Do you know something?
There's nearly seven billion humans settled all over this little planet.
But now, for the first time ever,
more than half of us are living in cities.
Without anyone even noticing it,
mankind has evolved into an urban species.
Things will never be the same again.
Welcome to Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria
and one of the new breed of megacities of ten million people
and more which are busy taking over the world.
60 years ago, less than 300,000 people lived here
and everyone used to say Lagos was gorgeous.
Now it's more like 16 million
and most people would agree it's suffering from a few growing pains.
But despite its reputation for corruption and poverty,
Lagos is not all like that, you know.
These people will show you what ghetto life is really like.
They've learned to be smart, resourceful, they're hustlers,
because here, nothing is wasted and everything is an opportunity.
And you better watch out, because people here are already
adapting to the extreme urban future
far more successfully than anyone in the so-called "developed world".
If you want an example of everything that's fantastic
about the people here,
then this is the place to start, Olusosun rubbish dump.
Now, this definitely isn't the prettiest part of the city,
and it smells just as bad as it looks,
but you know what?
Where you see filth and rubbish, the scavengers see a livelihood.
While people in the Western world agonise about the best ways to deal
with the waste they produce, these guys just get on with recycling it.
Anything and everything which can be used again is sold for reprocessing.
That's 3,000 tonnes of rubbish which is expertly filtered by hand
every day, keeping more than 5,000 people in regular employment.
Eric was born in Lagos 28 years ago.
He grew up on the streets.
But like lots of the people who choose to work on the dump,
he isn't what he appears.
He's a singer and musician
and has ambitions to become a major recording artist.
All the money he earns as a scavenger
is going towards finishing his debut CD,
and every scrap he finds brings him one step closer to his goal.
So come along.
This week, I have to work extremely hard, because I need money.
I need money for myself.
First and foremost, I need money to go to the studio to mix my song,
the song I want to promote.
I need money to take my picture shot.
And I need money to buy at least one or two T-shirts
that I'll be using for the picture shot.
That's why I need to work so hard this week.
Like most of the thousand or so scavengers,
Eric doesn't just work on the dump.
During the week, he sleeps here, too,
in a house which he made for himself from things he found lying around.
Can you see? That's how I do it.
It's incredible what's happened at this dump.
18 years ago, it was just a big hole in the ground.
Now it's like a city within the megacity.
Everything the scavengers need is here -
shops, restaurants, bars, three cinemas, a mosque,
even a barbers.
Some people never leave.
And you know what's the most amazing thing about it?
All this is just a stone's throw away
from the state government buildings.
And yet most people don't even know it exists.
HE SINGS
And it's not just scavengers who work here.
Some people have set up permanent businesses, like this guy, Joseph,
who has been a buyer here for the last 12 years.
Rubber slippers...
..copper, aluminium, brass, zinc battery.
All this, this is what I buy.
This is what I'm dealing on now.
Our business is just like the stock market.
The prices at my business, they depend on dollar.
When the dollar is down, the price goes down.
When the dollar is up, the price goes up.
The only difference between me
and the people that works in the stock market
is only the suit and the tie and the fine shoes.
I'm checking if this is brass or zinc.
That's what I'm doing.
Hmm...
It's brass.
I have to put my umbrella up.
Joseph sells in bulk to buyers from the reprocessing factories,
but most of his time is spent buying small amounts of scrap from the scavengers.
That's what I'm saying. If you give him all the money...
He'll not give me my own change,
the next time, I will use it to sell market to you.
So it's better he give me my change now, before I complete this morning.
So he's gone looking for change.
Most of the money Joseph earns goes on renting a one-room apartment
for him and his family ten minutes' walk away from the dump site.
OK, this is me, Joseph Orji, and my family.
The person behind me, that one now...
..is my beautiful wife, and this is the future Miss World.
This is Patience.
Patience!
Ah! She just sneeze.
Yes!
The dump hasn't just provided Joseph with his livelihood
for the past 12 years.
He met his wife Elizabeth there, too.
She was selling food, and they fell in love.
Even the room they live in with their two children,
Peace and Patience,
is almost entirely furnished with things he's brought home from work.
You know all these rich people?
They don't like to conserve things.
We, at the dump, we eat from the crumbs of people's table. This...
..sandwicher, bread sandwicher.
It's working. Nothing was wrong with it.
This is a radio torch light. It wasn't working.
Finally, I repaired it, and it's working, at the dump. Field glasses.
It's working! I can watch...
The teddy... The teddy is from the dump site.
I bought it from the dump site.
My baby loves Teddy.
She like this teddy.
One month from now, little Patience here will be a year old,
and Elizabeth wants to throw her a big party.
But Joseph is going to have to work extra hard to pay for it,
and that means a lot more time spent at work.
As the sun goes down and the night falls and you can see the lights
spread out for 40 miles, it's easy to forget the city's problems.
But you know what? It never lasts long.
Despite being in one of the biggest oil-producing countries
in the world, the power still goes off in Lagos every single day.
