Stories from the Centre of the Edge of the World (Dark Cargo) 

For their debut appearance on our airwaves for Chicoco Radio has offered up this two-part series within our STANDING IN THE CRACKS OF MULTIPLE HISTORIES collaboration:

Part I is “Dark Cargo”, an immersive radio programme that emerges from the vibrant and complex world of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. It engages a series of urgent narratives and offers perspectives from the water-front communities of the Niger Delta, a region where half a million people live in the shadow of the global oil industry and are subject to the whims of its most prominent power brokers.

This sonic offering moves in four acts. By means of investigative journalism and personal testimony, “Dark Cargo” unpacks the many-layered crises facing the region. It begins with the first act, titled “Black Skin, White Masks”, which offers a perspective on the skin-bleaching epidemic Nigeria is facing, and continues onward to “Voice from the Grave”, a segment which explores the spiritual and material burdens brought about by the observation of traditional burial rites. 

The third act, “Egede Down” provides a first-hand account of the bulldozing of a home, while the fourth act culminates in the literal dangers of the illegal oil economy with "Fire on Water". This work exposes a landscape where life is perpetually under threat and the extractive logic of colonialism and the violence of corporatism continues to rupture Black skin, dismantle communities, and fuel a desperate, underground economy.