Tsvangariya was not the best man to run against Mugabe.
He has been leader of his party for how long?
Let me see.....
2002: Tsvangirai was the MDC candidate. He lost.
2008: Tsvangirai contested as the MDC-T candidate. He lost.
2013:Tsvangirai contested as the MDC candidate. He Lost.
I will be the first to concede that he did nothing wrong contesting and losing over and over again. Reagan for instance lost his party's nomination from 1968 up until 1980, Lincoln is a study in perseverance, Francois Mitterand lost 3 or 4 straight elections.... (we are talking 7-year election cycles!!)...In Africa however where resources are being squandered recklessly, in a global economy where decisions are made at the speed of light, you MUST put your best foot forward and dreams can not be deferred any longer than is absolutely necessary! Out-waiting incompetent leadership is no longer an option for most people in today's world - as Egyptians have shown the world!
Lesson 2: Win through superior strategy
Innovate, or abdicate - everyone loves to chant - in the assumption that it speaks solely to bumbling incumbency. It holds true for the opposition - as well.
One of the online comments on Tsvangariya I read says: "if you are not the fastest runner on the team, don't insist on carrying the baton last in the relay'. He has very few leadership qualities and made it easy for Zanu PF to expose him for the puppet he really is. Voters had no other choice but to default to Zanu PF"
That Tsvangariya is a committed democrat is not in dispute - but strategy matters - especially if failure is not an option - if it is, that is if failure is an option, then Strategy too is optional which brings me to my next point:
Even psychologists have a name for it: Losers limp: Kids do it a lot - when they are far behind in a race, they fall down, grab their foot, and yell for help - and proceed to limp all the way back to their team box. Some even continue limping at school the following day - all because they failed to win!
Fact is: Most people do not care anymore if you claim an election was rigged anymore - especially if that complaint is straight out of Africa, from the candidate (Who expects to lose) as he heads straight out of the polling booth!
When failure is not an option, you will fight a good fight and when you lose, you will know you did your best, left no stone unturned, no road untraveled, no voters un-courted. The supreme irony in my view is this: When failure is not an option, it is then you are best prepared to accept it - should it occur.
Why? Because it is a failure you can learn from! You will even admire your opponent's strategy, review it and improve your 'ground game' for the next electoral battle.
...and when when failure is an option, you know what to do: head to court!
For Obama, failure was NOT an option.
He wasn't running just to get his name into the history books like Jesse Jackson before him, You just need to look past his smiling face and into his eyes and see the cold fire in them! (It is that cold fire which scares his opponents - the white establishment most!).
The problem with OUR opposition in Nigeria is that their failure at the polls is usually a system collapse! They come up with the same old same old drum-beating manifesto-less purposeless feel-good mega-festivals - where a good 50% of the attendees are either from the ruling party, or WILL vote for the ruling party!
The important lesson from Zimbabwe is: The man on top of the mountain didn't just fall there - he climbed there. I hope sincerely that the opposition is able to sweep the PDP from power. 16 years is enough time to show your mettle - in whatever field of Endeavor.
May 1997 in Cambridge on a factory visit I said to my host Mike Deighton (now late): I pray John Major wins
he replied: "Obi your prayers are wasted! 18 years is enough time for one party"
But he's such a decent man I protested
"Obi, - this is a democracy not a dictatorship. Major will definitely lose - this has nothing to do with his policies or leadership people have had enough!"
