Counting Your Blessings

All right, let me preface this entry by saying that I recognize some people may take offense. They may say that I’m being unfair or overly critical. To that, I might concede on a case by case basis. This post is not really meant to shame anyone into thinking they don’t deserve the luxuries they’ve acquired. Nor, does it mean that they don’t have legitimate complaints about being overworked, underpaid, underappreciated and so forth. It just means, that if you find yourself feeling stressed or sorry for yourself, then take a few minutes to put it in perspective.

The idea for this post came from the Facebook page of a friend of mine who is in the Peace Corps in Senegal. I first met her while she was student teaching here in Bungoma. The post is a little back and forth from her Status Update.

Peace Corps Volunteer “is wondering why some (not all :)) people at home find it so difficult to keep in touch!”

Friend back in the US… “Because we have kids! That keep us busy cooking and cleaning up after them all the time. Laundry...it's never ending! And my computer is slower than dirt and I don't have the $$ to buy a new one because we spend it on our kids. How are you?”

Peace Corps Volunteer… “I’m busy in a village in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or running water. eating out of a bowl with a million dirty hands and doing laundry by hand, also pulling the water out of the well by hand...email is often a two hour bike ride away and I have to pay for it by the minute after I finally get to it... but I still find time to email and write on my blog.. Excuses, excuses... but I am doing just fine!!”

My apartment building is two stories with an inner courtyard. My apartment is on the second floor and my bedroom/living room/office window looks out onto the area where people do their laundry and hang it out to dry. Laundry is typically done by the women but there are a number of single men or men whose families are “upcountry.” Despite the amount of dust and dirt that one accumulates from the unpaved roads, clothes are kept surprisingly clean and pressed.

I’ll be doing laundry in a little while today. It involves 2 large buckets of water. I have the luxury of a 2 burner propane cook top so I heat some water so that it’s at least warm when I do my wash. I use a powdered detergent whereas many people use laundry bars of soap. It takes a little soak, a lot of scrubbing, wringing out, and then rinsing. It’s not like doing a few delicates by hand in your kitchen sink. It’s doing everything from jeans to sheets while bending over a bucket. I’ve only done one round of wash since I’ve been back so my calluses aren’t quite developed yet. The nice thing is that everything is dried in the sun so it does have a nice fresh smell.

Some of you know that I love to iron and that’s a good thing here in Kenya. People dress surprisingly formal and pressing clothes is commonplace. Again, I have the luxury of a nice steam “ironbox.” Others, if they have electricity, use a less expensive ironbox which may or may not be steam. For those of you old enough to remember, think back to the days when you had the “sprinkler” cap that you put on top of a Pepsi bottle full of water so that you could dampen your clothes before ironing them. If a person doesn’t have electricity, then they use an iron that has hot coals put inside it to provide the heat. I will say that many people have some sort of synthetic blend so it’s not quite as difficult as ironing pure cotton.

Now, it’s on to the computer situation. The average Kenyan does not own a computer. On this return, I was happily surprised to find out I could buy a USB modem so that I can access the internet from home. In the past, I’ve always had to go to an internet café to either use their computers or access using my laptop. Most café’s charge 1 shilling per minute which works out to be $1 a day. In a rural area where the average daily income is $1-3 a day, internet is a luxury. Computers tend to be older and connections slow. The rooms are hot and crowded. But, the bright side is that you get to visit with people while you are there. Getting a “good” connection means that you fall somewhere between dial-up and DSL in terms of speed of upload. Printing something usually costs 10 shillings a page or about 15 cents. Photocopying is cheaper at about 3 cents per page.

So, keep in mind that what you perceive as hassles in the United States might be exorbitant luxuries in other parts of the world. Don’t take things for granted and when you do, try to recognize it and put them back into perspective.