In Lagos, a Festival of Repair Turns Mending Into a Public Art

LAGOS — On a blocked-off street in the Yaba district this weekend, several hundred people gathered not to buy anything but to fix what they already owned. The Festival of Repair, in its third year, pairs menders — of clothes, of electronics, of furniture, of the small broken machines of daily life — with anyone willing to sit and learn. Its organizer, seamstress Folake Balogun, frames it against the times. "The city is full of people who arrived with one bag," she said, nodding to the migration that has swelled Lagos through the hot months. "When you carry one bag, everything in it matters. You learn to keep it working." Booths taught patching, soldering, and the unglamorous craft of making a thing last another year. There was music, and food, and a long table where strangers stitched side by side. Balogun resists calling it a statement. "It is just mending," she said. "But mending is a way of saying you expect to still be here tomorrow."