Lagos The Great

Lagos the great I IN AT THE DEEP END It wouldn't be true to say that we had heard glowing reports of Lagos before going there. Most of the tourists we met in West Africa thought we were mad for considering it. Nigeria's immigration, customs and security personnel enjoy a special place in the horror stories of African travellers' lore, and Lagos holds pride of place. Long before arriving in Africa, we had heard stories of heavily armed gangs rampaging with impunity through the Lagos streets. In the guidebook descriptions, the word 'hellhole' is alarmingly common. Yet there were compelling reasons to visit it. It is sub-Saharan Africa's most populous city - nobody knows the population but estimates range from 6 to 13 million - dwarfing the other West African cities, and, as the region's undisputed economic capital, we were resolved to visit it, at least briefly, to give us a more rounded picture of the region. Furthermore, after one too may brushes with stamp happy immigration officials, I found my passport full and the only Irish embassies in the region are in Lagos and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Since the war had just flared up again just outside Freetown, Lagos surely had to be a better bet for a replacement passport. Finally and reassuringly, none of the African traders we met seemed to think it especially ill-advised to go there, limiting their warnings to saying that it was a 'fast' place. For months we had been mentally steeling ourselves for the challenges of this fabled city. Every time we arrived after dark in a town, allowed ourselves to be distracted by shady characters or excessively laden down with unwieldy baggage, we had said to ourselves: "we can make these mistakes now, but not in Lagos". We reckoned that our arrival in the city was the most perilous part of our stay since we'd be new to the country, ignorant of the customs and layout, as well as being conspicuously burdened with juicy backpacks. Therefore we spent a few days in Cotonou, Benin

preparing ourselves, before braving the 120 km trip along the coastal highway. We cut our baggage to an absolute minimum by posting all but the absolute necessary home, taking particular care to eliminate all politically questionable literature which might excite the suspicion of customs officers. We concealed our valuables in various secret pouches and pockets on our bodies. We filled our wallets with American single-dollar bills in preparation for corrupt border officials. Our camera and binoculars, evidence of the crime of 'journalism', were hidden deep inside our bags. The only part of our preparations which was incomplete was our accommodation since, despite many attempts; we had failed to achieve a telephone connection to any of the hotels listed in our guidebook. Nonetheless we set out from Cotonou bright and early to ensure we'd have plenty of time to find a hotel room before dark. By 11 am we were at the Nigerian border. Our taxi dropped us off a kilometre short of the frontier and we walked the remaining distance through a multitude of traders' stalls, towards the border post, an imposing concrete gateway spanning the road. Our sense of apprehension was heightened by the fact that we seemed to be a most unusual sight to the denizens of this frontier land. They stared in wonder, pointed at us and called out "tourists!" to their friends, as if we were some semi-mythical beast, unknown outside of ancient folklores. We were expecting a grueling series of interrogations and were prepared to follow the guidebook's advice and simply dole out the bribes to whoever asked without quibbling. Thus we were amazed when we got through the entire formalities in 5 minutes with almost no expense. We handed our passports to the immigration man, gave him $2 upon request, answered a few questions about ourselves, specified that we wanted to stay for a month and promptly got our passports back. We moved from immigration to customs. The officer asked for a 'dash' but, as I was fishing for it in my pocket, another officer came over and told his colleague to leave us alone as we were tourists. Reluctantly he concurred and waved us

