Have you ever sat under a tree with ten chairs arranged, only for two people to show up?

October taught me that every community has two stories: the story you see and the story you must sit long enough to hear. Every Volunteer has two stories, too: the one in the report and the one in the heart. Where these two stories meet, that is where real development begins.

Let me tell you about my October in Adigbo Tornu. If September sang for me, October tested me. September welcomed me with songs, house-to-house visits, sitting on low benches, and listening to stories. I thought I knew the community. But October whispered, “You haven’t started yet.”

In October, I tried to mobilize the youth. Have you ever tried to gather young people who have heard many promises before you? That was me. Every morning, I tied my scarf, picked up my notebook, and walked from house to house under the hot sun, asking, “Can we meet small?” Some nodded. Some smiled politely. Others said, “Tomorrow, Volunteer.”

Tomorrow would come, and I would arrange ten chairs under the mango tree and wait. Only two people would show up.

Sometimes, nobody came.

My notebook was open, my plans were ready, but the empty chairs stared back at me. It felt like my efforts were being rejected. Not because they hated me, but because they were tired. Tired of people coming with big English and big plans, only to leave without much changing.

So, when I said, “We can do it together!” they looked at me as if to say, “We’ve heard that before.”

Nothing went as planned. Some nights, I sat in my apartment, surrounded by silence, asking myself, “Am I even useful here? Am I failing?”

But I did not stop. Instead, I changed the question. Rather than saying, “Come to a meeting,” I started asking, “Can I sit with you? Tell me your dream.”

That was when my real October began.

Then came the turning point, the moment that gave me hope again. One evening, just as I was settling in after a tiring day, I heard a knock.

“Volunteer, are you there?”

It was a young person who had ignored me the previous week.

“Help me calculate if I sell fish like this, how much will I get?”

Another day, a girl came to me and said, “Sister, can you help me understand how to work with my idea properly?”

Can you imagine that feeling? After weeks of going to them, they were beginning to come to me.

Not because I had all the answers, but because they were beginning to see me as one of them. Not just a CorpsAfrica girl from outside, but their sister, someone willing to sit on the floor and dream with them.

That gave me real hope. I began to understand that development is not about big money falling from the sky. It is about reaching a point where the community sees you as one of their own and says, “Okay, let’s try these baby steps together.”

October was not smooth. It was about empty chairs, waiting under trees, and moments of rejection. But October was also a month of hope.

We post the smiling photos, but we rarely post the nights when we stare at the ceiling and ask ourselves, “Am I doing enough?”

Communities and Volunteers have big dreams, but we learn to walk towards them together, one small step at a time.