When Being Kind Leaves A Bitter Taste

I heard the most heart-wrenching story today, and unfortunately, it’s about kindness. You see, I like to preach about kindness and all, but I think I should start adding that not everyone deserves it. Yeah, that’s the truth, and it hurts.

My cousin has been taking care of this boy ever since he was born. The boy’s dad died not long after he was born, and his mom wasn’t also financially stable, so my cousin took it upon herself to take care of him. She’s taken her through school, from crèche to University. I’ve seen her provide for her even when she didn’t know what she was going to eat.

He just completed university and we were all even happy for him. Due to the economy, my cousin asked him if he wants to look for a job or start a business, and he chose the former. He started looking for jobs, and then after a month, he said he wasn’t getting any good paying jobs, so he would just start a business.

My cousin told him to do his feasibility studies on the kind of business he wants to start and how much he would need for capital. I don’t really know what business he wanted to invest in, but he told my cousin he would need a startup capital of 20,000 Ghana cedis. That’s about $2000. My cousin didn’t even think twice. She gave him the capital.

After about three months, she wasn’t hearing anything from him, so she asked about the business and then he said he was still working on it. My cousin even gave him some business tips and then motivated him to keep working hard until he reaches his goals.

Just this evening, I heard my mom shouting while talking on the phone, and afterwards, she told me something that shocked me to the core. So it happened that the guy used 18,000 Ghana cedis for a bet and lost. And the 2000 cedis, he can’t even account for it.

I don’t know what my cousin is going through right now but I know she’ll probably never be that kind to a stranger ever again. She also said the guy actually used to spend his school fees while in university, but she just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

To be honest, before I got to know this story, I even thought he was my relative, not knowing he was never my relative. He was just a stranger my cousin took in because of his situation. And just look at what he did.

I’m not going to say that we shouldn’t be kind but the way the world is going, you have to make sure whoever you are being kind to is not taking advantage of you. I don’t even know how to do that because people’s real characters are not written on their faces. But you know what? There are always signs. Look for that.