[Previous entry: "Syria Announcement 'Not Enough' - U.S. State Dept"] [Next entry: "Blair targets corruption in Africa plan"]

03/05/2005:

"'People wake up angry at being alive in a society like this'"

Lagos poet "AJ" Daga Tola is also a musician and activist who lives in some of the worst urban conditions on earth. The main road to his eight foot square shack in Ajegunle slum is ankle-high in litter. The open drain down his alley overflows with black sewage. Fires smoulder below the nearby motorway bridge; armies of hawkers sell water on the permanently jammed expressway; and burned-out lorries and cars are dumped on either side of the road.

"Everyone here wakes up in anger," says the man who has taken the initial letters of the slum as his first name. "The frustration of being alive in a society like this is excruciating. People find it very hard and it is getting worse. Day in, day out, poor people from all over Africa arrive in this place, still seeing Lagos as the land of opportunity. They are met at the bus stops by gangs of youths who demand payments. There is extortion at every point. Only one in 10 people have regular work."

Roughly one million people live in Ajegunle - known in Lagos as "Jungle City" - which is just one of many dozens of chaotic slum areas across the mega-city that now stretches over roughly 300 square kilometres with a population density greater than either Mumbai or Calcutta. Some, like Makoko, are built partly on water with families eking out a precarious and unhealthy existence in shacks balanced on stilts. All are dangerous, volatile and unhealthy.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk