Catching the worm

"The early bird catches the worm" is one of my favourite proverbial sayings. I guess because as a boy I interacted a lot with worms. We were living in Kigezi, and I used to wake up very early to go fishing in the nearby river with my friends. We would stop in the valleys to dig up worms which we would put in our fishing baskets or hook onto our fishing rods to act as bait. Early in the morning even the smallest worm cannot escape the weakest eye as it wiggles about vibrantly in the mud. But when the sun appears and it begins to get hot, the worms burrow into the mud until the next morning. Birds knew this and so would be up early too, swooping down and making yummy breakfast out of the poor earthy creatures. So the saying that the
early bird catches the worm is as literal as it is figurative.

The kind of rivers we grew up finishing in.

I was reminded of it during my early morning jogging. Shortly after 6am, Wandegeya, the place that rarely goes to sleep was this time unusually quiet and forlorn. I sat down on a roadside slab at Barclays Bank to catch my breath. I also wanted to buy a newspaper but saw no vendor. 6am and no newspaper vendor about? It was shocking.

Then I saw something that stirred and whispered to me passionately, "Look, Mr. Optimist, that's how success is made!" Just opposite, there was a man making rolex (a sandwich of fried eggs rolled in chapatti). He was the only one working in the same place that in the evening is crammed with several rolex makers competing for few clients. There were three people waiting for their rolexes. I joined them and watched him deftly flip the rolex on his flat pan with his big flat spoon. I thought, "This is what it means to have an edge over your competitors." The early bird truly catches the worm.