On their whirlwind three-day trip to Nigeria, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry put their focus on two of their biggest charitable endeavors, the Invictus Games and mental health initiatives through the Geanco Foundation. But during their final event on Sunday, they gestured to their next project for Netflix, a show about professional polo players, by taking a trip to a polo field in Lagos.
The couple spent the afternoon at Lagos Polo Club for a reception celebrating Nigeria: Unconquered, the charity that helps support wounded veterans from the country on their quest to make it to the Invictus Games. Meghan wore a dress by Johanna Ortiz and a pair of familiar Heidi Merrick sunglasses and Harry wore a dark suit. Together, the pair watched a polo match between two teams, Duke vs. Duchess, according to People. (Ultimately the duchess’s team won 5–3.)
Following in the footsteps of his father, King Charles III, Harry has long been an avid polo player, and on April 15, he joined his friend Nacho Figueras on the field for a match supporting his HIV/AIDS charity Sentebale. A few days before the match, Deadline reported that Harry is working on an unscripted Netflix series about polo, with Welcome to Wrexham’s Miloš Balać, signed on as a showrunner.
Meghan and Harry’s trip to Nigeria came at the request of Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar Badaru, the country’s minister of defense, who they first met at last fall’s Invictus Games in Düsseldorf. Nigeria sent their first team of wounded service members to those games, and a spokesperson for the ministry later said that Badaru decided at those games that he hoped Nigeria could host a future iteration.
Though Meghan and Harry appeared at a summit for student mental health during the tour, most of their focus was on the Invictus Games and the country’s wounded veterans. On Friday, Harry took a solo trip to Nigerian Army Reference Hospital Kaduna, where he toured six wards and shook hands with about 50 wounded soldiers, according to People.
Harry took the tour with David Wiseman, the Invictus Foundation’s director for international expansion, and during his conversations at the hospital, the prince encouraged the wounded to work towards representing their country at future events. Harry also spoke to Emmanuel Oyesigi, a sergeant recovering from a gunshot wound to the stomach, and called him “Mr. Lucky” for surviving the ordeal. “Anything that can help us is much appreciated,” Oysegi told the magazine. “It is good for morale to have him here.”
On Saturday, Meghan went on a solo engagement in the capital city Abuja, appearing on a panel discussion alongside Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization, where they discussed the importance of female leadership. In front of approximately 50 prominent women in politics, business, media, and culture, the duchess spoke about her excitement to be in the country—and her recent discovery of her own Nigerian heritage, thanks to a DNA test.
“Being African-American, part of it is really not knowing so much about your lineage or background, where you come from specifically,” Meghan said, adding that she first reached out to her mother, Doria Ragland, when she got the test results. “It was exciting for both of us to discover more and understand what that really means.”
She also spoke about her search for balance between work and life, telling a story from the time when she was an actor on the show Suits, and an executive told her that it might be impossible to find. “What I think that means now is that that balance will always change for you,” she said. “That balance—what seems balanced 10 years ago—is going to shift. And so being a mom has always been a dream of mine. And I’m so fortunate that we have two beautiful, healthy, very chatty, sweet children.”
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