ktravula – a travelogue!

I Hate Big Cities

Maybe I should just say I hate cities because Lagos is not such a big city (except by population) yet it has succeeded in riling me up enough to write this while battling headache and fever induced no less by a few days of activities in its rowdy belly. There is always an underlying assumption by residents of cities, I now believe, that they live in a concrete jungle and that the only way to survival is to live by the jungle rules. I talk of noise, of course, and a general rowdiness that always, always disorientate, or at best push one to a resolve never ever to return to that scene of madness except in a cocoon that blots out the noise, the long traffic, and the general lawlessness on the road of stressed office workers trying to get home in time for the latest edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

I bet New York is like that too. Darn, count me out for now. I’m going back home to take paracetamol and some malaria drugs, and then to bed.

I Hate Big Cities was published on August 14th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

More Lagos – Noise!

This fast city, known for its dirt as for its fast cars, runs on adrenaline. Panting for air in the back of a rickety bus of uneven metals, one wonders where exactly everyone is rushing to. I had this same feeling in Chicago, but not while in a public bus. Compared to my little village in Edwardsville, Lagos feels like hell on steroids. I’ve told you about the noise, right? When you’re not being deafened by the generators from every household that have resorted to using them to supplement electricity supply, you are being hassled on the road by incorrigibly noisy vendors on the road, bus conductors, and bus drivers with lead hands on vehicle horns. Aaaargh! Give me Cougar Village. Or, at least, give me Ibadan for now.

In my room at Cougar Village, I have never put the volume of my computer up higher than 50% of the total volume, and it was always loud enough to be heard at the front door from my room on the other end of the apartment. Right now in my sister’s house, with roaming children, a roaring fan and a rumbling generator, I can barely hear anything even at my Dell Vostro 1510’s loudest volume level.

When we talk about Climate change, we have always incorrectly assumed that the culprits are big oil corporations in the Niger Delta, or big industries in developed countries. Ask me now, and I’ll tell you that fumes from Lagos generators and commuting vans, and so much of this useless noise contribute even more to the degradation of the environment. And we say the Atlantic Ocean is now encroaching on the Lagos Island through the Bar Beach. Why won’t it? The amount of heat generated by these machines should be enough to deplete even more of the ozone layer. And what about the dirt, plastic bags on roadsides that will eventually find their ways into gutters and clog the flow of water when it rains? Well, there are some working trash cans, but are there sufficient implementation of laws regarding proper waste disposals? Are there such laws to begin with? And does anyone obey them?

My suggestions would include more road signs, stop signs, speed limit signs, traffic lights, required speedometer laws for each vehicle, and a ban on all honking throughout the day. As for the generators, there’s no solution yet although I could say let’s scrap them all totally, and force everyone to get solar panels – after all, we have the sun in abundance. The world is moving everyday towards new clean sources of energy: wind, and solar. Not only to reduce pollution, it will also reduce noise, which I believe must account for much of the disruptive behavioural patterns we see manifest in much of our public life.

Pictures coming soon. Apparently I’m not as used to whipping out my camera on the streets as I was a few months ago.

More Lagos – Noise! was published on May 17th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations, Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 5 comments on this article so far.

Blending In

Technically, I should be sleeping. I have a debt of more than 24 hours on my body clock. My eyes close by themselves at intervals, yet instead of going to bed, I am here. A few minutes ago, on the way back from a short lunch at one of Lagos’ famous malls, I slept off in the bus and missed my stop. I had to pay something close to a dollar to get back home. Yes, I should sleep now. But not before this short rant of my first culture shock experiences:

1. Private and public vehicles delight in honking their car horns every five seconds, for NO GOOD REASON! I’ve never seen this kind of madness anywhere else. Well, I may not have been to many places, but this must rank as one of the biggest nuisances of Lagos (nay, Nigerian) roads. Gosh!

2. More than half of the trash baskets in the public places are open in the bottom, thus pretty useless. Those that are not are almost full, rendering useless also the concept of a clean and fresh-smelling environment.

3. There is no visible speed limit on the roads. Although I’ve never felt this way before, I suddenly realized that I’m afraid to now commute in Lagos’ public transports anymore. They drive too fast, and too roughly. There is no visible speed limit on the roads. Most of the transport vans don’t have working speedometers, and there are no responsive health workers on the road in case of emergencies.

4. I’ve been prepared for NEPA (the electric power people), but not in this way. I got out of the airplane to discover that the escalator in the airport didn’t work. I had to walk on it like the normal steps. I heard that last week, there was a power outage at the airport, a now regular occurrence, that lasted almost three hours. Question then: how did the captain of my plane successfully land the plane without working satellite guiding devices at the airport that uses electricity?

5. As for the rest, I’ve discovered that the food in restaurants are not as nice as I envisioned them to be. And they’re more expensive than they should be. Heat is unbearable, and I can’t go out topless as I’d have loved to do. They might mistake me for a miscreant. What else is there to do than to come back here and rant?

It’s not really culture shock. It is just seeing things from a better perspective. More sanity can definitely be introduced, especially from the very little things. Welcome to Lagos, traveller. Just wait a few days more, then pack your things and head home to Ibadan. Maybe the heat will abate. And maybe you’ll at least get some sanity in your lush quasi-country/University life. For now, off to bed I go.

Blending In was published on May 16th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , under the Observations, Opinion category. There are currently 11 comments on this article so far.