Many a cross word

Since Monday we’ve been without Internet – I’ve been climbing the walls. No-one seems to have the slightest idea what to do about it either. And to crown it all, my South African BlackBerry access, that was working fine the first week I was back in Lagos, has stopped working. I’ll have to migrate my Nigerian MTN contract. Another day, another pain in the ass.

Besides the internet, everything else has been going flat-out. We have half a dozen campaigns in various stages of presentation and roll-out, which is stretching the agency to the limit.

 

Yesterday I went to see the Conoil client in Ikoyi. The traffic was average (read, bad) and we arrived 30 minutes late (read, miraculous). After a 20-minute wait, we finally kicked off a 3-hour meeting that left me exhausted. The long drive home was bad (read, bad) and we still had a bunch of ads to work on. I undertook to arrange the 23-odd cities serviced by Glo 3G into a crossword/Scrabble layout. Turned out I cut a rod, nay, cat o’ nine tails, for my own back. After labouring for two full hours I was going through the list to check I’d used all the names and realized with an icy shock of cold self-loathing that I had misspelt a word (Iloren has no e; that e should be an i, folks, lest it keep you up at nights). I had to deconstruct half the layout and start all over again. (I’d just like to thank the Crime Channel and Johnny Walker for keeping me going late enough to get through it).

3G coverage as at 14 July 2011

Cloudy and wet, with occasional flooding

I woke up Sunday morning … with no particular Blues song in mind. But the rain was chucking down and it was grey and gloomy. Does that count? 

Cars swimmimg past 69B Admiralty Way

Back to the studio, this time to shoot the Hause version of the ad we did yesterday. Most of the roads on Victoria Island were flooded axle-deep, but we had no idea of what was to come.

Hause isn’t that annoying repetitive lab rat music that you need handfuls of Ecstasy to tolerate; It’s that annoyingly repetitive desert rat music from North Nigeria that you need a steady supply of energy drinks to endure. Actually, Hause (rhymes with Yowzer) is the language spoken widely in the northern half of the country. The northerners are predominantly Muslim and are ostensibly far more conservative than their westernized counterparts, so instead of the buff Brothers P, we used a different guy in a variety of traditional outfits and the PSquare hip hop music was replaced with the vaguely Indian/Arabic music popular in them parts. I must confess, I began by quite liking it. Well, for the first few dozen times at least. The best part was watching the actor being taught to dance (it turns out he didn’t know how to). No Nureyev he, but we watched incredulously as he hopped around gamely and tried to cop bangra moves straight outta Bollywood from his long-suffering instructor, a short rather overweight middle aged guy in a white vest and tracksuit pants.

We broke for lunch, fried plantain (see blog of 22 May), rice and chicken cooked in a piquant red blister beetle sauce. At least, I think that’s what it was. One bite in and my tastebuds were too ravaged, my tongue too swollen and my lips too burnt to discern any flavour whatsoever. My eyes glazed over, welling with tears and I felt my cheeks glowing fiery red. Myself and Roddy were the only ones thus afflicted however, everyone else wolfed it down happily. Incredibly, the chicken itself was still tough – I was amazed that it hadn’t dissolved, smoking, into the sauce.

[Note to self/general warning: ALWAYS taste a soupcon first; Nigerian cooking uses chilli and curry the way we use salt and pepper]     

The earlier delay waiting for our leading man to learn to dance now became aggravated by the rain that had been increasing steadily in intensity and volume all morning. The noise on the tin roof of the studio was such that we couldn’t record live audio. We had to wait and hope for a lull in the storm, hopefully thunder-free, to grab the sound bites delivered to camera at the end of each successfully executed dance manoeuvre.  The lulls were about as infrequent as the successful dance steps. At 8.30pm, starving and exhausted, we gratefully piled into Halim’s waiting 4X4 to go home. We didn’t realize that major flooding had taken place all over Lagos, including Vic Island towards which we were headed.  

Vic Island under water as high as the door

SUV parking FAIL

The traffic was a disaster. Everywhere you looked was gridlock, with cars abandoned on all sides. People desperately roped in gangs of drenched passers-by to push their stricken vehicles through the water and out of the way. The trip from the studio to the Firehouse usually takes 40 minutes; this time it took us almost 4 hours. At one stage, the water was sloshing against the side of the car door that, luckily, proved to be watertight. We passed an expensive SUV hunkered down in the water at a crazy 45 degrees – the front had obviously gone into the open drain running down the length of the centre island. We inched homewards through the water, Roddy and I both blissfully ignorant that this was not, in fact, typical Lagos wet weather. It would be a few days before we realised that Halim was stoically navigating through the worst flooding they've had in a decade.

