Engineers, doctors, teachers, preachers, reporters, scholars, all and sundry, we can help in filling up the holes that characterize our everyday experiences by doing quality jobs that will speak volumes to posterity.
By Francis Ndegwa
As the majority of local tourists travelled to the coast and other towns for the Easter Holidays, I preferred the bounty of the Rift Valley. Viewing this spectacular phenomenon has always been fascinating but this time round, I left the place with much more than I had gone for; reflections.
A white couple who had stopped at the same viewpoint had just gotten into their car but before they could leave, their son came out intending to dispose off, some litter. The curio shopkeeper didn’t have a dustbin so he
took the paper bag, went beside the shop and hurled it a few meters away on to the grass.
The father watching from the car came out complaining about the disposal method, collected the litter, took his son’s hand, got back to his car and drove off.
As he went, I was left wondering what made him collect the litter. He was obviously correcting a wrong that had just been committed.
As I watched him go, I wondered, did he do this for his son’s sake or for himself?
If it was for his sake it, my take would be that he must be environmentally conscious person who refused to compromise on pollution. If he has taught
his son the same principle, he was jealously guarding him from wrong influence, by defending what he stands for.
We are a society that knows and talks great, but shows little determination to doing the right thing.
Instead, we hypocritically transfer the blame and responsibility to someone
else. So we stand on high social and political pedestal and accuse this and
that for being responsible for various shortcomings.
But it’s not until we address this passiveness that we can begin to expect
meaningful change.
Why is there so much rot and wastefulness in the utilization of resources,
despite the fact that most of the apparatus for economic and social growth
are within our reach?
Most of us when trusted with management of our natural resources behave like
a man who upon discovering gold, refuses to take just a little necessary to
sustain him and let others also share in the bounty.
Instead, out of greed he goes on and on digging deeper and deeper while
pocketing every bit he gets.
Eventually the mine collapses on him, burying him and the gold further than
it had initially been; such that when others come looking for it, it costs cost them more money, effort and time.
That is the cost of every form of corruption. Unfortunately, the institutions that we expect to fight the crime have proved far too inconsistent, incompetent or incapable of eradicating it.
Partly to blame is the fact that they are themselves a product of the same monster they later try to kill.
Africa has been endowed with a vast of mineral deposits and other resources, most of which benefit only a few in power and those with right connections.
The public monies stolen and stashed in local and foreign accounts keep deepening the economic hole from which we struggle to come out.
But it’s the passiveness and reluctance on the part of our leadership that aches more than baffles.
But at more personal level, we can all stand to be counted, just like the tourist who refused to see his young son corrupted by thoughtless disposal of litter.
He couldn’t stand deepening the hole for future environmentalists or council workers who would have spent more time trying to fix the litter mess.
Engineers, doctors, teachers, preachers, reporters, scholars, all and sundry, we can help in filling up the holes that characterize our everyday experiences by doing quality jobs that will speak volumes to posterity. This we can, we should.