Posts filed under 'stories'
I began thinking about going back to Nigeria before our return flight touched down in the U.S. Although I had just had one of the most immersive experiences of my life, there was still so much I didn’t know. The Niger Delta story is enormous and enormously complex. Not only did I want to learn more, I was also passionately interested in getting this story out there. How many Americans know that we get 15 percent of our oil from Nigeria? Who outside the Delta really understands what’s going on there? Any way you slice it — global community or end users in the chain of consumption — we are intimately bound up with a people struggling to survive in a land rich with resources enough for everyone. That’s a story that needs to be told.
It all came together around a movie. Sandy Cioffi, the videographer who had accompanied us to Nigeria, wanted to make a documentary. Several GCJ alumni wanted to return. And now it’s happening. We leave in two weeks with a film crew and a vision and an openness to what wants to emerge.
Learn more about the documentary film Sweet Crude
July 22nd, 2006
Nigeria was hot — in so many ways. One of them was obvious right off the bat: the weather. I have been in America’s version of really hot. I’m not talking about the clean, dry heat of the desert — if you ask me, this is the wimp definition of hot. I mean that dynamic duo of temperature and humidity that melts tar and hairdos and motivation. Try summer in New York. In Baltimore, North Carolina, Kentucky, Florida. OK, now take that up a few orders of magnitude. Then take yourself off the power grid. In the village, where generators are few and the hours they run even fewer, for most of the day there was no moving air, cold or otherwise. No ice. No relief. This made the occasional appearance of cold beer miraculous and the chance to duck into a temporarily air conditioned room more seductive than just about anything.
On the long, dusty treks to work on the library, I was often engaged in lovely talks with my new Nigerian friends. In my myopic American exuberance, I must admit I felt impatient when they were apparently unable to keep up the pace and the conversation simultaneously. A few slow-motion feet. A few-sentences pause. And so on. The journey of a thousand words both began and ended with a single step. And then I got it. Duh. In a strength-sapping environment, how smart it was to Just. Slow. Down.
So it went like this: Sweat was omnipresent. It dripped from your nose. Trickled down your neck. Put a sheen over your entire body. Wet down your clothes. Made an effective glue for the village sand to stick to your legs. And used up bandana after bandana after bandana.
By the time you went to bed, it might have cooled down just a tad. You might have taken a little tepid-water sponge bath. You might even be sleeping in a house with a six-pm-till-midnight generator and a room with a ceiling fan. Don’t get me wrong, it was still plenty hot. But you learned to identify every little data point on the continuum of hot, and the just-before-sleep hot wasn’t quite so…well, hot.
It was always slightly disorienting to open my eyes in the morning. What was different? Oh yeah, I was dry. Thus began the tiny daily window of non-sweat. If you kept your movements to a bare minimum, you could prolong this delicious state for a little while. But inevitably, the heat and humidity would come upon you. It happened in an instant. You could be brushing your teeth or pulling on your underwear. Waving good day to some village kids or taking the first bite of breakfast. One moment you were dry, the next you were soaked. This I came to call the Moisture Moment. And that’s how you knew your day in Nigeria had truly begun.
June 1st, 2006
Lagos almost defies description. So much of our time there was spent simply getting from one place to another. And I came to believe that much of the city’s spirit is embodied within those cacophonous streets.
Having grown up in New York I thought I knew a thing or two about traffic. Hah. In Lagos, there’s about one and a half lanes worth of road for what can loosely be called two lanes of traffic. It’s really more like one gigantic sea of vehicular motion — that is if you’re actually moving. Long stretches of time are spent just sitting in one place. Which most of the time was fine as it gave ample opportunity to observe my mysterious, complicated surroundings. There were moments, though, when the call of nature or nourishment crossed over from nice-to-have into bona fide emergency for one or more of the 40 of us — with nothing whatsoever to be done about it.
There may or may not be actual pavement on the road. If there’s pavement, it may just end at any moment. You often encounter potholes or piles of construction debris so big they simply can’t be driven over. About a second before your car reaches one of these obstacles, you give a big honk and cut over to the right or left to avoid it. The guy you just cut off miraculously doesn’t crash into you. If the way is blocked more significantly, you simply cut all the way over to the opposite side of the street to continue your journey for awhile against traffic. No one seems to mind.
The driving skill is astounding. After observing for a bit, all my potential fear vanished — our drivers quite obviously had it covered. It’s like a well-choreographed dance. Everyone seems to know where to go and does so with precision timing, the whole thing punctuated by the continuous rhythm of horns.
The predominant vehicles are motorbikes (with seats for two often occupied by four and at least one impossibly large object carried on someone’s head) and minivans (with seats for seven crammed with as many as 15 and often two or three hanging out the doorless sides). Most of these serve as public transportation. It’s difficult for residents to afford cars. And the cars you do see are dented all around. Which was interesting considering we never saw an actual accident.
As you’re weaving through the maze, another of Nigeria’s wonders kicks in. Street vendors appear at your windows, often turned sideways to squash into the inches-wide spaces between vehicles. They are selling everything. Seriously. Snacks? No problem. Cigarettes? Sure. Newspapers? OK, they do those in New York too. Phone cards? What a good idea. But then you begin to notice other things. Weird things. Car batteries. Toilet seats. And a parade of parts: electrical parts, plumbing parts, parts that are just plain unidentifiable.
On both sides of the road, no sidewalks but a stream of people walking, walking, stepping over the trash that is everywhere. They’re dressed in everything from traditional African garb (colors gorgeously saturated, the women’s headscarves like pieces of sculpture) to western business suits to Sunday finery to rags. And on both sides of the procession are wall-to-wall markets. Tiny stalls are crammed with eveything imaginable — food, clothing and an endless assortment of life’s accessories. At night, the merchandise is illuminated by flickering oil lamps, creating an eery backdrop for the five-senses-full-on experience that is Lagos.
February 8th, 2006
After a day-long ceremony to commission the Niger Delta Friendship library — hours of speeches, cultural performances, ribbon cutting, the entire community and multitudes of visitors filing through the reading room…it’s time for the real celebration: an all-nighter with the hottest highlife musician in southern Nigeria.
The sun is setting, the air is heavy with humidity, it’s hot, hot, hot. We’re wearing our by now sweat-soaked African outfits which were hand-made for all 40 of us by the village women for this very special day. Out of nowhere a stage is set up. Hundreds of white plastic chairs and many long tables carried in on the heads of children and young men are placed around the village square. Cold beer miraculously appears in this place without electricity, along with traditional snacks of peanuts packed into wine bottles.
King Robert takes the mike, his band laughing and tuning up around him. The first notes tell me never mind the heat, this is going to be one very cool night. A few hundred villagers gather in a huge circle and start dancing, bending forward from the waist and moving their butts in ways I’ll never fully get and can only vaguely imitate. About a thousand more cram the tables and all available standing room. We are peppered in among them, talking, laughing, dancing, the eighteen of us with white faces punctuating the darkness.
Kids are everywhere, their dance moves fully developed tho their bodies aren’t. The music is repetitive, hypnotic, joyous — and from what I can tell after soaking up this country for a few weeks, aptly embodies the Nigerian spirit. Every so often, a blinding few minutes of light as a journalist grabs some video footage. Flashes pierce the shadows — everyone wants to pose with us, “Snap me, snap me!” No one sleeps on this night.
King Robert and his guys play on and on, they never seem to take a break. In the early morning my roommate and I stumble back to our house to catch a bit of sleep. When I open my eyes, they’re still out there. A few villagers dancing, others stacking chairs. The band is just beginning to pack up as the sun and the heat emerge for another day.
read about king robert.
February 4th, 2006