On-The-Ground in Lagos

Last week, I took a long bus ride (10 hours) to Lagos, the biggest city in Africa (and second biggest in the world, according to my travel guide). One of the kids in the family I stay with lives in Lagos, so I stayed with her.

Julie and her family have lived there for a couple years. They have good jobs, live a comfortable life by Lagos standards, and live in one of the best areas of Lagos, Ikoyi.

While I love visiting new places to see them and the sites, I think the most interesting thing is learning about how people live in different places. On
Saturday, I followed Julie around, as she took her son for his immunization at a hospital in her area. Her life is a lot like my older sister’s - who lives in New York, has kids, and takes care of her family.

That afternoon, Julie and I went out to visit a friend. As we walked back, she was talking about how she’d like to improve her area. She lives in this enormous apartment complex (the picture is taken from her window). Refugees from Chad sleep in her doorway. As we walked in, mosquitoes were everywhere and she was talking about how she would like to pay the refugees who sleep there to keep up the place - sweep out the stairs, clean the front, etc.

And that she would like to invest in screened doors and windows for the whole apartment. She was like “If I could get together 2,500 Naira (a litte more than $200), she could do it.”

She told her husband about her plan and as they discussed it, I was so impressed by how she thought about this project. She was like, I don’t care if anyone thanks me. If I’m not going to do it, who is? Her commitment to investing in her community was so amazing to me. It’s really pretty simple, but this is how development happens. People see a problem, find a solution, and make it happen.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

Anne Reports on Local Gov. Election in Nigeria

Earlier this week the local government in Kaduna state, Nigeria, held its election day. Over the past couple weeks, there have increasingly been posters all over the place, promoting one candidate or another. Just this last week, the campaigns were elevated immensely, so that last Thursday, the streets were filled with campaigners, driving down the main stretch of town, playing music and urging voters to come out and support their candidate.

Their elections look a little different than ours ­ no televised debates and TV commercials (not complaining on that one). On Thursday, we were in a car
going back to the house in which I stay and we could barely drive up the main road without hitting a motorcycle because of the campaigns ­ an experience I’ve never had in the states.

I’m missing the elections at home. I hear about the primaries unfolding from text messages from my sister. There is something about elections and making decisions about the future of a country that is exhilarating, but also a little scary. The decisions we make as voters today will affect our country for the years to come.

In the US, campaigns like ONE Vote ‘08 build noise around important issues of extreme poverty, but in Nigeria, poverty is part of people’s lives everyday and therefore part of the campaign trail. The new Chairman of Jaba Local Government is a board member of the Gwaimen Center (the NGO where I work) so we are very hopeful that through accountability and effective measures to fight poverty the Jaba area can take great strides forward.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

Feeling Like A Child in Nigeria

I like to think that I know how to take care of myself. Before I came to Nigeria, I lived in an apartment, paid bills, cooked (and baked with passion), and took care of myself for the most part. One could even think that I was an adult.

At least a couple times a day here, I feel like a child ­ incapable of taking care of myself. Yesterday, I dropped my wallet into a cement wall. It’s a long story that ended happily for me (I had my wallet), but not so happily for the wall (it had a couple holes in it). Tomorrow, I’m going to do my laundry, which includes a long process of fetching water from the well, washing each piece of clothing from hand and then line drying it. I get really embarrassed if anyone else comes by when I¹m washing, as my technique has some room for improvement and I’m not really sure if my clothes are more than rinsed.

Luckily, there are generous people surrounding me, helping me out ­ poking holes in walls and the like. Maybe taking care of myself doesn¹t mean being totally self-sufficient and incapable of living on my own. Maybe the real lesson in how to take care of ourselves is how to take care of each other.

This is something that I learn everyday from the kids at the Gwaimen Center. The older kids help take care of the younger kids. When one of the young kids crying, one of the older ones are quick to wipe away their tears and comfort them. From my first moments at the Center, this amazed me.

Pictured here is Dorcas, who is eleven years old and attends primary school in Kwoi. From the second that she leaves school until they leave the Center around seven, Dorcas is with Precious, the child on her back. She¹s always taking care of her.

I am learning. Life in Nigeria is teaching me great and complicated lessons about justice, about AIDS, about poverty and how to fight it. But mostly, I’m learning life lessons. If we all took care of each other like Dorcas takes care of Precious, maybe I wouldn¹t have to learn about AIDS and poverty.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

More From Anne in Nigeria

When I left the ONE Campaign last fall, I had ONE bands everywhere that you could imagine: piles in every bag that I own, strewn about my car, and at my apartment. As I packed up for Nigeria, I piled all of those ONE bands and brought them with me.

This month, the Gwaimen Center (where I work) has had football and basketball matches to bring the young people of Kwoi together and we’ve used the opportunity to educate on those present on AIDS prevention. What better tool to use than the ONE bands?

While I enjoy watching football, seeing people from all around the area come together and talk about AIDS and how people can protect themselves was powerful. I told those gathered about ONE and the millions of people in the US who spend their free time and their energy fighting poverty and AIDS. This is a global effort and, in partnership, we’re going to end extreme poverty and global disease.

My friend who organized the match spoke about how these teenagers are examples to the children that were gathered to watch the match. I found his words inspiring. The next generation, whether we’re teenagers or elderly, is watching and learning from our example. We have an opportunity to change the course of history.

