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Using local materials and skills, this school in a floating slum is a brave exemplar for a community in dire need, yet the Lagos state government is threatening to demolish it
REPORT
JONATHAN GLANCEY
Makoko, a Nigerian shanty town on the marshy waterfront of Lagos, is not exactly Venice, but there are marked similarities between the two. Both are built on wooden piles driven into saline mud and tidal ooze. The streets of both are famously fall of water. Both were settled by fishing communities, Venice - officially - in AD 421, Makoko at some time in the 18th century. Their populations are of a similar size - 60,000 in Venice, around 80,000 in Makoko - although no one knows for certain. Both have been threatened: Venice more by floods than war, and Makoko by its status as an illegal settlement. Last year, machete-wielding men employed by the city of Lagos severed countless wooden piles, causing the collapse of hundreds of flimsy timber homes.
At this point, the difference between these two water-borne settlements becomes horribly clear. Venice - La Serenissima - was once among the world's wealthiest cities; today, it retains its power to captivate the dullest soul, and since 1987, city and lagoon have formed a World Heritage Site. Makoko, meanwhile, has sprawled into the marshy waters fringing Lagos over the past century. Like Venice, it is almost impossibly picturesque, luring adventurous photographers from around the world who, without a ripple of a doubt, produce some of their most memorable work here: in which direction can a photographer point a camera in Makoko without winning the art director's jackpot?
Here is the fish market with its daily catch of gleaming barracuda, red snapper, crab and prawns. Over there, young women in their Sunday best paddling their canoes to church. Morning mists and spectacular sunsets add to the superficial lustre of Makoko.
But, Makoko is very poor....