Welcome To Lagos (2010) s01e02 Episode Script
Makoko
Do you know something? More than half the people who live on this little planet now live in cities.
Human beings have become an urban species and the cities we live in are growing by over a million people every week.
Things will never be the same again.
Welcome to Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria, and the fastest growing of all the megacities, of 10 million people and more, which are popping up all over the world.
Each week, another 10,000 people pour into the slums which make up three quarters of Lagos.
And they're already full to bursting.
Every square inch is being used by someone and space is in such demand that the city is sprawling in every direction it can, even into the lagoon which surrounds it.
But despite this chaotic approach to urban planning, life in the ghettos on the water isn't all about poverty, pollution, and cholera, you know.
These people can show you that a little bit of chaos is not always a bad thing.
They're resourceful, determined and unbelievably resilient.
And they're successfully adapting to the realities of modern city life in ways which you, in the so-called developed world, couldn't even imagine.
If you want to know how the city has grown, then these are the people to ask, the inhabitants of Lagos's version of Venice - a slum, built on water, called Makoko.
200 years ago, this was just a small fishing village on the edge of Lagos lagoon.
But as more and more people flooded into the expanding city, looking for somewhere to settle, they began to build houses on stilts.
Now Makoko extends half a mile out into the water and is home to over 100,000 people and counting.
BABIES CRY Take this guy, Chubey.
He first came here 40 years ago, when he was in his twenties, and he's seen the place transformed.
Now aged 65, he's the proud father of 18 children and, as of today, five grandchildren, most of whom still live with him in the oldest part of Makoko.
THEY SING HE LAUGHS Hallelujah! TRANSLATION: Like most of the people who first settled in Makoko, Chubey is a fisherman.
TRANSLATION: But with three daughters at university, 10 children at various schools and more and more food to put on the table every day, he's become an expert at making money from the most unlikely of places.
HE LAUGHS Now, you might not want to go for a swim round here, but everything else in Makoko takes place on the water.
People commute to work, goods are brought to market, and every day the children are rowed to school.
CHILDREN CHEER AND SHOU And it's water that accounts for the huge piles of rubbish lying by people's houses.
Because this is no ordinary litter - it's land reclamation, Makoko-style.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Makoko must be one of the only places on earth where people actually pay to have rubbish dumped on their doorsteps.
The standard fee for a load of rubbish diverted from the dump is 30 pence.
And after a couple of years, a tonne or so of sand, and a few boat-loads of sawdust, you've got yourself an island.
Unless, of course, your boat springs a leak.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Half a mile or so downstream from Makoko is the place where all this sawdust comes from - Ebute Metta, West Africa's largest timber yard.
Clustered along the banks of the lagoon, are more than 100 sawmills, cutting vast quantities of timber every day.
As the slums of Lagos continue to expand, it's this place which is supplying all the wood.
THEY GROAN TRANSLATION: This guy, Paul, came here five years ago from his village in the east, looking for work and a place to sleep on the sawdust.
Now he's worked his way up to one of the top jobs in the yard, as chief saw operator at Funmi's mill.
In charge of a team of eight, cutting up to 200 planks in a day, Paul has become one of the highest earners in the mill and after a year of saving, he finally has a good chance to fulfil his ambition - his own house in Makoko.
All he needs is a few thousand naira more and the place is his.
But for the time being, he lives in the office, in the corner of the mill.
A few days ago, Paul took on two boys called Sunday and Afiz, who both left their parents in the country to come to Lagos to look for work.
They have now ended up in Ebute Metta.
They claim to be 15 and 17, but no-one really believes them.
TRANSLATION: Funmi, the mill boss, is keeping a close eye on Paul's new recruits.
She's run this place with an iron fist for 20 years and can spot trouble from 100 yards.
Funmi's is typical of most of the mills in Ebute Metta.
They're family-owned and run by the wives and they tend to buy off the same individual suppliers year in, year out.
Anywhere else in the world, there'd be multi-national logging firms all over this place.
