This Is Me:

The Official blog of Rotten Sandwich co-founder Dan Lam, his drawings, doodles, pictures and mindless jabber as you like. This may be the only thing keeping his sanity in check and his mind off of smoking, at least till his fingers leave the keyboard.

Monday, September 6, 2010

The Journey thus far... Part 1

I'm in Rome, I've been here for the past three days, staying in my college friend's apartment. She's a filmmaker like I am, she works as a Camera Assistant and is trying to make her way to Director of Photography. Caterina is her name.

I'll be home in a few days. It will have been 37 days that I've been away and I'm not sure if I miss it. Of course, I miss my friends and family, the people I normally see everyday and hang out with. A part of me is still yearning for new faces, new experiences and new dialogues. With the people I know at home, we always end up with the familiar, events that connects us.

I've learned so much in this past month, I feel like I've been sitting on my life for the past three years. The world is both a big and a small place. Big, in that it has so much stuff in it that it would take a very long time to experience and catalog it in our minds. Small, in that technology brings everything closer together.

Nigeria
My trip started in Lagos, Nigeria. I agreed to be a part of this documentary about the music and film industry that is blooming in Lagos, I was acquainted with Sola Fasehun (the director) through a friend of a friend. Through her, I was educated on Nigerian culture, its languages, history in military rule and independence, and the inconveniences that the Nigerian people have to deal with on a daily basis.

Three things that the people recognize and always voice out are:

Power
Electricity is a luxury, it's been so for the past four decades. Everyday, the electricity goes out from two to ten hours. The most its been taken away has been three days. Its not just a block or neighborhood, but the entire city of Lagos. The only way to counter this problem is investing in a good generator. Which almost every household and business has.

If you ask several people, why they think the power goes out they'll give you a few different reasons. Some would say NEPPA, the electric company, are running on a very old electric grid and with the amount of people in Lagos that consume energy it is almost impossible to catch up with that demand everyday. Others would tell you that certain power figures in the government take some of that power to reallocate it for their own pleasures and entertainment.

Two things are known though, companies are making money off of selling batteries, generators and fuel. So, controlling the electricity is controlling the profits of these products. If electricity was provided all the time, who will they sell their products to?

(On a side note: the lack of electricity also affects the control over water as well, so no power means no water, which means no showers and cooking.)

Traffic
A simply way of describing to you what happens on the highways of Lagos everyday is to picture Los Angeles traffic, cars bumper to bumper moving inch by inch every few minutes. Imagine that there are no clear indication of lanes, what was originally three lanes can become five in some parts. Cars edging out others to merge to another lane, hundreds of "Okadas" (Motorcyclists) snaking through the traffic whenever they can, and people walking through the traffic with goods like bread, sodas, magazines, CDs and watches showing them off to the people waiting in the cars, to entice them to buy it while they wait in traffic.

Now imagine doing this everyday, getting to work and coming home. This happens everyday between the hours of 9am to 1pm and 5pm to 10pm. The condition of the roads are not any better either, from a combination of weather and lack of maintenance, there are potholes the size of goats plaguing Lagos.

Economy
Nigeria is dealing with the economic crisis just as any other countries do. The criticism falls upon the rich who keep the money outside of their country. It is a capitalist model that keeps its own country from becoming progressive. The lower and middle working class, which is 80 percent of the country, spend their money in the country whether if its locally made products or Western imports. (Nigeria's biggest export is its oil)

The upper class spend their money outside of the country, meaning they travel abroad and spend most of their time living outside not paying taxes owed to the government.

Although Nigeria seems to have these inconveniences, it is still a brand new country in terms of its government and policies. It would take time for it to progress and reach the standards of Western society and if only its citizens would aggressively pursue this, they would get there even quicker. It is a lesson to be had in all countries, no matter the national problem, as I have also observed in Italy and France.