Stolchlickoff Scrapbooks>Narrative Marginalia>Ned Gets Lucky in Lagos, IX-73

Ned Bennett (now living in London) told me the story of his 1973 trip to Lagos and meeting with Salif Moumouni…

Sure, Matthew, I’ll tell you what I remember about Salif Moumouni, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long while, that bleeding thief. I was all of twenty-nine when I was promoted second unit director on The Embakasi Protocol. At the time I rubbed my hands and thought – here’s your chance, in’it, sunshine? Just don’t fuck it up.

Well, I did fuck it up.

That not-very-good film was shot in Nairobi, but there was a little prologue set among the tankers of Apapa, the busy port of Lagos. The producer couldn’t spare the expense of flying Michael Caine (lovely bloke) to Nigeria, a set at Pinewood would suffice for his Lagos scenes, but they needed some exteriors. I had three days to get the coverage and get back to Kenya. It was a shoestring mission, just me and a doddering cameraman from Lowestoft who’d fought in the Great War.

We jetted across the dark continent with six cans of raw 35mm stock, a Panavision camera, and various equipment in cargo. Lagos was hot and sticky, a cesspool of lepers and smouldering garbage and the stinking haze of open sewers. This wasn’t so long after the Civil War, you know. We were taken with our precious cargo in a van to a luxury hotel in Apapa. Now, that was a little better – colour telly, air conditioning, swimming pool. The old cameraman decided to snooze away the rest of the afternoon in his room. I changed into my swimming costume and took a dip in the hotel pool. Later, while I was smoking a fag by the poolside, who comes along but our contact, Mr Salif Moumouni. Apparently as a kid he’d worked running errands for John Huston on location in Chad, and our producer’s brother-in-law had recommended him – see, it really wasn’t my fault! Salif was originally from Dhaba, some stinking African hellhole you’ve never heard of. You had to see this chap’s get-up to believe it: purple scarf, mottled blue silk shirt, very scuffed Dingo boots, and tight green slacks. Salif was an Elvis Presley fan and wore his hair in a fuzzy sweaty pompadour. He was skinny and rather pretty. He said he would be happy to assist me tomorrow with the shoot, he knew the port of Lagos very well, knew all the best angles. I bet you do, I winked. Salif smiled shyly, and since all the while he couldn’t take his eyes off the bulge in my swimmers, I invited him up to my room. We took a bottle of Seagram’s V.O. with us.

So that sweaty afternoon I had this fellow six ways from Sunday in air-conditioned comfort. This was long before we knew about HIV and AIDS, of course. By the end I was knackered, flaccid as a dead fish and wanting a bit of kip, but Salif wanted to tell me about making movies. He had directed a 16mm movie starring himself in his native land, he said. He wanted to be the movie-star Elvis of the Republic of Dhaba. He sang me a song or two and wasn’t too bad. We went downstairs for a steak and to listen to a highlife band. I refused to let Salif stay the night in my room, though, said I needed my beauty sleep.

The next morning at dawn we loaded a rented Bedford truck with the camera equipment and the film cans and proceeded to a location Salif said was truly panoramic, perfect for the scene. Salif drove the truck and asked permission to play an Elvis Presley 8-track called I Got Lucky he’d bought that week at the market (he didn’t own a player). So we bounced along the road listening to Elvis. Meanwhile the doddering cameraman lay in the backseat reading the Daily Times of Nigeria. It was a hot-thick-rasp-in-the-lungs-plus-sun-stroke sort of a slippery morning. At some point I realised we were heading down a barren stretch of highway. I didn’t know where the bloody hell we were. What happened to the port and the panoramic view? Salif claimed he was lost. And then a Ford truck pulled up alongside us. The driver waved us off the road. Salif immediately obeyed him despite my order that he hit the accelerator. Next thing we knew four blacks with handkerchiefs covering their faces were pointing kitchen knives at us. Well, that’s the end of me, I thought – a highway robbery in bleeding West Africa. But they didn’t kill us. They transferred the camera equipment and raw stock from our truck to theirs, punctured our tyres, and buggered off up the highway.

Eventually we got back to Apapa, a long walk through the slums. I wired the producer from the hotel with the bad news. Salif said he would personally report the incident to the police and see what could be done. I wanted to go along with him, but he said he knew the right and proper way to deal with the cops, who were totally corrupt, of course. So Salif trotted off and I never saw the fucker again.

I left Nigeria with nothing to show for it but cholera. I reckon this incident explains why the supposedly impoverished Dhaban film movement began shooting features in 35mm with a Panavision camera from late ‘73.