But round here, anyone with a bit of sense and a chainsaw can set themselves up as a logger.
CHAINSAW ROARS Moses here is a student at Ogun State University, 100 kilometres outside Lagos.
While many undergraduates have part-time jobs, he pays for his entire Marine Engineering course by coming to his local jungle twice a year to cut the plentiful Awun trees, which are much in demand at Ebute Metta.
Moses has hit on a simple way to get his wood out of the forest.
He waits for the rainy season to flood the area and uses a boat to drag the whole lot into the nearest river, which floods into the Lagos lagoon.
From there, it's a three-day journey to Ebute Metta, which is where his troubles really start.
A couple of days after he stocked his new fish pond, Chubey's come up with another sure-fire way of making extra money for his family.
He's found a cheap source of imported European fish and plans to turn his home into a fish smokery.
Chubey's especially keen for his teenage son, Payo, to get involved.
He's started hanging out with a local gang and is driving his parents up the wall.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Fish are not the only thing on Chubey's mind.
After a lot of hard work, he's come up with a fiendishly complicated mathematical formula, which he is sure will guarantee huge winnings in the National Lottery.
The chart is this.
TRANSLATION: Every evening, without fail, Chubey insists his entire family gather for a meal.
As dawn creeps over the waters of the lagoon, it's easy to forget the noisy, dirty, chaos of the modern city.
Because out here, nothing has changed for decades.
Every morning, clustered together somewhere near the centre of the lagoon, you'll find this flotilla of boats and 500 or so sandboys, getting ready to dive for sand at the bottom of the lagoon 10 feet below.
TRANSLATION: Daniel and Kissme have been collecting sand the old-fashioned way - by hand, with a bucket - their whole lives.
The breeze blocks used to build the slums and tower blocks of Lagos, all start here.
Working fast, before the sun gets too high, it usually takes Daniel and Kissme just a couple of hours to fill this whole boat with the high-quality sharp sand so essential to the building trade.
Barely a week after taking on the two new boys, Paul's regular assistant saw operator has quit.
Sunday can't believe his luck, because Paul has decided to try him out in the job.
TRANSLATION: Sunday's promotion will bring him an extra 80p a day, but he needs to watch out.
Only two weeks ago, a new saw operator was electrocuted and killed.
And this morning, a few doors down from Funmi's yard, another broken electric cable has just been discovered.
TRANSLATION: Last night Payo disappeared and didn't get in until this morning, and Chubey is worried that he's going to get in real trouble.
To protect him, Chubey has called in a local herbalist, to apply a magic formula to a series of razor cuts.
Chubey was brought up using these traditional methods in his home village and still uses a number of preparations and charms, which he has adapted for modern city life.
MAKES STRAINING NOISE HE LAUGHS That's one of the most striking things about Makoko.
Most of the people who live here are like Chubey and have come from rural and coastal villages.
And now, even though they live less than a mile away from the bustling, modern, city centre, they still happily combine living in the 21st century with their more traditional way of doing things.
Tribal rituals take place with the Premiership playing in the background, health centres supply antibiotics and bark remedies in equal measure, and although everyone has a mobile phone, the news still gets spread by word of mouth.
And OK, not everything that is old fashioned round here is charming.
The plumbing, for one, is medieval.
And the Government, one of the richest in Africa thanks to the oil industry, does absolutely nothing for the place except draw up plans to destroy it.
But none of this has stopped Makoko becoming one of the most sought-after postcodes in downtown Lagos.
TRANSLATION: By mid-morning, Daniel and Kissme's boat is full with as much sand as they can carry without sinking.
Raising their sail, made from rice sacks hand-stitched together, they join the armada on the 15-mile journey back to the city.
TRANSLATION: One of the reasons it's been so hard for Paul to save enough money to move out of the mill is because of Lagos's erratic electricity supply.
Daily power cuts plague the whole city, but in Ebute Metta, when the lights go out, the saws go silent.
