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