Sunday, December 18, 2011 Pakistani exceptionalism Raja had preached before! I assumed he was Indian! Dark hued, handsome, slight of stature and soft-spoken. The very picture of meekness.... em what are the synonyms for meekness: Quiet, Submissive, Quiet, Submissive... being meek myself - as I like to think (;-)], I know the real deal when I see it. At the end of that church service, the first time I heard him preach, I walked up to him and told him I was blessed by him and asked if he was from Sri Lanka - that is my OBLIQUE way of asking Indians where they come from. I need to sit on a couch and be assisted to figure out why I always go from Sri Lanka to India.... ;-)) I'm from Pakistan!! Huh!? Paki-what? Pakistan!! Come let me hug you. You're probably my first Pakistani Certainly my first Pakistani Christian. You don't mind do you if I post in Facebook I met my first Pakistani Christian He laughed. I knew he was separated from his family he talked about sending money home during his sermon. Yesterday, he preached again - and his gentle voice and head movements, made me do something I only did at Lakewood Houston (my church where the spectacular was routine) - I brought out my camera.... em... iPad - and filmed him for just less than one minute. I filmed him because a phrase popped out of my head as I watched him: that phrase was; the exceptional Pakistani - and after he said: "Pak means holy and Pakistan means Holy country" the phrase Pakistani Exceptionalism seemed suddenly like a good them to build a rambling discourse such as this one around….bound to offend many in the United Sates who had claimed that very phrase for their beloved country…. I thought about GOP presidential debates and interviews past – and the clumsy attempts made to paint Mr. Obama as one who did not believe in American exceptionalism simply because he supposed that everyone created by God was exceptional! And this was a line of thinking rejected by many who have less travel experience than a whole lot 12 year olds in the 3rd world.... Anyway I said to myself: PAKISTANI EXCEPTIONALISM – and all of a sudden it seemed less a far fetched idea just looking at Raj preach! I said to myself: there is the proof - this young man - A Christian from an oasis in a desert of Islamic fundamentalism. He talked briefly about blasphemy laws - how they were used loosely against Christians... After church I met him again and we talked…...I would like to say that sitting there in that predominantly ‘Nigerian’ church in France, I received a revelation. It is hard to say that – because I know you'll think that I am mad! -especially if you are like that egregious Australian Gabi X - Sovereign of Cammeray County. I saw a phrase somewhere that said: “If you think that love will solve every problem in the world, you haven’t met my Mother-in-law” Gabi was THAT mother-in-law (She was Queen of Cammeray County in her spare time too!!). Nothing short of patting the head of an angel on his bald patch would convince her there was a God (and even then the aging angel would have has to worship her daily!! (Daily I say!) for her to believe there is a Christian God)...em... where was I? Yes! Sitting there in church I received a revelation (Yes Gabi! I am indeed mad – now get out!) and that revelation was that: the exceptional nations on earth were those that supported human freedoms! They ruled the earth and while other nations envied them, to become like them was a secret hidden from the nations of the earth in plain sight!!! It was the secret which would set men and nations free – if they wanted to be free: I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. Harriet Tubman Yes men were selfish and if they benefitted from the rotten carcass of the status quo, they would maintain that status quo. Kill (but not die) to maintain it. Kill but not die…. The converse incidentally was true - A status quo, which benefitted everyone, was one, which people would kill or die to maintain!!!
Anyway back to Pakistani exceptionalism.
Sitting in church, it is forgivable that I thought along the line that: No single nation was exceptional It IS Christianity, which was exceptional……… um…. I got that wrong didn’t I?.... Um what I meant to say is: It was Christianity, which made men and nations exceptional.
Thank you Raja for teaching me that!
…And Pakistan will become an exceptional nation because of you and dozens of committed Christians like you. Pakistan will become PAK-I Stan: The Holy Country – Land of the CLEAN through the redemption and healing found in peace love and the gospel of Christ. Amen.
THE US PRESIDENT ON MALEFACTORS OF GREAT WEALTH" "It may well be that the determination of the government (in which, gentlemen,it will not waver) to punish certain malefactors of great wealth, has been responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stressas possible, in order to discredit the policy of the Government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy,so that they may enjoy.
No not President Obama... Twas Theodore Roosevelt. one hundred and four years ago......
http://tinyurl.com/3g2g3vz
TORS OF GREAT WEALTH." Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not inthe world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty,regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing afortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses —whether these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to allow his son to lead alife of foolish and expensive idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of highsocial position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing achurch, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless of the working men, whom they oppress, andof the State, whose existence they imperil. There arenot very many of them, but there is a very great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type,and, just in so far as they do so approach, they arecurses to the country. (Forum, February 1895.) Mem.Ed. XV, 10; Nat. Ed. XIII, 9.
