FROM SIMPLE AND CHEAP TO EXPENSIVE AND RARE

A simple genuine smile, an honest handshake; these just simple and priceless gestures but in today’s modern technology-filled world, these gestures are the hardest, most expensive things to find. A simple stroll down the streets will tell you the whole story. The few smiles that will be thrown your way, genuinely I must state, are less than the number of fingers on your left hand.

With the enormous and fast-moving technological achievements and evolution respectively, we are more often than not glued to our smart gadgets. We are more concentrated on sending a smiley emoji to person miles away from you, rather than throw one genuine smile at the passenger seated next to you; it won’t cost you any data bundles anyway. Our fingers are so busy typing away on our screens, scrolling up and down on social media. Our hands always so busy to even stretch out for a simple handshake to the battler who opens the door for you day in day out at your workplace.

We are too busy taking care of our `personal’ issues. It’s not that they are less important, but I wonder where that saying I grew up with, ` No hurry in Africa’ varnished to? Many would argue that our country is now growing into a new age, an age where development comes first in order to improve our standards of living, but, what next after achieving the so-called ‘developed nation’ status, is it then that we now start paying attention to our societal sense of belonging? That for now, we can put all those smiles in a bag somewhere, all those handshakes then unleash them when we are now referred to as a developed country? Where did those simple handshakes that our fathers so generously dished out without measure disappear to?  Those smiles that defined our country as a smiling nation, were they buried with our mothers before us? They say a smile can brighten your day and then you wonder why your life is so gloomy, huh!

“Mwacha mila mtumwa”, the Swahili people said, so I guess traditions are part and person of our lives. In our traditional setting, sense of belonging was vital, great appreciation was accorded to each and every member of a society from the newborn baby to the elderly. Acknowledging even strangers was not an alien gesture, they were welcomed with open arms, received with smiles and heartwarming greetings and handshakes, not like those greetings in the movie ‘the gods must be crazy’ but, a welcoming that would leave you wondering if you were their prodigal son. Where did these practices go to?

The fact though is, we are too busy concentrating on me myself and I to notice the biblical commandment of love, love your neighbour as you love yourself, or is that only applicable to our dear beloved mafisi Sacco?

                                                                                                               By Githinji Kiiru.