-Anne Batchelder

Anne is a ONE member, as well as the former ONE Deputy Field Director, and co-founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

From Anne in Nigeria - on World AIDS Day

At 7am this morning (and every morning except Sundays), more than 30 kids came to the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, where I work. About half of them are HIV+, so they start their day by taking ARVs to go with their breakfast. Most of them go to school until 12:30 then they return for lunch, baths, naptime. Then we usually spend a couple hours working on their reading, writing, and math, and playing, of course. In the evening, they head home with dinner and another dose of ARVs.

They didn’t follow this regiment because it’s World AIDS Day. This is what they do everyday. For the HIV+ children, their lives include CD4 counts, visits to the doctor, ARVs and their side-effects, and for nearly all of them, the loss or sickness of an HIV+ parent.

Yesterday, I was at the Center and hanging out with the kids. We were reading a book about kittens and practicing the alphabet - really notable stuff. And Precious, a one-year-old was sitting on my lap. They don’t know her HIV status yet because the test is more definitive once they are 18 months or 2 years old. But her mom is HIV+ (and a cook at the Center), and her brother Vincent is 3 and HIV+ (and a total handful). I just had to wonder what her life would look like. Our Executive Director, Beatrice Kadangs, always says “You’re either infected or you’re affected.”

People are campaigning hard to stop the spread of AIDS. One of the most powerful things I’ve heard is a commercial on TV, asking us to imagine an AIDS-free generation (and giving tools to prevent infections).

It’s a dream I think we all should share in and work towards - a world without AIDS.

-Anne Batchelder, ONE member, former ONE Deputy Director of Field, and founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

Anne Batchedler’s First Report Back from Nigeria!

When I started working for the ONE Campaign in 2005 I had just come back from a year in Ghana, working on small-scale economic community development projects. Working for ONE, and advocating for ONE’s core issues, it was very real to me that we were working to help families support themselves through life-saving medicines, important clean water and hygiene programs, and through creating economic opportunities by making trade more fair - the kinds of things that people in Ghana desperately needed.

Now, I am back in Africa - Nigeria, this time, and again working on a community development project - the Gwaimen Center, a community-based sustainability center to support widows and orphans in Kwoi, Nigeria. Now that things have come full circle, I am now seeing the fruits of ONE’s arduous labors.

During my first week here, we stopped at a clinic in Kagoro to visit a friend. One of the first things that I noticed was this sign. “USAID had been here - from the American people.”

I suddenly had the clearest image of members of ONE’s amazing dedicated staff (whom I miss greatly!), ONE volunteers from around the country, and the 2.4 million ONE supporters, calling their leaders and asking them to support important initiatives like this. ONE is on the front lines - fighting for things that make a difference in the lives of people in other countries - from the American people.

I’ve only been here two weeks, so will continue to send stories from the ground!

-Anne Batchelder, ONE member, former ONE Deputy Field Director, and founder of the Gwaimen Center in Kwoi, Nigeria

110 Million Nigerians With Malaria: Ask Candidates Their Plan

The Daily Trust newspaper in Abuja, Nigeria reported on Wednesday that over 110 million Nigerians have malaria. This shockingly high burden of disease is costing the country about $7 billion per year in treatment for the disease and the country is losing another $1 billion per year in lost productivity because employee absenteeism and subsidized malaria treatment.

You can read the story here:

About 90% of all malaria deaths globally occur in Africa, where a child dies of the disease every 30 seconds. More than 350 million people become severely ill each year. This is a preventable and treatable disease. Though the news from Nigeria is tragic, there is also good news in the progress against malaria. Kenya reduced childhood deaths by 44% in two years with a rapid expansion of malaria control programs. ACTs costing roughly $2 per dose could treat the men, women and children who fall victim to this disease and dramatically reduce the number of deaths from malaria.

The good news here makes it all the more tragic that so many people are dying primarily because they got bitten by a mosquito and don’t have access to even basic medical care. It is our hope that the next president of the United States will continue to ramp up our nation’s spending on malaria. If you are at a campaign event with a candidate, please ask them what he or she will do if elected president to stop malaria!

-Josh Lozman, ONE Vote ‘08 Policy Director

Nigeria: One Small Step In The AIDS Race

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is not usually considered a model country in the fight against AIDS. The statistics are devastating – around 3 million of Nigeria’s 140 million people are currently living with the deadly disease. The country currently has the third highest number of HIV/AIDS infections after India and South Africa. Nigeria’s plan for controlling the spread of AIDS initially involved building new treatment centers to provide free drug therapy for around 250,000 people by the end of 2006. However, after failing to meet targets, major donors were skeptical about the way in which their funding was being spent.

The Nigerian AIDS control agency announced today that the momentum has recently started to pick up: the number of HIV/AIDS patients receiving treatment in Nigeria has tripled over the last year. An increase in treatment centers, from 74 to 210, has enabled 135,000 people (95,000 more than the previous year) to receive treatment. However, recent estimates indicate that only 10 percent of Nigerian HIV sufferers have been receiving treatment. ActionAid has previously deemed Nigeria as being high in the “AIDS league of shame”. Hopefully they will continue their progression, and become a model of success rather than a permanent fixture in the “league of shame”.

-Elizabeth Gregg, ONE Government Affairs & Policy Intern