Who's the Real Do-Gooder at Nsumba?

The kindness of some of teh people here really touches me sometimes. Take my friend, Kassim, another teacher at my school. For no real reason one day last week he invited Cha, the Korean volunteer at our school, and I to have chips (in the British sense) after school. There are several places by the road where they sell beer and soda and usually there's a guy who pan fries chips and grills beef shishkabobs call mshikaki. A popular thing to do with the chips is to add beaten eggs as he fries them. This comes out as sort of a french fry omlette, which sounds strange but is really good. It's called chipsi mayai--mayai being Swahili for eggs. So Kassim, who makes less money than I do and a lot less than Cha, insisted on paying. This is real normal for him. He often insists on paying for bus fare if we go somewhere and things like that. I've learned it's pointless to argue. I tried to make up for it a little this time by buying our sodas. So they guy made chipsi mayai and mshikaki one serving at a time since he only has one pan, and of course Kassim took his last. Everything up to then was nice enough, but what really touched me was when he saw a little boy walking home from primary school, called him over, and gave him half his food. By then it was 3 in the afternoon and that kid probably hadn't eaten since breakfast at 6. Needless to say, he was quite hungry and extremely grateful. I often think of the things I'm missing at home and lament my, by my old standards, spartan existence. Then there's Kassim, who's working as hard as I am but doesn't have a relatively luxurious life to look forward to after two years. I'm often amazed by how much people with so little can give.