Nigeria: A Scourge of "Hyacinths"

27 July 2014

Nigeria is a most hostile environment for any filmmaker. There is eruptive noise everywhere. No area, however sedate it might appear, is quiet. Nigerians are entirely incapable of keeping quiet. Recording audio is nothing but a nightmare every single time. Not even in the mountains. Not in the thickest forests. Megaphones cannot match the chatter of ordinary individuals who converse with their friends and fellows at the very top of their lungs. We must have the highest rate of hernias in the entire world.

Moreover, all our monuments are completely run down. Including those still being inhabited. You encountered peels and flakes, even whilst those places must have been ordered and neatly kept in the periods you are trying to capture. And don't tell me that you are going to paint up. To obtain permission to use locations, however decrepit, is unimaginably tedious. To obtain permission to renew, even sections to be implicated by your photography, is next to impossible. We were told in some places not to even think about it. Permissions (which we got a fistful of) only came, and comes, through the direct intervention of top functionaries within those organisations or approving authorities.

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