Snapshots of Childhood & Learning to Appreciate the Simple Things

My friends, would you please join me for a walk down memory lane? There's a bit I'd like to share, and here's why. Since I've been on this platform, I've been given a window into so many lives and so many perspectives and I've read so much from so many people that it has really been a wake up call for me. It's almost like these stories that I've read further reinforced a life lesson that I'm currently in the midst of, and that is learning to appreciate every single blessing you enjoy, even the simple one, because sometimes the things you bemoan and complain about might actually be things, simple things, that others desire.

I've learned that if you can't be happy and content with the things you have, you'd never be happy with the things you get. There's a saying I grew up with, and that's the grass is always greener on the other side. Have you ever read or heard the childhood story of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse? It's a simple tale, but the moral behind it is so true, it is better to live with little and be content than to grasp for plenty and live in fear.

This is my story.

I didn't have material wealth as a child. I grew up in a little wooden house without electricity or running water.

Our nights were lit by stars and kerosene lamps. My brothers and I were scared of the dark.

Our evening orchestras were mosquitoes. They sang us to sleep and then bit us awake.

I shared a home with termites, a bedroom with my brothers, and a bed with snakes. I literally woke up one night when a snake fell on my bed with a thump from the rafters. Ask me not how it got there, I have no clue, but I guess the fact that our house was literally on the edge of a forest can help to paint the picture.

Sometimes, at least once a week, my mom would fill a wheelbarrow with empty buckets and kegs, and she'd arm us with bottles and together we'd go trundling off to the village standpipe, about a quarter mile away, to get water for our home.

In the night, the wheelbarrow would make a terribly loud squeaky noise that would wake all the dogs in the neighborhood, so we'd have a howling choir in our wake.

Sometimes we couldn't afford to go to the groceries, so my mom would plant peas and corn and sorrel and dasheen and we'd eat fresh from the land.

Many times as children we would run off for the day, feasting on guavas and mangoes and sugar cane and oranges and star apples and whatever fruit we could find. I was a little girl, but boy could I climb.

The thing is, though we didn't have material wealth when I was growing up, I still think we had such a rich and beautiful childhood, a lot of which I took for granted even after I became an adult.

I was lucky to have a great education and to get decent jobs as an adult, and I moved away from the countryside and the wooden house and the barrels of water and the wheelbarrows and singing mosquitoes, and snakes that lay across our paths or curled up under our sheets, and giant tarantula spiders and bush fires, and I got an apartment in the city where the buildings were really close together.

We had electricity, even air condition, fancy cars, great roads, everything I dreamed of, and for a while it was as intoxicating as I imagined, right? But then, after a bit, would you believe, I yearned for simplicity? Perhaps not the poverty bit, but the beauty of life in the countryside.

And when hard times came and our company let off workers and closed its doors, I didn't grieve the loss of the fancy job as much as I grieved the loss of my connection with the countryside home of my childhood. That may sound super crazy, but it's the truth.

And today, as we share a cramped apartment in the city where our neighbors live on the other side of our wall, these are the memories I share with my children who do not and cannot know my yesterdays:

• Boys, thirsting for adventure,  diving heedlessly into small ponds, paddling carelessly and fearlessly alongside the caiman alligators that made the murky waters their home.

• Cattle resting in pools on the edges of the ponds where the children played- the very cattle that would be seen later in the day dragging carts laden with burnt sugar cane stalks while their owners sat perched atop the bundles of cane, lazily flicking switches, sometimes to urge the beasts on faster, at other times in idle threat to ward off grubby little hands seeking to pull the cane off the carts. 

• My grandma, walking barefoot in the streets as she balanced an open bucket of water on her head, never seeming to mind when the water sloshed over the edges to wet her shoulders.

• Men whose skin was wizened and hands calloused from hard work and toil in the garden; men who walked through village streets with the heavy stride of a farmer in gardening boots, squinting at the sun and chewing blades of grass or wantonly swiping at the grass that lined the roadsides with long, shiny cutlass blades at once a weapon and a tool.

• The watchful eyes of the ne’er do wells or limers, men who made loitering an art hanging out on street corners at almost any time of the day in different forms of repose. 

• The village madman who walked around with a machete, brandishing his weapon and shouting threats at anyone who dared to meet his eye.

• Garbage men, standing vicariously holding on to the back of moving trucks, whistling catcalls and yelling smutty remarks at any young girl they passed.

• Slow-driving vehicles with loud speakers splitting the quiet of a still night to yell announcements to a sleeping village. “We regret to announce the passing of…” 

• The blaring horns of the gas truck speeding past so fast, one had to practically race to the roadside, carrying empty gas tanks propped between shoulders. 

• The hunters who prowled the forested areas in search of tasty wild meat. 

• The weekend drinkers. 

• The souse lady, as fat as a stuffed pig herself.

•  The village bad-john who was only as brave as the madman would allow him to be.

• Our mom smoking out mosquitoes and evil spirits with special grasses and incents.

• Gardens of peas and corn and sorrel and groves of fruit trees

• Cane fields, proud stalks stretching for as far as the eye can see.

• Fences made of hibiscus hedges designed more to keep out prying eyes than to prevent the access of intruders.

• Doors left unlocked and windows thrown open at all hours of the day and night in a village where the greatest crimes were bar sprawls, domestic disputes and, on the rare occasion, the Anansi-like theft of garden produce.

• Coconut oil that turned to frost overnight

• The cocks and hens my mom raised in a makeshift coop, always on the lookout for mongoose.

• Evenings at our neighbors, biting into warm bread baked in mud ovens, the smoke still rising from it when cut open and lathered with butter and homemade jam.

I have come to the conclusion therefore, my friends, that poverty is relative. It depends on what you value. A man may not have material wealth and yet his life may be more rich and fulfilling than a millionaire's.

I am also reminded of the importance of appreciating every stage and every moment of one's life. I'll be honest, growing up I wasn't very grateful for my childhood, and when I got the fancy job, oh boy, I was so happy to trade my rags and poor home for a fancy car and the cool life. But the cool life is lonely. And it's cold. People aren't as genuine as you'd find in a simple village where so much is shared. This, if anything, has been a life lesson for me.

Thanks for joining me on this walk down memory lane, my friends. But tell me now, if you were to go back into your past and pick something that you really miss, something that makes you feel really nostalgic, and which you didn't think that much of at the time, what would it be?