Ode to a playground.

A place from your past or childhood, one that you’re fond of, is destroyed. Write it a memorial.

Growing up was fun, whenever I go to Lagos Island, sweet memories still flood my mind, memories of a clean sparsely populated and breezy neighborhood which encompassed Bishop Street, Olowogbowo, Elegbata, Daddy Alaja, Koseh, Balogun, John Street, Doherty, Idumota and Marina. Everywhere was our playground including the gutters and right in the middle of black well tarred  roads, cars hardly passed by, it was only a few people that had cars, commuting was not common then,

Carter bridge, the very first bridge that linked Lagos Island to the suburbs on the Mainland, it descends into Idumota

adults went to work almost within their vicinity and children's schools were walking distances to their homes.

A typical street on the Island then, reminds me of the street my family lived when I was born

We did not have a single care in the world, all we did after school( and school then was very brief, not dawn to night time like we have it now), was play and outdoors was the real play station.

Outdoors was our playstation.

The gutters were clean, free flowing, we would make canoes from newspapers and drop them in the gutters, we would then race our canoes down the gutters to see whose canoes would come first and whose will get wet and get stuck first. There was a bakery in our neighborhood, we would get dough, get discarded sardine cans and some firewood to make a fire, we would then embark on " serious baking" of the dough on the fire. Boys rolled tyres with sticks energetically down the streets or played football, some girls also played football especially when there were not enough boys to make up a team. Girls played 'ten ten' and 'suuwe' however some boys would also sometimes join us in ten ten and suuwe, then there was 'kenke', a game that was like high jump but the only differenceP being that if you don't scale it, you will be given some strokes of the cane as predetermined before starting the game and there was also a game called 'pillow master', our own version of  'ringa ringa roses' we also had games that helped our memory and concentration,I suppose the reason that outdoor play thrived  was because there was no television, ( my family would be one of the first to buy a TV set then) though NEPA called ECN then was very constant.Perhaps the extra topping on the pizza was the playround under the newly constructed Berger bridge known as 'abe Berger'. An old man eked out a living by renting out bicycles for a few kobos per hour and he also had swings that he rented out as well.

Because of all these activities I cannot recollect any child that was obese. Being obese or over-weight was something that was non-existent. The first obese person I would come across was in my secondary school days. Being ill  was also very rare, their was no malaria, and typhoid was also unheard of. 

What do we have now? A visit to Lagos Island makes it hard to believe that we had the kind of childhood that we had. My family moved out of the Island to Surulere, a suburb on the mainland. There was  population explosion, after the Nigerian civil war, lots of Nigerians from the Eastern part of the country started coming into Lagos in droves. Residential houses were demolished to give way to  ugly monstrosities to accommodate the new migrants, more shops and commercial buildings were put up, shanties houses without toilets and bathrooms were being built. Crossing the road to a neighbour's house to have a bath became a way of life. Drainage and gutters were obstructed by emergency builders and Shylock landlords, traffic jams became a common occurrence, schools became over populated. People who could afford it moved out of the Island.

Flood, at the slightest rain 

My playground under the bridge disappeared, makeshift structures were put up to accommodate porters (alabaru), commercial transport workers, artisans, petty drug peddlers, and all sorts of people of questionable character. Indian hemp (called eja) cocaine and heroine were easily available.

Chaos, traffic jam

Lagos Island as I knew it melted before my very eyes, it was very hard to imagine that a few years earlier The seat of government, the State house was just about ten minutes walk from my house

The seat of government, the State House Marina.. front row, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa(the then Prime minister of Nigeria), Princess Alexandra(representing Queen Elizabeth), and Sir James Robertson (the then Governor General) and other ministers in Balewa's cabinet.

and that we used to go for family picnics a short drive away at Ikoyi Park now known as Parkview Ikoyi.

Turnbull Road, not far from Ikoyi park, (now Parkview estate) in Ikoyi, we had lots of family picnic at the park.

My Lagos Island as I knew it, disappeared and in its place exists a slum.

My playground' abe' Berger,  now a slum.