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We were in West Africa, and we came to see Africa. We wanted the realness of it all. We came to bring awareness to ourselves, to the real African experience among real people and real conditions of an underdeveloped society, of the life preconceived within the frame of Nigeria and beyond. Nigeria, Nigeria, Nigeria. I caught myself repeating this and Eric Esplin did as well. We looked at one another and chanted as if caught in a trance. Nigeria. Together, Eric and I, and a few others ventured into the masses of Warri-town.
Warri-town
Camron Karsten2006-02-18 20:18:33
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We were in West Africa, and we came to see Africa. We wanted the realness of it all. We came to bring awareness to ourselves, to the real African experience among real people and real conditions of an underdeveloped society, of the life preconceived within the frame of Nigeria and beyond. Nigeria, Nigeria, Nigeria. I caught myself repeating this and Eric Esplin did as well. We looked at one another and chanted as if caught in a trance. Nigeria. Together, Eric and I, and a few others ventured into the masses of Warri-town.
It was a night open, and the atmosphere riddled with the sense of something new, something alive. A select group tasted this, felt the need for adventure, and so from our plush Wellington Hotel, we left the automatic doors and the gated entrance and met the real world of Nigeria and its Delta streets.
Just as it is with Cambodia, and India—and Nepal among others—Nigeria is real, it is raw, and it is dirty in the sense that they have been utterly besmeared by all hands of humanity. And having traveled from Lagos to Benin City, meeting up with twenty Nigerian delegates, and together moving further from Benin to
Egho Efetie of Warri rollin' into his hometown Warri as a part of our GCJ Nigerian delegation.Warri, it becomes just that: Warri after dark.
It was what all advisors warned against, including our own leaders and our own delegates (some of them from the metropolis itself). The traffic, the madness, the exodus of humanity returning home with the closure of shops at six and the subsequent road-ban of motorcycles at seven due to the recent regional unrest. The jam was a river of creosote-stained logs, spinning in a whirlpool of rusted industry.
But what intrigued me most was the sheen of the skin, its black gloss. It cast a mellow glare like hot candle wax, while the headlights reflected like sandblasted glass through the rising dust. Men's bald heads, their lanky necks and broad, ram-boned
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See photographs from:
Nigeria Gallery