through without the merest peek in our bags. We emerged in Nigeria to find, to our immense surprise, an almost total lack of touts, hustlers and hawkers. It actually took us some time to find a moneychanger, but eventually we tracked one down, changed $10, enough to get us to Lagos, and found a taxi which was leaving at once with a mere 3 passengers and acres of space, a shocking phenomenon in West Africa where empty space in vehicles seems to be considered an offence against nature itself. Our car tore along the multi-lane highway, giving us little chance to examine the 80 km of countryside which separate Lagos from the border. The onset of the city is gradual, indicated by thickening traffic which slows to a crawl at least 10 km before the city centre. The city was originally based on islands in the coastal lagoons but nowadays the vast majority of the population lives in sprawling suburbs on the mainland. Our taxi inched its way through this sprawl, along a 3 lane highway where the cars, immobilized by the perennial 'go slow', are thronged by itinerant salesmen hawking a vast array of produce. The highway snakes through a bleak, unrelenting, urban landscape, populated by countless rust-roofed apartment buildings and ramshackle commercial stalls, interrupted by massive, creaking factories, desolate warehouses and increasingly rare patches of wasteland, part rubbish dump, part tropical jungle. After about one hour of slow progress, our taxi ejected us at the major suburban intersection known as 'mile 2', where acres of buses, taxis and indeterminate motorized vehicles flank the road. Here we learned to our dismay that the taxi trip to the centre would cost as much as the 90 km from the border. This was especially disappointing since we had only $4 left and it required an agonizing series of negotiations before we found a taxi driver willing to take us to the hotel that we had picked from our guidebook for this small sum. The hotel's address was on Lagos Island, the commercial centre of the city. The trip there took us along an impressively modern system of highways, linked by stilted, twisting access roads, across bridges, over lagoons and

swamps, elevated above the rusting hulks of the city's power stations and major industry. The skyscrapers of Lagos Island loomed behind this scene of desolate pollution like a fairytale city in the clouds. We zoomed unimpeded through this industrial zone and finally emerged onto the final bridge to Lagos Island, with the city towering, unobscured before us. Here we learnt why the taxi drivers had been so unwilling to take us. Half way across the bridge, market stalls started appearing towards the side of the road, by the bridge's end, only the centre lane of the 3 lane road was available for cars as the stalls advanced further into the road. A few feet further on, the street disappeared altogether, devoured by the market's insatiable lust for commerce. We crossed the bridge at approximately 2pm, by 2:20 we had advanced about 20 feet when the road suddenly turned into an illegal motor park. The narrow passage that existed between the market stalls was filled with parked minivans, each trying to attract passengers from the market. Thus all traffic had to wait for a van to fill to advance the length of one minivan. We were stuck in the back of the taxi, the driver was getting increasingly annoyed at us for making him come this way, the sun was beating on our backs amplified by the windscreen glass and worst of all, we were penniless and thus unable to buy any of the frozen yoghurts that vendors were pushing in the windows. For the next 2 hours we advanced one minivan length every 20 minutes or so. The monotony was only relieved by the approach of a policeman who waved completely ineffectually at the traffic for a minute or so before demanding and receiving 50 cents from our driver in appreciation of his help. It was 4:20 pm when we finally emerged from the market and turned down the road where the hotel was supposed to be situated, a narrow street thronged with pedestrians. When our hotel proved not to be at the address claimed in our book, the driver was in no mood to continue the search and unceremoniously dumped us and our bags out onto the street. We strapped our backpacks on and set out to search the locality for the hotel, knowing that our guidebook

frequently gives slightly inaccurate locations. We backtracked along the busy street to roughly the area where it should have been and to our relief saw a small wooden sign pointing down a narrow side street. We jostled our way down this street along the thin passageway between traders' stalls, ignoring the astonished stares and shouted questions from bystanders, in a dismal attempt to appear as if we knew where we were going. 6 meters further on, another sign for the hotel appeared, pointing down a dark, narrow alleyway, maybe 5 feet wide, between two tall buildings. It seemed like a poor location for a hotel, somewhat risky for evening strolls, but we had little alternative but to press on. 10 meters or so down the alley an even smaller alley branched off to the right. A few meters down this alley we could just about see, through the gloom, the name plaque of the hotel pointing towards the doorway of an apparently derelict building with broken windows and boarded up doors. A young woman emerged from a dark entrance opposite and pointed us towards a grimy staircase which rose into unfathomable darkness. We turned and fled, back through the alleys, enduring the bemused looks of the stallholders, back onto the street whence we had come.