Sampling local delights: palmwine and suya

After a weekend that felt very very short, I am all exhausted and I have just spent 3 hours in my steamy little kitchen – instigating a marathon cooking session to set me up for the week. It was about time: today I had to resort to eating one of Nigeria’s favourite foods apart from pounded yam: Indomie. It is basically instant noodles sprinkled with MSG and they are doing very well for themselves, just like Nestle and Cadbury. In fact the only ads I see along the expressway from Ikeja to VI is corporations advertising Maggie cubes or Guinness or some other fast food product. Another frequent feature is whole buildings painted entirely with Vmobile’s or Friesland Food’s colours and logo. These houses are at least bright among all the derelict buildings and sheds that just look dirt-coloured, so they are a welcome addition to the cityscape.

But the culture of bad eating is soon about to vanish from the surface of Nigeria forever! Our NGO is doing short films on healthy eating habits to kids of two different age brackets. It is really exciting: we are shooting a film set on a football pitch for 7 to 10 year olds, depicting a match between the Healthy Kicks and Junkfood Kings, where the players represent different foods. Naturally Healthy Kicks kick ass and Junkfood Kings underperform and loose as they have been eating bad foods. And the other filmlet is a music video showing two teenagers leading parallel lives – one is eating and doing the right thing and excels in school, while the other is not up to his daily tasks because of bad nutrition and eventually flunks out. The production company that works on the Big Brother Nigeria show is producing the video and we have some really cool rap lyrics to pull the teenagers in.

Another project we are doing is on slumdwellers – I went with my boss and the director of the production to one of Lagos’ slums: Ajigunle where our guy lives. It was very interesting, depressing and hopeful at the same time. What struck me most is that Ajigunle did not actually seem that much worse than other parts of Lagos, so I guess the term slum is relative. Our guy is a nice man, he is an artist and lives behind this huge football pitch (named Maracana after the field in Rio) in Ajegunle where apparently all the star Nigerian football players have been discovered. I tried to memorise their names to appeal to any football fans who may be reading but failed. Uwa (our slumdweller) in Ajegunle paints landscapes even though he is in the middle of an urban ghetto where the closest he comes to ‘greenery’ is the colour of sewage water. In fact the whole of the beachfront that his quarters face are littered with empty water bottles, used plastic packaging and god know what other trash. There is no running water and they sleep six in a room (husband and wife, three kids and sister in law), their bathroom is a shed built on stilts on the waterfront and the health clinic is an even more dubious-looking shed next to the bathroom. The BBC World service was blasting out of the radio, which reminded me of all those times I was riding in NYC taxis and the immigrant cab drivers were listening to the BBC.

Work is really crazy and I have felt the need to escape or at least switch off as much as possible on the weekends. I went to Oshogbo, one of the creative hubs of Nigeria, two weekends ago to meet up with Tammie. Together we had a lovely weekend, looking at crafts, visiting the fertility shrine of Osun in the jungle by the river, where monkeys were climbing in the canopy and tilapia was stirring in the water, and chilling with palm wine and nice conversation. These are things you cannot really do in Lagos, it is either rough or super exclusive and hidden gems are hard to find. Having said that, this weekend I ended up in a beach bar with an awesome view and a stylish design, with coloured calabashes hanging from the ceiling of the thatched roof shacks. And another wonderful discovery is the suya! I did not think I would really like beef in Nigeria, but the suya I’ve had in Ikeja is really yummy, basically bits of beef fried on open fire and generously rubbed in chili and dried peanuts. Quite a treat by the poolside at the Airport hotel…