It's another three hours before the power comes back on and Paul and the boys are seriously behind.
And they've barely got started when everything suddenly comes to a halt.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Regardless of the tragedy, no-one's earned any money today.
Knowing the mill will be shut for three days out of respect for the dead operator, Paul decides to keep his saw working through the night.
THEY STRAIN It is midnight when they cut the last plank.
Sunday and Afiz have been at the yard since 6 o'clock this morning.
Even though his house is full to bursting with his ever expanding family, Chubey has decided there's always room for one more.
He's heard of a friend of a friend who is looking for a room to rent, and has offered to help him out.
As most of the newcomers to the city don't have much money, he's trying to get the rent up front.
All Chubey needs now .
.
is a room.
And to save as much money as possible, he plans to build one himself.
Five miles out, in the middle of the lagoon, the logs which Moses cut from the jungle a couple of weeks ago are making their way to Ebute Metta.
With a group of 20 or so other loggers, Moses has made a huge raft, over a kilometre long, which is being towed by tugs on the three-day journey into Lagos.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: A couple of hours later, the loggers reach the city centre.
Piloting a raft the length of nine football pitches through the arches of the Third Mainland Bridge is never easy, and today, the tide is against them.
THEY SHOU They've barely got 100 metres through, when the whole thing becomes stuck.
TRANSLATION: Almost immediately, the first touts from Ebute Metta start appearing on the raft, sizing up the cargo, looking for the best early deals.
Although Moses has been trading with them for years, he knows full well that they're all out to rip him off.
TRANSLATION: Despite all the activity on the raft, on shore, everything is silent, as Paul and the other operators show their respect for Baba Toyin, the man killed at his saw.
TRANSLATION: Paul and the other saw operators are having a collection to help pay for the dead man's funeral.
But with two of their friends killed in less than a month, they are up in arms about the conditions they have to work in.
TRANSLATION: Baba Toyin had worked at the sawmill for more than 30 years.
He had two wives and seven children, and he'd been planning to retire at the end of the year.
TRANSLATION: As a last act of kindness, Paul and the others collect another few hundred naira, to make sure the driver can get the family home to their village.
TRANSLATION: While the men sort out the funeral arrangements, the small boys at the mill are making the most of their unexpected downtime.
TRANSLATION: For Sunday and Afiz, this will be the last day off for a while.
After working the night shift, Funmi has decided to keep them on permanently.
TRANSLATION: I love working in Ebute Metta.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Since Chubey performed the black magic ritual on him, his son Payo's behaviour has got worse.
He's done nothing to help out at home, and while his dad's been struggling to build the lodger's room, he's been out partying with his friends, and now Chubey has had enough.
TRANSLATION: This evening, Chubey's asked Payo to arrange for a second boat to help collect all the wood from Ebute Metta which he needs to finish building the new room.
TRANSLATION: The following morning, Payo is supposed to be helping Chubey pick up the remaining wood, but once again, he went out all night, and by the time Chubey gets home, Payo is only just getting in.
TRANSLATION: To make matters worse, Chubey's boat almost sank on the way home.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: It's Moses's last day in Lagos.
All his wood has been measured, and this afternoon he's heading back to university to pay his fees.
All he needs to do now is agree the figures with his buyer.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Four hours later, they finally agree a price.
TRANSLATION: Thank you very much.
Despite all the setbacks, Paul has finally managed to save the 15,000 naira deposit he needs to start renting his own place.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14.
It's two months since Chubey installed his fish pond, and thanks to his loving care, the 200 sprats he put in have already doubled in size.
He's finally managed to finish the new room, and Joseph, the lodger, has found the money for the full deposit, and is ready to move in any day now.
And the foreign fish smoking business is a roaring success, selling all over Makoko.
And to cap it all, even Chubey's magical mathematical formula has come good.
This is how it be! Thank you! Chubey and the others are just some of the 11 million people in the slums that give Lagos its unique character.
But all that might be about to change.
