This week, I’ve learned a couple of things, but I’ll dwell on two. The first is that you never really get to know someone until you sit down with them and have a one-on-one conversation with them.
An unpretentious, informal chat in a casual setting, and no, don’t talk about work, because when people talk about work, whether all of you work for the same organisation or not, what is said is often sprinkled with lots of exaggeration and a lot of whining, deserved or not.
Whining about how one’s employer is bad, how bad the pay is, and how the person complaining gets to do all the hard work in their department. Work talk is also usually emotive, and most of the time, brings out the worst in most people. So no, no work talk.
If you really want to get to know someone, talk about everyday stuff such as relationships, children, politics and a little ‘gossip’ about people you all know. I promise you that whoever you are talking to will bloom right before your eyes.
This week, I got to spend some time with someone I’ve always assumed is a ‘terrible’ human being, a conclusion I arrived at from the few formal interactions we’ve had over the years. Until I saw the other side of this other person – funny, entertaining, accommodating. Not such a bad person after all.
What I’m writing about was motivated by a conversation I had with a couple of colleagues on Wednesday this week. To cut a long story short, one of them pointed out that for a long time, she had assumed that I was a snob, until she started really interacting with me a few months ago, only to realise that my only crime is that I’m an introvert, but when I really get to know someone, I become extroverted with them.
What am I saying? Forget about what you have heard about someone, or the assumptions you have about them drawn from the few and brief interactions you’ve had and get to really know them. You might be pleasantly surprised to find yourselves hitting it off, and who knows, you might just make yourself a friend.
The second thing I learnt this week is that quite a number of Kenyans have reached the ignition point. Yes, the frustration, discouragement and general resentment brought about by joblessness and the long-running economic depression has been there for a while, now, however, the disillusionment is staring at the precipice. I came to this conclusion when this Wednesday, during the protests called by the Opposition, I came across a video showing people, purportedly Kenyans, looting from a truck full of goats.
The truck was surrounded by men who were helping themselves to the animals. This particular video focused on a young man who seemed to be in his twenties. He had a goat by the leg and was pulling it behind him, but he happened to trip and fall. Rather than get up, he turned and began raining blows on the poor goat, which lay on the ground, probably terrified enough to die.
This man had decided to take out whatever frustrations he was harbouring on an animal that had nothing to do with whatever situation he was in. I don’t know why, but his actions chilled me to the bone because they spoke of something unhinged, something uncontrollable and inhumane.
If that video was indeed taken in Kenya, I’m not justifying the stealing and all those other criminal activities and attributing them to joblessness and an economy that’s on its knees, all I’m saying is that the country is in a bad place, and something’s got to give. Whatever that something is.
