Dr Angela Giwa-Osagie: Nigeria

Dr Angela Giwa-Osagie

Public dental health specialist Dr Angela Giwa-Osagie has been living and working in Nigeria for 31 years. Owner and medical director of the Osagie Dental Clinic, she is passionate about bringing a cavity-free smile to as many people as possible. Over the years, she has opened two practices (Lagos and Maryland) and developed a keen sense of duty in public dental health. Dr Giwa-Osagie provides free dental health education for her patients and regularly visits schools to provide dental check-ups to pupils in the area.

It was marriage that brought Dr Giwa-Osagie across the waters from Jamaica to Nigeria. She is heartened by the many similarities she has experienced between the two countries, especially in terms of the value systems of Nigerian elders which she recognises from older generations from Jamaica. However, she laments the decay of moral fibre and the unending quest for self-gratification in younger generations which she sees as parallel realities in both nations.

Like many Jamaican women living in Africa, Dr Giwa-Osagie is flying the Jamaican flag high and proud. She enjoys the warm embrace of the Nigerian communities she lives in but says she is still to crack the 'old-school network' because even after all these years she is still considered a foreigner.

"Living in Nigeria as a Jamaican has taught me that human beings are all the same but we need our direction from God. Nigeria has taught me the value of family, especially the extended family system", says Dr Giwa-Osagie.

"Living here has also taught me not to undervalue the potential of any individual as tomorrow that individual could be the leader of the country!" she concludes.

Dr Desta Meghoo: Ethiopia

Dr Desta Meghoo

Firebrand Dr Desta Meghoo cites her biggest accomplishment as birthing and raising 10 healthy and conscious children. She is a surrogate mother to many more homeless children at the DYMDC Children's Village Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

A social development consultant and staunch human rights activist, Dr Meghoo set up the DYMDC Children's Village Centre in 2005 in the spirit of the African proverb: 'It takes a village to raise a child'.

At the village, homeless children come daily for nourishment and nurturing from Dr Meghoo and a team of volunteers who tirelessly come together to give them the care and attention which they so desperately need.

Affectionately known as Dr D, she aims to end the cycle of poverty and begging by cultivating hope planted as seeds of love through arts, agriculture and home-making programmes which are run at the village every day.

Dr Meghoo has been working in various countries across the African continent for over 20 years. The former managing director of the Bob Marley Foundation, Dr D is the visionary behind the legendary Africa Unite annual events which were launched in Ethiopia in 2005. Created to actualise Bob Marley's vision of a united Africa through music, symposia and a variety of developmental initiative, the 2005 Africa Unite event in Addis Ababa saw over two million people and over 400 international media from across the globe gather to celebrate Bob Marley's 60th birthday.

"I'm passionate about Africa," says Dr D. "As the saying goes, if a kitten is born in an oven, is it a biscuit? I'm an African born in beautiful Jamaica!"

www.childrensvillagecenter.org