I left my flip-flops in Lagos when I was last here and they are now long gone. I thought I could get some in a go-slow but so far I haven't seen any.

Yesterday morning I went to the hole in the crumbled wall across from my guesthouse, and awoke a man sprawled on a woven mat across the floor.

"Do you have slippers?" I asked, as he scuttled around to the window to serve me.

"What size?" he slurred, pulling out two pairs of swirly purple plastic shoes. One pair were the size of a small hovercraft, the other fit for a medium-sized child. Neither fitted me.

"This is ten" he said holding up the small shoes. "And this is eleven," flapping the large pair. "You must be ten and half."

When I left Senegal in July I never thought I would be back to Africa so soon, but as someone who showed me around the late Fela Kuti's house today told me, "your dream has come true". Some time around August, when I met a journalist planning to go to Lagos for Felabration, the annual festival celebrating Fela's birthday, I hoped I would be able to find a way to go myself. And there you go, sometimes dreams just come right at you and you have to grab them while you can.

When I landed in Lagos last night, I was filled with that familiar feeling of euphoria at being in a place so hot and disordered whilst at the same time knowing that anything could go wrong. Racing, and then crawling, down the highway at night, a route I told myself I would never take for fear of bandits who rob anything that moves slowly enough, I had that rush of adrenaline as the hot dusty air ripped through my tangled hair and a bus completely filled with green oranges and topped with men crawled alongside. Back in Africa, just a couple of months after leaving, and feeling so incredibly at home, but not really knowing or understanding why.



This afternoon I was treated to a tour of The New Africa Shrine, the legendary musical home of Femi Kuti, son of Fela. Afterwards, Fela's daughter took us to where her father is buried, in the scrappy front yard of the Kalakuta Republic, where posters of her late father still stick to the white wall of the house and her brother Seun's more recent posters are stuck all over the front gate. She looked sad, she said she had not been there in six years. There seemed to be bad feelings surrounding the visit, but I still felt honoured to be there, in the place which I had heard so much about and never really thought I would ever get to visit. When we left, a crazed skinny man whose jeans seemed barely to cling to his waist, spotted Fela's daughter and chanting, "Mama, Mama" ran alongside the car, his clenched right fist in the air, until she wound down the window and met his fist with hers, the undying sign of her father's incredible strength.

"I think that if Africa has something to sell, it’s not petrol but the joy of life, the joy of living with nothing. I know that we had that, I don’t know if we still have it because today, in Africa, people complain a lot. Before, everyone wanted a mobile phone, now everyone wants three.

Africa is not just bam-bam-bam-bam and acrobatics. No, it’s also violins, people who walk peacefully, people who have something inside their hearts. It’s bam-bam-bam-bam inside, spirituality, people who have a special view of the world, people of emotion, poets who do not know they are poets. Africa isn’t just a history but something new as well, something which is moving towards the future."

I had a pleasurable encounter with Wasis Diop this summer, who told me this as he talked about his ethereal new album. What a poet, intellectual and visionary. I especially like his song and clip Automobile Mobile, which uses shots of 1960s Dakar from his film-maker brother's film to show a Dakar that still exists in small, barely-detectable elements.

Steve, who commented on my last blog, reminded me that I did not explain the removal of my previous posts from London. I have not found England easy to return to; the first weeks in which I revelled in the ease with which things can be done soon gave way to despair that life is colourless and provincial. Gone is the drama of a trip to the shops and gone the afternoons swimming in open warm seas and the heavy heat that allows, or insists on, long naps. Life in London is stressful, busy, rushed, but flat.

My last posts were becoming moans. I did not want to write a blog that bemoaned my easy life, and so I decided to delete the last posts. But things are becoming a bit easier, I suppose, and I am going to Lagos in a couple of weeks for some work, so I imagine I will start posting again soon enough.

In any case, it seems that from all the comments I have had from people who have left west Africa and now read my blog, it has got inside them like it has got inside me. I can't explain it, and don't need to, just that I will be happy to go back.