Over the past three years, and increasingly so, Contributing to the Map; Sharing informative photographs, writing honest and articulate reviews of places I have visited as well as adding uncaptured places to the map are things I eagerly looked forward to doing on a daily basis as a Local Guides.
Upon realizing that the points on my profile reflect, (in the program’s own currency)how hard I have worked to help others make good and informed decisions about places they care about, I always looked forward to doing more!
As at 21st of December 2019 when I was travelling to my village (in Anambra state, Nigeria) for Christmas, I had somewhere between seven and eight thousand points as a level 7 local guide.
When I went out visiting places in the village, I tried to see what information already existed on the map regarding places in my village, and there was actually little to no information despite that my village has some what urbanized over the past decade.
So I told myself that my “Ukwulu” was going to know that a Local Guide came in for christmas! I therefore set a goal to map my town during the remaining days of my stay so I went adding all the churches, the market, shrines (two of them) village square, town halls, the public schools (four of them), the private schools, the petrol station, etc, and then the student hostels which serve the accommodation needs of university students as the neighbouring town is a university town.
So, by the time christmas was over, I had earned a 1024 points, and made 57% progress towards reaching ,
level 8 this in a way made me feel good knowing that I had set in motion the enablement for other persons to easily locate important places around my village on the map, and perhaps add to enriching the contents after their own visit. But that was just a tip of the iceberg!
As I began associating with Local guides in Lagos, I got to know about top guides like @EmekaUlor , @SanyaOdare and other change makers from Nigeria whose stories are so inspiring, I sought to learn from them, and improve.
T****he actual setting of a goal, a tough demand on myself!
Alongside my new resolutions on how to become a better person to my friends and relatives during the new year, and becoming more resourceful in the marketplace for the year 2020, I also set a goal for my year as a Local Guide, and for January, my goal was to attain level 8. This I achieved.
Therefore, for February and March, I set an even tougher goal! to reach or at least be very close to reaching level 9 before the end of March 2020. This meant pursuing over 34,000 points in 8 weeks through qualitative contributions to the map, alongside my other daily commitments(work, and family time demands)
I made bold to share this goal in the public domain when @KarenVChin created the 2020 Local Guides Goals Challenge in February here
This ambitious journey included the editing activities I did during the February WW HOSPITAL EDIT WALK V.3 initiated by @Sagir during which myself and @Quadrigold toured Ifo for both government and private hospitals link here
deep within me, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but, I took the initiative from a philosophy I normally evoked at the point of goal setting that *“*if two persons set out at about the same time for two different destinations from the same point, let’s say that person A’s destination is not far at all, just 5 kilometers distance, and person B is going for a rather breathtaking 125 kilometers distance, Person B, will normally go at a faster pace and not easily get tired, and may end up doing over 50 kilometers before person A who would normally be taking it easy and not stressing, knowing after all that it is just 5 kilometers against 125 kilometers.
In the analogy above, I was both person A and B, I was not racing against anybody, but with a clear intent to stretch my limits, I pursued an ambitious goal, and seeing how far I could go in 7 weeks, turned out to be the single most interesting thing I have ever done in my over three years of being a Local Guide.
Today, the 30th of March 2020, With my contribution currently standing at over 43,000
(I had earned over 23,000 points in 7 weeks) only slowed down by the global actions aiming at containing the Covid 19 pandemic.
NB: I changed the name on my Maps profile severally between August 2019,and February 2020 in response to the privacy concerns I was having.
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