Learn to want what you have

What you need to know:

  • There is a life everyone longs for, and it certainly isn’t confined to a crumpled loaf and some band aid. We all envision what we consider to be the ideal life, but the things in which some among us find contentment are so basic they will make your heart bleed.
  • But when this is contrasted with the man in Pokot who wants a buyer that can give him Sh700 for his largest bull – which, by the way, is the amount you will pay for a kilo of steak at a city supermarket – then matters fall into perspective.
  • Don’t get me wrong. Nobody is asking you to kill your ambition; dreams are what we are all about. But you could choose to find the freedom that contentment brings and see how that works out for you.

The girl we sought knew how to break a man’s spirit.

She did not have a face; she didn’t even have a name – we had just decided to find her when a friend had told us her story.

She had seen her get attacked on his way home. We did find her eventually, two weekends later. She was resting under an old grounded lorry just outside town where a young boy had led us. It was almost 5 p.m.

At first, she didn’t seem to understand when we spoke to her but when a colleague asked her if she wanted anything, she responded gingerly in Swahili, “elastoplasts”, and pulled up her sweater to show us two deep festering wounds on her upper arm. We looked at each other uncomfortably.

We had carried water, food, and some clothes but no elastoplasts. She understood and covered her arm.
“We will get you some,” one of my friends offered. Her face lit up.

“I have been taking some tablets but the pain keeps returning... It hurts.” She was nervous.

She had been slashed by a street boy after they disagreed on the number of plastic bottles she would give him – he was the group leader and alpha male – from the lot she had collected, two weeks earlier.

She happily showed us a partly eaten loaf she had pressed into a lump and tucked away in an old trench coat she wore, but said she would take what we had and share with her group.

BROKE DOWN

At that point, several of us broke down. The girl looked on, unsure whether she had said anything to trigger that reaction.

We left at about 7 p.m., after assurances from a nurse at a clinic we had taken her to that her wound would heal. She firmly shook her head when we asked her if she would like to go to a children’s home, and said she was “happy” with her friends at the garbage mound.

“All she wanted was an elastoplast,” someone remarked in the bus on our way to the city centre. We all sighed and remained mum. There was nothing to say.

There is a life everyone longs for, and it certainly isn’t confined to a crumpled loaf and some band aid. We all envision what we consider to be the ideal life, but the things in which some among us find contentment are so basic they will make your heart bleed.

A line in one of Kenyan musician Nonini’s songs, Waliotuacha, goes: “...kwa hivyo wee jua kila saa ukiwa kwa bar unalewa, kuna mtu yuko hospitali jo anakatikiwa na hewa...

Misery, for some, comes from being unable to locate the source of the noise coming from under the hood of the car, despite numerous visits to the mechanic.

LITTLE THINGS

But when this is contrasted with the man in Pokot who wants a buyer that can give him Sh700 for his largest bull – which, by the way, is the amount you will pay for a kilo of steak at a city supermarket – then matters fall into perspective.

But man was not made to find contentment in “little things”. Individual perspective regarding how one ought to live is, after all, a matter of context.

We are encouraged to think and dream big and, while that is no tragedy, it ought to make you think again before you complain about having to pack an apple for lunch “for the third time this week” when what you really want are grapes.

Don’t get me wrong. Nobody is asking you to kill your ambition; dreams are what we are all about. But you could choose to find the freedom that contentment brings and see how that works out for you.

What is it that you long for?

The writer is a Sub Editor with the Sunday Nation’. [email protected]