I have sustained three strange injuries this week, but none are as painful to bear as the heat. Passing a flashing thermometer sign on Victoria Island yesterday I saw that it is 35 degrees. I'm not the only one suffering in the heat, F. said this morning that he was amazed we hadn't all beaten ourselves to death, and he is Nigerian. Last night I stayed with a friend who has air-conditioning. I've always been against the stuff- it just makes life harder once you inevitably go out into the heat and is a massive power-guzzler, but I slept for 9 solid hours last night and awoke freezing cold: it was wonderful.

My injuries include 'water yam rash', (the liquid that comes off a raw water yam causes this nasty itchy rash if you get it on your body) and swallowing a piece of glass. The glass, I am told by my doctor friend, will be dissolved by the acid in my stomach.

This week I went to meet a friend-of-a-friend in Ajegunle, 'the largest slum in Nigeria', and probably the whole of Africa. It comprises various neighbourhoods and covers a huge area of the city, and was founded by people coming from the Delta regions of Nigeria, where the oil now causes so much wahala (trouble). The children of Ajegunle are all sympathetic to the Delta struggle, the armed warfare that goes on between the Delta militants and the government and anyone on their side.

"They don't care what colour you are; if you're not black, they'll kidnap you" is the gist of one song by the dramatically-tall twin rappers who go by the name of LongJohn. They were invited by the rebels to go and do a concert in the Delta, a moral-boosting gig in one of the rebels' camps, a village deep in the jungle. They had to take a boat for six hours through the mangroves to get there. LongJohn, like most rappers who emerge from west African ghettos, are god-fearing, respectful and neat.

Ajegunle looked to me very unlike a 'slum'. It was not unlike the worst bits of Dakar- low-rise buildings, open sewers, rattling structures in which millet is ground and peanut-oil sold. I wasn't scared, as many said I should be. No self-respecting Nigerian would go to Ajegunle, and when I came back, my Nigerian friends asked to see photos; they were all surprised to see paved roads.

It does have a bad reputation though. My friend, K. led me to a clearing behind a decrepit building where Alsations were kept in cages and Doberman puppies yapped in a pen. "This is where the robbers plan their jobs", he said, pointing to a neat space beneath a palm tree. Later, as we sat in the street sipping cold Pepsi ("You ever had Pepsi as cold as this in Nigeria? The neighbourhood people bribe the electricity office to bring them light.") K. pointed to a young guy who roared up on a flash motorbike. "This guy uses a skeleton key, a spike filed really really sharp, to break into cars."

He also taught me some hand signals that he would use as we walked through the neighbourhood. "If I point at someone with my left hand, it means they're a scammer. If I point with my right, it means they're a robber. If I wave my arm round and round and round, it means they're all into everything." Pretty much everyone I met though, including my friend who is studying for an MA on conflict resolution in the Delta region, was polite and intelligent. I suppose you have to be intelligent to scam million of pounds out of greedy English people who fall for the 419 scams.

"People feel like white people came and took us people for slaves. Now we're taking their money back, it's only fair. But what I don't get," said K. "is how people can be so stupid as to fall for it!" That is what everyone, scammers and non, think about the 419 trick. The bad light is thrown not on the fraudsters, but on the idiots who fall for it.