He made a living collecting things we no longer wanted. Then he lost something no amount of money could replace.
I once gave a man some old clothes and walked away feeling like I had personally rescued humanity. You know that feeling?
You finally clear out your wardrobe, give away the things you haven’t worn in three years, and suddenly your conscience starts behaving as though you have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The man’s name was Jeremiah. He collected our garbage, found value in things we had discarded, and somehow managed to smile at people who barely noticed he existed.
Then one night, my phone rang. Jeremiah needed six hundred shillings. His little boy was in hospital. I sent the money. A few days later, he sent me a photograph. Underneath were four words. “He died yesterday.” And suddenly, everything I thought I understood about generosity, friendship and being a good human being became considerably more complicated.
There are people you meet who make you question whether you have understood life correctly. Jeremiah was one of them.
He was a hardworking man. He smiled easily and knew how to oil the social graces essential to his work. He was also a garbage collector.
Not your traditional garbage collector, though.
Jeremiah was something of an entrepreneur. He collected artefacts, old shoes, clothes, furniture and anything else that seemed valuable or useful. He would clean them up, find someone who needed them and resell them.
In a world where people spend money on things they do not need, Jeremiah made his living finding value in what they no longer wanted. I thought that was rather clever.
He was a man you would find difficult not to like. He had an arresting smile, the kind that arrived before the rest of him, and a way of introducing himself that made you feel as though you were meeting an old acquaintance.
“Good morning, Sir. Might you have some old shoes, clothes or an artefact in your house that you want to dispose of? Something taking too much space? Kindly let me know.”
He had perfected his pitch. And he had chosen his market rather well.
In this day and age, when our houses are filled with things we bought enthusiastically and subsequently forgot existed, Jeremiah was a godsend. We have clothes we hope to fit into again, appliances we intend to repair, and boxes whose contents remain a mystery because opening them might require making a decision.
Some of us have entire rooms dedicated to postponing decisions. We call them stores.
Jeremiah understood this peculiar human behavior. Twice a week, he walked through our estate, visiting roughly a hundred houses. Somehow, there was always something of value waiting to be discovered.
Sometimes it was offered willingly. Sometimes he found it rummaging through the garbage. Either way, he had developed a remarkable ability to see opportunity where others saw inconvenience.
And that was how I came to know him.
The Gentleman in the Dirty Overalls
The first time we spoke, I was struck by his diminutive frame and cheerful disposition. Jeremiah was a small man with an enormous capacity for pleasantries. He was ready to offer respect even when it was not returned.
Over time, I discovered that he was unusually well-liked. He enjoyed access to the estate that other garbage collectors did not have. He came and went with remarkable freedom, although he maintained a strict morning routine.
There was something almost ceremonial about the way he conducted his business. He would arrive early, inspect the garbage bags, carefully separate anything useful, and arrange the remaining waste for the collection truck expected in about an hour. Then he would visit particular houses.
He knew which doors to knock on, which households preferred a conversation, and which residents were likely to have something for him. He was a curious mixture of a butler, a concierge and a security escort. Only his uniform was dirty overalls, and his office was a collection of garbage bags.
Once, as I walked past, I found him engaged in a rather animated discussion with a resident. I stopped long enough to listen.
Jeremiah had developed some fascinating observations about the middle class. Here were people who appeared well-heeled, living behind imposing gates, surrounded by technology, vehicles and an impressive collection of household appliances. Yet many seemed unable to function without a small army of people helping them.
Someone to clean. Someone to cook. Someone to guard. Someone to garden. Someone to repair what had broken. And, of course, Jeremiah to help dispose of what they had accumulated.
It was an interesting observation from a man who had never attended university. He had attended primary school and learned the rest from life. I wondered how many educated people would have found his observations uncomfortable.
Jeremiah had also achieved something remarkable. He had convinced people who might otherwise have regarded him as beneath their social standing to spend several minutes in conversation with him. He did not demand respect. He made people comfortable enough to offer it.
He knew when to speak, when to listen and when to leave. He had mastered the delicate art of being familiar without becoming intrusive. And he was dependable. I came to appreciate that quality more than his sunny disposition.
The First Request
Our first proper interaction was uncomfortable for me. For Jeremiah, it was clearly well-rehearsed.
