I have always said and continue to believe that the world is full of good people. Unfortunately, due to various stereotypes, we find it hard to give each other a chance to be and do good. For instance, I have met people who claim to hate someone else yet they barely know them. I have also met others who decide that a certain race, religion or tribe is despicable. If only we could open our hearts to accepting and loving more unconditionally, then we would receive a lot of goodness from the people around us. Esther is my neighbour’s help, she is full of life, friendly, loving and warm. The fact that we don’t speak the same language has not stopped her from reaching out to me. She screams as soon as I get home and will say how happy she is to see me. Through her, I have learnt that there are some emotions that need not to be communicated in a language you understand, you’ll just feel it. A few days ago, she accompanied me to the market to buy groceries. Esther never keeps quiet; she will talk to me until I understand what she is saying, so throughout the journey, we were conversing in Kinyarwanda, English and Kiswahili. Before we left for the market we consulted on what I needed to buy and at some point I had to Google the image of a green pepper to explain what I meant only to realise that she knew it as ‘poivron’, which is French for ‘peppers’. While at the market, for items whose names were not common I had to walk around and locate them before returning to Esther after I had found what I needed. Most of the people at the market speak Kinyarwanda, meaning on my own I could not have managed considering I still haven’t fully understood the various denominations of the Rwandan currency in Kinyarwanda. Esther, therefore, came in handy albeit with a struggle. She would tell me the required amount then I would reach into my purse and pull out all the coins so that she could pick what she needed. She burst out into laughter when I asked for Irish potatoes because she had no idea what I meant. Buying meat was equally a challenge since Esther had neither heard of the word ‘meat’ nor ‘butchery’, which is what we call meat ‘shops’ in Kenya and Uganda. I almost mowed like a cow to demonstrate but I opted to say beef and luckily Esther knew beef so she guided me to the butchery at one corner of the market. By that time we were ready to call it a wrap. When we eventually got back home and served ourselves some Agashya (passion juice) I looked at her with a smile and thanked God that I had her in my life. Here she was being so helpful to a stranger. A few days prior she had helped me fold clothes and arrange stuff in my new house; on this day we had gone shopping and done so successfully regardless of the language barrier. The moral of this story is that the world is full of good people. Today, allow someone to do you a good deed. Be slow to judge and watch the world serve you some goodies. Follow Jackie on Twitter @JackieLumbasi
