It came as a complete surprise to me that Lagos, above, is a city with a plan; streets in grids, concentric curves and avenues all fitting together to form a whole. I saw it through the smog from a plane, a ceaseless patchwork of tin roofs and suburban red gables, unbroken beneath the haze. When you're inside Lagos, it's hard to imagine that there's anything at all outside of it, or that anything was thought through before it was laid down. It is stifling, tense, everything crammed in as if the heavy gray skies are the thing keeping everyone inside.



Landing in the north, in Kano above, I felt calmed by seeing flat roofs and square compounds, Arabic Africa, the Africa I know and feel comfortable in, love. The hot, dry air burning my eyes and nose only further reminded me of 'home'.

Leaving the airport, we passed a long queue of men hunched over wheeled barrows, each stacked with black jerry cans. "Kano no water," said my taxi driver. The water is collected by these sweating men, wheeled back to town and sold for 40 naira a can; a backbreaking way of earning a living. Kano is dusty and dry, with an intense heat that cools the minute you step out of the sun. It is desert air that at night becomes chilly, and after the sweltering heat of Lagos, it is delicious.