For it is in giving that we receive Francis of Assisi
For the longest time, I looked at giving to communities as a corporate venture or at least one done on the Non Governmental Organization (NGO) level. I saw philanthropy as a big word practised by big business; as a way to circumvent the negative effects of their presence (read oil business), or as a way to feel good about all the billions they make each year, whilst there are people in their immediate surrounds going without food, shelter or even basic healthcare. I recently heard a story that helped reshape my thinking.
This is the story of a young girl and her slightly older sister (18 if she was a day) who ventured from our capital city to our second largest city in search of gainful employment. These young girls had spent a stint in Nairobi unsuccessfully, in the hands of so-called relatives who had brought them from up-country on the pretence of “helping” their poor relatives. The experience was a disaster for the young girls as they discovered quickly that they had been brought to be slaves by their “relative”. Eventually she kicked them out in the middle of the night and it took a kind neighbour to both house them for the night and give them enough bus fare for them to travel to Mombasa.
Silly, brave girls had no real plan, they just believed that when they arrived, they would find work and begin their lives. They also knew that they could not go back home to the hardship and poverty they had left behind, continuing to be a burden on their parents who had 14 other mouths to feed. The ride to Mombasa was uneventful and the girls found themselves in Mwembe Tayari with nowhere to go and no one who knew them or cared. They arrived at night, frightened by the dark and unfamiliar with their surroundings, they harboured by the side of a building and spent the night, with the night watchmen as their only involuntary security. Night passed into dawn and in the morning the hustle and bustle of the day began.
Two young girls, terrified yet brave, huddled in the corner like two abandoned kittens, vulnerable to the world, yet not crippled by it into inaction. This is how she found them, wary yet curious. She could see their terror just layers from the brave faces they put on. Watching them, memories of times past flooded her mind and allowed her to make a decision. She knew well the look of abandonment, the sour taste of wretchedness, tossed out with yesterday’s garbage to face the elements. She saw it all in these two girls huddled together on the side of the building. These children needed rescuing and she was going to be their saviour.
She took them home, not much yet a safe haven for her and her foundlings, nursed their insecurities, fed their undernourished bodies and allowed them to have the space and mindset to organize their heads and look for work. Each day they ventured out to work (they eventually got gainful employment) and she went to the market to find her fortune, she worried about them, unable to eat her evening meal until “her girls” came home safely.
They lived with her, laughed with her, grew with her and became whole with her, for seven long wonderful months. They gave her a sense of family, something she had not experienced in a long time. She gave them love and security, something they had not really experienced before with 14 other siblings around and being in the hands of abusive relatives. She knew that they had grown and were ready to take on the world on their own terms. In month eight when her son from a forgotten past came to get her, she was ready to leave, happy to reconcile with her son. He came to give her a back a portion of what she had given him, rescue her; he came to take her home. It was a happy reunion and her departure from her “girls”, a bitter-sweet parting of strangers who had become family.
As mentioned earlier, my thought of giving has been somewhat restricted by the idea that corporations and organizations and other big groups are the ones that give, really give and have the greatest impact. Yet per our culture, our own traditions are steeped with people reaching out and helping each other (it takes a village…..). This true story is my emancipation from that thought onto a more enlightened place. Hearing it convinced me that it is possible for each and every one of us to make a difference in the lives of those around us (our village). We just have to have faith that doing good for others, is not limited to just organizations and corporations, we can be corporations within ourselves.