The Value in the Mundane as Taught to Me by Makoko Village Women

The scents of Yaba market fill my nostrils as I push through the throng of people in my way. Exhaust fumes from okada bikes shift in the air around me, triggering a few coughs. The sounds are a cacophony of car horns, afrobeat, store owners' calls, and conversations laced with Yoruba and broken English. Car bumpers nudge the crowd apart as tires slowly roll through the market onto Murtala Mohammed Way. The atmosphere is tense with desperation – vendors hustling to meet sales targets as the sun sets, Lagosians rushing to escape the gridlock, customers haggling over bargains, and women fighting off male traders who constantly grope them with casual entitlement.

Everything is rife with movement except the Makoko women. Lining the pavements, these women sit with trays of smoked fish placed on overturned buckets, before them. We know these women. The pungent fish smell clings to their arms along with soot and grease. Their signature attire is faded T-shirts and worn Ankara-print wrappers. Their prominent cheekbones, which soften only with laughter, reveal crinkles and the frailness of their dark-brown skin. I ride in yellow keke tricycles with these women, listening in on their chatters in local languages that I almost never decipher. This is us at least once a week. I contemplate them in silent admiration while dreading the sharp aroma of fish that clings to them until I get off at my estate. They banter over nearly empty baskets as they head home to Makoko, the largest floating community in Lagos and the world.

Some time has passed, and it’s early in December 2019. My team and I are standing before our peers and a panel to pitch a social enterprise. The slide projected on the wall beside us reads “Koko Ovens,” with a picture of three Makoko women, shrouded in smoke, as they toss fish over burning coals. A few months ago, faced with the need to develop an innovative product that can yield social impact in a developing country, we all turned to mind mapping and brainstorming. I’d never given much thought to the people of Makoko before now. There was that itsy-bitsy part of your life that you acknowledge but haven’t quite engaged. I saw Makoko women, shared keke rides with them, and even purchased smoked fish from them, all the while acknowledging their need for better opportunities. I just never thought I was in a position to offer viable solutions. I never really held court for them within myself. Nevertheless, our mundane experiences, like an obscure ball of yarn, are woven into the tapestry of our lives. We need only look more closely to recognize that they are indeed part of us.

I recalled with crisp clarity the clouds of smoke that hang over Makoko and the sharp angles at which bones jut out beneath her women’s dark skins. I could trace into the night air, forms of tired women and babies sitting over half-empty baskets of fish, waiting on the deepest parts of the night that would no longer permit work. I remembered the folded wads of naira notes dug out from waist bags, a heavy reminder that all the day’s sweat was worth barely a thousand or two. I vividly recall the stench that fills my nostrils each time I drive over the bridge that spans parts of Makoko, a testament to the waste that burdens the waterways. I could remember every detail, enough to culminate in a brilliant solution that would not only provide them with energy-efficient ovens but also a financing scheme driven by a waste-to-wealth mechanism. Now, we all know that waste has never been in short supply in Makoko. Delivering this pitch with my team, a group of brilliant people who’d found the Makoko women to be as compelling as I thought they were, I could taste the flavors of excitement bursting in my mouth. We brought a story to life and created from it, not for ourselves but for those who gave me the unnoticed privilege of passing through my life. A solution that scored the triple-bottom-line – people, planet, and profit. I would soon realize that nothing – nobody, no experience, no ability – is too plain that we cannot create greatness from it.

I narrate this in retrospect, not having realized the depth of this experience at the time I was working on this project. In the very moments when my team and I delivered the presentation, I had the quiet confidence that comes with experiential knowledge of a subject, but, truthfully, the flavor in my mouth was that of the Oreo milkshake I had been sipping before my group was called up. This is another beautiful thing about mundane experiences: their capacity to morph and deepen in meaning when we chew on them through reflection.

Let me tell you like it is. If you do not go back to excavate and reflect on what you have passed through, then be sure that too many things have passed through you unnoticed. We register more than we are consciously aware of, and our ability to maximize our potential is tied to our capacity to optimize the meanings of our experiences. We cannot always wait for grandiosity to spur us into creativity and innovation. We cannot grow in empathy without mindfully interrogating our experiences of and with others. We cannot truly transform the way we think if we do not come to ourselves from beyond our perceptions of our lives and environments. We have to question our routines, beliefs, and norms with unbridled candor and an eagerness to discover the uncommon. It is in exploring these for betterment that we can create true value in a rapidly evolving world.

It is also vital to realize that, regardless of how intimate you deem your experiences to be, creating from them does not have to be a solo process. Otherness is key to enriching perspectives, and as an innovative problem solver, perspectives are vital for robust outcomes. Take your own words with a pinch of salt when you try to convince yourself that only you can truly understand a situation enough to harness it effectively. There is a very high chance that contributions and constructive criticism will sharpen your work. However, be discerning about whom you share aspects of yourself with, especially in creative processes that require vulnerability and openness to external energies. I birthed the core ideas from my deep knowledge of the issues facing Makoko, having lived in Lagos, Nigeria. But I cannot claim sole ownership of the evolution of the ideas into the blueprint that earned us a great performance and a potentially viable product, should we consider moving it to the next level. In harnessing the power of the mundane, we ought to keep in view the Ubuntu principle – I am because we are.

It’s Day 4 of the 10-day series, and you are still here. Thank you for letting me pass through you with these experiences.

Cheers!