A new breed of politicians have drawn up plans to demolish the slums, and turn Lagos into a megacity of the future.
Human beings have become an urban species and the cities we live in are growing by over a million people every week.
Things will never be the same again.
Welcome to Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria, and the fastest growing of all the megacities, of 10 million people and more, which are popping up all over the world.
Each week, another 10,000 people pour into the slums which make up three quarters of Lagos.
And they're already full to bursting.
Every square inch is being used by someone and space is in such demand that the city is sprawling in every direction it can, even into the lagoon which surrounds it.
But despite this chaotic approach to urban planning, life in the ghettos on the water isn't all about poverty, pollution, and cholera, you know.
These people can show you that a little bit of chaos is not always a bad thing.
They're resourceful, determined and unbelievably resilient.
And they're successfully adapting to the realities of modern city life in ways which you, in the so-called developed world, couldn't even imagine.
If you want to know how the city has grown, then these are the people to ask, the inhabitants of Lagos's version of Venice - a slum, built on water, called Makoko.
200 years ago, this was just a small fishing village on the edge of Lagos lagoon.
But as more and more people flooded into the expanding city, looking for somewhere to settle, they began to build houses on stilts.
Now Makoko extends half a mile out into the water and is home to over 100,000 people and counting.
BABIES CRY Take this guy, Chubey.
He first came here 40 years ago, when he was in his twenties, and he's seen the place transformed.
Now aged 65, he's the proud father of 18 children and, as of today, five grandchildren, most of whom still live with him in the oldest part of Makoko.
THEY SING HE LAUGHS Hallelujah! TRANSLATION: Like most of the people who first settled in Makoko, Chubey is a fisherman.
TRANSLATION: But with three daughters at university, 10 children at various schools and more and more food to put on the table every day, he's become an expert at making money from the most unlikely of places.
HE LAUGHS Now, you might not want to go for a swim round here, but everything else in Makoko takes place on the water.
People commute to work, goods are brought to market, and every day the children are rowed to school.
CHILDREN CHEER AND SHOU And it's water that accounts for the huge piles of rubbish lying by people's houses.
Because this is no ordinary litter - it's land reclamation, Makoko-style.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Makoko must be one of the only places on earth where people actually pay to have rubbish dumped on their doorsteps.
The standard fee for a load of rubbish diverted from the dump is 30 pence.
And after a couple of years, a tonne or so of sand, and a few boat-loads of sawdust, you've got yourself an island.
Unless, of course, your boat springs a leak.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Half a mile or so downstream from Makoko is the place where all this sawdust comes from - Ebute Metta, West Africa's largest timber yard.
Clustered along the banks of the lagoon, are more than 100 sawmills, cutting vast quantities of timber every day.
As the slums of Lagos continue to expand, it's this place which is supplying all the wood.
THEY GROAN TRANSLATION: This guy, Paul, came here five years ago from his village in the east, looking for work and a place to sleep on the sawdust.
Now he's worked his way up to one of the top jobs in the yard, as chief saw operator at Funmi's mill.
In charge of a team of eight, cutting up to 200 planks in a day, Paul has become one of the highest earners in the mill and after a year of saving, he finally has a good chance to fulfil his ambition - his own house in Makoko.
All he needs is a few thousand naira more and the place is his.
But for the time being, he lives in the office, in the corner of the mill.
A few days ago, Paul took on two boys called Sunday and Afiz, who both left their parents in the country to come to Lagos to look for work.
They have now ended up in Ebute Metta.
They claim to be 15 and 17, but no-one really believes them.
TRANSLATION: Funmi, the mill boss, is keeping a close eye on Paul's new recruits.
She's run this place with an iron fist for 20 years and can spot trouble from 100 yards.
Funmi's is typical of most of the mills in Ebute Metta.
They're family-owned and run by the wives and they tend to buy off the same individual suppliers year in, year out.
Anywhere else in the world, there'd be multi-national logging firms all over this place.
But round here, anyone with a bit of sense and a chainsaw can set themselves up as a logger.
