THE LAGOSIAN OASIS
An old air conditioner rattled on the wall of the sterile, beige room as the visa agent dropped a thick mound of paperwork in front of me with a thud. The small Durban, South Africa, office was sweltering, yet the agent wore a thick suit with a pinstriped shirt, and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead as he guided me through the forms. He paused when he saw me check “tourism” as my reason for traveling to Nigeria.
“Tourist visa?” the agent said, arching his eyebrows. “We’ve never done one of these for Nigeria.”
I knew they had, however, since this was my second trip to Nigeria in six years. I’d visited in 2011 to verify rumors of a world-class wedge that breaks on the outskirts of Lagos Harbor. Swells would refract off a milelong breakwall like they’d hit a bumper in a pinball machine, bouncing toward shore and jacking into dark tubes that churned through Tarkwa Bay. But in the years since that first exploratory trip, the West African country has dominated global headlines with stories of escalating terrorism, kidnappings and ethnic violence. “Briton kidnapped by armed gang while leaving Lagos airport,” read a Sunday Express headline in July 2013. “234 schoolgirls kidnapped by extremists,” said CBS News the following April. “Double suicide bombing at Nigerian university,” reported Newsweek in January 2017.
Despite the anxiety-inducing news reports, I’d decided to return to Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, which has an estimated 21 million people crammed into the metropolitan area. Our contact there had told us about a left on the other side of the breakwall during that first trip, saying it got even better than the right in the dry season. His claims were met with skepticism until he started sending us photos of the wave. After a couple of years, the grainy cell-phone images became too tempting to
