Lagos

Our whirlwind tour of the West took us first to Lagos by plane. Obviously, nothing is easy. The flight for which we had booked tickets was due to leave Kaduna airport at 9am; so, having haggled hard, we had booked a driver to pick us up at 6.30am to get us to the airport in plenty of time. Of course, on the Friday, the State government announced that there would be a “sanitation day” in Kaduna on the Saturday – meaning that there can be no traffic on the roads between 7am and 10am (perhaps ostensibly to reduce air pollution, or maybe to allow for roads to be cleaned ; probably, in honesty, something to do with ticking the boxes for some international environmental grant or other). So we rearranged the driver for 6am to be sure that we would be at the airport before the roads ground to a halt. Then we received a text  message later that night from the airline: the flight had been rescheduled for 11am “due to sanitation”. Now, actually, this meant that everything was made hugely more difficult: we still had to leave before the no movement began, but now we would have a 4.5 hour wait at the airport. Brilliant.

So, that’s what we did. And with the obligatory 1 hour delay in taking off, we had been up and about for 6 hours before we even took off. Thankfully the flight landed at the nicer of the two domestic terminals in Lagos (the nastier one has an incredibly short baggage conveyor belt, against a wall so there’s only one side to stand, and surrounded by loud, elbowy Lagos women. We had booked with a hotel called The @venue - a bargain for the mid-range traveller, which is quite a rare find in Lagos, where everything is either very high-end business accommodation or scratty little hostels in the middle of nowhere.The @venue is on the ex-pat territory of Victoria Island, in walking distance of Bar Beach, within a short bus ride of most other things we wanted to see, and they had thrown in a free airport pick-up, so that part was relatively easy.

That afternoon, we attempted to visit the house and gallery of Nike Davies-Okundaye – a famous Nigerian artist who exhibits all over the world, including in MoMA in New York. I was extremely proud of us for managing to work out the buses, getting off at the right stop and walking for quite a way until we found the place: only to find that they had moved since the guide book was published. Hm. We were taken for a ride (literally and figuratively) by a taxi driver who took us to the new location round the corner for a whopping N1,500, all the time chuckling and – as he turned up the A/C and put a new CD into the player – saying “You enjoy your money!”.

The long and misled journey was worth it. We were welcomed by Nike and her family who were eating dinner in the forecourt of the gallery, and spent a while looking round the four floors of art work – some of it really very good. Once we’d finished, we had our arms twisted into drinking glass of red wine on them, which turned into two glasses and some fried plantain. All very lovely.

Dinner was a selection of suya (grilled meat) bought from some Hausa men at the side of the road – it was ridiculously comforting to find people who spoke Hausa, like we had found old friends. I have to say, I have noticed a big difference between people of the North (generally Hausa people) and the people we have met in the West. For example, down here, people seem to laugh more at us than with us. Where on a bus journey in Kaduna, people are generally happy to see foreigners, pleased to see when they know a bit of the lingo and generally joyful that you’re trying out their local ways, here in the West, people seem to just laugh at you for even trying and for getting pronunciation slightly wrong.

Another big difference is that we have been cheated out of money twice. The first time was on our very first bus ride. The driver told us the fare was N200 each, which seemed extortionate to us, but since we didn’t know Lagos prices, we turned to a woman sitting next to us, who nodded and said “Yes, that’s the price – it’s because of fuel prices”; so we paid it, only to find out the return journey – which was even slightly longer that the outward journey – was only N70 each. Sneaky.

The second time was when we were leaving Lagos to travel to Benin City, and were getting onto a bus at the motor park. The guy selling tickets told us one seat cost N1,700. So we paid up and took our seats, asking whether it would be ok with the luggage and being told “No problem, no problem”. We were waiting for quite a while for the bus to fill, and at some point I happened to notice how much someone was paying and realised that it wasn’t a multiple of N1,700, so I asked a woman in front of us how much she had paid: N1,500 came the answer. When I challenged the ticket guy, he swore blind that she was getting off earlier that us, and that was why she was paying less. It was only when I asked another guy to get involved and he checked with the woman that we were able to get the extra money back. And after all that, he had the cheek to try to cheat us out of some more money “for the luggage” – a totally spurious charge that no-one else was paying.

Now I know that this is what you expect when you’re travelling: seasoned travellers will think nothing of this. But the point is, that it doesn’t happen in the Nigeria I know (namely, the North). When we first arrived in country, of course I was used to checking with local people on buses how much they had paid, to make sure we hadn’t been swindled. But after a few times, I started to be embarrassed by the fact that I was asking – the answer invariably came back as the same as we had been charged, and the quizzical looks I was getting just confirmed to me that I was being paranoid, and I felt ashamed to even be doubting it. As far as I know, I have only ever been cheated out of N10 on transport in the North (= c.5p). But down here, I’ve had to recalibrate my mindset – I have to wear my “traveller’s” hat rather than my “Nigerian” hat.

Also, on at least three occasions down here in the West, we’ve been followed by children around a town or market, presumably with the intent of stealing something from us. I say “at least three”, because on those occasions it was painfully obvious what was happening – it may have happened many more times but more subtley. Genuinely, I don’t think this has ever happened to me in the North, and I have been round many markets and crowded city centres. It’s upsetting to have to readjust my view of a country I thought I knew, to be more suspicious and cynical about those around me.

On the other hand, there have been many people down here who have been as helpful and lovely as I have come to expect from Nigerians, and Lagos itself I found very enjoyable. There are pavements (very exciting), KFC and even the occasional pedestrian crossing with a green man – all mod cons. And I can’t tell you just how proud I am that we managed to work out the buses (hell, I’m proud enough when I work them out in Sheffield, let alone in crazy mega-city Lagos) – it gave us such a sense of satisfaction to be travelling in a ‘normal’ way around the city and not be forking out thousands of Naira for taxis.

On the second day, we walked through an old and busy part of town on Lagos Island, kind of like a sprawling market. Through alleyways and backstreets, we wandered through people’s daily lives (a little uncomfortable, and people here are definitely less happy for you to do that than we’re used to – we didn’t even take the camera out of the bag for fear of upsetting people), through rows of shops, under washing lines, past children playing football in the street, or using paper and balls of foil as a makeshift pool table, or a large plank of wood as a table tennis table with a breeze block for a net. There were lots of shouts of ‘Oyibo!’ (=white person) – some friendly, some less so; some children were clearly a little perturbed by us, others ran after us, shook our hands and beamed with delight as they proudly strutted back to their friends.

After a trip to the National Museum (a lot better  than I expected, and I actually think I learnt something about Nigeria’s history), we headed out to spend our last evening on Bar Beach. The write-up in the guidebook suggests this is really quite a nasty place, so we were pleasantly surprised to find clean water, clean sands and a busy row of tables and chairs where we were served beer and offered grilled fish and all manner of touristy knick-knacks. A beautiful place to watch the sun set on our brief time in Lagos.