The Yoruba people – of which I am one – are one of the most communal people in Nigeria. The communal life is ingrained in their culture. It is why a Yoruba adage says two eyes fathers a child, but 200 eyes raise the same child.
Virtually everything is done as a clan.
But a few years ago, the physical community was not enough. In Ibadan, the largest city in West Africa by land mass and home to a majority of Yoruba people, I was trying to navigate my way to a local market, where I was to buy some items for a very important project at the university. I tapped the broad address of my destination into Google maps. It followed through to a vast complex, with thousands of stalls.
I looked up the map again, perhaps I could get a visual sense of where exactly I was going, but there were no pictures. I asked many many many people. After nearly three hours of wandering, I eventually found the specific place I was going. I had gone past the place at least five times, not having an idea what it looked like.
Eventually, when I found the place, I took a picture and immediately uploaded it to the maps, to make sure no one has to go through the same. In a few weeks, my phot had grossed over 5,000 views. Many other people needed the same visual aid I needed in finding that section of the market. So, I decided to always add pictures of places to maps to help others.
Till date, I have added over 1,400 photos, and gotten over 1 million views from across the world!
In December 2018, I bought a Google Pixel 2, reputed, at the time, as having the world’s best phone camera. Before then, I had uploaded a few pictures on Google Maps, helping people find places I found very difficult to locate. While I was able to help, I wasn’t sharing the best pictures or telling the finest stories – my drive to help was limited by the hardware (mobile phone) available to me.
After getting Google’s flagship device, this became a thing of the past; It became easy to take the best pictures, to save the same, to keep the picture in the cloud, regardless of how many they were. From Lagos to London, from Ibadan to Doha, Abuja to Paris, across all the countries and cities I have visited since then, I have shared great moments and memories that help others solve local problems.
In a marriage of the values of my tribe, the tech that Google provides, and my travel experiences, I have established a romance of tribe, tech and travel in making the next trip easier for the next person. I hope my work inspires someone to share more pictures to help people like me navigate difficult places while sharing beautiful cultural and defining images.