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What use is it to see all and know it all if you can't do anything
about it…?
Take me for example, a simple Gecko living off the walls of billions
of homes around the globe.
I am in lodges, hotels and offices (White house, #10 Downing Street,
can’t remember what the Chinese, Norwegians, Nigerians, Japanese,
Iraqis call theirs, State House included) catching up on all the
action, eavesdropping, reading classified documents, you name them,
and yet I can do nothing with all this information I am armed with.
Takes me back to the years when I was growing up. There was this guy
who boasted that he had an 'ear to the ground' because he knew
everything that went about on the streets.
If
you wanted to know something, Jim was the man. He was on top of
things, the gossip, guys and dolls, who was who, and seeing who
until the day......well it’s like the saying and, “every dog has its
day”.
Somebody told him something that I will never forget......and from
that day I learnt one major lesson - that seeing all and knowing it
all is not good for you. Especially if one has a big mouth.
I will tell you more about Jim later, but first, I just want to
share with you my experiences in the last month, living at one of
the lodges that are mushrooming on every residential street and
other places across the country.
There is nothing wrong with having lodges sprawled across the
country, for a country like yours trying to make an impression in
terms of tourism - it's a step in the right direction. Big pat on
the backside…
Definitely Zambia has a lot to gain… “Zimbob-Sway” across the
Zambezi and 2010 across the Limpopo.”
But I have a bone to chew with these lodges, especially the one that
I was at. I was in this room for just one week and was sickened by
the goings-on. The kind of traffic, in and out of the room, was
worse than the traffic on Cairo road during rush hours. They would
come in, all shapes and sizes and always in a rush, like people
keeping an eye on a stop watch. And they would all leave within the
hour of occupying the room. All kinds of couples, the-in-people,
politicians in and outside government, women you could not see their
faces, men strangled in white colors, you name them - they would all
drop-in (like they were street kids) for a quickie. I was forced to
watch, not that I liked it, but what else could I do - just a Gecko
on the wall with the full view of the room and watch was all I could
do.
There was this high standing member of society who always came in at
a particular time and for that whole week with different women
but having one thing in common - they were all “sweet-sixteens”. I
remembered him from the many TV News clips in which he would speak
with such authority and moral standing on every issue,
Kingdom-Come-Amen and AIDS included.
He was the
scum of the earth and I will never forgive him because he always
called his wife afterwards to tell her a fib or two about his
whereabouts. Like, “sweetheart, please, do not still my beating
heart. I love you so much…”
With all these statistics on AIDS that “ManUnkind” get to read
about, I don't know where you are headed. Judging from what went on
in that room, for the week, I was there - God help us! Careful is an
alien word these days. They used no protection. A-Live- Session
they called it. With a lot of, aaahz!, hmmmzzzz! and
oooooooooooooooohz! She left him snoring, tip-toed to the door and
zoomed right out with a sigh, “that was really deep,” just to meet
her Sister-in-Teen Ka-girl.
“Packing my books tomorrow. Bee-line to campus ol’girl! I got me a
big fish, $100 and 50 pin for a cab on top,” she told her friend in
total bliss.
Ka-girl: “Hope it is not Ba-***&***?” My mother said once, she
paused, the woman he is married to is the fourth. “The second and
third are dead. The second after a short illness and the third
after a really long illness on some island between the seven seas…”
Where are the authorities? “This is a national calamity.” “A
disaster,” your donors call it. But if you ask me..........it's a
dangerously free world.
I
told myself that this is no way to promote tourism. Such debauchery
is not good for any tourist destination. Let alone any Christian
Nation.
We don't need this. This is sick. But since it is coming from the
Gecko, I wonder who will take me serious.
Anyway
I promised I would tell you, what Jim was told......I mean Jim, the
guy with an ear to the ground; well he was told that If you have an
ear to the ground, don't keep it too close to the ground because you
might get some dirt into it.
I have always wondered what the guy who told off Jim meant. I guess
he meant that picking up all kinds of information is not good if it
does not better you, in some way.
Forget Jim and his pride of being in the know and yet doing nothing
about it. You are not a Gecko who merely sees all and knows all but
cannot do anything about it. Do something, and stop the rot…
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November
2005