The complex nature of life in big cities offers inspirations for people who struggle to find purpose in life; it also prompts those who always follow their hearts to keep on their endeavors and make a difference.
Big city life inspires musicians, authors, poets, paint artists, architects, designers, engineers, politicians, humanitarians, philosophers, activists, and what is not, from various dimensions and with different purposes. In a big city, a poet may observe the fancy gate of a big luxury house of a rich man and be inspired to write a very short poem about the discrepancy between the lives of the rich and the poor, it lends the muse to very strong and heartbreaking words.
As he sits on the corner of the gate with his paper and pen to write a poem, he may as well see a very beautiful young girl coming out of the gate running with her tight sports outfit on and with a breath taking smile. Then, his inspiration would immediately shift and he could write a very lengthy poem whose lines and stanzas may appear as shown below:
Oh dear God almighty,
The father of all beauty,
The maker of such sunshine
Such destruction of my mind
How could I get mad at you?
Who would I be to judge you?
About unfairness and inequality,
About wealth or life of poverty?
If there is one thing, I should have known was
How to write a poem about beauty
But now I know, I know beauty is such a cause
For a poor man like me….
The long poem may not stop until he gets over and done with the inspiration or until the beautiful girl stops coming out of that gate. Maybe, she goes abroad for better education, that her family can afford more than the well-offs can afford. Well, since poets have big hearts, this poet could move on with new inspirations from his big city life.
Big city life may also inspire big businessmen to invest in something that would provide them with a large slice of profit to step up the ladder of success in business and also benefit their employees as well as the surrounding community from their wealth.
It is obvious that big city life would inspire some big businessmen with investment ideas that always make them envision only taking from and exploiting the poor.
When these types of people are inspired on taking from the poor and not think of trickling some to the community, that poet may start even hating the beautiful innocent young girl. He may develop a conclusive thought as a big city life brings one the best or the worst inspirations of all the time.
Poets or authors may write all the time but their best works are what they wrote when they are inspired. The worst poems they write are when they are not inspired. There is no definition for what is in between these extreme points. There is no such a thing called a “mid-level inspiration”.
My friend Duni and I are still walking on the streets of Addis Ababa; the biggest City of the Nation with a whole lot of big city life style that would inspire you for several purposes. On some parts of it, you would see blooming colors of the New Flower, whose equivalent in Amaric is Addis Ababa. On other parts of it, there are signs of motivated middle class life styles, a portion this on the verge of inspiration and the remaining seems to give up “inspiration”, just to stay sitting as middle class.
On the other parts, you may see hard working people doing their best to support their family. These people may not dress well and they may look poor to you. If you approach them and ask them how they are doing, they would always say “Thank God almighty, I’m doing great”. Then you may try to discuss the issue of poverty with these people. They would say “God has blessed me with good health and I am physically fit to work. So I am never poor!” These types of people are not even in the middleclass.
But they are inspired and always hope for better future as they work harder and keep praising God for every single blessing they earn. They never know complaining.
Meanwhile, there are also those who are with poor prime physical conditions and living in the poverty zone but also with no effort to do something about it except complaining. I am not saying that they are beggars but they do not work all day long or late at night. They just bother the people they used to hang with back in the good old days and they try to stay with these friends until they get what they want.
They get what they want and they are already gone to a nearby local liquor store. Duni told me such group of people would never be inspired as we kept on walking around Meskel square, where one of the biggest outdoor religious and cultural festival “Demera”; also one of the UNESCO registered cultural heritage, takes place every year in September.
Anyways, on that day, we saw something shocking and mesmerizing on one corner of the square. We saw a group of little children, some of them teenagers inhaling benzene and glue, half-filled in plastic bottles.
Suddenly one of them collapsed and was spitting blood all over the floor. Then, his friends helped him to stand but they started quarrelling. Though the sick boy was angry, one of the younger friends snatched the bottle from his hand and passed it to the other one.
Then one of them brought a bottle full of water and when the other held him still the other bent the sick boy down and started pouring the water on and washing his head. Later they allow him sip some water to wash his mouth. Then they let him stick out his tongue for some inspection, which I and Duni did not understand about. But the way, they were doing it was like a doctor checking up on his/her patient.
All of a sudden Duni started saying, “now these are the people who are passionate but most inspired people have ignored or forgotten about. Even though it comes in a sad way, but did you see how they care for each-other? You see most of these people driving fancy cars and passing by may act like they have no idea about what is going on around these streets and the lives of the street kids.
They just keep watching only the ways up from one self-development to another high level. Even if they know there is something they could do, their busy life style would take away the thought the moment they are caught up on their jobs. I know the City Adminstration has been collaborating with different partners to pick such type of kids from the streets and is trying its best to rehabilitate them for better future life. But isn’t it everyone’s responsibility to try what we can do best?”
This time I have to ask Duni about what we can do. He would think for a moment and say, “well, if we give these kids some money, I’m sure they would spend it on some benzene or alcohol. Even if we want to take the sick boy to a hospital, we don’t have enough money. Even worse, his friends wouldn’t allow us to take him to a hospital because they want us to give them the money.”
“So, what can we do?”
“I don’t know. Only feeling sorry… Don’t you ever ask me such kind of question when I’m broke?”
Well, we just kept our mouths shut and walked until our legs burn. Only feeling sorry. Feeling sorry!
The Ethiopian herald January 31/2020
BY HENOK TIBEBU