Fela se Kind

One half (or is that the root?) of PSquare

Having arrived late on Friday night (a pleasant flight with an entire middle row to myself) I woke up on Saturday morning and headed straight out to a TV shoot with Roddy. The TVC features PSquare – identical twins Peter and Paul - one of Nigeria’s hottest young hip-hop acts. As it turns out, very nice guys who busted their asses all day in front of the camera without a murmur of complaint.

Koga studios are in Ikeja on the mainland, a good 40 minutes’ drive from the agency, so after we wrapped around 7pm, Mordi and I joined the Glo producer Ororo and some of his colleagues for some drinks at a joint a few blocks away, right next to the famous Afrika Shrine. A sideplate of inkwobi (cow’s leg) was ordered as a snack. I tried a piece – it’s cooked in a tasty, hot sauce – but was not pleasantly surprised. It was pretty much a piece of gristle, one step away from an actual bone. I ground away manfully on the same piece for about 5 minutes before removing it into a serviette. Then we decided to visit the Afrika Shrine. This time I was pleasantly surprised. Squeezing through a crowded entrance into a dark yard, it opened up into a large, high roofed music venue (about the size of Bassline in Newtown, Jozi). The “shrine” is nothing like the dingy museum I anticipated – the whole place is a living, drinking, music thumping, dope smoking memorial to Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1938-1997). 

L-R: Ororo, Mordi and accomplice at the actual shrine inside the Shrine

Poster boy for mayhem

With plastic tables and chairs occupying the broad space between a high stage at one end and a bar at the other, and pool tables down the one side, it put me in mind of the Tandoor in Yeoville in the early 90’s. The familiar smell of Igbo (weed, vigorously endorsed by the late Fela) reinforced my impression.  We grabbed a table and a few more beers and I was regaled with stories of the legendary musician, bigamist (he married 27 women one day) and human freedom activist. 

Afterwards we went outside onto the busy sidewalk and squeezed onto one of the narrow wooden benches for an al fresco ABF.  I was offered a sip of Ogidiga – foul tasting bitters that smelt a bit like jelly beans mixed with ethanol. This elicited much mirth of the “nudge nudge wink wink” variety; Apparently this demon piss is reputed to give men the staying power of door-to-door Viagra salesmen. So, if you can keep it down, you can keep it up all night... I declined after the first taste, so we’ll never know

 
 Postscript: Liner notes attest that Fela changed his name in 1976 from Fela Ransome Kuti to Fela Anikulapo Kuta which, according to him, means “The One Who Emanates Greatness, Who carries Death in His Quiver and Who cannot be killed by Human Entity.” This was prescient; He finally succumbed to a heart condition complicated by AIDS/HIV.

The Waiting Game

"When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.

I've been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger. Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter."

                              - Apocalyse Now 

Well, it's been over a month since I arrived back in Jozi. My cheery parting words to my client "See you in 10 days" are long gone, leaving a bitter, a dry, hungover taste in my mouth. Through no fault of mine I should stress, and indeed, I am stressing. What momentum I built up in my first 3 weeks in Lagos has now ground to a halt under the blind, crushing weight of bureaucratic ineptitude that is the Nigerian Consulate. My first task upon arrival in SA was to submit, in quadruplicate, applications for an STR (Short Term Residence) visa, including everything from my employment contract to letters of reference to copies of my UCT degree (retrieved miraculously by Christy from the garage debris) and even my Matric certificate. My first - and last - foray to the consulate to drop off all the paperwork was blocked by a guard who informed me that they only accept applications on Tuesdays and Thursdays (it was Friday). Thinking to make the best of a wasted trip, I elected to go inside and clarify what payments would be required. Expecting an unruly, bewildered throng of people as we find at our own Home Affairs I was bemused to enter a large hall and find mself the only occupant, besides two women hunched sullenly behind the counter at the far end of the room. I cheerfully approached and aksed about paying for a visa application. After railing at me with the chant "Tuesdays and Thursdays only" and then being apprised of my intention, one of the trolls underlined a web URL on a photostated form and pushed it towards me. Apparently payments can ONLY be made online. I thanked her and gathered my pile of papers. She perked up visibly as she espied one of the four painstakingly completed 8-page application forms lying on top. "That's not allowed," she commented with grim relish. "It has to be typed up." It was at that point I decided to leave it to our capable Nigerian lawyers and (as it turns out) not-so-capable local facilitators to get my visa through the system. 

