Empathy

Empathy. The ability to understand and share someone else’s feelings, thoughts and experiences.

Samuel was a kid I met yesterday evening on the grassy path leading to University of Ibadan’s Chapel Hall. The Prayer Unit of my fellowship had met to pray for one hour concerning our forthcoming village outreach behind Chapel. We had all been blessed. But I stayed back. I needed strength for the second semester which would begin prematurely for only my level in the entire university on Monday. After a while, I got up and left Chapel.

Just before the road one would need to cross to get to the back of Mellanby Hall, I saw Samuel. Samuel cannot be more than 12 or 13 years old. He was wearing backwards a shirt that was supposed to be white (but which had been stained all over) atop an equally dirty yellow khaki pair of shorts. Samuel was urinating on the grass in front of me, so I tried maintaining a distance as I walked past him. I had only taken a few steps forward when I first heard briefly what sounded like a tearful lamentation.

I needed to be sure I heard someone crying behind me, so I slowed my pace to listen. Then I heard it again. Brief, not-too-loud weeping. Someone was indeed crying behind me. And that person was the urinating kid I had just walked past. I turned back, seeing him pacing back and forth the area of grass on which he had urinated, and walked towards him. He was trying to locate something amidst the grasses.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Then he started tearing up real bad. He had thought he made sure not to attract attention with his intermittent, brief and not-too-loud tearful lamentations. But he had failed at that and now a stranger had accosted him.

Tears. Tears of shame. I understood that he was deeply hurt. With my ‘sorries’ and gentle pats on his shoulder, I tried to calm him down and ascertain what was going wrong.

An Aunty had given him #1,500. He was to give his mother #1,000 and keep the remaining #500. He had lost the #1,500 after keeping it in a pocket of his shorts which, unknown to him, had torn and begun to leak. He had been beaten mercilessly by his mother– he showed me bruises on his body– and had been thrown out of the house with strict instruction from his mother not to return home without her #1,000. For close to four hours, he had been meandering round that grassy path to Chapel, where the Aunty had given him the money, searching for it tearfully. I sensed terror and fear in his voice and saw him shiver when he talked about his mother in a manner I thought no child should ever do.

I reached down into my pocket and handed him a #500 note. He gratefully received it but he did not stop crying. I tried to comfort him, but he only kept throwing himself on the floor and weeping profusely.

“Olorun saanu fun mi. Olorun. Saanu. Fun. Miiiiiii.”

He was attracting attention now. But people would slow down, examine the situation and then zoom off. It was at this point it clicked that I hadn’t asked for his name. He told me it was Samuel. Speaking in Yoruba, I hinted that it was already dark and his mother would surely have begun to worry about him. He rejected this and told me of how his mother threw out his older brother for losing money too. His older brother had to pass the night outside and only returned the following day after passersby had kindly given him the amount. Samuel was so sure his mother was anything but worried about him and there was no convincing him out of it.

My shoulders fell. He was crying out loud but I didn’t know what to say to calm him, so, standing cluelessly by his side, I watched his tears flow and listened to him calling on God to have mercy on him. I was moved to tears and began praying. I needed to know what to do. I didn’t have another #500 to give him.

Not too long after we both started praying, a tall, lean guy came our way and was almost walking past like others when he stopped short and asked what was going on. I explained to him. This guy just brought out his wallet and handed me a freshly minted #1,000 note. I was so shocked. So shocked all I could say was, “Thank you. God bless you.”

I told Samuel to prostrate in appreciation and he did. I could see that he too was trying to recover from the enormity of such kindness.

Of such empathy.