TOO MANY COOKS SPOIL THE BROTH

                                              TOO MANY COOKS SPOIL THE BROTH.

         Today, my day began at about 5.00 am in the morning. Unlike every other day in the recent past, I did sleep very deeply. For the record, I seldom sleep deeply and when I do, I don’t snore. For a moment I wondered why I didn’t recoil under my bedding to gather a little bit more warmth. But it didn’t bother me at all because I had been dying to wake up early without an alarm clock. Not only did I surprise myself for rising at this time, I felt accomplished.

           I thought about my sleep and was happy that I could recall my dream. It was  memorable. In the dream, I was surrounded by people who had many expectations of me and needed action. This was weird. Neither do I have pleasant dreams nor reminisce most of them. In addition, essentially I prefer to de-prioritize people who are demanding because at times I regard myself as an annoying needy person. I reached for my phone as is the norm, then realized that people from all over the world had tried to contact me while I was half dead. On my phone was a very entertaining commercial advert for Christmas which grabbed my attention. I found myself laughing alone in the room within the first minute of my wakeful life before I cared why and who tried to reach me.

          I conveniently awake daily at 6:50 when a man routinely hurriedly yanks open several steel doors next to my house causing loud noise which signals me to get out of bed. This usually gives me time to complete my morning routines in a haste and still be 4 minutes late for work, sometimes even ten minutes. Being 4 minutes late never ever bothers anyone in authority since the tendency to bend rules is common at my workplace. People simply do as they please, and nobody cares to check that the time you arrive at work corresponds to the time you sign in provided that you’re not an hour or two late. Technically, you could be lazy and still get by.

          My hobby as a mathematician and scientist is to find ideas that will blow my mind. I don’t like to be comfortable, much as I may feel or want to feel at any single moment. Simply put, I am just a dog that needs a bone. The past couple weeks have been boring and my colleagues haven’t been much company. Therefore, I almost became the nagging dog that needs a bone in order to back off. I reckoned it best to watch mind cracking YouTube videos while still being physically present at my desk yesterday. I could have listened to music but I exhausted my playlist last week. I needed today to be different from all the other days I have been at work. Unlike every other day, there was enough time for me to prepare myself and probably utilize the day it to its limits

Shortly after my dose of laughter, I received a phone call from my family. I was surprised they weren’t sleeping. Its ironic folks on the other side of the world, neither know you are asleep nor busy when they call. Their simple conclusion is that you are ignoring their calls whenever you fail to pick the phone up. After a lengthy hilarious chat, they went to bed. For a moment I thought that my mood was going great. It’s impossible to imagine how I could have captured any of these precious moments had I woken up at the usual time. Then I thought about my current awareness. Could it be that I am awake for not indulging in drinking behavior last night? Was it my research yesterday that led me into this loop of emotions today?

               My haircut wasn’t very well done yesterday. Today, I didn’t want it to be the same as yesterday. I like to be unpredictable. I could look sketchy today but I wouldn’t let my randomness today define me tomorrow. I looked for the shaving machine and the mirror and shaved carefully after speaking with my folks. It took me about thirty minutes of trimming my hair to persuade myself that the change was obvious. It wasn’t perfect. Sometimes I like to be perfect but I hate perfection because it’s impossible. Even if some people would recognize the perfect change, not everybody would. To me, that is not perfection. Perfection is when I score ten out of ten. That’s a hundred percent. It could as well be a trillion out of a trillion. Who cares?

         Today, I was very early for work. I had more than enough time to settle down and pretend to be busy or act busy. The next colleague who got to work asked me why I was so early. I told them that I slept at my desk. It is a good way to be polite and be humorous without giving too many details.  ……… but that also depends on your sense of humor. Nobody in my department likes details. Perhaps I am the only exception.

                    The day was as usual. I said hello to the next colleague after the first colleague went for a short call…… perhaps a long call………. No answer. Who cares?...I said GOOD MORNING louder and louder…. No answer. I figured there is no possible way to get a good morning so I quit after my voice resounded in the hall. More colleagues came in and most of them seemed to be doing fine. Nevertheless, I am the dog who is not fine with “fine” or just “good morning”. I wanted the bone. I want the marrow that lies inside the bone.

