Each One – Reach One

Dear God

The traffic eventually loosened its grip on my car and released us back into motion. Drivers hauled into action. Horns resumed their orchestra. Vendors scattered like choreography. Life resumed like nothing had happened. But something had shifted inside me.

The girl’s voice stayed in my ear.
“I wan go school. I wan be like you”.

That sentence followed me all the way home like a stubborn echo.

I tried to shake it off. I opened my book again. Same page. Same paragraph. Different eyes. The words blurred. My mind kept drifting back to the oversized dress, the shy smile, the courage it took for a child who owns nothing to ask for something invisible.

Not money. Not food. But A future.

“Lord,” I muttered, pulling into my driveway, “what exactly do You expect me to do with this?”

And you Lord remained silent.

So, I did the next most crazy thing. I started making phone calls. First call, a lawyer friend who works with a child advocacy NGO.

“Hypothetically,” I said casually, as if this were a quiz show, “if there were children being managed by street ‘caretakers’ and you wanted to intervene legally, what would that even look like?”

She laughed. “Hypothetically? Someone met a child beggar today.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “And guess what? She asked for a book instead of money. She asked for a future. She wanted to go to school. So now my entire Christian life is under personal review.”

“Why?” she laughed

“Because I didn’t help her. I couldn’t help her and it’s killing me!”

Her tone softened. “It’s complicated. You can’t just remove a child from the streets. And the bitter truth is: How many can you remove at a time? It’s a system, the more your remove, they more they replace. But you can trigger a welfare campaign. Social services. It’s slow. It’s messy. But it’s how you will protect the child eventually.”

Slow. Messy. Not heroic. I wasn’t getting any where and I couldn’t shake the light I saw in her eyes when she made those statements. I made a second call…..

Second call, another friend who runs a small informal school program for vulnerable kids.

“If a child showed up tomorrow with no guardian, no history, and a dangerous home structure,” I asked, “would you take her?”

“Without blinking,” she said. “We’ve taken harder cases than that. Children don’t arrive with resumes.”

Good. Because neither does hope…… my spirit said.

“Do you have an idea how the child can come to you?” I said, seeing the ray of hope.

“If I know the story, she replied, sometimes when they can’t come to us, we go to them”

I laughed. We are getting closer.

That night, I barely slept. I kept seeing the flicker of fear in the girl’s eyes when I asked about calling the caretaker. Fear is a language children learn too early.

What a maze of irony we have in Life. Every dream this child has is simply to go to school and yet, our privileged children sometimes view school as a burden. You can imagine that if this child has an opportunity to go to school, no one will ever remind her about homework….

By morning, my decision was made. Even if I wasn’t going to rescue that child. Even if I won’t be able to ride out on a horse and swop her out of there, I was going to build a bridge to hope for her.

The next day, I returned to the same stretch of road, same time, same traffic madness. My driver looked at me like I had lost a private bet with sanity.

“Madam, this place again? Make we follow another route naa”

“Yes,” I said. “We will repeat that route, let’s see what God has planned.”

The children appeared almost immediately, like they had been waiting for a curtain call. Same boy. Same younger girl. And then… her.

The book girl.

She recognized me instantly. Her face lit up, then dimmed quickly as if joy itself was risky. She approached cautiously.

“Good morning ma, God bless you……” she began her chant softly.

I motioned her to follow the car and asked my driver to park very well. 1st, I gave her some money. (I knew that the ultimate result for her for the day was to make some money). Then I handed her a story book.

Her eyes widened. “Me read?”

“Yes. Because you challenged me yesterday.”

She tilted her head. “Challenge?”

“Yes. You asked to be like me. Now I must behave like someone worth copying.”

She shook her head and then giggled. Actual laughter. Bright and sudden. (I was sure she didn’t understand what I was saying but standing there and having a discussion with me was a thrill).

I reached into my bag again and brought out a small notebook and a pen.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She hesitated. Then whispered it. “Lami”

I wrote it down carefully like it was a contract with destiny.

“Do you know how to write your name?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Then today, that’s our first miracle.”

Right there, in traffic, with engines growling and hawkers shouting, I taught her how to draw the first letter of her name on paper. Her tongue stuck out in concentration. The older boy watched suspiciously. The younger girl leaned closer.

“Again,” I said eagerly.

(I was a bit anxious the surveillance team will come for her but for some reasons, they didn’t come and for reasons I didn’t care)

We traced it again. And again. And again. Until her name stopped looking like accidental scratches and started looking like ownership. She stared at what she had written like it was treasure.

“I write my name,” she whispered in wonder.

“Yes,” I said. “You exist on paper now. Very official.”

She shook her head vigorously and laughed proudly.

I handed her the notebook and pen. “This is yours. Hide it. Protect it. This is your seed.”

Her fingers clutched it like glass.

Then I leaned closer and spoke quietly. “There are people who help children go to school. I’m going to connect with them. When the time is right, you’ll walk through a door into school. Keep that hope alive.”

She nodded slowly, absorbing every word. Her eyes shining like the bright sun.

“You remember me?” she asked pantomiming it

“How could I forget my first traffic professor?”

She grinned.

I didn’t take her away that day. But I planted a seed in her heart. I sowed Hope. And that was enough for now.

Within the week that followed, my calls turned into meetings. I looped my NGO friend in. I practically frustrated her life with calls. She filed reports. The process was slow, frustrating, bureaucratic, exactly what she warned me it was going to be.

My personal respect to Dr (Mrs) Adeyemi, the lioness of the tribe of Lagos. Dad, I love her so much. She orchestrated conversations with authorities about monitoring the so-called caretakers. I handed the problem over to her and she ran with it.

Everything is in motion. Not perfect. Not instant. But moving.

One evening, weeks later, I drove past that same road again. The girl wasn’t there. My heart skipped. Then I saw her farther back, sitting under a small umbrella, holding a book. An actual book. Reading.

I told my driver to wind down and call out to her. She looked up. Our eyes met across chaos and traffic. I waved her over. I had packed a bag full of books. My sister’s foundation usually ships books from USA for Schools and children in Nigeria. I packed a backpack full of the books and brought for her.

I handed over the bag of books to her and the way her eyes light up will live with me forever. She skipped and danced through the traffic and as I watched, she started sharing some of the books to the children. I saw the older women huddle together looking through the books.

“Dad, even if I don’t make Heaven, I am okay,” I said smiling like a proud heroine who had saved the world with compassion.

Lord… this is what You meant, right. We can change the world, one compassion at a time. We are Builders. Door openers. The answer to someone’s question.

And I realized something uncomfortable and beautiful at the same time:

The miracle was not that I helped a child. (Did I even help her? The caretakers are still in charge). The miracle was that a child rescued a grown woman (Me) from spiritual laziness. She taught me that sometimes God doesn’t directly answer prayers because He has already answered them… indirectly and placed them in the backseat of someone’s heart.

Don’t ask me how far the girl will go. Don’t ask me if the lawyer will succeed.  Que Sera Sera! Whatever will be will be. The future is not mine to tell. But this I know, we cannot be Christians and go on pretending that the decadence in our society is not our responsibility.

Each One……Reach One.

This is your daughter, Lord, I am proudly checking in.