“Mama Balo:” The CMUL Legend 

Lagos 1984.

Sherifat Esther Adebiyi moves through the crowded streets, a basket of fruit balanced on her head. But her pace is uncertain. Chief of Staff Babatunde Idiagbon has intensified his infamous War Against Indiscipline. It is a mass mobilization program that bans street hawking, forcing Sherifat—and many like her—to navigate an uncertain future. Soon, she will no longer be just another fruit seller in Idi-Araba. 

Four decades later, Vistanium’s intimate documentary, directed by Kayode Idowu and Yahaya Hassan, finds Mama Balo in the corridors of College of Medicine University of Lagos. Her hands, once skilled at arranging mangoes and oranges, now move with practiced precision through a different routine. As a hostel cleaner, she scrubs toilets and manages waste with the same dignity that defined her fruit-selling days. Her story may seem ordinary at first. But as the film unfolds, it reveals Mama Balo to be anything but ordinary. 

The documentary opens in Block 7, where warm laughter echoes as medical students trade playful banter with their beloved Mama B. Her eyes crinkle with genuine warmth as she returns their greetings, a ritual that speaks volumes about the bonds formed in these halls. As the scene dissolves into her first interview, we begin to understand the woman behind the smile. A daughter of Idi-Araba’s bustling streets, Mama Balo found her way to CMUL (LUTH) after laying down her fruit basket for good. The camera follows her daily rounds: her hands moving with grace as she empties the trash, her mop gliding in a steady motion. 

“I’m satisfied with the job,” she says in Yoruba, her contentment evident in every word.

There’s a remarkable lightness to Mama Balo’s storytelling, even as she recounts life’s challenges. Only when speaking of the coronavirus pandemic—which reached Nigeria’s shores on February 27, 2020, does a shadow cross her usually bright features. While others welcomed the respite from work, she faced a more pressing concern: survival. Yet even in those dark days, she found herself surrounded by love. Her students, even those abroad, rallied around her, ensuring she never felt alone.

Their devotion became official when they named her Female Worker of the Year, a tribute to the woman they affectionately call a CMUL Legend. Their words paint a vivid picture: “cranky” yet “hardworking,” a woman whose presence has left a mark on an institution that, in its own way, has become home.

In an unlikely place like LUTH, love stories unfold—not just of friendship, but of a mother’s devotion to a child she never bore. “Balo” isn’t the name of one of Mama Balo’s children but of a former student who once called this hostel home. As she recounts his story, the weight of grief lingers in her voice. Their bond defied time, and even after his tragic passing in a car accident, his memory lives on in the name everyone still calls her.

It’s hard to believe Mama B was born before Nigeria’s independence in 1960. With boundless energy and an infectious spirit, she moves through life with the vigor of someone untouched by age. Her presence at CMUL testifies to the unseen lives that shape institutions, precisely the kind of story Kayode Idowu and Hassan Yahaya have made it their mission to tell. 

The two directors have a gift for unearthing the extraordinary in places others might ignore. Their first documentary, The Gravediggers (March 2024), explored the lives of men who carve final resting places for the departed, revealing unexpected poetry in what many consider grim work. Through their lens, these gravediggers emerged not just as laborers but as philosophers of the earth, their daily toil a meditation on mortality and meaning.

In Mama Balo, they turn their sensitive gaze from a chorus of voices to a single, resonant story. Where The Gravediggers painted a collective portrait, here they craft an intimate character study, one that shows how a single life can ripple through countless others. The documentary’s camera lingers with tenderness, capturing Mama Balo’s world in a way that feels less like observation and more like a confession between old friends. Nothing is hidden because nothing needs to be.

In the closing scene, Mama Balo pauses before answering the question: What would you have rather done? 

“Accountant,” she says. The quiet mathematician within her briefly surfaces, offering a glimpse into an unlived life. 

But hers is not a story of unfulfillment. Cleaning is just one part of who Mama Balo is. She is a mother figure to generations of medical students, a guardian of hospital histories, a woman whose warmth transforms the most ordinary spaces into something sacred, and whose joy spills into every life she touches. Her story dismantles the narrow expectations placed on those who do “unimportant work.” As Chimamanda Adichie reminded us in her TED Talk, “The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” 

Mama B is living proof of this wisdom. Through her, we’re reminded that every person contains multitudes, that the simplest jobs often hide the most extraordinary souls, and that to reduce anyone to a single story is to miss the full symphony of their humanity. Mama Balo premieres on Tuesday, February 4th, at 4 PM WAT on Vistanium’s YouTube channel.