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The middle class neighborhood of Dolphin
High Rise Estate, Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria.
who make up Dolphin’s middle class, there were the mechanics
and traders and tailors who don’t have cars: the working
class. Then there are those who live on the estate to serve the
middle class: those who deliver the water, and do odd jobs.
These were mostly Nigerians
from the north of the country;
it’s much poorer there, so many
northerners travel south in search
of manual work.
The more I delved, the more
colorful and diverse Dolphin
became. There was the young
woman studying Russian at university
— she proudly told me of
her trip to Moscow; the young
girl who wanted to be a writer,
but she couldn’t read because
her glasses were broken; the
robe-wearing evangelist; the Manchester United fans (they’re
everywhere!); The guy with the little photo studio who Photoshopped
exotic backgrounds into his photos.
There were teenagers whose parents had a generator and
who watched “Spiderman” while the rest of the estate was
without power; their apartment was so loud they couldn’t hear
us knocking on the door. I met a couple who ran a non-governmental
organization who proudly announced they were
HIV positive before even telling me their names. I watched
Chinese soap operas while children prepared for school and
their father, a Muslim, made his
morning prayer. I ate rice and
canned fish under a spotlight after
the electricity went out and
plunged the apartment I was in
into darkness. I peeked in on
a private gym where muscular
men lifted lumps of concrete,
and into a makeshift fitness studio
where women did aerobics.
Complex communities are a
challenge for storytellers. Those
boxes we use to simplify and
compress are helpful when describing
a place, especially when you have a limited number
of words and photos. But they are also a problem, especially
when it comes to Africa.
One of the reasons I decided to make this project about
Lagos was that I wanted to make work that challenged our
view of the continent. So often, people describe Africa like a
22 CURRENT FALL 2017