Backstory: Can you program peace?
Before arriving in this African nation, I'd heard about how boisterous and aggressive its people are. But, after 11 days here, I'd put it a bit more pointedly: Folks here relish few things more than a good brawl.
OK, maybe that's a rash generalization given there are 130 million Nigerians. But I've just seen so many altercations.
There was the skinny 8-year-old girl walloping a bigger boy outside a cyber cafe.
There was the traffic cop bashing his fists on the hoods of the stream of cars crowding into his intersection, heaving himself against their grilles, shouting at drivers, in a mostly-vain attempt at traffic control.
There was the linebacker-sized guy in a powder-blue get-up at baggage claim bellowing, "What do you mean you lost my five bags?!" at the cowering desk clerk.
After these and other encounters, when I heard about an American nonprofit group gearing up to teach conflict resolution in Nigeria - by infusing peacemaking techniques and story lines into a TV show - I just had to investigate. I mean, preaching conflict resolution here seems like singing Kumbaya with a gang of Hell's Angels.
Anyway, they had my attention.
I arrived for Day 1 of "Common Ground Week," in which 60 cast- and crew-members of the TV show were being introduced to conflict-resolution basics.
Inside the warehouse-turned-production facility, the group is gathered in a circle, many of them slump-backed and clearly skeptical. First up: Allen Scheid, an American, who is the show's producer and local head of Common Ground Productions, a division of Search for Common Ground (a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that aims to "transform the way the world deals with conflict"). He's a skinny, greyhound of a guy who seems to subsist on espressos from his office coffee machine.
"OK," he says in a chipper voice. The best way to start the day is to "turn to your neighbor and give them a big hug."
There's a pause. The Nigerians seem baffled. Hugs don't fit in the cultural lexicon here. Eventually, many awkward embraces are exchanged. At least it's over. Or not."Now turn 180 degrees and hug your other neighbor," Mr. Scheid chirps. One guy in the circle is especially unenthusiastic. Scheid bolts over and hugs him. "He was looking a little frownie-faced," Scheid explains.
"Don't make me come kiss you," Scheid calls over his shoulder, walking back to the center of the circle.
"You won't," the guy says.
"Wanna bet?" Scheid retorts, adding a head fake in the guy's direction.
The group laughs for the first time.
"The people working here all represent tribes who are trying to kill each other," Scheid tells me.
Indeed, the circle is a Nigerian cross section - Muslims, Christians, northerners, southerners, and members of all four major ethnic groups. In part because of all these divisions, the country has been under military rule for 29 of its 45 years since independence. A brutal, ethnic-based civil war from 1967-70 left up to 1 million dead - and involved what some call genocide.
Asked to describe Nigeria, group responses include, "organized confusion," "scatter scatter," and "a mistake."
Sensing negativity, Scheid revs up: "Do you know this is the largest TV drama project ever attempted in Africa? Nobody has done this before. Does that make you proud?" A fairly enthusiastic chorus of "yes" fills the room.
The real point of today's exercises, he explains, is to break down walls in the group: "If they have problems with each other, or they can't communicate, we'll never have a TV show."
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