Noises Off

Just as timekeeping doesn’t hold the same weight of etiquette and manners in Nigeria as it does in Britain, neither, it seems, do noise levels.

This morning I was woken by the young boy who lives next door singing ‘Hallelujah’ repeatedly outside our bedroom window. An hour later, when the NEPA had gone off and I was sitting reading on the porch with a cup of tea, the thundering generators started up. To top it all off, our neighbour on the other side then started to play Backstreet Boys tracks very loudly whilst she, on her own porch, sang along at the top of her voice, and – I’m afraid it has to be said – in more of a shout than tuneful melody.

I have to say, it doesn’t really bother me (for one thing, I quite like the nostalgic chord that the Backstreet Boys strike), but there’s a strong British urge to complain which it’s quite hard to suppress. My natural reaction is to be indignant – in my world, to create any sort of noise which is audible to others in their home, is impolite, intrusive, and – at certain levels – illegal. Here, however, I don’t think there is any thought given to whether people can hear the music you’re playing, or the noise of your gargantuan generator (actually, I don’t know how big they are, since they’re behind a wall, but they sound like massive monsters). And just as with timekeeping, that’s probably because there’s no chance of another Nigerian being offended by the noise you’re creating.

Necessity is the enemy of indignation (sorry – I’ve been reading Shantaram, and it’s made me want to make a philosophical point with every second sentence). But the point is, complaining and getting indignant about things around us are luxuries – as is privacy. In our compound, there are four houses; three are attached to each other, and the fourth (the landlord’s) is separated from ours by an alleyway of about two feet in width. Behind our house is another alley of the same width, then, just the other side of a high wall, another compound. So given that no-one in Nigeria gets a constant supply of mains electricity, of course some people are going to have generators, and when you’re living in such close proximity to others, there’s really no point in worrying about whether people will be disturbed by it – it’s a just a fact of life that everyone accepts.

The music is perhaps less to do with necessity, and more to do with the joyful spirit – both religious and generally – of people here. And it makes me wonder, why would anyone ever want to tell someone to shut up when they’re so happy they’re singing out loud? Then I remember the tinny sound of a mobile phone playing R&B on the top of a London bus, because the one person who wants to listen to it has decided to play it out loud and force everyone to listen to it rather than use earphones, and I’m right back to being British, quietly seething about the bad manners of our youth.