BY PROFESSOR RAYMOND MOSHA
THE BRIGHT SIDE
In this column I reflect on our humanity and on some of those things that give ultimate meaning to it. I meditate on those human characteristics that spell out the meaning of people taking care of those in need, people caring for each other, in particular those most in need, the powerless, the voiceless, the downtrodden and so on.
Today I would like to tell a story of a teacher whose love for the needy is bigger than herself, indeed bigger than life. It is as if the good that we do transcends our humanity and comes to heights of goodness that we can hardly imagine.
This is a teacher in a government Primary School. Let us call her Mama Charity. She has been a teacher since 1992. She is married and both have four children. Then her sister passed away and left four children to be cared for by Mama Charity. As things would turn out in her neighbourhood, there were also two more children who had no one to care for them and these too came under the care of Mama Charity and her husband. Ten children in total!
We know well that her salary is not much. But what she did is miraculous. She literally sacrificed the little her family had so that those ten children could go to school. She says there were days when she had no money and yet those children needed money. Ten of them!
Mama Charity would take the little they had to make sure those ten children went to school, all the way from primary school to the university. The tenth one is now in Form Two. All the rest have graduated from higher education institutions. Mama Charity says she does not know how they could achieve this monumental act of charity, but somehow, they did it. Her greatest asset was her undying intention to help the children. We say in Kiswahili: Penye nia pana njia. If the intention is there, we do achieve miracles. That is exactly what Mama Charity did.
You would think this was more than enough. Not really. There is one student in her school whose parents cannot afford to pay for his lunch. Madame Charity has been sharing her own lunch with him for the last three years.
What a lesson for us! Please join me to applaud her and her family. Indeed, it is through reaching out to those in need that our humanity is spelt out in ways that defy description.
Prof. Raymond S. Mosha, (+255) 769 417 886;
rmosha@depaul.edu
