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.