Born on Third Base

Here's another reason why I can't waste time whining about how hard I'm working these days.

When I saw these 4 terra cotta figurines at a roadside market recently, I HAD to buy them. They depict a man selling roasted maize on the side of the road, the typical "Mama" stooped low hauling a huge bundle of firewood, a crowded matatu with people jammed inside and hanging on for dear life outside, and a woman braiding a girl's hair.

I see these kinds of images every day in Kenya: hardworking, decent, salt-of-the-earth people who start work LONG before I begin the daily negotiations about when I'll stop hitting the snooze button. These are people who work like dogs every day, for less than what I spend on a bottle of sparkling water. These are people who, for whatever reasons, repeat this routine every day, year after year, while their so-called "leaders" exploit the sweat of their brows, tax them beyond belief, raise the price of fuel and food so high that they might as well stay home, because they won't be able to get to work or feed their families on what they receive in wages.

I found these figurines shortly after reading a comment on a friend's Facebook Wall that I haven't been able to forget. The conversation was about conservative legislation in the US, and how the "Haves" keep looking for ways to nickel and dime the "Have Nots" back home. The commenter completely rang my bell when she wrote,

"Some people who were born on third base go around acting like they've just hit a triple."

To me, that meant that some people who through a set of circumstances they were either born into, or who had the right connections---or even simply because they WEREN'T born in a struggling, developing country--walk around acting like they are justified in condemning other people, or like they are more deserving of the right to live in dignity, or have enough to eat, or a warm bed to sleep in.

I ain't gon' lie--I have my moments when it's downright overwhelming to be living in my really nice two-bedroom Oasis of Graciousness, all by myself, with a full refrigerator, and the ability to call a taxi to take me wherever I need to go by my damn self, and not squeezed like a sardine into a noxious rolling death trap. I live vastly better than the nearly 60 percent of the population who demographers say live at or below the poverty line in Kenya, and I think part of what keeps me over here doing the work I do is bottom line guilt.

Even though I was born in poverty in the United States of America nearly 50 years ago, compared to people like the ones these figurines portray, I was "Born On Third Base." But I'm grateful that I don't walk around frontin' like I hit a triple. I take it one base at a time, and I try to wave a few people in behind me as I go.