Monday, October 20, 2008

Fela Kuti was a man of epic personality with a following in Africa as powerful as that of Bob Marley in other parts of the world. His image would have been easy to capitalise on, he's an icon to millions of downtrodden Africans living in poverty or under dictatorships, a man who embodied artistic genius with a fearless temperament, and who lived to care for the community in which he lived. His resting place is the front yard of his old home and commune, the Kalakuta republic. From the roof top, his shrine is beautiful and geometrically perfect.



"There can be no other Fela," said old Jimoh, my taxi driver who proudly remembers once driving the Kuti children around Lagos in his taxi. "Any other man is a counterfeit," he said, before telling me how it was possible in the Fela days to go to his Shrine nightclub and be fed a decent meal. Anyone was welcome, everyone would be taken care of.



Last Wednesday would have been Fela's 70th birthday. The Kuti's and our outfit bought two cows and they were slaughtered on the forecourt of the Shrine, where later on massive crowds would be dancing and smoking the night away. At night, I stayed high up on the balcony and watched with amazement the shows that unfolded to celebrate his birthday. During a rendition of Anarchy, a Fela song, the crowds picked up tables, chairs and glass bottles and smashed them or threw them wherever they could. After that they went back to watching the show with relative calm.

On hip-hop night, the Shrine was forced to close its gates after eight thousand people had come inside. The shows during Felabration are all free, and a lot of people get to eat for free too, something that his children have humbly insisted upon now that they run their own version if their father's legendary club.



Eight thousand young, mostly male, people high or drunk in an enclosed space could run to trouble. At three am, the Kuti daughter and her head of security are wandering around with a clipboard making sure that everything is running as it should. The security guards carry sticks, not guns, and in person are the gentlest, kindest men, despite their massive physical size. No one much misbehaves, everyone knows this is the Kuti home, not just a nightclub, and order must be respected. That is what Fela would have commanded, and that is what his children now expect too.

Monday, October 13, 2008

The man sitting next to me on the plane, a Nigerian now living in America making a living selling second-hand heavy digging machinery, said that flying into Lagos is his favourite moment of the trip back. The moment that he gets on the ground and knows he is back again, home, where things happen in the way that feels natural to him. When I get out of the British capsule and into the immigration hall, everything feels starkly unnatural, and I usually feel scared. What if someone robs me, cons me or points a gun at me? What if I lose all the money I am carrying? So many things could go wrong. It’s not until I am outside and away from the airport that I start to relax. Things go wrong all the time, but when not juxtaposed against the clinical safety of a British airplane, it doesn’t feel so bad. When armed robbers were pillaging cars further up the express way, we reversed and took another route. There was no panic.

At the roundabout on Allen Avenue, we are stopped by three policemen shining a torch into our car. Apart from the money I am carrying about my person, the man who has come to pick me up is carrying half a million naira in a plastic bag, for a ticket that he wanted to buy at the airport but didn’t manage to, since first class was booked up. The three men- the driver, my friend and the security guard brought along to prevent such happenings- all climb out of the car, and I am told to relax lady, be at ease.

“You must respect us,” barks one of the policemen, loosely wielding an AK47, at the three men.
“We respect you already,” says my friend, who clearly doesn’t.
“Are you a policeman?” demands the same policeman, turning the security guard around to shine his torch on his shirt, which has ‘security’ written in black letter across the tatty fabric.
“I am security,” grunts Tyson, the 7-foot tall guard, unsmiling.

Before long, the policemen take my friend’s telephone number, and when we are back in the car, a few moments later, his phone rings. It is the police. They want to check his number. The next time they come to the Shrine, they would like to be given special treatment.