It's been wonderful seeing my family and friends, even though it has been atrociously cold this year. Last weekend I removed a 3mm disc of ice from the dogs' water bowl outside! My bakkie also refused to start the other morning (I suspect a frozen solenoid) and I had to reverse bump-start it down the driveway. But it's been fun, generally speaking, and I have certainly enjoyed working with the creatives at the Firehouse in Jo'burg.

 

Meanwhile my bosses have been tearing out their hair as much as I've been climbing the walls. So, I'm massively relieved to hear, at last, that the visa will be ready on Tuesday and, with a bit o' luck, I'll be flying out next Thursday or Friday. 

Thank God.  

Or, based on past experience, maybe that should be, 

If it pleases God.

 

Back In Jozi

I caught the Friday night SAA flight back last Friday 27 May. Man, I had a dreadful flight. We arrived early at the airport, anticipating the worst, so we stood for an hour before check in was opened. Between that and getting on the plane, we went through no fewer than EIGHT checkpoints! These ranged from cursory checks for passport and boarding pass to full baggage rummaging and X-ray (sans shoes and belt) scans. Erica elected to carry a Ghanaian mask with her, which led to a further delay - the customs guys insisting that she was robbing West Africa of one of its most priceless artefacts without the necessary paperwork. (For the record, the necessary paperwork is usually rectangular and has a number of zeroes printed on opposing corners, back and front). Just before going down the gangway, I was spared having my laptop bag ransacked by a fortuitously placed Twix that I had slipped in there for the flight. The customs lady looked meaningfully at it and suggested that it might be meant for a child. I wondered aloud if she might have such a child... The chocolate vanished, my bag was zipped closed and handed back to me otherwise untouched, with a warm smile thrown in. Sitting on the plane, now an hour behind schedule, some power supply problem kept us grounded for another half hour. The air conditioning wouldn't kick in till the aircraft was taxiing - so I sat in the sweltering, sticky heat, sweating as if in a sauna. The tickling that had started at the back of my throat on Friday morning chose this time to gain a foothold and develop into proper flu symptoms. I spent the flight unsuccessfully trying to sleep, with the oversized bloke next to me spilling unconsciously into my chair, while my head steadily turned to sludge and my coccyx ached as it atrophied.

We finally arrived at Jan and/OR Tambo International around 6.30; I stepped out into the sharp, dry winter morning air with relief bordering on joy. I swear there were tears in my eyes and I was choked up. Or maybe it was just from coughing and trying to breathe through a faceful of snot. Anyway, a quick 15-minute Gautrain ride to Sandton later, and I was deposited in a strangely familiar, yet oddly different new world. A place with wide, unbroken roads, orderly lines of cars, traffic lights that not only work, but people STOP when they're red! It was quite spooky. Picked up by my Beloved and Barney, I was a bit dazed traveling the old roads again. I'd been gone for just three short, non-stop weeks, but it felt like another life away.

After showering and changing we went to pick up the kids. Awake now for 28 hours. By the time I got them home, sleep deprivation and flu were pushing me to the verge of hallucination. Arriving back in Westdene, I crashed on the couch in front of the TV. Home, set and match.

Friday morning

L-R: Nancy, Al, Emmanuel, Opeyemi

Halim & I (sartorially naturalized)

Halim arrived with a gift of a beautifully made Nigerian casual suit for me - handmade by one of his connections. The tailor measured me up last week (impressing me by memorising half a dozen measurements before actually committing them to paper). It's linen, lightweight and very cool, with drawstring pants. My early bird colleagues Emmanuel (Art Director) and Opeyemi (Account Exec) were suitably impressed, as were Nancy and Halim himself.

A last minute client briefing was scheduled before the trip to airport, so I packed beforehand. The rainwater from the mighty storm in the wee hours had flooded most of the roads on Victoria Island, the drains not being designed to handle the wastewater demands of the city.  I was very glad not to be one of the people I saw taking off shoes and rolling up their trouser legs to cross the street! The okada drivers - and their passengers - fared not much better, even trying to drive the pavements to avoid the deeper stretches, with feet raised to handlebar height, looking like paper marionettes.

Rhapsody in Grey - One thing about Lagos, even though it's always hot, it's overcast more often than not.

 After the meeting we took the long road to the airport - first time I had seen it in daylight. Crossing the long bridge from Victoria Island to the mainland, I admired the enormity of Lagos Lagoon (I'm told that Lagos is actually named from the Portuguese for lake).

