June 6, 2026
File image of boys playing street football.
There is a specific kind of dust that settles on the shoulders of boys in the reddish grit of laterite roads or the soot from generator fumes and danfo exhaust. It is something slower, heavier, almost invisible at first glance. The residue of days noticed often, but never fully seen.
To move into Lagos at dawn is to see pushing wheelbarrows through Balogun Market while traders are still untangling their wares. Apprentices asleep on wooden benches inside mechanic workshops in Ojuelegba. Small figures hawking pure water between traffic at Ikeja. Children crouched beside generators in Mushin, breathing fumes that settle deeper than memory.
Ladipo market. This is always a boy too young for what he is holding. An engine part lifted with both hands, not because he is strong, but because no one else is there to help him. Nearby, another child is sent across burning asphalt to buy fuel in a plastic container. Childhood is irrelevant to danger.At some point, if one looks without looking away, it becomes clear that these are not simply children working. They are children who have been absorbed into the machinery of survival.We have learned to pass them without disruption. That is how it continues.
