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.