“Boss, unaweza kuwa uko na old clothes hivi you spare them for me?”
He wanted to know whether I had some old clothes I could give him. The conversation was mainly in Sheng, that wonderful combination of English, Kiswahili and expressions invented by people who have decided that two languages are simply not enough.
I looked at him. He smiled. I recognized him from our previous encounters around the estate.
I have always made it a habit to greet people. It was something I was taught early in life, and I have carried it with me. Although I must confess, I have recently become rather economical with my greetings.
You see, I have discovered that for some people, a greeting is merely the opening ceremony for a request. You say hello today. Tomorrow, you exchange pleasantries. By the third encounter, someone is presenting you with a portfolio of problems requiring immediate financial intervention.
I do not know whether you share my face, but I seem to attract requests for assistance. I can go for a perfectly innocent walk and be approached by two or three strangers, each convinced I am uniquely positioned to resolve their difficulties.
Sometimes I wonder whether it is my face, my bearing or my eyes. Perhaps I look like a mobile branch of a charitable organization.
Anyway, back to Jeremiah.
I was wary. But I also considered myself a minimalist. Not an accomplished one, mind you. If minimalism were examined, I would probably score six out of ten.
There were still several things in my house that had survived my repeated declarations that I was simplifying my life. I thought of a few garments and a pair or two of shoes that might serve Jeremiah well.
“Give me a minute,” I said enthusiastically.
I went inside, collected the items, packed them and handed them to him. He thanked me warmly. And I felt wonderful.
For a remarkably long time afterwards, I carried the satisfaction of that small gesture. You know how you do one good deed and suddenly feel as though humanity has been rescued from the brink of collapse?
That was me.
I had given away some clothes I no longer wore, and my conscience was behaving as though I had personally solved global poverty.
Human beings are interesting creatures. We can be extraordinarily generous with things we have already decided we do not need.
A Man With a Plan
And so my relationship with Jeremiah began. A fist bump here. A greeting there. Occasionally, a conversation.
There were mornings when he seemed unusually happy, and others when his smile seemed to carry something heavier. I noticed these changes but never dared to ask about his family.
Until one morning.
I was out walking when I saw him rummaging through a garbage bag.
“Hello, Jeremiah.”
“Hello, Edwin.”
We exchanged the customary observations about the weather. It is remarkable how much time human beings spend discussing the weather when what we really want to understand is each other.
Then I asked about his family. His face brightened.
He was married, with two children, and another baby on the way. He was excited. He spoke about working hard to ensure there was food on the table and that his children received a good education. He wanted them to have opportunities he had never enjoyed.
There was hope in his eyes. Not the exaggerated optimism of someone who believes everything will magically work out. It was the practical hope of a man who knew that tomorrow would require him to wake up early and work.
He told me how fortunate he felt to have something stable to do. His job, he said, was respectable.
I nodded. I could have offered a speech about the dignity of labor, but it seemed unnecessary. Jeremiah did not need me to explain the value of his work. He already knew it.
We spoke for several more minutes. I remember leaving that conversation feeling as if I had heard a man speak from a deep well. A well that people rarely stopped long enough to listen to.
Perhaps he wanted affirmation. Perhaps he simply wanted someone to hear him. I could not tell. But I remembered his excitement about his children. And I remembered his pride.
Months passed.
I kept something of a mental Rolodex of my interactions with Jeremiah. We usually met when I was at the gym or on a walk. These were moments when I was alone, so our conversations often lingered in my mind.
Occasionally, I wondered how I might help him. He had become particularly popular with several older women in the estate. Respectable women who found him helpful, reliable and pleasant.
He knew how to speak to them and, from time to time, how to ask for assistance. I did not think much of it.
He was doing what many of us do. Building relationships. Creating goodwill. Finding ways to survive.
Only Jeremiah’s relationships were formed across social boundaries that most people rarely crossed.
And then, one night, my phone rang.
Six Hundred Shillings
It was late. The number was unfamiliar.
“Hello, Boss.”
I struggled to place the voice. He reminded me who he was.
Jeremiah.
“I need some help with an urgent matter.”
I listened.
“My child is at Kenyatta Hospital. I need six hundred shillings urgently.”