SCREAMING
What?
See?
Drrrr!
If the dump is at one end of the food chain, then this place,
the Oluwanisola cattle market and slaughter yard, is at the other.
It's where most of the meat that feeds this hungry city comes in.
As Lagos has grown bigger and bigger, so more and more herders
from all over West Africa have been drawn here.
Today, another 500 cows have just arrived -
ambala from Cameroon,
abore from southern Sudan,
kuri from Chad.
And the market thrives, because every one of these cows supports
hundreds of people, each getting a very small piece of the action,
just enough to live on, from the cattle dealers to the meat sellers,
the butchers to the cow wranglers.
Mohammed here is a successful cattle broker.
When he first arrived in Lagos ten years ago,
he was a herdsman from the bush who only spoke Fulani.
Now he speaks five different languages
and people from all over West Africa trust him to sell their cows.
This morning, Mohammed and his team are in the middle of negotiating
a sale to one of the biggest customers in the market,
the buyer for Mr Bigg's fast food chain.
Just like that, 20 cows are sold for 107,000 naira each.
THEY CHEER
As soon as the deal is done,
the buyer's cows are led to the slaughter slab just a few yard away,
where another army of people take over,
each making a living out of one particular part of the animal.
If you want to know how 16 million people get fed here every day,
then this place will give you a good idea.
That is the normal thing.
The only bit of the cow that is thrown away is its hair.
The hooves get sold to shoemakers,
the horns get turned into plastics for TV sets,
and even the contents of the cow's stomach is sold for fertiliser.
Everything here makes money for someone.
Gabriel first came here ten years ago,
straight out of agricultural college.
He saw that all the blood from the cows was being washed away
into the river, and he realised he'd spotted a gap in the market.
Straightaway, he set himself up with a little business
processing animal feed.
Gabriel processes more than 30 barrels of blood
like this each week,
and he's hoping to expand his operation
to meet the growing demands of the city.
All across Lagos, you'll find millions of others like Gabriel,
people who have found ingenious ways to make money
and who are pursuing it for all they're worth.
A few become wealthy,
but the vast majority earn just enough to live on.
But against all the odds,
they've turned Lagos into a city of opportunity, full of entrepreneurs,
resourceful, energetic and extremely optimistic.
Eric and Joseph have been trading with each other for years,
and although they wouldn't admit it, they've become good friends.
Nice copper.
Both men come from the same part of the country,
the oil-rich southeast,
but Joseph belongs to the Igbo tribe,
who have a reputation for being the canniest businessmen in Nigeria.
It's true. See? Everybody.
Your grandma wants to see you!
The end of the week is here,
and everyone who works in the business district
is trying to get out of the 12-mile-long traffic jam
on the miracle of engineering that is the Third Mainland Bridge.
On the dump, though, the commute isn't such a big problem.
Over at the Promised Land cafe,
where Eric eats most of his meals, the owner,
Auntie Anne, is getting ready for her usual Friday night rush.
Eric has been working so hard all week that he's saved enough
to be able to spend a few days on his music career.
But before he heads off into the outside world,
he needs to smarten up.
So I need to eat my food.
♪ Hi, I am a...
♪ What? I am a... Who?
♪ I am a...
♪ Nigerian
♪ Hi, I am a...
♪ Huh? I am a... What?
♪ I am a Nigerian... ♪
A few miles from the dump is one of the most lively ghettos in Lagos, Ajegunle.
Over the years, this place has become
the centre of the Nigerian music industry,
and many of its biggest stars have started out from round here.
♪ Who? I am a Nigerian
♪ Hi, I am a... Huh? ♪
Eric's been saving for this day for three months,
and now he's finally got the 15,000 naira he needs to hire a studio,
get his band together and finish the last track on his demo CD.
The producer!
THEY SING
I think that's OK!
That's OK!
OK, OK!
Champions now!
Yeah, man!
Want money, money to spend.
Yeah, man!
HE RAPS
HE SINGS
Eric doesn't do things by halves.
No sooner has he finished recording his song
than he's off to spend his last 4,000 naira
on getting the photos done for the CD sleeve.
After this, he'll be back to being stone-cold broke.
All the copper, the good pieces.
While most people in Lagos are out partying on Saturday night,
Joseph is working overtime at the dump,
burning copper wire to remove the plastic coatings.
Joseph's daughter's birthday is just three weeks away,
and he's decided to work more and more late nights
so he can afford to give her the best party possible.
The next day, there's trouble among the scavengers.
A man who's recently arrived from the north
has been caught helping himself to someone else's collection of iron.
To sort out problems like this, the scavengers have formed
their own kind of government, with this guy, Erico, at the head.
He's been a scavenger since he was a boy,
but now, as their elected chairman,
for the next three years, whatever he says goes.
In the end, chairman Erico banishes the scavenger from the dump,
never to return.
He'll have to start again somewhere else,
but he's probably glad he got away without the police being called.
That's one of the many surprising things about the dump.
It looks like a rough, lawless, dangerous place,
but it's actually quite the opposite.