CHAINSAW ROARS Moses here is a student at Ogun State University, 100 kilometres outside Lagos.
While many undergraduates have part-time jobs, he pays for his entire Marine Engineering course by coming to his local jungle twice a year to cut the plentiful Awun trees, which are much in demand at Ebute Metta.
Moses has hit on a simple way to get his wood out of the forest.
He waits for the rainy season to flood the area and uses a boat to drag the whole lot into the nearest river, which floods into the Lagos lagoon.
From there, it's a three-day journey to Ebute Metta, which is where his troubles really start.
A couple of days after he stocked his new fish pond, Chubey's come up with another sure-fire way of making extra money for his family.
He's found a cheap source of imported European fish and plans to turn his home into a fish smokery.
Chubey's especially keen for his teenage son, Payo, to get involved.
He's started hanging out with a local gang and is driving his parents up the wall.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Fish are not the only thing on Chubey's mind.
After a lot of hard work, he's come up with a fiendishly complicated mathematical formula, which he is sure will guarantee huge winnings in the National Lottery.
The chart is this.
TRANSLATION: Every evening, without fail, Chubey insists his entire family gather for a meal.
As dawn creeps over the waters of the lagoon, it's easy to forget the noisy, dirty, chaos of the modern city.
Because out here, nothing has changed for decades.
Every morning, clustered together somewhere near the centre of the lagoon, you'll find this flotilla of boats and 500 or so sandboys, getting ready to dive for sand at the bottom of the lagoon 10 feet below.
TRANSLATION: Daniel and Kissme have been collecting sand the old-fashioned way - by hand, with a bucket - their whole lives.
The breeze blocks used to build the slums and tower blocks of Lagos, all start here.
Working fast, before the sun gets too high, it usually takes Daniel and Kissme just a couple of hours to fill this whole boat with the high-quality sharp sand so essential to the building trade.
Barely a week after taking on the two new boys, Paul's regular assistant saw operator has quit.
Sunday can't believe his luck, because Paul has decided to try him out in the job.
TRANSLATION: Sunday's promotion will bring him an extra 80p a day, but he needs to watch out.
Only two weeks ago, a new saw operator was electrocuted and killed.
And this morning, a few doors down from Funmi's yard, another broken electric cable has just been discovered.
TRANSLATION: Last night Payo disappeared and didn't get in until this morning, and Chubey is worried that he's going to get in real trouble.
To protect him, Chubey has called in a local herbalist, to apply a magic formula to a series of razor cuts.
Chubey was brought up using these traditional methods in his home village and still uses a number of preparations and charms, which he has adapted for modern city life.
MAKES STRAINING NOISE HE LAUGHS That's one of the most striking things about Makoko.
Most of the people who live here are like Chubey and have come from rural and coastal villages.
And now, even though they live less than a mile away from the bustling, modern, city centre, they still happily combine living in the 21st century with their more traditional way of doing things.
Tribal rituals take place with the Premiership playing in the background, health centres supply antibiotics and bark remedies in equal measure, and although everyone has a mobile phone, the news still gets spread by word of mouth.
And OK, not everything that is old fashioned round here is charming.
The plumbing, for one, is medieval.
And the Government, one of the richest in Africa thanks to the oil industry, does absolutely nothing for the place except draw up plans to destroy it.
But none of this has stopped Makoko becoming one of the most sought-after postcodes in downtown Lagos.
TRANSLATION: By mid-morning, Daniel and Kissme's boat is full with as much sand as they can carry without sinking.
Raising their sail, made from rice sacks hand-stitched together, they join the armada on the 15-mile journey back to the city.
TRANSLATION: One of the reasons it's been so hard for Paul to save enough money to move out of the mill is because of Lagos's erratic electricity supply.
Daily power cuts plague the whole city, but in Ebute Metta, when the lights go out, the saws go silent.
It's another three hours before the power comes back on and Paul and the boys are seriously behind.