Six hundred shillings.
I did not hesitate. I sent the money.
He mentioned something about difficulties with SHA, the Social Health Authority, but I was more concerned about the immediate emergency. I told him to call if he needed anything else.
Then I waited for an update. None came.
Life continued.
A few days later, I was sitting with a group of men. We meet every other week, a prearranged gathering where we talk about life and the things that occupy our minds.
My phone vibrated. A message from Jeremiah.
There was a photograph. A young boy, perhaps a year and a half old, lay on a basic hospital bed.
Beneath the photograph were four words.
“He died yesterday.”
I stared at the screen. I read the message again. Then I looked at the photograph.
For a moment, the conversations around me disappeared.
I was shocked. Then angry. Then terribly sad.
I called him immediately.
“What happened?”
I asked almost desperately, as though there might have been a misunderstanding. Perhaps the photograph was old. Perhaps he meant someone else. Perhaps there was some explanation that would make the message less final.
There wasn’t.
And what shocked me most was his voice. It was calm. Almost piercingly calm.
“My son died.”
He explained that they had encountered difficulties because they lacked active SHA cover. According to him, there had been delays in getting assistance. They had waited. And waited. Then the child stopped breathing.
Jeremiah said he had been told there was a problem involving an overdose of medication. I could not establish exactly what had happened. I only knew what Jeremiah was telling me.
His voice remained strangely mechanical. He spoke as though he were giving me an account of an ordinary day’s work.
And then he said something I was completely unprepared for.
“I am hiring a loudspeaker and someone to play music in the kijiji. We will raise money to bury him.”
He lived in Kibera. The plan was to move through the community, play music and ask people to contribute towards the funeral.
I was still stuck on his first statement.
My son died.
Jeremiah had already moved to the next problem.
How to bury him.
The Things We Believe When We Are Helpless
Then his voice changed.
“I spoke to another lady who lost her son last week at Kenyatta.”
He paused.
“We poor people suffer when we don’t have money.”
There was bitterness now. He told me that he believed some children were deliberately being harmed so their organs could be harvested.
It was a horrifying accusation. I had no evidence to support it, and I could not know whether anything of the sort had happened. But I could hear what the belief meant to him.
He had entrusted his child to people he expected to help. His child had died. And he was searching for an explanation that could accommodate the enormity of that loss.
I heard anger. I heard resignation. And beneath both, I sensed a man who believed he had exhausted every possibility available to him.
I wanted to ask more questions. What exactly had happened? What treatment had the child received? Had anyone explained the medical records? Was there a formal report?
But the questions seemed to belong to a different conversation. Jeremiah was not calling me to investigate the hospital. He was calling because his son was dead and he needed help burying him.
“Please let the people in the estate know what I am going through.”
I said yes. Then I asked him whom he wanted me to speak to.
You see, the estate where I live is a curious place. We live close enough to hear one another’s dogs barking, yet sometimes know remarkably little about the people behind the neighboring gates.
I knew Jeremiah. I knew some residents. But I did not have either the courage or the social confidence to begin knocking on doors announcing that the garbage collector had lost his son.
And even if I did, whose gate would I knock on first?
I could imagine the conversations.
“Good afternoon. You know Jeremiah?”
“Which Jeremiah?”
“The gentleman who collects garbage.”
“Oh, yes. What about him?”
“His son has died.”
And then what?
Would I ask for money? Would I explain the circumstances? Would I be speaking for Jeremiah or merely satisfying my own need to feel useful?
I felt his helplessness. And, rather uncomfortably, my own.
I asked him to add me to the welfare group organizing the funeral. I promised to help to the best of my ability.
We ended the call.
I returned to the men seated around me. But something had changed.
The conversation continued. I was no longer fully there.
The Distance Between Knowing and Doing
In the days that followed, Jeremiah occupied my thoughts. I felt as though I had not done enough. As though his pain had not sunk deeply enough into me. As though I had moved on too quickly.
And perhaps I had.
I spoke to a few people who might assist him. I contributed what I could. But there was a nagging feeling that more could be done. More to help him. More to make a difference in his life.
And I began to wonder about something uncomfortable.
Why did I feel such satisfaction after giving Jeremiah a few old clothes, yet feel so inadequate now?
