Offbeat Economy Thrives at Nigerian Fish Stand: Robert Neuwirth
This article is for subscribers only.
Ogun Dairo put a match to the pile of wood chips she had carried from a nearby sawmill. The chips were soggy and didn’t burn. Instead, they smoldered, and the smoky fire fueled an unlikely global exchange that has supported her family of five for three decades.
Here, in the squatter community of Makoko, one of the waterside shantytowns of Lagos, Nigeria, Ogun Dairo smokes fish. Without a license, on land that she doesn’t own, she has created her economic future. The fish is imported from afar, caught in the North Sea, frozen and shipped to the cacophonous port city on the Nigerian coast.