The oldest ice cream parlor in Nairobi is located on the ground floor of Kenya House along Koinange Street, right opposite Kengele’s restaurant. Sno-cream is its name, and it has been around since 1954. Over the years, it has been carefully preserved to keep it in its original flavor. But one might not know this little fact, until he or she steps inside the small room. The old posters adverting coca-cola and Pepsi from another generation, the yellowed menu painted directly on the wall, the ice-cream making equipment from another era, and the ancient decor tell it all.

Sno-cream is quite simple, with a customer area consisting of a long counter where one can prop themselves up on the high stools, and a few low seats that are accompanied by antique coffee tables. The service area is manned by two members of staff; the cashier and the person who prepares the ice-cream. The cash register must be the most modern piece of equipment in the whole place.

The ice-cream at Sno-cream is delightful. If you ever walk into Sno-cream on a warm Nairobi evening and sit on one of the high stools, you most probably will find yourself stepping on a horizontal metal rail that is a few inches above the floor, and runs along the whole length of the bar. If you are used to sitting on high stools, you probably know how useful a footrest is, and the Sno-cream’s metal bar is no exception.

I find this metal bar the most remarkable item in the whole ice-cream parlor. If you look at it, you will notice that at the location where each stool stands, the metal is deeply worn out. It is as if a person started filing it and then abandoned the task half way. Over the many years that the metal bar has acted as a footrest to Sno-cream’s customers, the metal bar has gradually been eroded to less than half what it originally was.

How many pairs of shoes did it take for that to happen? More amazing is that it took the much softer rubber soles to eat into the hard metal. Over time, even the hardest metal can be worn out by rubber. That is how powerful the power if persistence is. In the words of Calvin Coolidge ,a former US president:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Looking at the footrest at Sno-cream reminds me that however difficult a challenge might be, and however weak we might seem in its face, we will eventually overcome it if we give ourselves time to do it without giving up. Let us be persistent.