And they've barely got started when everything suddenly comes to a halt.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Regardless of the tragedy, no-one's earned any money today.
Knowing the mill will be shut for three days out of respect for the dead operator, Paul decides to keep his saw working through the night.
THEY STRAIN It is midnight when they cut the last plank.
Sunday and Afiz have been at the yard since 6 o'clock this morning.
Even though his house is full to bursting with his ever expanding family, Chubey has decided there's always room for one more.
He's heard of a friend of a friend who is looking for a room to rent, and has offered to help him out.
As most of the newcomers to the city don't have much money, he's trying to get the rent up front.
All Chubey needs now .
.
is a room.
And to save as much money as possible, he plans to build one himself.
Five miles out, in the middle of the lagoon, the logs which Moses cut from the jungle a couple of weeks ago are making their way to Ebute Metta.
With a group of 20 or so other loggers, Moses has made a huge raft, over a kilometre long, which is being towed by tugs on the three-day journey into Lagos.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: A couple of hours later, the loggers reach the city centre.
Piloting a raft the length of nine football pitches through the arches of the Third Mainland Bridge is never easy, and today, the tide is against them.
THEY SHOU They've barely got 100 metres through, when the whole thing becomes stuck.
TRANSLATION: Almost immediately, the first touts from Ebute Metta start appearing on the raft, sizing up the cargo, looking for the best early deals.
Although Moses has been trading with them for years, he knows full well that they're all out to rip him off.
TRANSLATION: Despite all the activity on the raft, on shore, everything is silent, as Paul and the other operators show their respect for Baba Toyin, the man killed at his saw.
TRANSLATION: Paul and the other saw operators are having a collection to help pay for the dead man's funeral.
But with two of their friends killed in less than a month, they are up in arms about the conditions they have to work in.
TRANSLATION: Baba Toyin had worked at the sawmill for more than 30 years.
He had two wives and seven children, and he'd been planning to retire at the end of the year.
TRANSLATION: As a last act of kindness, Paul and the others collect another few hundred naira, to make sure the driver can get the family home to their village.
TRANSLATION: While the men sort out the funeral arrangements, the small boys at the mill are making the most of their unexpected downtime.
TRANSLATION: For Sunday and Afiz, this will be the last day off for a while.
After working the night shift, Funmi has decided to keep them on permanently.
TRANSLATION: I love working in Ebute Metta.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Since Chubey performed the black magic ritual on him, his son Payo's behaviour has got worse.
He's done nothing to help out at home, and while his dad's been struggling to build the lodger's room, he's been out partying with his friends, and now Chubey has had enough.
TRANSLATION: This evening, Chubey's asked Payo to arrange for a second boat to help collect all the wood from Ebute Metta which he needs to finish building the new room.
TRANSLATION: The following morning, Payo is supposed to be helping Chubey pick up the remaining wood, but once again, he went out all night, and by the time Chubey gets home, Payo is only just getting in.
TRANSLATION: To make matters worse, Chubey's boat almost sank on the way home.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: It's Moses's last day in Lagos.
All his wood has been measured, and this afternoon he's heading back to university to pay his fees.
All he needs to do now is agree the figures with his buyer.
TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: TRANSLATION: Four hours later, they finally agree a price.
TRANSLATION: Thank you very much.
Despite all the setbacks, Paul has finally managed to save the 15,000 naira deposit he needs to start renting his own place.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14.
It's two months since Chubey installed his fish pond, and thanks to his loving care, the 200 sprats he put in have already doubled in size.
He's finally managed to finish the new room, and Joseph, the lodger, has found the money for the full deposit, and is ready to move in any day now.
And the foreign fish smoking business is a roaring success, selling all over Makoko.
And to cap it all, even Chubey's magical mathematical formula has come good.
This is how it be! Thank you! Chubey and the others are just some of the 11 million people in the slums that give Lagos its unique character.
But all that might be about to change.
A new breed of politicians have drawn up plans to demolish the slums, and turn Lagos into a megacity of the future.