We take a lot for granted. I know that. You know that. It’s something I’ve said so many times I almost feel self-conscious saying it at all. Most of you reading this can expect to have access to clean, safe drinking water anywhere you go, for the rest of your life, but you would be hard pressed to hear a young person today give thanks for that out loud. But at no point in my life did I realize this phenomenon with more gravity than upon my return from my first four months in a severely impoverished country, having witnessed what Stephen Lewis calls the “brutal assault on the human condition”. Those of you who have had similar experiences will know the feeling well.
I’m not talking about taking long life for granted, or the democratic process, or access to material luxuries. I’m thinking of things that are much more banal. This blog is a place to share ideas and stories, and I’d like to share one with you.
Traveling on a shabby bus from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam last year, I distinctly remember a Batswana woman en route to Gaborone from Uganda to see her family (easily a 5 day trip over African roads). Six hours out of Dar, nearing the end of the second day of her trip, she realized she had lost her passport, probably somewhere just south of the Kenyan border crossing at Namanga, six hours behind us. She went into hysterics. The bus driver pulled over and she alighted at a small patch of dust with a sleepy chip-stand. I watched her pacing, in tears, as the bus immediately pulled away, and I could almost narrate her thoughts: “The sun is about to set. I’m in the middle of nowhere, with no passport, no money and very few possessions. There is no one I know here and my Swahili is poor.” All of this happened in less than a minute.
She would never find her passport if she turned around. It would be dark by the time she made it back to the border — if she made it back — and the closest Batswana embassy was hours in any direction. There’s no way she could afford to hang around Dar waiting for a new passport (which takes much longer to process there than it does here). But she couldn’t leave the country without it. I felt sick as I thought of all these realities.
I think about that woman a lot, what happened to her that night, and what I would do in such a circumstance. She had one shot to get where she was going. There’s no contingency plan, no room for error. Once you witness an experience like that, most people’s complaints at home seem to have the volume turned way down.
I don’t mean to suggest that Canadians don’t have problems. What I’m asking for is not disdain for Western life, nor any token of gratefulness for “how lucky we are”. I don’t need you to get mad about the baby seals. I’m asking for consciousness.
Complaining is silly. Either act or forget. When I feel angry because things don’t go my way, I turn on a tap — any tap, anywhere — and I think about all that that means.