by Makoko, Nigeria (AP) – Several canoes paddling towards Makoko, a huge, floating slum that was built on stilts in the lagoon at one end of the Nigerian economic center of Lagos. On the vessels there are huge puppet polle animals together with their puppet players who are dressed in black.
Once on the water, the animals – a gorilla, a leopard, an elephant, a great, a giraff and a donkey – become alive. The gorilla jumps, the donkey builds and wags his cock, while the leopard bends his neck to the surface, as if it wants to drink, but just before his face hits the water and then looks around to look around.
It is Saturday, the second day of the “The Herden” theater tour in Nigeria on a trip of 20,000 kilometers (12,427 miles) from Africa’s Congo Basin to the Arctic circle with puppet animals. It is a journey that says organizers that the climate crisis draws attention and “renew our bond with the natural world”.
The tour started in Kinshasa last week, the capital of the Congo, and will continue with Dakar, the Senegalese capital, the next stop around the world.
The story states that due to global warming, the animals are pushed out of their natural habitats and are sold to the north, stand in cities on the way and are connected by more animals.
The extensive slum of Makoko – an old fishing village – was perfectly illustrated that, given the climate change, it has shown resilience for many years and often found ways to adapt to extreme weather, said Amir Nizar Zuabi, the artistic director of the “herds”.
The Makoko Slum as a Venice Africa is a low community that is susceptible to rising sea levels and floods. Lagos himself is no stranger to the effects of climate change, with streets and houses in the coastal city often devouring during the annual floods.
“We are one of the greatest global crises on the edge, and … I think the global south offers a lot of knowledge and a lot of resilience,” said Zuabi, referring to developing countries in the southern hemisphere with lower income and higher poverty rates in comparison to the “global north”.
Makoko spread under the third bridge of the mainland, which connects a large part of Lagos, and came alive when “the herds” brought in. People put their heads out of the windows in awe from the exhibition. Children and women stood on the verands in front of their rickety wooden houses and observed how the animals paddled through the narrow waterways. Some grazed the animals while others applauded them and waved them.
“It looked so real,” said Samuel Shemede, a 22-year-old inhabitant of Makoko, in awe of the dolls. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It’s not real, but you made it look so real.”
When the Makoko Tour left and moved to the suburb of Yaba, the notorious traffic in the city for the puppets stood still when they towered over humans and vehicles. The big animals had been accompanied by smaller primates such as monkeys who are loudly driving around and even dancing.
The tour was interrupted by dance and choreography appearances by a local theater group, whose actors who were dressed in beige -sack and straw hats were temporarily admitted to the dolls as if they wanted to attack them.
When they traveled through the streets, the spectators were spoiled with chants from the Hausa language song “Amfara”, the loose translated into “We started”.
At a time when the African nations lose up to 5% of their gross domestic product every year, if they have a more severe burden than the rest of the world from climate change, the organizers of the “herds” said that it was important to break down the climate change and their effects in a way that many people can refer to.
“A lot of climate debate is about science … and scientific words mean nothing for most people,” said Zuabi, the artistic director. “I wanted to create a work of art that is wild and majestic about nature, beauty and how animals.”
The animals that penetrate into cities is a metaphor for abnormal things that are now becoming normal when the world deals with climate change, he said. “And hopefully this is a way to talk about what we will lose if we continue to burn fossil fuels.”
