Opportunism

When I was in high school, I went to Kenya for humanitarian aid with my father and his friends. Our goal was to bring meat to poor villages in Mombasa, a city in south of Kenya, as there were a lot of people who could not afford it. Before we leave our country, my father and his friends have gathered money from their relatives to buy meat in Kenya on behalf of them.

When we got to Mombasa, we had the chance see the city center and meet with a lot of friendly locals. One of them has offered to take care of our transportation in the city as soon as he heard about our purpose of visit. He told us which villages to go and where to find a slaughter house so we agreed to meet with him the next day. 

We went to the slaughter house to get meat and start distribution. Our driver, Mohammed, took us to the poor villages in Mombasa and started to look for a safe place to start handing out meat. He worried that some people might try to take more than they need as the trunk of the car was full with meat. In our first stop, we found a safe spot to hand out meat. Mohammed advised us to hand out the meet to women, as they will cook to their children.

Our second stop was too crowded and there were a lot of men. Mohammed told us to go to a safer place as he was worried that the aid might turn into a chaos. We decided to park the car outside of the village and carry the bags to people. Once we gave all the bags in our hands, we went back to the car to get more bags and realized that we haven't actually locked it. There was a young men next to the car keeping an eye on the meats and keeping people away from the car.

It was that moment I realized that he could have let people to take all the bags, but he didn’t. He also had the chance to act opportunistic and take everything, however, he decided to be ethical and stayed with the car until we got there. The only reason why he did that is because he had moral values and he wanted the distribution to be done fairly. It was ethics that kept him away from being opportunistic.