The Sky is Falling, Travel

Just cruising down the Ibadan – Lagos expressway at 120+ km/h when traffic from the other lane of the dual carriageway suddenly joins ours:

Welcome to Nigeria! This bizarre (but somehow functional) experience came to summarize my general feeling about Nigeria when I spent a few days working there last week. It’s something tragically comic, like, “How can this possibly be normal?

I had intended to write about my experiences — watching Chinese tourists passing wads of US dollars to airport officials, airport security asking for “some Naira” from my pocket during frisking, the unavailability of any coffee except Nescafé, etc — but when I started thinking about it all I realized it was actually just tragic.

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Kenya, Music

These are some new tunes. They’re new to me at least. I bet you’ve never heard ’em until now but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you heard about these when they dropped a few years ago. These two songs aren’t from Kenya but they sure get a lot of airtime in Kenya in matatus, clubs, ring tones, etc. I hope you enjoy these tracks as much as I do and sambaza (share/spread) them with everyone you know. Zimenibamba (they’ve “jazzed” me)!

Magic System — Premier Gaou

These dudes are from Côte d’Ivoire and this song is apparently from 2006 but I only recently realized how sweet it is. Now that I am in the loop I am pretty sure I’ve heard it in a few clubs over the past couple of years. Every time this song starts playing all the chicks in the joint shriek and jump up to dance with their girlfriends. You know what I’m talking about!

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