As I chatted to the women milking at dawn one day, I noticed a young woman begin to collect together the fresh dung left as the cows moved out of their night time kraal. I was intrigued to see her work on for more than an hour as the sun came up, collecting the dung in a bucket and dropping it into a large heap in the middle of the cattle enclosure, where she mixed it by hand at regular intervals. When she was satisfied with its consistency, she loaded it back into her bucket and hoisting it on her head, carried it, in several loads, over to the hut she shared with her mother, where she began to re-plaster the walls. What fascinated me was her composure as she carried out the work. From the outset, she was plagued by flies, on her hands, her head and face - she was pretty ‘plastered’ herself with the dung. It didn’t seem to bother her, she had a job to do, she asked for no help and made no complaint.
As a European, I thought of the hundreds of reasons why I would NOT enjoy such a job. In fact would I even think of doing it let alone enjoy it? I might get stuck in with a pair of Wellington boots, a long handled shovel and a wheel barrow and then use a VERY long handled trowel to do the plastering, but I can’t imagine just using my hands, hoisting the bucket onto my head and then plastering with hands that could now no longer be used to brush away the flies.
I was struck by how very pointless it is to worry about small irritations when you can do NOTHING about them. It seemed to me that this young woman had mastered the art of just getting on with a job that needed to be done, without bothering about the discomforts - and the reward? The very thing we all crave -absolute composure!
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