In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, people are finding their reset button in a “rage room” where they pay to smash electronics and furniture with a sledgehammer as a break from the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
The Shadow Rage Room, apparently the first of its kind in Nigeria, offers “a safe space” for people to let out pent-up emotions, the founder and physician James Babajide Banjoko said.
He said the idea came to him during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 after he lost his mother and struggled with work.
Photo: AP
For 7,500 naira (US$4.80), customers are left alone with protective gear and a sledgehammer or bat in a room for a 30-minute session with the items that are later recycled.
Times are tough in Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people where growing frustration among young people led to recent mass protests in which several people were killed by security forces. The inflation rate has reached a 28-year-high of 33.4 percent, while the naira has fallen to record lows against the US dollar.
Mental health services remain foreign or unaffordable for many in Africa’s most populous country, where 40 percent of citizens live below US$2 per day.
The West African nation has fewer than 400 registered psychologists, the Nigerian Association of Clinical Psychologists said.
That is one psychologist for about every 500,000 people.
Even when therapy is available, stigma remains a challenge, association president Gboyega Emmanuel Abikoye said in an interview.
Rage rooms are not necessarily new in other parts of the world, and there is no documented evidence of their mental health benefits beyond the momentary relief that comes with venting your feelings, Abikoye said.
Experts in Nigeria instead see a growing need for more long-term emotional support, especially among young people.
In Lagos, a city of about 20 million people and a magnet for those seeking better opportunities, such needs are even more pronounced. Daily stressors include traffic jams notorious for trapping drivers and passengers on streets for hours in heat and smog in one of the world’s most polluted cities.
Some Nigerians have turned to social media platforms like TikTok as a way to cope with stress. Some find support in communities wherever they can, from the church or mosque to the gym.
Now there is the rage room, which opens on weekends and is usually fully booked up to two weeks ahead, Banjoko said.
At the end of one session of smashing, Olaribigbe Akeem, a recent visitor, came out sweating, but relieved and visibly happy.
“As an average Nigerian, you get to deal with a lot every day,” Akeem said. “The anger has been piling up [and] instead of venting on somebody, this is the best avenue for me, and I feel a lot renewed.”
Rage room visitors also include couples who want to get something off their chest.
At times, people come in for recreation, but find something more.
“My favorite people are those that ... just want to try it, and at the end of the day, you see them, they break down, they cry, they become very expressive,” Banjoko said.
He said he often refers them to therapy.
Maymunah Yusuf Kadiri, a psychiatrist in Lagos, said that any benefit from smashing things is usually short-lived and cannot be a replacement for therapy.
The practice also risks making someone less likely to use “healthy coping strategies,” she said, adding that she is concerned that “repeated engagement ... might reinforce aggressive tendencies.”
At the rage room, some customers said their problems feel lighter only until they leave.
However, being vulnerable with yourself while inside, sledgehammer in hand, is still worth it, said Eka Stephanie Paul, an actor and TV host.
“Problem no dey finish anyway,” she said in the pidgin widely spoken across Nigeria, acknowledging that the rage room is hardly a cure. “But right now, I feel very light.”
A museum in southern French city Marseille is inviting visitors to discover Europe’s relationship to the naturist lifestyle by wandering its halls in the nude. “It’s not every day you get to walk around a museum naked,” said Julie Guegnolle, 38, who was celebrating her birthday at the “Naturist Paradises” exhibition in the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem). Once a month, visitors to Mucem can explore the history of naturism in Europe in only their shoes — a precaution not for modesty’s sake but simply to “avoid getting splinters,” said Eric Stefanut, head of French naturist organization
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people