The first gesture had been easy. It cost me little. I had something I no longer needed. He needed it. I gave it away. Everyone was happy.
But this was different.
There was no convenient bag of unwanted possessions I could hand over to make things better. I could not reach into my wardrobe and retrieve a replacement child. I could not offer him a few encouraging words and expect the grief to disappear.
And I could not pretend that six hundred shillings had been enough.
I thought about how easily we mistake a completed gesture for a completed responsibility. How we give, feel good and move on.
Not necessarily because we are selfish. Sometimes because we genuinely do not know what else to do.
Jeremiah had spent years collecting what people discarded. He had made a living finding value in things others overlooked. He had learned how to approach strangers, how to make himself useful and how to ask without appearing demanding.
And now, when he needed people most, he was relying on those same relationships.
I wondered how many people knew his children’s names. How many knew where he lived. How many knew what he feared.
I certainly hadn’t known enough.
Yet I had considered him a friend.
The Smile That Remained
I saw Jeremiah today.
He was back at work. The same dirty overalls. The same familiar route. The same garbage bags waiting to be sorted.
But something was different.
His smile was still there, although it seemed tired. He looked sad.
I approached him. We greeted each other.
I wanted to say something meaningful. Something that might acknowledge the terrible thing that had happened without making him feel obliged to comfort me.
But words are strange things. They arrive effortlessly when we have little to say and abandon us when something important needs to be expressed.
I stood beside him. He continued with his work.
I stayed a little longer. Long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable. Long enough for both of us to realize that neither knew quite what to do with it.
Eventually, he moved on. And I watched him go.
I have been thinking about Jeremiah ever since. About the cheerful man who knew how to put people at ease. About the father who spoke excitedly of educating his children. About the entrepreneur who found opportunity in discarded things.
And about the calm voice that told me his son had died before explaining how he intended to raise money for the burial.
I do not know what Jeremiah will become after this loss. I do not know what he tells himself when he returns home in the evening. I do not know whether his smile is courage, habit, resignation or simply the face he has learned to present to a world that still expects him to work.
Perhaps it is all four.
I know that I would like to do more for him. But I am also beginning to understand that helping another human being is not always about finding the right thing to give.
Sometimes it is about remaining present when nothing convenient remains to offer.
We live in a world where people are often valued according to what they own, what they earn and the doors they can open for us.
Jeremiah had very little of the first two. Yet he had somehow opened doors that remained closed to many others. He had done it with respect, consistency, usefulness and a smile.
And perhaps that is why his story troubles me.
Because I had seen him so many times, I had greeted him. I had spoken with him. I had even congratulated myself for helping him.
But I wonder how much of Jeremiah I had really seen.
He was the man who collected what we threw away. And today, watching him return to his work, I found myself thinking about all the things we discard without ever placing them in a garbage bag.
The conversations we postpone. The people we overlook. The questions we never ask. The relationships we assume will always be there. And the opportunities to know another human being before tragedy forces us to pay attention.
I do not have a grand conclusion to Jeremiah’s story. His life is still unfolding. His grief is still fresh. And I am still trying to understand what it means to be useful to him now.
But I remember standing beside him this morning, searching for something worthwhile to say.
I found nothing.
So I stayed.
Perhaps next time I will ask him how he is really doing. And perhaps, instead of preparing something clever to say, I will have the patience to listen.
Because for years, Jeremiah has been asking us whether we have anything of value we no longer need.
I wonder how many of us have ever stopped to ask him what he needs that money cannot buy.
And whether we would have the courage to remain long enough to hear the answer.
Talk. Clarify. Grow. Transform.
If this message stirred something in you, don’t let it fade.
1. Join my LinkedIn Habit Coaching Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/habits-with-coach-edwin-7399067976420966400/
2. Join my Habit WhatsApp Community at https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbAmKkOBvvsWOuBx5g3L
3. Join The Clarity Room at https://chat.whatsapp.com/HzoEAcKBM4lDHtzDnl6IL8
4. Ready to level up your life? Join my 12-Month Personal Transformation Program and let’s intentionally build the next version of you — with clarity, discipline, and momentum. Call or WhatsApp me directly at +254 724 328059, and let’s begin.
Comments
Post a Comment