Back to the future (1)

This is the first time in almost three years that I have solemnly typed the words ‘from Lagos’, and I did it with almost ritualistic pleasure. This came from the very fact of being back in the city by the lagoon after a medically-enforced absence, so all my memories of living in Lagos came flooding back, even as I received the usual adrenalin injection on leaving the airport, enhanced by a longer absence – memories of the evening wind in the trees at the back of the Financial Times flat in Ilabere Avenue, with Mobutu the African grey parrot inherited from William Wallis fixing me with his surly eye.

Then there is lapping of the waters of what I once indiscreetly described as the ‘odiferous lagoon’ and eating fresh fish at Fiki’s boatyard near south side of Falomo Bridge – these thoughts still clutch at my memory. I am reminded of the words of Mary Kingsley in an 1897 essay, which readers must pardon me for quoting at length simply because of its eloquence and formulation of words into emotions:

‘The charm of West Africa is a painful one. It gives you pleasure to fall under its sway when you are out there, but when you are back here it gives you pain by calling you. It sends up before your eyes a vision of dancing, white, rainbow-gemmed surf playing on a shore of yellow sand, or of a vast forest cathedral, and you hear nearer than the voices of the people round you, nearer than the roar of the city traffic, the sound of the surf that is breaking on the shore down there… sand then everything that is round you grows poor and thin in the face of that vision, and you want to go back to the coast that is calling you, saying as the African says to the soul of his dying friend, ‘Come back, come back, this is your home.’

Even in three years I found so much that has changed, is changing. And a short visit has filled me to bursting with new material for more than one diary, and that from within the confines of ‘the island’ without any trip to the mainland.

Let me begin with the purpose of the visit – the launch of my book Lagos: A Cultural and Historical Companion. This took place at La Scala restaurant with Governor Fashola fulfilling his commitment to be there as guest of honour who unveiled (alongside the event’s host Oliver Andrews, chairman of the Africa Centre in London), a larger-than-life cardboard model of the book. Fashola’s words gave me enormous encouragement and solace as he spoke of my own commitment to Nigeria, rival in my affections to my wife of fifty years, although nothing I have done could have happened without her. He put the book in the context of his own current theme that Lagos is one of the fastest emerging mega-cities in Africa but it remains a well-kept secret.

I was most content to see some of the guests, such as John Godwin, architect/professor, whose own book Sandbank City (written with his wife Jill Hopwood), distilling their sixty years deep involvement with the city, was the subject of one of my recent columns; Anya O. Anya, who was at the Nigerian Economic Summit when I first worked in Icon House on Victoria Island some eleven years ago, current crusader for the threatened Ladipo spare-parts market; Stanley Egbochuku, another denizen of Icon House who, as I recalled in my own remarks, had fished me from London out to work for Capital Alliance; Soji Elias, who once drove me to Lekki town to see the remains of the barracoon/factory of the French trader Regis Aine; and Chike Nwagbogu, progenitor of the Nimbus Gallery, now risen again alongside the Bogobiri Guest House after an untimely demise. He was delighted that I mentioned the slogan above the door of Bogobiri, ‘Lagos na soso enjoyment’, which the governor tucked in at the end of his remarks.

My friend the inimitable Tunji Lardner, master of ceremonies, who I said had been born to the role on this day, read a message of support from Ibrahim Gambari; and as harbinger for the future, the Abuja-based publisher Cassava Republic who will shortly be bringing out a Nigerian edition, had a stall of their books outside the entrance outside.

Frank Aigbogun, publisher of BusinessDay in Amuwo Odofin (that outpost of blessed memory), who has been my patron, as the French say, for the past eleven years, also spoke in support, and Jahman Anikulapo who has just given up editorship of The Sunday Guardian to give himself entirely to cultural entrepreneurship, reviewed the book. He was also the host the following day at the Freedom Park, where I spoke about the book for nearly three hours in a most exhilarating session. But that will be the subject of next week’s column.

KAYE WHITEMAN

From Lagos

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