a few days in Lagos

 So I finally made it to Lagos.  Somewhere I’ve felt for many years that I should visit, but never found the courage to do so, as I’d bought into the view that it was a dangerous city.  Then I read a report by a female traveller who’d spent a month there, who said it was nowhere near as scary as people assumed, so I decided to spend a few days there.

& I wish I’d spent longer.  I took advice not to follow my usual cheapest-available-accommodation approach, but booked myself into a nice little boutique hotel in a safe neighbourhood, and also booked their airport transfer.  As I researched what to see, I realised that I should have given myself two more days, but anyway, I had a half day and three full days to do what I could.

I started with the National Museum, which I enjoyed – some great masks and other traditional artifacts, one of the Benin bronzes (so they’re not all in the British Museum!) and a rather unexpected exhibition of photographs documenting the creation of a statue of Queen Elizabeth II, made in 1957.  The statue itself is also in the museum, but more interesting was a set of photographs of the Queen, from all angles, taken to assist with the creation of the statue together with a letter from Buckingham Palace telling the sculptor that “I am sure you realise that any photographs you may take on Tuesday must not … be published in any way”.  I wonder whether they obtained permission to show the photos now (in this exhibition which opened on 12 November this year)?

I took a tour to Makoko, “the world’s biggest floating slum” with some one-third of the houses built on stilts above the polluted water.  Much more scenic than Kibera in Nairobi although also sadder.  It’s hard to describe, but getting to the boat from where my guide parked the car basically involved walking on bouncy ground which turned out to be compacted litter.  & the water was full not just of litter, but also of sewage, with there being no public toilets such as those I saw in Kibera.

I then went to visit the Jazzhole Bookstore, referenced in Chimimanda Adichie’s book Americana and very close to my hotel.  I bought a delicious slice of carrot cake, and got into conversation with a nice lady who turned out to be the owner!  It was full of books on subjects that interest me (politics, philosophy, travel and world history) and music, mostly jazz, blues and reggae and mostly on vinyl.  It made me think again about how I could pleasurably fill my time if I were living a more normal, settled life!

I also went to the amazing Nike Gallery with its 25,000-odd works of art, and spent some time with Nike herself who explained some of the art works.  & I went to the Lekki Conservation Centre, where I walked along the longest canopy walkway in Africa (and second longest in the world) and took a few photos of the many mona monkeys I saw around me.

The highlight though was my attempt to take a day trip to the small town of Badagry, with museums and relics from its involvement in the Portuguese slave trade.  It’s 35km west of Lagos and reachable by road or water, and I opted to take the ferry, visiting the ferry terminal the day before to get times and prices of the boats.  So I got to the terminal around 08:40, allowing time to queue (if necessary) to buy the N11,000 ticket for the 9am ferry to Porto Novo (not the one in Benin, but a Nigerian coastal town by that name) where I’d have to change boats to get to Badagry – and discovered that no ‘ferry’ would leave until all twenty seats had been sold … and I say ‘ferry’ because it turned out – some five hours later, after they finally sold the 20^th seat – to be just a small open wooden boat, with hard wooden benches.

Not knowing that I would have to wait for five hours, I sat there in the waiting area.  & it didn’t take long for the man sitting next to me to start a conversation … a fascinating conversation.  Two extracts stood out for me:

-        He was born to Muslim parents so of course practiced the Muslim faith, but every so often he would suffer from terrible nightmares – from which he was always ‘saved’ by an appearance from Jesus Christ.  So eventually he converted to Christianity.  One of the consequences of his conversion was that he can now eat pig, and he proceeded to tell me about pigs … about how they are so strong and thick-skinned that they can lie down on top of snakes or scorpions and not get bitten or stung, but how their strength also extends to protection against evil spirits … a protection that extends to any human being eating their flesh

-        He told me that he worked as a civil servant, and I responded by telling him that prior to my retirement I’d worked as an auditor.  His eyes widened and he rubbed his fingers together, telling me in a conspiratorial whisper that the auditors always made lots of money when they went to audit a civil service department!  I explained that the audit department I’d worked in hadn’t operated like that!!

They sold the final ticket, and we clambered into the boat and set off, through various waterways in the general direction of Badagry.  Via a few stops, eg to sell the boat’s fuel to another boat, and then to replenish the stocks from someone further along the route…  Then – the boat made a stop at Badagry!  So no need to change boats!!  As I disembarked, I asked about the time of the last boat back, which they told me left Badagry at 18:30.  After a quick visit to the not-very-exciting museums, I made my way back to the small dock, rather early just-in-case – and of course the boat, confirmed as the last one, came 45 minutes earlier than the time they’d told me, and the ticket in this direction was only N4,000.

By this time the sun was going down, and by the time we arrived in Lagos it was dark.  But I could still see that we were not at the ferry terminal, and when I enquired of another passenger I was given the name of a place I’d never heard of, somewhere on the mainland of Lagos and very far from the safer island part I was staying in.  Hmm … lost in Lagos at night-time … but the boat captain walked us all up the river bank and along a few big roads to the bus station, and someone there showed me the bus to the ferry terminal.  During the journey I asked the passengers around me if it would be safe for me to do the 50-minute walk from the ferry terminal to my hotel, and there was general agreement that I’d be better advised to take a taxi.  A kind man downloaded the taxi app onto his phone so that he could order one for me, and then waited with me by the terminal for some ten minutes until the taxi turned up; he also quite insistently pressed a good pat of the taxi fare into my hand, despite my protestations that I could pay!

So whilst I wouldn’t advise people to bother with a visit to the rather under-whelming Badagry, I was very glad I’d made the trip as it gave me quite a few insights into the people and culture of Lagos that I would otherwise have missed.