When it became apparent that I won’t be traveling as much as I used to several years ago, I went into a gift shop in Nairobi and bought myself a globe. I then took it home and set it up in my living room so that the tip of my finger could travel to any country in the world from the comfort of my seat. Up till a few days ago, the globe was set up on a pedestal and propped up on a semi-circular metallic bar that enabled me to rotate the miniature world around its axis – just as the real world. But then Wanderi changed all that.

Wanderi is a 3 year old neighborhood boy that I hang out with once in a while. While I was outside watering some plants, Wanderi sneaked inside my house and I heard something crash. When I quickly went inside, I saw the pedestal from where the globe was propped on the floor separate from the circular ball still attached to the semi-circular bar that enables it to rotate. Wanderi was holding the ball with both hands and when he saw me, he excitedly said, “Ball!”

So, I extracted the globe from his hands and told him it is “World” as I tried to fit it back on the pedestal. However, the damage was permanent and the little world would not be the same again. Wanderi repeated “Ball!” and I said, “World” and shoed him out of the house to avoid further catastrophe.

When I looked at the globe later, the only thing that remained to be done was to unscrew the semi-circular bar and let the globe become a ball – just as Wanderi had wanted. When I look at the ball now, I realize that I can look at the world in many different ways that I hadn’t considered before. For example I can look at the map of the world upside down and when I turn it at an angle, Australia takes the shape of Africa.

I guess it takes people like Wanderi to come into our neat orderly lives and turn one or two things around, and then we are able to see the world from a different perspective. Then an ordinary world that rotates in a single direction at fixed periods of time, can become transformed into loose and carefree ball that can become fun to play with.