The 333rd good thing about Lagos: Nigerian Cultural Day at the American International School

I always enjoy going over to the American School when they are having their annual Nigerian Cultural Day.  Each year they choose a specific part of Nigeria to feature with cultural displays and this year it was Lagos' turn.  So they had a demonstration of the Eyo, which is the traditional Lagos masquerade.  When an Eyo festival is held, it is to commemorate the life of a prominent Lagosian who has passed away.  The Eyo are symbolic spirits who go through the streets of Lagos to cleanse the city of all wickedness.  They carry sticks to ward away evil and evil doers.  It was fun to see these characters again with their leaping and spinning.  Attending the Eyo festival will always be a lasting memory from my experience living here.  Luckily I don't have any lasting bruises from the swat I got, even though I had removed my shows and I wasn't doing anything inappropriate that would signify disrespect.  But I'm kind of glad I took a swat, because it makes the memory and the story-telling more interesting!

 

 

These Eyo did some charging at the crowd and some waving of sticks, but, of course, they didn't do any swatting of the school children.  They were on their best behavior.

 

Besides the Eyo demonstration and the music, there were food displays. some shopping with great prices,

 

and I always enjoy seeing all the school children and teachers dressed up Nigerian.  I love the vibrant colors and patterns of Nigerian dress and the richness of Nigerian culture.

The 328th good thing about Lagos: Children's Museum Day



Last May on the day I was leaving Lagos for the summer it was Children's Museum Day at the National Museum.  I had been there for this celebration before and I really wanted to come because the kids are so cute, many of them dressed up or costumed for the occasion.  So I made sure I had my bags packed and ready to go so I could stop over for some of the program. 

 

When I got to the museum, the program was already in progress and prominently in front of the performance area was this car.  I knew there was a "big man" there....

 

The license plate on the Rolls told me who it was -- the Ooni of Ife.  I knew that later in the day at the Museum they would be opening an exhibition of the Art of the Ife.  It is a great exhibition that had travelled to museums around the world, including the British Museum and I had seen it at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.  So the King -- called the Ooni -- was there, I'm sure, because of the exhibition opening.  He certainly gets to ride in style.  

 

Don't know which of these guys is the Ooni, but there were lots of "big men" there.

 

 

There were lots of dancing performances from different Nigerian cultural groups.

 

These dancers with all the coral in their dress are from Benin City.

I got some pictures of cute kids in costume waiting in line for the toilet.

Nigerian children are all so beautiful!

The 318th good thing about Lagos: experience Pecha Kucha

Have you ever heard about Pecha Kucha?  I hadn't either.  That is, until last April when the Goethe Society was sponsoring a Pecha Kucha night and we decided to see what it was about.  For those that won't bother to follow the link to the Pecha Kucha website, I'll quote what they say about it:

"PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.
It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace."

You may have heard about TED  -- well this seemed like some mini-TED presentations, but with an emphasis on the artistic or creative, and not on technology.  And it went so fast -- with each presenter showing 20 slides, each for 20 seconds and talking about their work, there was never time to get bored by anyone.

It was a really fun idea and a really fun evening. One thing that was neat was the venue. We were on the roof of the city hall.  They said they didn't really have approval to be up there, so hopefully no government busy bodies are reading my blog and no one will get in trouble.  Because it was a really great place to do this:  a big open flat roof with a view of the city around, a nice breeze and removed from the noise of the city.

 This is the lobby of the City Hall -- it has some pretty neat wood carvings decorating the walls.

 There was quite a nice variety of presenters at this Pecha Kucha night:  painters, sculptors, dancers, a film-maker, photographers.  We enjoyed getting acquainted with the work from some new artists and creative people.  There was some nice visiting time, too.  Most of my photos ended up too dark to share, but here are a couple.

 To put on an official Pecha Kucha night for a city, you have to be an approved leader by the Pecha Kucha organization and probably receive some kind of training.  But it seems like a simple enough idea that if you have a powerpoint projector and some creative people who want to talk about their work, or even people who want to show off their photos from their last vacation, or their recent crafting projects, or their unusual collection -- how about just getting together to "chit-chat" or "Pecha Kucha."

The 317th good thing about Lagos: Meeting the First Lady of Nigeria



In April I was able to go with some women from the American Women's Club to a special dinner and event celebrating the women of Nigeria at the Eko Hotel, where the honored guest was the First Lady of Nigeria.  It proved to be quite an interesting cultural experience.

 

It started before the event when we showed up at the time requested on the program and the doors to the venue were still closed.  No surprise here -- I am always caught off guard when things start on time here because it happens so rarely.  There was a long line of impatient women crowding the steamy lobby and things were getting kind of heated in the crowd in the hour or so we were waiting.  The women were all dressed to the nines, but that didn't mean they were acting with decorum.  There was pushing and shoving and shouting at the guards.  It was a relief to finally get inside and find our table.

There was a lot of preliminary action before the First Lady appeared, of course.  Lots of live, loud music.  An opening prayer that was, as is typical here, very Christian, even with a call and response kind of "Thank you, Jesus" thing that made me feel very uncomfortable for the many Muslims that were a part of the crowd.  It was a prayer that wouldn't have been politically correct in many places.  I couldn't help but wonder that if the intention of the gathering was, as stated, to bring women together in advocacy for peace and unity in Nigeria, that it was a little insensitive to have such a blatently Christian prayer that excluded so many in the audience, especially in light of the prevelence of Christian/Muslim violence in the country.

Below is a photo of the room.  It was a packed and beautifully decorated ballroom and, though this picture doesn't really showcase it, the bright colors of really dressed up women made for a very vibrant scene.

Here's the women moving to the music:

 

One really big eye-opener for me was that when Dame Patience Jonathan was speaking, the ballroom didn't quiet down.  People continued their conversations, their phone calling, their eating.  The room was noisy!  I was so surprised!  I know if I was at an event where Michelle Obama was speaking, there would be respectful silence while she was at the podium.  It was difficult to hear her and especially to focus on what she was saying with so much noise in the room.  I was able to shake the hand of the First Lady when she walked by our table.  She had quite a fancy outfit on...

After she finished her speech there were many of us who needed to leave, as it was quite late by that time.  We got to the door just as the guards slammed it shut and said that we couldn't leave.  By the time I got there, there was quite a crowd of women behind me.  I asked the guard if there was another door where we could exit and he said that we just needed to wait until the First Lady left.  Many of us said that we needed to leave and we couldn't wait and would he please direct us to a door where we could exit.  By this time, the guards were holding back a crowd of angry women who were going to exit the room no matter what the guards said.  They pushed their way through the security guys guarding the door and forced the doors open.  I said something to the security guy next to me about how there's no stopping a crowd of empowered women.  I guess it was a show of unity, though not quite one of peace....

The 315th good thing about Lagos: The Lagos Carnival!

Usually we travel out of Nigeria around Easter, so we haven't been in Lagos to view the colorful celebration of the Lagos Carnival, which has happened in the past few years on the Monday after Easter.  So I didn't feel too bad about staying in Lagos this year with a packed weekend of activities. I had a friend from African Book Group who was handing out VIP tickets for the stadium.  Carnival consists of two parades -- one for youth and one for adults.  They take different routes, both of which end up at Tafewa Balewa Square, the same big stadium where we enjoyed seeing the Eyo Festival.
This parade was not quite as unusual as that celebration.  Carnival was full of vibrant color from bright costumes.  The parade organizers had prepared 12,000 costumes for the parades!  I don't know if it was different for the adults, but the youth in various groups just paid a small registration fee and were given a costume to wear.  The costumes were really quite elaborate and I can't imagine the work the committee had to do to get all of them designed, sewn, and organized.

The result was an overpowering visual feast and I had a hard time deciding what photos to post here and so I decided to just show you a bunch, to give my readers a sense of the visual overload, without a lot to say.

There was very little live music during both of the parades, most of the marchers just danced to the recorded music broadcast through the stadium.

 Just to reassure you -- I took many more pictures that I'm not posting here.  And though I was busy snapping away, I was also frequently being snapped.  I was among a small group of fewer than 10 white faces in the crowd and many, many people wanted to take pictures of us and with us.  It was kind of weird. 

They really enjoyed it when we jumped into the parade to pose for a picture.

And after someone thrust their baby at me to take my picture holding him, I handed my camera to them so I could also record the moment.

Shortly before we were going to leave, it was getting crowded down on the parade level, so we decided to go up in the stands to get a view of the crowd.  It was amazing to see how many people had assembled!

We really had a fun time marveling at the costumes, but one thing that surprised me is the scarcity of food vendors in the stadium.  There was a small booth selling schwarmas and drinks and one other small food booth, but neither were very busy.  There just wasn't much food at all being sold inside and not many people eating (very different from a typical American celebration).  But when we left the stadium and went outside, there were plenty of food options there.  We guessed that getting a license for a concession inside was expensive, probably making the food more expensive, so Nigerians were getting their snacks outside.

We didn't try the boiled eggs....  maybe at next year's parade.