The road to hell is NOT paved with good intentions

In fact it is probably NOT paved at all...

Back to the Ghetto for Jesus & Romero

I'm still disconnected...

My bleeding pores and clammy hands have given way to flaking ashy skin and the hollowed (yeah right) cavities of my gaunt cheeks have welcomed back the calorific horrors of my decadent blameless 'liveable' life of surplus.

I'm still with you pain, red bleeding ground of multifarious deaths and counterintuitive citrus fruit...

Uzo! Uzo!

Hugo Boss is coming O!

The Electronic Enabler

The intro to Fela Kuti's "Water no get enemy" is a poignantly powerful soundtrack for my feeble generation. Its easy to critique from a distance: Physically, emotionally and morally removed...Look at it long enough and the pain suffering of many can be reduced an abstract seen from a moving vehicle.

My camera focused on the rain droplets on the windscreen outside a PNHC petrol station and handed me a free metaphor I lost in translation.

Sunday Sunday: Ndi Uka

A congregation in search of a temple - give generously

Sunday not quite best:

Afrovangelism cannot be addressed by pictures alone - they might give an impressionistic rendering; the riot of colour and sheer mass of bodies - but they CANNOT. Even film can barely communicate the sheer human impact of a crowd contorted in immense hope, feeling and desperation. Fervent, devout, desperate and angry prayer. Non of that genteel quiet storm. Awe inspiring and slightly disturbing. But as long as it remains a force for good in the real world...

Mummy Mummy at the centre of another prayer cataclysm

It seems churlish to attack those without response but this choir failed to stir my atheist soul

...Make the crooked way straight...

So a specific brand of 'Afrovangelism' is rife in southern Nigeria - in keeping with the looming apocalypse.
While I wish I could transcribe the audience's responses to this inevitable piece of roadside carnage(Blooood of Jesus!) the original images will have to suffice.

Graft

Point & Kill

Nothing quite like ordering the execution of your next meal and watching with mild revulsion as the surprisingly squeamish 'chef' clubs a generous catfish to death and then preps it with fresh chilli and other exotic condiments and brings it to your table which is already liberally soaked with lager and raucous African laughter. Even after 5 trays of Aviation mush, a full meal there was plenty to savour.

Akara

The most important meal of the day. Load up on this deep fried, bean derived delicacy and theoretically your average ex-resident-chief-mourner-funeral-commitee+organizer should be able to handle anything your average day throws up: from evil uncles to corrupt officials, bad roads and non existent toilet facilities.

Red Dust Swimming in Magic

Red dust is a truly noble thing, perhaps the most honest and noble of all things: fertile vivid and covering everything lizards and kings alike. Apocalyptic like a rebirth makes me want to order 10 yards of priestly robing and preach between oncoming traffic about the end of days till some starving orphan child magically transforms into that winged beast from revelations and tears my blaspheming flesh till it mingles into the dust.

Elites Nobles ...and the odd sociopath

So what if after 45 years of vacuous life wasting I decide to covet and claim what was never mine?
I am an elite after all, master of all I survey...

Escorts to family meeting number 1

I'm back

So after 9 long years of ignoring the obvious I head back to the gaping maw that apparently swallowed my father whole and left nothing but a collection of rabid brothers and a stunned, confused family.

This is a complex situation: As an estranged, diffident son who inhabits a (metaphoric and geographic) different universe.
Quite apart from the obligatory unresolved father/son issues. There are logistic nightmares created by the terrain, the culture the grubby sociopaths that answer the same name.

It is impolite to speak ill of the dead and besides I'm all grown up now and need to rise above my boyish issues.

All that pales in comparison to the desperate schemes, threats of violence and virulent heat, humidity, red dirt, grubby notes, evangelism and chaos.

BUT I made it through this is my visual testimony.