I do not remember why I wrote this piece but I believe it was most likely in response to an essay request put out by the economist. Typically, I wrote and forgot about it for almost three years. Cleaning my hard disk recently I stumbled across it. I'd like to share it with you. I have only edited it to replace my real name with ‘Didiscottie’
Obi Akaraiwe
Apr-2011
MAKING WASTE WORK!!
A thing or substance may be described as waste if it is no longer serving a purpose, or is being treated or considered to be valueless, or if it may be expended without useful effect.
Indeed the very act of failing to use an object or substance confers on it the status of waste. Waste therefore, is not an intrinsic characteristic of a thing, substance or activity, but a perception. For instance cow dung gathered preciously and used as fuel, (when mixed with straw) or manure by rural dwellers is repulsive to all others.
In the physical world, it remains to be seen if anything may categorically be described as waste. Nature abhors waste. This is borne out by physical laws, discovered lately by Homo sapiens, and encapsulated as the laws of conservation of energy, of matter, of momentum. These state that -matter/energy/momentum can neither be created nor lost.
Nature always finds a way. So should we. Nature calls nothing waste. We should not either.
Ancient processes such as the great physical and biological cycles known as the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water cycles respectively show natures preference in the re-use of end products. These natural processes – honed over hundreds of millions of years cannot be said to be fads. Waste works over and over again. And if it works, it cannot be waste.We need at this point to redefine waste.
Nature clearly shows thatwasteon a cosmic time frame doesnotexist – rather like muoniums (and other short lived but exotically named atomic particles); it is an intermediate phase of existence.More correctly, we may refer to such objects or substances (now referred to as waste), asunused end products.
What then is the concerns (if you will) of the environmentalists andgreensconsidering that nature has shown a great and unstoppable capacity to refine and re-use sundry end products.
Has nature failed?Yes and No.
Yes - in the sense that mans destructiveness was not fully anticipated by nature. Destructiveness is a harsh and uncompromising word but best describes man’s present unnaturalness, or his quest to attain, maintain and even expand the boundaries of this unnaturalness. A quest, which has given rise to prodigious amount of unused end products and by products – far beyond natures ability to cope as it, always had. Quite literally, we are with billions of tons of feckless waste straining her very bowels.
In some cases - as in the burning of fossil fuels, the end products arise as a result of incomplete burning. This itself rather than the mere act of burning appears to be account for a large proportion of the problem.
In others as in radio active or highly toxic industrial wastes, it boggles the mind on how or why certain materials are ever considered as suitable raw materials for any industrial process given that they are eminently unusable except through arcane refinement processes as logical as the alchemists dream. Mankind has thus set the agenda without regard to his environment and it is doubtful if the products of all such industrial processes rank higher than'nice-to-have'items on the scale of opportunity costs.
Let us consider the burning of coal:
“… During the incomplete burning or conversion of coal, many compounds are produced,
Some of which are carcinogenic. The burning of coal also produces sulphur and nitrogen oxides that react with atmospheric moisture to produce sulphuric and nitric acids--so-called acid rain. In addition, it produces particulate matter (fly ash) that can be transported by winds for many hundreds of kilometres and solids (bottom ash and slag) that must be disposed of. Trace elements originally present in the coal may escape as volatiles (e.g., chlorine and mercury) or be concentrated in the ash (e.g., arsenic and barium)[1]
Or look at man's intrusion into the nitrogen cycle (emphasis & paragraphing mine):
In natural systems, nitrogen lost by denitrification, leaching, erosion, and similar processes is replaced by fixation and other nitrogen sources.Human intrusion in the nitrogen cycle, however, can result in less nitrogen being cycled, or in an overload of the system.
For example, the cultivation of croplands, harvesting of crops, and cutting of forests have all caused a steady decline of nitrogen in the soil.
