Day 2 - Trip to the Mall

Miley Cyrus had a joint on stage and David Dimbleby has got a tattoo at the age of 75. The news that is coming from the Western world all the way to Nigeria doesn't paint us a great picture. God knows what Nigerians must think of us, why we'd have a huge price on our heads I do not know.

Anyhow, we woke at gone 10:00 this morning and prepared for breakfast. Dayo's Aunty had gone to work so it was just us and the workers who cooked us an interesting meal to get our day started. We had porridge on the side of a dish made out of beans, corned beef and sardines (Moi Moi). Both Sam and I preferred the porridge although I ate as much Moi Moi as I could, my stomach isn't quite ready for corned beef at that time in the morning I suppose, I made a decent effort though. Watching Dayo is funny, apparently our meals are toned down in spice and general 'African-ness', we had chicken and rice last night while Dayo dug into Bokoto, a cow leg delicacy, I couldn't taste much of the leg when I tried it though due to the internal mouth scars the spices were creating.

Busy Traffic during rain storm

Our itinerary for today didn't have too much on it, the most important thing was getting Dayo's business head screwed back on, he had been away from a working phone now for a day and needed a new sim card in order to contact people we could potentially interview for the Nollywood documentary. As I mentioned in the last post, our original plans had been cancelled due to the festival organisers not booking our flights to Calabar on time, so Dayo is having to find new ways of getting the material he desires for his project. We organised one of Aunty Ronke's drivers to pick us up from home at mid day and take us to a shopping mall half an hour away. This was our first chance to get some footage of the hectic traffic and roadside activities around Lagos, more opportunity for super slow motion shots also.

Angry driver during motorway traffic

The traffic is mental here, speeding across a bridge with 4 lanes on both sides there are times with no road markers that determine which lane your in. The horn is used often by each car in order to let other drivers know what your doing, although how much time you give them is unpredictable, it is every man for themselves, just mental. I'm not much of a writer so trying to explain what it's like out here is difficult, print screens of shots taken just seems easier and quicker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYF3sXrD6Ig

We arrived at the mall and had a short wait for Dayo to collect a new sim card, during which time we had lunch at a place called Chicken Republic. A place you would hope offers good chicken, it really didn't. This was no meat. What looked like a double beef burger when only chicken was on the menu, it tasted like what I can imagine ass would taste like. It was overcooked so badly that it just becomes rubber as well as the norm in standard of chicken at this fast food chain, one not to go to again. Surprisingly, Sam and I weren't as intriguing to the rest of the mall's public as I originally thought, of course we were in the middle of town though so foreign people weren't over-extraordinary. We caught a lift back to our accommodation for the week, whilst Dayo spent the afternoon making calls and organising the trip, Sam and I shot some more footage from the 3rd story balcony of the house overlooking a main road. Sam managed to download magic lantern once our internet was set up and running so that a time-lapse could be taken this evening, something we hope to get a lot of throughout the trip.

Landscape shot with colour correction (105mm)

We logged and transferred all footage and took another dip in the pool this evening, staying in till dark. It's weird having so many bats flying around you whilst having a swim. For dinner we had the same meal as last night but fish instead of chicken, Dayo had spicy soup and rice, we will have to take more pictures from now on.

We're now currently blogging and Dayo has managed to organise a behind the scenes shoot of a Nollywood film that is currently in production, called 'Lagos Cougars', an earlier start tomorrow so lights out at 01:00.