disfigured, fighting imminent death.
âThe white man who owns that big house took him to hospital, but he died before they reached there. You know, these oil burns are not like normal. They burn inside your body.â Sam held back genuine tears. He said Adeâs burnt features were still recognisable enough for his corpse to be identified, and he was given a quick Islamic burial in Tarkwa Bay that same day.
It was good to finally put some names, if not faces, to the victims of these tragedies. Foreign media reports on these incidents rarely give descriptions of those who died, and sometimes the accidentsâ exact locations arenât stated: ânear Lagosâ is the vague description provided. It was a stinging reflection of our worth in the eyes of government and, by extension, the world.
Sam and I sat on the smooth, damp sand of a deserted beach. The turquoise surf threw up a mist that blurred the brilliant sunshine and cast an ethereal haze around us. The beach and its palm trees stretched into the distance where the matchstick figure of a man rolled about on the shoreline, waves cresting over his body. He was performing a traditional Yoruba prayer, Sam said. Four hundred kilometres beyond us to the west, I knew that foreign tourists were
sunning themselves and taking drum lessons on the beaches of Kokrobite in Ghana, staying in well-run hotels. Why canât Nigeria offer something similar? Our thousands of miles of glorious coastline lay empty and shamefully under-capitalised. Oil saboteurs like Ade should be earning their money from beach tourism and using their disposable income to enjoy the beach more. The only people who seemed to be enjoying this particular stretch of beach that day were a handful of expats â the fat Israeli talking loudly to his friend in Hebrew; the haughty, muscular surfer walking past with his surfboard.
Out on the dazzling horizon, I counted more than fifty tankers. Sam told me that the vessels spend up to six weeks on the water waiting to load and offload their goods at the port, their crews sustained by hawkers and prostitutes who sail out to them in small boats.
By now, Samâs eyes were caressing my face, and his voice had lowered to a pre-coital purr. My ego toyed with the possibility that he was genuinely interested in me, but after factoring in my messy hair, baggy trousers and legs greyed by the dry winds, I knew my wallet was the only thing fanning his gigolo interest. His eyes now bored into mine while I stared into the horizon and made idle chit chat, strategically adjusting my position in order to maintain some daylight between us. When the daylight shrank further, I quickly rose to my feet.
We walked back to the main beach, where the endless stretches of sand were strewn with an ungodly amount of litter. I had recently stopped noticing garbage â after a few days in Lagos, oneâs eyes surrender to its ubiquity â but suddenly its quantity offended me to the core.
â Why donât they clean up all this rubbish?â
âWho will do it?â Sam was surprised that I expected anyone to take responsibility. Not only was there litter everywhere, but there were also a few wooden crosses, which looked like theyâd been
plonked there unceremoniously. Sam shrugged his shoulders; thatâs where people chose to bury their dead, he said. Land is used randomly in parts of Lagos.
We returned to Tarkwa Bayâs main beach, which was now filling up with expats. Groups of Lebanese men played football and volleyball by the waves. Sam pointed out the very hairy, barrel-chested Arab whose father owns the Eko Hotel, one of Lagosâs fanciest places to stay. He was one of the thousands of ethnic Lebanese merchants who came to Nigeria in the early twentieth century, a middle-class stratum that rarely dips its toes in the indigenous gene pool, preferring to marry within itself or fetch partners from the mother country. Their relative
âThe white man who owns that big house took him to hospital, but he died before they reached there. You know, these oil burns are not like normal. They burn inside your body.â Sam held back genuine tears. He said Adeâs burnt features were still recognisable enough for his corpse to be identified, and he was given a quick Islamic burial in Tarkwa Bay that same day.
It was good to finally put some names, if not faces, to the victims of these tragedies. Foreign media reports on these incidents rarely give descriptions of those who died, and sometimes the accidentsâ exact locations arenât stated: ânear Lagosâ is the vague description provided. It was a stinging reflection of our worth in the eyes of government and, by extension, the world.
Sam and I sat on the smooth, damp sand of a deserted beach. The turquoise surf threw up a mist that blurred the brilliant sunshine and cast an ethereal haze around us. The beach and its palm trees stretched into the distance where the matchstick figure of a man rolled about on the shoreline, waves cresting over his body. He was performing a traditional Yoruba prayer, Sam said. Four hundred kilometres beyond us to the west, I knew that foreign tourists were
sunning themselves and taking drum lessons on the beaches of Kokrobite in Ghana, staying in well-run hotels. Why canât Nigeria offer something similar? Our thousands of miles of glorious coastline lay empty and shamefully under-capitalised. Oil saboteurs like Ade should be earning their money from beach tourism and using their disposable income to enjoy the beach more. The only people who seemed to be enjoying this particular stretch of beach that day were a handful of expats â the fat Israeli talking loudly to his friend in Hebrew; the haughty, muscular surfer walking past with his surfboard.
Out on the dazzling horizon, I counted more than fifty tankers. Sam told me that the vessels spend up to six weeks on the water waiting to load and offload their goods at the port, their crews sustained by hawkers and prostitutes who sail out to them in small boats.
By now, Samâs eyes were caressing my face, and his voice had lowered to a pre-coital purr. My ego toyed with the possibility that he was genuinely interested in me, but after factoring in my messy hair, baggy trousers and legs greyed by the dry winds, I knew my wallet was the only thing fanning his gigolo interest. His eyes now bored into mine while I stared into the horizon and made idle chit chat, strategically adjusting my position in order to maintain some daylight between us. When the daylight shrank further, I quickly rose to my feet.
We walked back to the main beach, where the endless stretches of sand were strewn with an ungodly amount of litter. I had recently stopped noticing garbage â after a few days in Lagos, oneâs eyes surrender to its ubiquity â but suddenly its quantity offended me to the core.
â Why donât they clean up all this rubbish?â
âWho will do it?â Sam was surprised that I expected anyone to take responsibility. Not only was there litter everywhere, but there were also a few wooden crosses, which looked like theyâd been
plonked there unceremoniously. Sam shrugged his shoulders; thatâs where people chose to bury their dead, he said. Land is used randomly in parts of Lagos.
We returned to Tarkwa Bayâs main beach, which was now filling up with expats. Groups of Lebanese men played football and volleyball by the waves. Sam pointed out the very hairy, barrel-chested Arab whose father owns the Eko Hotel, one of Lagosâs fanciest places to stay. He was one of the thousands of ethnic Lebanese merchants who came to Nigeria in the early twentieth century, a middle-class stratum that rarely dips its toes in the indigenous gene pool, preferring to marry within itself or fetch partners from the mother country. Their relative
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