A lesson on loving what you have, well.

Almost exactly 7 years ago, someone told me something about loving the things we have, instead of admiring what others have, and it has shaped my consciousness around contentment and gratitude.

Back in 2018, I was a naive, bumbling fresh graduate from veterinary school who had only recently left Entebbe, to take on my first work assignment in Kotido -a vast, semi-arid, rural district in the North Eastern part of Uganda, where I knew neither the dominant local language spoken there, nor the first thing about working.

In fact, I remember that when I got my first salary, I could not fully wrap my mind around the fact that I had not really done any work, yet I had been paid for it. Being new staff, we did not have much to do yet, so we spent the first two to three months attending meetings to orient us into the system, and doing the light tasks which were occasionally assigned. It is why I did not feel like I had earned my first pay.

The other reason I was not working was because I did not have the required means of transport to allow me do my work. Thus, instead of being at the subcounty which was my duty station, I spent the early months of my deployment in Kotido town, where I volunteered my time as a meat inspector at the abattoir.

After a rather long while, I was eventually assigned a motorcycle to go to work with. When I first saw it, I was utterly disappointed. It was an old, dusty piece of metal scrap, compared to the shiny brand-new motorcycles that most people in the department were riding.

The pained look on my face must have been so visible to the person I went to pick the motorcycle with, that while I hesitated to receive it, he picked the keys from the storeman, unlocked the motorcycle and started to roll it away. I followed silently in tow. It was what he said next that changed my perspective quickly.

He told me that the motorcycle I had may not be the best there was but that if I loved it and took care of it well -maintained it, kept it clean, took it to the garage and performed all the major and minor repairs- it would be restored to such good condition that other people would even begin to admire it. He said that the motorcycle I had did not matter so much as how I took care of it.

I was surprised at how quickly I took that message to heart. I guess it was because this was coming from the same person who had patiently taught me how to ride a motorcycle and they had helped me learn to do so quickly, when every other previous learning attempt had not resulted in any meaningful progress.

I was so touched by his conviction that I took it as my own and in that moment, that old, dusty motorcycle that could not even start begun to look different to me, beautiful even. As we took it to the mechanic, I envisioned a time in the future when it would be all clean and touched up; roaring with that signature brup-brup-pop-pop of the Yamaha DT.

It would take another six months before this vision would come to life but the lesson had already taken root.