Episode 1.You fall prey to the fellow with the pathfinder international stickers at Muritala Mohammed International Airport who wonders why you say you are going for a short course when your visa says you are on a visit...and then adds ruefully that you might want to put something in the envelope he's handed you to make your journey through passport control easier. The Custom officers in turn put on the squeeze, your JJC status must reek all over you like a skunk's spray because the police in Jo'burg do the same. You will not be fazed on your next trip.
You lose close to five thousand Naira with panache at the Jo'burg airport due to your naievety about the exchange rate and the going price for a sim pack. You vow not to cry over spilt milk, but remain close to tears...your Naija blood hates being upended in a bargain, foreign soil or not!
Johannesburg looks bejewelled from the night sky at 27,000 feet, the streets glow as if they are paved with gold and the buildings glitter like diamonds. Very apt you would say considering South Africa's history with precious stones and the fact that the inflight magazine you browsed through at the beginning of the flight kept talking about design as if the word was limited to the cutting and shaping of diamonds. The imagery of a jewel splattered landscape wouldnt have come up however if the design sleuthe wasnt such a third worlder...nay, a beleagured Nigerian who cant fathom how an entire city can run with all its lights blazing at night. ALL its lights, including street lights (hence the golden streets)! But this is not about J'oburg which was only experienced through one long and cold walk by a weary traveller from the arrival terminal of the O. R. Tambo International Airport to the departure lounge of the domestic wing. This is the Cape Town Journal.
Cape Town feels claustrophobic from 30,000 feet. Sequestered between an endlessly rolling rocky terrain and the Atlantic Ocean, it looks like you would have nowhere to run if something major happens to the city. You remember the missing plane that's still not been found in the Cross River mountains and wonder how long it will take rescue choppers to find this plane if it decides to find nest between one of the mean looking rocks below....perish the thought.
Cape Town's exceptional blend of mountain range and extensive waterfront makes it a choice spot for tourists from all over the world. Its location on African soil nonetheless,Cape Town is a veritable firstworld city with its city center being served by a plethora of coastal towns like Muizenberg, Simonstown, Fish Hoek and Kalk Bay at the southerly end of the city. Cape Point, the very tip of South Africa that juts into the Atlantic Ocean, is the southernmost tip of the continent and is renowned for........... The city offers game reserves, boating and surfing....about the surfing, most of these coastal towns have surfing as the major attraction for their largely white resident and tourist population. Sharks are said to attack surfers at the beach every once in a while, but the dedication of the white folks to surfing is nearly religious, they keep walking with their surf boards headed to the beach as if for prayers. They have shark watchers posted on the rocks to watch out for sharks with binoculars but the sharks still find prey occasionally, the bathers only leave for a while and come right back the same day. The city center is a 45 minute train ride from Muizenberg where the design sleuthe has set up a mission control center. The surprise is not the fact that it is a beautiful city from the suburbs straight through the city center, but that the beauty is sustained over a great stretch, on and on without signs of strain in the system. Even the graphiti that the street kids do all over the place and is considered an act of vandalism looks beautiful (another story for another day), telling of a latent creativity that explains why our adverts and now our music videos are being done in South Africa.
Johannesburg looks bejewelled from the night sky at 27,000 feet, the streets glow as if they are paved with gold and the buildings glitter like diamonds. Very apt you would say considering South Africa's history with precious stones and the fact that the inflight magazine you browsed through at the beginning of the flight kept talking about design as if the word was limited to the cutting and shaping of diamonds. The imagery of a jewel splattered landscape wouldnt have come up however if the design sleuthe wasnt such a third worlder...nay, a beleagured Nigerian who cant fathom how an entire city can run with all its lights blazing at night. ALL its lights, including street lights (hence the golden streets)! But this is not about J'oburg which was only experienced through one long and cold walk by a weary traveller from the arrival terminal of the O. R. Tambo International Airport to the departure lounge of the domestic wing. This is the Cape Town Journal.
Cape Town feels claustrophobic from 30,000 feet. Sequestered between an endlessly rolling rocky terrain and the Atlantic Ocean, it looks like you would have nowhere to run if something major happens to the city. You remember the missing plane that's still not been found in the Cross River mountains and wonder how long it will take rescue choppers to find this plane if it decides to find nest between one of the mean looking rocks below....perish the thought.Cape Town's exceptional blend of mountain range and extensive waterfront makes it a choice spot for tourists from all over the world. Its location on African soil nonetheless,Cape Town is a veritable firstworld city with its city center being served by a plethora of coastal towns like Muizenberg, Simonstown, Fish Hoek and Kalk Bay at the southerly end of the city. Cape Point, the very tip of South Africa that juts into the Atlantic Ocean, is the southernmost tip of the continent and is renowned for........... The city offers game reserves, boating and surfing....about the surfing, most of these coastal towns have surfing as the major attraction for their largely white resident and tourist population. Sharks are said to attack surfers at the beach every once in a while, but the dedication of the white folks to surfing is nearly religious, they keep walking with their surf boards headed to the beach as if for prayers. They have shark watchers posted on the rocks to watch out for sharks with binoculars but the sharks still find prey occasionally, the bathers only leave for a while and come right back the same day. The city center is a 45 minute train ride from Muizenberg where the design sleuthe has set up a mission control center. The surprise is not the fact that it is a beautiful city from the suburbs straight through the city center, but that the beauty is sustained over a great stretch, on and on without signs of strain in the system. Even the graphiti that the street kids do all over the place and is considered an act of vandalism looks beautiful (another story for another day), telling of a latent creativity that explains why our adverts and now our music videos are being done in South Africa.
So it's not just about beauty, it's ultimately about sustainability. One actually feels sorry for the Lagos State Government, watching LAMATA paint and repaint the curbs on Ikorodu Road only for them to turn from white to brown to black within a few weeks. The amount of dust that swirls around the atmosphere in Lagos is amazing, how do you keep things pretty with all that dust? Here, where most surfaces are either tarred, paved or grassed, you do not see large expanses of exposed earth, except its a construction site, or a nature reserve and of course- the beach and even those have things well sorted out. There is also a certain quality to the atmosphere and the weather that seems to have a preservatory effect, making the design sleuthe muse that ff houses are organisms in which we live, then putting them up in a cold climate should be like keeping a kilo of meat in the fridge (or freezer as the case may be)- it doesnt rot as fast and thus gets to last longer. Little wonder that the buildings, no matter how old still look pristine, even the run down ones still stand with some dignity, tucked between more 'advantaged' neighbours and well ordered landscapes as they are. The Fashola Government seems to have caught on to this though, with the rate at which the Ministry of Environment is deploying landscaping initiatives across the state. One lingering memory of Lagos is that of a market woman in a bus on Oshodi bridge, looking upon the stretch of land below the bridge where a section of the market had been demolished by government.She sighed and intoned: "Now they will come and plant flowers here"- her sympathies obviously with the traders whose livelihoods had been destroyed by the Urban renewal drive. Urban Renewal is never an easy task and should not be about whether landscaping / beauty and the therapeutic benefits / tourism it brings to residents and visitors alike is more important than the livelihood of the inhabitants who will be displaced or otherwise adversely affected by the change or vice-versa.
The shanty towns on Cape Town's city precincts have tarred roads and electricity and are better ordered than some of our middle class neighbourhoods (yet another story for another day) all because the government found it a matter of duty to intervene...Urban Renewal should be about mutual trade-offs and the good of all, which with deep soul searching, is not so impossible.
-Ayodele Arigbabu
dreamarts.designagency@gmail.com
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