BURUKU from the series THE AFRONAUTS

‘This is what hatred did’ is the lapidary phrase that ends Amos Tutuola’s novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. When it was published in 1954, the novel provoked such violent reactions, to the hidden critique that it carried to the government, that Tutuola was obliged to leave Nigeria. Its concluding phrase is the starting point for my own interpretation of the tenebrous story based in the streets of Makoko, a watery slum in the city of Lagos.