A Lagos State of Mind: A 21st Century Meme to Those in the Know

You know. The Lagos thing, the unnamable name, the unique city of the demi-globe. The feeling when eyes open to a sunny, wood smoke wafting, grilled meats tantalizing, cool morning full of expectancy: there is yesterday's business to finish and today's new business to discover. People to meet and places to go. Broiling "suya" on the air. Maybe a stroll through the market on Balogun with a kabob of Suya (broiled goat kidney with superb dry-rub), yet-unkown but certainly already gestating drama where in a flourish of life affirmation, one might gift a market lady with a larger than normal gratis just to show one's appreciation of the human interaction that led to an apparent, but rarely real, bargain and tip. This gesture would be rewarded with the typical but always fresh Nigerian sales exclamation "You dash me?", as if such a gifting had never occured before (yet it has, many times, in the daily life of the market) but the phrase and joyfulness nevertheless always sounds as if the speaker is newly so surprised and amazed that he or she is so fortunate to be not only a witness to the noblisse gesture but to the more, he or she is furthermore the actual and real life recipient of the gesture. "Wah, you dash me??!!!" spoken with the questioning, mock innocent accusation that is the signature of spoken Yoruba where so much is carried by nuance and tonality. Yes, market lady, we have, the two of us, joined together in that 1000's of years old ritual of giving and acceptance that is mutually pleasing and brings smiles to all around who are privileged to witness and hear the joy and significance of this marketplace ritual.

Youruba spoken is the drum and the drum is of Yoruba. The two modes of communication in Lagos, and Yorubaland are so very much a symbiotic pairing. So much is drum. "B's are mouthed in a push of air both soft and purposeful as "Bwaa" and sometimes as "mBwmm". So the drum. The Yoruba Gods speak thru their specific drums and gave rise tothe New World "Voodoo, a religious belief focused on the intercessionary spirits to Vodon, the Orishas,...

[Voudou, Voodoo, Vudu] is a WestAfrican religion based on vodun spirits and other elements of divine essence that govern the Earth, a hierarchy that range in power from major deities governing the forces of nature and human society to the spirits of individual streams, trees, and rocks, as well as dozens of ethnic vodun, defenders of a certain clan, tribe, or nation. The vodun are the centre of religious life, similarly in many ways to the cult of intercession of saints and angels that made Vodun compatible with Christianity, especially Catholicism, and produced syncretic religions such as Haitian Vodou. Adherents also emphasise ancestor worship and hold that the spirits of the dead live side by side with the world of the living, each family of spirits having its own female priesthood, often hereditary.

I will no doubt return to this blog in days to come and embellish this thought.

Lagos is a state of mind. Lagos itself is a mass of life and a massive, crowd-large theater. All bustle and hustle. To survive, one has to join in. Then one becomes aware that as an initiated player on stage now, everyone one previously viewed nervously as impossibly glib and hustle-full are now your audience who are equally entertained by one's newly-donned thespian cloak...hopeful of your survival but not especially assisting and expecting to be properly entertained, too, by your efforts to cope. It is as if one is being judged and listened to, while being hustled, as if to evaluate whether one has acquired a certain panache, a style, enough vim and verve, nerve and audacity in one's even normal dealings, for the rest of the crowd to stop worrying about you and rejoice as they might celebrate the maturing of a favored small child. I have seen mature, seasoned and hard American businessmen literally frozen in step when emerging from Lagos airport (Murtala Mohammed) and barely able to turn back into the apparent safety of the airport lounge where...all is not a safe as might be expected for to turn back from the challenge of Lagos, before even one step into the Lagos whirl, dooms one to be looked at by the airport hustlers as cooked meat on the stick. More on this another day.

Northern Nigeria. Muslim without the politics and anxiety of the Middle East. Religious mien, prayer and conduct is the emphasis. The radio droning on and on with broadcast payer and Koranic readings in every settled background whether camel clogged Katsina or the riverside villages in western Sokoto. The still largely absence of the Mid-East "difficulties" results in a Muslim atmosphere that is stoically pure and clean. Under those circumstances one can appreciate and admire the religion of Mohammed.

The Griot traditions of oral historian/poet bring the past alive. If one is fortunate enough to have an audience with a genuine hereditary griot one might be confused thinking that one is impolitely easedropping on a conversation let's say between colonial Englishmen speaking about today's news only to occasionally hear references to give-away anachronisms that reveal the griot is speaking in the voices of participants in events that happened several centuries before.