On the other hand, the leaching of nitrogen from over fertilized croplands, cutover forestland, and animal wastes and sewage has contributed towater pollutionby adding too much nitrogen to aquatic ecosystems, resulting in reduced water quality and the stimulation of excessive algal growth[2].
Where we may ask is the balance?
The balance between responding to our environment by living a natural unspoiled life, and responding tothatwhich has been created by Homo sapiens. From which there seems no alternative rather a resignation to our fate as partakers (albeit reluctantly) of the despoliation of our planet.
On the other hand, has nature failed?
No.
In the sense that nature abhors unnatural processes such as incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, and presently works to expunge Homo sapiens us from her its garden. Phenomena like the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming, the emergence/re-emergence of phantom diseases with re-engineered vectors point to the fact that Homo sapiens’s guardian angel – Mother Nature has by omission or commission left his fate to his own hand. He caused the problem. He must solve it.
But how?
By optimising the re-use of end or by-products. Bringing it nearer home, bymaking waste work.
As part of my submission, I have undertaken to study what I consider to be the most unrelenting, harmful and unnatural source of waste today: the burning of fossil fuels.
Precisely seven years ago, I first gave thought to the all-encompassing wastage associated with automobiles. Their unused potential and kinetic energies, and unused exhaust fumes. I will in the subsequent paragraphs try to give life to my thinking seven years ago which I have long sought an avenue to express.
At that time I sought an immediate solution to the spewing of these dangerous gases. One solution would be the development of alternate technologies such as the electric motorcar. Such cars or hybrid models, which utilise power generated from improved fossil burning and sundry voltaic sources, will no doubt limit environmental damage. But in the meantime, shall we just shrug and wait for that day? Shall we not utilise waste in fighting waste?
Making Automobile associated wastes work:
Because of the burning of fossil fuels, the clearing of forests, and other such practices, the amount of CO2in the atmosphere has been increasing since theIndustrial Revolution. Atmospheric concentrations have risen from an estimated 260 to 300 parts per million (ppm) in pre-industrial times to more than 350 ppm today.
Although such increases have not yet been great enough to cancel out natural climatic variability, projected increases in CO2from the burning of fossil fuels suggest that global temperatures could rise some 2° to 6° C (about 4° to 11° F) by early in the 21stcentury. This increase would be significant enough to alter global climates and thereby affect human welfare.[3]
If all exhaust fumes were suctioned as soon as they are expelled from the vehicle, they no longer have the potential to disturb or unbalance our delicate ecosystem.
Ifwe can have a clearinghousefor this waste so gathered, andif we could utilise the contents of this clearinghouse as the source of raw materialsfor industries, then what do we have to worry about?
Three ‘Ifs’ represent at best a shaky proposition. We must tread carefully.
Let us start with the last two propositions:
If-1:If we can have a clearinghouse for this waste so gathered
Assuming (just assuming) we are able to provide suction - massive enough - such that exhaust fumes escaping from vehicles are carried away from the atmosphere, such a clearinghouse will probably (but not necessarily) be sub-surface. Let us assume it is sub-surface and massive suction fans are able to pass to it, a prodigious volume of gaseous substances – comprising of air (Nitrogen, oxygen) & exhaust fumes.
The function of the clearinghouse will be to:
1.Separate different components of its intake
2.Pass air back to surface.
3.Pass the others to different facilities where they are compressed and stored.
If-2:If we could utilise the contents of this clearinghouse as the source of raw materials.
The contents of the clearing house being the exhaust fumes. Primarily these are:Carbon monoxide – a very important industrial fuel, carbon dioxide – very useful industrially – as fire extinguishers, providing the effervescence in carbonated drinks, and as an industrial reagent in the manufacture of washing soda & baking powder. How do we separate the constituents of the exhaust fumes?
In one word, Gas-Chromatography:
This technique permits separation of mixtures consisting of gas compounds or of substances that can be vaporised by heat. The mixture is carried by an inert gas along a narrow, coiled tube packed with a material through which the components flow at different rates. The separated components are detected at the end of the tube.[4]
The gases received this may then be compressed and stored and transported subsequently, or fed directly to industrial processes.
