When I was young...
I used to see life from a different angle. My perception of life then was different that it is today. I will start this article by highlighting what my mum taught me about life and then explain how my perception of life has changed since.
I remember on several occasions, mum would come home in the evening, cook supper (ugali and sukuma wiki) and make us sit around the fireplace in our grass thatched house and lecture to us about important lessons of life. "Listen carefully my children." Mum would start her long lectures a midst clearing her throat. "You see in this life, God created human beings for two main purposes. One to serve Him (God) and two to listen to what their parents and grandparents tell them." Mum would then take a sip from the wooden cup that grandpa had left to us when he kicked the bucket not long ago. "In the beginning, God made human beings; perfect as they were and made them masters over all other creatures of the world." she would continue.
"Now listen to this very keenly my children. One day, God put His creatures in a land that they were to live peacefully for the rest of their lives. But one day something happened my children, something that made you and I start preparing to live our lives outside the peaceful garden." "But mum are you talking about the story our Sunday school teacher was reading to us from the Bible Stories on Sunday?" I would interrupt. Mum would keep quiet for a second and then take another sip from the wooden cup and then she would continue. "My son it might be the one or not but I want to you listen till the end of my story then you will be able to tell whether it is." Mum would answer and then continue from where she had stopped. " In this world my children, evil abounds. I know you have heard of stories of people killing others, others killing themselves and further still others bombing big buildings. That is what happened in the garden my children. One agent of darkness attacked the peaceful garden that God had created for us to live and cheated the early inhabitants that God had not good intentions for them by confining then in the garden. The agent of evil further told them that there existed other places that they would visit, live and enjoy life away from the 'prying' eyes of God." I remembered the news I had heard from our wooden radio from the vernacular radio station KBC Kisumu. I remembered how one reporter had reported about the Nairobi bombing of the american Embassy as I heard him say. I also remembered how two years early our neighbor Mzee Machungu had killed his wife just because she ate his lunch (a bowl of githeri-amixture of maize and beans). Then I remembered how my cousin Douglas had committed suicide some three months earlier citing hard life as the main cause of terminating his life. Since I was young then I never understood what hard life really was. Then I remembered how our Sunday school teacher had told us a story about one Moses who was called by God to go and deliver His children from Egypt because life was hard for them in Egypt. All this while I kept wondering what hard life was but I kept quiet to myself and kept on listening to mum's story.
"I know by now each of you is wondering who this agent of evil was." Mum would resume. "This agent of evil my children is satan. He is the one responsible for every evil that you see happening around the world today." I was very young by then to understand what mum meant by evil. To me evil meant caning us, denying us supper, break first or lunch simply because we did bot fetch firewood. To me evil was when my brother beat me because I had abused her or when my teacher canned us for not doing our homework. Simply anything that hurt me, myself and I was what I would consider evil. So when mum talked of evil, my mind would be tuned around those things. "You remember our neighbor Mzee Machungu killed his wife not long ago?" she would ask. "Yes Mum" we would all answer. "That is what the agent came to do my children: to confuse people and poison their minds so that they would not think straight. Killing a person because she had eaten his lunch is not an acceptable act my children." I would see a river of tears flowing from my mother's eyes as she vividly remembered the murder of Ngamizo by her husband. After another sip, mum would continue, "My children I want you to grow up knowing that food is not everything, neither is money. I want you to respect others and hearken to what your elders tell you. I know that one day you will grow up and become adults and only then you will understand what I am telling you. I want you to grow up knowing God and fearing Him because it is only Him who has answers to your problems." Al this while, my mind was engaged in thoughts about how our football team at school had scored two goals past the goalkeeper of the opposing team. I thought about what our Christian Religious Education(CRE) teacher was telling us about how traditional African Societies would worship in the forest and sing and dance till it rained. I had heard him talk of rainmakers and I was convince it is through human intervention that rain would drop from heaven. I had also heard of heaven from the same CRE teacher. So when mum talked about God and doing good because God demands that of all His creatures, I was left wondering what she meant.
My brother would ask mum about what doing good meant. He would also want to know where and why the agent of evil lived. "Listen my children, the agent of evil lives everywhere, he might be here with us or anywhere in the world. He works in many ways that we human beings cannot understand." This reply from my mother would in turn create confusion on my mind. I would ask myself how a person can live everywhere or anywhere for that matter while my Science teacher had taught me that matter is anything that has weight and occupies space. It further confused me when I remembered that just like matter, human beings must a;so occupy space. Now my mum was here telling us of a person who lives everywhere. For a child of my own age, understanding what she meant proved very heavy for my little mind.
"Now my children when you here of people killing themselves citing hard life as their reasons, then you should live knowing you should not kill yourself because of hard life," I was young then to understand what hard life meant but as one proverb would teach me: being young is like a calf drinking milk from her mother's breast.
When I grew up...
Growing up I did grow, and after my primary education, I joined high school and later joined university for my degree course. It was during my high school days that I started to understand slowly what hard life was. Being those years when bullying was ripe in high school. I would be bullied by my senior boys and whenever I reported this to my teachers, they told me you are being taught how to survive outside there. "Life is hard outside here so the are teaching you how to survive." I remembered how my mum hard talked about hard life and through her words, I kept pushing on. In my high school days, I often heard my teachers talk of a good life after high school and campus life. They said that if one passed their high examinations and later joined campus, then it was possible to live a comfortable life. I remembered how my neighbor who worked in the city and his children would come home during Christmas days carrying several bags of sugar, a number of bread and canned meat. I also remembered how we would run to his house and stare at his children while eating bread till they shared it with us. I remembered how I would ask my father why we would not eat bread at home, and how dad had told me that bread was only for those living in the city. I remember how I vowed to once live in the city so that me and my children would eat bread. That is why when my teachers talked of passing exams as a ticket to a good life, I put in my best and indeed I passed well in the secondary exams gaining entry to university to study Economics. I knew all my troubles were over and anything that defined a hard life was far from me.
I joined campus one year later and I remember the experience I had while at campus was one memorable events in my life. Four years were soon over and I called my village men and women to come and celebrate with me as I graduate. They indeed did not disappoint since they hired a two buses and traveled to the city in style to celebrate the success of one of their own. Old men and women would lecture me on how I should not forget them and their children because to them I was already a successful man. We all ate and made merry and finally my parents together with my kinsmen and village men traveled back home living me in the city to find out my way yo employment.
The process of seeking for a job has been one tough task and has made me remember what my mother had taught me about how hard life can get sometimes. Three years down the line and I am still jobless. The big dreams I had about good life have started becoming unrealized. The high rate of unemployment in my country has made me realize that life is indeed hard. I have now started understanding why my cousin Douglas had committed suicide. Nevertheless, I plan to soldier on because I believe life is teaching me those lessons my mother never taught me or maybe I was young to understand them when she taught me. Only living positively and trusting in the God my mum taught me will help me overcome those suicidal thoughts that cross my mind time and again. I have made it my habit to read Philippians 4v13 every day because it gives me strength to keep on walking.
