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

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

Taking 17 Kids to See The Doctors in Kafanchan, Nigeria

At the Gwaimen Center, we currently have 16 children who are on ARVs, so every other month, we have to take them to the general hospital in Kafanchan for check-ups and prescription refills.

Last Wednesday, we packed up some food for lunch, packed into a van and went to Kafanchan. It was a long day: registration, weighings, and individual doctor visits. The most important things that the doctors look for is side-effects to the ARV drugs, like opportunistic infections, and changes in overall health that could be due to their decreased CD4 counts.

Most are normal kids with runny noses and coughs, but when someone is HIV-positive, coughs can be more serious and infections seem to be sneaking up on them all the time. We just found out that two of the children have tuberculosis and one has malaria. Prompt treatment is necessary for these children to combat these illnesses.

Days like today are the ones that I realize why I am here. It was a long day: trying to get 17 children under control and not to run around the hospital like we were at a playground is exhausting (and usually not all that successful). But knowing that these children are getting the medical attention that they need: drugs that could literally save their lives, makes all the running after kids worthwhile.

I brought my ONE nalgene along for the ride, as I do many days. As I find that I am always doing, I carry ONE along with me in all of this work. Accompaniment is powerful and I’ve told many people about ONE and all of the Americans who care about them and who take action everyday to end extreme poverty. It inspires them and it inspires me. Thank you, ONE!

-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