One day, when I was ten, I went to the market with my aunt.
The sky had been carrying a burden long before it finally broke.
Rain fell without mercy, crashing against roofs and flooding the streets until the market itself seemed to surrender to it. Traders scrambled to cover their goods. People squeezed themselves beneath whatever shelter they could find.
My aunt and I ended up under One day, when I was ten, I went to the market with my aunt.
The sky had been carrying a burden long before it finally broke.
Rain fell without mercy, crashing against roofs and flooding the streets until the market itself seemed to surrender to it. Traders scrambled to cover their goods. People squeezed themselves beneath whatever shelter they could find.
My aunt and I ended up under a fish stall, surrounded by hanging nets, wooden crates and bowls that still smelled of the day’s catch.
The smell of salt, river water and fresh scales clung heavily to the air.
Strange how I still remember that.
I was ten.
There are entire years of my childhood I can barely recall, yet somehow I remember the smell of that fish stall.
Eventually, the rain weakened into scattered drops.
But the world it left behind felt... wrong.
The colors had disappeared.
Everything looked like an old grayscale photograph. The sky hung low and heavy above us, and even people’s voices seemed quieter, as though the storm had taken something with it.
So we headed home.
When we reached the bridge, we stopped.
The river had swallowed it.
You knew the bridge was there somewhere beneath the muddy water, but you couldn’t see it anymore. The current had risen to the waist of a grown adult and was rushing violently across the path.
“ You have to, remember To ten-year-old me, the river didn’t look like water anymore. It looked alive and hungry. “
People gathered at the edge, staring nervously at the water.
Eventually, they came up with a plan.
We would cross in groups of about twenty, holding onto one another so there would be enough weight to resist the current.
I remember waiting with my aunt, watching one group disappear into the water and slowly emerge on the other side.
Then another.
And another.
You know how adults sometimes look frightened but try not to let children notice?
I noticed.
“I’ve always been like that, actually. Watching people. Their faces. The slightest changes in expression. The things they try not to say. I started observing people long before I could make sense of what I noticed.”
Then he appeared.
A man.
Drunk.
He swayed slightly as he approached the river, amused by everyone’s hesitation.
He laughed.
Then, in Twi, he basically told everyone to move aside.
He could swim.
Some people laughed nervously.
Others warned him.
“Herh! Don’t go!”
“Come back!”
But he kept moving.
There’s something strange about arrogance.
Sometimes it makes a person deaf.
He stepped into the water.
At first, nothing happened.
Then,
pure chaos.
“STOP HIM!”
“COME BACK!”
“HERH!”
Everyone started shouting at once.
People rushed toward the riverbank.
Hands stretched desperately toward the water.
I looked too.
Waiting for his head to appear.
A hand.
Anything.
But there was nothing.
No hand reaching upward.
No desperate struggle.
No dramatic final scream.
Nothing.
Just muddy water rushing over a bridge as though nothing had happened.
As though nobody had been there.
As though the river had taken what it wanted and simply continued on its way.
That was the last anyone saw of him that day.
Eventually, our turn came.
We crossed.
And somehow, life continued.
I got home shivering so badly that my teeth knocked against each other.
I took a warm bath.
Changed into dry clothes.
Wrapped myself in blankets.
My mother made me hot tea, and I held the cup between my hands, letting the warmth seep into my fingers.
My family was around.
Someone made a joke.
Someone else added something funnier.
Everybody laughed.
I laughed too.
And that’s the part of this memory that bothers me most now.
I laughed.
Not because I didn’t care.
I was ten.
The terrible thing had happened at the river, and now I was home.
Safe.
Warm.
Dry.
But I’ve thought about that evening many times as I’ve grown older.
“ Think about this for a second. While I was sitting there drinking tea, somebody somewhere may have been waiting for that man. Maybe there was food waiting for him. Maybe someone was getting annoyed because he was late. Maybe his wife kept looking toward the door. Maybe a friend expected to see him the next morning. “
I don’t know.
I never even knew his name.
To me, he was simply the drunk man who made a bad decision .
But there’s a word I discovered years later that made me think differently about people.
Sonder.
It’s the sudden realisation that every random person you pass is living a life just as complicated and vivid as your own.
“ Think about that the next time you’re in traffic or walking through a crowd. Every face you barely notice belongs to somebody who has memories you will never see, people they love, things they regret, private jokes, childhood stories, fears, dreams and entire worlds inside them. “
That man had one too.
He had lived an entire life before our paths crossed for those few minutes.
Someone could recognise his voice in a crowded room.
Someone knew a version of him that I never would.
To me, he became a childhood memory.
To somebody else, he may have been home.
And while my family laughed that evening, another family’s worst day may have already begun.
I think about that sometimes when I’m walking through crowded places.
Look around you.
The person sitting beside you could have buried someone yesterday.
The woman laughing loudly across the room could have cried herself to sleep the night before.
Someone might be replying “I’m good” to your message while sitting in a hospital corridor.
Someone might be celebrating the best news of their life at the exact moment someone else receives the worst.
The traffic keeps moving.
People still go to work.
Food still gets delivered.
Someone somewhere is complaining that their Wi-Fi is slow.
Someone is falling in love.
Someone is getting their heart broken.
Someone is being born.
Someone is dying.
All at once.
“ So maybe just be kind to people.
Seriously.
You don’t know what happened in someone’s life five minutes before they met you. You don’t know what phone call they received that morning, what they’re going home to, what they’re grieving, or how much effort it took them just to show up and look normal. “
That day, beneath a dead grey sky, I witnessed death for the first time.
A man disappeared into a river and the world carried on completely unaware.
People laughed. Cars moved. My mother made me tea.
Someone’s world had just changed forever, and most of us didn’t even know.
This is good, really.
Deep❤️, Be Kind To People