Ten years of intense traveling were enough for me to stop renewing my passport for a while. I had no intention of moving again. The part of me looking for stability had taken the reins and convinced the rest of me that staying was the right decision.
By a fortunate coincidence, a few days before the expiration date, one of my closest friends, a brother to me, who’s living in London, had a baby, Alberto. I couldn’t allow myself not to visit; I had no choice but to renew it.
Two weeks after, I got a call. I was offered a job in Lagos.
I grew up with a dad who is a pure runner, in the old sense. He has had the same rhythm and pace for 30 years. He uses running as a way to spend time with himself, evaluate options, and make decisions. I think it’s his secret. Recently my mum came saying she tried Pilates and loved the final meditation session. He replied he doesn’t like to meditate. Very funny. As I’m sure running is his meditation.
As his child, alongside the thick and black eyebrows, I inherited this from him. The week I took to accept the offer is, to date, the one I run the most. I don’t know if I was running away from the decision or I was running towards it.
Deep inside, I knew it was a big yes since the beginning, but it was hard to convince the side of me who was longing for stability.
My mum was shocked by the news; we almost broke up with my girlfriend, and my grandpa told me to enjoy it with a mystic smile, knowing it could have been the last time to see each other.
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For more than a year, I went back and forth from Italy to Lagos. I took those flights often; they were like an eraser for me. Arriving in Nigeria, it was easy to forget how simple and sometimes boring life was in Italy. My body was entering survival mode, and energy was found everywhere.
But the most difficult part for me was going back home. The spectacular ride to the airport was deleting each part of Lagos from my memories. Upon landing, it was like that world I loved a few hours earlier didn’t exist anymore. If it ever existed, it was so distant. It was strange. And still is. I was not retaining any moment. I was lost.
I didn’t want to lose connection with that place, so I started to do whatever was possible to grab any little thing that was bringing me back. The notes and drawings in my journal were of great help; the photos were proof of existence; my other anchor was the music. And it worked like a superpower.
Every time I was coming back, friends and family were always asking: how is Nigeria? Legit question but…
I never knew how to answer; my mind was processing feelings, emotions, colors, chaos, experiences, a blink of essence. And my thoughts were like a slippery fish that, no matter how small the pond was, I was never able to catch. Confused and a bit concerned, I was replying with the most ambiguous word my mind was able to produce: “crazy”. By saying this, I was always seeing a sense of confirmation in the eyes of my counterpart. A sort of relief to be right in thinking what they were thinking already in their own prejudice and imagination of Lagos. I was not able to tell what I was living. The language we commonly use, made of the most sophisticated words, was not the right conveyor for anything. Saying “crazy” seemed the best way to move on with the conversation.
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I instantly understood this place was special for me; I wanted to make photographs, but I was not aware of how, what, who. Why. Nothing was familiar; I felt like an alien. I had thousands of stimuli. Where to start from?
From food. I learned it from Ferdinando Scianna, and I’m sure about this. If you want to know more about the people, you need to eat their food first. Smell it, taste it, embrace it. So I started to get familiar with jollof, plantain, amala, sebo, ewedu, okra. Everything was a source of inspiration for me. My body was fighting against the new flavors and the extremely high level of spice, but it was essential for me to connect with the place.
The second was to immerse myself completely in it.
One of the first days, I heard Seun Kuti talking about life in Lagos. He mentioned something that got me thinking for the whole duration of my stay. “The sign you’re a big man in Nigeria is that you don’t personally live the daily struggle of millions of people”.
I read this while I was requesting the company I was working with to change my apartment for a nice hotel; the kitchen was full of cockroaches, the water coming out of the shower was yellow and pressureless, and the noisiest highway was running in front of my bedroom. In that moment, I canceled the request and learned to live with the discomfort.
Lagos is a place of extremes.
Extreme heat and extreme flooding. Extreme poverty and extreme richness.
But also extreme energy alchemy. The more one is willing to give, the higher level of new, fresh, uncontaminated energy enters one’s body.
A good wave of ancient philosophy embraces the idea of constant change of oneself. What we’re now is different from a couple of moments ago. I was not really able to grasp the sense of any of these teachings until my stay. I felt a constant connection between the people, land, animals, plants, and ocean.
It was like the world shown to visitors was different from the real world of the ones living it. There was a veil covering it. It was possible to reach this unknown state, but in order to do so, one request was made to the visitor: to forget all the known.