that I would be returning to Lagos this summer, she told me her impression of the city:  not that it is chaotic, but that it has a palpable urgency, a "kill or be killed" competitive spirit.  On the street and at work, this is what I see every day.  

Lagos from the Passenger Side

Here is the Lagos I see as I'm driven to and from work:

This is the headquarters of United Bank for Africa, a major African bank, located on the marina in Lagos.

This building is also located on the marina in Lagos.  Last year, a portion of the top simply crumbled--it was over a holiday so no one was killed--and it has yet to be repaired.  Rumor has it that the building will be demolished soon.

Some early-morning street life in Lagos...

...and some Lagosians under a bridge.

"Chaos on a Stick"

As a welcome gift on my first day at the office, my boss gave me a copy of Time Out Nigeria and I’ve been grateful for it ever since.  Time Out Nigeria, like other Time Out magazines around the world, highlights the attractions of Nigeria’s major cities.  Its entry for Lagos begins:

Why go?  Lagos is a melting pot of West African culture with a diverse mix of people.  Get into the rhythm of its clamoring street life.

Don’t go for a peaceful holiday.  Lagos is chaos on a stick.

This was my impression when I first visited Lagos in January 2008:  a vast, chaotic city that somehow found a way to function everyday.  My view of Lagos is becoming more nuanced, but I do marvel at the overlapping of people, infrastructure, and commerce that marks this city.

On Friday evening I found myself stuck in traffic on a major highway inside Lagos.  Adjacent to the highway were the Nigerian headquarters of Exxon Mobil, Shell, and dozens of banks; below the highway dwelled the poorest residents of the city, who cook and sleep and do laundry in public spaces; and on the highway, weaving in and out of cars, were people hawking everything from cell phone credit to houseware to fried plantains.

This moment captured two of Lagos’s trademarks:  the industry of its people… and the traffic.

Time Out describes Lagos traffic this way:

Lagos is not everyone’s favorite place.  The largest city in Africa was built for a few hundred thousand people and now houses 13 million – at least.  One of the greatest evils of this phenomenon is … traffic.  Bumper-to-bumper, nose-to-nose, stuck, jammed, gridlocked.

It takes an excessively long time to get anywhere in Lagos because there are so many cars on the road, and there are so many cars on the road because there is no reliable form of public transportation, and the highways haven’t caught up with the exponentially growing population.  The traffic is loud, it smells, and it’s made more chaotic by the motorbikes that zip between cars stuck on the road.  Every morning when I arrive at work, and every evening when I return home, my head spins and I feel nauseous from the ride.

It’s easy to resent this aspect of life in Lagos.  (“How can people here live like this?!” I think to myself every day.)  But Time Out’s advice helps one relax:

Don’t hold your breath.  Stay calm, turn up the radio, sip a soft drink, maybe buy a dustbin.  You’ll get there in the end.

This is the attitude I’ve been trying to cultivate.  (Wish me luck!)  I also remind myself that the spirit of a people is not necessarily reflected in the environment in which they live.  Two weeks after my arrival in Lagos, it’s the people who impress me, not their surroundings…