- How did you approach the theme/topic when you first received the prompt?
When I first encountered the theme Night Shift, I thought about the people whose work literally takes place at night— nurses, security guards, emergency workers, cleaners, market women, sex workers and others whose working hours exist outside the rhythms of ordinary life. But the more I sat with the theme, the more I became interested in something less visible: the work that continues after everyone else has gone to sleep. I began thinking about the many forms of care, responsibility, and labour that happen quietly in those hours we rarely see. That became my entry point into the essay.
- What drew you to the particular angle you explored in your essay?
I was drawn to the idea that much of what sustains our lives is so ordinary that we stop seeing it as labour. A mother ironing a school uniform. A woman preparing food before dawn. A nurse completing a night shift. Someone answering a phone call from a person in distress. These acts may never become headlines, but they make other people’s mornings possible. I wanted to explore that invisible architecture of care, particularly the ways women so often carry it without recognition.
- Did writing this essay change or deepen your own perspective on the topic?
Very much. Writing it made me pay closer attention to the people and gestures I had previously considered ordinary, the woman preparing akara before dawn, the cleaner arriving before everyone else, the person keeping watch while an entire household sleeps. I began to understand that morning is not simply something that happens. For many people, it is something that has already been worked for. The essay made me more conscious of how easily we mistake invisible labour for nature.
- If readers remember just one idea from your piece, what would you want it to be?
Some mornings are not born; they are carried. I hope readers come away noticing the invisible labour that makes ordinary life possible, the people whose work, care, and sacrifice often disappear into the background. And perhaps, the next time they encounter someone working while the rest of the world sleeps, they will pause and see the person before they see the role.
- Complete the sentence: “I hope my writing makes people…”
I hope my writing makes people pause. Pause long enough to notice what they have learned to overlook. Pause long enough to question what they have accepted as ordinary. And pause long enough to encounter another person’s humanity with greater attention, tenderness, and courage. If my writing can make someone see the world and the people in it, with a little more attention, tenderness, and courage, then I believe it has done its work.
