Charity Daniel is 30 years old.

She lives in rural Kubwa Abuja. She doesn’t know when she was first diagnosed with sickle cell.

“I am always tired and sometimes feel weak because I can’t do most of the things my mates are doing, "

"It hasn’t been easy for me and my husband financially; my husband doesn’t have any tangible work or occupation that brings in any substantive income."

She stays at home in excruciating pain, resorting to cheap basic ineffective pain relief or native herbal concoctions until it goes away.

"His condition changed everything in our home because we had to make many adaptations and that impacted the wider family."

Whenever she has a crisis, we are always afraid that she won’t make it, but somehow she gets to bounce back to life.

She [Lydia] tells us that Peter regularly refuses to take his medication which breaks her heart.

"Living with sickle cell anemia hasn’t been easy for me, I go through a lot of pain whenever am sick, it’s as if my whole body is on fire."

His family makes sure he eats healthy meals regularly and takes his medicines daily. He said the love and compassion he gets from his loved ones is everything to him.

"I am currently training to be a hair stylist so as to be able to start up my own beauty salon and to save up for university by next year.”