Non-residents don’t usually venture into the maze-like network of muddy sawdust tracks and precarious make-shift structures that make up the Old Fadama slums. For a while, we idly observe from the perimeter road while we wait for our guide. Columns of people, trucks and motorbikes surge in either direction through a haze of petrol fumes, displays of brightly-coloured flip-flops juxtaposed with open drains filled with stagnant black water and the smell of sewage. The light begins to fall, the air seems to thicken, our guide arrives, and into the heart of the slums we go..
The structures we pass are reminiscent of Quentin Blake illustrations, improbably leaning and irregular. The occasional two-storey contraption is particularly arresting, as if kept upright by imagination alone. Despite the criss-cross of naked wires snaking overhead, many stalls are lit by oil lamps only, casting a dancing, dream-like aura over the arrays of sweet wrappers, toothbrushes, kenke and fruits laid out in front of them. Their flickering does not reach the ground however. I stumble repeatedly over rocks, ditches and kid goats as I hurry to keep pace with my supervisor and our guide, clipboard and camera clutched close to my chest. I nearly collide with a line of young women stretching out across the track, over-spill from the nearby mosque kneeling in prayer in the dirt street. Motorbikes weave precariously through the ceaseless human traffic; a naked toddler bounces past holding his mothers hand, heading for the bucket showers; a goat stands over her kids as they snooze next to an open fire; and the ground becomes springy with sawdust and sewage underfoot as we head further and further into the slums.
The sky is black now. Round a corner, a rubbish dump two men high and stretching for as far as can be seen by the scattered fires ripping through it, silhouettes skeletal cattle against flames and refuse. The air, thick with burning plastics, is suffocating. The rice stall here is lit by a single kerosene lamp, but trade is brisk, and the stall-holder barely looks up or skips a beat as he hands us our salad sample and answers the necessary questions, continuing to serve up rice, salad and chicken at top speed to a growing line of customers while behind him his brother stirs a cauldron-sized pan of fried rice.
Where I am used to hearing shouts of “Obruni” or “White lady” as I walk by, here I am met instead by the occasional yelp of surprise. In the darkness I appear no different until I am just a couple of steps away. Children follow me, touching my arms, standing on tip-toes to stroke my hair, giggling madly when I say “Hello.” One little boy simply stares at me with wide-eyed horror. On we walk, past the mosques, the endless stalls, the benches filled with people keenly watching WFF wrestling matches on tiny fuzzy screens, a single computer on a coffee table serving as the local internet cafe, more goats, more cattle, more people, more life. I sneak the odd side-ways glance through open doorways into faded rooms filled with lamp-light and voices. The place fascinates me, and I find myself wanting to see and know more.
After 2 hours and 10 samples, we head for the car, my head buzzing, already resolving to enrol on a photography course once I get back to Exeter.
Where's Viv? 