Power?
How shall we power for these massive suction?
By harnessing the kinetic and potential energies of moving vehicles and converting to electrical power.
How?One method will be to integrate platform on roads – lets call them kinetic pads, very similar in design to speed breakers – different in that they may be gently pushed down - by the wheels of the vehicles travelling on them and are able to quickly recover from this in order to be depressed again – an again.
This reciprocating motion may be converted to useful energy by a variety of means. One of which will be connecting the rubber encapsulated kinetic pad to crankshaft. Such that the motion occasioned by the depressing of the kinetic pad is converted to rotary motion.
We may then connect to the crankshaft via a flexible mechanical coupling a shaft bearing concentrated windings. From experience, I recommend not less than six poles. Around this shall be our multi phase distributed windings. Using synchroscopes, the output of several such generators may be combined.
The generation of power by the motion of automobile on its own could form the basis of an exhaustive treatise on making waste work.
Whereas using the motion of automobiles to generate power for the massive suction motors may help in minimising the amount of pollutants in the air, another idea would be to utilise the potential energy of hundreds of millions of cars all over the world in generating electricity for national grids around the world. What’s more electricity generated by the strategic placements of the so-called kinetic pads may be tied together to form a global electricity superhighway.
Designed from the scratch to be global, short-term benefits will include jobs creation: as tens of thousands of kilometres of copper or aluminium cables will have to be produced. Such an arrangement will require transformers. New techniques and materials will be developed to enable sub sea high power transformers. These high power transformers will have to be modular in design in addition to being installed in ‘Hot stand-by’ mode such that a faulty unit may be unplugged and replaced with minimum manoeuvre or disruption to power supply. A whole new service industry will emerge.
Long-term benefits will be:
One:The abundance of electricity globally – will reduce he use of fire wood, coal and other non-friendly sources of heating /cooking in the developing world,
Two:Reduce the wide proliferation petrol/diesel electricity generators in such countries (where public electricity output is insufficient).
Three:Introduce the possibility for making a prima facie case for legislation on power generation globally.
Four:Utilising the enormous amount of power locked up in the ‘wasted’ motion of automobiles, may lead to the redundancy of all but the cleanest power sources.
The West does not understand child labor. Is delivering Newspapers in Houston child labour? Or making cookies to raise money for the boys scouts.... Let them help to alleviate poverty. stop accepting money from.... did anyone know Gaddafy had 30 billion dollars invested in US banks? Stop selling arms to poor countries. It keeps people in the west employed but destroys..... Stop accepting payments for loans taken 50 years ago, which were never utilized.. as a matter of fact, which found their way back to Western banks.....
Obama and DNC candidates need to unleash the power of YES. The power of positive. And say things like:
"The SUN has never stopped shining on our country - do not believe the forces of NO. Forces of darkness the special interests who are groping in darkness - seeking new ways to breach the new economy we are creating..."
Let us go to the polls knowing that conscience is a quiet voice, Drown out the voices camp of No with your quiet confidence in the future of our country"
Life was really hard - I would eat amongst other things, grass shoots, succulent leaves, unripe paw-paw, and postage stamps. Unable to afford soap, I gave up bathing entirely for I hated to bathe with dirty water - to just rub it down a body already greasy with sweat and dirt.
I had to leave this neighbourhood fast!
There was nothing here for me – nobody liked me. Nobody here cared enough to help me. All I needed was a smile – a hand of friendship stretched in my direction. Here, they conspired against me - they conspired to frustrate my soul. They burnt my belongings when it seemed I was making way in the world they hated the sound of my second hand transistor radio permanently tuned to the BBC. They hated the smell of fried plantain which sometimes came from my section of the yard… I had a hand in this particular hatred on days I was able to get my hands on ripe plantains. On such days, I would make some dodo and sing war songs at the top of my voice.
