Live like BOSS

 In the gleaming sun at the heart of the streets of Nairobi, I ignore my burning body and employ my eyes. They scan around like a predator looking for prey, identify many prey but then one in particular seduces them. That's the one, my entire being confirms.

I look around to secure a suitable seating arrangement, and an abandoned rock whispers to me. I inspect it of dust but halfway through I realize that I don't really care so I sit on it. I search my chest pockets for a cigarette and I light it hoping the City Council bastards don't catch the smell. I inhale, close my eyes, then exhale. That power boost was enough. To happy hunting. 

Our prey - a short and plump middle-aged man with the face of an apple - is busy making a living. He ignores the scorching sun, and in turn, the sun ignores him too. He has on a beige shirt with chest pockets, and old jeans so dirty with layers of dust and dry mud - evidence of struggle. He has a black-cum-brown crocs, and a 'New York' baseball cap - an ally in the battle against the angry sun. He sells groundnuts, sweets, and bubble gum. His entire stock barely fills a five-kilogram see-through bucket. Nothing out of the ordinary, just your average lower-class citizen in Nairobi busting his back to silence his growling stomach and those of his loved ones. 

But this man is different. Let's call him Boss. Whatever Boss lacks in clothing and material boost, he makes up for with vibrance. Never before have I seen a man enjoying what he does so genuinely. He laughs with his customers - genuine laughs, not those sheepish ones. He engages them in conversations, mostly politics. With the polarized state of Kenyan politics, it is a miracle that all his customers exit with wide smiles and hysterical laughs. He engages his neighboring colleagues, laughing with them and their customers as well. 

Now, I don't know how much he makes in a day, though I saw him serving several customers in the thirty minutes that I was there. Neither do I know his home situation - the number of mouths he has to feed, but I got out of there with a wide smile myself, "Ah, he'll be fine."

I started digging for a way amidst the busy people to find a matatu to take me home, "I need a nap." But I didn't even take the nap in the speeding matatu. Partly due to the intimacy of the matatu, where spaces meant for two were now occupied by four. But mostly because Boss left some lingering questions inside my head. I was trying to block them, but they weren't having any of that. It reminded me of a scene in a Mission Impossible movie where Tom Cruise was trying to break into a glass window while suspended in the air, bouncing off the sturdy glass but each time coming back with much more force. Eventually, I gave in, and the glass broke.

I have always believed that a person should only engage in a trade that brings out the life in them and the fire in their eyes. It doesn't matter how high or low in the societal rank the trade is, if it arouses your demons and calms them in equal measure, do it till you disintegrate to whence you came. I wanted to stop there but Boss wouldn't let me. 

Did Boss truly love what he did? Didn't he have lofty dreams, to jump so high that he could at least touch the basement of his potential? Did he decide to love his job because it fed him and clothed him - though poorly? Given a chance at something better, how fast would he pounce on the opportunity? 

The human mind is a mysterious thing. It is a joke with layers where one layer reveals another joke until your ribs give up or the jokes stop being funny - but the layers don't stop. Albert Camus in The Stranger said how we can get used to anything. Anything. Given enough time, there's nothing that the body can't endure with the maximum backing of the mind of course. I think that's what happened to Boss. He and the countless others who have surrendered their souls to systems they hate. They told themselves, "This is just temporary. I will save up and then start my own firm." The days staggered by, making an amazing circus while at it to distract them, and when it ends, years have flown by, with the only thing reminding them of the grand dreams they used to have being the 'safe' lives they managed to mold. Getting used to things.

What amazes me with Boss though, is how content and happy he seemed to be with it all. There's a chance his life will never change, a chance that his entire life will be reduced to that tiny spot navigating the waves and tides of Nairobi life. He knows that, and he still manages to garner a genuine and hearty smile. 

With Boss a little satisfied with the trail of thought I had followed, I could now focus on finishing that book I had been avoiding. I think all we have to do in life is live it with a casual disregard for its twists and turns, to laugh and love amidst the chaos. If we are lucky enough to actually have our passion as an avenue of making a living, then good for us. But what if, like Boss, we are forced by circumstances into having any trade as a means of making a living? The answer is simple: live like Boss.