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.