OPINION: We Were Never Supposed to Get This Good at Surviving

By Fatuma Almasi

There is a tin in almost every Kenyan household that has outlived the product it came with.

Whatever it originally contained is long gone, but the tin remains. It now holds sugar, coins, nails, buttons, spices, or something nobody remembers buying but nobody is willing to throw away.

We rarely see an empty container and think, “This has served its purpose.” We look at it and think, “What else can this do?”

That is one of the simplest ways to understand Kenyans.

We are very good at making do.

We find alternative uses for objects that were never designed for them. When something is expensive, we look for a cheaper version. When a service takes too long, someone will know someone who knows someone who can help.

Give a Kenyan a problem and, more often than not, the first response is not despair. It is: “Tutafikiria.” “Bado iko sawa.” “Tutajipanga.”

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We have built an entire culture around figuring things out.

And that is beautiful. It speaks to creativity, resourcefulness, and an unwillingness to give up simply because the obvious solution is unavailable.

In places where resources are limited, the ability to improvise is not a small thing. It can be the difference between going without and finding a way.

But I have started wondering whether we praise this quality too easily.

Because there is a difference between being resourceful and being forced to improvise.

Perhaps that is part of the problem.

We have become so good at surviving inconvenience that inconvenience has become normal.

Someone will figure it out.

And they do.

That is what makes this complicated. Kenyan ingenuity is real. But a country should not depend entirely on the extraordinary resourcefulness of ordinary people.

There should be moments when things simply work.

It is possible to admire the Kenyan who makes something out of nothing while still wanting a country where people are not constantly required to make something out of nothing.

The tin in my house can have a second life. There is nothing wrong with that.

But perhaps we should be careful about applying the same logic to everything.

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Because we were never supposed to get this good at surviving everything.

We were supposed to get good at building things that work well enough that survival is not the most impressive thing about us.

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Fatuma Almasi PHOTO/File