BOOK PREVIEW
Home Away, edited by Louis Greenberg, published by Zebra Press.
Preview of "Lagos - Nigeria", Moky Makura's chapter.
http://zebra.book.co.za/blog
http://lwb.book.co.za/blog
BOOK PREVIEW
Home Away, edited by Louis Greenberg, published by Zebra Press.
Preview of "Lagos - Nigeria", Moky Makura's chapter.
http://zebra.book.co.za/blog
http://lwb.book.co.za/blog
BOOK PREVIEW
Home Away, edited by Louis Greenberg, published by Zebra Press.
Preview of "Lagos - Nigeria", Moky Makura's chapter.
http://zebra.book.co.za/blog
http://lwb.book.co.za/blog
With or without electricity, my favourite city in the entire world is not
dissimilar to a series of quick, sharp slaps to the cheek. Once the initial shock is over, it’s an experience you won’t forget in a hurry, and, although you can’t argue that it is fun at the time, you have to admit that it is probably unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. And that’s Lagos. A city that’s as alive at 7 a.m. as it is at 7 p.m. A place where a day seems to last longer than the usual twenty-four hours, where at 7 a.m. you feel like you’re already halfway through it. The trick is to find ways of avoiding the sharp slaps that you know are coming.
My first slap of the day comes at 7:01.
I wake up suddenly to the sound of a street fight brewing outside my open bedroom window. I listen intently; the fog of sleep quickly lifts and my mind and body are alert, ready for a day in Lagos. One of the voices is that of my older sister, a usually calm, generally good-natured and wonderfully energetic character packed into a petite 5´1˝ frame. She’s warming up to an argument with a man just outside my window. But this is not just any man. This is the man who has incorrectly installed her generator – a machine on which all activities in her home, and in the country for that matter, depend. He caused us to have No Electricity last night, the night I arrived in Lagos from South Africa. (A small note about electricity in Lagos: there isn’t any.)