A Day at the Beach

Living in Ife afforded me limited opportunities for beach swimming (it was 3 hours away) but I got once chance courtesy of a trip to Lagos in November for an LC trip to Tarkwa Bay.

After much frustration in a Lagos go-slow and the typical "African time" arrival of participants our group finally got itself in enough order to make the trip in the boats. The beach is on an island very close to the city so you had to get into a motorised canoe, travelling under a few pipes carrying oil to awaiting tankers to reach it to reach it. Gladly the boat did not capsize or run out of fuel for I suspect the "lifejackets" provided to us were more of an attempted confidence booster for the majority on board who had no idea how to swim rather than a real life-saving device. It seems even a trip to the beach in Nigeria requires some decent bargaining skills. In a half-hearted attempt at upping his profits, the boat driver took us to a jetty only halfway, trying to convince the group that to take us all the way would cost us an extra 25% each. He was unsuccessful in this endeavour.

Tarkwa Bay on arrival was not quite what I was expecting. When I hear the name Tarkwa bay I think Jamaica, I think tropical paradise, I think blue water and white sandy beaches. In reality Tarkwa bay was just to close to Lagos to be anything like that. The water flowing to the beach was in rather close proximity to the pollution flowing out of Lagos proper, so whilst there weren’t that many 'Pure Water' packets and 'Gala' wrappers floating around me, the water definitely wasn’t turquoise blue. But truly I did enjoy my first beach swim in Naija.

Most of our group spent more time on land that in water, eating and drinking away and attempting to throw the girls into the water whenever possible. It just wouldn't be Naija if there weren't hawkers with the usual assortment of edible goodies plying their trade too.

A rather unusual challenge faced by the group was the persistent money making schemes plied by the owners of the various lounge chairs and shade cloths that lined the beach. One comment made by a member of our group that "perhaps they will start charging us for the sand too" was perhaps obvious, but not far out of line. After a few arguments one chair-owner chose to remove a miniature wooden table in front of us claiming we hadn’t paid enough to allow its usage.

It seemed like most of the expat population of Lagos was at Tarkwa this weekend as I saw more foreigners than at any other time in Nigeria, bar my second visit to Abuja. All of them seemed to be trying their best to outdo each other with their respective speedboats, catamarans and jet skis. One ridiculous-looking, slightly red and toasted, pale-skinned bloke complete with cowboy hat and boots and drink in hand kept running up and down the beach on big brown horse.

No Solemn Service

I accepted an invitation from my friend Bayo the same weekend as the shrine visit to attend a service at what he told me was one of the largest and most spectacular churches ever built. The Living Faith Church was responsible for building the "Faith Tabernacle" a monstrous 50,000-seater church, an amazing architectural and engineering feat in Ogun state, just outside of Lagos.

Driving there in our car we were passed by innumerable buses labelled Caananland, all heading to this Sunday event. The organisation required just to conduct a service must be hard work with seemingly hundreds of people on parking, traffic, food, seating and other such duties. It is hard for me to describe the internal structure, but there was a central stage area with three sections of worshippers facing. Behind one side was a massive area for the thousand? - strong choir.

My best analogy for the service was that of a football match. Whilst the place wasn't fully packed it the crowd was probably several thousand times larger than and church I've been to before. If churches are looking for model of a way to get bums on seats this must be it. As the pastor whipped up the frenzy, worshippers danced, sang, waved white handkerchiefs in the air and stomped their feet. I was only waiting for a few in the crowd to throw flares, start a riot and we truly would have been at an action-packed football game.

The religious content was a bit lost on me, not only because I could barely understand what he was saying from my viewing point on the upper tier. I think it was mostly because I couldn’t stop marvelling at the monstrosity, and wishing I'd brought my camera.