No-one locks their doors
and everyone leaves their valuable scrap lying around.
By necessity, the place seems to run on trust
and respect for one another.
And how many neighbourhoods in the Western world can claim that?
Back in his scavenging gear,
Eric's hustling like crazy to earn some money.
But just as he gets going, everything suddenly comes to a halt.
ALARM RINGS
One of the hazards of working on the dump
is that pockets of gas form under the decomposing rubbish,
and once they catch alight, fires spread very quickly.
But for the next two days, fires keep springing up all over the dump,
and because it's the end of the dry season,
everything burns very easily.
Until the fires go out, no-one can earn anything.
Every now and again,
Lagos's insatiable appetite for raw materials comes unstuck.
A civil war in Chad has cut off one of the major supply routes to the market,
and there's a serious shortage of cattle.
Suddenly, prices have gone through the roof, and Mohammed is having
to deal with even more dirty tricks than usual to sell even one cow.
Fortunately, Gabriel doesn't have to deal with these endless negotiations.
He's finished processing this week's batch of blood,
and his regular buyer is coming to pay him.
A week later, the rains arrive.
Just as the heat was becoming unbearable,
there's a whole new set of problems to deal with -
flooding, blocked drains, overflowing sewers
and 16 million people who still need to get to work.
It is very lonely this morning.
The whole family have gone travelling. They've gone away.
Hot tea, because it's raining. Hmm?
Hot tea!
You must take hot tea inside the cold rain.
In the cold weather, sorry. Cold...
On the dump, the arrival of the rains makes life a whole lot harder
and smellier for everyone.
In these competitive conditions, some of the scavengers
prefer to work at night, when things are a bit calmer.
The trucks keep coming 24 hours a day,
so if you're prepared to take the risk,
you'll have the pick of the crop.
Across town in Ajegunle,
the sound systems which switch on after dark
are beginning to get lively, and tonight,
Eric has managed to hustle himself a slot on one of the biggest stages.
THEY SHOUT
THEY RAP
THEY SING
But to get your song on the radio,
you need to convince the DJs in all the bars and clubs to play it first.
This is the start of a very long night for Eric.
MUSIC PLAYS
News spreads very fast round here,
and by morning, everyone's talking about Eric.
But it's not good news.
At the end of his night out, trouble started, and one of his workmates,
a scavenger called Kazim, ended up in hospital.
Eric has been charged with assault.
I never really expected this to happen to me.
I was coming back to come and sleep in the dump
so I can start my work the next day,
then this boy, Kazim, called me.
"Slender! Slender!"
We was arguing, arguing, and we start to fight.
Before I knew, he use bottle on my head.
They break my head with bottle.
I fought, but I was fighting some people.
One of my friends was holding Kazim down, was injuring Kazim.
I never knew Kazim was that badly injured.
Before we knew, they bring police, and the police arrested me.
I don't want to go to jail.
Kazim has ended up in hospital
and is in danger of losing one of his eyes.
The other scavengers involved in the fight had run away,
leaving Eric to face the music on his own.
Chairman Erico is going to have to sort this out.
Thank you!
At least Joseph has got something to look forward to.
After a lot of hard work and late nights,
he's called in his big buyers from the reprocessing factories.
Steady, steady.
Dance like Indian.
♪ Happy birthday to you, Patience
♪ Happy birthday to you, Patience!
♪ Happy birthday, happy birthday Happy birthday to you. ♪
MUSIC STARTS PLAYING
MUSIC STOPS
MUSIC PLAYS
SHE SINGS
Patience!
It's my daughter.
Here, look up.
Everyone knows that the legal system in Lagos
moves slower than the traffic on its Third Mainland Bridge.
And after a month with no work,
Eric is only just having his first court appearance.
His only way to get out of years of proceedings
will be to settle out of court with Kazim's family.
But Kazim's brother is in no mood for negotiating.
Please, please. Hold on, hold on, hold on, please.
Amen.
In the end, it's not the courts or the lawyers
which solve Eric's problems, but the dump boys.
When Kazim's family start demanding millions in compensation,
chairman Erico decides it's time to step in.
Within days, chairman Erico has organised a whip-round
from everyone on the dump to pay off Kazim's hospital bills.
Once that's done, the family are happy to accept
a more manageable 300,000 naira from Eric.
After five weeks of banishment, Eric is finally allowed back on the dump.
At his current rate,
it will take Eric five years to pay off his £1,200 debt.
'Get a deal, get the rhythm on 93.7.'
Unless, of course, his music takes off first.
MUSIC PLAYS
And right now, Eric's songs are being played on radio stations
all over the megacity.
MUSIC PLAYS
Eric and the others are just a few of the people who have been drawn
to a city which is expanding at a rate of 600,000 every year.
Next, you're invited to take a trip into the ghetto
where many of the newcomers end up,
Lagos's own version of Venice, called Makoko.
Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing by Red Bee Media Ltd E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk
Resync by n17t01 www.addic7ed.com