An Artist’s Lagos
There is a part of Lagos you will NEVER experience from the driver’s seat of a private vehicle or the back seat of a chauffeur-driven car. It is the raw uncut side of Tinsel Town that energizes artists like me.
My mind strays briefly to 2010 when, armed with a small Sony camera, my phone, and some notes I visited Makoko and threaded its stilted shanty in a small wooden canoe in the company of a solitary boatsman. We cut our way through the murky waters, jostling with other canoes laden with women, children, and industry. Faces broke through the cracks of raffia walls to see yet another curious tourist. Curious about the poverty and the squalor that made Makoko the grime capital of Lagos. Filmmakers, YouTubers, Foreign Aid workers … we’ve all been here. And even though they were used to seeing other poverty porn addicts, every new face still merited a casual glance methinks, and some rough plying for cash if it looked like you would be making some gain from their misery. Weren’t we all there to take in the community’s infamous squalor and milk it for its money’s worth?
As we left the bustle of a community’s effort at making the most with the least behind, and we floated towards the creek in the bobbing canoe, I got views of a different world that only a few people have seen. It was a different kind of Lagos, colored and peopled differently. Indeed, a different perspective — one where I…
