Weaved Bags

I have been ill for the last few days having eaten something dodgy on the way back from Lamu. I am normally careful with what I eat the first few weeks and then I start taking risks and as usual I end up getting ill. As a result, I was not in the best of form yesterday morning as I was stared forlornly at breakfast in the open air restaurant next to the hotel I am staying in.

Hawkers come up to you every morning and try to sell you stuff as you are eating. Its hard to remain patient with them because it is an endless and persistent stream of people with all kinds of wares on offer and I often find myself being very dismissive to them as time goes by.

After yesterday I really regret doing this.

As I was sitting there nursing my upset stomach aand feeling sorry for myself a man came up to me and showed me the baskets he had handweaved the night before. He was middle aged, really impecably dressed in simple clothes, soft spoken and polite. He had five baskets under his arm and they were 200 schillings each (just over 2 euros).

I was tired and irritable and waved him away with my hand syaing I was not interested. He bowed said thank you and left.

Almost fourteen hours later around 11.00pm I found myself sitting in the same restaurant about to go to bed. I had spent most of the day lying down and had a sense that my stomach problems were under control. I was chatting with one of the bar maids who I had befriended during the day on account of moaning all the time about being sick and she had taken pity on me (pathetic I know...) when the same man with the baskets came back. He had three of the same baskets left having sold two during the day. He had made 400 (about 4 euros) schillings for his efforts.

Once again I waved him away. Once again he bowed and said thank you but as he walked away I saw a look of awful desperation on his face. It was just a moment but it was enough to feel his pain. Then the bar maid told me that this man had a family of four children and that he weaved baskets to support his family and that today had been a bad day for him...

I felt utterly ashamed and told the bar maid I would buy the rest of his bags to help and I went to leave the seat to go after the man. She pulled me back and looked at me strangely.

'Why would you buy something you do not want' she asked.
'Because it will relieve this mans pain' I answered.
'It will help him tonight but on no other night' she answered.
'If his bags are not selling he will try to do something different that will'
'Life is tough here but you can only survive if you learn from your mistakes'

Hopefully I am beginning to learn from mine.