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Sometime back, I was doing an internship at a certain radio station. I had to get stories from all over and I got to see a side of Kenyans that still intrigues me months after I finished my internship. Every time I interviewed someone, they would ask “and how much are you paying me for this?â€. If they were jobless, they would ask to advertise their expertise on air. Very few people wanted to give genuine interviews without expecting anything in return. Maybe it was the area we went to get the stories that had such people or maybe this habit of asking for something in return runs deep in Kenyans. I know I’ve seen it in several places. People need help but won’t even talk to you about it without you enticing them with rewards. Question is, who is to blame for this habit?
Ask someone to come down to your office so you can discuss giving them financial help or a job. Most times their reaction is – so what exactly is in it for us and for you? And how much are you paying us for attending this meeting? You want to help them, but they are used to the paid to be helped culture. To them anything they do deserves a small handout.
This is a habit that has been cultivated in most of us; we do not want to do anything without being told how much we will be paid for it. You never do anything unless you are being paid. You can get someone money form the CDF fund but you won’t do it because they are not paying you. Someone wants you to do some manual labor for him, sitting down and deciding on the terms needs you to be paid first. You won’t discuss anything unless you are paid first.
It has become a sort of trade now. Wanting quick money has led to overdependence on handouts and we no longer simply believe in pure acts of kindness. Think of the number of times you have wanted to help someone but they won’t believe you are doing it for free.
Maybe it is human nature to grab every opportunity and make quick money or an equivalent gain out of it. Maybe there is some unwritten law that says these handouts are a good thing and a permanent part of life. But one thing we fail to notice is that these handouts we give and take make us prisoners. They make us dependent on other people. They make us doubt that people can genuinely be good. And thing is that they are never enough! We always want more, and this right here is part of the problem.
I believe we live in a society fully dependent on hand-outs. Everything we do is to get rewarded. When will this habit? At what point do we as Kenyans say enough is enough and I will do something simply because it’s the right thing? Time has come for the dependency on handouts to end.