I’m so tired of hearing “I did the same when I was her age. I had to deal with worse.”
What’s the point of me going through shit if the next generation is going to deal with the same? Why bother suffering? What do you have to be proud of when those behind you have to endure what you endured?
This is a mentality I don’t understand here in 9ja. People can laugh off the suffering of others as a way of life, but they don’t dare empathize with others here.
Heading down the expressway with a car full of kids, we ran into car issues we weren’t banking on. This made us much later to our destination and the children ansy.
Their mother had the wherewithal to call on one of the side vendors for a small snack after running into bumper to bumper traffic.
She identified one small girl with a tray full of peanuts on her head. Mother called her right as traffic was becoming lighter. Keeping with the flow of traffic, she had to abandon the post she was waiting for the girl and move on. The young girl tried to duck in between the traffic to get to us but the flow picked up and we lost sight of her. Before we knew it, we were at least 500m from where we initially saw her and figured we would find another vendor to get a snack from.
I couldn’t believe what I saw.
This little girl of no more than 11 was running in the on-coming traffic lane with her eyes squarely on the suv we were in. I heard the patter of her flip-flops approach the vehicle and was in awe. Traffic slowed and this girl came up to the window, panting heavily with a bag of peanuts in hand.
After all that, mother asked how much? The girl said N300 ($2.60). Are you sure you won’t take N200?
I couldn’t help but show my disgust. I knew then that those living in this situation have a way of looking at life that disconnects them from the rest of the world.
I could even compare this to Greek life found in nearly all universities across the US. Once you suffer, there is some kind of joy seeing someone else have to deal with what you dealt with. For me…
I differ but can’t quite explain why. I’ll try sometime in the future.