Funke

Funke lives at No. 5 with her father, in the family flat behind the June 12 Community Clinic. She is in her fifth year of medicine at the University of Lagos, whose College of Medicine sits at Idi-Araba in the grounds of LUTH, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Her weekdays are ward rounds, clerking patients, consultants who ask questions in front of everyone, and exams that never seem to end.

At 6:30 every weekday morning she is at her gate in scrubs and a cardigan, waiting for the teal-grey car that takes her across the Lagos mainland to the hospital. In the evenings she sees her friends. On Sundays she goes to church with her father, who has already asked twice whether she has her Bible. When she has an hour, she helps Nurse Adaeze at the clinic downstairs: blood pressure, a calm voice, translating for patients who are scared of doctors.

She is direct, teasing and very busy, and she is not impressed by talk. When the new man at Iloro House starts finding reasons to pass No. 5, she makes him earn every smile. "Start by saying hello properly. Then we will see." After eight, the door stays shut. The window is as far as anyone comes.