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I remember the night we announced the 25 winners of the #Insiders4Good Nigeria Fellowship. For several days straight, Tom and Raji and Dara had worked to create and print a poster for each Fellow describing their business ideas.
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It was admittedly a small thing. I mention it only because I think it’s a marker of who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re a group of people who honestly care about what we’re doing. Sure, our NinjaCat team works for Microsoft. Sure, in FY16 Microsoft earned $84.7B in revenue. Sure, we’re visiting from Microsoft HQ, and at an event put on by our colleagues in the Microsoft Nigerian subsidiary, in the ballroom of a high-end hotel. Sure, someone else could have done it — someone from the hotel, a waiter. Sure, it was just paper. In fact, we hadn’t even mentioned the posters to the Fellows. Did we even need to put them up?
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:)]. Kendra found some more tacks. We ripped off pieces of tape and made little sticky loops, we put the tape or some tacks on the posters, and we hung the posters on the wall. This was not back-breaking labor. This was not staying out all day in the brutal sun or driving rain, selling potato chips to SUVs and taxis driving to the airport. Maybe it took 20 minutes. It was kind of fun.
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This human desire to work, to resist, to defy the odds, to strive day in and day out regardless of the task–it seems universal. I have seen it in the Dominican Republic; in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam. I’ve seen it in France, in Senegal, in Nepal, in New York. I’ve seen it in Seattle. This desire to work for it, to roll up your sleeves and fight astounds me, inspires me, challenges me. I see hope in this desire.
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This human desire to work, to resist, to defy the odds, to strive day in and day out regardless of the task–it seems universal. I have seen it in the Dominican Republic; in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam. I’ve seen it in France, in Senegal, in Nepal, in New York. I’ve seen it in Seattle. This desire to work for it, to roll up your sleeves and fight astounds me, inspires me, challenges me. I see hope in this desire.
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Right where the traffic slows is where they wait. They seek out people like Thomas first. Tom has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. The work we’re doing is his life’s passion. Already on this stretch of road he’s dreading leaving Lagos. I think he’d actually prefer our taxi get stuck, so we’d have a good excuse to miss the flight home. The vendors go straight for him every time.
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