Lagos

Determination, desperation, isolation, resentment…a few of the words that come to mind as I look at the man’s face as he steadily pushes his wheelbarrow full of barrels of a mysterious substance up the slope of the expressway. Was he born here? Or was there a time back in the village when a cousin told him of a land of opportunity and the younger boys cheered as he packed his bag and hopped onto a truck headed westward?

Another man stands casually in the middle of traffic holding an ironing board. It is for sale. It is all he has to sell and he stands there as the motorbikes weaving in and out of the stopped vehicles bump into him as though he does not exist. He stands there with an empty expression as the world ignores him.

A skeleton of a man lays nearly naked on a small patch of cement alongside the barrier separating lanes, clearly dying. Alone. On the street. No one seems to notice.

Women walk alongside the road carrying baskets of food on their heads selling to passersby. Children riffle through the piles of trash that cover the ground like grass covers a field. It is everywhere. Teenagers linger alongside the road, manning their territory. Waiting for the next vehicle that breaks down so that they can take what is "rightfully" theirs.

A thick haze blankets the city making it difficult to breath. Driving on the highway, it looks as though you are driving into a dark cloud that doesn’t show any sign of clearing. Ever. Smoke billows out of trucks, homes, factories, and from the burning piles of garbage. It fills the sky, it fills your lungs, and I have to wonder how anyone can survive here. Physically, mentally, how? I truly wonder how people stay alive.

Lagos.

The poverty is astounding and the fact that I ask myself how it is humanly possible to continue living here must be enough to indicate that injustice is real.

There is more beneath the surface I know. I have spent longer amounts of time in similar places and I believe full heartedly that the compassion and strength of the human spirit is stronger in such places than it is anywhere else on earth. I have sensed it in peoples’ smiles, felt it in their handshakes, and seen it in their eyes. I do believe that. I have to believe that. Without believing that, how can you possibly hold onto hope?

I wish I could say that I spent enough time in Lagos to testify that there is opportunity, there is joy, there is success and better lives have been created. I trust it is there, but all I can say from my brief experience is that it is difficult to see without time to dig in. I can say that, from what I saw, Lagos appears to be a city largely constructed by making something out of nothing. If that is possible then maybe there is hope?

...but I felt parts of my heart breaking when I drove through the city. As much as I believe in hope, I am forced to recognize that some of the eyes I have looked into have stopped believing and I cannot blame them.