Each afternoon, after school,
nine-year-old Success Damisa changes out of his uniform and eats
lunch in the one-room shanty he shares with his three siblings and
parents in one of Nigeria’s poorest neighbourhoods. He then heads
straight to an after-school programme and joins other children in
extra-curricular lessons.
“When he comes back from these
lessons, he still goes to read his books,” says his mother,
Blessing Damisa, who works as a food vendor. “The classes have
helped him to perform so well in school that he was recently given
a double promotion, skipping one class.”
Small and shy, Success wants to
emulate Lionel Messi and become a superstar footballer when he
grows up. It’s a big dream for someone growing up in Dustbin
Estate, the Lagos neighbourhood built on a swamp. An estimated
5,500 people, who cannot afford to live elsewhere, call the estate
home.
It needn’t be a barrier to
success, though. Some of Nigeria’s most prominent footballers, –
including Watford FC’s Odion Ighalo, former Newcastle striker
Obafemi Martins and Arsenal legend Kanu Nwankwo – learned their
skills in Lagos.
The slum is divided in two by a
sewage canal full of stagnant water, responsible for the putrid
smells that permanently linger. A few decades ago, roaming homeless
people who were too poor to sand-fill the swamps continued to dump
refuse until the area resembled dry land – and then they moved
in.
The nickname for the
neighbourhood came from the children, says Solomon Aare of the
LOTS Charity Foundation, a local NGO that works in the
area. Originally from the Dustbin Estate, the 21-year-old joined as
a volunteer in his last days of high school and returned to work
there full-time after obtaining a diploma in computer engineering.
He is now the administrator of a three-bedroom flat that serves as
a house, school, church and playground for the
children.
“When it rains, everywhere is
flooded and the canal overflows, so it spills some of its content
into the houses. It’s a sorry sight and it’s not healthy for the
children,” says Aare. In a country with a critical unemployment
rate – currently at 13.3% – a number of the residents
fend for their families by charging people who want to dump refuse
in the community, between N100 and N200 (20 to 40p) per
drop.
“We pay N1500 [around £3] every
month to rent this house,” says Blessing, pointing to her squalid
ramshackle apartment made of wooden boards and old banners nailed
together. “But it is too much to pay because the economy is bad.”
Her family shares a single toilet with four others.
Like many other shanties, the
foundation of litter is covered with old, grey, wet rugs with
peeping strands of algae. Beside some of the houses, refuse is
piled high in heaps large enough to swallow a child.
There are half-a-dozen boreholes
that the entire community relies on for water. Four of them were
donated by LOTS, but because of overload one is no longer
functional. Across the community, there is no sign of a government
project or initiative. A couple of years ago, however, a government
bulldozer arrived to demolish a school just days after it made the
front page of a national newspaper for its state of
neglect.
Success’s dream of becoming a
superstar footballer is mostly down to the work of LOTS, which
organises the after-school learning programme for 150 children from
the community. There are computer classes during the week, and
football practice and aerobics classes on the weekends. LOTS also
operates in two other slums – Makko and the Beggars’ Colony in
Oko-Baba.
Tolulope Sangosanya started LOTS
in 2005 when she was still an undergraduate student. “I needed to
be part of a lasting change and build a positive legacy,” she says.
“[The children] have seen the worst and they will now work for the
best. Their attitudes keep getting better as we show them the
possibilities that education opens up for them.”
LOTS has provided a home for
some children, such as 11-year-old Basit Abayomi, who was taken in
by the charity four years ago when his abusive mother threw a knife
at him. “I’m happy to be here,” he says. “I don’t want to stop
living here but if I have to, I will come back and visit a lot.”
Basit is in his last year of primary school and wants to be a
banker. “I like doing mathematics and I want to help my country
save its money,” he says.
LOTS also stepped in to pay for
16-year-old Faith Eze’s last three years of school when her parents
could not come up with the N38,000 (£76) for her tuition each term.
Faith travels to school from Amukoko, another community two bus
journeys away.
“It feels like part of a family,
sharing things with them and learning with them,” she says. The
teenager idolises some of Nollywood’s finest stars and wants to be
an actress. “Since childhood, I have always wanted to be involved
in the arts, in singing and in entertainment.”
Faith and Basit are two of more
than 30 children who attend schools outside the community, with
financial help from LOTS. The charity’s apartment-office is small
and a larger facility is needed, but the organisation’s budget is
stretched thin with all of its projects and six full-time staff to
pay for.
For now, most funding comes from
the sale of proceeds from Sangosanya’s farm, because “emotional
marketing is hard to do in a recession and there’s no government
support”, she says.
Sangosanya has plans to organise
a soup kitchen initiative for the rest of the community, and to
increase the number of medical outreaches she currently
coordinates. “My dream is to turn Dustbin Estate into Treasure
Estate, [and make it a] housing project with basic facilities
available for families.”