The first time I did, it was not meant to annoy anyone - I had only wanted to let Etsu the west African god of mischief know I was still holding on…. Still hangin' in and that there was nothin' he could do about it.
I was thoroughly battered no question, but I was still me - I was who I was - still a spark of the great God in whose heart I was still a dream. I loved God and I was fearless!
Where was I….
Let me tell you how it happened – how they burnt my belongings!!! Don't you remember? They burnt my belongings when it seemed I was making way in the world….You remember now? Right! ...
'Twas funny how the poor conspired one against the other. At least the rich held parties and hobnobbed together, they networked and tried to consolidate their wealth through marriage and friendship, through favours and I-owe-you-one's …but the poor? They were really poor. Poor in charity, poor in faith, poor in hope, poor in everything.
I still laugh when I recall how they had carefully watched as I made my way into the compound expecting me no doubt to let out a scream, and shouting, run towards my burning abode, beating my chest and probably looking to the sky and crying in ululating tones crying "WOE IS ME"…....................but I am beating the gun.... still I can't help but wonder where the hell those creeps are now?.....what the hell they are doing now? - what was new in their live - those appalling creatures...yes indeed I am beating the gun........No! I have to beat this gun! Yes! I am still struggling but my heart is in the right place - not so the doubly wretched - wretched in body wretched in mind. Yes they did me in somewhat and made my heart angry - but so do mosquitoes and tse-tse flies and rats. Do I despise them? No!
Listen!I was returning from the waterside where I had gone to hear stories. You guessed right. I had no job or let's say I was in between jobs - waiting for God's dream to end……
At the water front y’know, we traded stories, laughed, helped the men with their nets, sort their fish into grades, this and that and that and this stuff. We also fiftied cigarettes and sometimes we just sat and watched the River gently flow by. We were mostly gentle souls. All we wanted was to pacify the raging despair within our souls… until our dreams were ready for us to inhabit.
I hated my life but was willing to soldier on.
My heart quickened at the sight of smoke coming from my section of the swampy compound where I’d been allowed to put up a Batcher. Batcher? Basha?, Bacha?... I can't vouch for its right spelling - I was a nouveau pauper.
I’d been whistling as I approached the compound. My soul was happy - for Waka the fisherman, had regaled me with stories from his days as a palmwine Tapper. Waka the great!
"Now das my luck" he complained "to suffer-suffer for my daily bread." He talked about the risks inherent in the only occupations open to him – Palmwine tapping and fishing.
"Just my luck" he said without emotion "I either falling down from those tall tall trees or I drowning in de bad bad river"
"Waka" the entire congregation, which he presently addressed, shouted. "Speak am well well. Scatter de grammar"
"Bookooroo" someone else added rather shrilly. Bookooroo was derived from Book and was a euphemism for people who tried to show off their great learning.
He had fallen… yes you guessed right – from the tallest palm tree in the whole of the Niger delta."Him papa head good" someone had said of him when he had made a quick recovery two months later. To this day, he walked with an endearing limp a result of his injuries and Waka! he became known - pidgin for Walk!
In mid-life crisis, loath to climb another palm tree, like working men the world over, he retooled and retrained. He became a fisherman.Such however was the bond between Him and his former colleagues that they would bring him a gourd or two of frothing undiluted palm wine in the evenings - after the days work. They in turn would be roast fish - hotly spiced.
Waka was kind to me and would share his palmwine. I also had the honor to be Fish Roaster in the evenings when the brothers of the order of the of Palmwine Tappers returned. The brothers of that order, were men arrogant as men anywhere - men who had full and total control of their lives and knew it for a dead certain fact.The English milord would learn a thing or two from them.They were kings when they climbed up the tall palm trees of the Niger-delta and kings when they climbed down and even as they sat for roast fish, they exuded a certain understated dignity. These impoverished Royals lived their lives to the hilt and they one hundred percent knew it. They set their own work schedules and drew up their own Gantt charts, decided what to do, who to supply and who could wait… I surpass myself…
Unfailingly each evening, they would toast Bacchus the god of wine. Bacchus who had a thousand African names. "To Nmayan-nmo" They would say in unison "To you great Nmayan-nmo. The cause of and solution to all life’s problems"
"What do you mean Mmayan doesn't cause any problems" some one posited.
