Two is company, 16 Million is a Crowd

Once again I have to admit that although I thought I’d seen it all, I was wrong. In a lifetime of experiences we will never be able to make that claim.
Once you’ve seen one African city, you’ve seen them all right?? Wrong!! Not until you’ve seen and more importantly, been in Lagos have you even seen the half of it. Lagos is one of those places you either love or you hate!!
It embraces the essence of energy. I’m not sure if it’s the hundreds of generators billowing diesel fumes into the air or simply the buzz of 17
million people jostling for position in one city, but there is undeniably an electricity in the air. The infrastructure that exists suggests a New York of Africa in it’s “hey day”. A feat of engineering is evident in the bridge that crosses from the mainland to VI, which very much like Manhatten, is where the CBD resides.


Banks, Telecommunications and oil are clearly what sustains a large share of the countries wealth but you don’t have to go far at all to learn that business is in Nigerian blood even if it’s selling loaves of bread door to door or running through grid lock to make a deal for a pair of sunglasses. It is survival of the fittest in the concrete jungle and as I learnt from a Lagos resident, if you aren’t the strongest, you have to be the smartest and outwit your rival. If you aren’t the strongest, you have to give the impression to others that you are. Anyone who has seen the average Nigerian man who does just a little exercise will know, that is no simple achievement. It is this competitive edge that gives Nigerians across the continent the upper hand in many communities. It may be this competitive edge that gives them the reputation they unjustly hold in countries like our own where they are labelled the “Drug Lords” of any metropolis. I challenge that stereotypical thinking with a question… is it not just that those Nigerians who do deal in drugs (along with countless other foreign nationals), are the best at what they do… unjustly earning them the reputation they have gained?
I can safely say that my experience of Nigeria was not that it is the Columbia of Africa. To the contrary in fact, the people I met, although assertive, ambitious and some times just plain tactless, are extremely warm, welcoming proud Nigerians who only want us to leave their country having had a positive experience. I salute those who I met, who achieved no less than that. I’m not sure I’d like to live in the hustle and bustle of Lagos but I did leave with a very positive impression and altered impression.
Off to Abuja in late November and we’ll see if that is a little slower in pace.

Contrasts!!

We live in a world of contrasts... Within one month, in one moment I found myself in the hustle and bustle of Bangkok with it's endless traffic jams and oppressive Carbon Footprint, multi story shopping malls and polluted river courses and in the next, I was experiencing the serenity and simple life of a small village at the edge of the Great Rift Valley overlooking the Eastern Shore of Lake Malawi.

If I ask myself where I'd prefer to be or more specifically, which lifestyle I would choose to adopt, I'd most definitely have to go with the simpler, more "chilled" of the two, Malawi. Why then, do I find myself in an environment resembling Bangkok more? Why do I allow complicated schedules and deadlines, bank accounts and house bonds to crowd out the simple things in life? I had to ask myself, is it purely economic or is it my "Western mentality", my human need to feel "productive"?

The reason for my visit to Malawi was to film some friends of mine who have committed 12 years of their lives to missions. He had an interesting point, "We can adapt to another culture to the point where we exist within it but we will never loose our own." He is an example in the flesh, a project driven individual who seeks to make life easier and more comfortable and more healthy for the people he works amongst. What he does among the people, piping water into villages, installing sanitary slabs for their toilet pits and building sturdier houses could be perceived as the first steps towards technology... does this make him wrong, introducing Western ideas into a community that has functioned adequately for several millennium? Contrary to that, when a local man turns down the offer for a potential income because his crops were good this year... despite the fact that two years ago he was pleading with the same "westerner" for famine relief because his crop failed, does this make him wrong?

There is a fine line between simplicity and productivity? God will most certainly not reward productivity one day when it was at the expense of sleep and healthy family relationships. By the same token, he will not reward the sluggard who does not work to feed his family and accept his lot in life.

I have to admit, I too would look for projects to inspire, motivate and create if I lived within simplicity and maybe that is why I have chosen the "city way". However, I respect and crave what the simple, less complicated, and lets face it, less materialistic side has to offer. It is this contrast that determines who we are, may we be lead by Christ in our determination to find rest in attaining our purpose.

City Island Life

As always, I'm writing a seriously back dated account and I'm sure if anyone was in fact following this blog, they gave up on me a long time ago. Nonetheless it's time I shared some experiences with the great 'cyber void" out there again so here goes...

December's are always bitter sweet times for me because although they're the best time to go away from an industry point of view, they're also the time where I'm least inclined to spend too much money. Fortunately I learnt a long time ago that life is too short to think that way and when we're blessed financially, so long as we feel we've given back sufficiently, we sometimes need to bite the bullet and experience life a little...

With that in mind, it was off to Singapore, Phuket and Perth for the December holidays. It is of course easier to justify such a trip when there is family in two of the three places to be visited. Singapore would never be an option if it weren't for a free bed and meals, not to mention a car and personal tour guide (in the person of my sister). It's a city that like many other cosmopolitans is difficult to define particularly with obvious influences from both the Western and Eastern Worlds.


What impressed me most, apart from the Singapore Slings at the famous Raffles Hotel Long Bar and the cityscapes at night from the river side,


were the vast green belts that surround and exist within Singapore.


As I photographed monkeys in the Mc Richies Reservoir Forest, and strolled along kilometers of paths through the Botanical Gardens, I was so completely enveloped by the natural surroundings that I forgot I was "within city limits". This island city is the epitome of organisation and without compromising the need that people have to escape into natural environments. Singapore Zoo embraces this ethos, particularly the nocturnal Zoo & is something not to miss even for those who have an aversion to Zoos. It was an education for me to catch but a glimpse of the diversity of wildlife in South East Asia. I was truly humbled by my lack of knowledge, in fact, complete ignorance of the animal kingdom within this part of the world... Africa is apparently NOT the only continent with wild and interesting creatures, although even they can be found on exhibit in the bird park offering me my first sightings of the elusive Shoebill which occurs in only two places on the African continent.
I'd like to say one day that my photographs of a Shoebill are taken in the birds natural environment, but for now, these will do. After exploring this "city island" it was time for real island life...