Makoko 2035: An Encyclopedia

Lagos Lagoon

The Lagos Lagoon is the life's blood of Makoko. Until recent years, however, it has also been the greatest threat to the wellbeing of Makoko's people. Fed by the Ogun and Osun rivers, the Lagoon has historically received much of the untreated sewage discharge and storm runoff from Lagos and other polluting cities farther up-river. This situation, made worse by the increasing industrialization of Lagos in the early 21st century and coupled with the antiquated techniques by which the residents of Makoko would terraform the lagoon for construction, meant that the water became so toxic that, by the year 2018, the average life expectancy in Makoko had dipped to 39 years of age. Not only did the toxicity of the water in the canals and below the houses affect the inhabitants directly, it also had a deleterious impact on the conditions for fishing in the lagoon more broadly. Gradually, families that had previously earned a living fishing in the open waters were forced to provide for themselves solely through the smoking of fish brought in from the mainland. 

After the first wave of hackers educated at the Floating School began experimenting with environmental sensors and AR technologies, many of Makoko's residents—particularly the fisherman—could see for the first time just how polluted their environment had become. Not only did these new technologies reveal the extent of the pollution, but they also helped identify specific polluting agents—a revelation that began to spark discussion around how the issue could best be addressed.

Gradually, a number of technologies began to emerge from the makeshift hackerspaces that had begun to pop up around Makoko. Using recycled components "trashed" from the mainland, the local folk-engineers began to deploy a six-year, multi-faceted, technological fix that eventually led to Makoko's currently toxin-free water, longer life-expectancies, and improved fishing economy. Most ingenious among these technologies, was perhaps the repurposing of underwater ROVs—either hauled up from waters along the coast or found aboard ghost ships that often wash up there—to create submersible purification systems that scour the bottom of the canals, killing dangerous bacteria and filtering heavy metals from the water. Additionally, the more civil-engineering-minded of the Makoko hackers have created both filtration and diversion systems to help mitigate the problem of sewage and runoff from the two rivers that feed the lagoon.

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