Painters, blacksmiths and wordsmiths: building molues in Lagos

African Arts, Autumn, 2008 by Damola Osinulu

   I thought well, what's this man about? I mean he's about education;
   he's about information, and oil and transportation and all the
   things we use daily with trying to catch up with the West.... What
   I found amusing is that quite a lot of these vehicles are second
   hand from the West so it's that sort of thing: tying Nigeria and
   Britain, so a bus is a good tool. (8)

[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]

The bus travels around Britain and its interior is used as an educational space. Through her artistic expression Sokari Douglas Camp acknowledges the cultural significance of the molue and similar buses throughout the developing world. She also correctly observes the global imbrication of economic production and cultural production.

In summary, the process of constructing the body of the molue can be understood as one of hybridization wherein local craftsmen build a new body around an imported chassis. This is the primary condition of cultural production in the postcolonial and globalized environment. It is a condition wherein local users take an imported idea or concept and transform it into a cultural vehicle for their use. One finds this cultural hybridization in language, religion, and virtually every aspect of cultural production. The molue therefore provides us with a template for analyzing cultural production in a postcolonial and globalized world.

PAINTING THE MOLUE--THE AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE

In his article "Divine Horsepower;' Donald Cosentino describes the glorious tap-taps of Port-au-Prince as being "baroquely decorated" (1988:39). Similarly, Jamal J. Elias describes a Pakistani landscape transformed by the "explosion of color and pattern presented by ]Pakistani] trucks" (2005:50). Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts describe Dakar as a visually intense city where "colorful minibuses clogging the road have so many photographs, stickers, and paintings on them that they seem like altars on wheels" (2003:31). Unlike Port-au-Prince, where the bus decorators start from a white-painted bus (Cosentino 1988:42), the painters of Lagos buses are not offered the same degree of room to express their decorative creativity, since they must follow a state-mandated paint scheme; however, within this prescribed anonymity, they find ways to subvert the system.

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The painting process commences once the body builders are done with their work. Ola Dapo of Remo Painters explained the process: "When the bodybuilders and panel beaters are done with their work on the vehicle, then we can start. [The panel beaters] have to grind it then we sandpaper and paint it." (9) The paint applied on molues is referred to by transportation workers as "Jakande Yellow" since it was introduced under the civilian government of Lateef Jakande, which administered Lagos State from 1979 to 1983. In addition to the yellow paint, two belts of black paint divide either side of the bus. Furthermore, a vehicle must register its planned routes with the government and write the route on the body of the bus (see Fig. 17).