#finderskeeperslosersweepers

That nursery rhyme we sang when we were in baby class went something like:

“ I wrote a letter to my friend, and on the way I lost it. Somebody must have picked it up and put it in his pocket.”
And then you’d try to guess who the picker could be.

Only that today, it was nothing to do with a nursery rhyme but a crisp, folded 50,000 shillings’ note on the sidewalk at Constitution Square.
I was doing my morning walk to work lost in deep thought when I saw a young man crossing the road at high speed, kind of doing a sprint.
He’s stopped and bent down to pick something a few meters ahead of me. My eyes followed him. Who randomly picks a flyer on a walkway at 7:30am?

Then I saw that it was not a flyer. It was money. New money.
Our eyes met briefly as he rose and started walking briskly towards me. Kind of saying, “Sorry, I got to it first”, or, “Finders, keepers. Losers weepers! It’s mine now.”
And then I thought to myself, “If I’d gotten to that note first, would I have picked it up?"
"Would I have then gone looking for the owner?"
"Would I walk on by and pretend that I didn’t care?"
Or "Would I have done a double take and quickly drawn up a mental list of the groceries 50k could buy?"

Then my mind wandered again and sent me back to a time when I lived in the village, when a cousin came to visit with a friend. He had a plan to develop his land and they were to stay a few days.
Two days later the friend, a small wiry young man, came home in indescribable pain. His finger was swollen, that condition they call “entunuka” (My best friend Google tells me it’s called Paronychia- a bacterial or fungal infection, a nail disease).
Kati, he couldn’t eat or sleep from the throbbing pain.
He asked if he could lower his finger into the hole in our pit latrine because someone had advised it would offer instant relief and was the best treatment.
And that when he looked around, ours was the cleanest, the one where he could kneel for an hour.
Of course Mum dismissed the whole idea as ridiculous and advised him to go to a clinic and get an antibiotic.
“But this is not an infection!” he argued.
“Then what is it? Look, that pus needs to be removed, it needs to dry, because that is what is causing you untold pain!” Mum shot back.
The boy was being very difficult, holding his sick hand between his knees, his face the definition of misery.
“But nyabo. This is dogo, witchcraft! Help me!”
Now she wanted to laugh but she kept a straight face.
Then he came clean. “Okay, let me admit. I picked up some money that had been thrown in the masang’azira, the cross-roads. We had nothing to eat and the counts were a godsend. But someone told me that such money has bad luck attached to it, and now my finger is going! Just allow me to use your toilet.”
Oba byagweera wa?
But I know that he left the village that evening never to be seen again.

I’m sure that the next time he saw a coin lying on the ground, he either turned and went back, or kept his distance and crossed the road.