Sometimes I wish a balanced diet, a non-leaking roof over my head and hole-free clothes over my nakedness were all overrated. Then many like I would not suffer stress and sleepless nights working out plans on how to sneak our way out of poverty without the boring glances of inflation staring us in the face, stopping us in our steps as though we were but chicken thieves cornered by the chief in the dead of the night. Too much, I say! It all is too much for one man to bear. Yet still, not one man, but over half of the human race, suffers this same plight:
Every day, a mother and her children are thrown out of their house for lack of rent, thrown out of a place they call home, denied their one basic right. I wish the corridor was as good a home and that a decent house with a latch at the door was too overrated. Then I, and thousands more like myself would have nothing to worry about.
Every day, I read of a dying generation to the North of my country and I meet with many that are famished and frail, tired of life and all its twists and turns and still I do nothing, or too little to even count. Still the needy suit up to hide their flattened stomachs, wear a smile everyday and resign themselves to fate - no one likes to hang around the needy fellow, right? So live weary or die trying.
See me dragging my feet in the city streets every day, watch me slide that crispy note out of my pocket and pay for a meal I cannot afford, tag along as I parade myself in social circles, wearing the last of my borrowed show-off attires… laugh and smile with me, complement and enjoy my company. For later today, I might as well die, commit suicide, for I did not find the man that made the rules, the same ones that hurt the very least of us, the ones that raise the mighty higher and break the arms and muscle of the poor majority that hold them up.
But what good will it do me to kill myself over policies that are not my mistake, let alone my formulation? If that man was well able to ruin my life and many others by showing what need humans have and giving a few people the right to exploit us and force us on our knees, begging for the things we need, then I have as much power to counter that man, who is in fact, nothing short of a figment of my imagination. I am my worst enemy, you know; thinking myself too little to curb this mountain and of muscles too feeble to swim my way to the shores I can only dream of.
No, neither food, nor clothing and shelter are overrated. Only my fear of the unknown is. The day I storm out of my own pity party is the day change will begin. Because in essence, the only man i need to meet with, see face to face, slap and give sense to, is myself. Then the dream will begin to take form.
By Serah Njambi - Young writer,poet, web and android developer and God-lover. Google Student Ambassador http://callmealien.wordpress.com
