At 4:17 a.m.,

Lagos is still wearing the darkness

when Mama Bose lights her charcoal stove.

The fire catches.

Her eyes burn.

Her neighbours sleep.

By five,

the first akara is swimming in hot oil,

and the first customer is asking for credit.

“Mama, ẹ jọ̀ọ́, add two naira own.”

She laughs.

“Omo, if I add two naira for everybody,

who go add money for my own life?”

Then she adds one.

Because kindness, in Lagos,

sometimes looks like bad business.

Across the street,

a cleaner sweeps yesterday into a dustpan.

A security guard fights sleep

with a torchlight and the memory

of the school fees he has not paid.

A young girl irons her only interview blouse.

“Mummy, pray for me.”

Her mother raises a hand.

“Oluwa a ṣàánú fún ọ. God will help you.”

But the girl is already outside

before the prayer reaches its amen.

At the bus stop,

dreams queue without order.

One man wants a promotion.

One woman wants customers.

One boy wants to leave the streets.

One graduate just wants a job

that pays before the landlord remembers him.

And the sky begins to pale.

 Lagos does not wait for sunrise.

Its people manufacture morning

with tired hands and unfinished prayers.

By six, the streets are awake.

 By seven, the city is hungry.

 By eight, somebody is already shouting,

“Omo, today don red!”

And somewhere, beneath the growing noise,

a mother counts the money in her purse,

removes the last note,

and puts it in her child's lunchbox.

She will manage without lunch.

Àwọn ọmọ ni ọjọ́ iwájú.

The children are the future.

But in Lagos,

the future often leaves home hungry

because the present has eaten everything.

Still, the mothers rise.

Still, the charcoal burns.

Still, the sun climbs over the roofs

to find millions of people

who started living the day

before the day knew their names.