There were some major differences in our welcome here, which added to the strangeness. Moving is simply a challenge- some like to call it an adventure but adventures are challenges too. The girl is holding up fabulously, making friends with anyone in sight and embracing the newness (except the food. If it was possible to become pickier or eat even less, she's managed to do it. All her favorites are no longer her favorites, and they haven't been replaced.)
I keep hoping for some magic window of time to appear so I can step inside and get things done. There is reading and writing for class, daily lesson planning, long term curriculum sorting out to be done, thought sharing, and the purely creative stuff. There's no time for it all. I can barely keep my eyes open half the time.
Africa in English always takes a minute for me. My first tendency is to resort to French when I am off campus. And I do miss it. But English has morphed with culture and so the sounds on the street can be just as foreign at times. And the African languages are present in force, always music to my ears.
Lagos is big city, big city. Everywhere I look there are buildings. And apps. I am not crazy about the 2.0 version of getting around. Taxify, Uber- no more just hailing a cab. I need to be connected and charged and have the phone on hand. I feel tethered.
I've also landed in a bubble. It's quite large and I haven't yet found the edges. Ex-pat everything. I knew I would be feeling lost on this island of luxury, wondering how to find my people, the artists. There is a hustle here, there is a strong British influence and some surprising results. I am not ready to write about it yet, still trying to wrap my mind around it, but soon perhaps.
I've taken no pictures, and very little has endeared me. I don't quite feel as though I have arrived anywhere. Still in transit. Some place that is neither good nor bad, helpful nor harmful, familiar nor strange.
Quick and easy things I could be writing about if I weren't in such a fugue state:
- Money transactions- as expected all things related to money systems are complicated. The potential for fraud and scams have led to development of complex rituals around money. I sent Western Union yesterday, which took an hour and involved putting money in one account, only for it to be taken out and put into another. There were fingerprints and photographs. I moved from counter service to a small booth and back to counter service again. It was comedic fodder for sure. But everyone was pleasant and welcoming and nice so I laughed my way through the absurdities.
- Money bundles- one thousand naira is the highest denomination of bill. My on-the-run conversion method is to multiply by three. Three dollars for every 1,000 naira. It adds up quickly until you are walking around with massive piles of bills. I've taken to keeping them wrapped up in a hat. There is no wallet big enough. A trip to the grocery store could be about 30,000 naira, all counted out in 1,000 notes. The bundles are not amusing or convenient. Every cashier has one of those money counting machines, calculating the total with a crisp whir and efficient spin. Before finally working out a method for keeping track of the cash, I spent time counting money. Lots of time. Counting and recounting, trying to keep the 5 and 6 digit numbers in my head. Only Guinea can be worse, with their millions. It feels so miserly to be adding up such sums.
- Keke's- these cute little bugs are three wheeled transportation devices- and yellow. They zoom in and out of traffic and don't seem to recognize pedestrians at all. They are everywhere, ready to offer a quick ride to your destination or crush you flat in your spot. The constant beeping to attract customers and alert cars of their presence prompted Mbalia to wish for her own portable horn so she could join in the melee. Possibly worth a photo, if I get my head on right.
- The seedy side- honestly, I wasn't aware of this for some reason. Kinshasa and Lagos have a lot in common, from snazzy dressers, to popular music, to an infatuation with the big life. I have come to see them as cousins in this way. They also have a seedy side. From the art market to street sellers, I've seen a genre of painting that I haven't yet witnessed in African art. More investigation into the background might be illuminating, or deeply depressing. I have a sense of where the roots stem. Sensual images in bold colors on black backgrounds- velvet? glitter? neon? My search for a massage/spa turned up options for couples massage, erotic massage and sensual massage, among the more traditional office stress reliever and Swedish and deep tissue options. And my search for dance schools has led to everything from the very formal and clearly British influenced to Latin salsa and kizomba to pole dancing. There are quite a number of pole dancing schools in Lagos. I had no idea.
- Excess- being in this bubble has me surrounded by excess and waste to such a degree my head is spinning. I had to take a day or two to try and recenter myself. I'm still working on that. This kind of copious spending is hard to witness. It is cutting and painful. It is not something I can or want to come to terms with, but somehow must manage to live in. I don't want it to touch me and yet, by virtue of being here, I am implicated. While I had anticipated a clash of ethics to assault me, I hadn't been fully prepared for how often or how deeply wounding it would be. My studies are only compounding the matter. Perhaps I am ironically well placed to contemplate ethical and moral leadership from here in the nethers.
- School population- my surprise was complete and total on the second or third day when I realized what was missing- the African students. I hadn't thought to ask too many questions about the student body make-up, because my own preparations getting here were so traumatic (I never seem to do anything simply, hey? More story material. So much material.) But also because I'd made assumptions based on the other international schools I'd worked at or been to in Africa- a majority of African students. Although I have been told Nigerians are the second highest demographic, I don't see it. Granted, I am only teaching art and so a fraction of students pass through my class, but my attendance list is filled with Middle Eastern names- Saeed, Aditya, Nour, Hadar. There are American names- David, Mathew, Max and Northern European names- Regardt, Aida, Celine. My classes are filled with hues of cream and khaki. The number of students who tell me they don't speak a second language is shocking.