         The day went by. I reached out to people within my scope of work without imposing on them the result I expected. I talked about my culture and they told me more about theirs that I didn’t know of. I learned the similarities and I appreciated the differences between my culture, theirs and others I know of. At the end, they did what I wanted them to. I am sure I also learned what they also wanted me to know. I felt good about it. But the time didn’t favor all the questions I wanted to ask to satisfy my curiosity. Perhaps curiosity is a just black hole that never consumes enough for its fill. The session was over, yet I had barely scratched the surface. “I will have more time tomorrow.” I thought. But tomorrow is for other things. There is a quote that states,”Tomorrow has got its own burdens.”

                     Why does it seem that when we get needy we tend to want more of something? More knowledge, more time, more fun, more interaction, you name it. We all want more of everything. Even the most introverted of humans need this. We can never find everything within ourselves yet when we push ourselves hard enough, we can find something worthwhile. I decided to carry the burden to the office. I knew for a fact that there are specialized colleagues who can satisfy my curiosity; though not to the fullest, and that perhaps I didn’t have to carry the entire burden by myself to the next day. I wanted this day to end swiftly, almost just the way it began.

               At the office, the questions encountered the answers. This made me reflect more on my culture, this culture and the differences. I am at a point in my life where I need to accept that learning a new culture is similar to learning a new language. It’s that basic. I am like a toddler. The difference is that, unlike a toddler, I can ask questions and get answers. I feel like a baby making its first steps after a long season of crawling. I get to a point where I realize that I cannot ask any more questions. All I can do is be the dog that gladly received a bone and started chewing it with my molars while wagging its tail to show satisfaction.

            I am young. If you consider 26 to be young, then we totally agree on this. I feel permitted to make many mistakes at this age, not that I want to. If you are 60 and above, you probably agree with me on this. I try not to make the kind of mistakes teenagers make. Rounding off my age to the nearest ten I am almost 30. I try not to be as reckless as I was at 19. Though I didn’t make very many experiments then, I like to weigh all my options in order to make informed decisions; so to speak. All my choices are huge risks to me because I consider myself very inexperienced.  I don’t look down upon myself. As a mathematician, studying probability and statistics has proved that “Anything that can happen will happen.” That applies to everyone, not just me.

               At our office, scouts came, both male and female. Some of my colleagues and I dealt with the boys, who were required to recite the scouts promise and the scouts’ law. It was an engaging activity listening to them pledge loyalty to their nation and do what their superiors asked of them and so forth. For a moment, I recognized that if everyone could spend the rest of their lives as scouts, pledging to help those in need; then my dream would come true and I wouldn’t have to single handedly solve everyone else’s problem. They are only boys and don’t know what solving anyone’s problem entails at my age. Perhaps I am right.

               My colleagues who helped and I headed back to the office. On our way there, my sinuses picked up an aroma of a very lovely meal as I went past the corridor, which made me salivate. Upon reaching the office, I saw four carefully laid out sandwiches in a plate on the table, where anyone could place snacks for free in the morning for anyone who felt like trying them out to sample. Sometimes these snacks would be for sale. This was an afternoon so I picked one sandwich since my appetite had just been excited by the sweet aroma, and I was cork sure they were not for sale.

         Within a minute, a plate of aromatic exotic rice, eggs and  carefully arranged sliced cucumbers were brought in by a girl scout and placed on the table. The boss informed us that while we listened to the pledges of the boy scouts, the girls were preparing food four us to judge. Perhaps we were all hungry, but indeed, the aroma was irresistible. All my colleagues and I gathered around the table and engaged our taste buds. Not only was the scent awesome, the taste was amazing. At this point I spoke out to my colleagues.”” Too many cooks spoil the broth”, is it possible that all the girls could have come up with such a delicious meal?”

        There is only one person in our office who can make food this delicious. Her name is Pen. I badly wanted to prove this English proverb wrong in support of all the young girls, but all of us wanted to go to the kitchen to see indeed if the girl scouts had made the food. It brought us all to the ”Aha” moment when we found Pen in charge of the dish that was ready and still being prepared, including the sandwich I had tried earlier on. All the girl scouts were surrounding her, with plates in their hands like little Tom Sawyer in Roald Dahl’s books asking for a little more.

          Yes. It is true that too many cooks spoil the broth. This experience was real and I couldn’t let myself be lousy enough to not share it with the world before going to bed. Before I ask for tomorrow to offer me a little more, I must admit that today was an extraordinary day. I didn’t get all the answers to my questions but my I had a bone to chew on. At the end of the day, I can wag my tail in satisfaction and drink to that. If only all the other days can be like this one.

Patrick Kisumba.