What appeared to be a regatta was, on closer inspection, a flotilla of white sailed dugout boats. On even closer inspection it turned out that the sails weren't white; they were made up of a patchwork of old plastic/raffia bags - like the material used for grain or dry dog food. The bags were neatly arranged so that the branding colours matched. These boats aren't for fishing (my initial assumption), in fact they are dredgers. The owners use them for scooping up sand from the floor of the lagoon, which is then packed into bags (not unlike the ones the sails are made of), drained and sold for building construction. It's backbreaking, low-wage work, but the Lagosians are, typically, resourceful workers and compete for any job that's going.    

Out and about

Finally!
Freedom!!!
With extra exclamation marks!!!!!

Quintin from Video Lounge arranged to pick me up last night and we headed out for a few drinks. Started off at the Lagoon, a complex just past the Civic Centre that has four or five restaurants with bars and a function venue. Mostly run by French Lebanese, very friendly. There's also a sushi restaurant that Quintin reckons puts any in SA to shame. But we were on a drinking mission so after a quick tequila and beer chaser we moved on to the next spot. Bottles is a well known, popular expat pub/Mexican restaurant. For the first 15 minutes or so I was like small town hick transplanted in a busy city; I caught myself gawping at all the white faces!

The food looked very good (although I didn't order as I had already eaten), but a squizz at the menu confirmed that eating out in Lagos is indeed pricey. A steak is around R180, a burger around R100. Starters are areound R60-R80. And this isn't a fancy place. Anyway, we settled down to plenty of beers interspersed with a few more tequilas and enjoyed the buzz. There was a live band - actually pretty good - playing an interesting cross section of covers, from Black Eyed Peas to Abba, The Police and Ryan Adams, all with a reggae disco flavour. Turns out Quintin is a Weskus lad, so we reminisced about cool spots up and down that magical coastline. At one point we were joined by another SA couple and the entire conversation switched to Afrikaans. It struck me that this is possibly the last push of the Great Trek - a diaspora deep into the hinterland. Soon they'll be speaking Die Taal in the Sahara. Eventually, we called it quits and I was whisked back home, pausing only momentarily for the temporary roadblocks that are the local constabulary's way of shaking down people for pin money (you just put on the interior car light so they can see who's in the car, hopefully so that they don't shoot you as you accelerate past them without stopping). I was poured off at the office. My Joburg CEO Sandy and Account manager Erica had arrived from Ghana in the interim and were asleep already (exhausted by a trip that was rerouted and grounded in Benin due to bad weather) so I tiptoed upstairs for a reflective nightcap on my balcony.

Today was a grim lesson in How To Be The Client's Bitch. An ad was due to be placed tomorrow, but was delayed because the client was apparently incacapable of organising the shoot they insisted on taking over from us. Then they changed it at the last minute - they wanted the kids shot on a grass background so we had to comp in the grass. That was just the start. Apparently the detail that the media booked a DPS, not the A4 ad they had approved, was too trivial to notice or mention. Another redesign. It ended up that my Senior Art Director had to take an okada (kamikaze motorcycle taxi) to deliver material, the traffic being too congested for driver Halim to take the 4X4. Upon his arrival, the client decided that the grass was not to his liking; he wanted to drop in his own lawn. So now it was my junior copywriter's turn to take the open working files - and his life - in hand and chase after my AD on another okada. You want a nicer lawn? Sod off! (In fairness, when I saw the lawn we had supplied, I had to agree with the client; it looked like a yellow and green patchwork. It occurred to me that my designer had no actual point of reference - you don't see any lawns in Lagos, so any unbroken patch of green grass would be considered fair game)

After all the panic, I was less than thrilled to receive a call around 8pm informing me that on Monday I will be required to present all the work we have done to date to the Chairman. Besides the fact that Monday is a public holiday (Democracy Day - their 12th Anniversary), I have been counting the sleeps till my flight back to Jozi tomorrow night. So, now I'll have to see... If I can confirm that Richard will be back in Lagos in time to handle the presentation, I'll fly out as planned and paid for; If not, I'll be stuck here till next Tuesday. I will only know by noon tomorrow. Hold thumbs!

 Continuing my mind bogglingly exciting voyage of discovery in the kitchen, the green spiky heart-shaped fruit that had me baffled turned out to be a kind of feral cousin of the mango, called fuko'fuko. Possibly, the name is derived from the first question posed by pioneer English speaking missionaries in these parts, i.e. "What the fuck is that?" It's very juicy and quite refreshing, the fibrous sticky white flesh more tart than sour, although it has large black seeds dotted throughout, like rounded watermelon pips, that you need to pick (or spit) out.

The rough, hairy looking brown root thingy [below] is the humble, but highly celebrated yam. Besides featuring in Popeye's signature song (I yam, I yam) it's one of the staple foods of central and west Africa and it occurs abundantly in sixth grade geography text books and crossword puzzles.