This is Africa??

Nothing can prepare you for Lagos. It is an overwhelming, claustrophobic city and a dramatic introduction to Africa. The best word to describe Lagos is …chaos. The roads are something else. There are no traffic lights, stop signs or roundabouts, so every intersection is a mess and traffic slows to a crawl at each one as cars “merge”, inches apart. Drivers pay little attention to lane markings, where they exist, and have little hesitation in driving off-road to gain an advantage. Car horns sound constantly as thousands of cars, buses, bikes and pedestrians contend for the same patch of road. Buses travel to locations shouted out by the “conductor”, who generally hangs out the door for the duration of the journey while an amazingly high number of passengers sit in a bare metal and wood cabin. There are few designated bus stops as buses stop, or at least slow, wherever there is a passenger wanting to get on or off. Electricity is rarely available during the night, so most dwellings have at least one generator to fill the void. As well as being an expensive inconvenience, the generators are very noisy and so at night I sleep with what sounds like a motorbike revving outside my window. There are two taps providing water to the house I am staying in, so buckets are used for daily needs like showers, the laundry and the toilet. Many houses bore their own water. Rubbish is everywhere and much of it gets heaped in piles and burnt in the evening and throughout the night. All this results in thick pollution creating a permanent haze over the city of 15 million people. I don't know if there is a "nice" part of town in Lagos, but I certainly wasn't in it!

The people themselves are friendly, on the whole, but most are also intensely focused on getting about their daily business. This is by necessity; life in Lagos is expensive. At whatever socio-economic level a person is at, life is a struggle, whether it be to obtain enough food and drink for the day or to ensure access to other “basic” necessities - in order to ensure constant access to electricity, transport and communication infrastructure, many households own two or three mobile phones, and the same number of cars and generators. Large shops are very rare; instead tiny stores and seemingly millions of street sellers represent the basic economy. Religion is present in unexpected ways in Lagos. Christianity is everywhere - evangelistic messages dominate the back of taxis and buses, churches are prominently sign-posted and there are more billboards for Christian advertising than for secular advertising. All this Christianity is then mixed in with the mosques, religious clothing and public prayers of the Muslims. There seems to be no tension between the two, here at least. I am told the religious tensions increase as you travel North from Lagos, just as the political tensions increase as you travel East.

Without actually freaking out, I struggled to cope in Lagos at times. I certainly couldn’t have stayed much longer than I did. The city is so demanding, so insistent, I found myself struggling to breath and yearning for a break from it all. Over the few days though, as I got to know some of the locals, I started to understand better what it was like to live in Lagos. There is definitely a longing to escape in some - there is a bank advertisement here with the slogan, “We believe where you’re going should look nothing like where you’ve been”, which is not something I can imagine finding back home. But there also a very real sense in others that they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I was talking to a guy here, Frank, who said that having travelled to the UK and seen the “Western” way of living, he wouldn’t swap Lagos for anything. He said people in the UK are bored and have to keep looking for new sources of stimulation. Not in Lagos. Every day is different; every day is a struggle. Frank said the challenges in Lagos just working out how to survive each day make people feel alive, whereas in the UK everything is too easy and predictable. It’s a really interesting insight.

I stayed with a guy called Peter here, who runs a football academy operating out of the National Stadium complex in downtown Lagos. On the morning after I arrived I sat in on a meeting between Peter and a group of church leaders who are seeking to establish a football league with youth in their areas. It was a really interesting meeting (and not just because it started over two hours after it was supposed to) and I was really encouraged witnessing the passion these leaders have for making a difference in the lives of the youth in their community.

Our progress around Lagos was slowed considerably by the state of Peter’s car (a Cosmos, if you remember them!). On my first full day there we spent over two hours by the side of the road waiting for the car to be fixed by different mechanics. It even decided to break down in the middle of peak hour traffic, which in Lagos is a genuinely terrifying experience. On the second day the car broke down altogether, so after another hour or so standing by the side of the road, the car got towed to a mechanic and we set off on public transport. We eventually we made it to the National Stadium where I was able to see Peter’s boys’ academy train. Not only that but there were people playing football everywhere around the stadium - on grass patches, in the car park, on the fields; it was an awesome sight! I spoke to a boy called Emmanuel to hear about how the academy had impacted him and what it meant to him to be a part of it. It was a really good chat - he's got so much joy inside him it's incredible.

I was wearing my Liverpool jersey that day, which created some interesting responses. Rather than just call out “white man” to me, as the locals had been doing up until then, a lot of people now called out things like “Gerrard” or “Liverpool” or “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. One guy even walked up to me genuinely convinced I was Craig Bellamy (a former Liverpool player). My euphoria was dampened a little when someone called out “John Terry” (a Chelsea player), but I quickly moved on. European football, particularly English football, is massive here.

On Day 3 Peter took me to see his ladies academy team play in a five-a-side tournament. In typical Nigerian fashion, this ended up starting almost three hours late, so I used the time to have a walk around the Stadium grounds. As I was walking around I came across some amputees practicing football. I had never seen anything like it - guys with one leg were propelling themselves towards the ball and kicking it with amazing power, and guys with no arms were diving to save it. It was an incredible sight, so I got the camera out and interviewed some of the guys involved. The players were part of the Nigerian national amputee team, who play against other national teams from all around Africa. One of the guys playing lost his leg in a car accident a few years earlier and the joy he had in being able to continue to play was really contagious and reminded me of what this trip is all about.

Buoyed by this experience I went to see the ladies play a match, before we headed back to Peter’s office so that I could chat properly with him. He has such a massive passion for the academy and for seeing transformation in the boys and girls in the teams. Two other characteristics that really came through were his humility and his faith. I have definitely been touched by the hospitality I have received from him and his family during my time here.

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