"Leave that matter for another day" One with a gravelly voice retorted "I no get power for argue dis evening"
"I say Nmayan-nmo doesn't cause any problems. I don't care if you have power to argue or not. It doesn't cause any problems"
"But look at yourself are you not a problem to yourself already?"
"You're a damn fool - no wonder your in-laws beat you up the other day.."
"They disgraced themselves not me…"
On and on they bantered.
"Who is that Cockroach" I heard gravelly voice ask. I knew they spoke of me. I kept a straight face fanning the embers of fire over which a sooty basket of fish hung suspended. "That cockroach is a doctor" Waka explained. "Doctors do not roast fish! doctor of what?" A new voice cried out laughing with palmwine ejaculating from his nostrils "I don’t know" Waka answered "He told me he is a doctor and I believe him". "There are so many doctors these days" A new voice entered the fray "I am a doctor myself". "Doctor of what?" the one with the ejaculating nostrils asked again doubling with laughter - holding his midsection as though in acute pain "Don’t kill me here" he shouted – more palmwine coming out of his nose. "You will all be held responsible" he cried "You all know what a troublesome woman my wife is" "Answer now doctor?" Waka nudged the one who declared himself a doctor. "Doctor of tree climbing" he said resignedly. His thunder had been stolen by the one with the ejaculating nose. "Come here" Gravelly voiced said to me. "Sit with us. My daughter has just finished standard school. She wants to be a doctor. Are you really a doctor."
Yes! I’d been whistling when I approached the house and my heart quickened at the sight of smoke coming from the side of the swampy compound where I’d been allowed to put up a Bacha. My gait held up – not betraying the emotions I felt. I stepped smartly around what used to be my abode.
Funny enough I felt a gladness that it had been mercilessly incinerated by those who simply hated me and the earth upon which I stood. It certainly was "the peace that passeth all understanding" which I felt that time.
I recalled the dampness of the floor and the rats, which shared my space. One of which I had named Skippy for it would skip on its hind legs when it felt I had had enough of its antics and was going to smash against it something hard. I would always spare it on account of its comic plight. Evolution meant rats like Skippy would multiply and in time we would have smart rats.
If we had enough smart rats, we might be able to reach a compromise with them rats and teach 'em to steal and annoy no longer – explaining to them that there was enough for us all. (It would be easier I reckoned to explain this to Skippy & other members of the rat race than to the stealing machine called government!!) I had no feelings whatsoever surveying the remains of my home except perhaps worries that Skippy would now have to find a new abode. My main worry was that smart rats such as Skippy would be exterminated mindlessly. I thought how important it was for us to help evolutionary processes by getting a little sense into our heads... by not destroying that which we understood not.... alas the days of a reasoned tete a tete with Rats of the government or ratus ratus genre lay far ahead.
Still, whistling with my hands now in my pocket I surveyed the remains of my home and walked away head high. Freed from my shackles, I walked away. I had had it. I would first go to church and renew my relationship with Him who was patient and would verily receive me. Then I would beg some from the pastor, then I would travel to Warri. I was no longer a cockroach – smoked out of my hiding place, I was out in the open. Ready to make a hash of it. Cockroaches were afraid to move – having so many natural enemies – preferring the cover of darkness and blended out of sight. I wasn’t afraid to move – not any more. Indeed I had to move for I had no cover. But scurry I would not. I held my head high, turned around and walked out of the yard. I half expected applause - but that would have to wait for the movie version of my life story. I would first go to church and renew my relationship with Him who was patient and would verily receive me.
Then I would beg some from the pastor…and there was the one with the gravelly voice whose daughter wanted to be a doctor..... Life is tough but to my credit I'm hangin' in there.
I used to be a cockroach….I hated my life .....but was willing to soldier on and to wait for God.........
