“Nigeria is a difficult place to shoot and an even more difficult place to live. But it is also an incredibly inspiring place, with perhaps the hardest-working, most enterprising, most optimistic population I’ve ever encountered.” — Tony Bourdain in Lagos, Nigeria in Parts Unknown, in October 2016.
Tony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episode on Lagos, Nigeria — Africa’s largest city, with 15.9 million people (as of 2023) — premiered just one week after his light-hearted sojourn with Eric Ripert in the French Alps, and it’s hard to imagine a sharper, more stark contrast. Lagos was frenzied and frenetic where French Alps was quiet and cheerful, the difference between relaxation in the fresh, rarified air of high mountain scenery and the smog-choked desperation of an overcrowded big city, where side hustles are the only way to make a living for most, and the economic disparity between rich and poor is a conversation talking point in its own right.
The food is different, too — but that didn’t stop Bourdain from crafting a compelling, surprisingly upbeat hour of TV, fuelled by his sheer force of personality whenever the overcrowding and desperation around him threatened to overwhelm.
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, with a population of 230 million, and Lagos is practically a country in its own right, the most populated urban region in Africa and one of the fastest-growing megacities in the world.
In keeping with much of Africa — and the emerging world, for that matter — the demographic breakdown leans toward the young side: nearly a third of those people, 32.4 percent by one survey, are under the age of 18. What about their future? What kind of a life awaits them? Lagos may be the financial heartbeat of West Africa, but what does that mean when the financial disparity between rich and poor, old and young, is so great? It’s a question that confronts many of the world’s democracies today, and a question Bourdain wrestled with daily. (Thorny issues like that don’t matter so much in autocratic dictatorships where simply asking that question will get you disappeared.)
It’s hard to watch Lagos and remain in a sunny mood, no matter how much energy Bourdain puts into it — and if you know anything about Bourdain, that’s a hell of a lot. Bourdain is the indigenous film-making capital of the entire African continent, nicknamed Nollywood, and its music scene is the most vibrant in West Africa, which, if you know music, is saying something. The food is more tailored to street food, in keeping with a lifestyle that means eating while on the run, grabbing what one can from sidewalk street stalls, and Bourdain is the ideal companion for that. He’s a connoisseur but no snob when it comes to food.
A quick side note: Lagos was directed and produced by longtime Bourdain cameraman Morgan Fallon in grainy 16mm stock with a deliberately jittery, handheld look and a nervous, almost frantic style, in keeping with Bourdain’s lean toward a more experimental type of filmmaking in his later Parts Unknown episodes: God only knows how it must have appeared to CNN corporate bean counters on first viewing.
Lagos catches Bourdain in neither a soulful, reflective mood nor his angry, testy social commentator mode; things are happening around him too quickly for that. Watching Lagos just the other night, I couldn’t help wondering how Fallon and his camera crew kept up; this is one outing where it’s hard enough to follow Bourdain on the screen, let alone the guys dragging heavy camera equipment behind him; Fallon is the rock star of the piece, if behind the scenes.
This is not one of Bourdainophiles’ favourite episodes — a quick scan of Reddit reviews from the time lean more toward the What the hell? end of the reaction scale than the light-hearted joy and comfort of companionship that fans responded with to the Eric Ripert episodes, keeping in mind — again — that Lagos aired just seven days after French Alps.
One thing one can say about Lagos is, that in Bourdain’s hands, it’s never boring.
“It’s mad, it’s bad, it’s delicious, it’s confusing, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Bourdain said in his voiceover … and he was just getting started. Them’s fightin’ words coming from a dude who, as Eater assistant editor and culture writer Chris Fuhrmeister posted at the time on Eater's webpage, had been around the world, there and back, many times, who made nearly 300 hours of travel television in 15 years.
Lagos is also the only episode, that I’m aware of anyway, where Bourdain says, on-camera: “I’m lazy.” (Context: he was called out at the time for pouring beer without tipping his glass.)
Ah yes, the food. Lagosian cuisine, as it’s known, revolves around fresh fish, beef, spicy soups, and pounded yams. Lots and lots of pounded yams.
The particulars range from traditional Hausa dishes like masa griddlecakes to spicy (aka hot) pepper soups and home-cooked stews (think Jollof rice stewed with goat meat, fish stock, melon seeds and many, many chilis; “It burns,” Bourdain says, “It burns real good!”) with musician activists companions like Femi Kuti and Yeni Kuti, Edoato Agbeniyi and Yomi Messou, food blogger Iquo Ukoh, and journalist Kadaria Ahmed.
The music backbeat is hip, local and authentic — none of this lazy, AI-generated garbage you hear in so many Netflix docuseries. The original soundtrack recording, real music and not regurgitated pop. ranges from Afrobeat to psychedlic rock, in keeping with the episode’s jittery, nervous acid burn, from The Funkees (Point of No Return) and Bio (Chant to Mother Earth) to Fela Kuti (Zombie) and Ofo and the Black Company (Egwu Aja, Allah Wakbarr).
“Nigeria is a difficult place to shoot and an even more difficult place to live,” Bourdain wrote in his Field Notes for CNN. “But it is also an incredibly inspiring place, with perhaps the hardest-working, most enterprising, most optimistic population I’ve ever encountered.”
And there it is — as good a reason as any to revisit Lagos. Or watch for the first time, as the case may be.
Supplementary reading:
https://explorepartsunknown.com/lagos/bourdains-field-notes-lagos/
https://eatlikebourdain.com/?s=Lagos
Supplementary viewing:
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