Nigeria

Right, so I'm starting one of the themes that might be reoccurring in this blog - cultural interchange. I do feel that people (me very much included!) don't have enough of an awareness of culture across the globe and my belief is that it is one of the reasons for the tensions we have in the world right now. Our cultures are just too isolated from each other.
For me not knowing much about African culture is a reason for caring maybe less about Africa's problems than I should. Some of the things that happen there, if they were happening in Europe or North America they would leave me feeling shaken, but because they're happening in Africa I have little or no emotional reaction to them.
Anyway, the point is I think I have finally got the first seeds of developping some sort of reaction to whatever happens in Nigeria now :D And I want to share that.

I found this article on BBC about Nigeria.
I thought it was great in that it gave a lot of insight into what life there is like. The theme is Nigerian sense of humour and trying to fly out to somewhere from Lagos. Here's my favourite fragment (near the end of the article):

"The replacement aircraft is being serviced" said a cheery voice. "You'll be on your way just as soon as we've put the plane back together again."

Ibim and I - and the other passengers - collapsed in fits of thigh-grabbing, shoulder-thumping laughter.

We did get there in the end.


Of all the African countries, Nigeria seems to be the one that's been "following me around" the most in the last year or so.
Apart from meeting a Nigerian studying medicine in Poland about a year ago, during the summer I watched a documentary film entitled Workingman's Death which showed 5 very unpleasant jobs that are done in undevelopped places of the world. One of these jobs was that of butcher in Nigeria and something that caught my eye immediately was that of all the jobs the director showed, the Nigerians were the only ones who weren't depressed about doing it. They were just thanking God for having a job in the first place and totally satisfied with this sort of life (and mind you - the Nigerian part was the one which people couldn't stand so much that they started leaving the cinema - the way they were butchering animals up was really quite horrible, I think most people would absolutely hate to do that for a living in those conditions).
If you're interested, the official site for this film is here. As far as I know this film will be distributed in Poland by GutekFilm, so it probably will be shown in quite a few other countries as well.

Something else that my cousin drew my attention to is that Nigeria has a huge video film industry which is nicknamed Nollywood. It would be interesting to see something of their films one day (even though I expect the production values are probably bad, but I've been surprised before sometimes, so who knows? :) ). Of course at the moment in my part of the world seeing these films is pretty much impossible :(
Anyway, here's a trailer for a documentary about Nollywood: